Possession, Demoniacal And Other

by T K Oesterreich

  The Manchu women believe firmly in these spirit-apparitions and seek as soon as they are in any doubt to procure a decision in this way.

  Often mediums armed with a long lance seem to be riding a horse or tiger and execute wild dances on the wooden plank which represents the sofa in Chinese houses. This is called the t’iao-hu-shen (tiger-spirit-hopping). During the dance the tiger or horse utters terrifying cries….

  Should a man dare to look on secretly during the séance, the lance pierces the window, snatches his headgear from him and carries it off into the room where all the assembled women members of the family jerk round one after another in an apparently indefatigable goose-step.

  According to some Chinese to whom Liao-chai’s text was submitted and who were consulted in the matter, spirit-hopping is still performed in the same way in modern Pekin. This dance enjoys great favour amongst the women of the imperial palace and must be executed at least once a year in the dwellings of the princes and notables of the imperial court.2

  Mrs. Howard Taylor, with whose accounts of spontaneous possession in China we have already dealt, also had experience of possession in mediums from which it emerges that, as in India, the possession of Chinese mediums has a strongly marked character of compulsion, and is, moreover, extremely exhausting to them. Just as it is said that the Batak mediums of Sumatra when affected by particularly violent states die young, we find in Mrs. Howard Taylor a case of death attributable to possession. European doctors residing in China would earn our gratitude by investigating more narrowly such cases where the organism breaks down under the influence of compulsive states. Nor must we forget Father Tranquille of Loudon who also died under possession.1 Mrs. Taylor writes of the cultivation of possession:

  Specially in North China is this (the practice of spiritualism) common, where Taoist and Buddhist priests alike obtain great influence and financial profit from communications, real or pretended, with the unseen world…. Men and women who in western lands would be described as spirit-mediums abound. There is scarcely a village in the Shan-si plain without one. Some calamity befalls a family—illness or disaster. Send for the medium at once. She comes, and is respectfully welcomed. Incense is offered before the idols, for the medium always plays into the hands of the priests. She sits down, usually in the seat of honour in the guest-house, and soon relapses into a curious trance. This is done by yielding the whole being, absolutely, to the familiar spirit. The medium just waits, like an empty vessel, for the advent of the influence desired. Suddenly:

  “Shen-lai-liao, shen-lai-liao!” The spirit has come!

  The medium is now possessed, filled, transported. She speaks in a new voice, with great authority, and declares what the trouble is and how it may be remedied. More paper money and incense are burned, and more prostrations made before the idols; while gradually, with horrible contortions, she comes out of the trance again.2

  A striking feature in these cases is the apparent inability of the mediums to shake off the control of the terrible power to which they have yielded. Unsought, and contrary to their own desire, the overmastering influence comes back, no matter how they may struggle against it. One case of the kind occurred near P’ing Yang about this time, and is recorded by the missionary who witnessed it.

  A well-known medium, who for many years had made his living by the practice, finding his health and nervous system greatly impaired, decided to give it up. Though only sixty years of age, he was so worn and haggard that he looked at least twenty years older. The struggle was long and terrible. In spite of all his efforts, the old tyranny reasserted itself again and again, until deliverance seemed impossible. He was about to give up in despair, when providentially he came into contact with some P’ing Yang Christians. Just how much he understood and received of the Gospel is not known, but through prayer and a measure of faith in Christ he obtained considerable relief.

  But a night came when he was returning from the city by himself, and had to pass a sacred tree in a lonely spot, believed to be the dwelling-place of demons. As he drew near, an overwhelming impulse came upon him to fall down and worship as in former times. Desperately he resisted, but the inward urging was too strong. He stopped, fell on his knees, and bowed his forehead repeatedly to the ground. Immediately the old possession came back in redoubled force, and the misery he suffered was appalling.

  Those about him sent for the Christians, and later on for the missionary, from whose memory the despairing look in those poor, hunted eyes will never be effaced. He was nearing the end then, for the physical and the mental anguish of his condition were more than the shattered powers could withstand. But prayer again prevailed. The distressed soul turned to Christ for deliverance, and shortly afterwards, in peace that was not of this world, he died.1

  According to Bastian there is a verbal distinction between possession by evil spirits and possession by the nymphs (soothsaying), both in Chinese and Japanese.2

  In many cases the possessing spirits amongst the Chinese are animal in character. This is what von der Goltz says:

