Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 by S.M. Fuller
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S.M. Fuller >> Summer on the Lakes, in 1843
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I stood quite immersed in thee,
Thou angel figure above thy grave mound.
Willingly would I have exchanged with thee,
Willingly given up to thee my earthly luck,
Which those around praised as the blessing of heaven.
I prayed upon thy grave
For one blessing only,
That the wings of this angel
Might henceforward
On the hot path of life,
Waft around me the peace of heaven.
There standest thou, angel, now; my prayer was heard.
She was, in consequence of her marriage, removed to Kuernbach, a place on
the borders of Wuertemberg and Baden. Its position is low, gloomy, shut
in by hills; opposite in all the influences of earth and atmosphere to
those of Prevorst and its vicinity.
Those of electrical susceptibility are often made sick or well by change
of place. Papponi, (of whom Amoretti writes,) a man of such
susceptibility, was cured of convulsive attacks by change of place.
Penriet could find repose while in one part of Calabria, only by
wrapping himself in an oil-cloth mantle, thus, as it were, isolating
himself. That great sense of sidereal and imponderable influences, which
afterward manifested itself so clearly in the Seherin, probably made
this change of place very unfavorable to her. Later, it appeared, that
the lower she came down from the hills, the more she suffered from
spasms, but on the heights her tendency to the magnetic state was the
greatest.
But also mental influences were hostile to her. Already withdrawn from
the outward life, she was placed, where, as consort and housekeeper to a
laboring man, the calls on her care and attention were incessant. She
was obliged hourly to forsake her inner home, to provide for an outer,
which did not correspond with it.
She bore this seven months, though flying to solitude, whenever outward
relations permitted. But longer it was not possible to conceal the
inward verity by an outward action, "the body sank beneath the attempt,
and the spirit took refuge in the inner circle."
One night she dreamed that she awoke and found the dead body of the
preacher T. by her side; that at the same time her father, and two
physicians were considering what should be done for her in a severe
sickness. She called out that "the dead friend would help her; she
needed no physician." Her husband, hearing her cry out in sleep, woke
her.
This dream was presage of a fever, which seized her next morning. It
lasted fourteen days with great violence, and was succeeded by attacks
of convulsion and spasm. This was the beginning of that state of bodily
suffering and mental exaltation in which she passed the remaining seven
years of her life.
She seems to have been very injudiciously treated in the first stages of
her illness. Bleeding was resorted to, as usual in cases of extreme
suffering where the nurses know not what else to do, and, as usual, the
momentary relief was paid for by an increased nervousness, and capacity
for suffering.
Magnetic influences from other persons were of frequent use to her, but
they were applied without care as to what characters and constitutions
were brought into connexion with hers, and were probably in the end just
as injurious to her as the loss of blood. At last she became so weak, so
devoid of all power in herself, that her life seemed entirely dependent
on artificial means and the influence of other men.
There is a singular story of a woman in the neighborhood, who visited
her once or twice, apparently from an instinct that she should injure
her, and afterwards, interfered in the same way, and with the same
results, in the treatment of her child.
This demoniacal impulse and power, which were ascribed to the Canidias
of ancient superstition, may be seen subtly influencing the members of
every-day society. We see persons led, by an uneasy impulse, towards the
persons and the topics where they are sure they can irritate and annoy.
This is constantly observable among children, also in the closest
relations between grown up people who have not yet the government of
themselves, neither are governed by the better power.
There is also an interesting story of a quack who treated her with
amulets, whose parallel may be found in the action of such persons in
common society. It is an expression of the power that a vulgar and
self-willed nature will attain over one delicate, poetical, but not yet
clear within itself; outwardly it yields to a power which it inwardly
disclaims.
A touching little passage is related of a time in the first years, when
she seemed to be better, so much so as to receive an evening visit from
some female friends. They grew merry and began to dance; she remained
sad and thoughtful. When they stopped, she was in the attitude of
prayer. One of her intimates, observing this, began to laugh. This
affected her so much, that she became cold and rigid like a corpse. For
some time they did not hear her breathe, and, when she did, it was with
a rattling noise. They applied mustard poultices, and used foot and hand
baths; she was brought back to life, but to a state of great suffering.
