CHAPTER III

ASTRAL LIGHT AND THE PSYCHO-LASTROMETER

One of the commonest phenomena associated with Spiritualism is the production of light. Many mediums possess this power of attracting or emitting light and even small circles where there is in truth little enough Light in the true psychic sense, yet produce this, the most elementary of the phenomena.

It is possibly because it is so easy to induce light phenomena of various kinds that the production of any form of spirit luminosity has been, so to speak, taken at face value as a criterion of _goodness_.

In actual point of fact at least two-thirds of the light manifestations seen at Séances may be classed as dubious and a portion of them are more than dubious, they are malevolent manifestations.

To this blind belief in the “goodness” of spirit light in itself we may trace certain disastrous mental calamities that have overtaken too trustful searchers. The myth springs possibly from an acceptance of early Bible teachings and a desire to identify these manifestations with the Pentecostal tongues of fire and similar analogies. But among the mass of humble practitioners of Spiritualism who follow the path of the Light are many that are mistaking astral evils for psychic good.

To the average Spiritualist the success of a small circle in the production of spirit lights is a heartening message from the spirit world. It is a testimony that life-after-death endures, and as such the phenomena are welcomed as spirit visitors, sometimes identified as actual spirit forms, and no doubt is raised in the minds of those present concerning the innate and essential “goodness” of the visitation.

In order to avoid confusion I shall use the term astral light to describe the usual spirit light.

The light phenomena are customarily associated with the dark or semi-dark séance because in the full light of day or under normal conditions of artificial light it is almost impossible to see the astral light at all, unless one is clairvoyant or unless the concentration of spirit force is so marked that there is no possibility of mistaking it.

The normal appearance of astral light is that of indefinite globular or pear-shaped masses of faint phosphorescence. These appear near sitters or on objects in the room and frequently move about, wax and wane, or gather into clouds before a materialism or in support of a particular effort.[8]

In other cases they take the form of direct rays and in certain individuals have been known to occur as flashes like dull electric discharges. Another not uncommon form is the projection from the body of a distinctly defined aura or radiation of light which is faintly luminous like the gases in a Geissler tube subjected to oscillant discharges.

We must go far back into history and indeed beyond the bounds of history before we can come to a time when this manifestation of light was not one part of the common stock in trade of the thaumaturge or wonder worker.

The manipulation and control of astral light phenomena were part of the religious mysteries of the magicians of Chaldea who transmitted the secret knowledge to the seers of Egypt. We find it in the myth of the luminous bull in the Greek mysteries and again as an attribute of the great healer Apollonius of Tyana. This mysterious radiance plays equal parts in the records of the lives of the saints and in the terrible archives of the trials for sorcery.

Confusion exists because to the untrained eye of mankind all forms of astral light are identical.

The greater proportion of the astral light seen by circles is that generated and given off by the human mental energy of the circle itself. The spirit-forms are all too often thought-forms built up out of the liberated psychoplasm or thought-matter given off by sitters.

The physical nature of this psychoplasm has so far defied all attempts at scientific research, but it appears to be something more substantial than the mere emission of vibrations that it is commonly held to be. It appears to be an all-penetrating imponderable emanation which dissipates rapidly, but which under certain conditions is capable of being energized by the intelligence of the living or by discarnate intelligence. Under these conditions it becomes luminous and under certain further conditions can be used as the vehicle for the transmission of force.

It can best be realized as being to the mind what ectoplasm[9] is to the body of the medium, but the precise limitations of both the astral body-matter ectoplasm, and astral mind-matter psychoplasm are not yet ascertained.

It is a conceivable hypothesis that both are functions of the vast unknown mechanism of the subconscious self, but where the capacity for the projection of ectoplasm is rare, the emission of psychoplasm is the basis of most Spiritualist phenomena.

It is to this radiation of psychoplasm that we must look for the explanation of such a simple thing--and at the same time such a complex thing--as psychic atmosphere. Do we not all know the peculiar atmosphere which surrounds individuals and places? The phenomena associated with apparitions have been ascribed to the penetration of structure by violently liberated psychoplasm set free in moments of passion and bloody violence. There too is the clue to its physical source, for in some obscure way blood and the emanations from blood play a vital and important part in psychic matters.

