The Psychic Landscape of Antiquity: Beliefs in Life After Death Among Early Humans and Greeks

To Hannah and to all those others who know in their hearts that the clockwork universe is an illusion.
Walter Falk
www.thehamiltonfiles.info
https://vimeo.com/63670484
Part 1
THE LANDSCAPE OF CONSCIOUSNESS SURVIVAL:
PHYSICAL AND METAPHYSICAL
The Psychic Landscape of Antiquity

You may not remember exactly when you first became aware that this life is
going to end some day. But ever since that day you have at least occasionally
wondered. And as you grew older and are approaching this time of the inevitable
leave-taking you may find yourself wondering more and more often.
It has been said that there are only two things that are certain: death and
taxes. This is only about half-right. Sometimes people can escape taxes. No one
escapes death.
It is not something that most of us like to think about all that much; but if we
are honest with ourselves we will admit that it is something that is never very far
from our thoughts.
For most of us, when we contemplate a journey into a far country we deem it
prudent that certain precautions be taken and information be gathered about the
destination.
These precautions are likely to include questions such as:
What are conditions like within the country? What documents are going to be
required? Are there immunizations needed? What is the language and the coin
of the realm? What are travel conditions like within the destination country? We
may even spend some time perusing little travel guides and language books or
looking at maps.
We try to find people who have been there recently. We question them and
ask them to give their impressions. We talk excitedly with our friends about the
coming trip. Friends gather around to wish us well and we have farewell parties.
No one tells us that it is morbid to think about our coming adventure.
The situation is quite different when we contemplate our coming demise.
Friends encourage us with statements like ’you’re going to live forever’, and
’you’re looking good’. There is no talk about our coming journey. Everything
is done to take our attention from the coming changes. We are cautioned against
entertaining an unhealthy train of thought.
Most of us are happy to have our attention diverted in these ways. But maybe
you are different.
Maybe you have wondered: what is it going to be like on that day when you
close your eyes for the last time. Is it going to be like a long sleep, dreamless and
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Figure 1: Elmwood Cemetery Winnipeg - Cemetery where buried the Hamilton family
peaceful; are you going to be aware of what is going on around you in those last
moments; are there any new experiences; will your consciousness persist or will
there be a blank nothingness?
If it is a blank nothingness, then of course, there is nothing more to be said.
But what if your consciousness continues? What might your new state be like?
Will you remember those you have left behind? Will you meet loved ones who
have gone before? Will you meet those whom you have hurt in the past or who
have hurt you? Will the strained relationships continue? Will there be a possibility
of reconciliation?
Will there be Angels, or demons, a literal heaven or a literal hell, ﬂames or
celestial harps?
What will it be like?
At this time we are not going to ponder the details of such possible future
consciousness after death, rather we are going to look into how your questions
echo those of other humans, and other than humans, who have considered this
question of the possibility of after death consciousness, and what conclusions
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Figure 2: Neanderthals
they seem to have reached.
For one thing is certain, you are not alone when you wonder about these
questions. All through recorded history these questions have continually
occupied the thoughts and emotions of humans. Kings and Queens, royalty and
commoners, rich and poor, saints and sinners, judges and pirates, all the beautiful
people and all the ordinary people of history have wondered.
My favorite philosopher, Woody Allen, puts it this way: “I am not afraid of death,
I just don’t want to be there when it happens.” Probably most of us could say that
we feel the same way?
There is evidence that these questions go back to long before there was any
writing. Archaeologists have been busily digging up evidence that points to
human preoccupation with questions about death.
And not only humans!
The ﬁrst group we want to look at is the Neanderthals.
They are named for the Neander Thal in Germany. “Thal” is the German word
for Valley. The ﬁrst remains of the Neanderthals were found in this valley.
They roamed the earth, from about 600,000 B.C.E. to around 50 or 30,000
B.C.E.
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They stood about 5’ 6" tall, and their brain sizes at birth were about the same
as the brain sizes of homo sapiens, that is, humans.
