Supernatural

by Colin Wilson

  Other hypnotists, like Arnall Bloxham (an Englishman) and Joe Keeton, began to try the techniques of ‘regression’, and produced astonishing information that seemed to prove that patients could recall their ‘past lives’. One of Bloxham’s subjects gave an impressive account of being a naval gunner at the time of Nelson; while another, a housewife, recalled many past lives, including one of being a Jewess involved in an anti-semitic pogrom in York. Her knowledge of ancient history proved to be astonishingly detailed (as Jeffrey Iverson has recounted in his book More Lives than One?). A professor identified the church she had described—in the crypt of which the hunted Jews took refuge—as St Mary’s, the only problem being that St Mary’s had no crypt. A few months later, workmen renovating the church discovered the crypt.

  Now book after book appeared with powerful evidence for reincarnation. In The Cathars and Reincarnation, Dr Arthur Guirdham described a patient called ‘Mrs Smith’ who had dreams and visions of being alive in 13th-century France, as a member of a persecuted sect called the Cathars, who were finally exterminated by the Inquisition. Guirdham had himself been interested in the Cathars because he had also had strange dreams about them. Now, stimulated by Mrs Smith’s detailed ‘dream knowledge’ of the period, he investigated Catharism with the aid of French scholars, and found that she was correct again and again; when she and scholars disagreed, it was usually she who turned out to be correct. In Second Time Round Edward Ryall described in detail memories of a previous existence as a West-Country farmer who lived during the reign of Charles II and took part in the battle of Sedgemoor. In Lives to Remember, Peter Underwood and Leonard Wilder described hypnotic experiments with a housewife, Peggy Bailey, and detailed memories of three of her previous lives.

  Yet obviously the problem here is one of how far we can accept the evidence of people who have become convinced that reincarnation is a reality. To many sceptics Arthur Guirdham’s case is undermined by his admission that he was also a Cathar in a previous existence, and—by a strange coincidence—the lover of the previous Mrs Smith. The reader of A. J. Stewart’s Died 1513, Born 1929 is bound to experience a certain incredulity to learn that, in her previous existence, Miss Stewart was James II of Scotland.

  In 1981 the sceptics found a formidable champion in Ian Wilson, whose book Mind Out of Time? is a devastating analysis of some of the cases of reincarnation. I myself am quoted approvingly because of an experiment I conducted on BBC television in which a housewife was made to hallucinate as an evil clergyman by means of post-hypnotic suggestion. Wilson goes on to show how easily our unconscious minds can deceive us, citing many cases in which people have convinced themselves that long-buried memories of some book they once read are actually memories of past lives. He points out, for example, that the man who thought he had been a gunner in one of Nelson’s ships had read C. S. Forester’s Hornblower novels as a child and could easily have picked up his ‘facts’ from them. His final considered assessment is that most cases of reincarnation are actually examples of the strange psychological illness known as ‘multiple personality’.

  Wilson’s scepticism is salutary and bracing. But the book suffers from the defect of most attempts to ‘explode’ a particular belief: it seems to ignore some of the most convincing evidence. Anyone who is interested in reincarnation immediately turns to the index to see what he makes of the Lurancy Vennum case—and discovers that, for some odd reason, he does not even mention it. Discussing Stevenson’s cases, he objects that so many involve young children, and points out that children often fantasise about being somebody else. But he only has one brief and indirect reference to the astonishing case of Jasbir Lal Jat, and prefers to pick holes and find minor errors in less well-documented cases.

  And then Wilson seriously undermines his own arguments by citing one of the most remarkable cases of recent years—that of the Pollock twins. In May 1975 two sisters—Joanna and Jacqueline Pollock, aged 11 and 6—were killed by a car that mounted the pavement. In October 1958 Mrs Pollock had female twins, who were called Jennifer and Gillian. Jennifer had a scar on her forehead in exactly the place her dead sister Jacqueline had had one. When the twins were only four months old, the family moved away from Hexham to Whitley Bay. But when the twins were taken back three years later, they behaved as if they had known it all their lives, recognizing the school, the playground and the old house where their sisters had lived. When Mrs Pollock decided to open a locked cupboard in which she had kept the dead children’s toys, the twins immediately recognised them item by item, naming all the dolls. One day Mrs Pollock was shocked to find them playing a game in which one twin cradled the other’s head saying, ‘The blood’s coming out of your eyes. That’s where the car hit you.’ But the Pollocks had been careful never to tell their children anything about how their sisters had died.