Under normal circumstances psychoplasm is dissipated and the liberated energy that animated it goes with it to return in the normal way of the cycle of life. Under other circumstances the psychoplasm retreats back into the mind whence it came, just as the materialized ectoplasm is reabsorbed into the body of the medium.

The dangers latent in assuming all astral light phenomena to be “good” can be realized when it is considered what may occur to the projected psychoplasm which is emotionally liberated beyond the confines of the body and beyond its living human control.

A party of some half-dozen form a circle in some provincial city. They may know one another well or they may be, comparatively speaking, strangers. However well they may know the public lives of the members of the circle, can they fathom the secret soul of each sitter? Can they say whose mind is a garden of purity or who may have some tendency to some unknown enormity?

Yet it is precisely this weakness that makes a soul-appalling danger of the hideous mental promiscuity that is one of the essential things of which all the more ingenuous and simple believers and a few clever evil hypocrites among Spiritualists make a cult.

They may unknowingly include among themselves an individual, man or woman, who has somewhere a secret kink--a mental leaning--it need not be an actually accomplished physical fact--but simply an inclination to the obscene, the evil, or the cruel.

The circle launches its prayer, concentrates on the attraction of the discarnate spirits of those who have passed over--and what comes, who comes?

There is no gifted Spiritualist or student of matters psychic who has not had either personal or absolutely credible second-hand experience of the existence of bad or lying spirits. It is true that insistence upon their existence has latterly become unfashionable in Spiritualist circles--because it does harm to the professional medium, but not even the most insistent of suppressive propaganda can live down the writings and testimonies of the past and the ever-recurrent undeniable phenomena of the present.

It is not too much to say that in nine cases out of ten where a crude and humble belief in Spiritualism is put in practice by a circle of operators whose standard of education and intellectual attainment is low, the etherealization of the psychoplasm of the believers is mistaken for the materialization of the spirit.[10]

So much for the visible luminous appearances of astral light. Now let us consider the range of probabilities that may affect these. It must be borne in mind that it is the process of their reabsorption into the sitters after being charged with outside influences that introduces the element of danger.

Psychologists know that certain fixed laws govern mental processes. There is the Law of Similarity, which evokes the association of ideas; there is the Law of Integration, which splits memories and picture memories into integral fragments; and there is the Law of Redintegration, which enables the subconscious mind to reassemble the part memories into one completed picture of a past scene or event.

The astral light, once beyond the control of the sitter, is at the command of (1) stronger human wills in the circle, (2) the lower or baser forms of discarnate intelligence, (3) spirits of ex-mortals, (4) higher spirits.

It is the dominance of the human will that is the first positive danger. Part of the accepted dogma of Spiritualism is that hostile or unbelieving influences are antagonistic to the spirits. This is by no means accurate, but can be classed for practical purposes as a half-truth. The state of mental concentration and muscular relaxation that is necessary to the séance bears a close and analogous resemblance to the state of consent that the hypnotist demands of his subject.

The first requisite of the Spiritualist is the question put to him or her by others of the cult.

“Do you believe in Spiritualism?”

The honest sceptic, the unreasoning man-in-the-street observer is soon converted by evidence, then faith in the inexplicable wonders of Spiritualism is born.

In other words the mind of the neophyte accepts the whole loose doctrine of Spiritualism and is prepared to believe that all phenomena are due to spirit influence, and does not attempt to further analyse the accepted spirit influence.

The mental or emotional state produced by the participation of a devout believer in a séance, leaves the mind receptive of ideas, and the ideas received back into the mind are those impressed upon the psychoplasm that is liberated and is visible as astral light and is reabsorbed into its sources after it has been beyond the control of its originator’s consciousness.

In a circle of ten or fewer people where the sexes are mixed, it is impossible to say what suppressed desires may be latent in the minds of those who compose it. Even in the case of circles confined to one sex alone there is the possibility of sex perversion being a secretly dominant mental force in the mind of someone there.

It is an inexorable law that the conscious or subconscious will of the most powerful and determined member of the circle dominates the minds of the others through its influence on the psychoplasm or astral light.

Even without the knowledge of the dominant influence his or her will or thought-force emission will gain mastery over those of the others, and if there is any violent sex disturbance at the bottom of the dominant will, this will be communicated to the others or to the selected other furthering the desire.

