Theos-Talk Archives (March 2002 Message tt00492)

An 1853 account about a sitting with the famous medium
Daniel D. Home is given below:

"The gas light had been turned down, but sufficient
light remained in the room to render ourselves, and
most objects, quite visible, and the hands of the
party, which rested on the table, could be distinctly
seen. The spirits asked [by raps]: 'How many hands
are there on the table?' There were six of us in the
party, and the answer, after counting, was 'twelve'.
[Then there was a] Reply [by the spirits] ---'There
are thirteen.'

"And there, sure enough, on that side of the table
which was vacant, and opposite to the medium [Home],
appeared a thirteenth hand! It faded as we gazed, 
but presently up it came again --- a hand and an arm,
gleaming and apparently self-luminous; and it slowly
moved . . . toward the centre of the table! To make
sure that we were not deceived or laboring under a
hallucination, we counted our own hands, which were
all resting in sight upon the table. There it was,
however, an arm and a hand, the arm extending back to
the elbow, and there fading into imperceptibility. We
all saw it, and all spoke of it, to assure each other
of the reality of the thing. It emitted a faint but
perceptible light. Presently it vanished, but we were
soon permitted to see not only the same thing again,
but the process of its formation. It began at the
elbow, and formed rapidly and steadily, until the arm
and hand again rested on the table before us. It was
so plainly seen, that I readily observed it to be a
left hand. . . . "

Quoted in Alan Gauld's THE FOUNDERS OF PSYCHICAL
RESEARCH, p. 17.

Daniel H. Caldwell
BLAVATSKY ARCHIVES
http://blavatskyarchives.com/introduction.htm
"...Contrast alone can enable us to appreciate things
at their right value; and unless a judge compares
notes and hears both sides he can hardly come to a
correct decision."
H.P. Blavatsky. The Theosophist, July, 1881, p. 218.

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