Pneumatography or direct writing.

Pneumatography is writing produced directly by the Spirit, without any intermediary; it differs from psychography in that the latter is the transmission of the Spirit's thought by means of writing done with the medium's hand. We gave these two words in the Spiritist Vocabulary, placed at the beginning of our Practical Instruction, with an indication of their etymological difference. Psychography, from the Greek psykê, butterfly, soul; and graphus, I write; Pneumatography, from pneuma, air, breath, wind, Spirit. In the writing medium the hand is an instrument, but his soul, or incarnate Spirit, is the intermediary, the agent or the interpreter of the foreign Spirit who communicates; in Pneumatography, it is the foreign Spirit himself who writes directly, without an intermediary. The phenomenon of direct writing is, undeniably, one of the most extraordinary of Spiritism. Abnormal as it may seem at first sight, it is today a verified and incontestable fact. If we have not yet spoken of it, that is because we were waiting to be able to give an explanation of it and to have already carried out the necessary observations, in order to treat the question with full knowledge of the matter. Theory, always necessary for acquainting ourselves with the possibility of spiritist phenomena in general, is perhaps even more necessary in this case which, without contestation, is one of the strangest that can present itself, yet ceasing to seem supernatural once its principle is understood. The first time this phenomenon occurred, doubt was the dominant feeling it left behind. The idea of a hoax at once occurred to those who witnessed it. Everyone, indeed, knows the action of the so-called sympathetic inks, whose traces, at first completely invisible, appear after some time. It could therefore be that, by this means, the credulity of those present had been abused, and we are far from affirming that this has never been done. We are even convinced that some persons, not with a mercenary purpose, but solely out of self-love and to make people believe in their faculties, have employed subterfuges.

In the third of the letters written from Montaigne, J. J. Rousseau relates the following fact: “In 1743 I saw in Venice a new kind of sortilege, stranger than those of Praeneste; whoever wished to consult it entered a chamber, remaining there alone if he so desired. From a book of blank pages he drew one of his choice; then, holding that page, he asked mentally, and not aloud, that which he wished to know; next, he folded the blank page, placed it in an envelope, sealed it, and put it, thus closed, inside a book. Finally, and without losing sight of the book, after having recited some very extravagant formulas, he verified that the seal had not been broken, opened the envelope, withdrew the paper, and found the answer written. The magician who performed these sortes was the first secretary of the Embassy of France and was named J. J. Rousseau.” We doubt that Rousseau knew of direct writing, for, otherwise, he would have known other things concerning spiritist manifestations and would not have treated the subject with such levity. As he himself acknowledged when we questioned him about this fact, it is probable that he used a process he had learned from an Italian charlatan.

However, from the fact that a thing can be imitated, it would be absurd to conclude its nonexistence. In these latter times, has not a means been found to imitate somnambulic lucidity, to the point of causing illusion? But, because this mountebank's process has been exhibited at every fair, should one conclude that there are no true somnambulists? Because certain merchants sell adulterated wine, is that a reason for there to be no pure wine? The same happens with direct writing. Quite simple and easy, moreover, were the precautions to be taken to guarantee the reality of the fact and, thanks to these precautions, today it can no longer be the object of the slightest doubt. Considering that the possibility of writing without an intermediary represents one of the attributes of the Spirit; since Spirits have always existed from all time and since from all time the various phenomena we know have been produced, that of direct writing must likewise have operated in Antiquity, as much as in present days. It is in this way that one can explain the appearance of the three celebrated words in the banquet hall of Belshazzar. The Middle Ages, so fertile in occult prodigies, but which were smothered by means of the stake, must also have known direct writing; it is equally possible that, in the theory of the modifications through which Spirits can make matter pass, a theory we developed in our previous article [Furniture from Beyond the Tomb], may be found the foundation of the belief in the transmutation of metals. It is a point we shall take up some day. One of our subscribers lately told us that one of his uncles, a canon, who for many years had been a missionary in Paraguay, obtained, around the year 1800, direct writing, together with his friend, the celebrated Abbot Faria. His process, which our subscriber never came to know well, and which he had in some manner happened upon by chance, consisted of a series of suspended rings, to which pencils were fitted, arranged in a vertical position, whose points rested on the paper. This process reflected the infancy of the art; afterward we progressed.

