Part 8

"It appears but as yesterday, and yet, nevertheless, it was at the beginning of the year 1788. We were dining with one of our brethren at the Academy--a man of considerable wealth and genius. The conversation became serious; much admiration was expressed on the revolution in thought which Voltaire had effected, and it was agreed that it was his first claim to the reputation he enjoyed. We concluded that the revolution must soon be consummated; that it was indispensable that superstition and fanaticism should give place to philosophy, and we began to calculate the probability of the period when this should be, and which of the present company should live to see it. The oldest complained that they could scarcely flatter themselves with the hope; the younger rejoiced that they might entertain this very probable expectation; and they congratulated the Academy especially for having prepared this great work, and for having been the great rallying point, the centre, and the prime mover of the liberty of thought.

"One only of the guests had not taken part in all the joyousness of this conversation, and had even gently and cheerfully checked our splendid enthusiasm. This was Cazotte, an amiable and original man, but unhappily infatuated with the reveries of the illuminati. He spoke, and with the most serious tone. 'Gentlemen,' said he, 'be satisfied; you will all see this great and sublime revolution, which you so much desire. You know that I am a little inclined to prophesy; I repeat, you will see it.' He was answered by the common rejoinder: 'One need not be a conjuror to see that.' 'Be it so; but perhaps one must be a little more than conjuror for what remains for me to tell you. Do you know what will be the consequence of this revolution--what will be the consequence to all of you, and what will be the immediate result--the well-established effect--the thoroughly-recognized consequence to all of you who are here present?' 'Ah!' said Condorcet, with his insolent and half-suppressed smile, 'let us hear--a philosopher is not sorry to encounter a prophet.' 'You, Monsieur de Condorcet--you will yield up your last breath on the floor of a dungeon; you will die from poison, which you will have taken, in order to escape from execution--from poison which the happiness of that time will oblige you to carry about your person.'

"'Monsieur de Chamfort, you will open your veins with twenty-two cuts of a razor, and yet you will not die until some months afterward.' They looked at each other, and laughed again. 'You, Monsieur Vicq d'Azir, you will not open your own veins, but you will cause yourself to be bled six times in one day, during a parozysm of the gout, in order to make more sure of your end, and you will die in the night. You, Monsieur de Nicolai, you will die upon the scaffold; you, Monsieur Bailly, on the scaffold; you, Monsieur de Malesherbes, on the scaffold.' 'Ah! God be thanked,' exclaimed Roucher, 'and what of I?' 'You! you also will die upon the scaffold.' 'Yes,' replied Chamfort, 'but when will all this happen?' 'Six years will not pass over, before all that I have said to you shall be accomplished.'

"'Here are some astonishing miracles (and, this time, it was I myself (La Harpe) who spoke), but you have not included me in your list.' 'But you will be there, as an equally extraordinary miracle; you will then be a Christian.' Vehement exclamations on all sides. 'Ah,' replied Chamfort, 'I am comforted; if we shall perish only when La Harpe shall be a Christian, we are immortal.'

"'As for that,' then observed Madame la Duchesse de Grammont, 'we women, we are happy to be counted for nothing in these revolutions: when I say for nothing, it is not that we do not always mix ourselves up with them a little; but it is a received maxim that they take no notice of us, and of our sex.' 'Your sex, ladies, will not protect you this time; and you had far better meddle with nothing, for you will be treated entirely as men, without any difference whatever.' 'But what, then, are you really telling us of, Monsieur Cazotte? You are preaching to us the end of the world.' 'I know nothing on this subject; but what I do know is, that you, Madame la Duchesse, will be conducted to the scaffold, you and many other ladies with you, in the cart of the executioner, and with your hands tied behind your backs.' 'Ah! I hope that, in that case, I shall at least have a carriage hung in black.' 'No, madame; higher ladies than yourself will go, like you, in the common car, with their hands tied behind them.' 'Higher ladies! what! the princesses of the blood?' 'Still more exalted personages.' Here a sensible emotion pervaded the whole company, and the countenance of the host was dark and lowering; they began to feel that the joke was become too serious.

"Madame de Grammont, in order to dissipate the cloud, took no notice of the reply, and contented herself with saying in a careless tone: 'You see that he will not leave me even a confessor!' 'No, madame, you will not have one--neither you, nor any one besides. The last victim to whom this favor will be afforded will be----' He stopped for a moment. 'Well! who then will be the happy mortal to whom this prerogative will be given?' ''Tis the only one which he will have then retained--and that will be the king of France.'"

The amazing sequel to this historical prediction is that ~it was verified in every detail~, as all students of the French Revolution know--~and all within the six years~, as Cazotte foretold.

LESSON XI.

DREAM PSYCHOMANCY.

