Charles Godfrey Leland

“ Whether it be the action of a faculty, a correlative action of physical functions, or a separate soul in us, the fact is indisputable that when our ordinary waking consciousness or will goes to sleep or rest, or even dozes, that instant an entirely different power takes command of the myriad forces of memory, and proceeds to make them act, wheel, evolute, and perform dramatic tricks, such as the Common Sense of our daily life would never admit. This power we call the Dream, but it is more than that. ”

“ The study, therefore, of quickness of perception, as set forth or exercised in gypsy fortune-telling, is indeed curious; but to the far-reaching observer who is interested in education it is infinitely more useful, for it furnishes proof of the ability latent in every mind to perform what appear to be more than feats of intelligence or miracles, yet which often are all mere trifles compared to what man could effect if he were properly trained to it.
Sorcery! We are all sorcerers, and live in a wonderland of marvel and beauty if we did but know it. ”

“ When we think of what we might be if we could master ourselves, and call on the vast sea of knowledge which is in the brain of every one who reads these lines, to give strict reckoning of its every wave and every drop of water, and every shell, pebble, wreck, weed, or grain of sand over which it rolls, and withal master the forces which make its tides and storms, then we may comprehend that all the wonder-working power attributed to all the sorcerers of olden time was nothing compared to what we really have within us. ”

“ Raise a man from the dead, make him fly through the air, and it is for everybody a miracle. Give them the power to do the same, and in a month's time it will be no longer miraculous, but something "in the due course of nature." And what single fact is there in the due course of nature which is not as inexplicable if we seek for a full explanation of it? ”

“ Waking quickness of perception is a wonderful ability. It can be trained to flit like lightning over illimitable fields of thought (supplied by a vast memory) , and with them it spontaneously developes comparison and deduction. Now all of this is marvellously akin to the habitual action of the dream power plus that of reflection. And it is not possible to conceive that with waking quickness of perception, or voluntary subtlety of thought, cultivated in infancy to the highest power, its twin which sports in sleep should not feel its influence and act under it. ”

“ If all the stores of our memory were distinctly cognized by our waking will when they first came into our possession, we should have the first great element of power beyond all our present dreams of greatness. ”

“ Every image which man has received from sensation lies stored away in a cell, and is, in fact, a memory by itself. There is a faculty of association or sympathy by which groups of these images are called up, and there is perception which receives them, more or less vividly, like a photographic plate. When awake, Will, or coherent Common Sense, regulates all this machinery. When asleep, the Images seem to steal out and blend and frisk about by themselves in quaint dances, guided apparently by a kind of power whom I have conventionally called the alter-ego. ”

“ In recalling strange, beautiful images, and in imagining scenes, we partly lapse into dreaming; in fact, we do dream, though conscious will sits by us all the time and even aids our work. And most poets and artists, and many inventors, will testify that, while imagining or inventing, they abstract the "mind" from the world and common-place events, seek calm and quiet, and try to get into a "brown study," which is a waking dream. That is to say, a condition which is in some respects analogous to sleep is necessary to stimulate the flow and combination of images. ”

“ There is nothing in all the annals of prophecy, divination, fortune-telling, or prediction, which is nearly so wonderful as what we may all do if we would by practice and exercise bring out of ourselves our own innate power of perception. ”

“ That gypsy women often do surmise or arrive at very curious and startling truths I know by my own experience, and also know that I myself when reading character in people's hands according to the laws laid down in books on chiromancy, when I have felt deeply interested, or as one may say excited or inspired, and have gone a little beyond mere description into conjecture and deduction, have been amazed at my own successes. ”

“ Unconsciously the Dream Spirit, or the Alter-Ego, is awakened. It calls forth from the hidden stores of Memory strange facts and associations, and with it arises the latent and often unconscious quickness of Perception, and the gypsy actually apprehends and utters things which are "wonderful." There is no clairvoyance, illumination or witchcraft in such cases. If such powers existed as they are generally understood to do, we should for one case of curious prediction hear of twenty thousand. But the Dream-power is at best fitful, irregular and fantastic in its action ”

“ Now, there are people who, without being able to say why, are often inspired by this power which intuitively divines or guesses without revealing the process to common sense. They look into the eye of a person--something in glances and tones, gestures, mien, and address, suggests at once an assertion or a prediction which proves to be true. ”

“ This power throws open brain or memory-cells, which waking Common Sense has forgotten; in their chaotic or fantastic searches and mingling they produce poetry; they may chance on prophecy, for if our waking self had at command the immense latent knowledge in which these elves revel, it would detect sequences and know to what many things would lead, now unto us all unknown. ”

“ Agreeable sensations and their harmony become the Beautiful. These blend and produce a general æsthetic sense. It becomes mystical, and is easily worked on by the alter-ego. The most inspired passages of every poet on the beauty of Nature betray clearly the influence and hidden power of the Dream in waking life. ”

“ If a child be trained to exercise quickness of perception so that at last it observes and remembers everything--and experiment has proved this also--it will make the Dream Power a waking power absolutely in harmony and accordance with waking wisdom or conscious will. For the reason why the capricious, wild, strange fitful faculty has always remained foreign to us, is because in all our culture we have never sought to subdue and train the powers allied to it. ”

“ Now this Dream Artist is, to judge by his works, a very different kind of a person from Me. We are not sympathetic, and herein lies a great and serious subject of study. "Dreams," says a writer, "are the novels which we read when we are fast asleep," and, at the risk of receiving punishment, I declare that my writer belongs to a school of novelists with which I have no feelings in common. If, as everybody assumes, it is always I who dream--only using other material--how is it that I always invariably disagree with, thwart, contradict, vex, and mock myself? ”

