DIFFERENT MODES OF COMMUNICATION.

Sematology and typtology.

— Psychography.

Spirits can communicate with us by various means. We have defined them in the “Spiritist Vocabulary.” We shall give here, on each one, the explanations necessary for practice.

Sematology and typtology.

Originally the table was used for this means of correspondence, solely because it is a convenient piece of furniture, around which people can easily place themselves, and because it was the first on which the movements were produced that gave rise to the burlesque expression “dancing of the tables.” But it is important to know that a table exerts no greater influence in this process than any other piece of furniture or object whatsoever. Let us take the phenomenon at its simplest point of view.

If a person places the tips of the fingers on the edge of a circular, movable object, such as a goblet, a plate, a hat, a glass, etc., and, in this situation, concentrates the will upon that object to make it move, it may happen that it begins to stir with a rotary movement, at first slow, then faster and faster, to the point where one has difficulty following it. The object will turn, either to the right or to the left, according to the direction indicated by the person, verbally or mentally. Once the fluidic communication between the person and the object is established, the person can produce the movement without contact, acting solely by thought. We said that this may happen because, in effect, there is no absolute certainty of success. Certain persons are endowed, in this respect, with such a power that the movement is produced after a few seconds; others obtain it only after five or ten minutes; others, finally, obtain nothing. Apart from experience, there is no diagnosis that can make one recognize the aptitude to produce this phenomenon. Physical strength exerts no influence on this; often frail and delicate persons obtain it more frequently than vigorous men. And it is a trial that anyone can make without any danger, although from it there sometimes results a rather intense muscular fatigue and a kind of feverish agitation. If the person is endowed with sufficient power, he will be able, by himself, to make a light table turn and, sometimes, manages to act even upon a heavy and massive table. But, for this, an exceptional power is required.

To operate with more certainty upon a table of some weight, several persons are placed around it. The number is indifferent. Nor is it necessary to alternate the sexes, or to establish contact between the fingers of those present. It is enough to place the tips of the fingers on the edge of the table, whether horizontally or in the position of playing the piano; this matters little. There are, on the contrary, other essential conditions more difficult to fulfill, that is, the concentration of the thought of all the persons, with a view to obtaining movement in one direction or another, an absolute recollection and silence, and, above all, great patience. Sometimes the movement is produced in five or ten minutes, but, frequently, one must resign oneself to waiting half an hour or more. If, after an hour, nothing is obtained, it is useless to continue.

We must add that certain persons are antipathetic to this phenomenon and that their negative influence can be exerted merely by the fact of their presence; others are completely neutral. In general, the fewer the spectators, the better the result, either because there is less probability of encountering antipathies, or because silence and recollection are easier.

The phenomenon is always provoked by the effect of the special aptitude of some acting persons, whose power is multiplied by the number. When the power is great enough, the table does not limit itself to turning; it stirs, rises up, lifts itself upon one leg, sways like a ship, and even ends by moving away from the ground without a point of support.

One thing is remarkable: whatever the inclination of the table, the objects that are upon it remain there, and even a candelabrum runs not the least risk. A no less singular fact is that, being inclined and sustained upon a single leg, it can offer such resistance that the weight of a person is insufficient to lower it.

When one has succeeded in producing an energetic movement, the contact of the hands is no longer necessary and we can move away from the table; it directs itself to the right, to the left, forward, backward, toward such a designated person, lifts itself upon one leg or upon another, according to the order given to it.

Up to this point these phenomena have no essentially intelligent character; they are nonetheless no less curious to observe, as the product of an unknown force. They are, moreover, capable of persuading certain persons, who would not let themselves be convinced by philosophical arguments alone. It is the first step in the Spiritist science which, very naturally, leads us to the means of communication.

