Part 7

10. THO I will not be so curious nor so peremptorie as he who will prove the Posibility of the Philosopher’s Stone from Scripture, Job, 28. 1. 2. Job, 22. 24. 25.; or the Pluralitie of Worlds, from John, 14. 2. and Hebrews ij. 3.; nor the Circulation of Blood from Eccles. 12. and 6.; nor the Tanismanical Airt, from the Blind and Lame mentioned in 2d of Samuel, 5. 6. yet I humblie propose these Passages which may give some Light to our Subject at least, and show that this Polity and Rank of People is not a Thing impossible, nor the modest and innocent Scrutiny of them impertinent or unsafe. The Legion or Brigad of Spirits (mentioned Mark, 5. 10.) besought our Saviour not to send them away out of the Countrey; which shows they were DÆMONES LOCI, Topical Spirits, and peculiar Superintendents and Supervisors assign’d to that Province. And the Power over the Nations granted (Rev. 2. 26.) to the Conquerors of Vice and Infidelitie, Sound somewhat to that Purpose. Tobit had a Dæmon attending Marriage, Chap. 6. Verse, 15; and in Matth. 4. and 5. ane evill Spirit came in a Visible Shape to tempt our Saviour, who himselfe denyed not the sensible appearing of Ghosts to our Sight, but said, their Bodies were not composed of Flesh and Bones, as ours, Luke, 24. 39. And in Philip. 2. 10. our verie Subterraneans are expressly said to bow to the Name of JESUS. Elisha, not intellectually only, but sensibly, saw Gehazi when out of the Reach of ane ordinary View. It wants not good Evidents that there are more managed by God’s Spirits, good, evill, and intermediate Spirits, among Men in this World, then we are aware of; the good Spirits ingesting fair and heroick Apprehensions and Images of Vertue and the divyne Life, thereby animating us to act for a higher Happines, according to our Improvement; and relinquishing us as strangely upon our Neglect, or our embraceing the deceatfull syrene-like Pictures and Representations of Pleasures and Gain, presented to our Imaginations by evill and sportfull Angells, to allure to ane unthinking, ungenerous, and sensual Lyfe; non of them having power to compell us to any Misdemeanour without our flat Consent. Moreover, this Life of ours being called a Warfair, and God’s saying that at last there will be no Peace to the Wicked, our bussie and silent Companions also being called _Siths_, or _People at Rest and Quiet_, in respect of us; and withall many Ghosts appearing to Men that want this _Second Sight_, in the very Shapes, and speaking the same Language, they did when incorporate and alive with us; a Matter that is of ane old imprescriptible Tradition, (_our Highlanders_ making still a Distinction betwixt _Sluagh Saoghalta_ and _Sluagh Sith_, averring that the Souls goe to the _Sith_ when dislodged;) many real Treasures and Murders being discovered by Souls that pass from among our selves, or by the Kindness of these our airie Neighbours, non of which Spirits can be altogither inorganical. No less than the Conseits about Purgatory, or a State of Rescue; the _Limbus Patrum et Infantum_, Inventions, [which] tho misapplyed, yet are not Chimæras, and altogither groundless. For _ab origine_, it is nothing but blansh and faint Discoveries of this SECRET REPUBLICK of ours here treated on, and additional Fictions of Monks doting and crazied Heads, our Creed saying that our Saviour descended εἰς ᾅδου, to the invisible Place and People. And many Divines supposing that the Deity appear’d in a visible Shape seen by Adam in the Cooll of the Day, and speaking to him with ane audible voice. And Jesus, probably by the Ministery of invisible Attendants, conveying more meat of the same Kind to the fyve Thowsand that wes fed by him with a very few Loaves and Fishes, (for a new Creation it was not.) The Zijmjiim and Ochim, in Isa. 13. 21. 22. Thes Satyres, and doolfull unknown Creatures of Islands and Deserts, seem to have a plain Prospect that Way. Finally, the eternal Happiness enjoyed in the 3d Heavens, being more mysterious than most of Men take it to be. It is not a sense whollie adduced to Scripture to say, that this SIGHT, and the due Objects of it, hath some Vestige in holy Write, but rather ’tis modestly deduced from it.

