CHAPTER III

ASTRAL LIGHT AND THE PSYCHO-LASTROMETER


One of the commonest phenomena associated with Spiritualism is the
production of light. Many mediums possess this power of attracting or
emitting light and even small circles where there is in truth little
enough Light in the true psychic sense, yet produce this, the most
elementary of the phenomena.

It is possibly because it is so easy to induce light phenomena of
various kinds that the production of any form of spirit luminosity
has been, so to speak, taken at face value as a criterion of
_goodness_.

In actual point of fact at least two-thirds of the light manifestations
seen at Séances may be classed as dubious and a portion of them are
more than dubious, they are malevolent manifestations.

To this blind belief in the “goodness” of spirit light in itself we
may trace certain disastrous mental calamities that have overtaken
too trustful searchers. The myth springs possibly from an acceptance
of early Bible teachings and a desire to identify these manifestations
with the Pentecostal tongues of fire and similar analogies. But among
the mass of humble practitioners of Spiritualism who follow the path of
the Light are many that are mistaking astral evils for psychic good.

To the average Spiritualist the success of a small circle in the
production of spirit lights is a heartening message from the spirit
world. It is a testimony that life-after-death endures, and as such
the phenomena are welcomed as spirit visitors, sometimes identified
as actual spirit forms, and no doubt is raised in the minds of
those present concerning the innate and essential “goodness” of the
visitation.

In order to avoid confusion I shall use the term astral light to
describe the usual spirit light.

The light phenomena are customarily associated with the dark or
semi-dark séance because in the full light of day or under normal
conditions of artificial light it is almost impossible to see
the astral light at all, unless one is clairvoyant or unless the
concentration of spirit force is so marked that there is no possibility
of mistaking it.

The normal appearance of astral light is that of indefinite globular or
pear-shaped masses of faint phosphorescence. These appear near sitters
or on objects in the room and frequently move about, wax and wane, or
gather into clouds before a materialism or in support of a particular
effort.[8]

In other cases they take the form of direct rays and in certain
individuals have been known to occur as flashes like dull electric
discharges. Another not uncommon form is the projection from the body
of a distinctly defined aura or radiation of light which is faintly
luminous like the gases in a Geissler tube subjected to oscillant
discharges.

We must go far back into history and indeed beyond the bounds of
history before we can come to a time when this manifestation of light
was not one part of the common stock in trade of the thaumaturge or
wonder worker.

The manipulation and control of astral light phenomena were part of the
religious mysteries of the magicians of Chaldea who transmitted the
secret knowledge to the seers of Egypt. We find it in the myth of the
luminous bull in the Greek mysteries and again as an attribute of the
great healer Apollonius of Tyana. This mysterious radiance plays equal
parts in the records of the lives of the saints and in the terrible
archives of the trials for sorcery.

Confusion exists because to the untrained eye of mankind all forms of
astral light are identical.

The greater proportion of the astral light seen by circles is that
generated and given off by the human mental energy of the circle
itself. The spirit-forms are all too often thought-forms built up out
of the liberated psychoplasm or thought-matter given off by sitters.

The physical nature of this psychoplasm has so far defied all attempts
at scientific research, but it appears to be something more substantial
than the mere emission of vibrations that it is commonly held to
be. It appears to be an all-penetrating imponderable emanation which
dissipates rapidly, but which under certain conditions is capable of
being energized by the intelligence of the living or by discarnate
intelligence. Under these conditions it becomes luminous and under
certain further conditions can be used as the vehicle for the
transmission of force.

It can best be realized as being to the mind what ectoplasm[9] is to
the body of the medium, but the precise limitations of both the astral
body-matter ectoplasm, and astral mind-matter psychoplasm are not yet
ascertained.

It is a conceivable hypothesis that both are functions of the vast
unknown mechanism of the subconscious self, but where the capacity for
the projection of ectoplasm is rare, the emission of psychoplasm is the
basis of most Spiritualist phenomena.

It is to this radiation of psychoplasm that we must look for the
explanation of such a simple thing--and at the same time such a
complex thing--as psychic atmosphere. Do we not all know the peculiar
atmosphere which surrounds individuals and places? The phenomena
associated with apparitions have been ascribed to the penetration of
structure by violently liberated psychoplasm set free in moments of
passion and bloody violence. There too is the clue to its physical
source, for in some obscure way blood and the emanations from blood
play a vital and important part in psychic matters.

Under normal circumstances psychoplasm is dissipated and the liberated
energy that animated it goes with it to return in the normal way of the
cycle of life. Under other circumstances the psychoplasm retreats back
into the mind whence it came, just as the materialized ectoplasm is
reabsorbed into the body of the medium.

The dangers latent in assuming all astral light phenomena to be “good”
can be realized when it is considered what may occur to the projected
psychoplasm which is emotionally liberated beyond the confines of the
body and beyond its living human control.

A party of some half-dozen form a circle in some provincial city.
They may know one another well or they may be, comparatively speaking,
strangers. However well they may know the public lives of the members
of the circle, can they fathom the secret soul of each sitter? Can they
say whose mind is a garden of purity or who may have some tendency to
some unknown enormity?

Yet it is precisely this weakness that makes a soul-appalling danger of
the hideous mental promiscuity that is one of the essential things of
which all the more ingenuous and simple believers and a few clever evil
hypocrites among Spiritualists make a cult.

They may unknowingly include among themselves an individual, man or
woman, who has somewhere a secret kink--a mental leaning--it need not
be an actually accomplished physical fact--but simply an inclination to
the obscene, the evil, or the cruel.

The circle launches its prayer, concentrates on the attraction of the
discarnate spirits of those who have passed over--and what comes, who
comes?

There is no gifted Spiritualist or student of matters psychic who has
not had either personal or absolutely credible second-hand experience
of the existence of bad or lying spirits. It is true that insistence
upon their existence has latterly become unfashionable in Spiritualist
circles--because it does harm to the professional medium, but not even
the most insistent of suppressive propaganda can live down the writings
and testimonies of the past and the ever-recurrent undeniable phenomena
of the present.

It is not too much to say that in nine cases out of ten where a crude
and humble belief in Spiritualism is put in practice by a circle of
operators whose standard of education and intellectual attainment
is low, the etherealization of the psychoplasm of the believers is
mistaken for the materialization of the spirit.[10]

So much for the visible luminous appearances of astral light. Now let
us consider the range of probabilities that may affect these. It must
be borne in mind that it is the process of their reabsorption into the
sitters after being charged with outside influences that introduces
the element of danger.

Psychologists know that certain fixed laws govern mental processes.
There is the Law of Similarity, which evokes the association of
ideas; there is the Law of Integration, which splits memories and
picture memories into integral fragments; and there is the Law of
Redintegration, which enables the subconscious mind to reassemble the