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isis unveiled: chapter x (outside the walls…)

"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 [...]

isis unveiled: chapter x (outside the walls…)

"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 [...]

isis unveiled: chapter x (outside the walls…)

"As we have said, but few kabalists believe in it, and this doctrine originated with certain astrologers. While casting up the nativities of certain historical personages renowned for some peculiarities of disposition, they found the conjunction of the planets answering perfectly to remarkable oracles and prophesies about other persons born ages later. Observation, and what [...]