Magick Without Tears

NECROMANCY AND SPIRITISM 181 features were European. The Shaman then lit a fire and burnt some leaves, threw powder on them muttering incantations, and there was a heavy aromatic smoke . He said in Russian to the Bolshevik, "Ask what you want to know." The Bolshevik spoke in German; he was sure that the Shaman knew no German, but he was equally sure he saw the /ips move and heard it answer, clearly, in German. He asked what would happen to Russia, and what would happen to him. From the moving lips of the corpse came the reply that Russia would be defeated in war and that there would be a revolution; the Tzar would be captured by his enemies and killed on the eve of rescue; he, the Bolshevik, would fight in the Revolution but would suffer no harm; later, he would be wounded fighting a foreign enemy, but would recover and live long. The Bolshevik did not really believe what he had seen, although he was certain that he had seen it, I mean that he explained it by hypnotism or auto-suggestion or something of the kind; but it was true, he said, that he passed unscathed through the Revolution and the Civil War and was wounded in the Polish War when the Red Army recovered Kiev. So also we are most fortunate in possessing the account almost beyond Heart's desire of Spiritism, in Robert Browning's Mr. Sludge the Medium. You see that I write "Spiritism" not "Spiritualism." To use the latter word in this connection is vulgar ignorance ; it denotes a system of philosophy which flourished (more or less) in the Middle Ages-read your Erdmann if you want the gruesome details. But why should you? The model for Mr. Sludge was David Dunbar? (Douglas) Home, who was really quite a distinguished person in his way, and succeeded in pulling some remarkably instructed and blue-blooded legs. Personally, I believe him to have been genuine, getting real results through pacts with elementals,