Category: Isis Unveiled: H. P. Blavatsky (1877)

"One of the most learned scholars of his century, Bodin, the Demonologian, held the same opinion, that both the human and cosmical elementaries "were sorely afraid of swords and daggers." It is also the opinion of Porphyry, Iamblichus, and Plato. Plutarch mentions it several times. The practicing theurgists knew it well and acted accordingly; and [...]

"Psellus introduces a whole catechism of demonology, which he gives in the following terms, as far as we remember: "You want to know", asked the conjurer, "whether the bodies of the spirits can be hurt by sword or any other weapon? Yes, they can. Any hard substance striking them can make them sensible to pain; [...]

"We will not ask which of the ancient writers mention facts of seemingly-supernatural nature; but rather which of them does not? In Homer, we find Ulysses evoking the spirit of his friend, the soothsayer Tiresias. Preparing for the ceremony of the "festival of blood", Ulysses draws his sword, and thus frightens away the thousands of [...]

"We will now give a few historical instances going to show that some daimons, or elementary spirits, are afraid of sword, knife, or anything sharp. We do not pretend to explain the reason. That is the province of physiology and psychology. Unfortunately, physiologists have not yet been able to even establish the relations between speech [...]

"The history of the Salem witchcraft, as we find it recorded in the works of Cotton Mather, Calef, Upham, and others, furnishes a curious corroboration of the fact of the double, as it also does of the effects of allowing elementary spirits to have their own way. This tragical chapter of American history has never [...]

""The prodigy of repercussion", says des Mousseaux, "occurs when a blow aimed at the spirit, visible or otherwise, of an absent living person, or at the phantom which represents him, strikes the person himself, at the same time, and in the very place at which the spectre or his double is touched! We must suppose, [...]

"Skeptics, and even skeptical spiritualists, have often unjustly accused mediums of fraud, when denied what they considered their inalienable right to test the spirits. But where there is one such case, there are fifty in which spiritualists have permitted themselves to be practiced upon by tricksters, while they neglected to appreciate genuine manifestations procured for [...]

"Professor Pepper, director of the Polytechnic Institute of London, invented a clever apparatus to produce spiritual appearances on the stage, and sold his patent in 1863, in Paris, for the sum of 20,000 francs. The phantoms looked real and were evanescent, being but an effect produced by the reflection of a highly-illuminated object upon the [...]

"Notwithstanding his unfairness in the Algerian affair, Robert Houdin, an authority on the art of prestidigitation, and Moreau-Cinti, another, gave honest testimony in behalf of the French mediums. They both testified, when cross-examined by the Academicians, that none but the "mediums" could possibly produce the phenomena of table-rapping and levitation without a suitable preparation and [...]

"The description which Isaiah gives of the purification necessary for a prophet to undergo before he is worthy to be the mouthpiece of heaven, applies to the case in point. In customary metaphor he says: "Then flew one of the seraphim unto me having a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with [...]