The Student will have noted that in many cases mentioned in these lessons, the Psychomantic vision manifested during physical sleep. The reason of this occurrence is that in the majority of persons the physical nature, when awake, holds the attention of the individual to such an extent as to prevent him from manifesting the psychic faculties clearly. But when the physical body sinks into sleep then the field is clear for the exercise of the Astral Senses, which not being fatigued, are in fine condition to manifest. In fact the majority of persons do manifest Psychomancy during sleep, but have little or no recollection of the same when waking, beyond indistinct recollections of "dreams," etc. Still, many of you who read these lines will have a more or less clear remembrance of certain "dreams" in which you seemed to visit other places, scenes, lands, countries, etc., seeing strange faces, land-scapes, etc., and upon awakening were somewhat annoyed at having been brought back from your pleasant travels.

It is not our intention to enter into an extended consideration of the general subject of Dreams, at this time and place. We write these few lines merely for the purpose of calling your attention to the fact that the phenomena of Psychomancy very frequently manifests itself in dreams, for the reasons stated above. The principle in both the waking and dream phenomena is precisely the same, the apparent difference being that the dreamer very seldom carries back with him a clear and connected memory of his vision, while the waking person is able to impress his Astral vision upon a wide-awake physical brain, there to be remembered.

You will find several instances of Dream Psychomancy recorded in the various lessons of this work, inserted for the purpose of illustrating the several phases of the phenomena. In such cases we have made no distinction between the Psychomantic phenomena experienced in dreams on the one hand, and that experienced in the waking state on the other hand. The principle is the same in both cases, and there is no necessity for making any such distinction between the phenomena occurring under any of the several general classes. But as we still have to spare a few pages of the space allotted to us in the preparation of these lessons, we think that we should give you a few more of the many interesting cases of record.

A well-known and interesting case is that mentioned in the Proceedings of the Psychical Research Society, of London. It is related as follows:

On September 9th, 1848, at the siege of Mooltan, Major-General R. was most severely and dangerously wounded; and, supposing himself to be dying, asked one of the officers with him to take the ring off his finger and send it to his wife, who at the time was fully 150 miles distant at Ferozepore.

"On the night of September 9th, 1848," writes his wife, "I was lying on my bed, between sleeping and waking, when I distinctly saw my husband being carried off the field seriously wounded, and heard his voice, saying, 'Take this ring off my finger and send it to my wife.' All the next day I could not get the sight or the voice out of my mind. In due time I heard of General R. having been seriously wounded in the assault of Mooltan. He survived, however, and is still living. It was not for some time after the siege that I heard from General L., the officer who helped to carry my husband off the field, that the request as to the ring was actually made by him, just as I heard it at Ferozepore at that very time."

The following, related by Mrs. Crowe, is interesting, particularly in its aspect as a warning:

"A few years ago, Dr. Watson, now residing at Glasgow, dreamt that he received a summons to attend a patient at a place some miles from where he was living; that he started on horseback, and that as he was crossing a moor, he saw a bull making furiously at him, whose horns he escaped only by taking refuge on a spot inaccessible to the animal, where he waited a long time till some people, observing his situation, came to his assistance and released him. While at breakfast the following morning the summons came, and smiling at the odd co-incidence (as he thought it), he started on horseback. He was quite ignorant of the road he had to go, but by and by he arrived at the moor, which he recognized, and presently the bull appeared, coming full tilt towards him. But his dream had shown him the place of refuge, for which he instantly made, and there he spent three or four hours besieged by the animal, till the country people set him free. Dr. Watson declared that but for the dream he should not have known in what direction to run for safety."

This case is an instance of Future Time Psychomancy, as the student will readily see. Here is another case coming under the same classification. It is related by Dr. Lee:

Mrs. Hannah Green, the housekeeper of a country family in Oxfordshire, dreamt one night that she had been left alone in the house on a Sunday evening, and that hearing a knock at the door of the chief entrance, she went to it and found confronting her an ugly tramp, armed with a big club, who forced himself into the house in spite of her struggles, striking her insensible with his club during the conflict. She awoke at this point. A considerable period of time elapsed, and she had almost forgotten her dream until it was recalled in a startling manner. She was then in charge of an isolated mansion at Kensington, and on a Sunday afternoon, when the servants had taken a holiday, leaving her alone, she was startled by a loud knock at the door. At once the memory of her dream flashed before her with singular vividness and remarkable force. She knew that she was alone, but for the purpose of frightening away the intruder she lighted a lamp on the hall table, and afterward in other places in the house, and also rang the bells violently in different parts of the house. She also made sure that the doors and windows were fastened. She succeeded in scaring off the man, by making him believe that the house was occupied by the family, or several people at least, but not until she had thrown up the window over the stair landing, and there to her intense terror saw the identical man of her dream, armed with the same club, and demanding an entrance. Had she not been warned by the dream of several years previous, she would have met with a fate such as she had dreamed of.