The adult Neanderthal had a brain size somewhat larger than the human,
leaving us with the question “Were they more intelligent than the humans that
lived concurrently with them? If so, why did humans survive, and why did the
Neanderthals die out?
The Neanderthal were cousins to humans. And they seem to have been here
on earth somewhat before we homo sapiens made our appearance.
There even seem to be some genetic linkages between Neanderthals and
humans. Possibly there was some interbreeding between the two strains of
bipeds.
When archaeologists dig up Neanderthal graves, they find that there are
definite signs of intentional internment.
It took archaeologists more than 50 years after the discovery of the first
Neanderthals to reach the conclusion that the burials were deliberate and
meaningful to the Neanderthals. Anthropologist and archaeologist Louis Leaky
was the first to reach this conclusion.
In both Europe and the near East, Neanderthal cadavers appear to be placed
in dug-out graves in sleeping or fetal positions, as if they were being readied for
a future rebirth. This seems to hint that there may have been some sort of belief
that death was a kind of a sleep state, a rest before rebirth.
These ritualistic burials indicate very strongly that there was some sort of
a belief in survival or of a future life. Sometimes plants or flowers had been
placed in the hands of the Neanderthals, giving the appearance of a deliberate
arrangement. Sometimes there is a red pigment marking the graves, which
suggests some kind of symbolic meaning.
Apparently family and friends gathered horsetails and other plants, carried
them to the grave, and carefully placed them on the body.
Sometimes corn flowers and grape hyacinths were gathered along with other
flowers and plants with known curative and anti- inflammatory properties.
It is not known whether the Neanderthals were aware of the medicinal
properties of the plants or whether they were coincidental choices.
Some Neanderthals are buried in groups, suggesting some kind of family
relationships. Occasionally there are stone slabs over the graves.
Some are buried with food and tools. This again strongly indicates some sort
of an idea of an afterlife. It seems as if the expectation was that after- death
conditions were very much like those of life.
And there are indications that after the time of the latest Neanderthals, and
before the earliest Greeks there was a continuing belief in human survival. These
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Figure 3: Burial Neanderthals
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are mostly not in the form of written records, but in the rituals that surrounded
human burial, as evidenced by archaeology.
From the time of the earliest writings there are abundant indications that the
early civilizations had customs and performed rituals that indicated that there was
some sort of a belief in the continued consciousness of the departed individuals.
During the time of the pre-Socratic philosophers in Greece - among these were
Permenides, Heraclitus, Empedocles and Pythagoras - from 520 B.C.E. to 430
B.C.E. - people were thinking about what happens when they die, and there are
even records of attempts to contact those who had passed on.
Parmenides and many others had traveled to the Far-World and talked and
written about it. And you can guess what they meant by the Far-World.
We are often told that the Greeks spent time in earnest cogitation, but were
not especially adept at experimenting to prove or disprove their thinking. They
were not scientiﬁc in our modern view of such things.
They were content with a sort of wooly-headed mysticism far from the hard-
headed practical and successful approach of modern scientists.
They actually experimented quite a lot; but most of their experimentation was
in the areas of the non-physical, what we might now call psychological or even
spiritual.
This sort of experimentation is reminiscent of Einstein’s ‘gedanken’ experi-
ments, which could be translated as ‘thought experiments’, and which Einstein
used to derive both the special and general theories of relativity. Einstein was
famous for arriving at some of his most far-reaching conclusions through these
thought experiments. There is, therefore, nothing strange or unusual or worthy
of contempt about the Greek way of arriving at their conclusions.
Newton, for instance, derived his laws of gravity by the use of mathematics
and observations of the celestial objects made by others, without experimenting
with any physical objects to come to his conclusions. It was observations and
conclusions.
It seems that they knew, on the basis of their Far-World travels, that the
physical world is an illusion anyhow. It was a temporary state of some use in
the growth of consciousness in experiencing itself; but it was not the be-all and
end-all. Hence experimenting in the physical world was not the most essential
activity.
In their view, if the higher, non-physical, world could be investigated and
understood it would give adequate insights into the lower level physical world
where needed without the need for extraordinary playing around with physical
objects.
