Occult-Magick

Alchemy and the Golden Dawn - by Jean-Pascal Ruggiu
(present Imperator of Ahathöor Temple No. 7, Paris, France)


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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.

Psychic Self Defense by Dione Fortune - Chapter VI Hauntings
There are two forms of "haunting" which have to be considered, the one which is due to a discarnate soul who interferes with a particular person, and the one which is due to the conditions prevailing in a particular place, and which affects any person sufficiently sensitive who happens to go there. Except in cases where the influence is exceptionally strong, the insensitive person is immune. To perceive a "haunting" one needs, as a general rule, to be slightly psychic; it is for this reason that children, Celts and the coloured races suffer severely from such interferences, and the stolid Nordic type is comparatively immune, and, to a lesser extent, the lively, materialistic and sceptical Latin.

Let us consider first of all the question of interference by a discarnate soul, It will be noted that I use the term "interference" and not "attack." The disturbance need not necessarily be an attack, any more than the drowning man who clings to his rescuer and drags him under is motived by malice. The entity that is causing the trouble may be a soul that is itself in distress on the Inner Planes, and is too ignorant of post-mortem conditions to know the harm it is doing by clinging so desperately to the living. It is for this reason that the wide dissemination of Spiritualistic teachings is of value, for it helps to relieve the tension between this world and the next.

As far as my experience goes, I am inclined to think that deliberate malevolence is rare; but this panic-stricken clinging is not uncommon, and explains why the survivor of a pair sometimes goes through very unpleasant experiences after the death of the partner. There are also cases, though rarer, wherein a soul who has some occult knowledge but is bound strongly to earth by sensual desires, uses a curious form of rapport in order to gratify those desires through the physical body of another.

There are innumerable instances of both these types of astral interference in occult and spiritualistic literature, but as I am confining myself to cases within my own experience, I will not cite them, but limit myself to listing the literature of the subject in the bibliography.


Someone of my acquaintance lost, after a long illness, her husband to whom she was much attached, but whom most people would have thought she was well rid of, as for many years he had been addicted to drink, and died finally after a long illness during which he was kept under morphia for prolonged periods, taking enormous quantities. He was a man of intensely malignant and selfish disposition, and died unrepentant. She, however, during the course of his last illness, when, being bedridden, he could do no more harm, elected to idolise him, and as soon as he was safely dead, canonised him into the family saint. She was interested in occultism and in the habit of practising meditation and invoking the Masters. In spite of all counsel to the contrary, she began to try and get into psychic touch with her husband, invoking him as her guide. Like many other men of a sensual disposition, he had clung desperately to life, remaining in articulo mortis for days.

Fortunately for all concerned, it had been possible to persuade her to have his remains cremated, but despite all persuasion she brought all his belongings from the nursing-home where he had died and kept them in her bedroom, and made a little altar around his photograph and used it as the focus of her meditations.
The last illness had been a long and trying one, and she had been living at the end of a telephone wire, in a state of constant anxiety for weeks, but had had no physical strain, so there was nothing physical to account for the serious illness which ensued after the strain was over. It soon became noticeable that she, who had previously had a very lovable and gentle disposition, was gradually changing, so that not only in temperament, but in facial expression, she was growing like her late husband. Next a curious thing ensued. Her husband had died of an inflammatory spinal lesion which caused no pain at the site of the trouble, but intense pain in the nerves that issued from the spine at that point, so that the pain was referred to a particular distribution in the hands and arms, more upon one side than the other. This lady developed a severe neuritis that exactly corresponded in its distribution to her late husband's symptoms.

Another illustrative case is that of Miss E., whose fiance was killed during the War. She says in a letter written to the person whom she consulted with regard to her problem:
"I was able to rise above the loss and separation at the time, but six months later I suffered nervous breakdown, from this time I have been troubled with weak nerves. For the last two months I have been having very extraordinary experiences which are causing me much perplexity and rendering me unfit for work. It is a night experience and has not once occurred during the day. After I have composed myself for sleep I find that gradually my body is losing all sensation; it feels as if I was being slowly frozen stiff. (I don't know how else to describe it.) At this stage I can sometimes rouse myself and overcome it, but I cannot always do this. My efforts to rouse myself are in vain, and although fully conscious I feel unable to move or call. Usually after this I sink into some kind of sleep. I have all kinds of experiences. Sometimes I visit strange places and talk with people I don't know. Sometimes my experiences are beautiful beyond description; sometimes I am threatened with danger of drowning or falling, but in these cases I always rise in the air and travel for miles, it seems to me. Sometimes I feel that I am just floating in the air. How long the dream lasts I cannot tell. When I wakeup, however, I have great difficulty in moving for some time; but gradually I regain the power to move about, and after a lot of stinging sensation in the limbs I get up, usually feeling very tired and unrefreshed, but sometimes I feel none the worse for the strange experience. But it is under mining my health and happiness, and it cannot be good."


