After April 8, 1928— see the New York Times of this date— I lose track of Paul Diebel. The story ends with an explanation. Nothing is said of the alleged crucifixions. The explanation is a retreat to statements that are supposed to be understandable in commonplace terms. I do not think that they are so understandable. "Diebel has disclosed his secret to the public, saying that shortly before his appearance, he scratched his flesh with his fingernails, or a sharp instrument, being careful not to cut it. On the stage by contracting his muscles, those formerly invisible lines assumed blood-red hue and often bled."
I have heard of other persons, who have "disclosed" trade secrets.
Upon March 2, 1931, a man lay, most publicly, upon a bed of nails. See the New York Herald Tribune, March 3, 1931. In Union Square, New York City, an unoriental magician, named Brawman, from the unmystical region of Pelham Bay, in the Bronx, gave an exhibition that was staged by the magazine, Science and Invention. This fakir from the Bronx lay upon a bed of 1,200 nails. In response to his invitation, ten men walked on his body, pressing the points of the nails into his back. He stood up, showing deep, red marks made by the nails. These marks soon faded away.
I have thought of leaf insects as pictorial representations wrought in the bodies of insects, by their imaginations, or by the imaginative qualities of the substances of their bodies— back in plastic times, when insects were probably not so set in their ways as they now are. The conventional explanation of protective colorations and formations has, as to some of these insects, considerable reasonableness. But there is one of these creatures— the Tasmanian leaf insect— that represents an artistry that so transcends utility that I considered the specimen that I saw, in the American Museum of Natural History, misplaced: it should have been in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. This leaf insect has reproduced the appearance of a leaf down to such tiny details as serrated edges. The deception of enemies, or survival-value, has had nothing thinkable to do with some of the making of this remarkable likeness, because such minute particulars as serrations would be invisible to any bird, unless so close that the undisguisable insect-characteristics would be apparent.
I now have the case of what I consider a stigmatic bird. It is most unprotectively marked. Upon its breast it bears betrayal— or it is so conspicuously marked that one doubts that there is much for the theory of protective coloration to base upon, if conspicuously marked forms of life survive everywhere, and if many of them cannot be explained away, as Darwin explained away some of them, in terms of warnings.
It is a story of the sensitiveness of pigeons. I have told of the pigeons with whom I was acquainted. One day a boy shot one, and the body lay where the others saw it. They were so nervous that they flew, hearing trifling sounds that, before, they'd not have noticed. They were so suspicious that they kept away from the window sills. For a month they remembered.
The bleeding-heart pigeon of the Philippines— the spot of red on its breast— or that its breast remembered—
Or once upon a time— back in plastic times when the forms and plumages of birds were not so fixed, or established, as they now are— an ancestral pigeon and her mate. The swoop of a hawk— a wound on his breast— and that sentiment in her plumage was so sympathetically moved that it stigmatized her, or reproduced on offsprings, and is to this day the recorded impression of an ancient little tragedy.
A simple red spot on the breast of a bird would not be conceived of, by me, as having any such significance. It is not a simple, red spot, only vaguely suggestive of a wound, on the breast of the bleeding-heart pigeon of the Philippines. The bordering red feathers are stiff, as if clotted. They have the appearance of coagulation.
Conceiving of the transmission of a pictorial representation, by heredity, is conceiving of external stigmatism, but of internal origin. If I could think that a human being's intense mental state, at the sight of a wound, had marked a pigeon, that would be more of a span over our gap. But I have noted an observation for thinking that the sight of a dead and mutilated pigeon may intensely affect the imaginations of other pigeons. If anybody thinks that birds have not imagination, let him tell me with what a parrot of mine foresees what I am going to do to him, when I catch him up to some of his mischief, such as gouging furniture. The body of a dead and mutilated companion prints on the minds of other pigeons: but I have not a datum for thinking that the skeleton, or any part of the skeleton, of a pigeon, would be of any meaning to other pigeons. I have never heard of anything that indicates that in the mind of any other living thing is the mystic awe that human beings, or most human beings, have for bones—
Or a moth sat on a skull—
And that so it rested, with no more concern than it would feel upon a stone. That a human being came suddenly upon the skull, and that, from him, a gush of mystic fright marked the moth— The Death's Head Moth.