She recognized as her guardian spirit, who sometimes magnetized her or
removed from her neighborhood substances that were hurtful to her, her
grandmother; thus coinciding with the popular opinion that traits
reappear in the third generation.
Now began still greater wonders; the second sight, numerous and various
visits from spirits and so forth.
The following may be mentioned in connection with theories and
experiments current among ourselves.
"A friend, who was often with her at this time, wrote to me (Kerner):
When I, with my finger, touch her _on the forehead between the
eyebrows_, she says each time something that bears upon the state of my
soul. Some of these sentences I record.
"Keep thy soul so that thou mayst bear it in thy hands."
"When thou comest into a world of bustle and folly, hold the Lord fast
in thy heart."
"If any seek to veil from thee thy true feeling, pray to God for grace."
"Permit not thyself to stifle the light that springs up within thyself."
"Think often of the cross of Jesus; go forth and embrace it."
"As the dove found a resting-place in Noah's ark, so wilt thou, also,
find a resting-place which God has appointed for thee."
When she was put under the care of Kerner, she had been five years in
this state, and was reduced to such weakness, that she was, with
difficulty, sustained from hour to hour.
He thought at first it would be best to take no notice of her magnetic
states and directions, and told her he should not, but should treat her
with regard to her bodily symptoms, as he would any other invalid.
"At this time she fell every evening into magnetic sleep, and gave
orders about herself; to which, however, those round her no longer paid
attention.
I was now called in. I had never seen this woman, but had heard many
false or perverted accounts of her condition. I must confess that I
shared the evil opinion of the world as to her illness; that I advised
to pay no attention to her magnetic situation, and the orders she gave
in it; in her spasms, to forbear the laying of hands upon her; to deny
her the support of persons of stronger nerves; in short, to do all
possible to draw her out of the magnetic state, and to treat her with
attention, but with absolutely none but the common medical means.
These views were shared by my friend, Dr. Off, of Loewenstein, who
continued to treat her accordingly. But without good results.
Hemorrhage, spasms, night-sweats continued. Her gums were scorbutically
affected, and bled constantly; she lost all her teeth. Strengthening
remedies affected her like being drawn up from her bed by force; she
sank into a fear of all men, and a deadly weakness. Her death was to be
wished, but it came not. Her relations, in despair, not knowing
themselves what they could do with her, brought her, almost against my
will, to me at Weinsburg.
She was brought hither an image of death, perfectly emaciated, unable to
raise herself. Every three or four minutes, a teaspoonful of nourishment
must be given her, else she fell into faintness or convulsion. Her
somnambulic situation alternated with fever, hemorrhage, and
night-sweats. Every evening, about seven o'clock, she fell into magnetic
sleep. She then spread out her arms, and found herself, from that
moment, in a clairvoyant state; but only when she brought them back upon
her breast, did she begin to speak. (Kerner mentions that her child,
too, slept with its hands and feet crossed.) In this state her eyes were
shut, her face calm and bright. As she fell asleep, the first night
after her arrival, she asked for me, but I bade them tell her that I
now, and in future, should speak to her only when awake.
After she awoke, I went to her and declared, in brief and earnest terms,
that I should pay no attention to what she said in sleep, and that her
somnambulic state, which had lasted so long to the grief and trouble of
her family, must now come to an end. This declaration I accompanied by
an earnest appeal, designed to awaken a firm will in her to put down the
excessive activity of brain that disordered her whole system.
Afterwards, no address was made to her on any subject when in her
sleep-waking state. She was left to lie unheeded. I pursued a
homoeopathic treatment of her case. But the medicines constantly
produced effects opposite to what I expected. She now suffered less from
spasm and somnambulism, but with increasing marks of weakness and
decay. All seemed as if the end of her sufferings drew near. It was too
late for the means I wished to use. Affected so variously and powerfully
by magnetic means in the first years of her illness, she had now no life
more, so thoroughly was the force of her own organization exhausted, but
what she borrowed from others. In her now more infrequent magnetic
trance, she was always seeking the true means of her cure. It was
touching to see how, retiring within herself, she sought for help. The
physician who had aided her so little with his drugs, must often stand
abashed before this inner physician, perceiving it to be far better
skilled than himself."