11. It only now remains to ansear the obvious Objections against the Reality and Lawfullness of this Speculation.

QUESTION 1. How do you salve the Second Sight from Compact and Witchcraft?

ANSWER. Tho this Correspondence with the Intermediate Unconfirm’d People (betwixt Man and Angell) be not ordinary to all of us who are Superterraneans, yet this SIGHT falling some Persons by Accident, and its being connatural to others from their Birth, the Derivation of it cannot always be wicked. A too great Curiositie, indeed, to acquyre any unnecessary Airt, may be blameworthy; but diverse of the SECRET COMMONWEALTH may, by Permission, discover themselves as innocently to us, who are in another State, as some of us Men do to Fishes, which are in another Element, when we plunge and dive into the Bottom of the Seas, their native Region; and in Process of Time we may come to converse as familiarly with these nimble and agile Clans (but with greater Pleasure and Profit,) as we do now with the Chino’s Antipodes.

QUESTION 2. Are they subject to Vice, Lusts? Passion, and Injustice, as we who live on the Surface of the Earth?

ANSWER. The Seers tell us that these wandering Aereal People have not such an Impetus and fatall Tendency to any Vice as Men, as not being drenched into so gross and dregy Bodies as we, but yet are in ane imperfect State, and some of them making better Essays for heroick Actions than others; having the same Measures of Vertue and Vice as wee, and still expecting advancement to a higher and more splendid State of Lyfe. One of them is stronger than many Men, yet do not incline to hurt Mankind, except by Commission for a gross Misdemeanour, as the destroying Angell of Ægypt, and the Assyrians, Exod. 12. 29. 2 Kings, 10. 35. They haunt most where is most Barbaritie; and therefoir our ignorant Ancestors, to prevent the Insults of that strange People, used as rude and course a Remedie; such as Exorcisms, Donations, and Vows: But how soon ever the true Piety prevailed in any Place, it did not put the Inhabitants beyond the Reach and Awthoritie of these subtile inferiour Co-inhabitants and Colleagues of ours: The FATHER OF ALL SPIRITS, and the Person himselfe, having the only Command of his Soul and Actions, a concurrance they may have to what is virtuously done; for upon committing of a foul Deed, one will find a Demure upon his Soul, as if his cheerfull Collegue had deserted him.

QUESTION 3. Do these airie Tribes procreate? If so, how are they nourished, and at what period of Time do they die?

ANSWER. Supposing all Spirits to be created at once in the Beginning, Souls to pre-exist and to circle about into several States of Probationship; to make them either totally unexcusable, or perfectly happie against the last Day, solves all the Difficulties. But in very Deed, and speaking suteable to the Nature of Things, there is no more Absurditie for a Spirit to inform ane Infant in Bodie of Airs, than a Bodie composed of dull and drusie Earth; the best of Spirits have alwayes delyghted more to appear into aereal, than into terrestrial Bodyes. They feed most what on Quintessences, and aetheriall Essences. The Pith and Spirits only of Women’s Milk feed their Children, being artificially conveyed, (as Air and Oyl sink into our Bodies,) to make them vigorous and fresh. And this shorter Way of conveying a pure Aliment, (without the usuall Digestions,) by transfusing it, and transpyring thorow the Pores into the Veins, Arteries, and Vessells that supplie the Bodie, is nothing more absurd, than ane Infant’s being fed by the Navel before it is borne, or than a Plant, which groweth by attracting a livelie Juice from the Earth thorow many small Roots and Tendons, whose courser Pairts be adapted and made connatural to the Whole, doth quickly coalesce by the ambient Cold; and so are condens’d and bak’d up into a confirm’d Wood in the one, and solid Bodie of the Flesh and Bone in the other. A Notion which, if intertained and approv’d, may shew that the late Invention of soaking and transfusing (not Blood, but) athereal virtuall Spirits, may be usefull both for Nourishment and Health, whereof is a Vestige in the damnable Practise of evill Angells, their sucking of Blood and Spirits out of Witches Bodys (till they drew them into a deform’d and dry Leanness,) to feid their own Vehicles withall, leaving what we call the Witches Mark behind; a Spot that I have seen, as a small Mole, horny, and brown-coloured; throw which Mark, when a large Brass Pin was thrust (both in Buttock, Nose, and Rooff of the Mouth,) till it bowed and become crooked, the Witches, both Men and Women, nather felt a Pain, nor did bleed, nor knew the precise Time when this was adoing to them, (there Eyes only being covered.) Now the Air being a Body as well as Earth, no Reason can be given why there may not be Particles of more vivific Spirit form’d of it for Procreation, then is possible to be of Earth, which takes more Time and Pains to rarify and ripen it, ere it can come to have a prolific Virtue. And if our Aping Darlings did not thus procreate, there whole Number would be exhausted after a considerable Space of Time. For tho they are of more refyned Bodies and Intellectualls than wee, and of far less heavy and corruptive Humours, (which cause a Dissolution,) yet many of their Lives being dissonant to right Reason and their own Laws, and their Vehicles not being wholly frie of Lust and Passion, especially of the more spirituall and hautie Sins they pass (after a long healthy Lyfe) into one Orb and Receptacle fitted for their Degree, till they come under the general Cognizance of the last Day.

