Isis unveiled, Volume 1 (of 2), Science

We will add to M. Huc’s narrative the statement that the characters which appear upon the different portions of the Kounboum are in the Sansar (or language of the Sun), characters (ancient Sanscrit); and that the sacred tree, in its various parts, contains in extenso the whole history of the creation, and in substance the sacred books of Buddhism. In this respect, it bears the same relation to Buddhism as the pictures in the Temple of Dendera, in Egypt, do to the ancient faith of the Pharaohs. The latter are briefly described by Professor W. B. Carpenter, President of the British Association, in his Manchester Lecture on Egypt. He makes it clear that the Jewish book of Genesis is nothing more than an expression of the early Jewish ideas, based upon the pictorial records of the Egyptians among whom they lived. But he does not make it clear, except inferentially, whether, he believes either the Dendera pictures or the Mosaic account to be an allegory or a pretended historical narrative. How a scientist who had devoted himself to the most superficial investigation of the subject can venture to assert that the ancient Egyptians had the same ridiculous notions about the world’s instantaneous creation as the early Christian theologians, passes comprehension! How can he say that because the Dendera picture happens to represent their cosmogony in one allegory, they intended to show the scene as occurring in six minutes or six millions of years? It may as well indicate allegorically six successive epochs or æons, or eternity, as six days.

Besides, the Books of Hermes certainly give no color to the charge, and the Avesta specifically names six periods, each embracing thousands of years, instead of days. Many of the Egyptian hieroglyphics contradict Dr. Carpenter’s theory, and Champollion has avenged the ancients in many particulars. From what is gone before, it will, we think, be made clear to the reader that the Egyptian philosophy had no room for any such crude speculations, if the Hebrews themselves ever believed them; their cosmogony viewed man as the result of evolution, and his progress to be marked by immensely lengthened cycles. But to return to the wonders of Thibet.

Speaking of pictures, the one described by Huc as hanging in a certain Lamasery may fairly be regarded as one of the most wonderful in existence. It is a simple canvas without the slightest mechanical apparatus attached, as the visitor may prove by examining it at his leisure. It represents a moon-lit landscape, but the moon is not at all motionless and dead; quite the reverse, for, according to the abbé, one would say that our moon herself, or at least her living double, lighted the picture. Each phase, each aspect, each movement of our satellite, is repeated in her fac-simile, in the movement and progress of the moon in the sacred picture. “You see this planet in the painting ride as a crescent, or full, shine brightly, pass behind the clouds, peep out or set, in a manner corresponding in the most extraordinary way with the real luminary. It is, in a word, a most servile and resplendent reproduction of the pale queen of the night, which received the adoration of so many people in the days of old.”

When we think of the astonishment that would inevitably be felt by one of our self-complacent academicians at seeing such a picture—and it is by no means the only one, for they have them in other parts of Thibet and Japan also, which represent the sun’s movements—when we think, we say, of his embarrassment at knowing that if he ventured to tell the unvarnished truth to his colleagues, his fate would probably be like that of poor Huc, and he flung out of the academical chair as a liar or a lunatic, we cannot help recalling the anecdote of Tycho-Brahe, given by Humboldt in his Cosmos.[675]

“One evening,” says the great Danish astronomer, “as, according to my usual habit, I was considering the celestial vault, to my indescribable amazement, I saw, close to the zenith, in Cassiopea, a radiant star of extraordinary size. Struck with astonishment, I knew not whether I could believe my own eyes. Some time after that, I learned that in Germany, cartmen, and other persons of the lower classes had repeatedly warned the scientists that a great apparition could be seen in the sky; which fact afforded both the press and public one more opportunity to indulge in their usual raillery against the men of science, who, in the cases of several antecedent comets, had not predicted their appearance.”

