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Possession by the Dead,
by Colin Wilson.
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"In 1924 the National Psychological Institute in Los Angeles published a book with the arresting title Thirty Years Among the Dead, by Carl A. Wickland. It was not, as one might have supposed, the memoirs of a mortuary attendant but an account by a respectable doctor of medicine of his psychological research into Spiritualism. Inevitably, it aroused a great deal of scorn among the medical fraternity, one fortunate result being that first editions are still fairly easy to find in the “occult” sections of secondhand bookshops. Yet this is hardly fair to a work that proves, on closer examination, to be a sober and factual account of Dr Wickland’s theory that a great deal of mental illness is caused by “spirit possession”."
" ... (Wickland’s experience was that people who are insane or on the verge of a nervous breakdown are vulnerable to these psychic parasites.) ... "
"In a well-known case of the 1870s, a French youth named Louis Vivé was bitten by a viper and became paralyzed in both legs for three years; during this time he was quiet and well behaved. One day he had a “hysterico-epileptic” attack, followed by a fifteen-hour sleep; when he woke up, the well-behaved youth had given way to a violent, aggressive, and dishonest delinquent. But, unlike Frank James, Vivé’s two personalities continued to alternate. This new “criminal” self had a speech defect and was paralyzed down the right side of his body. After receiving a conviction for theft, Vivé was sent to an asylum at Rochefort, where two doctors became interested in his case. At this time there was considerable interest in the influence of magnets and of various metals on physical ailments like paralysis, and the doctors tried stroking his right side with steel. It had the effect of transferring the paralysis to the left side and restoring the patient to his previous quiet and well-behaved personality. All his memories of the “criminal” period vanished, and he could recall only his “own” earlier self – although his “other self” could be brought back by hypnosis.
"Here it seems clear that the “criminal” Vivé was a condition associated with his right brain – hence the speech disorder. (Speech is controlled by the left side of the brain). ... "
Interesting - because generally, most males brand women - however falsely - as talkers, and so do academics related to medicine and psychology; but then again, women arent credited with logical thought, which is supposedly left brain, only with unreasonable and unreasoning emotion, which is held not left brain! Does that imply there are more divisions of brain and functions, or just that males are completely confused every time it's concerning women?
" ... Rivail ... published the result in an influential work entitled The Spirits’ Book. (He used the pseudonym Allan Kardec, suggested to him by “spirits”.)
"According to The Spirits’ Book, man consists of body, “aura”, intelligent soul, and spiritual soul. The aim of human life, according to the spirits, is evolution, and this comes about through reincarnation – rebirth into new bodies. People who die suddenly, or are unprepared for death by reason of wasted lives, are often unaware that they are dead and become homeless, wanderers on the earth, attracted by human beings of like mind, and sharing their lives and experiences. They are able, to some extent, to influence these like-minded people and to make them do their will through suggestion. Some “low spirits” are activated by malice; others are merely mischievous and can use energy drawn from human beings to cause physical disturbances – these are known as poltergeists. When Kardec asked, “Do spirits influence our thoughts and actions”? the answer was, “Their influence upon [human beings] is greater than you suppose, for it is very often they who direct both”. Asked about possession, the “spirit” explained that a spirit cannot actually take over another person’s body, since that belongs to its owner; but a spirit can assimilate itself to a person who has the same defects and qualities as himself and may dominate such a person. In short, such spirits could be described as “mind parasites”."
"Perhaps the most obvious example of Oesterreich’s failure to allow facts to speak for themselves is in his account of one of the most famous of all cases of “possession”, that of “the Watseka wonder”, a girl named Lurancy Vennum. In July 1877 thirteen-year-old Lurancy, of Watseka, Illinois, had a fit, after which she became prone to trances. In these trances she became a medium, and a number of disagreeable personalities manifested themselves through her. On 11 February 1878, placed under hypnosis by a local doctor, Lurancy stated that there was a spirit in the room named Mary Roff, and a Mrs Roff who was also present exclaimed, “That’s my daughter”. Mary had died twelve years earlier, at the age of eighteen. Lurancy then stated that Mary was going to be allowed to take over her body for the next three months.
"The next day Lurancy claimed to be Mary Roff. She asked to be taken back to the Roff’s home, and on the way there, she recognized their previous home, in which they had lived while she was alive and which was unknown to Lurancy. She also recognized Mary Roff’s sister, who was standing at the window. And during the next few weeks, “Mary” showed a precise and detailed knowledge of the Roff household and of Mary’s past, recognizing old acquaintances and toys and recalling long-forgotten incidents. On 21 May, the day she had declared she had to leave, she took a tearful farewell of her family, and on the way home, “became” Lurancy again. The case was investigated by Richard Hodgson, one of the most skeptical members of the Society for Psychical Research, who was convinced of its genuineness."
"It is difficult to draw a clear dividing line between “possession” and poltergeist manifestations. Poltergeists are “noisy ghosts” who cause objects to fly through the air, and scientific observation of dozens of cases has established their reality beyond all doubt. The most widely held current view is that they are a form of ‘spontaneous psychokinesis” (mind over matter) caused by the unconscious mind of an emotionally disturbed adolescent, but this theory fails to explain how the unconscious mind can cause heavy objects to fly through the air. (In labouratory experiments, “psychics” have so far failed to move any object larger than a compass needle.) ... "
Wilson comes, after describing other cases, to church.
"It is important to realize that fornication among the clergy was a commonplace occurrence in the seventeenth century and that seduction of nuns by their confessors was far from rare. In 1625 a French orphan named Madeleine Bavent was seduced by a Franciscan priest, appropriately named Bonnetemps. In the following year she entered a convent run by Brother Pierre David, who secretly belonged to the Illuminati – a sect that believed that the Holy Spirit could do no harm and that therefore, sex was perfectly acceptable among priests. David apparently insisted that Madeleine should strip to the waist as he administered communion; other nuns, she later claimed, strolled around naked. She claimed that she and David never engaged in actual intercourse – only mutual masturbation – and that when David died in 1628, his successor, Brother Mathurin Picard, continued to caress her genitals during confession."
" ... But half a century later the notorious chambre ardente (“lighted chamber”) affair revealed that many priests did, in fact, take part in such practices. When Louis XIV was informed by his chief of police that many women were asking for absolution for murdering their husbands, he ordered an investigation. It revealed that an international poisoning ring, organized by men of influence, existed. A number of fortune-tellers provided their clients with poisons and love philters, while priests performed Black Masses involving the sacrifice of babies and magical ceremonies in which they copulated with women on altars. These facts duly emerged in secret sessions of the “lighted chamber”, and were recorded in detail. (The king later ordered all records to be destroyed, but the official transcript was overlooked.) One hundred and four of the accused were sentenced, thirty-six of them to death, while two of the fortune-tellers were burned alive. It is difficult for us to understand why the Church was involved in this wave of demonology – the likeliest explanation is that seventeenth-century rationalism was undermining its authority and that the protest against this authority took the form of licentiousness and black magic. Whatever the explanation, the chambre ardente transcripts leave no doubt that it really happened."
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December 13, 2021 - December 16, 2021.
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