It is interesting to note that most of the wonderful discoveries of the last
centuries were already previsioned two millenia ago by the Greeks.
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Figure 4: The School of Athens, by the Italian Renaissance artist Raphael
Sometimes our modern study of physics seems to corroborate their philosoph-
ical views to a much greater extent than the earlier intellectual and experimental
gropings of physical science .
Quantum mechanics comes to mind here.
String theory, a modern way of viewing the world, has negligible experimental
backing at present, but is taken seriously nevertheless by many physicists simply
on logical grounds.
Some physicists tend to discount it on this account.
The energies required to investigate matter at the very minute distances that
would be required for such investigations are so large that it is doubtful whether
human technology will ever attain such power. So experimentation seems out of
the question with our present technologies.
But the complete understanding of the universe requires that we know what
happens at these minute distances, and since there seems no way forward using
experimental methods we are required to use our intelligence instead.
Mathematics is helpful, and can be used both as a crutch and a ﬂashlight, but
could be misleading also.
There is, however, the hope that someday there may be some experimental
evidence found for string theory, perhaps in cosmology.
The Greek way of thinking of the ‘spiritual’ as being more basic to reality than
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Walter Falk
the physical world has its reﬂection in the growing realization of modern physics
that ‘consciousness’ is the basic stuff of the universe, and that the physical is a
creation of consciousness, rather than the other way around.
Modern studies of the mind seem to be going in the same direction, because
some major mind researchers are coming to the conclusion that it is not the
physical brain that creates consciousness, but that consciousness creates the
physical brain. More to be said about this in a later part of this series of video
presentations.
To return to Greece, Herodotus, the ﬁrst known historian, writes about
Zalmoxis. Zalmoxis had been enslaved for some reason, and he was, in a sense,
fortunate to become a slave of Pythagoras, who believed in the continuation of
life beyond death; and Pythagoras seems to have spent much time with Zalmoxis
discussing human survival.
Apparently Zalmoxis was eventually freed, and he left Greece for a time; and
when he returned he had become a wealthy man.
He was a strong believer in life after death, and he spent his fortune in
educating the Greeks about the meaning of death. Apparently he became very
well beloved by his Creek neighbors.
Herodotus tells how he had an underground cavern built, with food and
provisions for a long stay.
Then Zalmoxis talked to his fellow Greeks, telling them that death is nothing to
be feared; and that he would prove this to them.
He then went underground, disappearing for about three years, never showing
his face to anyone above ground; but reappearing at the end of the three years,
to the joy of the Greeks.
In this way he hoped to show them that death was nothing more than a
separation, with an eventual reuniting.
As already stated, the Greeks mourned Zalmoxis when he went underground;
they went through the well-known stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining,
depression and acceptance and they were overjoyed when he reappeared.
Zalmoxis believed that he had proved his point.
Whether this is a true story or not, (and we all know that not all history is
true), it indicates clearly that the Greeks believed in a life beyond the death of
the physical body.
The Greeks accepted communication of the living with the dead. Dr. Raymond
Moody tells of a visit to a psychomantium in Greece. He even gives precise
directions to prospective tourists, so they can visit an ancient psychomantium
even today.
He tells us that Sotiris Dakaris, a modern-day archaeologist, has excavated an
ancient Greek psychomantium.
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Figure 5: Herodotus
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Figure 6: Psychomantium
Dr. Moody wonders whether the story of Plato’s cave, by which Plato hoped
to illustrate how humans are unaware of the true reality of our existence, by
showing humans chained in a cave with their backs to the entrance, and able to
see only dancing shadows on the wall of the cave, may be based in part on such
psychomantea.
The psychomanteum of which Dr. Moody writes seems to have been frequented
by a great many people in order to visit or communicate with their loved dead
relatives.
It was an underground cave in which there would have been a large metal
cauldron, which Dr. Moody believes was used as the mirror in which the living
viewed the dead. Perhaps the dead appeared to come from out of the cauldron to
communicate.
