Occultism and Spiritualism

...tographic plates or by means of purely mechanical apparatus, in order to avoid hallucinations.

Research of this kind has been summarized in the two works of one of the experimenters, M. A. de Rochas. A first series of trials dealt with the exteriorization of sensitivity, and the results were very clear, confirming occultist theories regarding the radiation of the astral body. The second series, carried out largely by means of a special subject, Eusapia Paladino, and in the presence of numerous and impartial researchers, dealt with the study of the movement of objects at a distance and without contact, and further confirmed the close relationship between the nervous force of the medium and the effects produced under the name of "exteriorization of motricity." These trials are too recent and have not yet been verified by enough experimenters to take their place within classical Science, any more than the research of Dr. Baraduc and Messrs. Luys and David, or M. Narkiovitz Iodko, on the photographic recording of effluvia—which was, moreover, contested by Dr. Guebhard. There is simply a tendency here to confirm occultist theories through the methods of contemporary Science and by non-occultist experimenters, which deserved to be noted in this place.

This astral body thus has the following various roles, according to occultism: 1. it unites, by a double polarization, the physical body to the spirit; 2. it is the hidden worker performing the functions of vegetative life and preserving the material body—which it maintains and repairs incessantly—in its form, despite the continual death of physical cells, and in its functional harmony, despite illness and imprudence; 3. finally, it can radiate around the individual, forming a sort of invisible atmosphere called the "Astral Aura," and it can even exteriorize itself completely. It is thanks to these various properties of the astral body that the occul-