In conversation she amplified the statements in her letter, and said that during the experiences described, someone, she thought it was her fiance, was trying to prevent her from getting back into her body again after these nocturnal expeditions.


The case was entirely cleared up in one week by means of telepathic treatment. The notes on the manner in which the work was done are of considerable interest.
"The treatment was given to the entity that was causing the trouble, not merely to the patient, and it was the release of the obsessor from his plane of work and helping him Heavenward that gave freedom to his victim."


In the other type of haunting, that in which it is the place which is the focus of manifestation, not a special person, we must distinguish between the earth-bound entity which remains attached to a particular spot, and the thought-atmosphere which is left behind after violent emotions have been experienced there.
Let us consider first the question of thought-atmosphere, of which I can give a very illuminating example. A friend of mine who was a student at a school of dramatic art consulted me concerning an attack of stage fright she had had, which left her rather nervous as to its recurrence.

She was an experienced student, in fact a pupil teacher, and she was having some extra tuition from the head of the school. Going for her lesson one afternoon, she found that her teacher had just finished taking the junior students for their end-of-the-term examination in elocution. She went on to the stage and stood beside the small table which had been placed there for the convenience of the examiner, and commenced to recite the piece on which she was to have her lesson. She herself had no occasion for nervousness; as had already been noted, she was an experienced speaker and teacher; moreover, nothing of importance hung upon this lesson, it was merely one of a series. Nor was she usually nervous or self-conscious.

But as soon as she tried to start, she experienced a complete "dry-up," and stood paralysed, unable to utter a word. A little prompting soon started her off, however, but she had experienced a nasty attack of stage fright, and it shook her nerve.


From the psychic point of view, the explanation was not far to seek. She was standing in the mental atmosphere created by a series of girls who had gone on to that platform for an examination upon which a good deal depended for them, and who had all been correspondingly nervous. She herself, being sensitive, had been affected by this atmosphere, which induced in her a similar mental state by means of which is called "sympathetic induction," a phenomenon well known in electricity and in acoustics, but equally valid in psychology.
No doubt the unfortunate examinees themselves were infecting each other. It may well be that the "microphone panic," so well known to broadcasters, is caused by the thought-atmosphere generated by a succession of nervous people who have stood upon the same spot.


An experience of my own may be of interest in this connection. I took a bed-sitting-room in a hostel, and as soon as I came there, I found myself afflicted with the most intense depression. I am not usually subject to the blues, being normally a cheerful soul, but as soon as I entered this room, which was a sunny and pleasant one, the cloud descended upon me, but lifted again as soon as I went out of it, whether into the dining-room of the hostel, or out of doors. I soon recognised that here was something that needed to be dealt with, and enquired as to the history of the room. I was told that it had previously been the bed room of the last owner of the house, who had been addicted to drink and had gone bankrupt.

It is a curious fact that drunkards and drug addicts make very evil psychic atmospheres, whereas a person who is a common criminal, however bad, is not nearly so noxious and his atmosphere fades rapidly.
In these two cases there was no question of an entity, discarnate or incarnate, being concerned in the matter; there was merely an unpleasant mental atmosphere generated by some powerful and painful emotion that had been experienced over a considerable period at that spot.
Such a concentration, if very strong, will linger almost indefinitely. The structures that saw the concentration may have been pulled down and new ones built, nevertheless the forces remain, like a previous exposure on a photographic plate, and sensitive people are affected by them. The insensitive may escape comparatively scatheless.


It is not altogether an easy matter to determine whether the disturbance is due to atmosphere alone, or whether an earth-bound entity complicates the situation. Where an entity is present, it will usually be seen sooner or later. Moreover, it will usually be heard as well as felt. This latter sign, however, does not invariably indicate the presence of an organised entity, for I know of a case wherein a room that had been used as a lodge of ritual initiation was subsequently partitioned into an office and two bedrooms after the lodge was moved elsewhere, and the bedrooms were practically uninhabitable owing to the din of cracks, bangs and thumpings that went on at night. In such a case there was no reason to suspect the presence of any entity, for the rituals had not been of an evocative type, nor was the influence evil. It was merely force in a state of tension. It was sheer physical noise that made the disturbance, as I can testify, for I have slept, or rather, tried to sleep, there.


