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Second Sight: A study of Natural and Induced Clairvoyance by Sepharial

II. MATERIALS AND CONDITIONS

The crystal is a clear pellucid piece of quartz or beryl, sometimes oval in shape but more generally spherical. It is accredited by Reichenbach and other researchers with highly magnetic qualities, capable of producing in a suitable subject a state analogous to the ordinary "waking trance" of the hypnotists. It is believed that all bodies convey, or are the vehicles of certain universal property called od or odyle (od-hyle), which is not regarded as a force but as an inert and passive substance underlying the more active forces familiar to us in kinetic, calorific and electrical phenomena. In this respect it holds a position analogous to the argon of the atmosphere, and is capable of taking up the vibrations of those bodies to which it is related and which it invests. It would perhaps not be amiss to regard it as static ether. Of itself it has no active properties, but in its still, well-like depths, it holds the potentiality of all magnetic forces.

This odyle is particularly potent in certain bodies and one of these is the beryl or quartz. It produces and retains more readily in the beryl than in most other bodies the images communicated to it by the subconscious activity of the seer. It is in the nature of a sensitized film which is capable of recording thought forms and mental images as the photographic film records objective things. The occultist will probably recognize in it many of the properties of the "astral light," which is often spoken of in this connection. Readers of my _Manual of Occultism_ will already be informed concerning the nature of subconscious activity. The mind or soul of man has two aspects: the attentive or waking consciousness, directed to the things of the external world; and the subconscious, which is concerned with the things of the interior world. Each of these spheres of the mind has its voluntary and automatic phases, a fact which is usually lost sight of, inasmuch as the automatism of the mind is frequently confounded with the subconscious. All purposive action tends to become automatic, whether it be physical or mental, sensory or psychic.

The soul in this connection is to be regarded as the repository of all that complex of emotions, thoughts, aspirations, impressions, perceptions, feelings, etc., which constitute the inner life of man. The soul is none the less a fact because there are those who bandy words about its origin and nature.

Reichenbach has shown by a series of experiments upon sensitive and hypnotized subjects, that metals and other materials produce very marked effects in contact with the human body. The experiments further showed that the same substance affected different patients in diverse manners.

The hypnotic experiments of the late Dr. Charcot, the well-known French biologist, also demonstrate the rapport existing between the sensitive subject and foreign bodies in proximity. A bottle containing a poison is taken at random from a number of others of similar appearance and is applied to the back of the patient's neck. The hypnotic subject at once begins to develop all the symptoms of arsenical, strychnine or prussic acid poisoning; it being afterwards found that the bottle contains the toxine whose effects have been portrayed by the subject. But not all hypnotic subjects are capable of the same degree of sensibility.

Community of sensation is as common a phenomenon as community of thought between a hypnotizer and his subject, and what are called sympathetic pains are included in common experience. Sensitive persons will simulate all the symptoms of a virulent disease, _e.g._ mock measles. The phenomena of psychometry reveal the fact of bodies being able to retain records and of the human possibility of reviving these records as sensations and thought images, although there is no direct community of sensation between an inanimate object and the nervous organism of a sensitive. It need not, therefore, be a matter of surprise that the crystal can exert a very definite and sensible effect upon the nervous organism of a certain order of subjects. It does not affect all alike nor act in a uniform and constant manner on those whom it does so affect. The modifications of sensibility taking place in the subject or sensitive render the action of the agent a variable quantity. Where its action is more or less rapid and remarkable, however, the quartz or beryl crystal may be regarded as the most effective agent for producing clairvoyance.