The simplest of all these means is, as in the man deprived of speech and writing, the language of signs. A Spirit can communicate its thought by the movement of any object whatsoever. We know someone who converses with his familiar Spirit, that of a person to whom he had become greatly attached, by means of the first object that appears: a ruler, a spatula, placed upon his desk. He puts his fingers on top and, after having evoked that Spirit, the ruler moves to the right or to the left, to say yes or no, according to what was agreed, indicates the numbers, etc. The same result is obtained with an ordinary table or with a small three-legged table. With the fingers placed on the edge, whether there is one or several persons, and the Spirit evoked, if it presents itself and judges it opportune to reveal itself, the table rises, lowers, stirs and, by these movements to the right or to the left, or of pendulum oscillation, it answers affirmatively or negatively. By its tappings, it expresses joy, impatience, and even anger. At times, it falls over violently or rushes upon one of those present, as if it had been impelled by an invisible hand, one recognizing, in these movements, the expression of sentiments of affection or of antipathy. One of our friends found himself one evening in his drawing room, occupied with manifestations of this kind. He receives a letter; while he reads it, the small table advances in his direction, draws near to the letter, and this spontaneously, without anyone’s influence. The reading finished, he goes to place the letter upon a table at the other end of the drawing room; the small table follows him and throws itself upon the letter. From this he deduced the presence of a newly arrived Spirit, sympathetic to the author of the letter and which wished to communicate with him. Having interrogated it by means of the center table, he had the confirmation of his predictions. And it is this that we call sematology, or language of signs.

Typtology, or language by raps, offers more precision. It can be obtained by two very diverse processes. The first, which we call typtology by movement, consists of raps struck by the table itself with one of its legs. Such raps can answer yes or no, according to the number of beats agreed upon to express one or the other. As is to be foreseen, the answers are very incomplete, subject to errors, and little convincing to novices, because they can always be attributed to chance.

Intimate typtology is produced in an entirely different manner. It is no longer the table that strikes; it remains completely immobile, but the raps resound in the very substance of the wood, of the stone, or of any other body, and, often, with sufficient force to be heard in the neighboring room. If one applies the ear or the hand against any part of the table, one feels that it vibrates from the legs to the surface. This phenomenon is obtained by proceeding in a manner identical to that employed to make it move, but with this difference: pure and simple movement can occur without evocation, whereas, to obtain the raps, it is almost always necessary to appeal to a Spirit.

One recognizes in these raps the intervention of an intelligence, since they obey a thought. Thus, according to the desire expressed verbally or mentally, they change place, make themselves heard in the direction of such or such a designated person, go around the table, are struck forcefully or in a light manner, imitate the echo, the noise of a saw, that of the hammer, that of the drum, that of artillery discharges, marking the measure of a determined air, indicate the hour, the number of persons present, etc., or else they leave the table and go to make themselves heard against the wall or against the door, in the agreed places. Finally, they answer yes or no to the questions addressed to them.

These experiences constitute rather an object of curiosity, since they do not entail serious communications. The Spirits that manifest themselves in this way are, in general, of an inferior order. Serious Spirits do not lend themselves to exhibitions either, just as, among us, respectable men do not lend themselves to the juggling of mountebanks. When we interrogate them in this regard, they answer with this question: “Among you, is it the superior men who make the bears dance?”

Alphabetical typtology offers us a means of correspondence that is easier and more complete. It consists in the designation of the letters of the alphabet by a number of raps corresponding to the order of each letter, words and sentences being formed in this manner. However, this means, by its slowness, has the great inconvenience of not lending itself to expositions of a certain length. We can, nevertheless, abbreviate it in a number of cases. It is often enough to know the first letters of a word to guess its end, and then one does not let it finish. In case of doubt, one asks whether it is the word one supposes, and the Spirit answers yes or no by the agreed sign.

Alphabetical typtology can be obtained by the two means we have just indicated: the raps struck by the table, and those that are heard in the substance of a hard body. For the more serious communications, we prefer the first, for two reasons: one because it is, in a certain way, more manageable, a greater number of persons being apt for it; the other depends on the nature of the Spirits. In intimate typtology the Spirits that manifest themselves are, generally, those we call rappers: frivolous Spirits, at times very amusing, but always ignorant. They can be agents of serious Spirits, according to circumstances, but they act most of the time spontaneously and on their own account, whereas experience proves that the Spirits of the other orders communicate by preference through movement.

In any case, alphabetical typtology is a mode of communication which the Superior Spirits use reluctantly and only for lack of a better recourse. They prefer that which lends itself to the rapidity of thought and, because of this slowness, which makes them impatient, they abbreviate their answers. They already find our language too slow and, with greater reason, when the means increases that slowness.

Psycho­ graphy.