It is also possible that the cauldron was filled with some sort of liquid that was
used much as modern-day crystal balls to see images of the dead loved ones. In
this way the psychomanteum served as a meeting point between the living and
the dead.
Homer gives a graphic description of a ceremony for summoning the dead
that didn’t require the elaborate facilities and rituals that were found at
psychomanteums.
He recounts that Odysseus sailed to an Oracle that was consecrated to this
activity. Here he dug a shallow pit that he then filled with the blood from a
sacrificial ewe and ram, a pool of blood into which he gazed and communicated
with the spirits. To quote Homer:
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Figure 7: Plato’s cave
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Figure 8: Dr. Moody
“Then the souls of the dead who had passed away came up in a crowd from
Erobos: young men and brides, old men who had suffered much, and tender
maidens to whom sorrow was a new thing; others killed in battle, warriors clad in
bloodstained armor. All this crowd gathered about the pit from every side, with a
dreadful great noise, which made me pale with fear.”
Following this encounter Odysseus has a conversation with his mother, who,
unbeknownst to him, has died in a faraway land. Odysseus assumes that his
mother’s death has been a violent one, or perhaps one brought about by lingering
illness, but she denies both of these possible causes. “It was no disease that made
me pine away,” says his mother. “But I missed you so much, and your clever wit
and your gay merry ways, and life was sweet no longer, so I died.”
“When I heard this, I longed to throw my arms around her neck,” says
Odysseus. “Three times I tried to embrace the ghost, three times it slipped
through my hands like a shadow or a dream.”
The psychomanteum that Dr. Moody writes about was destroyed in 280 B.C.E.
by the Romans. After that a Christian Byzantine chapel was built above it, most
likely to hide it.
When Christianity made its debut, many such ancient sites were either
destroyed or hidden from view; and this also included the burning of books
and libraries, to erase all knowledge that might contradict the new Christian
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teachings. Christianity could not easily prosper if the truth were allowed to
continue to be readily available.
For the Egyptians, there were always two worlds interconnecting or coexisting
- the physical world and the far world. These two worlds intertwined, like the
two snakes of the caduceus, or the double helix of genetics. You could not really
speak about one without also mentioning the other. This is very reminiscent of the
dualities of physics, of which the wave particle duality is a well-known example.
These dualities are very common in physics, and probably also apply to the
spiritual realms.
For the Egyptians the physical realm existed within time, and the far world
existed outside of time. All the energies and vitalities of the physical world had
their source in the far world, what we would term the spiritual world. Life itself
came from this far world.
The physically dead were understood to be the truly living ones.
Modern mystics, Swedenborg, claim to have visited this far world, and told
of some of its characteristics. Iamblichus, a philosopher from Syria, had a
great interest in the spiritual beliefs and practices of the Egyptians. He was a
Neoplatonist. He lived in the third century A.D.
He was teaching theurgy, which is probably best translated as ‘working with the
gods’, as contrasted with ‘theology’, which would be ‘talking or studying about
the gods’. He was much more interested in practical effects than in intellectual
argument. He wanted his students to ‘know’ rather than just ‘believe’.
He was very open about the ability of the Egyptian priests to separate their
consciousness from their body and enter the Far-World. And he did not just imply
this. He was explicit. There was to be no possibility of misunderstanding or
misinterpretation.
He states that the priests did not have their knowledge of the divine realms -
to quote him - ‘by mere reason alone’.
This is a direct challenge to the popular teaching of Aristotle, who believed that
intellect alone could reach the higher realms.
It is also very far removed from the latter day Christian teaching that belief
is the key to heaven. Iamblichus claimed that in the Egyptian teaching it was
possible for the spiritual part of the human being to separate from the physical
part. He appears to have understood the spiritual and the physical to be two
distinct kinds of reality.
He says that in the Egyptian teaching, at the point of death, the individual soul
goes forth in an out of body experience in a spontaneous way.
As Iamblicus described it, this can also be done by a healthy individual, in the
living state. This projection requires some induction, some initiation, or some kind
of a ritual.
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Figure 9: Emanuel Swedenborg
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Scholars are still puzzled about an interesting ritual that was performed by the
priests in the temples.