On the back of the thorax of this insect is a representation of a human skull that is as faithful a likeness as ever any pirate drew. In Borneo and many other places, there is not much abhorrence for a human skull: but the death's head moth is a native of England.
Or the death's heads that appeared upon windowpanes, at Boulley— except that perhaps there were no such occurrences at Boulley. Suppose most of what I call data may be yarns. But the numbers of them— except, what does that mean? Oh, nothing, except that some of our opponents, if out in a storm long enough, might have it dawn on them that it was raining.
If I could say of any pictorial representation that has appeared on the wall of a church that it was probably not an interpretation of chance arrangements of lights and shades, but was a transference from somebody's mind, then from a case like this, of the pretty, the artistic, or of what would be thought of by some persons as the spiritual, and a subject to be treated reverently, would flow into probability a flood of everything that is bizarre, malicious, depraved, and terrifying in witchcraft— and of course jostles of suggestions of uses.
In this subject I have had much experience. Long ago, I experimented. I covered sheets of paper with scrawls, to see what I could visualize out of them; tacked a sheet of wrapping paper to a ceiling, and smudged it with a candle flame; made what I called a "visualizing curtain," which was a white window shade, covered with scrawls and smudges; went on into three dimensions, with boards veneered with clay. It was long ago— about 1907. I visualized much, but the thought never occurred to me that I marked anything. It was my theory that, with a visualizing device, I could make imaginary characters perform for me more vividly than in my mind, and that I could write a novel about their doings. Out of this idea I developed nothing, anyway at the time. I have had much experience with visualizations that were, according to my beliefs, at the time, only my own imaginings, and I have had not one experience— so recognized by me— of ever having imaginatively marked anything. Not that I mean anything by anything.
There is one of these appearances that many readers of this book may investigate. Upon Feb. 23, 1932, New York newspapers reported a clearly discernible figure of Christ in the variegations of the sepia-toned marble of the sanctuary wall of St. Bartholomew's Church, Park Avenue and Fiftieth Street, New York City.
In the New York Times, Feb. 24, 1932, the rector of the church, the Rev. Dr. Robert Norwood, is quoted:
"One day, at the conclusion of my talk, I happened to glance at the sanctuary wall and was amazed to see this lovely figure of Christ in the marble. I had never noticed it before. As it seemed to me to be an actual expression on the face of the marble of what I was preaching, 'His Glorious Body,' I consider it a curious and beautiful happening. I have a weird theory that the force of thought, a dominant thought, may be strong enough to be somehow transferred to stone in its receptive state."
In 1920, a censor stopped a show: but, in 1930, the Ladies' Home Journal published William Seabrook's story— clipping sent to me by Mr. Charles McDaniel, East Liberty P.O., Pittsburgh, Pa. There was a performance in the village of Doa, in the Ben-Hounien territory of the French West African Colony.
It is a story of sorceries practiced by magicians, not upon their own bodies, but upon the bodies of others.
"There were the two living children close to me. I touched them with my hands. And there equally close were the two men with their swords. The swords were iron, three-dimensional, metal, cold and hard. And this is what I now saw with my eyes, but you will understand why I am reluctant to tell of it, and that I do not know what seeing means:
"Each man, holding his sword stiffly upward with his left hand, tossed a child high in the air with his right, then caught it full upon the point, impaling it like a butterfly on a pin. No blood flowed, but the two children were there, held aloft, pierced through and through, impaled upon the swords.
"The crowd screamed now, falling to its knees. Many veiled their eyes with their hands, and others fell prostrate. Through the crowd the jugglers marched, each bearing a child aloft, impaled upon his sword, and disappeared into the witch doctor's inclosure."
Later Seabrook saw the children, and touched them, and had the impression that he would have, looking at a dynamo, or at a storm at sea, at something falling from a table, or at a baby crawling— that he was in the presence of the unknown,
Chapter 27
THE twitch of the legs of a frog— and Emma Piggott swiped a powder puff.
