Jtevieit of lierkws, IJII/OS. 



Leadlna Articles. 



483 



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NOTES FROM THE OCCULT MAGAZINES. 



The Hindu Spirilual Magazine for JuJy does Mr. 

 .Stead the honour of quoting from Borderland the 

 .storv of how he began to write automatically. The 

 most remarkable paper in the magazine is an ac- 

 •count of '■ wonderful manifestations in a haunted 

 house " : — 



The occupants of a house near Cilcutta were annoyed, 

 ■but not hurt, by showers of stones, and an unseen person 

 performed puja to Kali in due form witli offerings of 

 flowers and a water jar daubed witli vermilion. This cere- 

 monial was enacted during: tlie night on a terrace-roof only 

 accessible through the rooms occupied by the family. The 

 "ghost" fiually drove the people away by setting fire to 

 "their private papers. It is all very well, the writer says, 

 to talk about "mysterious forces," but can a "force" be 

 intelligent enough to know ihow to make offerings to a 

 Hindu goddess in pre-scribed form? 



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The Occult Rcvieiv for September is very interest- 

 ing. It opens with the report upon the prize com- 

 petition for ghost stories of animals. Most of the 

 animals whose ghosts are described were cats. 

 Some of the papers are very remarkable. There is 

 nothing, for instance, to approach the story of the 

 photograph of an Oxford professor's pet dog, which 

 Avas obtained by Mr. Boursnell, who knew neither 

 the professor nor the dog. Mr. R. B. Span's stories 

 of Demoniacal Possession are noticed elsewhere. 

 Miss Freer continues her extracts from her wallet 

 <if psychical lore. One of the most suggestive 

 papers is entitled " A Psychic Drama," by Helen 

 Bourchier. Mr. Wilmshurst writes on Science and 

 the Occult at the British Association, and Mr. W. 

 Gorn Old contributes a character sketch of George 

 Fox. The subject for the next prize competition is 

 thus stated: — "Judging Jesus Christ by the New 

 Testament narratives, what are we justified in as- 

 suming would have been His attitude towards the 

 orthodox Christianity of the present day ?" 



The Annals of Psychical Science — by-the-bye, why 

 does Profesor Richet not call it Metapsychical 

 .S"t7t-«a-.?~publishes as its frontispiece a portrait of 

 Mr. James H. Hyslop, whose report upon the Smead 

 case is given at length. Mrs. Smead is a lady 

 through whom profess to come communications 

 from Mars. Mr. F. C. Constable, in his paper on 

 Science versus Psychical Research, thus smartly 

 turns the tables upon the scientists who pooh-pooh 

 metapsychics : — 



Science does not deal with realities: it deals but with 

 relations; the very ideas of science are not of realities 

 'things in themselves) but of relations. Science never ha«, 

 never can, as it is at present constituted, deal with one 

 sinu'le fact, one single ' thing-in-ilself." It can deal but 

 with relations and ideals of relations. And this a majority 

 of scientific men, if not all, admit. Evidence is also acou- 

 mulatinL' in proof that telepathy takes place not only 

 untrammelled by the limits of space but untrammelled b.v 

 the limitfl of time. If. then. Psychical Research has proved 

 telepathy as a fact, and proved that it takes place un- 

 trammelled by the limits of space; if it is accumulating 

 evidence that telepathy takes place untrammelled by the 

 limits of time, may it not be that Psychical Research is 

 already touching the fringe of thingB-in-themselvcs? 



In Broad Views for September Mr. Sinnett deals 

 with the prejudices against Reincarnation from the 

 lioint of one who knows Reincarnation to be a fact. 

 Mr. Reginald Span describes some extraordinary 



.spiritualistic phenomena which he witnessed at Men- 

 tone, phenomena throwing all that Eusapin Palla- 

 dino has done into the shade. The most interest- 

 ing article in Broad Viaus is Miss Alice C. Ames' 

 account of her extraordinary success in healing, 

 almost instantaneously, many deadly diseases by 

 hypnotism, and the not less extraordinary reason 

 she gives for having for ever forsworn the practice 

 of hypnotic healing. She says : — 



Pain. I was instructed, was onlv the outer expression on 

 tlie physical plane of a force that worked itself out in that 

 manifestation, and could rarely be thrown back into the 

 subtler bodies with impmify. Hypnotism, under any cir- 

 cumstances, was speciall.v condemned as weakening the 

 barrier benefioent Nature has interposed between us and 

 woilds invisible. It is as if in a box closing sharply with 

 a spring lock, something should clog the wards, and the 

 lock become feebler, so that into the mind that has been 

 submitted to a similar process, entitles, unknown to 

 science, can force an entrance, and the terrors of obses- 

 sion may result. In this world, where the need for learn- 

 ing 'is so urgent, only a certain amount of power is at the 

 deposition of us all. If this power be diverted into work 

 such as I have written of. the higher vehicles inevitably 

 suffer, virtue truly goes out of us into the alleviation of 

 temporary suffering, instead of training itself to bear a 

 worthier part in healing the great world jwin. 



In the Thcosophical Review there is an interesting 

 account of the Rosicrucians of Russia by a Russian. 

 One Novikoff was a persecuted leader of the Order. 

 .Another interesting article draws parallels between 

 the Norse Eddas and the teaching of Madame Bla- 

 \-atsky. Mr. A. A. Wells maintains boldly that 

 spiritual life consists of temptations, and that pro- 

 gress is only possible bv being .submitted to higher 

 teachers, that is, to more subtle temptations. 



The Crisis in tlie Frencii Church. 



Mr. Robert Dell, who criticises Mr. Bodley's 

 '• France " pretty severely in the Fortnightly Review' 

 for September, thus states his view of the position 

 created by the: Pope's Encyclical : — 



The Encyclical has thrown the French Church into a state 

 of even worse chaos than before. A Papal decsiou in this 

 sense was quite unexpected, even by the French bishops, 

 who, by a majority of nearly two-thirds, requested the 

 Pope a.l their Assembly last May to allow them and their 

 flocks to accommodate themselves to the law. Thev now 

 find themselves in tie dilflciilt position of being left by the 

 Pope to bear tlie brunt of a policy which they regard as 

 fatal, with onlv negative and to some extent contradictory 

 instructions for their guidance. Moreover, the Pope has 

 compromised them with their fellow-countrymen by sug- 

 gesting in the Encyclical that they were almost unanimous 

 in lecommending the policy which he has adopted— a sug- 

 gest. on wliich their position makes it almost impossible for 

 tlioni to repudiate. In these circumstances, it is impos- 

 aiblo as yet to form any definite opinion as to the conse- 

 quences of tlie Pope's action, except as regards one point — 

 should an attempt actually be made to resist the law the 

 result of the ensuing conflict between the State and the 

 Papalist party will inevitably be that the latter will be 

 speedily and finally crushed, and perhaps that the Roman 

 Church in Prance will be reduced to religious as well as 

 political impotence. This does not necessarily mean that 

 Gatholicism in some form will not survive. 



Mr. S. H. Swiney, in the Positivist Re-view, says: — 



What the Catholics hive a right to demand— and with all 

 the more force, if thev trust entirely to the free contribu- 

 tions of the faiithful— is that they shall be granted the 

 same liberty of preaching and worship as is enjoyed by the 

 Catholics of this countrj' and of the United Skites of 

 America. 