The ancient texts say that a priest would sit in a quiet place and use some sort
of techniques that would induce something that could be translated as ‘sleep’. It
appears in this context to refer to something more like a ‘trance’ or a ‘meditative’
state. Perhaps it was a hypnotic state of some kind.
This ritual state appeared to result in the priest moving into the world of the
dead - the Far-World. On his return from this state he was able to describe his
experiences as a ‘dead’ person.
This process is often referred to as an initiation.
There is an interesting aspect to the teachings of Iamblichus. Going deeper
into his teachings it seems that he meant for the masses of people to perform
rituals that were physical in nature, while the higher types, who were closest to
the divine (and whose numbers were few), could reach the divine realm through
contemplation. It seems that he thought that there were different levels at which
humans could approach the divine.
Iamblichus was said to have been a man of great culture and learning. He was
also renowned for his charity and self-denial. Many students gathered around
him, and he lived with them in genial friendship. According to Fabricius, he died
during the reign of Constantine, sometime before 333AD.
It was during the reign of Constantine that the Christian religion became the
state religion of the Roman empire. It was at this point that Christianity began
its ascendancy in numbers of ‘believers’ and decline in spiritual power. Soon it
included ‘just war’ theories and other signs of retreat from the teachings of its
purported icon, Jesus.
At the Munro Institute in the States a form of out of body experience is taught,
making use of some modern psychological knowledge. This seems to be a modern
form of the Egyptian initiations.
In the intervening years between the time of the Greeks and the 1860s there
are many references in the literature to various forms of communication with the
departed.
There are some early references in the old testament to various forms of
necromancy: there is the story of Saul visiting the Witch of Endor, sometimes
called the medium of Endor, a woman who apparently called up the ghost of the
recently deceased prophet Samuel, at the demand of King Saul of the Kingdom of
Israel as related in the First Book of Samuel.
As the story goes, after Samuel had died, he was buried in Ramah. After
Samuel’s death Saul received no more answers from God in dreams, through
prophets, or via the Urim and Thummim as to his best course of action against
the assembled forces of the Philistines.
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Figure 10: She summons up the spirit of Samuel, at Saul’s request
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Consequently Saul, who had earlier driven out all necromancers and magicians
from Israel, seeks out a medium, anonymously, and in disguise.
Following the instruction of her visitor, the woman claims that she sees the
ghost of Samuel rising from the abode of the dead.
The voice of the prophet’s ghost, after some complaining about being
disturbed, berates Saul for disobeying God, and predicts Saul’s downfall, along
with his whole army, in battle the next day, then adds that Saul and his sons will
join him, shortly, in the abode of the dead.
Saul is shocked and afraid, and in the following encounter he is defeated, and
Saul throws himself on his sword after being wounded.
The Jewish historian Josephus, writing in the Antiquities of the Jews, quotes this
story and appears to find it completely credible.
The story of King Saul and the Witch of Endor would appear to affirm that it is
possible for humans to summon the spirits of the dead, or at least to confirm that
such belief existed.
Medieval glosses to the Bible, catering to Catholic interpretation, suggested
that what the witch actually summoned was not the ghost of Samuel, but a demon
taking his shape or an illusion crafted by the witch.
There are many more cases cited in the Bible of divination and diviners.
Moses, Aaron, Joshua, Judge Samuel, King Saul, King David, Joseph, many high
priests, and the eleven apostles after the death of Jesus as recounted in the Acts,
and John also, are presented as diviners
Joseph in Pharaoh’s service once instructed his steward to go and find the cup
that Joseph used to drink from and use for divination.
The cup was found in his visiting brother Benjamin’s sack. Joseph said to his
shamed brothers, "What is this you have done? Don’t you know that a man like
me can find things out by divination?" This is from Genesis 44.
The Israelites got their various areas to live in the holy land assigned by lot - as
commanded through Moses in Joshua 14.
Casting of lots is one form of divination. Moses instigated it among the
Israelites, and Joshua carried it on.
