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DIVINATION & AUGURY IN A MODERN LIGHT 191 mesmerized clairvoyants in maintaining that they saw and heard other invisible beings, the spiritualistic camp maintained the existence of these beings as a fact, and then went beyond the mesmerists in affirming that a susceptible subject can be mesmerized not only by living incarnated operators, but also by these unseen beings, provided these unseen beings have certain conditions allowed them, viz., tranquility or passivity of the minds of all present, absence of disturbing influences in the ether, like strong light, the presence of harmonious vibration of the air as caused by music, perfumes and incense, and the presence of the bodily emanations (or magnetism) of certain others in the circle.
Once admit this possibility as a fact and nearly every case of augury becomes easily explained. The unseen spirits can automatically move the mediumistic fingers to draw, the tongue and lips to give utterances, the hand to draw a card or a lot ; and if a man's movements, why not also, a fortiori, a bird's, a beast's? They can make a bird to fly across your path or a beast to howl. But the spiritualists do more then this. They have definitely decided that these unseen intelligences are those of human spirits disincarnated, not necessarily dead, possibly severed, in the form of a spirit-body or "double" from the flesh, temporarily, by a trance, abstraction, or deep slumber-but still human. This theory if it can only once be accepted by an enquiring mind through some personal experience-will throw another flood of clear light on the augural practices of the ancient Etruscans and Romans,
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