After some weeks forbearance, Kerner did ask her in her sleep what he
should do for her. She prescribed a magnetic treatment, which was found
of use. Afterwards, she described a machine, of which there is a drawing
in this book, which she wished to have made for her use; it was so, and
she derived benefit from it. She had indicated such a machine in the
early stages of her disease, but at that time no one attended to her. By
degrees she grew better under this treatment, and lived at Weinsberg,
nearly two years, though in a state of great weakness, and more in the
magnetic and clairvoyant than in the natural human state.
How his acquaintance with her affected the physician, he thus expresses:
"During those last months of her abode on the earth, there remained to
her only the life of a sylph. I have been interested to record, not a
journal of her sickness, but the mental phenomena of such an almost
disembodied life. Such may cast light on the period when also our Psyche
may unfold her wings, free from bodily bonds, and the hindrances of
space and time. I give facts; each reader may interpret them in his own
way.
The manuals of animal magnetism and other writings have proposed many
theories by which to explain such. All these are known to me. I shall
make no reference to them, but only, by use of parallel facts here and
there, show that the phenomena of this case recall many in which there
is nothing marvellous, but which are manifestly grounded in our common
existence. Such apparitions cannot too frequently, if only for moments,
flash across that common existence, as electric lights from the higher
world.
Frau H. was, previous to my magnetic treatment, in so deep a somnambulic
life, that she was, in fact, never rightly awake, even when she seemed
to be; or rather, let us say, she was at all times more awake than
others are; for it is strange to term sleep this state which is just
that of the clearest wakefulness. Better to say she was immersed in the
inward state.
In this state and the consequent excitement of the nerves, she had
almost wholly lost organic force, and received it only by transmission
from those of stronger condition, principally from their eyes and the
ends of the fingers. The atmosphere and nerve communications of others,
said she, bring me the life which I need; they do not feel it; these
effusions on which I live, would flow from them and be lost, if my
nerves did not attract them; only in this way can I live.
She often assured us that others did not suffer by loss of what they
imparted to her; but it cannot be denied that persons were weakened by
constant intercourse with her, suffered from contraction in the limbs,
trembling, &c. They were weakened also in the eyes and pit of the
stomach. From those related to her by blood, she could draw more benefit
than from others, and, when very weak, from them only; probably on
account of a natural affinity of temperament. She could not bear to have
around her nervous and sick persons; those from whom she could gain
nothing made her weaker.
Even so it is remarked that flowers soon lose their beauty near the
sick, and suffer peculiarly under the contact or care of some persons.
Other physicians, beside myself, can vouch that the presence of some
persons affected her as a pabulum vitae, while, if left with certain
others or alone, she was sure to grow weaker.
From the air, too, she seemed to draw a peculiar ethereal nourishment of
the same sort; she could not remain without an open window in the
severest cold of winter.[1]
[Footnote 1: Near us, this last winter, a person who suffered, and
finally died, from spasms like those of the Seherin,
also found relief from having the windows open, while
the cold occasioned great suffering to his attendants.]
The spirit of things, about which we have no perception, was sensible to
her, and had influence on her; she showed this sense of the spirit of
metals, plants, animals, and men. Imponderable existences, such as the
various colors of the ray, showed distinct influences upon her. The
electric fluid was visible and sensible to her when it was not to us.
Yea! what is incredible! even the written words of men she could
discriminate by touch.[2]
[Footnote 2: Facts of the same kind are asserted of late among
ourselves, and believed, though "incredible."]
These experiments are detailed under their several heads in the book.
From her eyes flowed a peculiar spiritual light which impressed even
those who saw her for a very short time. She was in each relation more
spirit than human.
Should we compare her with anything human, we would say she was as one
detained at the moment of dissolution, betwixt life and death; and who
is better able to discern the affairs of the world that lies before,
than that behind him.
