Occult-Magick

Chapter VII , The Pathology of Non-Human Contacts

There are other forms of life as well as ours whose sphere of evolution impinges upon the earth. In the realm of folk-lore we constantly meet with the idea of intercourse between the human and the fairy kingdoms; of the marriage of a human being with a fairy spouse, or the theft of a child by the fairies, an impish changeling being left in its place. We shall be rash if we assume that an extensive body of folk-belief is entirely without foundation in fact. Let us therefore examine these old and crude beliefs and see whether we can find any grounds for them, and if so, what the real nature of the facts may be, and whether they throw any light upon modem psychic phenomena of the kind we are considering in these pages.

There are many of us who have met people who might well be described as non-human, soulless, in that the ordinary human motives are not operative with them, nor do the ordinary human feelings prompt or inhibit them. We cannot but love them, for they have great charm, but we cannot but dread them as well, for they spread an infinitude of suffering around them. Although seldom deliberately evil, they are singularly detrimental to all with whom they come in contact. They, for their part, are unhappy and lonely in our midst. They feel themselves to be alien and uncompanioned; every man's hand is against them, and in consequence it all too often happens that their hand is against everyone and they develop a puckish malevolence, though there is seldom calculated evil-doing. Gratitude, compassion, good faith, morality and common honesty are utterly foreign to their natures, as far beyond their conception as the differential calculus. They are not immoral, however, but simply non-moral. On the other hand, they possess the virtues of absolute sincerity and great courage. In terms of human ethics they are "undesirables," but they have an ethic of their own to which they are loyal, and that is the beauty which is truth, and this is all they know, and, as far as their life is concerned, all they need to know.



In appearance they are usually small and slight, possessing unusual physical strength and endurance but very liable to nervous exhaustion and brain-storms. In social relations they take violent likes and dislikes; they show a facile and demonstrative affection towards those they like, but quickly forget them. Gratitude and pity are unknown to their nature. Towards those they dislike they are pettily malicious, and in all relations of life they are utterly irresponsible. One cannot describe them better than to say that they resemble nothing so much as a blend of Persian kitten and pet monkey. They have the beauty and aloofness and charm of the cat, and the amusing, mischievous destructiveness of the monkey. Many human beings hate them at sight; others are fascinated by them because they bring with them a sense of unearthly beauty and a quickening of the life-forces. I have been able to investigate the history of two such beings, and it is interesting to note that both of them were conceived while their mothers were under the influence of drink. There is a very great deal of information available concerning the occult aspect of the incarnation of souls, but not much of the knowledge concerning the actual facts of conception has ever found its way into print. I have given a little in my book, The Esoteric Philosophy of Love and Marriage. I cannot enter into the subject deeply in these pages, for it would be too much of a digression. Some points, however, it is essential to touch upon for a comprehensive survey of our subject.

At the moment of sexual union a psychic vortex is formed resembling a waterspout, a funnel-shaped swirling that towers up into other dimension. As body after body engages, the vortex goes up the planes. In all cases the physical, etheric and astral bodies are involved; the vortex therefore always reaches as far as the astral plane; a soul upon the astral plane may be drawn into this vortex if it is ripe for incarnation, and thus enter the sphere of the parents. If the vortex extends higher than the astral plane, souls of a different type may enter this sphere, but such extension is rare, and therefore it is said that man is born of desire, for few are born of anything else. But this vortex may not only extend vertically up the planes (speaking metaphorically), but it may also, under certain conditions, be deflected, as it were, out of the normal human line of evolution, so that its open end extends into the sphere of evolution of another type of life. Under such circumstances it is theoretically possible for a being of a parallel evolution to be drawn into incarnation in a human body. Occultists hold that this occasionally occurs, and explains certain types of non-pathological abnormality which are occasionally met with.

These non-humans are either adored or hated by their human associates. They have a peculiar fascination for certain types of temperament, the types that psychologists call the unstable. In these types the subconscious comes very near to the surface, deep calls to deep, and they are instinctively drawn towards the elemental kingdoms. There is nothing more disastrous than marriage with a non-human, for they have nothing in their nature that can satisfy the normal human yearnings for affection and sympathy. The one saving feature in such a union is that grounds for divorce are invariably readily available, for the morals of the non-human are those of the barnyard.

