UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA LIBRARIES COLLEGE COLLECTION il Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2010 with funding from Lyrasis IVIembers and Sloan Foundation http://www.archive.org/details/occultphenomenaiOOwies OCCULT PHENOMENA OCCULT PHENOMENA IN THE LIGHT OF THEOLOGY by ALOIS WIESINGER, O.G.S.O. THE NEWMAN PRESS WESTMINSTER, MARYLAND 1957 NIHIL OBSTAT : DANIEL DVIVESTEIJN, S.T.D. CENSOR DEPVTATVS IMPRIMATVR : E. MORROGH BERNARD VICARIVS GENERALIS WESTMONASTERII, DIE XV JVNII MCMLVI Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 56-1 1423 MADE AND PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN First published ig^y CONTENTS Introduction Vll XV Glossary Part I THE PRETERNATURAL GIFTS I. Body and Soul 12 II. Pure Spirit .... 21 [II. The Body-Free Soul IV. The Partly Body-Free Soul . 31 spirit-soul (a) The normal activity of the 32 {b) Abnormal activity of the spirit-soul . 34 activity (c) Anticipations of this abnormal 39 ^ activity (d) The psychology of the spirit-soul's 54 58 (e) The subconscious .... V. The Twofold Nature of the Soul's Activity 63 VI. Body and Soul of our First Parents 74 80 {a) Their preternatural modes of knowledge will . 83 lb) Their preternatural ^11. The Fall . • . • • .90 Part II OCCULT PHENOMENA EXAMINED IN DETAIL IN THE LIGHT OF THE AUTHOR'S THEORY I. Natural Sleep .-99 (a) Natural dreams . • • .102 . .111 (/>) Natural somnambulism . vi Contents II. Pathological Sleep and Somnambulism (a) Second sight . (b) Hysteria — (c) Witches and their delusions —(</) The medium (e) Actual madness III. The Phenomena of Artificial Sleep (a) Telepathy . Ix — (b) Clairvoyance. ^ . (c) The physical manifestations (i) Telacoustic phenomena {raps) \ (ii) Telekinesis . \ (iii) Teleplastic phenomena IV. Certain Special Aspects of the Phenomena of Artificial Sleep a) Magic .... b) Radiaesthesia (divining) . c) Coueism and Christian Science d) Crystal-gazing e) SpirituaUsm . f) Ghosts and hauntings g) Hylomancy (psychometry) h) Hypnosis . ^ Diabolical possession V. Searchings by Mankind to attain to the Contemplation of Spiritual Truth and to TRANSCEND THE MATERIAL (NeOPLATONISM, Theosophy and Yoga, Cabbala and Astrology) ...... VI. Mystical Sleep INTRODUCTION been 'HE number of books that have in recent years indeed, and T^ written on the subject of occultism is very large periodicals concerned the number of its adherents and of the sign that it has become a with it grows continually; this is a souls like a spiritual serious problem, one which disturbs men's is obhged for epidemic. Professor Feldmann, to whom the writer many valuable suggestions, states in his Okkulte Philosophie sent him a catalogue that a second-hand bookseller in Munich volumes, each of books on occult sciences consisting of four number of of which contained between 600 and 800 titles. A distribution of publica- firms are engaged in the printing and causes of this tions on the occult both at home and abroad. The great hunger general widespread interest reside first of all in the philosophical systems for the preternatural which the various their names this are unable to assuage, however high-sounding ; reaction against the epidemic, however, is also a violent and the materialism which "holds matter to be the sole reality no difference mother of all Uving things", which assumes simply as "a between spirit and matter, and refers to man digestive tract open at both ends". have The rehgion of Christ satisfies this hunger; but many built unto forsaken God, the fountain of living water, and have have themselves "cisterns that hold no water" (Jer. 2. 13). They they no knowledge of the means of salvation, and, although of Christian consider themselves educated, are ignorant Church doctrine. They stand in particular fear of the CathoHc ready to because of her moral code, live Hke heathens and are promises to accept any superstition that in some slight way lead them beyond the material. which Others seek the occult because of the childish curiosity cures which, the unusual inspires, or because of the astonishing were not an ele- as they believe, could not be explained if there themselves ment of truth in Spiritualism. Others again concern viii Introduction with it in order to acquaint themselves with the behaviour of the soul when it is in certain unusual states and to learn its hidden nature, characteristics and powers, possibly also to assist in the development of man towards a new species, towards the superman. The explanations of occultism are as varied as they are numerous ; the materiaUsts seek to explain it in terms of matter and its movements, by a theory of "waves", the exact nature of which is not yet known. Others beUeve that we are dealing with reappearances of the dead, with "rebirths", or with a "peri- spirit" which is not truly either spirit or body but is what is called an astral body. The majority of learned Christians fall back on the devil, who