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Sun Spots, v. 3, issue 4, whole no. 12, November 1940
Page 17
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November, 1940 SUN SPOTS Page 17 torn by a coyote, saying that I might turn into a coyote after such a repest. Summer vacationists at Wading River, Long Island, were terrorized several years ago by a howling night monster that seemed to have a dog's head and a misshapen human body. Similar tales, many of them equally modern, are rife in Europe, Asia, Africa and all other lands beyond the sea. Despite this universality of the tale, it seems a process entirely contrary to nature. One is prone to laugh it away, like the New Jersey Recorded. Yet there is an explanation-parallel, so obvious that I marvel nobody ever thought of it before. Ectoplasm Any standard book on spiritist phenomena will define ectoplasm -- an unclassified substance exuded by certain psychically gifted persons under certain favorable conditions. These conditions usually include darkness, quiet, serenity of spirit, inclination to the set. Even when ectoplasm is put forth involuntarily, some control of its shaping seems to exist. At first appearance it seems vaporescent, then sticky and gulatinous, finally it takes substantial shape. It may counterfeit a separate living creature, to cover the face and body of the medium and alter appearances. Female medium have produced male figures in ectoplasm. Sometimes the final form is animal. Charles Richet, in Thirty years of Psychical Research, describes a [?seance] at Warsaw, where at a medium achieved an ectoplasmic dog-form that was rather fearsome. .In the present discussion, it is interesting to remember that Warsaw is in the very heart of the werewolf-legend country. Though firm and strong, this material can vanish like most when the medium is frightened, perplexed or hurt. Ectoplasmic hands grasp and pinch, but if seized they melt away instantly. Camera flashlights often drive ectoplasm back into the body that yielded it. This characteristic shyness of the stuff makes study difficult; however, Baron Schrenek-Notzing, the chemist, claims to have secured a small portion of it at a seance and to have examined it under a microscope. He found traces of fatty tissue, epithelium and bacteria as is normal organic substance. Now then. review the above, and for "medium" read "wizard". At once a picture comes to mind, of a sorcerer with the power of excluding ectoplasm. Such a person, having darkness and quit and the desire to disguise his form under a layer of pseudo-tissue, might have the further faculty of matching his inner cruelties and hungers with the outer semblance of a beast of prey. It would be a quicker and more extreme modification than, say, that [?] Napoleon, whose crafty, homely face changed through ambitious years to an idealization of a Roman emperor; but it would be temperary and rare, and it would retain sometging of humanity. Levi Hubert, a young Negro writer who has studied the semi-legendary career of Father Divine in Harlem, told me the following story as a "horrible example" cited by the Divine followers: A handsome young girl of the New York brown belt was wont to frequent dance halls of a questionable character. At one such hall she met and danced Continued on page 19
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November, 1940 SUN SPOTS Page 17 torn by a coyote, saying that I might turn into a coyote after such a repest. Summer vacationists at Wading River, Long Island, were terrorized several years ago by a howling night monster that seemed to have a dog's head and a misshapen human body. Similar tales, many of them equally modern, are rife in Europe, Asia, Africa and all other lands beyond the sea. Despite this universality of the tale, it seems a process entirely contrary to nature. One is prone to laugh it away, like the New Jersey Recorded. Yet there is an explanation-parallel, so obvious that I marvel nobody ever thought of it before. Ectoplasm Any standard book on spiritist phenomena will define ectoplasm -- an unclassified substance exuded by certain psychically gifted persons under certain favorable conditions. These conditions usually include darkness, quiet, serenity of spirit, inclination to the set. Even when ectoplasm is put forth involuntarily, some control of its shaping seems to exist. At first appearance it seems vaporescent, then sticky and gulatinous, finally it takes substantial shape. It may counterfeit a separate living creature, to cover the face and body of the medium and alter appearances. Female medium have produced male figures in ectoplasm. Sometimes the final form is animal. Charles Richet, in Thirty years of Psychical Research, describes a [?seance] at Warsaw, where at a medium achieved an ectoplasmic dog-form that was rather fearsome. .In the present discussion, it is interesting to remember that Warsaw is in the very heart of the werewolf-legend country. Though firm and strong, this material can vanish like most when the medium is frightened, perplexed or hurt. Ectoplasmic hands grasp and pinch, but if seized they melt away instantly. Camera flashlights often drive ectoplasm back into the body that yielded it. This characteristic shyness of the stuff makes study difficult; however, Baron Schrenek-Notzing, the chemist, claims to have secured a small portion of it at a seance and to have examined it under a microscope. He found traces of fatty tissue, epithelium and bacteria as is normal organic substance. Now then. review the above, and for "medium" read "wizard". At once a picture comes to mind, of a sorcerer with the power of excluding ectoplasm. Such a person, having darkness and quit and the desire to disguise his form under a layer of pseudo-tissue, might have the further faculty of matching his inner cruelties and hungers with the outer semblance of a beast of prey. It would be a quicker and more extreme modification than, say, that [?] Napoleon, whose crafty, homely face changed through ambitious years to an idealization of a Roman emperor; but it would be temperary and rare, and it would retain sometging of humanity. Levi Hubert, a young Negro writer who has studied the semi-legendary career of Father Divine in Harlem, told me the following story as a "horrible example" cited by the Divine followers: A handsome young girl of the New York brown belt was wont to frequent dance halls of a questionable character. At one such hall she met and danced Continued on page 19
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