The power of non-humans to injure their enemies is comparatively small, for they are aliens in a strange land when incarnated in human form, and cannot avail themselves of any of the ordinary human resources of mischief. They are, in fact, singularly defenceless and helpless, and themselves suffer acutely at the hands of society. It is otherwise, however, in their relations with their friends. They seem to have an infinite capacity for inflicting hurt on those who love them. Not deliberately or maliciously, but like a child pulling flies to pieces out of idleness, not realising what it is doing. Obeying the laws of their own nature, they are destructive to beings of the human evolution. Yet what other laws can they obey? For them to submit to our standards is to deny their deepest instincts.

The effect they have upon those who love them constitutes such a well-marked syndrome among the psychic pathologies that we must consider it in detail. The person who forms a rapport with a non-human becomes deeply stirred by the elemental forces that find ingress to our sphere through the channel of this wandering and alien soul. He becomes, as it were, drawn away from normal human things and set wandering upon the confines of the fairy kingdom, and yet he can find there no rest for his foot and no sustenance for his soul. The story of the handsome fisher-lad and the mermaid is indicative of this condition. She loves him, draws him to her and he drowns, for he cannot live in the element of water.

The explanation of the curious power, both of fascination and destruction, which is exercised by non-humans may lie in the fact that they belong to one element only, whereas in man all four are combined. Any elemental contact is stimulating to us, because elemental beings pour forth in abundance the vitality of their own particular sphere, and this vitalizes the corresponding element in ourselves. But if a four-element creature is drawn into the sphere of a single element he is poisoned by an overdose of the one element in which he finds himself, and starved of the other three. It is for this reason that mortals in the fairy kingdom are always said to be enchanted or asleep. They are never living normally in full possession of their faculties.
An equally difficult problem is set to the non-human who is drawn into our midst. A single-element creature is bidden to control and assimilate an additional three elements for which it has no equipment or experience, and the result is disastrous.

But it is not enough that we should merely describe the conditions and state the problem in these pages. Our aim is essentially practical. What then can be done when a non-human has to be faced and dealt with? It must be clearly realised that any mating between a human and a non-human is a hopeless proposition. In the first place, it can only be the preamble to a divorce, because non-humans are promiscuous in their sexual habits; and, secondly, there is nothing in the nature of a non-human that can satisfy the higher aspirations of the human. We must not allow the human form to mislead us as to the existence of a human soul. A non-human is a pet animal, not a fellow-creature. That, frankly, is the only possible ground upon which they can be approached. If we expect no more of them than we should of a pet bird, if we manage them as we should manage a kitten, we have got as near to the solution of the problem as we are ever likely to get until the Dark Angel mercifully restores them to their own kingdom; a mercy seldom long delayed, for non-humans do not make old bones.

Human beings may also come into touch with elemental beings by themselves venturing into the spheres of elemental life. Such contacts need not necessarily be harmful to either kingdom provided those who enter into them know what they are about. In fact, such associations are frequently entered into by occultists in the course of their work and researches, but it is an undertaking for the advanced initiate only, not for neophytes.
There are cases, however, where such an association may lead to harm. The human partner in the association may be ill-equipped or ill-adapted for the undertaking. He may have ventured out beyond his depth, having picked up a formula from some more experienced occultist and used it without proper preparation. Or again, it is not uncommon to find people who have brought through from previous incarnations a natural aptitude for getting into touch with the elemental kingdoms. In such cases it may occur that an elemental who has had experience of relations with human beings may deliberately get into touch with them. This is in every way undesirable, for the elemental has not got the knowledge of human conditions necessary to enable it to avoid injuring its new friend. In any case, elementals have got a one-way intelligence, and it is not well that they should be senior partners in any alliance with human beings. The whole question of elemental contacts, an exceedingly fascinating one, is too extensive and intricate to be entered upon in these pages. It has been necessary to refer to it, however, for certain cases of psychic difficulty may be due to inexpert operations on both sides of the Veil.