QUESTION 4. Doth the acquiring of this Second Sight make any Change on the Acquirers Body, Mind, or Actions?

ANSWER. All uncouth SIGHTS enfeebles the SEER. Daniel, tho familiar with divyne Visions, yet fell frequently doun without Strength, when dazzled with a Power which had the Ascendant of, and passed on him beyond his Comprehension, Chap. 10. 8. 17. So our SEER is put in a Rapture, Transport, and sort of Death, as divested of his Body and all its Senses, when he is first made participant of this curious Peice of Knowledge: But it maketh no Wramp or Strain in the Understanding of any; only to the Fancy’s of clownish or illiterate Men, it creates some Affrightments and Disturbances, because of the Strongness of the Showes, and their Unacquaintedness with them. And as for their Lyfe, the Persons endued with this Rarity are, for the most Part, candid, honest, and sociable People. If any of them be subject to Immoralities, this obstruse Skill is not to be blamed for it; for unless themselves be the Tempters, the Colonies of the Invisible Plantations, with which they intercommune, do provoke them by no Villainy or Malifice, nather at their first Acquaintance nor after a long Familiarity.

QUESTION 5. Doth not Sathan interpose in such Cases by many subtile unthought Insinuations, as to him who let the Fly, or Familiar, go out of the Box, and yet found the Fly of his own putting in, as serviceable as the other would have been?

ANSWER. The Goodness of the Lyfe, and Designs of the ancient Prophets and Seers, was one of the best Prooffs of their Mission.[37]

NOTE.

In trying to collect evidence as to the Rerrick “evil spirit” from Kirk-Session Records, I have been most kindly assisted by the Rev. Mr. M‘Conachie, Minister of Rerrick. Mr. M‘Conachie finds that only two parishes in the Stewartry, Kells and Girthon, have records containing the years 1695, 1696. The records of Rerrick do not go so far back. We are therefore left to the pamphlet of 1696, by Telfair, which is an unusually business-like statement, the names of attesting witnesses being added in the marginal notes. For phenomena singularly similar to those of Rerrick, _Obeah_, by Mr. H. J. Bell, may be consulted. (_Obeah_, Sampson Low & Co., London, 1889, p. 93.)

NOTES.

INTRODUCTION.

_Note_ (_a_), p. xvi.—“The Psychical Society.”

The Psychical Society, as far as the writer is aware has not examined officially the old accounts of the phenomena which it investigates at present. The Catalogue of the Society’s Library, however, proves that it does not lack the materials.

_Note_ (_b_), p. xxx.—“Their speech is a kind of whistling.”

That the voice of spirits is a kind of whistling, twittering, or chirping, is a very widely diffused and ancient belief. The ghosts in Homer twitter like bats; in New Caledonia an English settler found that he could scare the natives from a piece of ground by whistling there at night. Mr. Samuel Wesley says, “I followed the noise into almost every room in the house, both by day and by night, with lights and without, and have sat alone for some time, and, when I heard the noise, spoke to it to tell me what it was, but never heard any articulate voice, and only once or twice two or three feeble squeaks, a little louder than the chirping of a bird, and not like the noise of rats, which I have often heard” (_Memoirs of the Wesley Family_, p. 164). Professor Alexander mentions the “pecular whistling sound” at some manifestations in Rio Janeiro as “rather frequent” (_Proc. S. P. R._, xix. 180). Here children were the mediums; how did they get the idea of the traditional whistle? See also the following note.