From the days of the earliest antiquity, the Brahmans were known to be possessed of wonderful knowledge in every kind of magic arts. From Pythagoras, the first philosopher who studied wisdom with the Gymnosophists, and Plotinus, who was initiated into the mystery of uniting one’s self with the Deity through abstract contemplation, down to the modern adepts, it was well known that in the land of the Brahmans and Gautama-Buddha the sources of “hidden” wisdom are to be sought after. It is for future ages to discover this grand truth, and accept it as such, whereas now it is degraded as a low superstition. What did any one, even the greatest scientists, know of India, Thibet, and China, until the last quarter of this century? That most untiring scholar, Max Müller, tells us that before then not a single original document of the Buddhist religion had been accessible to European philologists; that fifty years ago “there was not a single scholar who could have translated a line of the Veda, a line of the Zend-Avesta, or a line of the Buddhist Tripitâka,” let alone other dialects or languages. And even now, that science is in possession of various sacred texts, what they have are but very incomplete editions of these works, and nothing, positively nothing of the secret sacred literature of Buddhism. And the little that our Sanscrit scholars have got hold of, and which at first was termed by Max Müller a dreary “jungle of religious literature—the most excellent hiding-place for Lamas and Dalai-Lamas,” is now beginning to shed a faint light on the primitive darkness.

We find this scholar stating that that which appeared at the first glance into the labyrinth of the religions of the world, all darkness, self deceit, and vanity begin to assume another form. “It sounds,” he writes, “like a degradation of the very name of religion, to apply it to the wild ravings of Hindu Yogins, and the blank blasphemies of Chinese Buddhists.... But, as we slowly and patiently wend our way through the dreary prisons, our own eyes seem to expand, and we perceive a glimmer of light, where all was darkness at first.”[676]

As an illustration of how little even the generation which directly preceded our own was competent to judge the religions and beliefs of the several hundred million Buddhists, Brahmans, and Parsees, let the student consult the advertisement of a scientific work published in 1828 by a Professor Dunbar, the first scholar who has undertaken to demonstrate that the Sanscrit is derived from the Greek. It appeared under the following title:

“An Inquiry into the structure and affinity of the Greek and Latin languages; with occasional comparisons of the Sanscrit and Gothic; with an Appendix, in which the derivation of the Sanscrit from the Greek is endeavoured to be established. By George Dunbar, F.R. S.E., and Professor of Greek in the University of Edinburgh. Price, 18s.”[677]

Had Max Müller happened to fall from the sky at that time, among the scholars of the day, and with his present knowledge, we would like to have compiled the epithets which would have been bestowed by the learned academicians upon the daring innovator! One who, classifying languages genealogically, says that “Sanscrit, as compared to Greek and Latin, is an elder sister ... the earliest deposit of Aryan speech.”

And so, we may naturally expect that in 1976, the same criticisms will be justly applied to many a scientific discovery, now deemed conclusive and final by our scholars. That which is now termed the superstitious verbiage and gibberish of mere heathens and savages, composed many thousands of years ago, may be found to contain the master-key to all religious systems. The cautious sentence of St. Augustine, a favorite name in Max Müller’s lectures, which says that “there is no false religion which does not contain some elements of truth,” may yet be triumphantly proved correct; the more so as, far from being original with the Bishop of Hippo, it was borrowed by him from the works of Ammonius Saccas, the great Alexandrian teacher.

This “god-taught” philosopher, the theodidaktos, had repeated these same words to exhaustion, in his numerous works some 140 years before Augustine. Acknowledging Jesus as “an excellent man, and the friend of God,” he always maintained that his design was not to abolish the intercourse with gods and demons (spirits), but simply to purify the ancient religions; that “the religion of the multitude went hand in hand with philosophy, and with her had shared the fate of being by degrees corrupted and obscured with mere human conceits, superstition, and lies: that it ought therefore to be brought back to its original purity by purging it of this dross and expounding it upon philosophical principles; and that the whole which Christ had in view was to reinstate and restore to its primitive integrity the wisdom of the ancients.”[678]

