Spiritist Review - Journal of Psychological Studies - 1868

We can understand, with the general title of retrospective Spiritism, the thoughts, doctrines, beliefs and all the spiritualist facts prior to modern Spiritism, that is until 1850, period in which the observations and studies on these kinds of phenomena began. It was not until 1857 that these observations were coordinated into a body of methodical and philosophical doctrine. This division seems useful to us in the history of Spiritism.



The event below is reported in the Memoirs of Duke Saint-Simon:^[1]



“I also remember something that he (the Duke of Orleans) told me in the Marly room, on the verge of his departure to Italy, whose singularity, verified by the event, does not allow me to omit it. He was curious about all kinds of arts and sciences, and with infinite wit, he had had in all his life the weakness so common at the court of the children of Henry II, that Catherine de Medici had, among other evils, brought from Italy. He told me many times that he had sought to see the devil, as much as he could, without success, and to see extraordinary things, and to know the future. Ms. de Sery had a little girl with her, eight or nine years old, who had been born there and never left, and who had the ignorance and simplicity of the age and education. Among other rascals involved with hidden curiosities, of which the Duke of Orleans had seen many in his life, he was introduced to one that claimed to show, in a glass filled with water, all that one would want to know. He asked someone young and innocent to look there, and the little girl was found fit for that. So, they had fun wishing to know what was happening even at distant places, and the little girl saw and described what she saw. The man whispered something over the glass filled with water, and they were immediately successful in seeing something there.



The deceptions often experienced by the Duke of Orleans led him to a test that could reassure him. He whispered to one of his servants to immediately go to Madame de Nancré's, to carefully examine who was there, what they were doing, the position and the furniture of the room, and the situation of everything that was going on there, and without wasting any time or speaking to anyone, to come and whisper it to him. The task was carried out in a jiffy, and nobody realized what had just happened, and the little girl still in the room. As soon as the Duke of Orleans was informed, he asked the little girl to look at who was with Madame de Nancré and what was going on there. She immediately told them, word for word, all that the man sent by the Duke of Orleans had seen. The description of the face, the looks, the clothes, the people who were there, their position in the room, the people who played at two different tables, those looking over or chatting, sitting, or standing, the arrangement of the furniture, in a word, everything. The Duke of Orleans immediately asked Nancré to go there, and he reported having found everything as the little girl had said, and as the valet who had first been there had reported to the ear of the Duke of Orleans.



He hardly spoke to me about these things because I took the liberty of shaming him. I took the liberty of teasing him about this story and told him what I thought I could dissuade him from believing in these sorceries, especially at a time when he should have his mind occupied with so many great things. "That is not all," he said to me, "and I have only told you about it to get to the rest;” He then told me that, encouraged by the accuracy of what the little girl had seen in Madame de Nancré's room, he wanted to see something more important, and what would happen with the death of the king, but without specifying the date that could not be seen in this glass. He then asked the little girl, who had never heard of Versailles, nor seen anyone from the court, but himself. She looked and explained to him at length everything she saw. She correctly described the king's bedroom at Versailles, and the furnishings that were in fact there at his death. She depicted him perfectly in his bed, and a well-behaved small child that was standing near the bed or in the room, held by Madame de Ventadour, after what she cried because she had seen her at the home of Ms. de Sery.



She introduced them to Madam de Maintenon, the singular figure of Fayon, Madam Duchesse d'Orléans, Madam Duchesse and Princess of Conti; she cried out to Mr. Duke of Orleans; in short, she let them know what she saw in terms of princes, lords, servants, and valets. When she finished describing everything, the Duke of Orleans was surprised that she had not introduced them to Monseigneur, to the Duke of Bourgogne, the Monseigneur Duke of Berry, and asked her if she did not see this or that figure. She firmly said no and repeated the ones she saw. This is what the Duke of Orleans could not understand and was greatly surprised with, in vain asking me for the reason. The event explained it. It was then in 1706. All four were then full of life and health, and all four had died before the king. It was the same with the Prince, the Duke, and the Prince of Conti, whom she did not see, while she saw the children of the last two, Mr. du Maine, his sons, and the Count of Toulouse. But until the occurrence, it remained in the dark. Having the curiosity ended, the Duke of Orleans wanted to know what would become of him. So, it was no longer in the glass of water. The man who was there offered to show him, as if painted on the wall of the room, provided he was not afraid to see himself there; and after a quarter of an hour of a few reactions, the face of the Duke of Orleans suddenly appeared before them all, dressed as he was then and in his natural size, on the wall like in a painting, with a crown on his head. It was neither from France, nor Spain, nor England, nor Imperial; the Duke of Orleans, who looked at it with his eyes wide open, could never guess it, for he had never seen one like that; it only had four circles, and nothing at the top. The crown covered his head.



