Mediumship by the glass of water in 1706.

— One may comprehend, under the general title of retrospective Spiritism, the thoughts, the doctrines, the beliefs, and all the Spiritist facts prior to modern Spiritism, that is, up to 1850, the epoch in which the observations and studies on these kinds of phenomena began. It was not until 1857 that such observations were coordinated into a body of methodical and philosophical doctrine. This division seems to us useful to the history of Spiritism.

— The following fact is related in the Memoirs of the Duke of Saint-Simon: n “I also recall a thing which he (the Duke of Orléans) n told me in the salon of Marly, on the occasion of his departure for Italy, the singularity of which, verified by the event, leads me not to omit it. He was curious about all sorts of arts and sciences and, with very great spirit, he had had throughout his whole life the weakness so common at the court of the sons of Henry II, which Catherine de’ Medici had, among other ills, brought from Italy. As much as was possible, he had sought to see the devil, without having succeeded in it, as he told me many times, and to see extraordinary things and to know the future. La Sery had at home a girl of eight or nine years, born there and who had never left there, and who had the ignorance and the simplicity of that age and of that upbringing. Among other rogues of occult curiosities, of whom the Lord Duke of Orléans had seen many in his life, there was presented to him one who claimed to make visible, in a glass full of water, everything one wished to know. He asked someone young and innocent to look into it, and that little girl was judged suitable. They then amused themselves in wishing to know what was happening at that moment in two distant places, and the girl saw and described what she was seeing. That man pronounced softly something over the glass of water and at once they looked into it with success. “The deceptions of which the Duke of Orléans had so often been the victim led him to a test that might reassure him. He ordered softly, into the ear of one of his servants, to go immediately to the house of Madame Nancré, to examine there who was present, what they were doing, the position and the furnishing of the room, as well as the situation of everything that was happening there and, without losing an instant, nor speaking to anyone, to come and tell it to him in his ear. In the twinkling of an eye the mission was carried out, without anyone perceiving what it was, the girl remaining always in the room. As soon as the Lord Duke of Orléans was informed, he asked the girl to see who was at the house of Madame de Nancré and what was happening there. At once she told him, word for word, everything that the envoy of the Lord Duke of Orléans had seen. The description of the face, of the figures, of the clothing, of the persons who were there, their situation in the room, the persons who were playing at two different tables, those who were watching or conversing, seated or standing, the disposition of the furniture, in a word, everything. In an instant the Lord Duke of Orléans sent Nancré there, who reported that he had found everything as the girl had said and as the lackey who had been there had told into the ear of the Lord Duke of Orléans. “He hardly ever spoke to me of these things, because I took the liberty of shaming him. I took it of reproaching him in this case and of telling him that I thought I might dissuade him from having faith in and amusing himself with these sorceries, especially on an occasion when he ought to have his mind occupied with so many important things. ‘That is not all,’ he said to me, ‘and I have told you this only to come to the rest.’ And, immediately, he told me that, encouraged by the exactness of what the girl had seen in the room of Madame de Nancré, he had wished to see something more important, namely what would happen at the death of the king, but without searching for the date, which could not be seen in the glass. So he asked all at once of the girl, who had never heard of Versailles, nor seen anyone of the court except him. She looked and explained to him at length everything she saw. She made with exactness the description of the king’s room at Versailles and the furnishings that, in fact, were there at the time of his death. She described him perfectly in his bed, and that there was in the room, near the bed, a well-behaved little boy, held by Madame de Ventadour, at which she cried out, because she had seen her at the house of Mademoiselle de Sery. She made known to them Madame de Maintenon, the singular face of Fayon, the Lady Duchess of Orléans, the Lady Duchess and the Lady Princess of Conti; she cried out to the Lord Duke of Orléans; in a word, she made known to him what she saw there of princes, of lords, of servants, of lackeys. When she had finished saying everything, surprised that she had not referred to him ‘Monseigneur,’ Monseigneur the Duke of Bourgogne, Monseigneur the Duke of Berry, he asked her if she did not see such and such figures. She constantly answered no and repeated those she saw. This was what the Lord Duke of Orléans could not understand and at which he marveled greatly with me, vainly seeking the reason. “The event explained it. It was then 1706. The four were then full of life and of health, and the four had died before the king. It was the same thing with the Lord Prince, with the Lord Duke and the Lord Prince of Conti, whom she did not see, while she saw the sons of the last two, the Lord du Maine, his own, and the Lord Count of Toulouse. But until the event this remained in obscurity. This curiosity ended, the Lord Duke of Orléans wished to know what would happen to himself. Then it was no longer the glass of water. The man who was there offered to show him, as if painted on the wall of the room, provided she had no fear of seeing it; and at the end of a quarter of an hour of some affectations before everyone, the figure of the Lord Duke of Orléans, dressed as he was then and in natural size, suddenly appeared on the wall, as in a painting, with a crown on his head. It was neither of France, nor of Spain, nor of England, nor imperial; the Lord Duke of Orléans, who considered it with wide-open eyes, could never guess it and had never seen one like it; it had only four circles and nothing on the top. This crown covered his head. “From the preceding obscurity and from this one, I took the occasion to show him again the vanity of these kinds of curiosities, the just illusions of the devil, which God permits in order to punish curiosities, which He forbids, the nothingness and the darkness that result from them, instead of the light and the satisfaction that are sought in them. Surely he was very far from being regent of the kingdom and from imagining it. Perhaps this singular crown was what announced it to him. All this had taken place in Paris, at the house of his mistress, in the presence of his most intimate company, on the eve of the day on which he told it to me, and I found it so extraordinary that I have given it a place here, not to approve it, but to record it.”