  So although Mr Wilson points out that the evidence is by no means watertight—because John Pollock himself believes in reincarnation—he leaves most readers with the impression that it is quite strong enough for any reasonable person. And when, at the end of his discussion of the Bridey Murphy case, he admits reluctantly: ‘. . . when the dubious and the downright spurious has been discarded, there remain signs of some not yet understood phenomenon at work,’ most readers will be inclined to wonder why he considers himself a sceptic.

  1. See article on ‘The Curse of the Pharaohs’ in my Encyclopedia of Unsolved Mysteries, volume one.

  1. Alan Vaughan: Patterns of Prophecy, 1973, p. 4.

  2. Access to Inner Worlds: The Story of Brad Absetz, 1983.

  12

  Magicians and Wonder Workers

  IT WOULD BE A mistake to think of the magician as the male form of the witch. (In fact, the word ‘witch’ can apply to both men and women.) But in the long occult tradition, the magician is distinguished from the witch by his desire to achieve intellectual mastery over the principles of nature. Magicians like Paracelsus and Cornelius Agrippa regarded themselves as scientists rather than as sorcerers—as becomes clear from Lynn Thorndike’s vast History of Magic and Experimental Science, in which there is no attempt to distinguish one from the other.

  But what also becomes very clear from the history of magic is that most of the ‘great magicians’ were driven by another motive: the desire for personal fame and power. And, more often than not, this has been their downfall.

  In primitive tribal societies, the magician was indistinguishable from the witch. We have seen—in the chapter on witches—how modern tribal shamans—like those described in F. Bruce Lamb’s Wizard of the Upper Amazon—are actually able to lure animals into the area where hunters are waiting for them. And there seems no reason to doubt that the shamans depicted by our Cro-magnon ancestors in their cave paintings were able to do the same thing.

  Slowly, over the course of many thousands of years, the tribal shaman evolved into the modern sorcerer. That is, he ceased to be what is called a white witch—a benevolent and helpful worker of magic—and became more interested in obtaining power for himself. We can see this transformation beginning in the Old Testament prophets such as Moses, Joshua, Elijah, and Daniel. It is true that they are men of God, and that their power apparently comes from God. But it is significant how often they are engaged in magical contests in which they demonstrate their power at the expense of competing magicians. Aaron throws down his rod in front of the Pharaoh and it turns into a snake. The rival Egyptian magicians do the same thing and their rods also become snakes. But Aaron’s snake eats up all the other snakes. Elijah challenges four hundred and fifty priests of Baal to a test of magic in which they are to call on their god to light the fire under a sacrificial bullock. Their god fails them. Elijah, with great dramatic flair, tells his people to drench his bullock and firewood with water three times. Then he calls upon Jehovah. The God of the Jews sends down a fire that consumes the bullock, the wood, and the water. After this, Elijah orders the people to kill all the priests of Baal. The will to power swaggers through the whole story.
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  The desire to dominate, to assert themselves, to humiliate or destroy those who oppose them is something that can be observed again and again in the lives of the great magicians. Moreover, the magical contest—the battle with a rival—is a standard feature of the lives of the magicians. In the 1st century AD the Greek magician Apollonius of Tyana engaged in a contest with a rival named Euphrates. Simon Magus, the magician of Samaria referred to in the Acts of the Apostles, was supposed to have been challenged by St. Peter. The legend is that Simon conjured up huge black hounds that rushed at Peter.