The next stage occurs where passion or desire on the part of one member of the circle for another is absent. Despite repeated statements that the desire of the members of the circle is to meet pure spirits, there may be members whose secret wishes are not those of the pathway of light. Love for those who have passed over may be still carnal love in the hearts of those who remain. Abélard may have passed beyond passion into the realm of death, but Héloïse may refuse his plea of impossibility and still pursue in the spirit that which escaped her in the flesh.

Carnality is not confined to this plane nor does it cease upon the next, but the endeavour of mortals to get in touch with the spirit world while there is latent in them either known or suppressed, and unrecognized desire is fatal.

Every sexual desire the mind has experienced is indexed or pigeon-holed in the recesses of the subliminal mind. People whose conscious mind is free of any vestige of such desire may go to a séance and under the influence of the emotional forces of a séance liberate all the repressed energy of their past ungratified sexual desires--without knowing it.

These forces attract low-grade spirits some of whom have never been human and the lowest and most vicious of spirits whose human lives have been a cycle of debauchery. Like attracts like, is one of the laws of Nature. The Law of Similarity is one of the rules of psychology.

The gateways of the soul are thrown open not to whoever may enter in, but with an explicit mental invitation to those spirits that derive gratification from the lusts and desires of mortals.

The whole body of the psychoplasm of a circle is at the mercy of the mind of the individual to whose call the spirits come.

The practical results of these open-house invitations to the spirits are devastating. The ideas of gratification become rooted not in the conscious mind but in the subconscious mind, where they work slowly but inevitably to the subversion of conscious “good.”

The first step toward possession and obsession are often the result of séances, where Truth has been sought with the tongue and Evil within the heart of one present. It is not the guilty alone who suffer, but the weak and innocent who sit beside them.

There are no bounds to the malignancy of the impure spirits. They are sly and notable liars--they can assume the form of mortals who have passed over and they can assume personality and knowledge that was known to the dead. By degrees they inculcate evil, predisposing the victim to accept and yield to evil in particular forms. Frequently they proceed by slow stages, advising and inspiring savage asceticism, but seizing each stage of natural reaction from this unnatural régime to further subvert their victim in wantonness.

The obvious need is for some method of distinguishing between good and bad projections of astral light.

To the human eye alone there is no means of distinguishing between the etherealizations of the psychoplasm of the believer and the identical luminous phenomena which occur when there is a materialization of the actual spirit. It is there that psychic science can come to our assistance.

The fluorescent bodies zinc sulphide, barium platino-cyanide, and the preparation known as Sidot’s hexagonal blonde, are all intensely susceptible to radioactivity. The rays of radioactive bodies have the peculiar property of being able to penetrate the ether, and the mass of spirit teaching tells us that this property is also common to the disembodied spirits of those who have passed to other planes.

The relative purity or potency of astral lights may be readily ascertained by their effect upon a simple instrument that I have named the Psycho-Lastrometer.

This instrument is both cheap and easy to make in the simple form in which I first used it. The later applications which make it a registering instrument in addition to being a mere indicator are necessarily costly, but these are only necessary to the expert investigator and are of no value to the mere seeker after proof or those who seek communion with the spirits of the dead for the purposes of solace, quasi-religious conviction, or vulgar curiosity.

To make a crude psycho-lastrometer all that is necessary is a wide-mouthed glass jar whose walls should not be more than two millimetres thick. The height of the jar should be some eight inches, the width in proportion three and a quarter inches.

I have found that an ordinary lipped beaker of Bohemian glass such as is readily obtainable from any maker of laboratory apparatus is admirably suited to the purpose.

The neck of this jar must be fitted with a large cork or wooden bung the whole of which is covered with tinfoil. The centre of this cork should be pierced by a piece of brass wire five inches long, bent at one end to form a hook. This end is inside the jar and from the hook hangs the plate of the lastrometer. To the projecting end of the brass wire outside the jar should be soldered a circular collecting disc of brightly polished brass or tinplate three inches in diameter. This should stand up vertically to the axis of the wire, being thus on edge instead of forming a flat table.

The plate of the lastrometer consists of a rectangle of thin aluminum two and half inches wide by four inches deep. Half an inch from the top edge three slits should be cut in the metal so that a portion of a magnetized knitting needle three inches long may be threaded through the breadth of the plate, projecting half an inch on each side.