These elementals, or nature spirits, are quite different to the controls with whom Spiritualistic circles come into touch. The Spiritualistic movement is highly organised on the Inner Planes, and promiscuous controlling is not permitted. Controls have, in fact, to "sit" for development in just the same way that mediums do, and there is invariably some experienced entity within call who can come to the assistance of the circle if all is not going well. Western Occultism was thoroughly disorganised and broken up by centuries of persecution; its Inner Plane conditions, consequently, present many tangles and gaps even to this day. It is nothing like as well organised as the Spiritualistic sphere. The great Orders have their definite contacts and work strictly within them, keeping a firm hand on neophytes; outside the Orders there is a good deal of chaos and banditry, and it is unwise to venture far save in the company of an experienced occultist who understands the technique of the methods employed.

There are many people for whom the Deva Kingdom, as the sphere which the elementals share with the Nature Spirits is sometimes called, has a great fascination, and they try by meditation and ritual to get into touch with it. In my opinion it is decidedly risky for a person who is not an initiate to attempt this work. It is exceedingly apt to lead to mental unbalance, if not to actual obsession. Not that the nature contacts are evil, but they are profoundly disturbing to the human consciousness because they stir those atavistic depths which the psycho-analyst aims at laying bare by means of his technique. Anyone who is acquainted with the literature or practice of psycho-analysis knows that the ab-reaction is an important factor in this system; it is a crisis, and can, for the time being at any rate, upset the patient pretty thoroughly and exacerbate all his symptoms. When we touch the elemental contacts we get the same reaction that is caused by psycho-analysis when the censor is being penetrated.

Persons in whom the subconscious mind is near the surface, such as the artist, the crank, the unstable, and, for the matter of that, the genius in any walk of life, love the elemental contacts because they stimulate the elemental forces in their own nature which are to them the springs of their power and inspiration. But the average citizen, whose mental content is organised largely in a basis of repression and compromise in order that he may be a citizen at all and take his place in organised society, is upset by the elemental contacts according to the proportion of repression to compromise in his make-up. Compromise is the normal lot of humanity; repression is the pathology of compromise. The person who has managed to effect a working compromise between the different elements of his nature can afford to allow himself a holiday with the Devas without doing any body any harm; but the person who is repressed will find that they disagree with him actively because they are having the same effect upon him that a drastic psycho-analysis would have. We hear sometimes of the tragedy that results from taking the last dose in a bottle of tonic of which arsenic is one of the ingredients. This is due to the fact that the bottle has not been thoroughly shaken up each time a dose has been taken, so that the arsenical sediment has all collected in the last dose and reached a poisonous concentration. So it is with the elemental contacts; they are a potent tonic, but they can reach a poisonous concentration under unsuitable circumstances.

I have never come across or heard of a case of pathology due to the fascination of the Element of Earth; it is not an element that usually attracts the amateur experimenter, though the initiate appreciates its value and importance. I have come across cases, however, of sensitive people dwelling in a mountainous country, especially in narrow gulches where there is a paucity of sunlight, who have become obsessed with the fear of the mountains. They do not fear so much that the mountains will fall upon them as that they will close over them, as the cave closed upon the children who followed the Pied Piper of Hamelin. The psychiatrist will, of course, recognise this symptom as belonging to the well-known psycho-neurosis of claustrophobia. This, however, does not invalidate my statement; for in my opinion we may find that in a more intimate knowledge of the elemental kingdoms we shall come upon the clue to both claustrophobia and agarophobia.
Mountaineers also know this peculiar terror with which the great hills can obsess mankind. It is neither giddiness nor mountain sickness, but a curious oppression of the spirits by the overwhelming grandeur of nature. The same force, when not at a poisonous concentration, inspires the passion ate love of the hills or of the sea that Kipling has celebrated so gloriously in one of his poems.

The pathologies of the Element of Water may be a fascination so great that a man will walk out into the sea until he drowns. Swinburne had this peculiarity, and has immortalised it in several of his poems, "Strike out as the heart in us bids and beseeches, athirst for the foam." On one occasion he was picked up in the open sea by a Breton fishing-smack, swimming tirelessly, many miles from land, borne on the sea by currents, but oblivious of his danger. Being rescued, he sat upon the deck with his mane of red hair drying in the wind, chanting sea-poems to his rescuers, a spectacle that one would have given much to witness.