The Spiritist science has progressed like all the others, or more rapidly than the others, for only a few years separate us from those primitive and incomplete means, trivially called talking tables, and we can already communicate with the Spirits as easily and as rapidly as men do among themselves, and this by the same means: writing and speech. Writing has, above all, the advantage of indicating more materially the intervention of an occult power and of leaving traces that can be preserved, as we do with our own correspondence. The first means employed was that of the planchettes or of the baskets furnished with a pencil; the Spirits themselves indicated it. Here is the manner of proceeding.

At the beginning of this chapter we said that a person endowed with a special aptitude can impress a movement of rotation upon any object whatsoever. Let us take, for example, a small basket of fifteen to twenty centimeters in diameter (it matters little whether it be of wood or of wicker, the substance is indifferent). If, now, through the bottom of this basket one passes a pencil fixed solidly, with the point outward and downward, and one keeps the whole in equilibrium upon the point of the pencil, itself placed upon a sheet of paper, when the fingers are placed upon the basket, it will move. But, instead of turning like a top, it will make the pencil run in various directions over the paper, in such a way as to form, now insignificant strokes, now characters of writing. If a Spirit is evoked and wishes to communicate, it will answer no longer by yes or no, but by words and complete sentences. In this disposition the pencil, reaching the end of the line, does not turn back upon itself to begin another; it continues circularly, in such a way that the line of writing forms a spiral, and one must turn the paper several times to read what is written. The writing thus obtained is not always legible, in case the words are not separated; but the medium, by a kind of intuition, deciphers it easily. For economy one can substitute for the ordinary paper and pencil a slate and a pencil of the same material. We shall designate this basket by the name of top-basket. Various other devices have been imagined to attain the same objective. The most convenient is the one we shall call beak-basket, and which consists in adapting upon the basket an inclined rod of wood, projecting 10 to 15 centimeters to the side, in the position of the bowsprit of a ship. Through an orifice made in the extremity of this rod, or of the beak, one passes a pencil long enough for the point to rest upon the paper. When the medium places the fingers upon the basket, the whole apparatus stirs and the pencil writes as in the case described before, with the difference that the writing is, in general, more legible, the words separated, and the lines are no longer in a spiral, but follow one another as in ordinary writing, since the pencil transports itself, by itself, from one line to another. One obtains, thus, dissertations of several pages, as rapidly as if one were writing by hand. Often the intelligence that manifests itself acts by other unequivocal signs. Reaching the end of the page, the pencil makes spontaneously a movement to turn it. If it wishes to refer to a preceding passage, on the same page or on another, it seeks it with the point of the pencil, as someone would do with the eyes, and then underlines it. If, finally, the Spirit wishes to address one of those present, the point of the wooden rod turns toward him. To abbreviate, it frequently expresses the words yes and no, employing the signs of affirmation and of negation that we make with the head. Of all the processes employed, this is the one that affords the writing the greatest variety, according to the Spirit that manifests itself and, often, in a handwriting similar to the one it had in life, if it left the Earth a short time ago.

In place of a basket, some persons make use of a kind of small table, made for the purpose, of 12 to 15 centimeters in length by 5 to 6 in height, with three legs, one of which holds the pencil. Others make use simply of a planchette without legs; on one of the edges there is an orifice in which to put the pencil. Placed for writing, it is inclined and rests by one of its sides upon the paper. It is conceived, moreover, that these arrangements have nothing absolute about them. The most convenient is the best.

With all these apparatuses, the presence of two persons is almost always necessary; but it is not necessary that the second person be endowed with a mediumistic faculty; she serves solely to maintain the equilibrium and diminish the fatigue of the medium.

