Supernatural powers

“ Supernatural as well as human attributes have been extended to material things, as animals are given supernormal powers in a sense different from and yet similar to those possessed by the enchanted animals in folk-lore. Science has its physical as well as psychic horrors which the scientific ghostly tales bring in.
Not only are animals gifted with supernatural powers but plants as well are humanized, diabolized. We have strange murderous trees, vampire orchids, flowers that slay men in secret ways with all the smiling loveliness of a treacherous woman. ”

“ If a man invested with his body produced such effects of himself, we should say with reason that they are supernatural operations, because they exceed the known ordinary and natural power of the living man; but if a man held commerce with a spirit, an angel, or a demon, whom by virtue of some compact, explicit or implicit, he commanded to perform certain things which would be above his natural powers, but not beyond the powers of the spirit whom he commanded, would the effect resulting from it be miraculous or supernatural? ”

“ These Powers are not necessarily what the superstitious call ‘supernatural’. We realize now that there is nothing supernatural—that what used to be so called is simply something that we do not understand at present. ”

“ In general, in modern fiction, man now makes his supernatural characters in his own image. Ghosts, angels, devils, witches, werewolves, are humanized, made like to man in appearance, passions, and powers. ”

“ In both civilised and savage myths we find that the world, or that various things in the world, were made by this extra-natural race. Its members were gifted with precisely the same supernatural power as we have seen that the savage medicine-man or sorcerer claims for himself. They could assume animal shapes at will; nay, among the most backward peoples the beings of this powerful race were actually beasts, endowed with human attributes and with magical and supernatural powers. ”

“ We have come to look upon many phenomena that were formerly ascribed to supernatural agencies—crystal gazing, second sight, hallucinations, double personality, possessions, ghosts, even mediumship—not as manifestations of supernatural powers, but as due to an abnormal condition of mind in the subject. ”

“ The phenomena which have accounted for the vigour of life and the prostration of disease account for the motion of things in heaven above and the earth beneath, and the barbaric mind thus enlarges its belief in a twofold existence in man to a far-reaching doctrine of spirits everywhere. Step by step, from ghost-soul flitting round the wigwam to the great spirits indwelling in the powers of nature, the belief in supernatural beings with physical [Pg 225] qualities arises, until the moral element comes in, and they appear as good and evil gods contending for the mastery of the universe. ”

“ Ancient supernaturalism assigned its occurrences to no cause adequate to produce them. Those who asserted its reality, referred it to the action of deities who possessed very limited power, or to occult powers in nature. Such occult powers we now know to have no existence, and the power attributed to the supposed deities was far too limited to be capable of producing the results in question. All reputed events, the alleged cause of which is unable to produce them, we are entitled to reject without further investigation. ”

“ But since the things of the spirit are intangible they must be represented in concrete form, as definite beings whom our minds can apprehend. Thus the poets and dramatists and story-makers must show us images to shadow forth spiritual things. As with a shudder we close the books that tell us horrifying tales of satanic spirits, of accursed beings that are neither wholly animal nor human, of mortals with diabolic powers, we shrink from the evils of the soul that they represent, and recognize their essential truth in the guise of fiction. ”

“ Poetry in general in all times has freely used the various elements of supernaturalism. The epic has certain distinct themes, such as visits to the lower world, visions of heaven, and conflict between mortal and divine powers, and brings in mythological characters, gods, goddesses, demigods, and the like. Fate is a moving figure in the older dramas, while the liturgical plays introduced devils, angels, and even the Deity as characters in the action. In the classical and Elizabethan drama we see ghosts, witches, magicians, as dramatis personæ. ”

“ The reality of the powers of sorcery was never questioned. Every marvel and every narrative of supernatural interference with human affairs seemed matter of course to the superstitious credulity of the age. However much miracles are exceptions to the order of nature, they have always been the rule in the history of ignorance. In fact, the excess of belief in them throughout many centuries of darkness is fatal to their claims to credence now. ”

“ But it is to be observed that the supernatural beings, who are the real sources of atmospheric phenomena, have delegated or deputed a portion of their powers not merely to certain material objects, such as stones or leaves, but to certain set forms of words, which men call incantations or spells ”

“ In addition to the unholy powers possessed by the devil and given by him to his agents, the witches, warlocks and magicians, we see in Gothic fiction other aspects of dæmonology, such as that associated with animals and with inanimate objects. Supernaturalism in the horror novel is by no means confined to human beings, but extends to beasts as well. ”

“ There are crystal balls that reveal not only what is going on in distant parts, but show the future as well. [23] The same volume describes magic swords that bear changing hieroglyphics to be read only by enchantment and other uncanny objects. These will serve to illustrate the preternatural powers possessed by inanimate objects [33] in the terror literature. In some instances the motif is used with effectiveness, definitely heightening the impression of the weird in a way that human supernaturalism could not accomplish. ”

“ Subject to the sudden revelations, the breaks in habitual existence caused by the aspect of death, the touch of love, the flood of music, I never lived, that I remember, what you call a common natural day. All my days are touched by the supernatural, for I feel the pressure of hidden causes, and the presence, sometimes the communion, of unseen powers. It needs not that I should ask the clairvoyant whether "a spirit-world projects into ours." As to the specific evidence, I would not tarnish my mind by hasty reception. ”

“ There is freedom of will amongst the angels as among human beings, and some of the angels abused their trust, and fell through love of the daughters of men, of whom were begotten those who are called Giants. (2) These angels who have fallen from heaven busy themselves about the air and the earth; and the souls of the Giants, (3) which are the demons that roam about the world, work evil according to their respective natures. (4) There are powers which exercise dominion over matter, and by means of it, and more especially one, who is opposed to God. ”

“ The distinction in function between these powers is affirmed by him no less than three times; what it consisted in, we are only able to judge from the terms themselves, and the nature of the case. There is every probability that the distinction points to a higher and a lower exercise of supernatural power; the one being the evidential miracle properly so called, and the other a supernatural knowledge of how to effect cures—a gift which would be exactly suited to enable the missionary to obtain that attentive hearing of his message which he so urgently required. The Epistle of St. ”

“ History clearly demonstrates that, wherever ignorance and superstition have prevailed, every obscure occurrence has been attributed to supernatural agency, and it is freely acknowledged that, under their influence, inexplicable and miraculous are convertible terms. ”

“ Until a little more than a hundred years ago all persons affected in any of these unusual ways were supposed to be endowed with some sort of supernatural power, or to be under external and supernatural influence, either divine or satanic. ”

“ Everywhere, from time to time, the proximity of the unseen world and the existence of the Supernatural were made manifest: while, here and there, examples of special miraculous interventions evidently stood forth to show that neither the Arm of the Most High was shortened nor the faith of the followers of our Blessed Lord stunted in its growth. ”

“ Thus near are we, in every exercise of our reasonable life, to the superhuman and to the supernatural. Upon the other hand, there is positively no need of magic, or of miracle, or of mysterious promptings from the subconscious, to prove to us the reality of the human and of the supernatural, or to define our reasonable relations with it. ”

“ Miracles, spells, incantations, witchcrafts, in short all the facts that are incorrectly called supernatural, can only be possible and accounted for by the authority with which some other mind compels us to accept the effects of a mysterious law of optics which magnifies, or diminishes, or exalts creation, enables it to move within us independently of our will, distorts or embellishes it, snatches us up to heaven, or plunges us into hell—the two terms by which we express the excess of rapture or of pain. These phenomena are within us, not outside us. ”

“ As I have observed, the principle is found energizing wherever man exists. Although in one age it may be more active than in another, it is alike the inheritance of the civilized man and the savage. It has displayed itself in the creations of the poet and the writer of fiction; in the various forms of religious thought; in the production of ghost-stories and pictures of the under-world; in the creation of the various forms of demonology, witchcraft and magic; in the milder form of fairy-tales; in charms and incantations, and in efforts to pry into the future. ”

“ The introduction of an unknown [pg 043] force can only be accomplished by a being who, although he may be immanent in nature, is yet capable of controlling its material forces. Occurrences therefore which transcend the power of the known forces existing in the universe to accomplish, whether they are material or human, may for all practical purposes be viewed as supernatural; that is to say, they denote the presence and agency of a being who is possessed of power, intelligence, and volition. ”

“ Such changes as spring from the occultly creative acts of the spiritual world, or more exactly the spirit-world, represented by God in the character of an extraneous being, by a personal devil or by those minor spirits or powers of light or darkness, often if not usually described as objects of superstition, no longer interfere with nature's orderly course. ”

“ I draw a reason from these prodigious practices of wizards, magicians, enchanters, &c., and from all the heathen idolatry and superstition, to prove that there is a Deity; for from these acts of theirs, being preternatural and above human wisdom, we may consequently infer that they proceed from a supernatural and immaterial cause, such as demons are. ”

“ Now the purport of this volume is to show by examples of supernatural intervention—examples many of which have been gathered from quite recent periods—that Almighty God, from time to time, in various ways and by different human instruments, still condescendingly reveals to man glimpses of the world unseen, and shows the existence of that life beyond the grave, in which the sceptic and materialist of the present restless age would have us disbelieve, and which they themselves scornfully reject. ”

“ I loved the supernatural in book and fancy, and on rare occasions, when I was in a state of spiritual exaltation, a vague belief would steal upon me that I should one day possess the power of piercing the veil which shuts off the unseen from mortal eyes. ”

“ Her magic potion not only gives her length of days but protection against danger as well, for her rival’s dagger glances harmlessly away from her, and she is proof against chance and fate. She gains her immortal life partly by bathing in a secret essence or vapor whose emanations give her mystic force and immortal beauty. There are many other elements of supernaturalism in association with the not impossible She,—magic vision, reincarnation, a mystic light that envelops her body, the power to call up the dead, to reanimate the skeletons in the desert and raise them to dreadful life. ”

“ We have been thus tedious in giving these examples, that it may appear how improperly Men fly to supernatural causes to solve effects by, that are and may be performed by natural means; and that Men need neither fetch a Devil from Hell nor a Soul from Heaven to solve these effects that mens cunning, art and craft are able to perform. ”

“ It is surely the strangeness, the unknown nature, the anomalous character of the supernatural agents here employed, that makes them to operate so powerfully on our hopes, fears, curiosities, sympathies, and, in short, on all the feelings of our hearts. ”

“ It follows, therefore, that if the phenomena of spiritualism are viewed as due to supernatural causes, it is utterly incredible either that the Governor of the Universe would permit such a course of action, or that the spirits themselves, unless deprived of reason, would exhibit themselves in such a variety of phantastic forms, and for no other apparent purpose than to effect a number of capricious interferences with the visible order of nature. ”

“ And therefore those Men must needs be precipicious, and build upon a sandy foundation, that will ascribe corporeal effects unto Devils, and yet know not the extent of nature, for no Man can rationally assign a beginning for supernatural agents and actions, that does not certainly know where the power and operation of nature ends. ”