Blavatsky Blogger
Taking Theosophical
ideas
into the 21st
century
Psychometry
By
William Q Judge
The name Psychometry has been given to a faculty which, it is
claimed, inheres in about seven out of every ten persons. but
it seems to me to be a designation at once, inadequate and inaccurate, because
it does not express to the mind all that is intended to be conveyed.
Expressed
in many words, the power to psychometrise means: the
power to bring up before the mental or spiritual eye, a panoramic view of all
that has occurred to the object examined.
The use of the word "psychometry" came
about because it was laid down by Professors Buchanan and
If the
word "soul" means the innermost spiritual part of the thing measured,
it will here be inadequate and incorrect; while, if it be held to mean the mere
outside or accidental material part or attribute of the object, then it is
perverted from its proper and intended use. The phenomena taken into
consideration in the pursuit of psychometry, belong
almost entirely to accidental or exterior impressions, which, while they
percolate or permeate the whole mass of the object examined, never partake of
its constitution or properties. At the same time, in psychometrising
an object, the faculty under consideration takes account of the spirit or soul
of the object. So that we see that the designation, soul-measuring, is not only
inaccurate but also redundant. Some other word ought to be selected to express
what we intend when we use the word "psychometry."
The
Science of today does not recognize psychometry,
because it does not allow that the human soul or mind has the power to produce
effects which it admits can be produced by the use of chemicals or electricity.
It is admitted that a lasting and reproduceable
impression can be made upon a piece of smooth steel by simply placing on it
another object, such as a penny, and that the washed-out images on certain
plates can be brought to light again by electricity or chemicals. But they will
not admit that a man can, by simply holding the same plates in his hand or to
his forehead, take off and bring up clearly before his
mind's eye the same old and obliterated impressions. What they do admit,
however, proves that those impressions are really lasting, and gives us ground
for hoping that one day they will admit all the rest.
If one
will erect a paper screen, say five feet square, and stand behind it, he will
find, of course, that the view in front is obstructed completely. But make a
pin-hole at the upper right-hand corner and place the eye thereat. What
follows? He sees the objects which were hitherto concealed. Make another
pin-hole at the opposite corner, five feet away, and the same objects or scene
can be observed in their entirety. This can, of course, be repeated at all
parts of the screen. If at the time that he is looking at the scene in front
through the pin-hole at the upper right-hand corner, a camera-lens is put
through a hole in the center of the screen, a photograph of all that he is
looking at through the pin-hole will be taken by the camera.
This
proves, conclusively, that the image of the object or scene in part is
impressed or thrown against every part of the screen; and that the minutest
point, or rather upon the very smallest piece of the screen, will be found a
picture in its entirety of the whole object or scene that is before it, as well
as a complete picture thrown over the whole body of the screen.
An ancient
familiar illustration will exemplify my meaning. If one holds a drop of
quicksilver on a plate, the face is reflected from it. If the drop be scattered
into a thousand smaller drops, each one reflects the face again. Or, more
easily understood yet: If five men stand affront of one man ten feet away, each
pair of eyes of the five sees the one man; proving that there exists on each
separate retina a separate and complete image of the one object.
Theosophists
and occultists from the earliest times have held that every object in the world
receives and keeps all impressions, not only of all objects that stand before
it, but also of all that happens before it; that these impressions are
indelible and can at any time be taken off by man's nervous system and from
that reported to the mind; and, therefore, that if we possess a piece of stone
from the Roman Forum, we can reproduce to the mind, as clearly as a picture,
all that happened in the Forum.
The use of
the screen-illustration and our insistence upon it,
was to show that no ridiculous or impossible claim is made when we say that the
small fragment from the Forum will give a complete picture and not a fragmental
one.
I received
from a friend, in the year 1882, a piece of the linen wrapping of an Egyptian
ibis found on the breast of a mummy. I handed it, wrapped up in tissue-paper,
to a friend who did not know what, if anything, was in the paper. He put it to
his forehead and soon began to describe Egyptian scenery; then an ancient city;
from that he went on to describe a man in Egyptian clothes sailing on a river;
then that this man went ashore into a grove where he killed a bird; then that
the bird looked like pictures of an ibis, and ended by describing the man as
returning with the bird to the city, the description of which tallied with the
picture and description of ancient Egyptian cities.
I leave
this coincidence, as science designates it, with those who can appreciate it at
its true value.
When
science begins to admit the existence in man of what the Christians call
spirit, but which some people know to be matter in a finely-divided state, then
will psychometry be studied as it should be, and
incalculable aid and dazzling light be thrown upon archaeological and
ethnological research.
But is
there any hope for Science?
The
Platonist, January, 1884
______________________
The Blavatsky
Blogger
Taking Theosophical
ideas
into the 21st
century
__________________________
Postings
to this Website reflect
the views of The Blavatsky Blogger.
Please
don’t go looking for anyone else.