Strange Powers (20 page)

Yet the really important change has already taken place. On my desk, as I write, I have two books that I acquired in the last couple of days. One is called
Thirty Years Among the Dead
, by Carl A. Wickland, MD, published in America in 1924 by the National Psychological Institute. The other is
The Cosmic Clocks
, by Michel Gauquelin, published by the Henry Reguery Company in 1967. The interesting thing is that both books approach their subject from a scientific point of view; Dr Wickland states that he only intends to present the records and deductions of thirty years experimental research in the science of normal and abnormal psychology and within the first few pages he discusses the fascinating case of Sally Beauchamp, the girl with four distinctive personalities, recorded by Morton Prince. (I have discussed it in the
The Occult
). But he starts Chapter One: 'The reality of an invisible world surrounding the physical world is for many difficult to comprehend, and the mind sphere is often limited to the visible and tangible; however, it requires but little thought to realize the constant change of matter as it occurs in three forms, solid, liquid and gaseous, in its range back and forth between the visible and the invisible...' And so on '... Considering the wonderful advancement of science into the field of nature's finer forces it is inconceivable that any thinking mind can fail to recognize the rationale of the independent existence of the human spirit apart for [sic] the physical body.' This writing is basically gobbledygook. The book may or may not be valueless; but it will certainly convince no one but the converted.

On the other hand, Gauquelin's study deals with biological clocks, how animals and plants know the time of day, and kindred subjects. Opening it at random, I find in Chapter Eleven:

'Around 1950, as we were preparing our critique of traditional astrology, we found ourselves confronted, somewhat unwillingly, with a strange result. In one of our research samples—composed of the birth dates of 576 members of the French Academy of Medicine—the frequency of the position of certain planets was altogether unusual. The phenomenon did not correspond to any of the traditional laws of astrology, but it was interesting, nevertheless. What we had observed was that a large number of future great physicians were born when the planets Mars and Saturn had just risen or culminated in the sky...' He goes on to describe how he took a second sample of 508 physicians—a long job, since the actual hour of birth is not included in most reference books—and again discovered that most of them were born after the rise or the culmination of Mars and Saturn.

One can sense the whole world of difference between the two extracts quoted. One is by a spiritualist who is determined to sound like a scientist; one is by scientist who finds himself flying to explain facts that so far have no place in the framework of science. Gauquelin goes on to produce various hypotheses about the influence of 'cosmic clocks' on our physical make-up. I do not know whether he is a better scientist than Dr Wickland, or whether he is more reliable. All I know is that he is treating his subject matter like a traditional scientist. This is how Rutherford and his colleagues worked when it was a question of exploring the 'invisible' realm of the inside of the atom; the facts are taken into account, hypotheses are constructed to fit them, and then research is undertaken to try to uncover more facts, to confirm or deny the theories.

The 'occult' has not yet qualified for recognition as a science. But the day when occultists and spiritualists had to plead to be taken seriously is past. Certain facts are lying around where scientists cannot help tripping over them. And that is a situation which the tidy mind of the scientist finds intolerable. As Charles Fort might have expressed it: If the occult did not exist, science would be compelled to invent it.