It was Ammonius who first taught that every religion was based on one and the same truth; which is the wisdom found in the Books of Thoth (Hermes Trismegistus), from which books Pythagoras and Plato had learned all their philosophy. And the doctrines of the former he affirmed to have been identical with the earliest teachings of the Brahmans—now embodied in the oldest Vedas. “The name Thoth,” says Professor Wilder, “means a college or assembly,”[679] and “it is not improbable that the books were so named as being the collected oracles and doctrines of the sacerdotal fraternity of Memphis. Rabbi Wise had suggested a similar hypothesis in relation to the divine utterances recorded in the Hebrew Scripture. But the Indian writers assert, that during the reign of king Kansa, Yadus (Judeans?) or sacred tribe left India and migrated to the West, carrying the four Vedas with them. There was certainly a great resemblance between the philosophical doctrines and religious customs of the Egyptians and Eastern Buddhists; but whether the Hermetic books and the four Vedas were identical, is not now known.”

But one thing is certainly known, and that is, that before the word philosopher was first pronounced by Pythagoras at the court of the king of the Philiasians, the “secret doctrine” or wisdom was identical in every country. Therefore it is in the oldest texts—those least polluted by subsequent forgeries—that we have to look for the truth. And now that philology has possessed itself of Sanscrit texts which may be boldly affirmed to be documents by far antedating the Mosaic Bible, it is the duty of the scholars to present the world with truth, and nothing but the truth. Without regard to either skeptical or theological prejudice, they are bound to impartially examine both documents—the oldest Vedas and the Old Testament, and then decide which of the two is the original Sruti or Revelation, and which but the Smriti, which, as Max Müller shows, only means recollection or tradition.

Origen writes that the Brahmans were always famous for the wonderful cures which they performed by certain words;[680] and in our own age we find Orioli, a learned corresponding member of the French Institute,[681] corroborating the statement of Origen in the third century, and that of Leonard de Vair of the sixteenth, in which the latter wrote: “There are also persons, who upon pronouncing a certain sentence—a charm, walk bare-footed on red, burning coals, and on the points of sharp knives stuck in the ground; and, once poised on them, on one toe, they will lift up in the air a heavy man or any other burden of considerable weight. They will tame wild horses likewise, and the most furious bulls, with a single word.”[682]

This word is to be found in the Mantras of the Sanscrit Vedas, say some adepts. It is for the philologists to decide for themselves whether there is such a word in the Vedas. So far as human evidence goes, it would seem that such magic words do exist.

It appears that the reverend fathers of the Order of Jesuits have picked up many such tricks in their missionary travels. Baldinger gives them full credit for it. The tschamping—a Hindu word, from which the modern word shampooing is derived—is a well-known magical manipulation in the East Indies. The native sorcerers use it with success to the present day, and it is from them that the father Jesuits derived their wisdom.

Camerarius, in his Horæ Subscecivæ, narrates that once upon a time there existed a great rivalry of “miracles” between the Austin Friars and the Jesuits. A disputation having taken place between the father-general of the Austin Friars, who was very learned, and the general of the Jesuits, who was very unlearned, but full of magical knowledge, the latter proposed to settle the question by trying their subordinates, and finding out which of them would be the readiest to obey his superiors. Thereupon, turning to one of his Jesuits, he said: “Brother Mark, our companions are cold; I command you, in virtue of the holy obedience you have sworn to me, to bring here instantly out of the kitchen fire, and in your hands, some burning coals, that they may warm themselves over your hands.” Father Mark instantly obeyed, and brought in both his hands a supply of red, burning coals, and held them till the company present had all warmed themselves, after which he took them back to the kitchen hearth. The general of the Austin Friars found himself crestfallen, for none of his subordinates would obey him so far as that. The triumph of the Jesuits was thus accomplished.

If the above is looked upon as an anecdote unworthy of credence, we will inquire of the reader what we must think of some modern “mediums,” who perform the same while entranced. The testimony of several highly respectable and trustworthy witnesses, such as Lord Adair and Mr. S. C. Hall, is unimpeachable. “Spirits,” the spiritualists will argue. Perhaps so, in the case of American and English fire-proof mediums; but not so in Thibet and India. In the West a “sensitive” has to be entranced before being rendered invulnerable by the presiding “guides,” and we defy any “medium,” in his or her normal physical state to bury the arms to the elbows in glowing coals. But in the East, whether the performer be a holy lama or a mercenary sorcerer (the latter class being generally termed “jugglers”) he needs no preparation or abnormal state to be able to handle fire, red-hot pieces of iron, or melted lead. We have seen in Southern India these “jugglers” keep their hands in a furnace of burning coals until the latter were reduced to cinders. During the religious ceremony of Siva-Râtri, or the vigil-night of Siva, when the people spend whole nights in watching and praying, some of the Sivaites called in a Tamil juggler, who produced the most wonderful phenomena by simply summoning to his help a spirit whom they call Kutti-Sâttan—the little demon.

But, far from allowing people to think he was guided or “controlled” by this gnome—for it was a gnome, if it was anything—the man, while crouching over his fiery pit, proudly rebuked a Catholic missionary, who took his opportunity to inform the by-standers that the miserable sinner “had sold himself to Satan.” Without removing his hands and arms from the burning coals within which he was coolly refreshing them, the Tamil only turned his head and gave one arrogant look at the flushed missionary. “My father and my father’s father,” he said, “had this ‘little one’ at their command. For two centuries the Kutti is a faithful servant in our home, and now, sir, you would make people believe that he is my master! But they know better.” After this, he quietly withdrew his hands from the fire, and proceeded with other performances.

As for the wonderful powers of prediction and clairvoyance possessed by certain Brahmans, they are well known to every European resident of India. If these upon their return to “civilized” countries, laugh at such stories, and sometimes even deny them outright, they only impugn their good faith, not the fact. These Brahmans live principally in “sacred villages,” and secluded places, principally on the western coast of India. They avoid populated cities, and especially Europeans, and it is but rarely that the latter can succeed in making themselves intimate with the “seers.” It is generally thought that the circumstance is due to their religious observance of the caste; but we are firmly convinced that in many cases this is not so. Years, perhaps centuries, will roll away before the real reason is ascertained.

As to the lower castes, some of which are termed by the missionaries devil-worshippers, notwithstanding the pious efforts on the part of the Catholic missionaries to spread in Europe heart-rending reports of the misery of these people “sold to the Arch-Enemy;” and like efforts, perhaps only a trifle less ridiculous and absurd, of Protestant missionaries, the word devil, in the sense understood by Christians, is a nonentity for them. They believe in good and bad spirits; but they neither worship nor dread the Devil. Their “worship” is simply a ceremonial precaution against “terrestrial” and human spirits, whom they dread far more than the millions of elementals of various forms. They use all kinds of music, incense, and perfumes, in their efforts to drive away the “bad spirits” (the elementary). In this case, they are no more to be ridiculed than the well-known scientist, a firm spiritualist, who suggested the keeping of vitriol and powdered nitre in the room to keep away “unpleasant spirits;” and no more than he, are they wrong in so doing; for the experience of their ancestors, extending over many thousands of years has taught them how to proceed against this vile “spiritual horde.” That they are human spirits is shown by the fact that very often they try to humor and propitiate the “larvæ” of their own daughters and relatives, when they have reason to suspect that the latter did not die in the odor of sanctity and chastity. Such spirits they name “Kanni,” bad virgins. The case was noticed by several missionaries; Rev. E. Lewis,[683] among others.