Nevertheless, whatever the results obtained at various periods, it was only after spiritist manifestations had become widespread that the question of direct writing was taken seriously. As it appears, the first to make it known, in these last years, in Paris, was the baron de Guldenstubbé, who published on the subject a very interesting work, with a great number of facsimiles of the writings he obtained. n The phenomenon was already known in America, for some time. The social position of Mr. Guldenstubbé, his independence, the consideration he enjoys in the most elevated circles, incontestably remove all suspicion of intentional fraud, since there was no motive of interest to which he was obeying. At most, what one might suppose is that he was the victim of an illusion; to this, however, a fact responds peremptorily: that of other persons having obtained the same phenomenon, surrounded by all the precautions necessary to avoid any hoax and any cause of error. Direct writing is obtained, as in general are the greater part of non-spontaneous spiritist manifestations, by means of concentration, prayer, and evocation. It has been produced in churches, on tombs, at the foot of statues, or images of the personages evoked. Evidently, the place exercises no other influence than that of affording greater spiritual recollection and greater concentration of thoughts, since it is proven that the phenomenon is obtained, equally, without these accessories and in the most ordinary places, on a simple household piece of furniture, provided that those who wish to obtain it find themselves in the due moral conditions and, among them, there be found one who possesses the necessary mediumistic faculty. It was judged, at first, that it was necessary to place a pencil here or there with the paper. The fact could then, up to a certain point, be explained. It is known that Spirits produce the movement and displacement of objects; that, sometimes, they take them and hurl them far away. They could well, then, also take hold of the pencil and make use of it to trace letters. Since they impel it, making use of the medium's hand, of a planchette, etc., they could, in the same way, impel it directly. It was not long, however, before it was recognized that the pencil was dispensable, that a piece of paper, folded or not, sufficed for the letters to be found written upon it after a few minutes. Here, the phenomenon already changes aspect completely and transports us to an entirely new order of things. The letters must have been traced with some substance. Now, it being certain that no one furnished the Spirit with that substance, it follows that he himself composed it. Whence did he draw it? That is the problem. The Russian general, Count de B… showed us a stanza of ten German verses obtained in this manner through the intermediary of the baron de Guldenstubbé's sister, simply by placing a sheet of paper, torn from his own notebook, beneath the pedestal of the mantelpiece clock. Having withdrawn it after a few minutes, he found upon it verses in very fine German typographic characters of perfect purity. Through a psychographic medium the Spirit told him to burn this paper; as he hesitated, regretting to sacrifice so precious a specimen, the Spirit added: “Fear nothing; I will give you another.” With this assurance he cast the paper into the fire, then placed a second sheet, likewise taken from his wallet, on which the verses were found reproduced, exactly in the same manner. It was this second edition that we saw and examined with the greatest care and, a bizarre thing, the characters presented a relief as if they had come from the press. It is not, then, only the pencil that Spirits can make, but the ink and the characters of print. One of our honored colleagues of the Society, Mr. Didier, obtained a few days ago the following results, which we had the opportunity to verify, and whose perfect identity we can guarantee. Having gone to the church of Our Lady of Victories, with Mrs. Huet, who recently had success in experiments of this kind, he took a sheet of letter paper bearing the letterhead of his commercial house, folded it in four, and placed it on the steps of an altar, praying, in the name of God, that a good Spirit would deign to write something. After ten minutes of recollection he found inside and on one of the folded parts of the sheet the word faith and in one of the other fields the word God. Next, having asked the Spirit to say who had written that, he replaced the paper in the same place and, after ten minutes, found these words: by Fénelon. Eight days later, on July 12, he wished to repeat the experiment and went to the Louvre, to the Coyzevox room, situated beneath the clock pavilion. On the base of the bust of Bossuet he placed a sheet of paper, folded like the first, but obtained nothing. A boy of five