The following case of Dream Psychomancy, which is a good example of Astral Projection during sleep, is related by a correspondent of the Psychical Research Society, as follows:

"One morning in December, 1836, he had the following dream, or, he would prefer to call it, revelation. He found himself suddenly at the gate of Major N. M.'s avenue, many miles from his home. Close to him was a group of persons, one of whom was a woman with a basket on her arm, the rest men, four of whom were tenants of his own, while the others were unknown to him. Some of the strangers seemed to be assaulting H. W., one of his tenants, and he interfered. 'I struck violently at the man on my left, and then with greater violence at the man's face on my right. Finding, to my surprise, that I had not knocked down either, I struck again and again with all the violence of a man frenzied at the sight of my poor friend's murder. To my great amazement I saw my arms, although visible to my eye, were without substance, and the bodies of the men I struck at and my own came close together after each blow through the shadowy arms I struck with. My blows were delivered with more extreme violence than I ever think I exerted, but I became painfully convinced of my incompetency. I have no consciousness of what happened after this feeling of unsubstantiality came upon me.' Next morning A. experienced the stiffness and soreness of violent bodily exercise, and was informed by his wife that in the course of the night he had much alarmed her by striking out again and again with his arms in a terrific manner, 'as if fighting for his life.' He, in turn, informed her of his dream, and begged her to remember the names of those actors in it who were known to him. On the morning of the following day (Wednesday) A. received a letter from his agent, who resided in the town close to the scene of the dream, informing that his tenant had been found on Tuesday morning at Major N. M.'s gate, speechless and apparently dying from a fracture of the skull, and that there was no trace of the murderers. That night A. started for the town, and arrived there on Thursday morning. On his way to a meeting of magistrates he met the senior magistrate of that part of the country, and requested him to give orders for the arrest of the three men whom, besides H. W., he had recognized in his dream, and to have them examined separately. This was at once done. The three men gave identical accounts of the occurrence, and all named the woman who was with them. She was then arrested, and gave precisely similar testimony. They said that between eleven and twelve on the Monday night they had been walking homewards altogether along the road, when they were overtaken by three strangers, two of whom savagely assaulted H. W., while the other prevented his friends from interfering. H. W. did not die, but was never the same man afterwards; he subsequently emigrated."

Stead relates the following case, which was imparted to him as a truthful and correct account of the vision of a murder seen in all of its details by a brother of the murdered man. It is a case of Astral Projection, undoubtedly:

"St. Eglos is situated about ten miles from the Atlantic, and not quite so far from the old market town of Trebodwina. Hart and George Northey were brothers, and from childhood their lives had been marked by the strongest brotherly affection. Hart and George Northey had never been separated from their birth until George became a sailor, Hart meantime joining his father in business. On the 8th of February, 1840, while George Northey's ship was lying in port at St. Helena, he had the following strange dream:

"'Last night I dreamt my brother was at Trebodwina Market, and that I was with him, quite close by his side, during the whole of the market transactions. Although I could see and hear everything which passed around me, I felt sure that it was not my bodily presence which thus accompanied him, but my shadow, or rather my spiritual presence, for he seemed quite unconscious that I was near him. I felt that my being thus present in this strange way betokened some hidden danger which he was destined to meet, and which I knew my presence could not avert, for I could not speak to warn him of his peril.'"

The brother having collected considerable money then started on his ride homeward. The story then continues:

"'My terror gradually increased as Hart approached the hamlet of Polkerrow, until I was in a perfect frenzy, frantically desirous, yet unable, to warn my brother in some way and prevent him going further. I suddenly became aware of two dark shadows thrown across the road. I felt my brother's hour had come, and I was powerless to aid him! Two men appeared, whom I instantly recognized as notorious poachers, who lived in a lonely wood near St. Eglos. The men wished him "Good-night, maister," civilly enough. He replied, and entered into conversation with them about some work he had promised them. After a few minutes they asked him for some money. The elder of the two brothers, who was standing near the horse's head, said, "Mr. Northey, we know you have just come from Trebodwina market with plenty of money in your pockets; we are desperate men, and you bean't going to leave this place until we've got that money, so hand over." My brother made no reply, except to slash at him with the whip and spur the horse at him.

"'The younger of the ruffians instantly drew a pistol and fired. Hart dropped lifeless from the saddle, and one of the villains held him by the throat with a grip of iron for some minutes, as though to make assurance doubly sure, and crush out any particle of life my poor brother might have left. The murderers secured the horse to a tree in the orchard, and, having rifled the corpse, they dragged it up the stream, concealing it under the overhanging banks of the water-course. They then carefully covered over all marks of blood on the road, and hid the pistol in the thatch of a disused hut close to the roadside; then, setting the horse free to gallop home alone, they decamped across the country to their own cottage.'

"The vessel left St. Helena next day, and reached Plymouth in due course. George Northey had during the whole of the voyage home, never altered his conviction that Hart had been killed as he had dreamt, and that retribution was by his means to fall on the murderers."