to man.[1] The hallucination of rising and floating in the air is extremely common, and ascetics of all religions are especially liable to it.
Among modern accounts of diabolic possession, also, the rising in the air is described as taking place not subjectively but objectively. In 1657, Richard Jones, a sprightly lad of twelve years old, living at Shepton Mallet, was bewitched by one Jane Brooks; he was seen to rise in the air and pass over a garden wall some thirty yards, and at other times was found in a room with his hands flat against a beam at the top of the room, and his body two or three feet from the ground, nine people at a time seeing him in this latter position. Jane Brooks was accordingly condemned and executed at Chard Assizes in March, 1658. Richard, the Surrey demoniac of 1689, was hoisted up in the air and let down by Satan; at the beginning of his fits he was, as it were, blown or snatched or borne up suddenly from his chair, as if he would have flown away, but that those who held him hung to his arms and legs and clung about him. One account (not the official medical one) of the demoniacal possessions at Morzine in Savoy, in 1864, relates that a patient was held suspended in the air by an invisible force during some seconds or minutes above the cemetery, in the presence of the archbishop.[2] Modern spiritualists claim this power as possessed by certain distinguished living mediums, who, indeed, profess to rival in sober fact the aerostatic miracles of Buddhist and Catholic legend. The force employed is of course considered to be that of the spirits.
The performances of tied mediums have been specially represented in England by the Davenport Brothers, who 'are generally recognized by Spiritualists as genuine media, and
- ↑ Alban Butler, 'Lives of the Saints,' vol. i. p. 674; Calmet, 'Diss. sur les Apparitions, &c.,' chap. xxi.; De Maistre, 'Soirées de St. Pétersbourg,' vol. ii. pp. 158, 175. See also Bastian, 'Mensch,' vol. ii. p. 578; 'Psychologie,' p. 159.
- ↑ Glanvil, 'Saducismus Triumphatus,' part ii.; Bastian, 'Psychologie,' p. 161.