Another curious case of water-pathology I knew person ally. A very level-headed woman, a school teacher, was obsessed by a horror of rough waves. She always declared that if she went on the sea-front to watch a storm, the waves made a "dead set" at her. She lived at a seaside place, but so great was her dislike of the waves that she did not care to walk on the promenade when the tide was in. She was cured of her fear in a curious way. She took initiation into Co-Masonry, and found to her surprise that from that day forth she was free from her fear of the sea. I am not a Co-Mason, and speak subject to correction, but I believe I am right in saying that Co-Masonry differs from other forms of Masonry in that Elemental Invocations have been introduced into it.

The Element of Air, as all occultists know, is a very tricky element to deal with. More initiates turn off the Path in the Grade of Air than in any other, and it is rare to see a Ritual of Air worked without something being dropped or knocked over. It is a quarrelsome element; when it is being worked, the operators are apt to bicker and squabble. It is also intimately associated with sex, as is revealed by its symbolism. If an occultist is making a magic circle, and for any reason wishes to seal it with the Kerubim of the Elements instead of the Archangels, as is more commonly done, and feels himself unequal to the task of drawing a presentable eagle, the symbolic form of the Kerub of Air, he will use the Zodiacal sign for Scorpio. The evolutionary connection between the snake and the bird is well known to biologists; but long ages before Darwin, initiates used the Serpent and the Eagle to represent the unsublimated and sublimated aspects of the life-force. The Scorpion connects with the Serpent through the Dragon.

I had a very curious experience myself in connection with the Element of Air. I am betraying no secrets if I say that certain grades of initiation refer to the elements, for the fact is too generally known, and too obvious, for it to be any more mysterious than the Queen of Spain's legs. To begin with, I have an exceptionally bad head for heights, and as the Abyss of Height belongs to the Element of Air, I obviously have no natural affinity with it. The ceremony went exceptionally badly even for an Air Ritual. Two of the principal officers, husband and wife, helped to maintain its reputation as a contentious element by having a family jar in the middle of the proceedings, and the usual upsets and smashings occurred on a generous scale.

For the next fortnight I lived in the midst of a cataclysm of crockery. I smashed my way through two entire tea-sets and all the mantelpiece ornaments. The ornaments just fell off the mantelpiece one by one of their own accord. I actually saw two of them do it. I did not know at the time that the Element of Air had this sinister reputation. I realised that something queer was afoot, however, and asked my teacher about it. She was much amused, but I was not, because it was my crockery that was supplying the raw material for the phenomena. She advised me to get into sympathetic touch with the Sylphs, as the initiation had evidently not been altogether successful. I tried to do this, but I was in London at the time and met with no success, for the elemental contacts, with the exception of Fire, cannot be worked successfully in a city. The smashing went on, and I was reduced to a tin mug and a tooth-glass, for I saw it was useless to get any more china until things had settled down.

Then I went away for my summer holiday and found myself on the summit of a high and isolated hill on a day of bright sun and high wind. I was very conscious of the nearness of the elemental kingdoms. The air seemed full of silver sparkles, which is always a sign that the veil is thin. There was no one present save some friends who were sympathetic. I faced into the wind and raised my arms in Invocation. Suddenly we saw below us a figure bursting through hedges and leaping ditches and running wildly towards it. We presently recognised it as another of our friends, and when he joined us he told us that he had felt the sudden rush of power while in the valley and on an over powering impulse started for the hill-top. Then all of us, without any suggestion of leadership, began the Dance of the Elements, whirling like dancing dervishes upon that hill-top. Fortunately nobody was about, but I do not know that it would have made very much difference if they had been, for we were caught up out of ourselves and the air seemed full of rushing golden flames, lying level in the wind. For days afterwards we seemed charged with elemental energy by that extraordinary dance.