From the preceding obscurity and from this one, I took the opportunity to show him the vanity of these kinds of curiosities, the just deceptions of the devil, that God allows to punish the curiosities that he forbids, the nothingness and darkness that result from it, instead of the light and satisfaction that one seeks in it. He was certainly a long way then from being regent of the kingdom and from imagining it. It was perhaps what that singular crown announced to him. All this had happened in Paris, with his mistress, in the presence of his closest acquaintances, the day before he had told me about it, and I found it so extraordinary that I gave him a place here, not to approve, but to register it."

The credibility of the Duke of Saint-Simon is all the less suspect since he was opposed to these kinds of ideas; there can therefore be no doubt that he faithfully reported the story of the Duke of Orleans. As for the fact itself, it is not probable that the duke invented it for nothing. The phenomena that occur nowadays prove their possibility; what then passed for something wonderful is now a very natural fact. Besides, one cannot certainly blame them on the imagination of the child, who was unknown to the individuals, and could not serve as his accomplice. The words spoken on the glass of water undoubtedly had no other purpose than to give the phenomenon a mysterious and cabalistic appearance, according to the beliefs of the time; but they could very well exert an unconscious magnetic action, and that with even more reason, for that man appeared endowed with an energetic will. As for the fact of the painting that he made appear on the wall, until now one cannot give any explanation for that. Moreover, the prior magnetization of the water does not appear to be essential.



A few years ago, one of our correspondents from Spain told us the following fact that had happened before his eyes, fifteen years ago, at a time and in a region where Spiritism was unknown, and when it pushed skepticism to its limits. Some in his family heard of the ability that some people have to see in a jug filled with water, and they did not give any more importance to this than to popular beliefs. Yet, they wanted to try out of curiosity. A young girl, after a moment of concentration, saw a relative of his, making an accurate portrait; she saw him on a mountain, a few leagues away, where he could not supposedly be, then descend into a gorge, return, and doing various trips up and down. When the individual returned and was told where he came from and what he had done, he was very surprised, because he had not communicated his intention to anyone. Imagination here is completely out of question, since none of the assistants could act on the mind of the young girl through their thoughts.



The influence of imagination is the great objection that is opposed to this kind of phenomenon, as to all those of mediumship in general, hence one cannot be careful enough when collecting the cases in which it is demonstrated that this influence cannot take place. The following fact is a not less conclusive example.



Another of our subscribers from Palermo, Sicily, was recently in Paris; in his absence, his daughter, who has never been to Paris, received the issue of the Spiritist Review, in which the glass of water is considered; she wanted to try to see her father. She did not see him, but she saw several streets that from the description she gave to him, he easily recognized as the streets of Paix, Castiglione and Rivoli. Now, these streets were precisely those through which he had passed on the very day on which the experiment had been carried out. Thus, that young lady does not see her father, whom she knows, whom she wishes to see, on whom her thoughts are concentrated, while she sees the path he has traveled, and that she did not know. What reason can be given to this oddity? The Spirits told us that things happened in such way to give unmistakable proof that the imagination had nothing to do with that. We will complete, through the following reflections, what we said on the same subject, in the June issue.



The glass with or without water, as well as the bottle, obviously play the role of hypnotic agents in this phenomenon; the concentration of sight and thought on one point causes a greater or lesser detachment of the soul, and consequently, the development of the psychic sight. (See the Spiritist Review, January 1860, Details about hypnotism).

This kind of mediumship can give rise to special modes of manifestation, to new perceptions; it is one more means of ascertaining the existence and independence of the soul, and for that reason, a very interesting subject of study; but as we have said, it would be a mistake to believe that this is a better way than any other of knowing everything that one wishes, because there are things that must be hidden from us or that can only be revealed at a certain time. When the moment to know them is right, one learns by one of the thousand means at the disposal of the Spirits, whether one is a Spiritist or not; but one glass of water is not more effective than another. From the fact that the Spirits have used it to give valuable advice for health, it does not follow that it is an infallible method of healing all illnesses, even those that must not be cured. If a cure by the Spirits is possible, they give their advice by any means, and by any medium suitable for this kind of communication. The effectiveness is in the prescription, not in the mode by which it is given.