Where a ghost is seen, it is usually also heard because for a form to be sufficiently substantial to be visible there must be a modicum at least of ectoplasm in its composition, and ectoplasm is capable of exercising force on the physical plane, in some degree at least. Where a ghost is both seen and heard, we may be sure there is an actual haunting. Where it is seen, but not heard, it may possibly be that a person with psychic tendencies is perceiving the images in the reflecting ether, the photographic plate of Nature, and there may be no actual entity present. Where the disturbance is heard, but not seen, it may be due to astral forces set in motion by ritual magic, and which continue for a while after the original impulse is withdrawn. These may be perfectly harmless, save that they disturb the sleep in the same way that a rattling window would do. On the other hand, if powerful evocative rituals have been performed, and the clearing of the sphere has not been properly done, profound disturbances may result and the whole situation be exceedingly unpleasant.


Examples will again help to make the problem clear. As an instance of a non-ritual haunting, I may cite the case of a friend of mine who went to live in a block of modern mansions. From the first she was not happy there, and as time went by the oppression and distress strengthened. Coming into her drawing-room one evening at dusk, she saw in the half-light a man standing with his back to the room, gazing intently out of the window. She switched on the light, and found that there was no one there. On several occasions her maid saw someone walk down the passage leading to this room. Moreover, the hall door had a knack of coming open of its own accord.
My friend's depression deepened until finally, when standing herself at the drawing-room window one day, she had a sudden impulse to fling herself out. Then she realised that things were serious and that liver-pills and a week-end at the seaside would not put them right. Being an occultist, she understood the significance of the happenings that had been going on in her flat, and she made enquiries concerning the history of the square in which this block of modern mansions had been built.

She learnt that it was the site of an old madhouse of sinister reputation. The form that she and her maid had seen was probably that of some unfortunate patient of suicidal tendencies who had succeeded in giving effect to his impulses on a spot corresponding to the situation of her room. The terrific emotional forces generated by his brooding and last desperate act were photographed on the atmosphere, as it were, and suggested to her mind thoughts of self-destruction just as the ill-temper or depression of a companion will induce a similar mood in ourselves without any word spoken.


Another example within the sphere of my experience, although it was not actually my case, is of much interest in that it combines an example of a very definite poltergeist haunting with vampirism.


I was once consulted by a mental healer to whom a very curious case had been brought. Some charitably disposed people had raised funds to found a home for unwanted babies, and a suitable house had been purchased on the outskirts of a village not far from London. The house had been a conspicuous bargain and they were very pleased with it.

Soon, however, they began to be disturbed by some very curious phenomena, and also by inexplicable illness and seizures among the babies. One child, in fact, actually died, and its death was not satisfactorily accounted for. Then one of the nurses, an Irish girl, began to be affected also. Celts are notoriously susceptible to psychic influences, and are always the first to be affected by them. It will be observed that the babies went down first under the attack, their resistance being low compared to that of an adult; and then the most sensitive of the adults was affected, the Irish Celt.


On several occasions the sound was heard of a cart and horse coming up the drive, but when the maid went to the door to open it, there was nothing to be seen. Soon the ghost became even more energetic, and took to shoveling the coal from side to side of an outhouse. It would shift several tons of coal in this way in a night, the occupants of the house lying shivering in their beds while lumps of coal thudded and rumbled' against the sides of the bunkers. As to why or wherefore this particular manifestation should take place, I can offer no suggestion.
On several occasions different people saw a strange man crossing the hall, and immediately afterwards children were taken ill.


Finally, in addition to all other troubles, mysterious fires began to break out all over the house. A basket of clean linen in an empty room was found to be on fire. Curtains were found to be smouldering. Meanwhile the unfortunate Irish nurse went from bad to worse, lying in bed too weak to stand up, and rapidly going off her head.

It will probably be suggested that some mischievous or demented person was at the bottom of the trouble, but it is difficult to know what human agency either could or would shovel a truck-load of coal across a shed single-handed during the night.
The superintendent of the home was interested in mental healing and knew enough of the mind side of things to realise that something abnormal was happening in the house under her charge. She consulted a mental healer, who in her turn consulted me.