It may be interesting to note that we danced with a circular movement, each revolving on our own axis at the same time, and that we both danced and revolved deosil, that is, with the sun. All this occurred spontaneously, the tide of the elements catching us up and away. I have never known a more glorious experience. It was indeed the divine inebriation of the Mysteries. After this there were no more smashings of crockery. I have already noted my exceptionally bad head for heights. I have found that it is considerably mitigated, temporarily at any rate, by the Invocation of Air. I am of the opinion that the curious impulse which causes people for no reason whatsoever to commit suicide by throwing themselves from heights may be due to the same impulse that causes people who are obsessed by the Element of Water to swim out to sea, as I have recorded of Swinburne.

These apparently causeless suicides by Water and Air are, in my opinion, a form of union with the god which is one of the ideas underlying human sacrifice. There are two types of human sacrifice, the willing and the unwilling. The unwilling sacrifice, the prisoner struggling or drugged into passivity, is used, not to propitiate the god, as is usually thought, but in order that his vital forces may serve as a basis of manifestation. The willing sacrifice, in which the victim will be either a priest or a devotee of the god, has for its motive the idea of divine union, not altogether unknown to Christian mystics, who seek its achievement by a living death, whereas the adherents of Juggernaut escape with one brief pang.

The European belief of one man, one life, has imbued us with the idea of death as the supreme evil. Therefore the European very often does not go to his death when he unites with the elements, but his higher self withdraws from incarnation, leaving his body ensouled by a curious kind of intelligent automaton, which deteriorates rapidly. What ever may be the status of the soul that withdraws, that which is left behind is not nice. I feel, therefore, that it must seriously delay and distort the evolution of the human Monad if it turns aside into the sphere of the Deva evolution. It may well be that some of the creatures whom at first sight we might classify as non-humans are really humans who have had a Deva phase in their Karmic record. There is a very interesting field of research awaiting the person who systematically investigates the past lives of the weak- minded and the mentally deranged.

The pathologies of the Element of Fire are also rare, though it may be that the aimless incendiary and pyromaniac belong to this class. I have never personally had any opportunity of investigating this type of case. Algernon Blackwood writes of one in his very interesting story, "The Regeneration of Lord Ernie," which is published in his volume of short stories entitled Incredible Adventures. Indeed, this author is exceedingly fond of drawing his inspiration from the Deva kingdom, and has some most interesting studies of the subject scattered through his books. Any organic geographical unit develops something of an oversoul, and where the differentiation is marked, the over soul may become a very definite entity. If there are among the inhabitants of the district any who are sensitive to the Unseen, they may form either an affinity or a repulsion for this oversoul. A great forest has a very marked personality, and there are few white men who can resist its influence, becoming markedly changed and de-humanised if exposed to it for long periods without the companionship of others of their race. Natives, on the other hand, seem to enter into it and be part of it.
It is well known how often trees are objects of worship in all parts of the world.

They have very marked personalities and strong magnetic fields. In the spring, when the sap is rising, even non-psychics can often see the aura of a tree. It can best be seen by getting at a distance of a couple of hundred yards and looking at the sky beyond the top of the tree. The aura will then be perceived as a whitish cloud, like a patch of lighter-coloured sky, surrounding the top of the tree, and usually swaying gently from side to side. There is a curious antagonism between elms and humanity, and about orchids all sensitive persons agree there is some thing sinister. Tropical vegetation, as a whole, is over-powerful for humanity. Under the tremendous stimulation of the solar fire the elemental forces are concentrated to a poisonous strength. I am not personally acquainted with the West Coast of Africa, but from what I can gather I am of the opinion that the elemental forces and the atmosphere made by Juju rites are between them more responsible than the climate for earning that part of the world its sinister reputation as the White Man's Grave. There are other spots where the climate is equally hot and humid, Burmah, for instance, but there is no other spot that produces the same loosening of moral fibre. The only place that is at all comparable to it is the Carribbean Sea, which produces, not so much a demoralisation, as a fierceness and violence quite alien to the racial characteristics of the people who go there.