The mysterious twitchings of electrified legs— and unutterable flutterings in the mind of Galvani. His travail of mental miscarriages— or ideas that could not be born properly. The twitch of trivialities that were faint and fantastic germinations in the mind of Galvani— the uninterpretable meanings of far-distant hums of motors— these pre-natal stirrings of aeroplanes and transportation systems and the lighting operations of cities—
Twitch of the legs of a frog—
A woman, from Brewster, N. Y., annoyed a hotel clerk.
My general expression is that all human beings who can do anything, and dogs that track unseen quarry, and homing pigeons, and bird-charming snakes, and caterpillars who transform into butterflies, are magicians. In the lower— or quite as truly the higher, considering them the more aristocratic and established— forms of being, the miracles are standardized and limited: but human affairs are still developing, and "sports," as the biologists call them, are of far more frequent occurrence among humans. But their development depends very much upon a sense of sureness of reward for the pains, travail, and discouragements of the long, little-paid period of apprenticeship, which makes questionable whether it is ever worthwhile to learn anything. Reward depends upon harmonization with the dominant spirit of an era.
Considering modern data, it is likely that many of the fakirs of the past, who are now known as saints, did, or to some degree did, perform the miracles that have been attributed to them. Miracles, or stunts, that were in accord with the dominant power of the period were fostered, and miracles that conflicted with, or that did not contribute to, the glory of the Church, were discouraged, or were savagely suppressed. There could be no development of mechanical, chemical, or electric miracles—
And that, in the succeeding age of Materialism— or call it the Industrial Era— there is the same state of subservience to a dominant, so that young men are trained to the glory of the job, and dream and invent in fields that are likely to interest stockholders, and are schooled into thinking that all magics, except their own industrial magics, are fakes, superstitions, or newspaper yarns.
I am of the Industrial Era, myself; and, even though I can see only advantages-disadvantages in all uses, I am very largely only a practical thinker—
Or the trail of a working witchcraft— and we're on the scent of utilities—
Or that, if a girl, in the town of Derby, set a house afire, by a process that is now somewhat understandable, a fireman could, if he had a still better understanding, have put out that fire without moving from his office. If the mechanism of a motor can invisibly be stopped, all the motors of the world may, without the dirt, crime, misery, and exploitation of coal-mining, be started and operated. If Ambrose Small was wished so far away that he never got back— though that there is magic in a mere wish, or in a mere hope, or hate, I do not think— the present snails of the wheels and planes may be replaced by instantaneous teleportations. If we can think that quacks and cranks and scientists of highest repute, who have announced successes, which were in opposition to supposed medical, physical, chemical, or biological principles— which are now considered impostures, or errors, or "premature announcements"— may not in all cases have altogether deceived themselves, or tried to deceive others, we— or maybe only I— extend this suspicion into mechanical fields.
Now it is my expression that all perpetual motion cranks may not have been dupes, or rascals— that they may have been right, occasionally— that their wheels may sometimes have turned, their marbles rolled, their various gimcracks twirled, in an excess of reaction over action, either because sometimes will occur exceptions to any such supposed law as "the conservation of energy," or because motivating "rays" emanated from the inventors—
That sometimes engines have run, fueled with zeals— but have, by such incipient, or undeveloped, witchcraft, operated only transiently, or only momentarily— but that they may be forerunners to such a revolution of the affairs of this earth, as once upon a time were flutters of the little lids of teakettles—
A new era of new happiness and new hells to pay; ambitions somewhat realized, and hopes dashed to nothing; new crimes, pastimes, products, employments, unemployments; labor troubles, or strikes that would be world-wide; new delights, new diseases, disasters such as had never before been heard of—
In this existence of the desirable-undesirable.
Wild carrots in a field— and to me came a dissatisfaction with ham and cabbage. That was too bad: there isn't much that is better. My notion was that probably all around were roots and shoots and foliages that might be, but that never had been, developed eatably— but that most unlikely would be the cultivation of something new to go with ham, in the place of cabbage, because of the conventionalized requirements of markets. But once upon a time there were wild cabbages and wild beets and wild onions, and they were poor, little incipiencies until they were called for by markets. I think so. I don't know. At any rate, this applies to wild fruits.