A garment-like "tool" called the ephod was designed to serve as a divining
object. It served divination and was specified for Israelite priests and leaders in
Exodus 28. "This is to be a lasting ordinance for Aaron and his descendants.”
Judge Samuel wore the ephod when he served before the tabernacle at Shiloh
as in Sam 2. The ephod proper was worn outside the robe. It seems to have been
"kept in place” by a girdle and by shoulder pieces, from which hung the breast
plate (or pouch) containing the sacred lots, the divinatory objects, the Urim and
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Figure 11: Joseph’s dreams. When Joseph had a dream of wheats heaves.
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Figure 12: The divinatory objects, the Urim and Thummim
Thummim, whose precise function is now unknown. This description is found in
the Encyclopedia Britannica.
Thus, the ephod was part of the ceremonial dress of the high priest of ancient
Israel. The ephod was also used for oracular purposes, together with the two
stones, Urim and Thummim.
The point of citing these references is not to show that divining was a common
practice, the stories may all be apocryphal. For instance there is a question of
whether there ever was a Moses. Most of the other characters, such as Joseph,
may be mythical. The point is to show that there has been a belief that divining
was practiced in ancient Israel.
Joseph’s cup was used in a form of communication often called mirror gazing.
The Tungus natives used copper mirrors in their shamanic rituals.
There is a story of Aladdin’s lamp, clearly another form of mirror, because
when the lamp had been polished the genie appeared. This is not exactly
communication with the dead, but somewhat in the same vein.
The Romans believed in water fairies, the Celts did their gazing, and in
Shakespeare’s Macbeth there is a calling up of apparitions.
Queen Elizabeth the ﬁrst had her own mirror gazer. He was John Dee, who
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acted as a sleuth for her at various times, and he is very likely the man on whom
agent 007 is modeled.
Around the 1860s, an American president, Abraham Lincoln, had a precognitive
dream, in which he saw a vision in a mirror, which his wife interpreted as
presaging his death.
In the United States, Raymond Moody has created a psychomanteum which
many people have visited, in a modern form of mirror gazing, in which they claim
to be able to meet with and communicate with loved ones who have departed
this earth.
There is much evidence that since time immemorial death has been both
celebrated and feared; giving us reason to think that there was a strong belief
in the continuation of some kind of soul or consciousness after the demise of the
physical body.
There are some practices as closing the eyes of the dead person, thus closing
off a window between the living world and the spirit world; or covering the face, or
even holding the mouth and nose of the dying person shut, which were to make
sure that the soul could not escape, and therefore the death of the person would
be delayed.
Covering the face of the deceased comes from the pagan belief that the spirit
of the deceased escapes through the mouth.
The homes of the deceased were sometimes burned, to keep the spirit from
returning. At other times the doors and windows were opened, to allow the soul
to escape, so that the deceased could not haunt the living who continued to live
in the house.
The dead were carried out of the home feet ﬁrst, so that they could not look
back into the house and beckon to those left behind to follow them.
Mirrors were covered in black crêpe, so that the souls of the deceased would
not be trapped on this side, making it impossible to proceed to the other side.
Family photographs were turned face down, so that other family members
would not be possessed by the spirit of the dead.
Some Saxons cut the feet off their dead, so that they could not walk abroad
and disturb the living.
Among some aborigines the practice was to cut off the heads of the deceased,
so they would be kept too busy looking for their heads to give any trouble to those
still in the living.
The use of tombstones may come from a belief that the dead could be weighed
down.
Occasionally mazes were constructed at the doors of mausoleums, apparently
on the theory that the dead could only travel in straight lines. They could thus be
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kept at bay.
Sometimes funeral processions were arranged in such a way that the path to
the cemetery was different from the path back from the cemetery. This was
meant to keep the deceased from being able to find their way to the homes of
the living.
Some of the rituals which we now perform as a sign of respect for the dead had
their origin in fear of the dead.
Beating on the grave, the firing of guns, and other noisy or violent acts may
have originated in an attempt to frighten away other spirits at the cemetery.
In many cemeteries most of the graves are oriented in such a way that the feet
of the dead are to the east and the heads to the West. This may have originated
in ancient times with Sun worshipers, but at present it is most likely associated
with the belief that the trumpets calling the dead to judgment will be coming from
the East.
Mourning clothing comes from a practice designed to disguise the living, so
that the dead would be confused and leave the living in peace.
Feasting probably comes from the practice of early societies leaving food
offerings for their deceased.
Wakes originated in an ancient practice of keeping watch over the deceased,
hoping that life would return.
The lighting of candles originates from the practice of using fire to protect the
living from the spirits of the dead.
The ringing of bells comes from the medieval belief that the ringing of
consecrated bells will keep the spirits at bay.
The firing of guns mirrors the ancient practice of throwing spears into the air to
ward off spirits hovering over the deceased.
Holy water was sprinkled over the deceased to protect them from demons.
Floral offerings are often intended to gain favor with the spirit of the deceased.
Funeral music began with ancient chants designed to placate the spirits.
From these practices we can clearly see that there was a strong belief in the
survival of the soul or spirit of the individual, and that there was a possibility of
interaction between the dead and the living.
Often this possibility was a source of fear and dread for the living. There is not
too much evidence for the attitude of the dead.
As we can see there has been a very long-term belief in the survival of the
human spirit, but this is often seen as a one-sided intrusion of spirits into the land
of the living, and often with fearful consequences for the living, if one is to believe
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the fearful propaganda.
Any weekend on television is replete with horrifying tales of the murder and
mayhem perpetrated by spirits of the dead on the living. And of course, some
of those who have died have left legacies that no doubt now keep them busily
turning over in their graves with regret.
But the living today are really the ones to be feared!
One has only to spend a little bit of time with the daily news to see how much
horrific mayhem is being perpetrated in the name of all that is holy and just.
Even the icon of Christianity, Jesus, must be horrified when contemplating the
endless follies of racism and the destruction of the lives of apparently innocent
men, women and children, especially children, that are perpetrated in his name,
and putatively for the sake of propagating his good news.
And the Buddha, and the Hindu gods, and Zoroaster, and all the spirits of all
the ancient tribes and cultures through the ages, must be similarly agitated.
No wonder that an apparently impenetrable veil seems to have been
interposed between the living and the dead. If there is indeed such a veil then
this is no doubt more for the protection of the dead than of the living.
It is no wonder that we humans walk about, bowed under the weight of the guilt
over the things that we have done, are doing, and will no doubt continue to do in
the foreseeable future. All in the name of everything that we hold to be noble and
holy.
And in 1848 three sisters, Leah, Margaret and Kate, appeared on the scene,
and the world has not been quite the same since.
This phenomenon has been debated for years, and there is no clear evidence
for either side. There are those who believe that the Fox sisters re-opened the
door for us to enter the realm of the departed, and those who fervently debunk
this point of view.
Whatever the truth, there were rappings and table tippings, mysterious lights,
and answers to human questions purporting to come from the “other side”.
Before long most of American society, from the upper crust of Boston to the lower
East side of New York, was tipping and bumping, and raising a riot of holy and
occasionally unholy psychical fun.
By 1888, the girls confessed publicly that the whole thing had started with a
joke meant to frighten their mother; that it was all fraudulent. They now said:
"When we went to bed at night we used to tie an apple to a string and move the
string up and down, causing the apple to bump on the floor, or we would drop the
apple on the floor, making a strange noise every time it would rebound. Mother
listened to this for a time. She would not understand it and did not suspect us as
being capable of a trick because we were so young."
23

Figure 13: The Fox Sisters, Margaretta, Kate and Leah
24

Walter Falk
The account went on to say: During the night of March 31, Kate challenged
the invisible noise- maker, presumed to be a "spirit", to repeat the snaps of her
fingers. "It" did. "It" was asked to rap out the ages of the girls. "It" did.
The neighbours were called in, and over the course of the next few days a
type of code was developed where raps could signify yes or no in response to a
question, or be used to indicate a letter of the alphabet.
The girls addressed the spirit as "Mr. Splitfoot" which is a nickname for the
Devil. Later, the alleged "entity" creating the sounds claimed to be the spirit of a
peddler named Charles B. Rosma, who had been murdered five years earlier and
buried in the cellar.
Doyle claims the neighbors dug up the cellar and found a few pieces of bone,
but it wasn’t until 1904 that a skeleton was found, buried in the cellar wall. No
missing person named Charles B. Rosma was ever identified.
A year later, just to add to the fun, they denied their confession. This greatly
excited the participants: the believers were taken aback, the pseudo-skeptics
were delighted, and the skeptics were thoroughly confused after that.
But this is only one of many conflicting accounts. The arguments have been
going pro and con ever since.
The girls fell out of favor with each other at various times and appear to have
told various stories, and the situation became more bizarre. At this distance and
time from the events, and considering the heat of the emotions generated, there
does not appear to be any clear-cut indication as to the truth of the allegations
and counter- allegations.
One would think that these shenanigans would have made people shy away
from the phenomena, but such does not appear to be the case. If anything, the
controversies added to the fun, and word-of- mouth advertising is always the most
effective.
And since most people are either hoping to see the reality of psychic
phenomena established, or are hoping for its opposite, with very few people
simply trying to establish the truth of the situation in an unbiased manner, there
is not likely to be an early end to the controversies.
At any rate the phenomenon blossomed and grew and the stories multiplied.
All manner of psychic abilities were now in evidence. The Fox sisters
phenomenon seemed to have opened a gigantic floodgate. It was as if the world
had been waiting for some kind of return to the earlier belief in spirits and sprites
and demons and angels. The so- called scientific revolution had tended to tamp
down the natural belief of human beings in another world. But the beliefs were
clearly never very far submerged.
And this avalanche of fascination with the doings of the spirit world also flowed
over into Europe and England. Almost everyone, including people like Carl Jung,
25

indulged in at least some experimentation with this new phenomenon.
The original Fox sisters, who started it all, did not fare too well. They had their
time of fame and fortune, with many revering them, while others threw cabbages
and threatened to lynch them. At least one of them ended up eventually on the
tipsy, poor and lonely side of life.
This was the beginning of modern spiritualism. In retrospect it has many of
the more entertaining aspects of a good modern election campaign or religious
revival.
But there was at the same time a new spirit in the modern world. As
already mentioned, materialism had been on a very steady march since Newton
and the industrial revolution. But Isaac Newton’s insights and the advance of
technology had also spurred a new spirit of adventure and experimentation along
psychological lines.
And almost everyone was now aware that it was possible to acquire knowledge
about one’s surroundings by careful observation and some cogitation. There was
a new sense of the power of the human mind to probe nature, and perhaps also
to acquire knowledge in areas that had hitherto merely inspired belief.
Scientists now began to study the phenomenon and its phenomena, and some
came to the conclusion that there was something to the non-materialist side of
life. Something that needed serious investigation.
There was much controversy, but there also seemed to be some evidence
coming forward to confirm the ancient belief that there was indeed more to life
and death than the new age of scientific materialism was willing to show an
interest in or able to accommodate.
It became evident that not all phenomena were visible to the naked eye, as the
microscope and the telescope and the advent of radio waves and their application
to communication had by now made clear. What else might lie beyond the scope
of the ordinary five senses?
Although it was still rather dangerous to the reputation and career of any
scientific investigator to engage openly in such study, there were very reputable
and trusted people who were willing to take the chance with their reputations,
and who came forward and confirmed in undeniable language that there was
something to the “psychic”.
Between 1860 and 1919, numerous other researchers joined the quest. More
or less in order of their appearance we will look at the work of a few of them. The
year in which each one of them began his work is shown in the accompanying
slide. I include mainly researchers who were known to Dr. Hamilton during the
years when he was doing his own psychic investigations.
In the next video we will take a brief look at the work of each of these
researchers.
26

Walter Falk
Figure 14: Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961)
27

The Psychic Landscape of Antiquity: Beliefs in Life After Death Among Early Humans and Greeks

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