The alleged Vampire has always been a popular character in tales of mystery and imagination. There is a considerable literature concerning his doings, from the famous novel Dracula to serious studies of the medieval
witch-trials, for which the reader is referred to the bibliography at the end of the book. In these pages, however, I do
not want to avail myself of second-hand evidence, nor of incidents which took place in other centuries and under
primitive conditions, for it might be argued that with the passing of such conditions from our midst, the problem of vampirism, like the problem of typhus, has gone too, and need not trouble us. From my own experience I am of the opinion, however, that this is not so, and that the peculiar condition which the ancients called vampirism may account for certain forms of mental disturbance and the physical ill-health associated therewith.

When psycho-analysis was first introduced into England I took up the subject, and became a student, and eventually a  lecturer at a clinic that was founded in London. We students were soon struck by the fact that some cases were exceedingly exhausting to deal with. It was not that they were troublesome, but simply that they "took it out" of us, and left us feeling like limp rags at the end of a treatment. Someone happened to mention this fact to one of the nurses engaged in the electrical department, and she told us that the same patients equally "took it out of" the electrical machines and that they could absorb the most surprising voltages without turning a hair.


At the same place, in the course of my psycho-analytical work, I came across a number of cases where a morbid attachment existed between two people, most commonly mother and daughter, or two women friends; sometimes alsobetween mother and son, and in one case I met socially, between a man and a woman. It was always the negative one of the pair who came for treatment, and we were able to benefit them considerably by psycho-therapeutic means. They
always showed the same symptom-complex, a sensitive temperament, pallid complexion, wasted form and general debility, sense of weakness, and easy fatiguabilty. They were also invariably highly suggestible, and were therefore easy to handle. Consequently we were usually able to get good results pretty quickly in such cases.

The curious point, however, was that the breaking of the morbid rapport caused a marked disturbance and even semi-collapse of the dominant partner in the alliance. We found it necessary to insist upon a separation if a cure were to be effected, and the separation invariably disagreed very actively with the dominant partner. At that time I explained everything in terms of the Freudian psychology, but even so, I could not help being struck bythe curious effect a separation had upon the person who was not supposed to be ill, and that as the one went uphill, the other went down.

I am of the opinion that what Freud calls an Oedipus complex is not altogether a one-sided affair, and that the "soul" of the parent is drawing upon the psychic vitality of the child. It is curious how aged Oedipus cases always look, and whatlittle old men and women they are as children. They never have a normal childhood, but always are mentally mature for
their years. I persuaded various patients to show me photographs of themselves as children, and was much struck by the elderly, worried expression of the childish faces, as if they had known all of life's problems and burdens. Knowing what we do of telepathy and the magnetic aura, it appears to me not unreasonable to suppose that in some way which we do not as yet fully understand, the negative partner of such a rapport is "shorting" on to the positive partner. There is a leakage of vitality going on, and the dominant partner is more or less consciously lapping it up, if not actually sucking it out.


Such cases are by no of means uncommon, and clear up rapidly when the victim is separated from the vampire. Whenever there is a record of a close and dominating bond between two people with the devitalisation of one of them, it is a good plan to recommend a temporary separation and observe the results. Such cases as these, however, may more justly be described as parasitism than vampirism. Such psychic parasitism is exceedingly common, and explains many psychological problems. We will not pursue the subject in these pages,
however, as it is outside the scope of our present enquiry, and is merely mentioned for illustrative purposes. Vampirism, as generally understood, is a very different matter, and we shall do well to reserve the term for those cases wherein the attack is deliberate, applying the term parasitism to the cases wherein it is unconscious and involuntary.


In my opinion, true vampirism cannot take place unless there is power to project the etheric double. All the records of vampirism that we have give an account of something much more tangible than a haunting. In Western Europe the occurrence seems to be comparatively rare in modern times, but in Eastern Europe and in primitive countries it appears to be by no means uncommon, and innumerable well-authenticated cases occur in books of travel.

Commander Gould, in his exceedingly interesting book, Oddities, gives an account of vampirism among the Berberlangs of the Philippine Islands. His account is based on a paper printed in the Journal of the Asiatic Society, Vol. LXV, 1896. These unpleasant people, according to Mr. Skertchley, the author of the article which Commander Gould quotes, "are ghouls, and must eat human flesh occasionally or they would die. . . . When they feel a craving for a meal of human flesh they go away into the grass, and having carefully hidden their bodies, hold their breaths and fall into a trance. Their astral bodies are then liberated. . . They fly away, and entering a house, make their way into the body of one of the occupants and feed on his entrails.

