AUBREY, JOHN [1626—1697]
One of the first known collectors of ghost stories, antiquarian and biographer John Aubrey’s compilation, Miscellanies, was published in 1696 and is packed with eye-witness accounts of ghostly sightings gathered from all points of Great Britain. Aubrey’s interest in the supernatural was reinforced by his own personal experiences. In Miscellanies, Aubrey writes about strange knocking sounds on the walls of his house a few days before his father died. ‘Three or four days before my father died’, he wrote, ‘as I was in my bed about nine o’clock in the morning, perfectly awake, I did hear three distinct knocks over the bed’s head, as if it had been with a ruler or ferula.’ This mysterious incident, when combined with his interviews of others who had encountered ghosts, utterly convinced Aubrey that the spirit world existed.
AUGURY
A form of divination using the flight or song of birds. This was common practice in ancient Rome, where augurs foretold the future by observing and interpreting bird omens, which included noticing the type of bird seen as well as the direction of its flight and its singing. The Romans also used the term ‘augur‘ to refer to divination by thunder and lightning, which was believed to be communication from the god Jupiter.
The term ‘augury‘ also refers to the general art of divination, especially the interpretation of the future based on divinations and omens, mostly related to the appearance and behaviour of animals. These practices include:
Ailuromancy(cats).
Alectromancy(chickens).
Arachnomancy(spiders).
Batrachomancy:(frogs).
Entomancy(insects).
Hippomancy(horses).
Ichthyomancy(fish).
Myomancy(mice).
Ophiomancy(snakes).
Zoomancy(any animal).
A related practice was Haruspicy, or interpreting animal entrails.
AUMAKUA
A family of guardian spirits from Hawaiian mythology, the aumakua are worshipped to ensure the wellbeing of the family. The aumakua are thought to have laws that must be followed, and transgressions are sometimes punished for decades. Many believe it is of vital importance to be on good terms with your family’s aumakua, or a soul may be abandoned before it reaches the land of the dead. Such abandoned souls haunt the living and remain in limbo until another aumakua takes pity on them and leads them to their new home.
Offspring of the aumakua can be born into families, and various legends tell of people born with supernatural powers, such as the ability to transform into animals.
According to lore the aumakua escort the souls of the dead to the afterlife in a ghostly procession, and if you have not rectified your sins against the aumakua before death, you have one chance to beg for pardon when the procession reaches its first stopping place. It is believed that the aumakua take the entire body to the next world, but if for any reason the body is not taken, the family must prepare the corpse for burial and its transformation into the aumakua form, which is that of a snake or shark.
AURA
The name given to a subtle envelope of vital energy that is thought to radiate round natural objects, including human beings, animals and plants. The colours and forms of each aura are believed to be characteristic of the person, animal or thing it surrounds and to fluctuate and shift according to mood and state of health.
The aura is normally invisible, but it can be seen by clairvoyants as a halo of light and colour. Two clairvoyants viewing the same aura might see different colours or interpret it in different ways. State of health and a person’s emotions show up as differences in colours and energy patterns or breaks in an aura. Physical illness seems related to the part of the aura that is closest to the body, often called the etheric body. Some psychics see the aura as a psychic screen for the projection of information, past, present and future.
Although the body does have a magnetic field - a biofield - there is no scientific evidence that auras exist. However, the belief that the human body emits radiations of a kind that in certain circumstances becomes visible has been encountered for centuries, and was present in ancient Egypt, India, Greece and Rome. In the sixteenth century, discourses on the astral body and its ‘fiery aura’ abound, and in the eighteenth century the theory of animal magnetism was developed by Anton Mesmer, who promoted a variety of scientific experiments to try to identify the phenomenon.
Just before World War I, Dr Walter Kilner from St Thomas’s Hospital in London developed a method to view auras, which he claimed appeared as a faint haze around the body, using an apparatus that rendered ultraviolet light visible. His theory of auric diagnosis of illness linked the appearance of an aura to a patient’s health. Kilner’s work was greeted with scepticism and interrupted by the outbreak of hostilities. In 1939, Semyon Davidovich Kirlian, a Russian electrician, developed a technique that he claimed recorded auras on film, but this technique remains to be verified. See Kirlian photography.
Auras, like parking places, are easy to find when you aren’t looking for them. So if you want to see an aura, you need to feel as relaxed and calm as possible. Breathe slowly and deeply for a few minutes. Then, instead of looking directly at someone, look straight past them and casually glance in their direction, allowing your eyes to lose focus. The idea is to trick your rational brain by deliberately putting a lot of your concentration on something else, but to keep a vague focus on the person whose aura you want to read.
With practise you may see a dim haze of energy around someone. Keep breathing deeply, and the aura may brighten to a colour. Don’t expect people to light up like Christmas trees and stay that way. Visions of auras tend to be lightning quick, but the more you practise the more natural it will feel and the more likely it is for colour to become noticeable. To find out what different auric colours could mean, see Colour divination.
AUTOMATIC WRITING
The most common form of automatism, automatic writing is writing that does not come from the conscious mind and is done in an altered state of consciousness. Some attribute it to spiritual beings who are somehow able to manipulate a writing utensil in order to communicate. Psychical researchers believe automatic writing emanates from material in the person’s subconscious mind or is obtained through ESP.
Many people try automatic writing in an effort to make contact with spirits or to communicate with the dead. Typically the writer is unaware of what is being written and the writing is much faster, larger and expansive than their normal handwriting. Some people experience tingling in the arms or hands. Pens are a common tool, but slates and typewriters may also be used. Automatic writers have been known to produce mirror scripts, starting at the bottom right of the page and finishing at the top left. At the height of spiritualism, automatic writing was common in séances, and it replaced the much slower methods of spelling out messages from spirits with table rappings or pointers.