But these pious gentlemen usually insist upon it that they worship devils, whereas, they do nothing of the sort; for they merely try to remain on good terms with them in order to be left unmolested. They offer them cakes and fruit, and various kinds of food which they liked while alive, for many of them have experienced the wickedness of these returning “dead ones,” whose persecutions are sometimes dreadful. On this principle likewise they act toward the spirits of all wicked men. They leave on their tombs, if they were buried, or near the place where their remains were burnt, food and liquors, with the object of keeping them near these places, and with the idea that these vampires will be prevented thereby from returning to their homes. This is no worship; it is rather a spiritualism of a practical sort. Until 1861, there prevailed a custom among the Hindus of mutilating the feet of executed murderers, under the firm belief that thereby the disembodied soul would be prevented from wandering and doing more mischief. Subsequently, they were prohibited, by the police, from continuing the practice.

Another good reason why the Hindus should not worship the “Devil” is that they have no word to convey such a meaning. They call these spirits “pûttâm,” which answers rather to our “spook,” or malicious imp; another expression they use is “pey” and the Sanscrit pesâsu, both meaning ghosts or “returning ones” perhaps goblins, in some cases. The pûttâm are the most terrible, for they are literally “haunting spooks,” who return on earth to torment the living. They are believed to visit generally the places where their bodies were burnt. The “fire” or “Siva-spirits” are identical with the Rosicrucian gnomes and salamanders; for they are pictured as dwarfs of a fiery appearance, living in earth and fire. The Ceylonese demon called Dewel is a stout smiling female figure with a white Elizabethan frill around the neck and a red jacket.

As Dr. Warton justly observes: “There is no character more strictly Oriental than the dragons of romance and fiction; they are intermixed with every tradition of early date and of themselves confer a species of illustrative evidence of origin.” In no writings are these characters more marked, than in the details of Buddhism; these record particulars of the Nagas, or kingly snakes, inhabiting the cavities under the earth, corresponding with the abodes of Tiresias and the Greek seers, a region of mystery and darkness, wherein revolves much of the system of divination and oracular response, connected with inflation, or a sort of possession, designating the spirit of Python himself, the dragon-serpent slain by Apollo. But the Buddhists no more believe in the devil of the Christian system—that is, an entity as distinct from humanity as the Deity itself—than the Hindus. Buddhists teach that there are inferior gods who have been men either on this or another planet, but still who were men. They believe in the Nagas, who had been sorcerers on earth, bad people, and who give the power to other bad and yet living men to blight all the fruit they look upon, and even human lives. When a Cinghalese has the reputation that if he looks on a tree or on a person both will wither and die, he is said to have the Naga-Raja, or king-serpent on him. The whole endless catalogue of bad spirits are not devils in the sense the Christian clergy wants us to understand, but merely spiritually incarnated sins, crimes, and human thoughts, if we may so express it.

The blue, green, yellow, and purple god-demons, like the inferior gods of Jugandere, are more of the kind of presiding genii, and many are as good and beneficient as the Nat deities themselves, although the Nats reckon in their numbers, giants, evil genii, and the like which inhabit the desert of Mount Jugandere.

The true doctrine of Buddha says that the demons, when nature produced the sun, moon, and stars, were human beings, but, on account of their sins, they fell from the state of felicity. If they commit greater sins, they suffer greater punishments, and condemned men are reckoned by them among the devils; while, on the contrary, demons who die (elemental spirits) and are born or incarnated as men, and commit no more sin, can arrive at the state of celestial felicity. Which is a demonstration, remarks Edward Upham, in his History and Doctrine of Buddhism, that all beings, divine as well as human, are subject to the laws of transmigration, which are operative on all, according to a scale of moral deeds. This faith then, is a complete test of a code of moral enactments and motives, applied to the regulation and government of man an experiment, he adds, “which renders the study of Buddhism an important and curious subject for the philosopher.”