  In Tientsin there exists a popular belief in the superhuman qualities of the five families of animals. The professional mediums (k’an-hsiang, incense-burners) make their living by them. In Suchuang near Tientsin lives an old woman named Chêng. At the beginning of this month she suddenly fell ill and asserted that she was possessed by a member of the five animal families.. The spirit of the possessed began to speak and said that his name was Lin (Lin is the word for a willow-tree, but in this case means serpent) a native of the lower Yangtse valley. The son of the possessed woman then invited an “incense-seer”named Yên to come into the house. When Yen came the snake cried out: “It is very good that Master Yen is here, I have been waiting for him for a long time. We are five in all of the Lin family, come from the valley of the Yangtse, five have for the moment gone elsewhere and will return at the end of four or five days, then we will go southwards together.” Thereupon Yen replied: “But this is a woman and the mother of a family; how can you dare to enter into her?” The snake replied: “Can you then find me another abode?” “We have here a very fine temple to the god of war, you can live there for the time being until you leave with your relatives.” “The god of war is a true god, how should I dare to do that?” “That does not matter, I will give you an incense-taper with which you can enter the temple in all security.” Then the snake left the woman Chêng who immediately became well again.

  Through the building of the imperial pleasure-palaces near Wan-shou-shan (west of Pekin) a great number of snakes have, according to the inhabitants of the capital, been deprived of their dwelling-places; nothing remains for these animals except to seek a new habitation in man, and the inhabitants drive a roaring trade in consequence.3

  From eastern Asia we now turn to European civilization together with its derivative in North America. Here too we still find “artificial possession” at the present day, or, more exactly, we rediscover it, for in the period of “Enlightenment” it had all but disappeared. But since the middle nineteenth century it has once more attained to a much enhanced measure of consideration and practice; it finds no place in orthodox culture, but under the surface there is a pretty strong current which results in the rendering of a sort of cult to these states. This is spiritualism. Unlike belief in the devil and in possession as professed by the Catholic Church, this is not a belief founded on centuries of authority, but on relatively new convictions. Spiritualism originated towards the middle of the nineteenth century in America and from thence passed to Europe where it has become more or less widely disseminated in all countries.

  There is a remarkable contrast between the various civilized nations. The classical conception of the universe which does not recognize free spirits in the world, has won its most comprehensive victory in Germany, where in consequence of the riot of speculation in the Romantic period the conditions were most favourable to victory. This has not, however, been complete.

  Du Prel has become the most scien
tific thinker of the proclaimed spiritualists. Amongst others we should mention C. Z. Zoellner, the founder of astrophysics, as well as the philosopher Fechner, who was manifestly and completely convinced of the possibility of intercourse with the spirits of the dead, although he considered it a derangement of the normal relations between the present and the Beyond. Amongst psychologists Messer now seems desirous of leaving open the possibility of such communication,1 which would entail the concession of a partial return to the earlier doctrine of possession.

  Anglo-Saxon civilization has shown itself much more inclined to the revival of the mediæval conception of life. William James, the most important psychologist and philosopher that America has yet produced, may be considered as a partisan of spiritualism, although as might be expected from a person of his scientific eminence he gave a wide berth to dogmatism.1 In England physicists of the importance of Crookes and Lodge have adhered to spiritualism entirely on the ground of the peculiar states of possession seen in certain mediums, but yet more characteristic of the Anglo-Saxon countries than these single names is the vast spread of the spiritualist movement. It is still more surprising that the land which gave birth to the new physiological materialism and indeed to the European movement of enlightenment, France herself, should have proved increasingly accessible to these ideas.2

  A whole complex of abnormal phenomena, some authentic, some contested, some counterfeit, forms the basis on which the new belief in spirits is built. The works of its partisans deal with a varied collection of manifestations such as telepathy, spirit-rapping, luminous apparitions, trances, automatic writing, inspiration, mediumistic drawings, telekinesia, materialization and yet others. In various periods and circles now one and now another phenomenon prevails and is, so to speak, in fashion. Only one group interests us here: certain states of trance which are nearly related to possession. It is difficult to say how frequent in point of numbers these states may be; this depends, as we have said, on fashion, for possession is susceptible in a high degree of psychological cultivation.

  The mediumistic trances which we are about to study are nothing more nor less than the substitution of another personality for the normal. These are not states of tumultuous excitement such as were presented by the energumens, but the essential factor, the transformation of the personality, is reproduced in them. By these states of trance the modern world joins hands with that of primitive religion; spiritualism and the Bataks alike believe in the possibility of intercourse with deified ancestors. It is a definitely religious movement, its followers receiving the mediums’ manifestations with astonished awe and admiration; they are filled with intense fervour and deep inward conviction, on account of their belief in a future life and the possibility of intercourse with those who have “passed over.”1 For this reason the movement renders it possible for investigators to study on living subjects manifestations of the religious life which would otherwise belong to the past, or rather it might so permit if spiritualist circles were less prejudiced against scientific research and conversely if psychologists showed a greater interest in this mine of remarkable psychological phenomena.

  A few examples will serve to evidence the nature of spiritualist possession. The cases which have been thoroughly studied are much richer in psychic material than the mass of those which occur daily in spiritualistic séances when someone present—more often than not a woman—falls into a somnambulistic state and “a spirit” then speaks through her.