This needle forms a cross bar at the top of the plate and should be accurately adjusted so that the broad surface of the plate is always in the same plane as the axis of the needle.

To the projecting ends of the needle is secured a loop of copper wire four inches long whose other end is made fast to the other end of the needle and whose centre passes over the hooked end of the wire through the cork. The plate thus swings like a miniature signboard suspended from the hook.

The surface of one side of the plate is now painted with several successive layers of a saturated solution of gum arabic in one ounce of water to which has been added one and a half drachms of luminous zinc sulphide or Sidot’s preparation (preferably the latter) and one liquid drachm of a ten per cent. solution of barium platino-cyanide. The other side of the plate should be painted with “optical black” or any other suitable dead black varnish.

Between the edge of the bung and the central wire should be inserted at convenient intervals three or four sections of glass tubing whose internal bore exceeds half an inch. These serve to admit external influences to the interior of the lastrometer.

When complete it will be found that the plate of the lastrometer is highly fluorescent and can be energized into greater activity by exposure to sun or artificial light. It is desirable that the plate should be kept in a state of relatively low radiancy, as otherwise spirit agency cannot raise its luminous powers to a higher degree.

At a séance the instrument should be placed within the circle and the jar rotated till the magnetized needle can oscillate freely in its natural position pointing toward the North and South Poles.

Concentrations of genuine spirit force will raise the luminosity of the plate to double and treble its normal output of light. When the force is concentrated in the lastrometer, questions can be answered by the spirits by signaling in Morse or simple code by rotating the plate through an angle of 90° against the surface force of the magnet.[11]

It may be urged that this apparatus is not fraud-proof and that it would respond to certain agencies such as the concealment of an electromagnet in the room. To this it may be answered that an ordinary pocket compass placed on the table by the lastrometer would also respond to these forces and the fraud would be transparent to any observer.

So far as I can tell, no human mental effort conscious or subconscious can affect this simple instrument. It is necessary to guard against illusion by imagining that the lastrometer is gaining radiance, and to this end it is advisable to prepare a stand and test-piece made of aluminum and coated with precisely the same solution as is applied to the plate. These should always be kept together and allowed to become equally radiant. If this is placed on the table near the lastrometer, any variations in the latter can be rapidly verified by comparison with the non-insulated and non-oriented test-piece.

Antipathy on the part of the presiding medium to the use of the psycho-lastrometer is invariably a bad sign. Spirit messages objecting to it are the most valid reasons for its retention, and such communications should be viewed with the deepest suspicion. The cost of the apparatus is a few shillings, it can be made by anybody in an hour or so of spare time, and in actual point of fact there is nothing about it that is offensive to the spirits of “good” or to the pure.

To those who are learned in symbolism I may suggest that the receiving disc at the top of the wire need not be in the form of a disc, but can be cut or pierced with ornament such as sacred symbols or with any decorative design.

It is desirable, however, that the light surface be retained and that the available metallic surface of the disc should not be diminished more than is necessary.

FOOTNOTES:

[8] _Notes of an Enquiry into the Phenomena Called Spiritual._ William Crookes, F.R.S., p. 91; Class VIII: Luminous Appearances.

[9] For details concerning ectoplasm see _Ghosts in Solid Form_, Gambier Bolton, etc.

[10] Something of this view may be found in the chapter on “Pseudo Spirit Phenomena” in _Borderland of Psychical Research_, H. J. Hyslop. A book deserving of attention by all interested in Spiritualism.

[11] The psycho-lastrometer was further perfected. The element selenium is inordinately sensitive to all forms of light rays and according to the light thrown upon it permits more or less electric current to pass. I arranged the apparatus so that the light thrown out by the psycho-lastrometer impinged upon a selenium cell whose resistance varied from 50,000 ohms to 100,000 ohms, which was in its turn connected to a cell and to a Deprex d’Arsonval mirror galvanometer. This enables accurate readings of the actual waxings and wanings of the light value of the lastrometer plate to be taken, and entirely eliminates any possibility of visual illusion seeming to make the plate more luminous than before. A series of plotted curves based on time abscissæ and light co-ordinates will give an accurate scientific record of any differences in the radiant value of the plate that occur during the séance.