Witch experiment
The witch experiment (also known as the lump experiment ) was an attempt by the British parapsychologist Harry Price to prove witchcraft . Price was director of the National Laboratory of Psychical Research , the national research facility for parapsychological research in London . It was the first time that a major experiment was dared to investigate the mystical beliefs and black magic of old legends experimentally. It took place on the 100th anniversary of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's death on Saturday, June 18, 1932 on a plateau on the Brocken facing the Hexentanzplatz .
The Brocken, the legendary mountain in the Harz Mountains, was mystified as a meeting place for witches at the latest with Goethe's Faust I. In Price's view, the mountain, also popularly known as Blocksberg , was the only possible place to carry out the witch experiment. The basis of the experiment was the legend that on a full moon night a billy goat on the Brocken could be transformed into a beautiful young man by a virgin of pure heart. With the image of the Brocken witch, Price was deliberately promoting popular belief .
environment
Price is said to have got his inspiration from the transcription of a grimoire that he would have received in autumn 1931. According to him, it contained a handwritten copy of magical formulas that would be kept in a German museum. It dates from around the 15th century and contains many rituals for the practice of transcendental magic. Among many experiments was a so-called Bloksberg Tryst (translated as: " tryst am Brocken"), which he wanted to use then.
Its proponent, Cyril Edwin Mitchinson Joad , assisted Price. Joad was also interested in the exploration of the supernatural , and he had already carried out a number of ghost hunts with Harry Price . So joining the Ghost Club , of which Price became its president, was a matter of course. He was involved in psychological research and in 1932 traveled with Price to the Harz Mountains to the so-called "Bloksberg Tryst". The journey is detailed in Price's notes. They came from Göttingen and reached Wernigerode on Friday , where a “real live witch” was introduced to them as part of the bi-national social program, which then turned out to be an amateur actress at the local theater and so for general amusement cared. A very benevolent reputation preceded the two British people and the following afternoon they were supposed to arrive in Halberstadt to receive the honor of “ freedom of the city ”. The honor was given by the shirt-sleeved representative of the mayor in a dignified and simple manner at the same time and after the ceremony they asked each other what special honor they had actually received.
The experiment was expressly welcomed and supported by the Harzer Verkehrsverband , the Harz Tourist Association, because this type of educational tourism promised to provide the region with economic support. Price wrote in his memoirs:
“In 1932 was celebrated throughout Germany the centenary of the immortal poet Goethe. The Harz Goethe Centenary Committee (the Harzer Verkehrsverband), hearing that I possessed a copy of the ritual of the Bloksberg Tryst, invited me to reproduce the experiment as part of the Goethejahr celebrations. I consented. Another reason why I decided to go - quite unofficially - was that I wished to emphasize the absolute futility of ancient magical ritual under twentieth-century conditions. "
“In 1932 the centenary of the immortal poet Goethe was celebrated throughout Germany. When the Harz Committee for Goethe's centenary (Harzer Verkehrsverband) heard that I had a copy of the Bloksberg Tryst ritual, they invited me to repeat the experiment as part of the Goethe Year celebrations. I agreed. Another reason why I decided to leave - quite unofficially - was to emphasize the absolute pointlessness of the old magical ritual under the conditions of the 20th century. "
The experiment
A number of prerequisites had to be met for the experimental setup required.
Price had created a magic circle of the prescribed size with the usual symbols and a triangle in it, pointing in the direction of the witches' dance area . A pine fire was burning, and a bowl of incense was set up. The only thing missing was the full moon. Price still hoped that this would appear in the course of the ritual, just as he would have thought the hope of therianthropy itself to be a miracle.
The unmarried Urta Bohn, who carried out the experiment, was considered a suitable virgin. Urta Bohn was the daughter of the Breslau attorney Erich Bohn (1874–1948), who was also interested in the subject. Bohn was chairman of the Breslau Society for Psychological Research , which was devoted to the scientific research of parapsychological phenomena and had separated from the Association of German Occultists in 1896 .
The billy goat was rubbed with a specially made ointment made from bat blood, soot, honey and a substance scraped off from church bells. Price had previously received the scraped off church bells from a friendly bell ringer from a church bell tower in Sussex . As the magic formula required, the goat was led into the magic circle on a silver cord. After he was anointed, a white sheet was thrown over him. Harry Price counted from one to ten in a monotonous voice and the prescribed pauses.
According to relevant, identical eyewitness reports, the audience, numbering in the hundreds, was breathless and motionless. As Price later wrote, you could have heard a pin drop. And further: “The virgin pulled down the white sheet. And there stood the goat, not exactly in the best shape with all the blood and honey and the scraped off church bells, and was shivering from the cold. The audience applauded warmly, and the researchers announced that they were satisfied with the result. They didn't expect the spell to work anyway. It was only a question of proving through a conscientious experiment that there was nothing in all of these witchcraft stories. "
The "High German Black Book" quoted by him obviously did not exist. This misleading fit into his scheme of the low seriousness of his actions.
reception
Price picked up the mood on the subject. He consciously referred to Goethe, who in his work “Faust I” secularized and ironized Dante's Divine Comedy , just as Price ironized the transformation and made it ridiculous. Not least the book Witch-Cult in Western Europe published by Margaret Alice Murray in 1921 will have caused his displeasure. Other critics also branded Murray's work with statements such as "neither the documents with which she selects her hypothesis nor the method of its interpretation convince". Despite her strictly scientific approach, the recognized Egyptologist did not find approval for these theories in specialist circles. The failure of Price's attempt on the Brocken should discredit the theses of this neo-paganism .
The witch experiment was received by many newspapers. They also emphasized that this promoted free science because "the true scientist [...] asks about the meaning of all phenomena without prejudice".
After the experiment, Cyril Leslie Oakley developed the so-called Purity-in-Heart-Index (PHI) in his article He-goats into young men: first steps into statistics in 1943 to illustrate the basics of pharmacological statistics . David Colquhoun (* 1936) took up this idea in a chapter of his textbook Lectures on Biostatistics: An Introduction to Statistics with Applications in Biology and Medicine in 1972 .
literature
- Trevor Hall: Search for Harry Price. Duckworth, London 1978, ISBN 0-7156-1143-7 .
Web links
- The Brocken Experiment on the Harry Price website (English)
- CW Kilmister: Statistics of life (PDF file, 26 kB, English)
Individual evidence
- ^ A b c d Harry Price, The Bloksberg Tryst
- ↑ V like Vintage , historical photo collection ( Memento from February 22, 2013 in the web archive archive.today )
- ^ Trevor Hall: Search for Harry Price. Duckworth, London 1978, ISBN 0-7156-1143-7 , p. 160.
- ↑ Salt Lake Tribune, July 24, 1932, p. 28.
- ^ Corinna Treitel: A Science for the Soul. Occultism and the Genesis of the German Modern. JHU Press, Baltimore 2004, ISBN 978-0-8018-7812-1 , p. 314.
- ↑ Washington Star, June 28, 1932.
- ^ Russell B. Jeffrey, Alexander Brooks: A New History of Witchcraft. Thames & Hudson, London 2007, ISBN 978-0-500-28634-0 , p. 154.
- ^ Evening Standard of June 18, 1932, cited in: Harry Price, The Bloksberg Tryst, p. 343.
- ^ DG Evans: Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society Vol. 22, Nov. 1976, Editor: The Royal Society, pp. 295-305.
- ^ David Colquhoun: Lectures on Biostatistics. An Introduction to Statistics with Applications in Biology and Medicine. Clarendon Press, Oxford 1972, pp. 111-115. ( Digitized version ).