CHAPTER 1
INFLUENCE BYPHYSICAL PRESENCE
You are a very disturbing magnet I believe to a certain extent in magnetism ... butI have never accepted the idea that persons can silently and almost withoutconscious effort, influence others for malign or beneficial purposes. In yourpresence, however, the thing is forced upon me as though it were a truth ...
—Marie Corelli
In the cultural history of all times and places there are records of people whomerely by their quiet and outwardly inactive presence have been able to exercisea healthy or unhealthy influence on their surroundings. The word "inactive"immediately alerts us to the fact that what we have here is not the taking of alead when an opportunity arises, but "contagion" with the essential radiation ofa personality possessing a certain psychic structure.
Agrippa von Nettesheim (1486-1535) put it this way in 1510: "Even as asafoetidaand musk drench everything in their smell, so something evil is imparted totheir neighbors by the evil and something good by the good, and often it clingsto them for a long time."
Extremely Psychoactive People
I have deliberately refrained from using the words "strong personalities,"because some people who have a negative effect on their environment are theexact opposite of this, and what they do is confined to paralyzing others andleeching them of their vitality; for which reason Dr. Eugène OSTY, (1874-1938)called them "personnes stérilisantes." Now even if our examples were only ofpeople like this, it would be reasonable to infer the existence of theiropposites, whom the Budapest medical hypnotist Dr. Franz Völgyesi in 1941labeled "extremely psychoactive" individuals.
The Evil Eye—"Ocular Rays"
Some cases of the so-called evil eye (Italian jettatura, mal occhio), theexistence of which is widely accepted by educated people, especially in Italy,might easily be explained as the negative effect of the whole personality;nevertheless modern researchers do assign a decisive role to the malign glanceof the jettatore [person possessing an evil eye], and an electroscopicapparatus made in England is said to have been deflected by rays emitted fromthe eye.
Dr. Walter Voeller (1893-1954) claims to have demonstrated with hisOrganoelectrometer that "continual neural-electrical discharges are emitted fromthe eyes." German mesmerists have taken great pains to demonstrate by simplemeans the émission pésante or "ponderable emission" from the human eye.
At all events, Charles Lafontaine, one of the most notable mesmerists of acentury ago, reported several cases of the killing of small animals within aquarter of an hour by the gaze, while each time the experimenter suffered fromunpleasant recoil reactions (weakness, headache, smarting eyes).
The "most unlikely jettatore known" in recent times was Cardinal Pignatelli DIBelmonte (1851-1948), if the usually well-informed Roger Peyrefitte is to bebelieved.
The Theme in Literature
Literature has often seized on our subject. Here we have space only for apassing reference to the declaration of Goethe's Margarethe in regard to Dr.Heinrich Faust's companion Mephistopheles:
"His presence agitates my blood.""And his presence stifles me inside."
CHAPTER 2
SYMPATHY, ANTIPATHY,INDIFFERENCE
There is certainly something in the law of attraction between human beings whichwe do not understand.
—Marie Corelli
This sentence from an imaginative writer, who often "know more than thephilosophic head" (that is to say, who on the basis of what reason derides as"unreliable intuition" arrives sooner and more often than reason does atvaluable perceptions—which, naturally, will have to be presented in a rationaldress to the rank and file who have little or no intuition) this word, I say,brings us at a stroke to the common experience of being affected by anotherperson. For in most of us in whom the parasitic cerebrum has still not quiteoverrun the emotions, there arises, on meeting a stranger, a feeling thatimmediately allows us to differentiate between compatible, attractive,sympathetic individuals and incompatible, unattractive, antipatheticindividuals. After spending more time with them we can also speak of those whoare "a tonic" to us and those who are "wet blankets." In addition there arethose in the majority who are neutral or indifferent.
Everyday life repeatedly teaches us that later experience will usually confirmthe initial emotional judgment that is often flatly opposed to the intellectualjudgment.
Here is an example from the medical sector: the celebrated internist, Chvostekmade the following observation: "When I first examine a patient I suddenlybecome aware of the nature of the disease as if by inspiration. Then, oncompleting the usual tests, I reach a completely different conclusion. In theprocess of time, often after several weeks, the accuracy of my instantaneousinitial diagnosis is confirmed."
The guardian of Kaspar Hauser (1812 [?]-1833), Baron Gottlieb Von Tucher (amember of the Kreisrat), wrote to the professor of Evangelical Theology, Dr.August Tholuck (1799-1877) in Halle a.d.S., as published by the latter in hisLiterarischen Anzeiger für christliche Theologie und Wissenschaft (1840, 318-320):"The effect that people had on him (Hauser) varied greatly; being pleasantor unpleasant, and in debauches was foul and disgusting even though he knewnothing of their way of life. Each individual has—said he—a personal scent,though it is not the kind that is smelled by the nose but quite different. Hecould not find words to describe it."
One is reminded of a comment that the Viennese "psychological dietician" BaronErnst von Feuchtersleben (1806-1849) apparently quoted from Karl LeberechtImmermann (1796-1840): "It is a pity that we do not know if the noted Berlinphysician Dr. HEIM, who was so renowned a diagnostician and could accuratelydistinguish between various cutaneous eruptions by their smell, could also sniffout moral proclivities by the same organ."
Personal Scent—The Odor of Sanctity
There may in fact be occasional subliminal odorific stimuli involved in theemotional interaction between two individuals. As an illustration of being "inevil odor" here is a quotation from the physician August Strindberg (1849-1912).In an attempt to reify the indefinable, he says: "If someone smells of rats, heis a skinflint ... hatred smells like a corpse." Proverbially there is an(agreeable) "odor of sanctity," which can be taken literally. Among many otherthings, holiness is based on sexual abstinence. JOYCE...
