part memories into one completed picture of a past scene or event.

The astral light, once beyond the control of the sitter, is at the
command of (1) stronger human wills in the circle, (2) the lower or
baser forms of discarnate intelligence, (3) spirits of ex-mortals, (4)
higher spirits.

It is the dominance of the human will that is the first positive
danger. Part of the accepted dogma of Spiritualism is that hostile
or unbelieving influences are antagonistic to the spirits. This is
by no means accurate, but can be classed for practical purposes as a
half-truth. The state of mental concentration and muscular relaxation
that is necessary to the séance bears a close and analogous resemblance
to the state of consent that the hypnotist demands of his subject.

The first requisite of the Spiritualist is the question put to him or
her by others of the cult.

“Do you believe in Spiritualism?”

The honest sceptic, the unreasoning man-in-the-street observer is
soon converted by evidence, then faith in the inexplicable wonders of
Spiritualism is born.

In other words the mind of the neophyte accepts the whole loose
doctrine of Spiritualism and is prepared to believe that all phenomena
are due to spirit influence, and does not attempt to further analyse
the accepted spirit influence.

The mental or emotional state produced by the participation of a devout
believer in a séance, leaves the mind receptive of ideas, and the ideas
received back into the mind are those impressed upon the psychoplasm
that is liberated and is visible as astral light and is reabsorbed into
its sources after it has been beyond the control of its originator’s
consciousness.

In a circle of ten or fewer people where the sexes are mixed, it is
impossible to say what suppressed desires may be latent in the minds
of those who compose it. Even in the case of circles confined to one
sex alone there is the possibility of sex perversion being a secretly
dominant mental force in the mind of someone there.

It is an inexorable law that the conscious or subconscious will of the
most powerful and determined member of the circle dominates the minds
of the others through its influence on the psychoplasm or astral light.

Even without the knowledge of the dominant influence his or her will or
thought-force emission will gain mastery over those of the others, and
if there is any violent sex disturbance at the bottom of the dominant
will, this will be communicated to the others or to the selected other
furthering the desire.

The next stage occurs where passion or desire on the part of one member
of the circle for another is absent. Despite repeated statements that
the desire of the members of the circle is to meet pure spirits, there
may be members whose secret wishes are not those of the pathway of
light. Love for those who have passed over may be still carnal love
in the hearts of those who remain. Abélard may have passed beyond
passion into the realm of death, but Héloïse may refuse his plea of
impossibility and still pursue in the spirit that which escaped her in
the flesh.

Carnality is not confined to this plane nor does it cease upon the
next, but the endeavour of mortals to get in touch with the spirit
world while there is latent in them either known or suppressed, and
unrecognized desire is fatal.

Every sexual desire the mind has experienced is indexed or pigeon-holed
in the recesses of the subliminal mind. People whose conscious mind
is free of any vestige of such desire may go to a séance and under
the influence of the emotional forces of a séance liberate all the
repressed energy of their past ungratified sexual desires--without
knowing it.

These forces attract low-grade spirits some of whom have never been
human and the lowest and most vicious of spirits whose human lives have
been a cycle of debauchery. Like attracts like, is one of the laws of
Nature. The Law of Similarity is one of the rules of psychology.

The gateways of the soul are thrown open not to whoever may enter in,
but with an explicit mental invitation to those spirits that derive
gratification from the lusts and desires of mortals.

The whole body of the psychoplasm of a circle is at the mercy of the
mind of the individual to whose call the spirits come.

The practical results of these open-house invitations to the spirits
are devastating. The ideas of gratification become rooted not in the
conscious mind but in the subconscious mind, where they work slowly but
inevitably to the subversion of conscious “good.”

The first step toward possession and obsession are often the result of
séances, where Truth has been sought with the tongue and Evil within
the heart of one present. It is not the guilty alone who suffer, but
the weak and innocent who sit beside them.

There are no bounds to the malignancy of the impure spirits. They are
sly and notable liars--they can assume the form of mortals who have
passed over and they can assume personality and knowledge that was
known to the dead. By degrees they inculcate evil, predisposing the
victim to accept and yield to evil in particular forms. Frequently they
proceed by slow stages, advising and inspiring savage asceticism, but
seizing each stage of natural reaction from this unnatural régime to
further subvert their victim in wantonness.

The obvious need is for some method of distinguishing between good and
bad projections of astral light.

To the human eye alone there is no means of distinguishing between the
etherealizations of the psychoplasm of the believer and the identical
luminous phenomena which occur when there is a materialization of
the actual spirit. It is there that psychic science can come to our
assistance.

The fluorescent bodies zinc sulphide, barium platino-cyanide, and
the preparation known as Sidot’s hexagonal blonde, are all intensely
susceptible to radioactivity. The rays of radioactive bodies have the
peculiar property of being able to penetrate the ether, and the mass
of spirit teaching tells us that this property is also common to the
disembodied spirits of those who have passed to other planes.

The relative purity or potency of astral lights may be readily
ascertained by their effect upon a simple instrument that I have named
the Psycho-Lastrometer.

This instrument is both cheap and easy to make in the simple form
in which I first used it. The later applications which make it a
registering instrument in addition to being a mere indicator are
necessarily costly, but these are only necessary to the expert
investigator and are of no value to the mere seeker after proof or
those who seek communion with the spirits of the dead for the purposes
of solace, quasi-religious conviction, or vulgar curiosity.

