Material action of Spirits upon the organism.

— The following fact was transmitted to us by Mr. A. Superchi, of Parma, honorary member of the Spiritist Society of Paris.

“In our session of last April 23, I had the medium put his hand upon the paper without evoking any Spirit. As soon as the hand began to move, he felt a strange force that compelled him to keep his index finger raised and stiff, in an absolutely anomalous position. The finger was singularly cold. Finding no explanation for such an eccentricity, I asked the Spirit for the explanation. It answered: “How forgetful you are! Do you not remember the one who, in life, wrote in this way? I made this finger stiff to give you a proof of our authenticity and of our power.” It was the Spirit of a brother of the medium, who died in Florence more than twenty years ago. He had injured the finger in breaking a bottle, while pouring out its contents, in such a way that the finger became ankylosed. I enclose a drawing representing the position of the medium’s hand.

“Another medium, resentful over a deserved mystification, was striving to prove that the phenomena came from our own Spirit, concentrated in I know not what manner. One day, while conversing, he mechanically took a pencil to draw a few lines, in jest; but his hand remained immobile, in spite of all his efforts. At last, it set itself in motion and wrote these words: “When I do not wish it, you will never be able to write anything whatsoever.” Surprised, but at the same time wounded in his self-esteem, he took up the pencil again, saying that he did not want to write and that he would see whether this supposed Spirit would have the power to compel him. In spite of his resolution, the hand moved rapidly and wrote: “When I wish it, you will not be able to refrain from writing.”

— In the two cases above, the action of the Spirit upon the organs is, as one sees, completely independent of the will. From this it is at once conceivable that it may be exercised spontaneously, abstraction made of any notion of Spiritism. Indeed, this is what many observations prove. Here it occurred in a finger; elsewhere it will be upon another organ and may translate itself into other effects. Such action, temporary in this circumstance, could acquire a certain duration and present a pathological appearance, which in reality would not exist, and against which ordinary therapeutics would be ineffective.

Considered from the point of view of the Spiritist manifestations, this phenomenon offers a remarkable proof of identity. The Spirit, as a Spirit, incontestably does not have an ankylosed finger, but to a seeing medium it would be presented with such an infirmity in order to be recognized; to one who was not seeing, it communicates its ailment for a few moments. Here again we encounter the evident proof that the Spirit identifies itself with the medium and makes use of the latter’s body as it would make use of its own body. Whether this action be produced by a malevolent Spirit, whether it acquire a certain duration, whether it take on more characteristic and eccentric forms, and we shall have the explanation of the majority of cases of bodily subjugation attributed to madness.

— The following fact, of an analogous nature, was related by a member of the Society of Paris, who witnessed it in a town in the interior.

“I saw,” he said, “a very singular medium; she is a lady still young, who asks her familiar Spirit to paralyze, for example, her tongue; and at once she can no longer speak except in the manner of a mute, who strives to make himself understood. At her request, it makes her hands adhere to one another, in such a way that it is impossible to separate them; it fastens her to a chair until she asks to be set free. I asked the Spirit to make her fall asleep instantly, and it did so: the medium fell asleep for the first time, almost immediately, without anyone’s aid. It was in this state that I believed I recognized the nature of this Spirit, which seemed to me an obsessor, since, when the lady was suffering, or, at least, became very agitated during sleep, if I wished to give her some magnetic passes to calm her, the Spirit led her to repel me harshly. I recommended to that lady that she not repeat the experiments too frequently.”

As for us, we advised her to abstain from them entirely, because they could play her a trick. It becomes evident that a good Spirit cannot lend itself to such things; to make a game of them is to place oneself voluntarily under a baneful dependence, morally and physically, and God alone knows where this would end up. There could result from it some terrible bodily subjugation, from which it would be very difficult, if not impossible, for her to disentangle herself. It is already enough that such accidents occur spontaneously, without their being made to follow when provoked in excess and merely to satisfy a vain curiosity. Such experiments have no usefulness for moral improvement and may entail the gravest inconveniences. Afterward they would incriminate Spiritism, when one should accuse only the imprudence or the pride of those who deem themselves capable of directing the bad Spirits at their will. We never defy them with impunity. We do not affirm that the Spirit in question is bad by nature, but what is certain is that it cannot be advanced, nor even essentially good, and that it is always dangerous to submit to such subordination, the least inconvenience of which would be the neutralization of free will. By giving access to Spirits of this kind, we become penetrated by their fluids, necessarily refractory to the influences of the good Spirits, who withdraw if we do not strive to attract them, seeking in Spiritism the means of improving ourselves. Once penetrated by a malefic fluid, the perispirit is like a garment impregnated with an acrid odor, which the most delicious perfumes cannot make disappear.