FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   36   37   38   39   40   41   42   43   44   45   46   47   48   49   50   51   52   53   54   55   56   57   58   59   60  
61   62   63   64   65   66   67   68   69   70   71   72   73   74   75   76   77   78   79   80   81   82   83   84   85   >>   >|  
not yet understand'. If Swedenborg had gone into a Medicine Lodge, no doubt, in that 'close place,' the phenomena would have been very much more remarkable. In 1853 Pere Arnaud visited the Nasquapees, and describes a seance. 'The conjurers shut themselves up in a little lodge, and remain for a few minutes in a pensive attitude, cross-legged. Soon the lodge begins to move like a table turning, and replies by bounds and jumps to the questions which are put to the conjurer.' {48} The experiment might be tried with a modern medium. Father Lejeune, in 1637, gives a case which reminds us of Home. According to Home, and to Mrs. S. C. Hall, and other witnesses, when 'in power' he could not only handle live coals without being burned, but he actually placed a large glowing coal, about the size of a cricket-ball, on the pate of Mr. S. C. Hall, where it shone redly through Mr. Hall's white locks, but did him no manner of harm. Now Father Pijart was present, tesmoin oculaire, when a Huron medicine- man heated a stone red hot, put it in his mouth, and ran round the cabin with it, without receiving any harm. Father Brebeuf, afterwards a most heroic martyr, sent the stone to Father Lejeune; it bore the marks of the medicine-man's teeth, though Father Pijart, examining the man, found that lips and tongue had no trace of burn or blister. He reasonably concluded that these things could not be done 'sans l'operation de quelque Demon'. That an excited patient should not feel fire is, perhaps, admissible, but that it should not scorch either Mr. Hall, or Home, or the Huron, is a large demand on our credulity. Still, the evidence in this case (that of Mr. Crookes and Lord Crawford) is much better than usual. It would be strange if practices analogous to modern 'table-turning' did not exist among savage and barbaric races. Thus Mr. Tylor, in Primitive Culture (ii. 156), quotes a Kutuchtu Lama who mounted a bench, and rode it, as it were, to a tent where the stolen goods were concealed. The bench was believed, by the credulous Mongols, to carry the Lama! Among the Manyanja of Africa thefts are detected by young men holding sticks in their hands. After a sufficient amount of incantation, dancing, and convulsions, the sticks became possessed, the men 'can hardly hold them,' and are dragged after them in the required directions. {50a} These examples are analogous to the use of the Divining Rod, which is probably moved unconsc
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   36   37   38   39   40   41   42   43   44   45   46   47   48   49   50   51   52   53   54   55   56   57   58   59   60  
61   62   63   64   65   66   67   68   69   70   71   72   73   74   75   76   77   78   79   80   81   82   83   84   85   >>   >|  



Top keywords:

Father

 

turning

 
modern
 

Lejeune

 
analogous
 

sticks

 

Pijart

 

medicine

 

evidence

 

Crookes


strange

 

Crawford

 

practices

 

Primitive

 

Culture

 

barbaric

 

savage

 

credulity

 

operation

 

quelque


concluded

 

things

 

admissible

 

scorch

 
demand
 
Medicine
 

excited

 

patient

 

quotes

 

possessed


convulsions

 

sufficient

 

amount

 

incantation

 
dancing
 
dragged
 

Divining

 

unconsc

 

examples

 
required

directions
 

Swedenborg

 
stolen
 
concealed
 
Kutuchtu
 
blister
 

mounted

 

believed

 

credulous

 
detected