_Note_ (_c_), p. xl.—“Not long after the Spanish conquest of Peru.”

The phenomena alluded to here are said to have occurred in 1549. The evidence is a mere report by Cieza de Leon, who does not pretend to have been an eye-witness. But, as Mr. Clements Markham, Cieza’s editor, remarks, the phenomena are analogous to those of spiritualism. At the very least, we find a belief in this kind of manifestation at a remote date, and in an outlandish place. Cieza says:[38]

“When the Adelantado Belalcazar was governor of the province of Popyan, and when Gomez Hernandez was his lieutenant in the town of Auzerma, there was a chief in a village called Pirsa, almost four leagues from the town, whose brother, a good-looking youth named Tamaraqunga, inspired by God, wished to go to the town of the Christians to receive baptism. But the devils did not wish that he should attain his desire, fearing to lose what seemed secure, so they frightened this Tamaraqunga in such sort that he was unable to do anything. God permitting it, the devils stationed themselves in a place where the chief alone could see them, in the shape of birds called _auras_. Finding himself so persecuted by the devils, he sent in great haste to a Christian living near, who came at once, and hearing what he wanted, signed him with the sign of the cross. But the devils then frightened him more than ever, appearing in hideous forms, which only were visible to him. _The Christian only saw stones falling from the air and heard whistling._ A brother of one Juan Pacheco, citizen of the same town, then holding office in the place of Gomez Hernandez, who had gone to Caramanta, came from Auzerma with another man to visit the Indian chief. They say that Tamaraqunga was much frightened and ill-treated by the devils, who carried him through the air from one place to another in presence of the Christians, he complaining and the devils whistling and shouting. Sometimes when the chief was sitting with a glass of liquor before him, the Christians saw the glass raised up in the air and put down empty, and a short time afterwards the wine was again poured into the cup from the air.” Compare what Ibn Batuta, the old Arab traveller, saw at the court of the King of Delhi. The matter is discussed in Colonel Yule’s _Marco Polo_.

This may suffice as a specimen of the manifestations. They continued while the chief was on his way to church; he was lifted into the air, and the Christians had to hold him down. In church the ghostly whistling was heard, and stones fell around, while the chief said that he saw devils standing upside down, and himself was thrown into that unusual posture. The combination of convulsive movements with the other phenomena is that which we have already remarked in the cases of “Mr. H.” and the grandson of William Morse. Cieza de Leon says that the chief was not troubled after his baptism. The illusions of the newly-converted, so like those of the early Christian hermits, are described by Callaway in his _Zulu Tales_.

_Note_ (_d_), p. l.

Priestley’s explanation of the Epworth disturbances is imposture by the servants, by way of a practical joke. Coleridge, on the other hand, says that “all these stories, and I could produce fifty cases at least equally well authenticated, and, as far as the veracity of the narrators, and the single fact of their having seen and heard such and such sights or sounds, above all rational scepticism, are as much like one another as the symptoms of the same disease in different patients.”