years accompanied him and his cap was left on the pedestal of the statue of Louis XIV, which was a few steps from the first. Thinking the experiment had failed, he was already preparing to leave when, upon picking up the cap, he perceived beneath it, as if it had been written in pencil on the marble, the expression love God, followed by the letter B. The first thought that came to the minds of those present was that such words might have been written previously by foreign hands, which had not been perceived. However, they wished to attempt the test again, replacing the folded sheet on top of those words, covering them with the cap. After a few minutes had passed they perceived that the sheet contained three letters: l o v. They put the paper back and asked that the writings be completed and obtained: Love God, that is, that which had been written on the marble, less the B. It thus became evident that the first letters traced resulted from direct writing. There stood out, moreover, this curious fact: the letters were written successively and not all at once; at the time of the first inspection, there had not been time to finish the words. Leaving the Louvre, Mr. D… went to the church of Saint-Germain l'Auxerrois where he obtained, by the same process, the words: Be humble. Fénelon, written in a very clear and very legible manner. These words can still be seen on the marble of the statue to which we referred. The substance of which these characters are made has all the appearance of pencil graphite and is easily erased with the eraser. We examined it under the microscope and verified that it is not incorporated into the paper, but simply deposited on the surface, in an irregular manner, upon its roughnesses, forming arborescences very similar to those of certain crystallizations. The part erased by the eraser leaves exposed the layers of black matter introduced into the small cavities of the paper's ruggedness. Detached and removed with care, these layers are the very matter that is produced during the operation. We regret that the small quantity collected did not allow us to make a chemical analysis of it; but we have not lost the hope of succeeding some day. Whoever wishes to refer to the explanations that were given in our previous article will find the theory of the phenomenon complete. To write in this manner, the Spirit makes use neither of our substances nor of our instruments. He himself fabricates the matter and the instruments he requires, drawing, for this, the precious materials from the universal primitive element which, by the action of his will, undergoes the modifications necessary for the production of the desired effect. It is possible for him, therefore, to fabricate the red pencil, the printing ink, the common ink, as well as the black pencil, or even typographic characters resistant enough to give relief to the writing. Such is the result to which the phenomenon of the snuffbox, described in our previous number, has led us, and upon which we dwelt at length, because in it we perceived an opportunity to scrutinize one of the important laws of Spiritism, a law whose knowledge can clarify more than one mystery, even of the visible world. Thus it is that, from an apparently commonplace fact, light can emerge. Everything lies in observing with care, and this everyone can do as we do, provided they do not limit themselves to observing effects, without seeking their causes. If our faith strengthens from day to day, it is because we understand. Strive, then, to understand, if you wish to make serious proselytes. Yet another result follows from the comprehension of causes: that of leaving a dividing line traced between truth and superstition. Considering direct writing from the point of view of the advantages it may offer, we shall say that, up to the present, its principal utility has consisted in the material confirmation of a serious fact: the intervention of an occult power which, in this phenomenon, has one more means of manifesting itself. Nevertheless, rarely are the communications obtained in this form extensive. Generally spontaneous, they are reduced to a few words or propositions and, sometimes, to unintelligible signs. They have been given in all languages: in Greek, in Latin, in Syriac, in hieroglyphic characters, etc., but they have not yet lent themselves to the sustained and rapid dissertations that psychography, or writing by the medium's hand, permits. [see also in the Review of May 1860: Pneumatography or direct writing.]

[1] Translator's Note: See The Mediums' Book – Second Part – chapter XII.

[2] La realité des Esprits et de leurs manifestations, démontrée par le phénomène de l'écriture directe, by the baron de Guldenstubbé, 1 vol. in-8º, with 15 plates and 93 facsimiles. Price 8 fr. Frank House, Richelieu street. It is also found at the Dentu and Ledoyen Houses.