“ These and a thousand stranger discoveries will during the ensuing century burst upon the world, changing it utterly. We go on as of old in our little petty narrow grooves, declaring that this will be, and that will never come to pass, and that this or that kind of hop-scotch lines, and tip-cat and marbles rules, are the eternal laws of humanity, and lo! all the while in his study some man whom you regard as a dreamer or dolt is preparing that which will be felt forever. ”

“ And it often happens to him who looks deeply into causes, that one of the myriad test cases of so-called "supernaturalism," when it has ignominiously broken down--as all do sooner or later--often reveals a deeper marvel or mystery than it was intended to support. Thus some Red Indians in North America, on being told how certain juggling tricks which they had accepted for magic were performed, calmly replied that it did not make the least difference--that a man must have been a magician (or divinely inspired) to be able to find out such tricks. ”

“ It is probable that the radical function of the dream-power is to prevent images from becoming utterly forgotten or rusty; and by exercising the faculty of facile or chance combination to keep awake in man originality and creativeness. For it is almost certain that, but for the intrusion of this faculty into our waking thoughts, man would become a mere animal, without an idea beyond the joint common appetites, instincts, and emotions of the lowest of his kind. ”

“ It is a fundamental principle of human folly to assume that any alleged marvel is a "violation of the laws of Nature," or the work of supernatural influences, until it is proved not to be such. Nature cannot be violated. She is ever virgin. And "how do you account for that?" is always assumed to be a test question. It cannot be denied that in almost every case, the narrator assumes the absolute truth of all which he states, when, as is well known, even in the most commonplace incidents of ordinary life, such truth can very rarely be obtained. ”

“ All that we can say is that it is probable. But that this power manifests itself in waking hours when it submits to Reflection, is an established fact. It shows itself in all imagination, in all originality, brave art or "fantasy." ”

“ The dream spirit, or that which knows all our memories, and which combines, blends, separates, scatters. unites, confuses, intensifies, beautifies, or makes terrible all the persons, scenes, acts, events, tragedies, or comedies known to us, can, if it pleases, by instantaneous reasoning or intuition, perceive what waking common sense does not. We visit a sick man, and the dream spirit, out of the inexhaustible hoards of memory aided by association, which results in subtle, occult reasoning, perceives that the patient will die in a certain time, and this result is served up in a dramatic dream. ”

“ The poetic or artistic faculty is, we therefore assume, the action on the myriad cells of memory by a strange--sometimes apparently involuntary--fantastic power, which is at the same time higher and lower than common sense or waking consciousness. ”

“ This alter-ego does not confine himself to dreams. A lunatic is a man who dreams wide-awake. He has lost his will or the controlling power resulting from the just co-relation of brain forces. Then the stored-up images stray out and blend. I have dreamed of telling or seeing things and of acting them at the same time. A fish and a watch and a man may seem to be the same thing at once in a dream, as they often are to a waking lunatic. A poet is a man who dreams wide-awake ”

“ CHAPTER XI GYPSY WITCHCRAFT--THE MAGICAL POWER WHICH IS INNATE IN ALL MEN AND WOMEN--HOW IT MAY BE CULTIVATED AND DEVELOPED--THE PRINCIPLES OF FORTUNE-TELLING
WOMEN excel in the manifestation of certain qualities which are associated with mystery and suggestive of occult influences or power. Perhaps the reader will pardon me if I devote a few pages to what I conceive to be, to a certain degree, an explanation of this magic; though, indeed, it may be justly said that in so doing We only pass the old boundary of "spiritual" sorcery to find ourselves in the wider wonderland of Science. ”

“ The line which indicates brain is on an average shorter in women than in men; in almost every instance certain signs infallibly indicate great sensuality. Others show a disposition to dreaminess, sentimentalism, the occult. Now as Love, Wisdom, Strength of Will, or Inertness, are associable with Venus, Apollo, Jupiter, or Saturn, and as astrology was then seriously believed in, it came to pass that the signs of chiromancy were distributed to the seven planets, and supposed to be under their dominion. ”

“ It can do more than make Us, or Me, or the Waking Will, believe that we are passing through fantastic scenes. It can remember or revive the memory of things forgotten by us; it can, when he is making no effort, solve for the geometrician problems which are far beyond his waking capacity--it sometimes teaches the musician airs such as he could not compose. ”

“ The power often actually acts against Me--it plays at fast and loose with me--it tries to deceive me, and when it finds that in dreams I have detected a blunder in the plot of the play which it is spinning, it brings the whole abruptly to an end with the convulsion of a nightmare, or by letting the curtain fall with a crash, and--scena est deserta! ”

“ But for those who believe with MAUDSLEY, et sui generis, that all such distinctions are not seriously worth considering, and to him who can rise to the great philosophy now dawning on the world, there is perceptible in it something far more wonderful and poetical, beautiful and even awful, than ever was known to any occultist of old--for it is scientific and true. It is also true that man can now talk across the world and hear all sounds conveyed to him through the depths of ocean. ”

“ Therefore it is no extravagant deduction to conclude that all of its action which now seems so wonderful, and which has furnished the ground-work for what we call magic, is perfectly within our grasp, and may be secured by simple methods of training which require only perseverance to perfect them.
The gypsy fortune-teller is accustomed for years to look keenly and earnestly into the eyes of those whom she dukkers or "fortune-tells." ”