[Gutenberg 39279] • Mysterious Psychic Forces / An Account of the Author's Investigations in Psychical Research, Together with Those of Other European Savants

Excerpt: ... CHAPTER II MY FIRST SEANCES IN THE ALLAN KAEDEC GHOUP AND WITH THE MEDIUMS OF THAT EPOCH One day in the month of November, 1861, under the Galeries de l'Odeon, * I spied a book, the title of which struck me, -- Le Livre des E'sprits ("The Book of Spirits"), by Allan Kardec. I bought it and read it with avidity, several chapters seeming to me to agree with the scientific bases of the book I was then writing, The Plurality of Inhabited Worlds. I hunted up the author, who proposed that I should enter, as a free associated member, the Parisian Society for Spiritualistic Studies, which he had founded, and of which he was president. I accepted, and by chance have just found the green ticket signed by him on the fifteenth day of November, 1861. This is the date of my debut in psychic studies. I was then nineteen, and for three years had been an astronomical pupil at the Paris Observatory. At this time I was putting the last touches to the book I just mentioned, the first edition of which was published some months afterwards by the printer-publisher of the Observatory. The members came together every Friday evening in the assembly room of the society, in the little passageway of Sainte Anne, which was placed under the protection of Saint Louis. The president opened the seance by an "invocation to the good spirits." It was admitted, as a principle, that invisible spirits were present there and revealed * Certain book-shops in Paris.-- Trans. themselves. After this invocation a certain number of persons, seated at a large table, were besought to abandon themselves to their inspiration and to write. They were called "writing mediums." Their dissertations were afterwards read before an attentive audience. There were no physical experiments of table-turning, or tables moving o...