She was often in situations when one who had, like her, the power of
discerning spirits, would have seen her own free from the body, which at
all times enveloped it only as a light veil. She saw herself often out
of the body; saw herself double. She would say, "I seem out of myself,
hover above my body, and think of it as something apart from myself. But
it is not a pleasant feeling, because I still sympathize with my body.
If only my soul were bound more firmly to the nerve-spirit, it might be
bound more closely with the nerves themselves; but the bond of my
nerve-spirit is always becoming looser."
She makes a distinction between spirit as the pure intelligence; soul,
the ideal of this individual man; and nerve-spirit, the dynamic of his
temporal existence.
Of this feeling of double identity, an invalid, now wasting under
nervous disease, often speaks to me. He has it when he first awakes from
sleep. Blake, the painter, whose life was almost as much a series of
trances as that of our Seherin, in his designs of the Resurrection,
represents spirits as rising from, or hovering over, their bodies in the
same way.
Often she seemed quite freed from her body, and to have no more sense of
its weight.
As to artificial culture, or dressing, (dressur,) Frau H. had nothing of
it. She had learned no foreign tongue, neither history, nor geography,
nor natural philosophy, nor any other of those branches now imparted to
those of her sex in their schools. The Bible and hymn-book were,
especially in the long years of her sickness, her only reading: her
moral character was throughout blameless; she was pious without
fanaticism. Even her long suffering, and the peculiar manner of it, she
recognized as the grace of God; as she expresses in the following
verses:
Great God! how great is thy goodness,
To me thou hast given faith and love,
Holding me firm in the distress of my sufferings.
In the darkness of my sorrow,
I was so far led away,
As to beg for peace in speedy death.
But then came to me the mighty strong faith;
Hope came; and came eternal love;
They shut my earthly eyelids.
When, O bliss!
Dead lies my bodily frame,
But in the inmost mind a light burns up,
Such as none knows in the waking life.
Is it a light? no! but a sun of grace!
Often in the sense of her sufferings, while in the magnetic trance, she
made prayers in verse, of which this is one:
Father, hear me!
Hear my prayer and supplication.
Father, I implore thee,
Let not thy child perish!
Look on my anguish, my tears.
Shed hope into my heart, and still its longing,
Father, on thee I call; have pity!
Take something from me, the sick one, the poor one.
Father, I leave thee not,
Though sickness and pain consume me.
If I the spring's light,
See only through the mist of tears,
Father, I leave thee not.
These verses lose their merit of a touching simplicity in an unrhymed
translation; but they will serve to show the habitual temper of her
mind.
"As I was a maker of verses," continues Dr. Kerner, "it was easy to say,
Frau H. derived this talent from my magnetic influence; but she made
these little verses before she came under my care." Not without deep
significance was Apollo distinguished as being at once the God of poesy,
of prophecy, and the medical art. Sleep-waking develops the powers of
seeing, healing, and poesy. How nobly the ancients understood the inner
life; how fully is it indicated in their mysteries?
I know a peasant maiden, who cannot write, but who, in the magnetic
state, speaks in measured verse.
Galen was indebted to his nightly dreams for a part of his medical
knowledge.
The calumnies spread about Frau H. were many and gross; this she well
knew. As one day she heard so many of these as to be much affected by
them, we thought she would express her feelings that night in the
magnetic sleep, but she only said "they can affect my body, but not my
spirit." Her mind, raised above such assaults by the consciousness of
innocence, maintained its tranquillity and dwelt solely on spiritual
matters.
Once in her sleep-waking she wrote thus:
When the world declares of me
Such cruel ill in calumny,
And to your ears it finds a way,
Do you believe it, yea or nay?
I answered:
To us thou seemest true and pure,
Let others view it as they will;
We have our assurance still
If our own sight can make us sure.
People of all kinds, to my great trouble, were always pressing to see
her. If we refused them access to the sick room, they avenged
themselves by the invention of all kinds of falsehoods.
She met all with an equal friendliness, even when it cost her bodily
pain, and those who defamed her, she often defended. There came to her
both good and bad men. She felt the evil in men clearly, but would not
censure; lifted up a stone to cast at no sinner, but was rather likely
to awake, in the faulty beings she suffered near her, faith in a
spiritual life which might make them better.