I made a psychic diagnosis of the case, and reported that in my opinion the house had at some time been occupied by someone who had a knowledge of occultism, and who, being upon the Left-hand Path, objected strongly to going to face his portion of Purgatory after the death of the physical body, and that he was maintaining himself in an intermediate state as an earth-bound spirit by drawing upon the vitality of the unfortunate children, and had accidentally drawn too much from one, thus killing it outright.


Working on this hypothesis, the healer undertook to give the case "absent treatment." Needless to say, the officials of the home were not taken into our confidence. The result of this treatment was that the manifestations immediately ceased. No more children had seizures and the Irish nurse rapidly recovered. The superintendent was then told the hypothesis upon which we had worked. She was greatly interested, and made enquiries in the village as to the history of the house, and learned that it was notoriously haunted, which was the reason they had obtained it so cheaply.

It appeared that no tenant could stop there long, and that there was a constant record of these exhausting and mysterious illnesses. It also transpired that about sixty years previously the house had been occupied for a long period by a man who was viewed askance by his neighbours as an eccentric and mysterious personage, and was reported to be engaged in some sort of research which necessitated the use of a laboratory into which no one was ever allowed to go, and in which he worked by night.


It is interesting to note that neither the mental healer or myself ever visited the house or were within twenty miles of it; for it shows in what way these unseen forces can be manipulated from a distance.

A final example, taken from The Confessions of Aleister Crowley, will serve to show the nature of a haunting produced by ceremonial magic in which the forces invoked are not adequately dispersed.

"The demons connected with Abramelin do not wait to be invoked, they come unsought. One night Jones and I went out to dinner. I noticed on leaving the White Temple that the latch of its Yale lock had not caught. Accordingly I pulled the door to, and tested it. As we went out, we noticed semi-solid shadows on the stairs; the whole atmosphere was vibrating with the forces we had been using. (We were trying to condense them into sensible images.) When we came back, nothing had been disturbed in the flat; but the Temple door was wide open, the furniture disarranged, and some of the symbols flung about the room. We restored order, and then observed that semi-materialised beings were marching round the main room in almost unending procession.


"When I finally left the flat for Scotland, it was found that the mirrors were too big to take out save by the way of the Black Temple. This had, of course, been completely dismantled before the workmen arrived. But the atmosphere remained, and two of them were put out of action for several hours. It was almost a weekly experience, by the way, to hear of casual callers fainting, or being seized with dizziness, cramp or apoplexy on the staircase. It was a long time before these rooms were re-let. People felt instinctively the presence of something uncanny."
It is well known to all psychics that the sites of ancient temples where mystery-rituals have been worked, are always potently charged with psychic force.

This force need not necessarily be evil, but it has a powerfully stimulating effect upon the psychic centres and stirs up the subconscious forces; and as the majority of civilized people suffer in a greater or lesser degree from what Freud calls " repression," such a stirring of the subliminal mind produces a feeling of profound disturbance. We should not unquestioningly attribute evil influences to a place or a person that causes us discomfort; it may merely be that psychic force at a greater tension than we are accustomed to is disturbing our equilibrium.


The sites of monasteries that were disbanded with persecution at the time of the Reformation are also frequently badly "haunted" by psychic forces. The group-mind of a religious community is a very potent thing, and when it is disturbed by the corporate emotion of its members, the forces thus let loose are not readily dispersed. Moreover, the monks, initiates of the Mysteries of Jesus, would not be likely to hand over their sacred places to the despoilers with any good will. It has been reported again and again that a curse rests on those who profited by the spoliation of Church lands. This is too well known to require discussion in these pages.


There is another fact in connection with Church property, however, which may not be so well known, and that is the frequency with which psychic happenings are reported in connection with vicarages. In enquiring among friends and fellow-workers for data in connection with the research that has gone to the making of this book, I have been astonished how frequently a vicarage has been mentioned in connection with the phenomena of which I have been told.
The rituals of the Church are, of course, ceremonial magic, as is admitted by even such an orthodox authority as Evelyn Underhill. The average clergyman is not conversant with the technique of occultism, and has therefore little or no understanding of what he is doing. What influences he brings to the altar, and what forces he takes away therefrom, must therefore be an open question in each individual case. A man whose consciousness has been exalted by ritual, and who does not know how to seal his aura and return to normal, is liable to psychic invasion.