It is a pity that Coleridge did not produce his fifty well-authenticated examples. The similarity of the narratives everywhere, all the world over, is exactly what makes them interesting. Coleridge goes on: “This indeed I take to be the true and only solution—a contagious nervous disease, the acme, or intensest form of which is catalepsy” (Southey’s _Wesley_, vol. i. p. 14, Coleridge’s note). If there be such a contagious nervous disease, it is a very remarkable malady, and well worth examining. The Wesleys were not alarmed; they bantered the spirit; they wished they could set him to work; and beyond the trembling of the children when Jeffrey was knocking during their sleep, there is no sign of morbid conditions. A neighbouring clergyman, who was asked to pass a night in the house, saw and heard just what the others heard and saw.[39] The hypothesis of a contagious nervous disease, in which every witness exhibits the same symptoms of illusion in all parts of the world, is a theory which needs a good deal of verification. Where material traces of the disturbances remain, it is absurd to speak of contagious hallucinations. We must fall back on the hypothesis of trickery, or must say with Southey, “Such things may be preternatural, yet not miraculous; they may not be in the ordinary course of nature, yet imply no alteration of its laws.” Any theory is more plausible than the idea that Mr. Wesley and Mr. Hoole were in a state bordering on catalepsy. Believers in hypnotism may think it possible that this, that, and the other persons, if they submitted themselves to hypnotic influences, might have the same hallucinations suggested to them. But there is no evidence, in the Epworth case nor in the Rerrick case, of any such matter. “So far as we yet know, sensory hallucination of several persons together, _who are not in a hypnotic state_, is a rare phenomenon, and therefore not a probable explanation” (_Proc. S. P. R._, iv. 62). There is some evidence that epileptic patients suffer from the same illusions—for example, the presence of a woman in a red cloak; and in _delirium tremens_ the “horrors” are usually similar. But that all the persons who enter a given house should be impressed by the same material illusions, as of chairs and tables, and even beds (like Nancy Wesley’s) flying about, is a theory more incredible than the hypothesis either of trickery or of abnormal occurrences. When the disturbances always cease on the arrival of a competent witness, then it is not hard to say which theory we ought to choose. For imposture see next note.

_Note_ (_e_), p. lvii.—“Children at _séances_.”

The phenomena discussed are most frequently connected with children, who may be regarded either as mediums or impostors, conscious or unconscious. In _Proc. S. P. R._, iv. 25-42, Professor Barrett gives the case of a little girl whom he knew. She had raps wherever she went, even when alone with the Professor, who made her stand with her hands against the wall, at the greatest stretch of her arms, “with the muscles of the legs and arms all in tension.” “A brisk pattering of raps” followed Professor Barrett’s request. But he also mentions a boy “of juvenile piety,” who “for twelve months deceived his father, a distinguished surgeon, and all his family, by pretended spiritualistic manifestations, which appeared at first sight inexplicable, until the cunning trickery of the lad was discovered.” The only difference between these cases is that an “outsider” discovered trickery in one instance and not in the other. This is a very ticklish kind of certainty, and it is plain that children can do a great deal in the way of mere imposture. The state of any young Wesley who might have been caught out is unenviable. Verily Mr. Wesley would not have spared for his crying.

_Note_ (_f_), p. lxii.—“The pricking of witches.”

It is pretty certain that some of there unlucky old women were pricked “in anæsthetic areas.”

* * * * *

_Note_ (_a_), p. 8.—“These Arrows that fly in the Dark.”

The arrows are the ancient flint arrow-heads, which Mr. Kirk later asserts to be too delicate for human artificers. On this matter Isabel Gowdie, the witch, confessed, “As for Elf arrows, the Divell sharpes them with his ain hand, and deliveris them to Elf boys, wha whyttlis and dightis them with a sharp thing lyk a paking needle; bot whan I was in Elfland, I saw them whyttling and dighting them.” Isabel described the manner in which witches use this artillery: “We spang them from the naillis of our thoombs,” and with these she and her friends shot and slew many men and women. The confessions of Isabel Gowdie are in the third volume of Pitcairn’s _Scottish Criminal Trials_. They contain little or nothing of the “psychical;” all is mere folk-lore, fairy tales, and charms derived from the old Catholic liturgy. The poor woman, having begun to fable, fabled with manifest enjoyment and considerable power. It seems from her account that each “Covin,” or assembly of witches, had a maiden in it, and “without our maiden we could do no great thing.” On the other hand, an extraordinary case of an epileptic boy, who was hurled about, and beheld distant occurrences in trance, may be read in Chambers’s _Domestic Annals of Scotland_, iii. 449. Candles used to go out when this boy, a third son of Lord Torpichen, was in the room. The date (1720) and the place (Mid-Lothian) prevented any one from being burned for bewitching him. A fast was proclaimed. The boy recovered, and did good service in the navy. He is said to have been “levitated” frequently.

_Note_ (_b_), p. 11.—“Milk thorow a hair-tedder.”

Isabel Gowdie confessed to stealing milk from the cow by magic. “We plait the rope the wrong way, in the Devil’s name, and we draw the tether between the cow’s hind feet, and out betwixt her forward feet, in the Devil’s name, and thereby take with us the cow’s milk.”