CHAPTER III.

Clairvoyance Illustrated. Clairvoyance may be briefly classified as far and near, direct and indirect, objective and subjective. I propose to give a few well-authenticated cases to illustrate these phases in this chapter. FAR AND DIRECT CLAIRVOYANCE is possibly the highest and purest combination. The sensitive is able to state facts not within the range of the knowledge of those present. Thus when Swedenborg described to the Queen and her friends, when at a distance of several hundred miles from the conflagration, the burning of her palace at Christiania, no one present could possibly know of the fire or the incidents connected therewith. Hence no thought-reading, brain-picking, much less guess-work or coincidence, could account for the exactness of details given by the seer. Clairvoyance in this case was not only far and direct, but objective. That is, the matter recorded was connected with the physical or objective plane. CLAIRVOYANCE AN AID TO SCIENCE. “Chicago, as is well-known, is one of the most go-ahead cities in the world. Like Jonah’s gourd it appeared to spring up in a night. Its population rapidly increased, and water soon became a _sine qua non_, both as regards use and luxury. Science was at fault; for geologists had pronounced that there could be no water beneath such a strata. Top water was all that could be looked for, and presently a water company was formed to supply this impure kind of liquid. “There happened to live at this time in Chicago a person named Abraham James, a simple-minded man, of Quaker descent, uneducated, and in fact, quite an ignorant person. It was discovered by a Mrs. Caroline Jordon that James was a natural clairvoyant, in fact a medium, and that he had declared when put into the trance condition that both water and petroleum, in large quantities, would be found in a certain tract of land in the neighbourhood of the city. For a long time no attention was paid to his statements. At length two gentlemen from Maine, called Whitehead and Scott, coming to Chicago on business, and hearing what had been said by Abraham James, had him taken to the land where he said water could be had in immense quantities by boring for. Being entranced, James at once pointed out the very spot. He told them that he not only saw the water, but could trace its source from the Rocky Mountains, 2000 miles away, to the spot on which they stood, and could sketch out on maps the strata and caverns through which it ran. Negotiations were at once entered into for the purchase of the land, and the work of boring was commenced. This was in February, 1864, and the process went on daily till November, when, having reached a depth of 711 feet, water was struck, and flowed up at once at the rate of 600,000 gallons every 24 hours. “The borings showed the following kinds of strata passed through by the drill, and this was spiritually seen and described by the clairvoyant as practical proofs to the senses of other people. First the drill passed through alluvium soil, 100 feet; limestone, saturated with oil, 35 feet, which would burn as well as any coal; Joliet marble, 100 feet; conglomerate strata of sand and flint, mixed with iron pyrites and traces of copper, 125 feet; rock (shale) saturated with petroleum, the sediment coming up like putty, thick and greasy, 156 feet; galena limestone was next reached at a depth of 530 feet; a bed of limestone, containing flint and sulphuret of iron was bored through, the depth being 639 feet, and being very hard, the work went on slowly. At this point there appeared a constant commotion arising from the escape of gas, the water suddenly falling from 30 to 60 feet, and then as suddenly rising to the surface, carrying with it chippings from the drill, and other matters. The work still went on; when at the depth of 711 feet the arch of the rock was penetrated, and the water suddenly burst forth from a bore 4½ in. at the bottom, of a temperature of 58° F., clear as crystal, pure as diamond, and perfectly free from every kind of animal and vegetable matter, and which, for drinking purposes and health, is much better adapted than any water yet known, and will turn out to be the poor man’s friend for all time to come. “Here, then, is a huge fact for the faithless: the fact brought to light by dynamic or invisible agency, and which no power of negation can gainsay. Natural science said, No water could be found; but psychology said--False, for I will point out the spot where it will flow in splendid streams as long as the earth spins on its axis. Since 1864 the artesian well of Chicago has poured forth water at the rate of a million and a half gallons daily; and what is economic, to say nothing of Yankee shrewdness, it is conveyed into ponds or reservoirs which in winter freeze, producing 40,000 tons of ice for sale, and which might be quadrupled at any time.”