THE SPIRITUAL TIARA.

I had had occasion to meet Madame de Cardone at the sessions of Mr. Roustan. Someone told me, I believe it was Mr. Carlotti, that she possessed a remarkable talent for reading hands. I never believed that the lines of the hand have any signification whatever, but I always believed that, for certain persons endowed with a kind of second sight, this could constitute a means of establishing a relation that would permit them, like sleepwalkers, to say true things sometimes. The signs of the hand are, in that case, nothing more than a pretext, a means of fixing the attention, of developing lucidity, just as cards, coffee grounds, and so-called magic mirrors are for the individuals who possess that faculty. Experience confirmed to me once more the correctness of this opinion. Be that as it may, that lady, having invited me to visit her, I acceded to her invitation, and here is a summary of what she told me: “You were born with a great abundance of resources and of intellectual means… extraordinary force of reasoning… Your taste has been formed, governed by the head; you moderate inspiration by reasoning; you subordinate instinct, passion, intuition to method, to theory. You have always had a leaning toward the moral sciences… Love of absolute truth… Love of defined Art.

“Your style has number, measure, and cadence; but, at times, you would exchange a little of its precision for a certain poetry.

“As an idealist philosopher, you were subject to the opinion of others; as a believing philosopher, you now experience the need to form a sect.

“Judicious benevolence; imperious need to relieve, to succor, to console; need of independence.

“Very slowly do you correct yourself of the sudden impulse of your temper.

“You were singularly suited to the mission entrusted to you, inasmuch as your nature is more to make yourself the center of immense developments than capable of isolated labors… Your eyes have the gaze of thought.

“I see here the sign of the spiritual tiara… And it is well pronounced… See.” (I looked and saw nothing in particular.)

What do you understand, I asked her, by spiritual tiara? Do you mean to say that I shall be pope? If such were to happen, it would certainly not be in this existence.

Answer. — You should note that I said spiritual tiara, which signifies: moral and religious authority and not effective sovereignty.”

I have reproduced purely and simply the words of that lady, transcribed by herself. It is not for me to judge whether they are exact on all points. Some, I recognize as true, because they accord with my character and with the dispositions of my mind.

There is, however, one evidently erroneous passage, the one in which she says, apropos of my style, that I would sometimes exchange something of my precision for a little poetry. No poetic instinct exists in me; what I seek, above all, what pleases me, what I appreciate in others, is clarity, limpidity, precision, and, far from sacrificing the latter to poetry, what could be reproached to me would be the sacrificing of poetic sentiment to the dryness of the positive form. I have always preferred what speaks to the intelligence over what speaks only to the imagination.

As for the spiritual tiara, “The Spirits' Book” had just appeared; the Doctrine was in its beginnings and could not yet prejudge the results it would later yield. I attached, then, no importance to that revelation and limited myself to noting it down by way of information.

The following year Madame de Cardone left Paris, and I did not see her again until eight years later, in 1868, when things had already advanced considerably. She said to me: Do you remember my prediction about the spiritual tiara? There you have it realized. — How realized? As far as I know, I do not find myself on the throne of St. Peter. — No, certainly; but, also, that is not what I announced to you. Are you not, in fact, the head of the Doctrine, recognized by Spiritists of the whole world? Are not your writings the ones that make law? Are not your co-religionists counted by the millions? In matters of Spiritism, is there anyone whose name has more authority than yours? Are not the titles of high priest, of pontiff, even of pope, given to you spontaneously? They are given, above all, by your adversaries and in irony, I well know, but the fact none the less indicates of what kind is the influence they recognize in you, because they sense what role falls to you. Thus, those titles will remain with you. In short, you have conquered, without seeking it, a moral position which no one can take from you, given that, whatever works may be elaborated after yours, or concurrently with them, you will always be the proclaimed founder of the Doctrine. Therefore, in reality, you are with the spiritual tiara, that is, with moral supremacy. Acknowledge, then, that I told the truth.

Do you now believe a little more in the signs of the hands? — Less than ever, and I am convinced that, if you saw something, it was not in my hand, but in your own mind, and I am going to prove it.

I admit that in the hands, as in the feet, in the arms, and in the other parts of the body, there exist certain physiognomic signs; but each organ presents particular signs, according to the use to which it is subjected and according to its relations with thought. The signs of the hands cannot be the same as those of the feet, of the arms, of the mouth, of the eyes, etc.

As for the creasing of the palms of the hands, the greater or lesser accentuation they present results from the nature of the skin and from the greater or lesser quantity of cellular tissue. Since these parts are in no physiological correlation with the organs of the intellectual and moral faculties, they cannot be the expression of those faculties. Even admitting that there is such a correlation, they could furnish indications about the present state of the individual, but they could not constitute signs presaging future things, nor past events independent of the will of that same individual. In the first hypothesis, I would, strictly speaking, understand that, with the aid of such lineaments, one might say that a person possesses this or that aptitude, this or that inclination; the most common good sense, however, would repel the idea that one can see there whether she was married or not, how many times, and the number of children she had, whether she is a widow or not, and other similar things, as the majority of palmists claim. Among the lines of the hands, there is one that everyone knows and that indeed represents an M. If it is fairly accentuated, it presages, they say, an unhappy life (malheureuse); but the word malheur (unhappiness) is French, and no one remembers that, in the other languages, the word corresponding to it does not begin with the same letter, whence it follows that the line in question would have to present different forms according to the languages of the peoples.

As for the spiritual tiara, it is, evidently, a special, exceptional, and, to a certain extent, individual thing, and I am convinced that you did not find that expression in the vocabulary of any treatise on palmistry. How, then, did it come to your mind? Through intuition, through inspiration, through that kind of prescience peculiar to the double sight with which many persons are endowed without suspecting it. Your attention was concentrated on the lineaments of the hand; you fixed your thought on a sign in which another person would have seen something very different, or to which you yourself would attribute a different signification if it were a matter of another individual.