The Hindus believe, as firmly as the Servians or Hungarians, in vampires. Furthermore, their doctrine is that of Pierart, the famous French spiritist and mesmerizer, whose school flourished some dozen years ago. “The fact of a spectre returning to suck human blood,” says this Doctor,[684] “is not so inexplicable as it seems, and here we appeal to the spiritualists who admit the phenomenon of bicorporeity or soul-duplication. The hands which we have pressed ... these ‘materialized’ limbs, so palpable ... prove clearly how much is possible for astral spectres under favorable conditions.”

The honorable physician expresses the theory of the kabalists. The Shadim are the lowest of the spiritual orders. Maimonides, who tells us that his countrymen were obliged to maintain an intimate intercourse with their departed ones, describes the feast of blood they held on such occasions. They dug a hole, and fresh blood was poured in, over which was placed a table; after which the “spirits” came and answered all their questions.[685]

Pierart, whose doctrine was founded on that of the theurgists, exhibits a warm indignation against the superstition of the clergy which requires, whenever a corpse is suspected of vampirism, that a stake should be driven through the heart. So long as the astral form is not entirely liberated from the body there is a liability that it may be forced by magnetic attraction to reënter it. Sometimes it will be only half-way out, when the corpse, which presents the appearance of death, is buried. In such cases the terrified astral soul violently reënters its casket; and then, one of two things happens—either the unhappy victim will writhe in the agonizing torture of suffocation, or, if he had been grossly material, he becomes a vampire. The bicorporeal life begins; and these unfortunate buried cataleptics sustain their miserable lives by having their astral bodies rob the life-blood from living persons. The æthereal form can go wherever it pleases; and so long as it does not break the link which attaches it to the body, it is at liberty to wander about, either visible or invisible, and feed on human victims. “According to all appearance, this ‘spirit’ then transmits through a mysterious and invisible cord of connection, which perhaps, some day may be explained, the results of the suction to the material body which lies inert at the bottom of the tomb, aiding it, in a manner, to perpetuate the state of catalepsy.”[686]

Brierre de Boismont gives a number of such cases, fully authenticated, which he is pleased to term “hallucinations.” A recent inquest, says a French paper, “has established that in 1871 two corpses were submitted to the infamous treatment of popular superstition, at the instigation of the clergy ... O blind prejudice!” But Dr. Pierart, quoted by des Mousseaux, who stoutly adheres to vampirism, exclaims: “Blind, you say? Yes, blind, as much as you like. But whence sprang these prejudices? Why are they perpetuated in all ages, and in so many countries? After a crowd of facts of vampirism so often proved, should we say that there are no more and that they never had a foundation? Nothing comes of nothing. Every belief, every custom springs from facts and causes which gave it birth. If one had never seen appear, in the bosom of families of certain countries, beings clothing themselves in the shape of the familiar dead, coming thus to suck the blood of one or of several persons, and if the death of the victims by emaciation had not followed, they would never have gone to disinter the corpses in cemeteries; we would never have had attested the incredible fact of persons buried for several years being found with the corpse soft, flexible, the eyes open, with rosy complexions, the mouth and nose full of blood, and of the blood running in torrents under blows, from wounds, and when decapitated.”[687]

One of the most important examples of vampirism figures in the private letters of the philosopher, the Marquis d’Argens; and, in the Revue Britannique, for March, 1837, the English traveller Pashley describes some that came under his notice in the island of Candia. Dr. Jobard, the anti-Catholic and anti-spiritual Belgian savant, testifies to similar experiences.[688]

“I will not examine,” wrote the Bishop d’Avranches Huet, “whether the facts of vampirism, which are constantly being reported, are true, or the fruit of a popular error; but it is certain that they are testified to by so many authors, able and trustworthy, and by so many eye-witnesses, that no one ought to decide upon the question without a good deal of caution.”[689]

The chevalier, who went to great pains to collect materials for his demonological theory, brings the most thrilling instances to prove that all such cases are produced by the Devil, who uses graveyard corpses with which to clothe himself, and roams at night sucking people’s blood. Methinks we could do very well without bringing this dusky personage upon the scene. If we are to believe at all in the return of spirits, there are plenty of wicked sensualists, misers, and sinners of other descriptions—especially suicides, who could have rivalled the Devil himself in malice in his best days. It is quite enough to be actually forced to believe in what we do see, and know to be a fact, namely spirits, without adding to our Pantheon of ghosts the Devil—whom nobody ever saw.