[B] This is a case of far and near, direct and objective clairvoyance. This historical incident proves the value and reality of psychic vision. Indirect clairvoyance is the power of discerning what may be more or less in the minds of those present, including absent or forgotten thoughts and incidents. Thus, when a clairvoyant describes a place with accuracy, recognised by some one present to be correct, and also gives details partly known and unknown, but afterwards found to be correct, this mixture of phases may be recognised as indirect. SUBJECTIVE CLAIRVOYANCE is that phase which enables the sensitive to perceive things and ideas on the spiritual or subjective plane. The late Rev. Stainton Moses, well known in literary circles as “M.A., Oxon,” once asked the following pertinent questions:--“Is there conceivably a mass of life all round us of which most of us have no cognisance? One gifted lady I know sees clairvoyantly the spirit-life of all organised things, of a tree or plant for example. I have heard her describe what her interior faculties perceive. Is it a fact that spirit, underlying everything, can be so perceived by the awakened faculties?” I should say yes. If this lady’s clairvoyance has been of a high order in other respects--why not in this? This type of psychic vision is of the subjective order. There are necessarily an infinite variety of phases, pure and mixed, which the investigator will meet in practice. These phases may be called _far_, such as seeing objects, etc., at a distance--prevoyance, predicting events; retrovoyance, reading the past; introvoyance, seeing internally, or examining bodies, as in disease; external introvoyance, seeing into lockets, packets, letters, safes, and discovering hidden, known or forgotten, or lost objects. Lastly, there is pseudo-clairvoyance. For one case of direct there are hundreds of well authenticated cases of indirect clairvoyance, and again for one of the latter there are thousands of pseudo-clairvoyance, which are the outcome of states similar to hypnosis, and are nothing more than an incongruous medley of suggested ideas and fancies. Thus a strong and positive willed person can impinge his ideas through the thought-atmosphere of the sensitive and distort or deflect the psychic vision, and render abortive any attempts to get beyond the circle of the dominating influence. Again, the sensitive may enter a realm of fancy--a veritable dreamland of coherent and incoherent ideation, either the product of the sensitive’s own condition, or of suggestion--accidental, spontaneous, and determined--in the sensitive’s surroundings. Of course any classification of the numerous phases of clairvoyance must be purely arbitrary. DIRECT AND OBJECTIVE CLAIRVOYANCE--LOST GOODS RESTORED. This instance of far vision is taken from “A Tangled Yarn,” page 173, “Leaves from Captain James Payn’s Log,” which was published recently by C. H. Kelly. As I knew Captain Hudson, of Swansea, personally, and heard from his own lips the following incident, I have much pleasure in introducing it here as a further illustration of the _Cui bono_ of clairvoyance:-- “The _Theodore_ got into Liverpool the same day as the _Bland_. She was a larger ship than ours but had a similar cargo. The day that I went to the owners to report ‘all right,’ I met with Captain Morton in a terrible stew because he was thirty bales of cotton short, a loss equal to the whole of his own wages and the mate’s into the bargain. He was so fretted over it that his wife in desperation recommended him to get the advice of a Captain Hudson, who had a young female friend clever as a clairvoyant. We were both sceptical in the matter of clairvoyance. At first Morton didn’t wish to meddle, he said, with ‘a parcel of modern witchcraft,’ and that sort of thing; but he at last yielded to his wife’s urgency and consented to go. There was first of all a half-crown fee to Captain Hudson, and then the way was clear for an interview with the young clairvoyant. I was present to ‘see fair.’ When the girl had been put into the clairvoyant state Morton was instructed to take her right hand in his right hand and ask her any questions he wished. The replies were in substance as follows:--She went back mentally to the port whence the _Theodore_ had sailed, retracing with her hand as she in words also described the course of the ship from Liverpool across the Atlantic, through the West Indian group, etc., back to New Orleans. At length she said, ‘Yes, this is the place where the cotton was lost; it’s put on board a big black ship with a red mark round it.’ Then she began to trace with her hand and describe the homeward course of the vessel, but after re-crossing the Atlantic, instead of coming up the Irish Channel for Liverpool, she turned along the English Channel as though bound for the coast of France; and then stretching out her hand she exclaimed, ‘Oh, here’s the cotton; but what funny people they are; they don’t talk English.’ Captain Morton said at once, ‘I see; it’s the _Brunswick_, Captain Thomas,’ an American ship that lay alongside of him at New Orleans and was taking in her cargo of cotton while the _Theodore_ was loading, and was bound for Havre de Grace. Captain Morton, satisfied with his clairvoyant’s information, went home and wrote immediately to Captain Thomas, inquiring for his lost cargo. In due course he got an answer that the cotton was certainly there, that it had been taken off the wharf in mistake, and that it was about to be sold for whomsoever it might concern; but that if he (Captain Morton) would remit a certain amount to cover freight and expenses the bales should be forwarded to him at once. He did so, and in due time received the cotton, subject only to the expenses of transit from Havre to Liverpool. Such are the facts; I do not profess to offer any explanation.” CLAIRVOYANCE AN AID TO THE PHYSICIAN. I am indebted to Dr. George Wyld for this case, which also exhibits the value of clairvoyance. Dr. Wyld had the good fortune to make the acquaintance of a Mrs. D----, a lady in private life who was endowed with the gift of natural clairvoyance. Dr. Wyld told this lady of “a friend who had for years suffered intense agony for hours every night in his back and chest, and that latterly he had been obliged to sit up all night in a chair, and his legs began to swell.” “This gentleman had regularly for three years been under many of the leading physicians of London. Some said that there must be some obscure heart affection, others said it was neuralgia, one said it was gout, and the last consulted said it was malignant caries of the spine.” Dr. Wyld’s friend called upon him by appointment, and met Mrs. D----. This lady merely looked at him. When he had retired from the room Mrs. D---- made the following statement of his case to the doctor:--“I have seen what the disease is; I saw it as distinctly as if the body were transparent. There is a tumour behind the heart, about the size of a walnut; it is of a dirty colour; and it jumps and looks as if it would burst. Nothing can do him any good but entire rest.” “I at once saw,” says Dr. Wyld, what she meant, and sat down to write to my friend’s medical attendant as follows:-- “I believe I have discovered the nature of Mr.----’s disease. He has an aneurism on the descending aorta, about the size of a walnut. It is this which causes the slight displacement which has been observed in the heart, and the pressure of the tumour against the intercostal nerves is the cause of the agony in the back, and the peripheral pains in the front of the chest. You are going to-morrow to see Sir ---- in consultation; show him this diagnosis, and let me know what he says.” “Next the patient had the consultation, and Mrs. D----’s diagnosis was confirmed; and the doctors agreed with Mrs. D---- the only thing to be done was to take entire rest. The treatment was duly followed up, with successful results.” Dr. Wyld thoughtfully adds--“It is true that the diagnosis cannot be absolutely confirmed during life, but as the profession unanimously pronounce the disease to be aneurism, the diagnosis may be accepted as correct. This diagnosis has probably saved the gentleman’s life, as before Mrs. D---- saw him he was allowed to shoot over Scotch moors, and to ride, drive, and play billiards.” The use of clairvoyance in the diagnosis of disease is by no means as rare as the majority of physicians and the general public would naturally assume. I have had many opportunities of witnessing the accuracy of diagnosis and the excellence of the methods of treatment advised by clairvoyants. In my own personal experience I have had much evidence of correctness of clairvoyance in diagnosis, and subsequent success in treatment. It is a phase most desirable to cultivate if possible, and all allied conditions connected therewith. TRAVELLING CLAIRVOYANCE. As a public entertainer at one time, giving demonstrations of mesmeric phenomena, I have had naturally many opportunities of seeing different types of clairvoyance. During a course of entertainments given by me in Rothesay, 1881, I was able to introduce clairvoyance to public notice by the most difficult method, that of public experiments.