Objects associated with any form of ceremonial operations are invariably highly charged with magnetism and intimately linked with the force whose uses they have served. I remember, many years ago, when I had but little know ledge of occultism and no pretentions at all to psychism, that two friends and myself were amusing ourselves by turning over each other's trinket-boxes. I picked up a handsome amethyst cross from one of them, and immediately exclaimed:
"There is something extraordinary about this cross. It feels as if it were alive."
"That was the cross that was given me at my first communion," replied my friend," and it was originally a bishop's pectoral cross."


Her sister was greatly interested, and immediately brought her own jewel-case to me and asked me if I could pick out her first communion cross also, for, like her sister, she was a Roman Catholic, and these crosses that were given them as presents on the occasion of their first communion had been specially blessed by the priest. I was greatly interested to observe that from three or four ornamental crosses I was able to pick one which felt warm and living and electric to the hand, and pass it across to her, saying, "This is your communion cross," and it was.
I remember once, as a small child, picking up a dying rook; the creature lay motionless on my knee for a few minutes, and then gave a flutter and died. I had never seen death before, but I needed no one to tell me that I saw it now. The "feel" of the creature, before and after that flutter, was different. I can only compare the feel of the magnetised and the unmagnetised crosses to the difference between the living and the dead bird.


But the Christian is not the only religion that can magnetise its ceremonial instruments. There are other ritualistic religions, and some of these are debased. We ought to use much caution before we place about our rooms as ornaments objects which may have been associated with cults whose nature we do not understand. Many of them, of course, belong to the Brummagem cult, and are dedicated to no more desperate deity than Mammon; but the genuine curio is a different matter.
I had an example of this once in the British Museum. I was visiting the room in the basement which contains a collection of plaster casts of the famous statues of antiquity, the originals being elsewhere. Suddenly I became aware of a sense of magnetic power. I turned towards it, and saw a small altar. Reading the label, I found that this was not a cast but the original.


It is a very interesting test of psychism to sample the atmosphere of the different rooms of the British Museum. The benign and brooding peace of the Buddhist Room is a thing to be remembered. The flavour of the long Ethnological Room is a thing to be got out of the mouth as quickly as possible. To me, at any rate, the Egyptian Room is disappointing; the mummies all seem neither malignant or benignant, but merely cynical. Perhaps I should feel differently, however, if I spent a night with them. Magnetism, which is dispersed during the day, charges up again during the silence and darkness of the night. I remember visiting Stonehenge amid a crowd of trippers and chars-a-blancs, and thinking that the glory had departed; but it was a very different affair when I visited it in the desolation of a bleak spring day after its long winter solitude. It had charged up again, and was as formidable as anyone could wish.


I should hesitate, therefore, to say that because the mummies and I have never struck sparks when we met in the British Museum, that their reputation is groundless. At the time that Tut-ankh-amen's tomb was being opened I said to myself, If the mummy's curse does not work in this case, I shall lose my faith in occultism. We all know how it has worked, even unto the third and fourth generation. No novelist, deriving his ideas of ancient Egypt from an encyclopedia article on Egyptology and some photographs, would have dared stretch the long arm of coincidence anything like as far.


The Egyptians attached great importance to the preservation of the physical body. The tombs of great men, as is well known, were protected by means of what are popularly called spells, and the power and scope of Egyptian magic are things that very few people realise. The modern student of occultism who reads Iamblichos on the Egyptian Mysteries, will have a surprise.


In most cases, however, the purchaser of Egyptian curios has nothing to fear; the worst that they will yield to psychic investigation is a vision of labour disputes in a mass- production factory. I have, however, heard of a very wonderful psychometric reading which was obtained from a mummy which, when subsequently unrolled, was found to consist entirely of French newspapers of recent date!
I have always been greatly amused by the indignation of Egyptologists against tomb robbers. After all, is there any distinction between the earlier and later visitors to a tomb save that one lot work by day and the other by night? In the view of the people who made the tomb, and spared nothing to render it inviolate and preserve the peace of their dead, the workers by night would probably be preferred, for they merely robbed, and did not strip and expose the nude bodies to the public gaze.


There was a terrible outcry recently when some bodies were moved in a village church yard to make room for the monument chosen to decorate the grave of a famous public man. Even the people whose religious feelings were not outraged by this act of sacrilege regarded it as in shocking bad taste. Yet nobody proposed to strip the graveclothes from the body of someone's wife or mother and photograph it stark naked. When it comes to the question of a mummy's curse, I am afraid that my sympathies are entirely with the mummy.