Years before she was brought to me, the earth, with its atmosphere, and
all that is about and upon it, human beings not excepted, was no more
for her. She needed, not only a magnetizer, not only a love, an
earnestness, an insight, such as scarce lies within the capacity of any
man, but also what no mortal could bestow upon her, another heaven,
other means of nourishment, other air than that of this earth. She
belonged to the world of spirits, living here herself, as more than half
spirit. She belonged to the state after death, into which she had
advanced more than half way.
It is possible she might have been brought back to an adaptation for
this world in the second or third year of her malady; but, in the fifth,
no mode of treatment could have effected this. But by care she was aided
to a greater harmony and clearness of the inward life; she enjoyed at
Weinsberg, as she after said, the richest and happiest days of this
life, and to us her abode here remains a point of light.
As to her outward form, we have already said it seemed but a thin veil
about her spirit. She was little, her features of an oriental cast, her
eye had the penetrating look of a seer's eye, which was set off by the
shade of long dark eyelashes. She was a light flower that only lived on
rays.
Eschenmayer writes thus of her in his "Mysteries."
"Her natural state was a mild, friendly earnestness, always disposed to
prayer and devotion; her eye had a highly spiritual expression, and
remained, notwithstanding her great sufferings, always bright and clear.
Her look was penetrating, would quickly change in the conversation, seem
to give forth sparks, and remain fixed on some one place,--this was a
token that some strange apparition fettered it,--then would she resume
the conversation. When I first saw her, she was in a situation which
showed that her bodily life could not long endure, and that recovery to
the common natural state was quite impossible. Without visible
derangement of the functions, her life seemed only a wick glimmering in
the socket. She was, as Kerner truly describes her, like one arrested in
the act of dying and detained in the body by magnetic influences. Spirit
and soul seemed often divided, and the spirit to have taken up its abode
in other regions, while the soul was yet bound to the body."
I have given these extracts as being happily expressive of the relation
between the physician and the clairvoyant, also of her character.
It seems to have been one of singular gentleness, and grateful piety,
simple and pure, but not at all one from which we should expect
extraordinary development of brain in any way; yet the excitement of her
temperament from climate, scenery, the influence of traditions which
evidently flowed round her, and a great constitutional impressibility
did develop in her brain the germs both of poetic creation and science.
I say poetic creation, for, to my mind, the ghosts she saw were
projections of herself into objective reality. The Hades she imagines is
based in fact, for it is one of souls, who, having neglected their
opportunities for better life, find themselves left forlorn, helpless,
seeking aid from beings still ignorant and prejudiced, perhaps much
below themselves in natural powers. Having forfeited their chance of
direct access to God, they seek mediation from the prayers of men. But
in the coloring and dress[3] of these ghosts, as also in their manner
and mode of speech, there is a great deal which seems merely
fanciful--local and peculiar.
[Footnote 3: The women ghosts all wear veils, put on the way admired
by the Italian poets, of whom, however, she could know
nothing.]
To me, these interviews represent only prophecies of her mind; yet,
considered in this way, they are, if not ghostly, spiritual facts of
high beauty, and which cast light on the state of the soul after its
separation from the body. Her gentle patience with them, her steady
reference to a higher cause, her pure joy, when they became white in the
light of happiness obtained through aspiration, are worthy of a more
than half enfranchised angel.
As to the stories of mental correspondence and visits to those still
engaged in this world, such as are told of her presentiment of her
father's death, and connexion with him in the last moments, these are
probably pure facts. Those who have sufficient strength of affection to
be easily disengaged from external impressions and habits, and who dare
trust their mental impulses are familiar with such.
Her invention of a language seems a simply natural motion of the mind
when left to itself. The language we habitually use is so broken, and so
hackneyed by ages of conventional use, that, in all deep states of
being, we crave one simple and primitive in its stead. Most persons make
one more or less clear from looks, tones, and symbols:--this woman, in
the long leisure of her loneliness, and a mind bent upon itself,
attempted to compose one of letters and words. I look upon it as no gift
from without, but a growth from her own mind.
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