Direct font
With Direct writing a will occult or esoteric art called, with one by a medium summoned spirit can convey a message to those present without physical assistance of a present right to.
Difference to "automatic writing"
Direct writing, like automatic writing , was seen in spiritualist circles in the 19th and early 20th centuries as a way of making contact with the spirits of the dead. The fundamental difference between the two practices is that the direct writing should take place without the influence of a medium, so that the previously called mind writes down its message directly.
Practice of direct writing
After the spirits with whom contact was to be made had been invoked, there were various ways of presenting the message: Max Dessoir reports of a visit to the medium Henry Slade , where he had placed a piece of slate between two boards, pressed them together and attached them held Dessoir's ear so he could hear the sounds of writing inside. After a while the panels were opened again and a French text was legible. A second variant consists in pressing a board with a piece of slate under the table around which the group gathered, waiting for the writing noises and their completion and then reading the message.
Scientific investigations
The physicist and astronomer Karl Friedrich Zöllner was one of the first scientists to study paranormal phenomena. He carried out several experiments in Leipzig in 1877 and 1878 together with the American con artist Henry Slade , these were scientifically accompanied by the physicists Gustav Theodor Fechner and Wilhelm Eduard Weber and the mathematician Wilhelm Scheibner . Zöllner later described several such attempts that were carried out in the apartment of his friend O. Hoffmann took place. He mentioned that the medium fell into a full trance, the audience sat around a small table with their hands loosely on top of each other. This description is similar to that of the table back . A pencil, which was surrounded by an ectoplasm veil , is said to have set itself on the table itself for independent writing. Zöllner was heavily criticized for the experimental setup and the interpretation, but his description triggered a wave of enthusiasm for spiritualism, especially in and around Leipzig and among the publishing houses based there.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Priska Pytlik, Occultism and Modernity, A cultural-historical phenomenon and its significance for literature around 1900, Paderborn 2005, p. 81.
- ^ Corinna Treitel: A Science for the Soul - Occultism and the Genesis of the German Modern , Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore and London 2004, pp. 3-17