The initiate is strictly counselled that he should never blaspheme the name by which another knoweth his God, for it is the same force that he himself worships represented by another symbol. "The ways to God are as many as the breaths of the sons of men," says the old Arab proverb. We should have enough sympathy with the struggles of another soul towards the light not to desecrate the things that are sanctified by his hopes and endeavours, even if by nothing else. The Father of us all may understand their significance better than we do, and by His acceptance consecrate them for ever.



There are many Europeans who have a great affection for the Buddha, and have His statue in their rooms (though sometimes they confuse it with Chenresi, the stout and beaming god of good-luck). That the influence of that great Being, the Light of Asia, is noble and benignant, I would be the last to deny; but the statues of the Buddha are a different matter, and need to be approached with caution if genuine. Some of the worst black magic in the world is a debased form of Buddhism. To say this is not to insult that venerable faith, for it is only lack of opportunity that prevents the Black Mass from occupying that dubious eminence. In the Tibetan monasteries of the Dugpa sect there are temples each one of which contained literally thousands of statues of the Buddha. On various occasions one or another of these monasteries has been raided, either by rival religionists or Chinese troops, and its curios scattered. To be the possessor of one of these Buddhas, magnetised by Dugpa rites, is not a very pleasant thing.


I had a curious experience with a Buddha upon one occasion. It was an archaic soap-stone statuette, some nine inches high, and its owner had dug it up herself on the site of a Burmese city that had fallen in ruin and been swallowed by the jungle. It was placed on the floor in an angle of the stairs, and served as a doorstop upon occasion. I had a flat on the top floor, and had to pass the melancholy little Buddha each time I came in or went out, and to me it seemed a desecration to see the sacred symbol of another faith treated thus. I tried to point this out to her, and asked her how she would feel if she saw a crucifix thus utilised, but without result. Meanwhile the little Buddha sat there patiently, getting the carpet-sweeper pushed in his face and receiving libations of slops.
One day, passing upstairs bearing a bunch of flowers, I was prompted to throw before him one of the traditional marigolds of Indian devotion.


Immediately I was conscious that a link had been formed between myself and the little statue, and that it was sinister. A night or two afterwards I was returning home rather late, and as I passed the Buddha I had a feeling that there was something behind me, and looking over my shoulder, saw a ball of pale golden light about the size of a football separate itself from the Buddha and come rolling up the stairs after me. Thoroughly alarmed, and disliking this manifestation very much indeed, I immediately made a banishing gesture and the ball of light returned down the stairs and was reabsorbed into the Buddha, who, needless to say, got no more marigolds from me, and received a very wide berth until I left the flat shortly after. The experience was a singularly unpleasant one, and was a sharp lesson to me not to meddle with the sacred objects of another system unless I knew exactly what I was about. I learnt subsequently that some of these statues are consecrated with the blood of a human sacrifice.


I do not mean to imply by this that all Buddhist statues have been so treated; such consecrations are, I should imagine, comparatively rare; but I think no one who has a knowledge of the facts will deny that they occur, even as one might occasionally come across a Crucifix which had been used upside down at a Black Mass.
It is not every case of psychic disturbance, however, which originates externally. It is a well-known cosmic law that everything moves in circles, and whatever forces we send out, and whatever thought-forms we extrude from our auras, unless absorbed by the object to which they are directed, will return to us in due course. One of the most effective, and also one of the most widely practised methods of occult defence is to refuse to react to an attack, neither accepting nor neutralising the forces projected against one, and thus turning them back on their sender. We must never overlook the fact that a so-called occult attack may be evil thought-forms returning home to roost.


There are certain types of insanity in which the lunatic believes himself to be the victim of an attack by invisible beings, who threaten and abuse him and offer base or dangerous insinuations. He will describe his tormentors, or point to their position in the room. A psychic who investigates such a case can very often see the alleged entities just where the lunatic says they are. Nevertheless, the psychologist can come forward and prove beyond any reasonable doubt that the so-called "hallucinations" are due to repressed instincts giving rise to dissociated complexes of ideas in the patient's own subconscious mind.

Mastering Astral Projection: 90-day Guide to Out-of-Body Experience

Does this mean that the psychic is mistaken in thinking he perceives an astral entity? In my opinion both psychic and psychologist are right, and their findings are mutually explanatory. What the psychic sees is the dissociated complex extruded from the aura as a thought-form. A great deal of relief can be given to lunatics by breaking up the thought-forms that are surrounding them, but unfortunately the relief is short-lived; for unless the cause of the illness can be dealt with, a fresh batch of thought-forms is built up as soon as the original ones are destroyed.