Still, there are interesting particulars to be gathered in relation to vampirism, since belief in this phenomenon has existed in all countries, from the remotest ages. The Slavonian nations, the Greeks, the Wallachians, and the Servians would rather doubt the existence of their enemies, the Turks, than the fact that there are vampires. The broucolâk, or vourdalak, as the latter are called, are but too familiar guests at the Slavonian fireside. Writers of the greatest ability, men as full of sagacity as of high integrity, have treated of the subject and believed in it. Whence, then, such a superstition? Whence that unanimous credence throughout the ages, and whence that identity in details and similarity of description as to that one particular phenomenon which we find in the testimony—generally sworn evidence—of peoples foreign to each other and differing widely in matters concerning other superstitions.

“There are,” says Dom Calmet, a skeptical Benedictine monk of the last century, “two different ways to destroy the belief in these pretended ghosts.... The first would be to explain the prodigies of vampirism by physical causes. The second way is to deny totally the truth of all such stories; and the latter plan would be undoubtedly the most certain, as the most wise.”[690]

The first way—that of explaining it by physical, though occult causes, is the one adopted by the Pierart school of mesmerism. It is certainly not the spiritualists who have a right to doubt the plausibility of this explanation. The second plan is that adopted by scientists and skeptics. They deny point-blank. As des Mousseaux remarks, there is no better or surer way, and none exacts less of either philosophy or science.

The spectre of a village herdsman, near Kodom, in Bavaria, began appearing to several inhabitants of the place, and either in consequence of their fright or some other cause, every one of them died during the following week. Driven to despair, the peasants disinterred the corpse, and pinned it to the ground with a long stake. The same night he appeared again, plunging people into convulsions of fright, and suffocating several of them. Then the village authorities delivered the body into the hands of the executioner, who carried it to a neighboring field and burned it. “The corpse,” says des Mousseaux, quoting Dom Calmet, “howled like a madman, kicking and tearing as if he had been alive. When he was run through again with sharp-pointed stakes, he uttered piercing cries, and vomited masses of crimson blood. The apparitions of this spectre ceased only after the corpse had been reduced to ashes.”[691]

Officers of justice visited the places said to be so haunted; the bodies were exhumed, and in nearly every case it was observed that the corpse suspected of vampirism looked healthy and rosy, and the flesh was in no way decaying. The objects which had belonged to these ghosts were observed moving about the house without any one touching them. But the legal authorities generally refused to resort to cremation and beheading before they had observed the strictest rules of legal procedure. Witnesses were summoned to appear, and evidence was heard and carefully weighed. After that the exhumed corpses were examined; and if they exhibited the unequivocal and characteristic signs of vampirism, they were handed over to the executioner.

“But,” argues Dom Calmet,[692] “the principal difficulty consists in learning how these vampires can quit their tombs, and how they reënter them, without appearing to have disturbed the earth in the least; how is it that they are seen with their usual clothing; how can they go about, and walk, and eat?... If this is all imagination on the part of those who believe themselves molested by such vampires, how happens it that the accused ghosts are subsequently found in their graves ... exhibiting no signs of decay, full of blood, supple and fresh? How explain the cause of their feet found muddy and covered with dirt on the day following the night they had appeared and frightened their neighbors, while nothing of the sort was ever found on other corpses buried in the same cemetery?[693] How is it again that once burned they never reappear? and that these cases should happen so often in this country that it is found impossible to cure people from this prejudice; for, instead of being destroyed, daily experience only fortifies the superstition in the people, and increases belief in it.”[694]