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SECOND SIGHT

A Study of Natural and Induced Clairvoyance

by

SEPHARIAL

Author of "A Manual of Astrology," "Prognostic Astronomy," "A Manual
of Occultism," "Kabalistic Astrology," "The Kabala of Numbers,"
Etc., Etc.







London
William Rider & Son, Limited
1912

Richard Clay & Sons, Limited,
Brunswick Street, Stamford Street, S.E.,
and Bungay, Suffolk.





CONTENTS

Introduction                                 7
Chapter I.     The Scientific Position      10
Chapter II.    Materials and Conditions     21
Chapter III.   The Faculty of Seership      29
Chapter IV.    Preliminaries and Practice   39
Chapter V.     Kinds of Vision              51
Chapter VI.    Obstacles to Clairvoyance    59
Chapter VII.   Symbolism                    67
Chapter VIII.  Allied Psychic Phases        76
Chapter IX.    Experience and Use           84
Conclusion                                  93


INTRODUCTION

Few words will be necessary by way of preface to this book,
which is designed as an introduction to a little understood and
much misrepresented subject.

I have not here written anything which is intended to displace
the observations of other authors on this subject, nor will it be
found that anything has been said subversive of the conclusions
arrived at by experimentalists who have essayed the study
of clairvoyant phenomena in a manner that is altogether
commendable, and who have sought to place the subject on a
demonstrable and scientific basis. I refer to the proceedings of
the Society for Psychical Research.

In the following pages I have endeavoured to indicate the nature
of the faculty of Second Sight or Clairvoyance, the means of its
development, the use of suitable media or agents for this
purpose, and the kind of results that may be expected to follow
a regulated effort in this direction. I have also sought to show
that the development of the psychic faculties may form an
orderly step in the process of human unfoldment and perfectibility.

As far as the nature and scope of this little work will allow, I
have sought to treat the subject on a broad and general basis
rather than pursue more particular and possibly more attractive
scientific lines. What I have here said is the result of a personal
experience of some years in this and other forms of psychic
development and experimentation. My conclusions are given
for what they are worth, and I have no wish to persuade my
readers to my view of the nature and source of these abnormal
phenomena. The reader is at liberty to form his own theory in
regard to them, but such theory should be inclusive of all the
known facts. The theories depending on hypnotic suggestion
may be dismissed as inadequate. There appear to remain only
the inspirational theory of direct revelation and the theory of the
world-soul enunciated by the Occultists. I have elected in
favour of the latter for reasons which, I think, will be
conspicuous to those who read these pages.

I should be the last to allow the study of psychism to usurp the
legitimate place in life of intellectual and spiritual pursuits, and
I look with abhorrence upon the flippant use made of the
psychic faculties by a certain class of pseudo-occultists who
serve up this kind of thing with their five o'clock tea. But I
regard an ordered psychism as a most valuable accessory to
intellectual and spiritual development and as filling a natural
place in the process of unfoldment between that intellectualism
that is grounded in the senses and that higher intelligence which
receives its light from within. From this view-point the
following pages are written, and will, I trust, prove helpful.


CHAPTER I.

THE SCIENTIFIC POSITION

It would perhaps be premature to make any definite pronouncement
as to the scientific position in regard to the psychic phenomenon
known as "scrying," and certainly presumptuous on my part
to cite an authority from among the many who have examined
this subject, since all are not agreed upon the nature and
source of the observed phenomena. Their names are, moreover,
already identified with modern scientific research and theory,
so that to associate them with experimental psychology would
be to lend colour to the idea that modern science has recognized
this branch of knowledge. Nothing, perhaps, is further from
the fact, and while it cannot in any way be regarded as derogatory
to the highest scientist to be associated with others, of less
scientific attainment but of equal integrity, in this comparatively new
field of enquiry, it may lead to popular error to institute a connection.
It is still fresh in the mind how the Darwinian hypothesis was utterly
misconceived by the popular mind, the suggestion that man was descended
from the apes being generally quoted as a correct expression of
Darwin's theory, whereas he never suggested any such thing,
but that man and the apes had a common ancestor, which makes
of the ape rather a degenerate lemur than a human ancestor.
Other and more prevalent errors will occur to the reader, these
being due to the use of what is called "the evidence of the
senses"; and of all criteria the evidence of sensation is perhaps
the most faulty. Logical inference from deductive or inductive
reasoning has often enough been a good monitor to sense-perception,
and has, moreover, pioneered the man of science to correct
knowledge on more than one occasion. But as far as we know
or can learn from the history of human knowledge, our senses
have been the chiefest source of error. It is with considerable
caution that the scientist employs the evidence from sense
alone, and in the study of experimental psychology it is the sense
which has first to be corrected, and which, in fact, forms the great
factor in the equation. A person informs me that he can see a vision in
the crystal ball before him, and although I am in the same relation
with the "field" as he, I cannot see anything except accountable
reflections. This fact does not give any room for contradicting him or
any right to infer that it is all imagination. It is futile to say the
vision does not exist. If he sees it, it does exist so far as he is
concerned. There is no more a universal community of sensation than of
thought. When I am at work my own thought is more real than any
impression received through the sense organs. It is louder than the
babel of voices or the strains of instrumental music, and more
conspicuous than any object upon which the eye may fall. These external
impressions are admitted or shut out at will. I then know that
my thought is as real as my senses, that the images of thought
are as perceptible as those exterior to it and in every way as
objective and real. The thought-form has this advantage,
however, that it can be given a durable or a temporary existence,
and can be taken about with me without being liable to impost
as "excess luggage." In the matter of evidence in psychological
questions, therefore, sense perceptions are only second-rate
criteria and ought to be received with caution.

Almost all persons dream, and while dreaming they see and
hear, touch and taste, without questioning for a moment the
reality of these experiences. The dreaming person loses sight of
the fact that he is in a bedroom of a particular house, that he has
certain relations with others sleeping in the same house. He
loses sight of the fact that his name is, let us say, Henry, and
that he is famous for the manufacture of a particular brand of
soap or cheese. For him, and as long as it lasts, the dream is the
one reality. Now the question of the philosopher has always
been: which is the true dream, the sleeping dream or the waking
dream? The fact that the one is continuous of itself while the
other is not, and that we always fall into a new dream but
always wake to the same reality, has given a permanent value to
the waking or external life, and an equally fictitious one to the
interior or dreaming life. But what if the dream life became
more or less permanent to the exclusion of all other memories
and sensations? We should then get a case of insanity in which
hallucination would be symptomic. (The dream state is more or
less permanent with certain poetical temperaments, and if there
is any insanity attaching to it at all, it consists in the inability
to react.) Imagination, deep thought and grief are as much
anaesthetic as chloroform. But