  A particularly well observed and highly complex case is that of Hélène Smith, pseudonym of a Genevese medium whom Flournoy subjected to a thorough study. She manifested a whole series of states of spiritualistic possession—i.e., states in which the organism was alleged to be occupied by strange spirits. Spiritualists often speak of “incarnations.” Now it was the spirit of Marie Antoinette, now that of a celebrated eighteenth-century magician Cagliostro, now those of alleged Martians. We have already reproduced the account which Flournoy gives of the incarnation of Cagliostro (p. 18).

  Jung has described another case, not, however, of the same rich complexity, concerning a girl:

  In her somnambulistic conversations she copied with extreme skill deceased relations and friends with all their peculiarities, so that she made a lasting impression on impartial observers. She also, for instance, copied persons known to her by description only, and this in so striking a manner that those who witnessed it could not deny her at the least a very remarkable dramatic talent. Gradually to mere words were added gestures which finally led to “attitudes passionnelles” and even dramatic scenes. She assumed attitudes of prayer and ecstasy in which she spoke with shining eyes and a really seductive diction, ardent and passionate. She then used only literary German which, in marked contrast to her uncertain and confused bearing in the waking state, she spoke with the utmost confidence and mastery. Her movements were quite free, full of gracious dignity and reflected her changing moods in the most admirable way.2

  No fundamentally new phenomenon appears in these descriptions, they are somnambulistic imitations either of historical personages or else of pure phantasies. In my Phänomenologie des Ich I have already examined in detail the psychological genesis of these states, and shall therefore not return to them here. I can only give in a general way examples of the form assumed by possession in modern spiritualism.

  In some—although rare—cases, there occur states of possession in which the individual preserves his understanding and does not fall into somnambulism.

  Hélène Smith also had such states. Here is a particularly well described example in which we see the recrudescence of the primitive idea that possession is caused by a strange spirit possessed of a sort of etheric body penetrating spatially into the body of the possessed.

  … There are also cases of conscious fusion, in which Hélène undergoes and experiences a coalescence between her cœnesthesia and that of Leopold (Cagliostro). It is a state of consciousness sui generis, of which no adequate description is possible, and which can only be imagined by analogy with those curious states, exceptional in the normal waking life but less rare in dreams, when we feel ourselves change and become another person.

  Hélène has more than once told me that she has had the impression of becoming and of momentarily being Leopold. This happens to her during the night or particularly on waking in the morning; she first has a fugitive vision of her cavalier, and then he seems to pass gradually into her, she feels him as it were invade and penetrate her whole organic substance as if he became herself or she him. It is, in short, a spontaneous incarnation without loss of consciousness or memory, and she would certainly give no other description of her cœnesthesic impressions if at the end of the séances where she has personified Cagliostro with taut muscles, thickened neck, bust drawn up, etc., she preserved the memory of what she had felt during that metamorphosis. These hybrid states in which the consciousness and powers of reflection of the normal self persist while the second personality takes possession of the organism are of extreme interest to the psychologist. Unfortunately, either because they are generally blotted out or because the mediums who remember them cannot or will not give an account of them, we rarely obtain detailed descriptions—apart from analogous observations gleaned from the insane.1

  In the case described by Jung these semi-somnambulistic and lucid states of possession show the following traits: the girl begins by assuming a character totally different from her ordinary one. and which is then fully developed in somnambulism. She—

  … finds herself for some time before and after the fits of somnambulism proper in a state predominantly characterized by what must be described as “absent-mindedness.” The patient only shares in the conversation with half an ear, replies in a preoccupied manner, and is often subject to all sorts of hallucinations; her bearing is dignified, her glance ecstatic and extremely brilliant. Closer observation shows a profound change in her whole character; she is grave, reserved; when she speaks it is always of serious matters; in this stat
e she can express herself forcefully and with penetration, so that one is almost reduced to wondering if this is really a little girl of fifteen and a half years; one has the impression of dealing with a mature woman possessed at the least of outstanding dramatic talent. The patient’s gravity and earnestness are entirely due to the fact that she is, according to her own statement, on the borders of this world and the next and is as closely in touch with the spirits of the dead as with living men. In effect her conversation is divided between replies to objectively real questions and to hallucinations.1

  The semi-somnambulistic possession in a case related by Freimark is both striking and instructive. It concerns a young sculptor who for a long period served as a medium for incarnations. In this state he was subject to semi-somnambulism in which visiting spirits seemed to take possession of his body. One of these spirits, an alleged Circassian named Tia, so charmed a friend of the sculptor that he fell in love with her in him, and the sculptor remained in a state of trance for half a day at a time in order to please his friend. Amongst the spirits which seemed to manifest themselves were others whose characters were a source of unpleasantness. The case was obviously one of semi-somnambulism or, as we have said above, of lucid possession.