II. Exteriorized Od in Magical Psychology

II. Exteriorized Od in Magical Psychology.II. Das exteriorisierte Od in der magischen Psychologie.

1. Table-Turning as a Psychological Problem.1. Das Tischrücken als psychologisches Problem.

Reichenbach pointed out more than once in his various writings that in the doctrine of od the boundaries of the physical and the psychic mingle. The odic outflowing of man does in fact depend not only quantitatively but also qualitatively on the agent’s psychic state. That is why in the Middle Ages magic could divide into a white and a black, although the force by which the working is done is the same, and only the modifications are different that it undergoes through the psychic state of the agent. That is also why, in more recent times, the theory of psychic force could arise with regard to the phenomena of occultism, an expression that stresses the psychic modification unduly or even denies the physical side of the matter altogether. All magic is action at a distance of thought or will. But to be transferred, these need a physical vehicle, a bearer. Now in table-turning it has been found that through loading over of od the table not only comes into motion at all, but also takes the direction willed and asked for by those present. Here, then, od shows itself as the physical vehicle of the transference of the will: an astonishing fact, provided of course that the mechanical influence, or even just that of unconscious movements of the muscles, is ruled out.

Now to explain astonishing facts one does well to keep not to their simplest form but to the highest, because the explanation of the highest also takes in that of the lower forms, but not the reverse. A very simple form of psychic action at a distance is the movement of a table in a direction asked for; but the highest form is present in thought transference from brain to brain. Let us keep to this, then. I have observed it a hundred times, and the reader who knows my experiments bearing on it¹⁾ will not be surprised that I set down thought transference as a given fact without more ado. Three possibilities now present themselves here: