.png)
The most famous medium of the late 19th century—the golden age of mediums and spiritualistic phenomena— was a Scottish-American named Daniel Dunglas Home (1833-86), whose distinctions included never having been discovered in any kind of fraud.
(For an account of Home’s frequently performed levitations, see pages 293-95.)
The following report of a seance given at Norwood, England, in 1868 was written by Lord Adare, later the earl of Dunraven. He describes how Home entered a trance and seemed to become fascinated by the fire, which he frequently approached and stirred with a poker. Here turned to the fire again,
and with his hand stirred the embers into a flame; then kneeling down, he placed his face right among the burning coals, moving it about as though bathing it in water. Then, getting up, he held his finger for some time in the flame of the candle. Presently, he took the same lump of coal he had previously handled and came over to us, blowing upon it to make it brighter. He then walked slowly round the table, and said, “I want to see which of you will be the best subject. Ah! Adare will be the easiest, because he has been most with Dan.” [Home is here referring to himself as Dan.] Mr. Jencken held out his hand, saying, “Put it in mine,” Home said,
''No no, touch it and see,'' he touched it with the tip of his finger and burnt himself. Home then held it within four or five inches of Mr. Saals and Mr. Hurts hands, and they could not endure the heat.
He came to me and said, “Now, if you are not afraid, hold out your hand”; I did so, and having made two rapid passes over my hand, he placed the coal in it. I must have held it for half a minute, long enough to have burned my hand fearfully; the coal felt scarcely warm. Home then took it away, laughed, and seemed much pleased. As he was going back to the fire-place, he suddenly turned round and said,“Why, just fancy, some of them think that only one side of the ember was hot.” He told me to make a hollow of both my hands; I did so, and he placed the coal in them, and then put both his on the top of the coal, so that it was completely covered by our four hands, and we held it there for some time. Upon this occasion scarcely any heat at all could be perceived.
In fact, demonstrations of this kind were not extraordinary for Home, as Lord Lindsay, later the earl of Crawford and Balcarres, testified to the Committee of the Dialectical Society in 1869, during their investigation of spiritualistic phenomena:
I have frequently seen Home [he said], when in a trance, go to the fire and take out large red-hot coals, and carry them about in his hands, put them inside his shirt, etc. Eight times I have myself held a red-hot coal in my hands without injury, when it scorched my face on raising my hand. Once, I wished to see if they really would burn, and I said so, and touched a coal with the middle finger of my right hand, and I got a blister as large as a sixpence [i.e.,the size of a dime]; I instantly asked him to give me the coal, and I held the part that burnt me, in the middle of my hand, for three or four minutes, without the least inconvenience. A few weeks ago, I was at a seance with eight others. Of these, seven held a red-hot coal without pain, and the two others could not bear the approach of it; of the seven, four were ladies.
As these (and many other) accounts make clear, Home was able to extend his own immunity to fire to others on numerous occasions. The most dramatic involved his old friend Samuel Carter Hall, who for years had been editor of The Art Journal. Hall, as his wife relates, was an old man when Home enlisted him in an outrageous and, from one point of view, preposterous demonstration. There were several people present at the seance, in addition to the Halls, when Home, in a trance, seized a lump of burning coal from the fireplace—it was so large that he needed both hands to hold it—and placed it on Samuel Halls head. “Is it not hot?'' someone asked. “Warm, but not hot!” Hall replied. Home, meanwhile, was gathering up his friends white hair and bunching it around and above the coal, which was still glowing red. Hall still did not find it too hot. Home then placed the coal in Mrs. Halls left hand, and she too reported that it felt warm but not painfully hot—though several others who tried touching it burned their fingers.
Home’s power to confer his own immunity to fire on others was variable, depending on his own state of mind and the mental attitude of the other person. To prepare himself for these exploits he apparently conferred with spirits, by whom he believed his immunity was granted. A description of one of these spirit conferences has been preserved in notes made by W. Stainton Moses, himself a notable medium:
[Mr. Home] then went to the fireplace, removed the guard, and sat down on the hearthrug. There he seemed to hold a conversation by signs with a spirit. He repeatedly bowed, and finally set to work to mesmerise his head again. He ruffled his bushy hair until it stood out like a mop, and then deliberately lay down and put his head in the bright wood fire.
The hair was in the blaze, and must, under ordinary circumstances, have been singed off. His head was in the grate, and his neck on a level with the top bar. This was repeated several times. He also put his hand into the fire, smoothed away the wood and coal, and picked out a live coal, which he held in his hand for a few seconds, but replaced soon, saying the power was not sufficient. He tried to give a hot coal to Mr. Crookes, but was unable to do it.
The Mr. Crookes mentioned here, later Sir William Crookes, was one of the leading chemists and physicists of his time. His own account of the incident, which occurred in London on April 28, 1873, is as follows:
….. Mr. Home told me to leave my seat and come with him to the fire. He asked me if I should be afraid to take a live coal (ember) from his hand. I said, No, I would take it if he would give it to me. He then put his hand among the hot coals (embers), and deliberately picked out the brightest bit and held it in his hand for a few seconds. He appeared to deliberate for a time, and then returned it to the grate, saying the power was too weak, and he was afraid I might be hurt. During this time I was kneeling on the hearthrug, and am unable to explain how it was he was not severely burnt..... After Home had recovered from the trance I examined his hand with care to see if there were any signs of burning or of previous preparation. I could detect no trace of injury to the skin, which was soft and delicate like a woman's.
SOURCES
(Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research 9: 306-08, 1894; 35:132-36, 281-82, 1926; Herbert Thurston, The Physical Phenomena of Mysticism} pp.181-86)
Comentarios