The glass of water is not a guarantee against the interference of evil Spirits either; experience has already shown that evil Spirits use this means like any other, to mislead and abuse credulity. How could one oppose them a more powerful obstacle! We have said it time and time again, and we cannot repeat it too often: There is no mediumship that is immune to evil Spirits, and there is no physical process for removing them. The best, the only protection is in oneself; it is by one’s own purification that one keeps them away, like one is protected against harmful insects by the cleanliness of the body.

---

[1] Refer to the issue of June 1868 of the Spiritist Review

The following report is taken from the story of Saint François-Xavier by Father Bouhours. It is a theological discussion between a Japanese monk named Tucarondono, and Saint Francis-Xavier, then a missionary in Japan.



“- I don't know if you know me, or to put it better, if you recognize me," Tucarondono said to François-Xavier.



- I do not remember having ever seen you, the latter replies.



The bonze then burst in laughter and turned to other bonzes, his colleagues whom he had brought with him:



- I clearly see," he said to them, "that I will have no difficulty in defeating a man that has dealt with me more than a hundred times, and pretends to have never seen me.” Then, looking at Xavier with a smile of contempt: “Don’t you have anything left,” he continued, “of the goods that you sold me at the port of Frénasoma?”



“In reality,” replied Xavier, with an always serene and modest face, “I have never been a merchant in my life, and I have never seen Frénasoma.”



- “Ah! what a lack of memory and what a stupidity!” resumed the monk, looking astonished, and continuing his bursts of laughter:



- “What! Is it possible that you forgot that?”



- “Refresh my memory,” replied the father gently, “you who have more wit and memory than I do.”



- “I don't mind,” said the monk, proud of the praise Xavier had thrown at him. “It is now just fifteen hundred years that you and I, who were merchants, traded in Frénasoma, and that I bought a hundred pieces of silk from you, very cheaply. Do you remember it now?



The saint assessed where the bonze's speech was going and asked him honestly how old he was.



" - I'm fifty-two years old," said Tucarondono.



“- How can it be,'' Xavier went on, “that you were a merchant fifteen centuries ago, if you have only been in the world for half a century, and how did we deal in those days, you and I, in Frénasoma, if most of the other bonzes teach that Japan was only a desert, fifteen hundred years ago?”



"- Listen to me,” said the bonze; “you will hear the oracles, and you will agree that we have more knowledge of past things than you have of present things.”



“- You must therefore know that the world has never had a beginning, and that souls, strictly speaking, do not die. The soul emerges from the body in which she was enclosed; she seeks another one, fresh and vigorous, where we are reborn sometimes with the noblest sex, sometimes with the imperfect sex, according to the various constellations of the sky and the different aspects of the moon. These changes of birth cause our fortunes to change too. For it is the reward of those who have lived holy, to have the fresh memory of all lives that one has had in past centuries, and to represent oneself entirely as one has been for ages, in the form of prince, merchant, man of letters, warrior and other figures. On the contrary, someone like you that knows so little about his own affairs, who does not know what he has been and what he has done over the course of countless centuries, shows that his crimes have made him worthy of death so many times that he has lost the memory of the lives he changed.”



Observation: We cannot suppose that François-Xavier invented this story, that was not to his advantage, nor can we suspect the good faith of his historian, Father Bouhours. On the other hand, it is not less certain that it was a trap set for the missionary by the bonze, since we know that the memory of previous existences is an exceptional case, and that, in any case, it does not ever has such precise details; but what emerges from this fact is that the doctrine of reincarnation existed in Japan at that time, in identical conditions to those that are taught today by the Spirits, except for the intervention of the constellations and the moon. Another no less remarkable similarity is the idea that the accuracy of memory is a sign of superiority; the Spirits tell us, in fact, that in worlds more elevated than Earth, where the body is less material and the soul is in a normal state of freedom, the memory of the past is a faculty common to everyone; there one remembers their former lives, like we remember the first years of our childhood. It is obvious that the Japanese are not at this degree of dematerialization that does not exist on Earth, but this fact proves that they have its intuition.