— The veracity of the Duke of Saint-Simon is so much the less suspect inasmuch as he was opposed to these kinds of ideas; one cannot, then, doubt that he faithfully recorded the account of the Duke of Orléans. As to the fact in itself, it is not probable that the duke would have invented or exaggerated it. The phenomena that occur in our days, moreover, prove its possibility; what, then, passed for something marvelous, is now a very natural fact. Certainly one cannot attribute it to the imagination of the girl who, unknown to the individual, could not serve him as an accomplice. The words pronounced over the glass of water had, probably, no other object than to give the phenomenon a mysterious and cabalistic appearance, according to the beliefs of the epoch; but they could very well exercise an unconscious magnetic action, and this with all the more reason inasmuch as that man seemed endowed with an energetic will. As to the fact of the picture that he made appear on the wall, up to the present no explanation can be given of it.

— Moreover, the prior magnetization of the water does not seem to be indispensable. One of our correspondents from Spain cited to us, some days ago, the following fact, which had taken place before his eyes about fifteen years ago, in an epoch and in a region where Spiritism was unknown and when he himself carried incredulity to the utmost limits. In his family they had heard of the faculty that certain persons have of seeing in a bottle full of water, and they gave no more importance to it than to popular superstitions. Nevertheless, they wished to experiment out of curiosity. A young woman, after a moment of concentration, saw a relative of his, of whom she made an exact portrait; she saw him on a mountain, some leagues from there, where they could not suppose he was, then descend into a ravine, climb up again, make various comings and goings. When the individual returned and they told him whence he came and what he had done, he was very surprised, for he had communicated his intention to no one. Here again the imagination is completely out of the question, because the thought of none of those present could act upon the mind of the young woman. The influence of the imagination being the great objection that is opposed to this kind of phenomenon, as to all those of mediumship in general, could one not gather with great care the cases in which it is demonstrated that this influence cannot occur? The following fact is an example no less conclusive.

Another of our subscribers from Palermo, in Sicily, was lately in Paris; in his absence, his daughter, who has never come to Paris, received the issue of the Review in which the glass of water is treated; she wished to experiment, and her desire was to see her father. She did not see him, but she saw several streets which, by the description that she made in writing to him, he easily recognized as being the streets of the Rue de la Paix, Castiglione and Rivoli. Now, these streets were precisely those through which he had passed on the very day on which the experiment was made. Thus, that young lady does not see her father, whom she knows, whom she desires to see, upon whom she concentrates her thought, while she sees the path that he traversed, and which she did not know. What reason to give for this oddity? The Spirits told us that things had happened in this manner in order to give an irrefutable proof that the imagination had nothing to do with the case.

— By the reflections that follow, we shall complete what we have said on the same subject in the June issue.

The glass, with or without water, as well as the bottle, evidently play, in this phenomenon, the role of hypnotic agents; the concentration of the sight and of the thought upon one point provokes a greater or lesser detachment of the soul and, in consequence, the development of psychic vision. (See the Review of January 1860: Details on hypnotism.)

This kind of mediumship can lead to special modes of manifestations, to new perceptions; it is one more means of verifying the existence and the independence of the soul and, for that very reason, a subject of study very interesting; but, as we have said, it would be an error to think that here is a means better than another of knowing everything one desires, because there are things that must remain hidden from us, or that can only be revealed at the right moment. When the moment to know them has come, one comes to know it by one of the thousand ways at the disposal of the Spirits, whether one is a Spiritist or not; but the glass of water is no more efficacious than another. From the fact that the Spirits have made use of it to give counsels salutary to health, it does not follow that it is an infallible process for triumphing over all ills, even those that ought not to be cured. If a cure is possible by the Spirits, these latter will give their counsels by any mediumistic means whatever and by any medium apt for this kind of communication. The efficacy is in the prescription, and not in the manner in which it is given. The glass of water is also not a guarantee against the intrusion of evil Spirits; experience has already proved that the ill-intentioned Spirits make use of this means as of others to lead into error and to abuse credulity. By what could one oppose to them a more powerful obstacle? We have said it many times, and we shall never repeat it too much: There is no mediumship sheltered from the evil Spirits, and there exists no material process for keeping them away. The best, the only preservative is in oneself; it is by one’s own purification that one keeps them away, just as by the cleanliness of the body one preserves oneself against harmful insects.

[1] See the issue of June 1868.

[2] [Duke of Orléans is one of the most important titles of French nobility, going back at least to the fourteenth century. It was always conferred on princes of the French royal family. Frequently in the history of France, the Duke of Orléans had an important political role.]