We call indirect psychography the writing thus obtained, in opposition to direct psychography, or writing obtained by the hand of the medium himself. To understand this last process, one must take account of what occurs in this operation. The foreign Spirit that communicates acts upon the medium; the latter, under this influence, directs mechanically the hand and the arm to write, without having — at least this is the most common case — the least consciousness of what he writes. The hand acts upon the basket and the basket upon the pencil. Thus, it is not the basket that becomes intelligent; it is a mere instrument directed by an intelligence; in truth, it is no more than a pencil-holder, an appendage of the hand, an inert intermediary between the hand and the pencil. Suppress this intermediary, place the pencil in the hand, and you will obtain the same result, with a much simpler mechanism, seeing that the medium writes as he does under normal conditions. In this way, any person who writes with the aid of the basket, planchette, or other object, can write directly. Of all the means of communication, this is, without contestation, the simplest, the easiest, and the most convenient, since it requires no preparation and lends itself, like ordinary writing, to more extensive developments. We shall return to it when we treat of the mediums. Pneumatography is the direct writing of the Spirits. When this phenomenon first arose — at least in our time, for nothing proves that it was not known in Antiquity and in the Middle Ages, like all the other genres of manifestations — it raised very natural doubts. Today, however, it is an incontestable fact. Someone very worthy of faith told us that a canon, a friend of his parents, in combination with the abbé Faria, obtained this genre of writing in Paris from the year 1804. The Baron de Guldenstubbé has just published on this subject a very interesting work, accompanied by numerous autographs in this writing. In a certain way it was he who brought it into evidence, and many other persons, according to what he affirms, obtained the same results. Initially one placed a sheet of paper and a pencil upon a tomb, at the foot of a statue, or beside the portrait of any personage whatsoever, and, on the following day, sometimes a few hours later, one found inscribed upon the paper a name, a sentence, sometimes unintelligible signs. It is evident that neither the tomb nor the statue exerted any influence by themselves; they were, simply, a means of evocation by thought. Now, we content ourselves with putting the paper, with or without a pencil, in a drawer or in a box, which can be locked with a key, taking all the precautions necessary to avoid any fraud, and one obtains the same result by evoking the Spirit. This phenomenon is, without a shadow of a doubt, one of the most extraordinary among those presented by the Spiritist manifestations, and one of those that attest in a peremptory manner the intervention of an occult intelligence, but it cannot replace psychography, at least up to now, by virtue of the developments that certain subjects entail. One obtains, thus, the expression of a spontaneous thought, but it seems to lend itself with difficulty to conversations and to the rapid exchange of ideas that the other manner entails. This mode is, moreover, of rarer obtainment, whereas writing mediums are very numerous.

At first sight it seems difficult to take account of a fact so abnormal. It is not in our plans to develop it here, for, for this, it would be necessary to go back to the source of other phenomena of which it is a consequence. Its complete explanation is found in the Spiritist Review, one being able to arrive, by logical deductions, at a very natural result.

Finally the Spirits transmit to us their thought by the voice of certain mediums, endowed, for this purpose, with a special faculty. It is what we call psychophony. This means has all the advantages of psychography in the rapidity and extension of the subjects treated. It pleases the Superior Spirits exceedingly, but, perhaps it has, for persons who doubt, the inconvenience of not indicating, in a sufficiently evident manner, the intervention of a foreign intelligence. It is suitable, above all, for those who, already sufficiently edified as to the reality of the Spiritist facts, make use of them for the complementing of their studies and need no longer to increase their conviction.

We have just sketched the different means of direct communication with the Spirits; we have designated them by characteristic names which embrace all the varieties and even all the nuances, thus permitting us to understand better than with periphrases, which have nothing definitive or methodical about them. At the beginning of the manifestations, when ideas in this regard were less precise, various writings were published with this designation: Communications obtained by a basket, by a planchette, by talking tables, etc.

Today one understands how much all these expressions have of the insufficient or of the erroneous, abstraction made of their little serious character. Effectively, as we have just seen, the tables, planchettes, and baskets are no more than inert instruments that can communicate nothing by themselves; it is like taking the effect for the cause, the instrument for the principle; it would be equivalent to putting in the title of an author’s work that he wrote it with a metallic pen or with a goose quill. These instruments, moreover, are not exclusive. We know a person who, in place of the top-basket we described, made use of a funnel, through the neck of which he passed the pencil. We could obtain, then, communications from a funnel, as well as from a saucepan or from a salad bowl. If they are given by means of raps and those raps are struck by a chair or by a staff, it is no longer a question of a talking table, but of a talking chair or of a talking staff. What matters to know is not the nature of the instrument, but the mode of obtainment. If the communication is given by writing, whatever the pencil-holder, for us it is a question of psychography; if through raps, it is a question of typtology. Spiritism, taking the proportions of a science, needs a scientific language.