  The apostle held out a loaf of holy bread, and the hounds vanished into thin air. In one version of the legend, Simon then rose into the air, hovered for a moment, and flew through a window. Peter fell to his knees and prayed, whereupon Simon plummeted to the ground. He died from his injuries in this fall.

  There can be no doubt that many such stories are pure invention. Others, however, are too detailed—and too widely reported—to be wholly invented. The interesting question is: What genuine powers did men such as Simon Magus possess? The account of him given in the Acts of the Apostles is, understandably, belittling. Describing himself as ‘some great one,’ Simon angered St. Peter by offering him money in exchange for the gift of the Holy Spirit. Christian documents are inclined to regard Simon as a charlatan. He claimed to be able to make himself invisible, change himself into an animal, and walk unharmed through fire. The Christians said that all this was achieved by bewitching the senses of the onlookers. Modern writers have taken this to mean that he used some form of hypnosis. For example, legend says that when Simon went to Rome, Nero ordered him to be decapitated by one of his officers. Simon, however, bewitched the officer into decapitating a ram instead. When he reappeared with his head still on his shoulders, Nero was so impressed by his powers that he made Simon his court magician.

  But was Simon’s means of control over the officer ordinary hypnosis or was it the kind of Psi power exercised by Wolf Messing (see p. 54) when he induced the bank clerk to hand over ten thousand roubles. The latter is altogether more likely, because hypnosis usually takes the co-operation of the person about to be hypnotised. It is unlikely that Simon was able to make himself invisible or turn himself into an animal. But he certainly seemed to have command of the power of thought pressure, just as some people are born with a green thumb.

  At this point, it is time to raise the question of how such a power could work. Let us look more closely at some of the recorded examples.

  The poet W. B. Yeats was a member of the order of the Golden Dawn, one of the first and best known occult societies of late 19th century England. In his autobiography Yeats describes an incident that occurred on a walk taken by one of the other Golden Dawn members and MacGregor Mathers, one of the order’s founders. ‘Look at those sheep,’ said Mathers. ‘I am going to imagine myself a ram.’ The sheep immediately began to run after him.

  Mathers could also use his strange powers on people, just as the Swedish playwright August Strindberg believed he himself could. Once when Strindberg was eating alone in a restaurant, he recognised two friends among some drunk people at another table. To his dismay, one of them began to approach him. Strindberg fixed his eyes on the man. At this, the friend looked bewildered and returned to his table apparently convinced that Strindberg was a stranger.

  Strindberg once attempted to practise black magic, and he believed that his later suffering and bad luck was a result of this dabbling with evil forces. It was when he was separated from his second wife. He wanted desperately to bring about a reconciliation, and had to think of a way of seeing her. He decided to use his telepathic powers to make his daughter just sick enough to require a visit from him. Using a photograph of the girl, he tried to bring about her illness. When the two children of his first marriage got sick a short time later, he felt that he was responsible, and that his use of the evil eye had misfired. Strindberg dates his misfortunes from then on.

  A mixture of hypnosis and telepathy was used in a series of experiments conducted by the Soviet scientist Leonid Vasiliev in the 1920s and 1930s. The aim of the experiments was to discover not only whether telepathic communication was possible but also if it could be proved. In one test, Vasiliev used a hypnotist and a hypnotic subject who, the hypnotist claimed, could be made to fall asleep by telepathic suggestion. The hypnotist was placed in one room, and the subject in another. Only Vasiliev and his assistants knew precisely when the hypnotist made the mental suggestion. In repeated tests, they established that the subject fell asleep within one and a half minutes of the suggestion. Later, they discovered that distance made no difference. A subject in the Crimean city of Sebastopol fell asleep at a telepathic suggestion made in Leningrad, more than one thousand miles away. Vasiliev wondered whether telepathic communication might depend upon some kind of electromagnetic radiation, and tried sealing the hypnotist up in a lead chamber. It made no difference whatever, proving that the waves involved in telepathy have nothing in common with radio waves.