To make a crude psycho-lastrometer all that is necessary is a
wide-mouthed glass jar whose walls should not be more than two
millimetres thick. The height of the jar should be some eight inches,
the width in proportion three and a quarter inches.

I have found that an ordinary lipped beaker of Bohemian glass such
as is readily obtainable from any maker of laboratory apparatus is
admirably suited to the purpose.

The neck of this jar must be fitted with a large cork or wooden bung
the whole of which is covered with tinfoil. The centre of this cork
should be pierced by a piece of brass wire five inches long, bent at
one end to form a hook. This end is inside the jar and from the hook
hangs the plate of the lastrometer. To the projecting end of the brass
wire outside the jar should be soldered a circular collecting disc of
brightly polished brass or tinplate three inches in diameter. This
should stand up vertically to the axis of the wire, being thus on edge
instead of forming a flat table.

The plate of the lastrometer consists of a rectangle of thin aluminum
two and half inches wide by four inches deep. Half an inch from the
top edge three slits should be cut in the metal so that a portion of a
magnetized knitting needle three inches long may be threaded through
the breadth of the plate, projecting half an inch on each side.

This needle forms a cross bar at the top of the plate and should be
accurately adjusted so that the broad surface of the plate is always in
the same plane as the axis of the needle.

To the projecting ends of the needle is secured a loop of copper wire
four inches long whose other end is made fast to the other end of the
needle and whose centre passes over the hooked end of the wire through
the cork. The plate thus swings like a miniature signboard suspended
from the hook.

The surface of one side of the plate is now painted with several
successive layers of a saturated solution of gum arabic in one ounce of
water to which has been added one and a half drachms of luminous zinc
sulphide or Sidot’s preparation (preferably the latter) and one liquid
drachm of a ten per cent. solution of barium platino-cyanide. The other
side of the plate should be painted with “optical black” or any other
suitable dead black varnish.

Between the edge of the bung and the central wire should be inserted
at convenient intervals three or four sections of glass tubing whose
internal bore exceeds half an inch. These serve to admit external
influences to the interior of the lastrometer.

When complete it will be found that the plate of the lastrometer is
highly fluorescent and can be energized into greater activity by
exposure to sun or artificial light. It is desirable that the plate
should be kept in a state of relatively low radiancy, as otherwise
spirit agency cannot raise its luminous powers to a higher degree.

At a séance the instrument should be placed within the circle and the
jar rotated till the magnetized needle can oscillate freely in its
natural position pointing toward the North and South Poles.

Concentrations of genuine spirit force will raise the luminosity of
the plate to double and treble its normal output of light. When the
force is concentrated in the lastrometer, questions can be answered by
the spirits by signaling in Morse or simple code by rotating the plate
through an angle of 90° against the surface force of the magnet.[11]

It may be urged that this apparatus is not fraud-proof and that it
would respond to certain agencies such as the concealment of an
electromagnet in the room. To this it may be answered that an ordinary
pocket compass placed on the table by the lastrometer would also
respond to these forces and the fraud would be transparent to any
observer.

So far as I can tell, no human mental effort conscious or subconscious
can affect this simple instrument. It is necessary to guard against
illusion by imagining that the lastrometer is gaining radiance, and
to this end it is advisable to prepare a stand and test-piece made of
aluminum and coated with precisely the same solution as is applied to
the plate. These should always be kept together and allowed to become
equally radiant. If this is placed on the table near the lastrometer,
any variations in the latter can be rapidly verified by comparison with
the non-insulated and non-oriented test-piece.

Antipathy on the part of the presiding medium to the use of the
psycho-lastrometer is invariably a bad sign. Spirit messages objecting
to it are the most valid reasons for its retention, and such
communications should be viewed with the deepest suspicion. The cost of
the apparatus is a few shillings, it can be made by anybody in an hour
or so of spare time, and in actual point of fact there is nothing about
it that is offensive to the spirits of “good” or to the pure.

To those who are learned in symbolism I may suggest that the receiving
disc at the top of the wire need not be in the form of a disc, but can
be cut or pierced with ornament such as sacred symbols or with any
decorative design.

It is desirable, however, that the light surface be retained and that
the available metallic surface of the disc should not be diminished
more than is necessary.


FOOTNOTES:

[8] _Notes of an Enquiry into the Phenomena Called Spiritual._ William
Crookes, F.R.S., p. 91; Class VIII: Luminous Appearances.

[9] For details concerning ectoplasm see _Ghosts in Solid Form_,
Gambier Bolton, etc.

[10] Something of this view may be found in the chapter on “Pseudo
Spirit Phenomena” in _Borderland of Psychical Research_, H. J. Hyslop.
A book deserving of attention by all interested in Spiritualism.

[11] The psycho-lastrometer was further perfected. The element selenium
is inordinately sensitive to all forms of light rays and according
to the light thrown upon it permits more or less electric current to
pass. I arranged the apparatus so that the light thrown out by the
psycho-lastrometer impinged upon a selenium cell whose resistance
varied from 50,000 ohms to 100,000 ohms, which was in its turn
connected to a cell and to a Deprex d’Arsonval mirror galvanometer.
This enables accurate readings of the actual waxings and wanings of
the light value of the lastrometer plate to be taken, and entirely
eliminates any possibility of visual illusion seeming to make the plate
more luminous than before. A series of plotted curves based on time
abscissæ and light co-ordinates will give an accurate scientific record
of any differences in the radiant value of the plate that occur during
the séance.