"The Berberlangs may be heard coming, as they make a moaning noise, which is loud at a distance and dies away to a feeble moan as they approach. When they are near you, the sound of their wings may be heard, and the flashing lights of their eyes can be seen dancing like fire-flies in the dark."Mr. Skertchley declares that he himself saw and heard a flight of Berberlangs pass by, and visiting next day the house  he saw them enter, found the occupant dead without any sign of external violence.

Compare Mr. Skertchley's account of the Berberlangs lying in the long grass and throwing themselves into trance with Mr. Muldoon's account of "The Projection of the Astral Body," with which every student of occultism ought to be familiar, for it is undoubtedly a classic of occult literature, being a practical account of occult experiences and detailed instructions how to go and do likewise. But to return nearer home. In the course of my experience of the byways of the human mind, which, from the nature of my work, has been, like Sam Weller's knowledge of London, extensive and peculiar, I have only known one case of genuine vampirism, according to the sense in which I use the term, and this was not one of my own cases, though I
knew the persons concerned, but was handled by my original teacher, whom I have already referred to in connection with the case of the good lady who chased me with a carving-knife. I have made use of the facts of this case as a groundwork for one of the stories in The Secrets of Dr. Taverner, but the actual facts are such that they were unsuitable for a work supposedly designed to amuse.

At that time I was doing the tutorials in abnormal psychology at the clinic I have spoken of, and supervising the work of the other students; one of them took counsel with me concerning a case that had come to her in private practice, the case of a youth in the late 'teens, one of those degenerate but intellectual and socially presentable types that not infrequently crop up in old families whose blood is too blue to be wholesome. This lad was taken as boarder in a flat which the student shared with another woman, and they soon began to be troubled with curious phenomena. About the same time every evening the dogs in a neighbouring mews began a furious outcry of barking and howling, and a few moments later the French window leading on to the verandah would open. It did not matter how often they got the locksmith to it, nor how they barricaded it, open it would come at the appointed time, and a cold draught sweep through the flat.

This phenomenon took place one evening when the adept, Z., was present, and he declared that an unpleasant invisible entity had entered. They lowered the lights, and were able to see a dull glow in the corner he indicated, and when they put their hands into this glow, felt a tingling sensation such as is experienced when the hands are put into electrically- charged water. Then began a mighty spook-hunt up and down the flat, and the presence was finally cornered and dispatched in the bathroom. I have staged the incident somewhat more picturesquely in my story, but the essential facts are the same. The result of the dispatching of this entity was a marked improvement in the condition of the boy patient, and the elicitation of the following story.


The boy, whom we will call D., was in the habit of going to sit with a cousin who had been invalided home from France suffering from alleged shell-shock. This young man was another scion of a worn-out stock, and it transpired that he had been caught red-handed in that unpleasant per version called necrophilia. According to the story elicited from
the parents of D., this vice was not uncommon on certain sections of the Front, as were also attacks on wounded men. The authorities were taking drastic steps to put it down. Owing to family influence the cousin of D. was able to escape
incarceration in a military prison, and was placed in the care of his family as a mental case, and they put him in the
charge of a male nurse. It was while the male nurse was off duty that the unfortunate young D. was misguidedly employed to sit with him. It also came out that the relations between D. and his cousin were of a vicious nature, and on one occasion he bit the boy on the neck, just under the ear, actually drawing blood.

D. had always been under the impression that some "ghost" attacked him during his crises, but had not dared to say so for fear of being thought mad. What may have been the exact percentages of neurotic taint, vice, and psychic attack, it is difficult to say, nor is it easy
to decide which was the predisposing cause that opened the door to all the trouble, but one thing stood out clearly to all beholders, that with the dispatch of the psychic visitant, not only did D.'s condition clear up immediately, but after a short, sharp upheaval the cousin also recovered. The method of dispatch used by the adept, Z., was to pin the entity inside a magic circle, so that it could not get away, and then absorb it into himself through compassion. As he completed the operation, he fell over backwards unconscious. It was, in fact, the same method that I was instructed to use in dealing with my were-wolf, but it is a much more formidable task to absorb and transmute the projection of another person than to absorb one's own, and could only have been accomplished by an initiate of a very high grade,
which Z. indubitably was.