  After Simon Magus, the most famous magician in European history is Faust, also known as Dr Faustus. The Faust legend has maintained its potency for almost five centuries, and has inspired at least three great works of literature—Christopher Marlowe’s Dr Faustus (1604), Goethe’s Faust (1808 and 1832), and Thomas Mann’s Doctor Faustus (1947)—as well as many musical works. From all these, the picture that emerges of Faust is of a brilliant, proud, restless man who longs to share the secrets of the gods. But these characteristics have evolved over the centuries, and as we go backward in time we come closer to the truth about the person who called himself Faust. Thomas Mann’s Faust is a great musician; Goethe’s Faust is a restless scholar, chafing against the frustration of being merely human; Marlowe’s Faustus is a scholar who has been led into temptation by the lust for power. The book on which all these were based is Johann Spies’ Historia von D. Johann Faustus, which appeared in Berlin in 1587. Its hero is little more than a magical confidence trickster. Significantly, his chief gift is hypnosis—although, of course, the author does not use that word.

  In a typical episode in the Spies’ book, Faust goes to a Jew and offers to leave behind his arm or leg as security for a loan. The Jew accepts, and Faust appears to saw off his leg. Embarrassed and disgusted by this, the Jew later throws the leg into a river—whereupon Faust appears and demands his leg back. The Jew is forced to pay him heavy compensation. In another anecdote, Faust asks a wagoner with a load of hay how much hay he will allow him to eat for a few pence. The wagoner says jokingly: ‘As much as you like.’ When Faust has eaten half the wagonload, the wagoner repents his generosity and offers Faust a gold piece on condition he leaves the rest undevoured. When he reaches home the wagoner discovers that his load is intact, ‘for the delusion which the doctor had raised was vanished’.

  Even the Faust of this original book is described as ‘a scholar and a gentleman.’ He is said to have been the son of honest German peasants, born near Weimar in 1491, but brought up by a well-to-do uncle in Wittenberg. This uncle sent him to university. Faust’s ‘strong powers of mind’ soon distinguish him, and his friends urge him to enter the Church. But Faust has greater ambitions. He begins to dabble in sorcery. He studies Chaldean, Greek, and Arabic. He takes his degree of Doctor of Divinity, and also a medical degree. In due course, he becomes a famous doctor. It is intellectual brilliance that is his downfall, ‘the boldness of his profane enquiries’—a quality that later generations would consider a virtue, and for which even Spies has a sneaking admiration. Faust wishes to become a great magician, and this is why he invokes the Devil. Having entered into his pact with the Devil, Faust is corrupted by the Prince of Darkness, who proceeds to fill him with greed and lust for power.

  At this point, it is worth quoting the Historia on a subject that has some bearing on the lives of magicians. ‘It used to be an old saying that the magician, charm he ever so wisely for a year together, was never a sixpence richer for all his efforts.’ This belief t
hat unusual powers cannot be used for financial gain is fundamental and persistent. And there seems to be some truth in it. None of the great magicians from Simon Magus to MacGregor Mathers has died rich, and most of them have died paupers. The few who have succeeded in living comfortably—Emmanuel Swedenborg and Gurdjieff, for example—made their money in other ways than magic.

  When we pass from the Faust legends to the obscure original, as described by some of his contemporaries, we encounter exactly the sort of person that this investigation has led us to expect: a coarse, vulgar, boastful man, with some natural talent and an overmastering desire for fame. We don’t know if he was named Georg Sabellicus or Johannes, but he was often called Faustus Junior. The first we hear of him is in 1507 when, through the good offices of a nobleman, he obtained a post as a teacher in a boys’ school in Kreuznach near Frankfurt. Apparently he was a homosexual, for he proceeded to seduce some of his pupils, ‘indulging in the most dastardly kind of lewdness’. When found out, he fled. In 1509, Johannes Faust was given a degree in theology in Heidelberg, some forty miles from Kreuznach. In 1513, the canon of St. Mary’s church in Gotha in what is now East Germany, recorded that he had heard Georg Faust, known as ‘the demigod of Heidelberg’, boasting and talking nonsense in an inn in nearby Erfurt.