In some cases automatic writing occurs involuntarily, as in the case of Anna Windsor. In 1860 Windsor began automatic writing with her right hand, which she called Stump. Stump had a personality of its own, writing out verses and prose while the left hand did something else.
Through automatic writing, mediums have claimed to produce messages not just from deceased relatives or loved ones but from famous persons in history, such as Francis Bacon, Emanuel Swedenborg and even Jesus Christ. Frederick Myers, one of the founders of the Society for PsychicalResearch, found little evidence that spirits communicated through automatic writing but, curiously, after his death several mediums claimed to receive automatic writing messages from him.
Exercise to practise automatic writing
Make sure you are in a calm and relaxed mood. If you feel stressed or anxious, leave it and try another day.
Find a good pen or pencil and a quiet place at a table. Sit there and let your hand move as it will. You may like to ask your hand if it has any messages for you. Hold your pen loosely in whichever hand you normally write with and let your mind roam freely. Write down whatever comes into your head for about five to ten minutes at the most.
If nothing happens, visualize a column of light made up of golden letters, forming and reforming words. Focus on one letter, and let the light flow down into your fingers and the pen. Wait until you feel your pen tremble, and let it move. At first it may scribble and make patterns, but words may follow. Don’t try to read or make sense of them or you will lose the spontaneity.
When you feel you are losing concentration, stop. Lay your pen down and see the column of light fading. Read what you have written. It may seem to relate to you or to another person in your life, perhaps a persona that is deep within you. Don’t be concerned if your first attempts appear nothing more than random scribbles or a jumble of disconnected words. It takes practise to establish a clear delivery of information.
Do something mundane or physical to bring you back to earth.
While psychical researchers continue to investigate automatic writing as evidence for the existence of the spirit world, the field of psychology has adopted automatic writing. Psychologists use it as a way for the unconscious mind to express thoughts and feelings that cannot be verbalized. Automatic writing continues to be used as a therapeutic tool to this day. Some critics warn of dangers in automatic writing -they claim that the writer is vulnerable to harassment from the evil-minded dead. However, psychologists maintain that the real danger is in exposing material from the unconscious that has been repressed.
AUTOMATISM
Automatism is divided into two categories: motor automatism and sensory automatism. Motor automatisms are unconscious movements of the muscles, which seem to be directed by supernatural guidance. The most common forms of motor automatism are automatic writing and automatic painting or psychic art, and other creative pursuits such as speaking, singing, composing and dancing. Dowsing is a type of motor automatism, an extrasensory guidance influenced by the movements of the rod held by a dowser. Other types of motor automatisms include impulsive behaviour, such as deciding to do or not do something at the last minute without knowing why, sudden inhibitions and sudden physical incapacities.
Sensory automatisms are thought to be produced by an inner voice or vision and can include apparitions of the living, inspirations, hallucinations and dreams. Hallucinations were once assumed to be caused by physical disorders, but Edmund Gurney, an early psychical researcher and a founder of the Society for Psychical Research, established that paranormal visions and sounds can occur without the presence of physical disorders.
After automatic writing and drawing, automatic music composition is perhaps the most common form of automatism. An unusual case was that of a London woman called Rosemary Brown, who, although she had limited musical ability, began in 1970 to compose music that she said was channelled to her from dead composers such as Chopin, Liszt and Beethoven. Recordings were made, and the works did indeed resemble the various styles of the composers, but critics declared them not as good as definitive compositions by these musical geniuses.
Problems associated with automatisms include compulsion, obsession and a feeling of possession. The practice may grow until a person feels taken over by it. Some people talk of possession by demons, but psychologists say that the effects are created by paranoia, not demons.
Since ancient times, inspired activity has always been attributed to the divine, the supernatural or the spirits, but today’s view is that automatisms are products of ESP or secondary personalities who produce knowledge or information that has been repressed or forgotten.
AVALON
According to Celtic legend, a mystical land of immortal heroes where the enchanted sword Excalibur was forged and where a mortally wounded King Arthur was taken after a bloody battle.
The story of King Arthur may be based on a historical figure of a Celtic king of the sixth century, who defended his kingdom against Saxon invaders, but it is the legends of King Arthur that have had a timeless, mystical hold over people’s imagination for centuries. According to legend Arthur came to power when he pulled a magical sword from a stone with the help of the wizard Merlin, an act that proclaimed his royal heritage. He started the Order of the Round Table, peopled by noble and virtuous knights, and married the beautiful but adulterous Guinevere who betrayed him for his best friend Lancelot. Arthur was mortally wounded by his treacherous nephew, Mordred, and is said to be buried on the mythical Isle of Avalon, from where he will rise again in Britain’s hour of need.
There is a tradition that Glastonbury was the Isle of Avalon. In 1191 the monks of Glastonbury unearthed, from 16 feet under the ground, an oak coffin that they said was Arthur’s. They showed an inscription: ‘Here lies beneath the renowned King Arthur with his beloved Queen Guinevere his second wife in the Isle of Avalon’ on a lead cross, which they said had been found in the coffin.
With its miraculous weapon of destiny, its goddess-like Lady of the Lake appearing by moonlight from the water and, most of all, the mysterious realm of Avalon, where Arthur journeys by water to be healed from death, the Arthurian world shimmers with a Celtic supernatural glow. Like a faraway, half-heard song, Avalon conveys a sense of something lost forever, never to be found - the mystical quest for the lost land, the lost world, the lost self and lost psychic powers.