is supposed in these cases to misuse human powers and so to deceive us. Admittedly they try increasingly to ascribe as many of these phenomena as possible to natural powers. So far, however, they do not appear to have arrived at a satisfactory explanation. Writers who ascribe everything to demoniac intervention, or, at any rate, do this in the case of transcendental phenomena (supersensual manifestations) such as "spiritual suggestion", perception of objects that are not present to the eye, movement of objects at a distance, etc., argue as follows: there are certain manifestations for which there is no natural explanation, and since they cannot be ascribed to the intervention of God or the angels or to the dead, there remains only one possible author, and that is the devil, i At first sight this seems sensible enough, but it rests on the supposition that the soul has no powers save those which it ordinarily displays ; it is thus essentially a superficial view, and those who hold it seem unaware of the fact th^ they are opening the door to precisely that kind of demonomania that for some five hundred years caused the West to have witches on the brain. Moreover, to call on the devil as though he were a kind of deus ex machina, every time we cannot think of some natural explanation for a thing, is really a little unscientific. The teaching ofthe Church is equally far removed from either 1 Dr Arthiir Lehmkuhl, Theologia Moralis, I, 1902, n. 363 ; Adam Gopfert, Moraltheologie, 1922; Lapponi Hypnotismus und Spiritismus, Leipzig, 1906 (German translation of the Italian). : Introduction ix extreme, from materialism as from demonomania. The Church does not deny the possibiUty of diabohcal possession and even has a special ordination conferring powers of exorcism for the casting out of devils, but she enjoins us to treat everything as natural until the contrary is proved, a rule that she applies with particular strictness when alleged miracles are cited in a canonization process. In these circumstances it is surely legitimate to present in the light of theology and of Christian philosophy an explanation which seems to come closer to the truth. It is not suggested that the theory here advanced is wholly new, for its essential features are to be found in other Catholic writers, but so far it has not been presented as a consistent whole. One could call this theory the theory of the spirit-soul, and its basic assumption is that the depths of this spirit-soul are as yet insufficiently known to us. It is a curious thing that until recently man had much neglected to explore the depths of the human soul. Myers draws attention to this remarkable fact in the following words In the long story of man's endeavour to understand his own environment and to govern his own fate, there is one gap or omission so singular that, however we may afterwards con- trive to explain the fact, its simple statement has the air of a paradox. Yet is is strictly true to say that man has never yet applied to the problems which most profoundly concern him those methods of enquiry which, in attacking all other problems, he has found so efficacious. The question for man most momentous of all is whether he has an immortal soul, or—to avoid the word immortal, which belongs to the realm of infinities—whether or no his person- ality involves an element which can survive bodily death. I say then this method (of modern scientific enquiry) has never yet been applied to the most important problem of existence : the powers, the destiny of the human soul ... in most civiHzed countries there has been for nearly two thousand years a distinct beUef that survival has actually been proved by certain phenomena observed at a given date in Palestine. And beyond the Christian pale—whether through X Introduction reason, instinct or superstition—it has been commonly held that ghostly phenomena of one kind or another exist to testify to a life beyond the life we know. But nevertheless neither those who believe on vague grounds, nor those who believe on definite grounds that the question might possibly, or has actually been solved, by human observation of objective facts, have hitherto made any serious attempt to connect and correlate that belief with the general scheme of beUef for which science already vouches. They have not sought for fresh corroborative instances, for analogy, for explanations, rather have they kept their con- victions on these fundamental matters in separate and sealed compartments of their mind, a compartment consecrated to religion or to superstititon, but not to observation and experiment.! To devote one's powers to the exploration of the human soul seems therefore to be both a lawful and a necessary undertaking. Admittedly people like Flammarion, Crookes and Moser have in the past repeatedly referred to something they called "psychic power", but none of them has so far been able to indicate its sources or explain it more precisely.