His opinion concerning the case, though there was no means of obtaining independent confirmation of this, was that some Eastern European troops had been brought to the Western Front, and among these were individuals with the traditional knowledge of Black Magic for which South Eastern Europe has always enjoyed a sinister reputation among occultists. These men, getting killed, knew how to avoid going to the Second Death, that is to say, the disintegration of the Astral Body, and maintained themselves in the etheric double by vampirising the wounded. Now vampirism is contagious; the person who is vampirised, being depleted of vitality, is a psychic vacuum, himself absorbing from anyone he comes across in order to refill his depleted resources of vitality. He soon learns by experience the tricks of a vampire without realising their significance, and before he knows where he is, he is a full-blown vampire himself,
vampirising others. The earth-bound soul of a vampire sometimes attaches itself permanently to one individual if it succeeds in making a functioning vampire of him, systematically drawing its etheric nutriment from him, for, since he in his turn is re-supplying himself from others, he will not die from exhaustion as victims of vampires do in the ordinary way.

Z. was of the opinion that D.'s cousin was not the primary vampire in the case, but was himself a victim. Being a youth of unstable morale, he speedily acquired the vampire tricks, and the earth-bound soul of some Magyar magician exploited him. Through his act of biting and drawing blood from the neck of his cousin, this entity became transferred
to young D., preferring pastures new to the depleted resources of its previous victim. Probably it alternated between the two, for it was not constantly with D.
Exactly what Z. did we do not know, for he was exceedingly secretive concerning his methods, but in the light of subsequent knowledge I should imagine that he absorbed the etheric energy of the earthbound soul, and thus deprived it of its means of resisting the Second Death. Merely to drive the resisting soul out to the Judgment Hall of Osiris would have involved leaving behind an astral corpse, which for some time would have continued to give trouble.


It may be interesting to note in connection with this case that during the time that Miss L. was at the occult college in Hampshire we had some rather curious happenings. There was an outbreak among us of exceedingly bad "mosquito bites." The bites themselves were not poisonous, but the stabs were of such a nature that they bled freely. I remember waking up one morning to find a patch of blood the size of the palm of my hand on the pillow; it had apparently come from a small puncture just behind the angle of the jaw. Several others had similar experiences. I have never seen anything like it, either before or since, nor did it occur again after Miss L. left. I did not tell the adept Z. about it at the time, and later, when I was reminded of the incident and mentioned it, the opportunity for investigation had gone by. He expressed the opinion that it was a vampire's work, and cited similar cases which he had met with in the course of his experience. He said he had seen cases in Africa where the victim had
become so bloodless that it was with difficulty that a specimen of blood could be obtained for examination, for it could hardly be induced to flow from the debilitated tissues.

Nothing can be done for such cases by medical science. They are dying by inches, and yet no organic disease can be demonstrated. Nevertheless, their appearance is that of a person sinking from repeated hemorrhages. When vampirism is suspected the thing to do is to go over that person's body inch by inch with a powerful magnifying glass, and the search will probably be rewarded by the discovery of numerous minute punctures, so minute that they are not discovered by an examination with the naked eye unless they reveal themselves by becoming infected and suppurating, when they are usually mistaken for insect bites. They are bites right enough, but not those of an insect. The places to look for them are around the neck, especially under the ears; down the inner surface of the forearms; on the lobes of the ears; about the tips of the toes and, in a woman, upon the breasts.

It is said that a person with vampire tendencies develops abnormally long and sharp canine teeth, and I have myself  seen one such case, and a curious sight it was. The two canine teeth, the pair that come between the incisors and the double teeth, were half as long again as the others, and terminated in points of needle-like sharpness. True vampirism in Western Europe appears to be rare, but Z. was of the opinion that many obscure cases of tropical debility in which anemia played a prominent part, might be attributed to this cause.