The perispirit described in 1805.

Extracted from the German work: The mystical phenomena of human life, by Maximilien Perty, Professor of the University of Bern, – Leipzig and Heidelberg,

n (Summary)

Apparition described in German literature.

The knowledge of the spiritual body goes back to the highest Antiquity, only the name perispirit is modern.

Do certain animals sense the presence of the Spirits?

Under the title of “Real apparition of my wife after her death” — Chemnitz, 1804 – Doctor Woetzel n published a book that caused a great sensation in the first years of this century. The author was attacked in several writings, principally by Wieland, who holds him up to ridicule in the Euthanasia. n During an illness of his wife, Woetzel had asked the latter to appear to him after her death; she promised him this. Later, however, at the husband’s entreaty, she released herself from the promise. Nevertheless, some weeks after her death, a violent wind seemed to blow in the room, although it was closed; the light nearly went out; a small window in the alcove opened and, despite the faint clarity that reigned, Woetzel saw the form of his wife, saying to him in a gentle voice: “Charles, I am immortal; one day we shall see each other again.” The apparition and these consoling words were repeated later, a second time. The wife showed herself in a white dress, with the same appearance she had had before dying. A dog that had not stirred at the first apparition grew agitated and described a circle, as if it were around a known person. In a second work on the same subject (Leipzig, 1805), the author speaks of invitations that had been addressed to him to deny the whole affair, “for, otherwise, many learned men would be forced to renounce what, until then, they had judged to be true and just opinions, and because superstition would find nourishment there.” But he had already asked the council of the University of Leipzig to permit him to take an oath in this regard. The author develops his theory. According to him, “the soul, after death, would be enveloped by an ethereal, luminous body, by means of which it could become visible; that it could wear other garments, over this luminous envelope; that the apparition had not acted upon his inner sense, but solely upon the outer senses.” As one sees, only the word perispirit is lacking to this explanation. However, Woetzel is mistaken when he judges that the apparition acts only upon the outer senses, and not upon the inner sense. It is known today that the contrary is what occurs. But perhaps he had meant to say that he was perfectly awake, and not in a state of dream, which, probably, would have made him think that he had perceived the apparition only by corporeal vision, since he did not know the properties of the perispiritual fluid, nor the mechanism of spiritual vision. Besides, on reading the erudite work of Mr. Pezzani, on the Plurality of Existences, n one has the proof that the knowledge of the spiritual body goes back to the highest antiquity, and that only the name perispirit is modern. Saint Paul described it in his first epistle to the Corinthians, chapter XV. Woetzel recognized it only by the force of reasoning. Having studied it in the numerous facts that it observed, Spiritism described its properties and deduced the laws of its formation and of its manifestations. As for what concerns the dog, there is nothing surprising in this. Various facts seem to prove that certain animals sense the presence of the Spirits. In the Spiritist Review of June 1860, we cited an example that has a remarkable analogy with that of Woetzel. It is not even positively proven that they cannot see them. There would be nothing impossible in the fact that, in certain circumstances, for example, horses that take fright and obstinately refuse to advance without known cause, undergo the effect of a hidden influence. [1]

[Die mystischen Erscheinungen der menschlichen Natur von Maximilian Perty — Google Books.]

[2] [Die mystischen Erscheinungen der menschlichen Natur (p. 520) — Google Books.]

[3] [Euthanasia.

Christoph Martin Wieland — Google Books.]

[4] [La Pluralité des Existences de l’Ame: conforme a la doctrine de la … — Google Books.]