Shakti and Shâkta : essays and addresses on the Shâkta Tantrashâstra

TANTRA SHASTRA AND VEDA

for success in a telepathic experiment. As the witchcraft trials show, the victim is first affected in thought and then in body by the malignant thought thus focussed upon him. Sometimes no apparent means are employed, as in a case reported to me by a friend of mine as occurring in a Bombay Hotel when a man well-known in India for his “ Powers ” (Siddhi) drove away, by the power of his thought only, a party of persons sitting at a neighbouring table whose presence was greatly distasteful to one of his companions. This, if the effect of magical power, was an instance of what the Tantras call Uchchatana. In all cases the general principle is the same, namely the setting in motion and direction of powerful thought by appropriate means.

This is the view of those who give what may be called a psychological explanation of these phenomena. These would hold that the magical symbolisms are without inherent force but work according to race and individual characteristics on the mind which does the rest. Others believe that there is an inherent power in Symbolism itself, that the ““Symbol ” is not merely such but an actual expression of, and instrument by which, certain occult laws are brought into play. In other words the power of “Symbolism ” derives not merely from the effect which it, may have on particular minds likely to be affected by it but from itself as a law external to human thought. Some again (and Indian magicians amongst others) believe in the presence and aid of discarnate personalities (such as the unclean Pishachas) given in the carrying out of occult operations. Similarly it is commonly held by Catholics that where so-called “ spiritualistic”” phenomena are real and not fraudulent (as they sometimes are) the action is not that of the dead but of Infernal Spirits stimulating them and misleading men to their damnation. Occultism in the sense of a belief in, and claim to be able to use, a certain range of forces which may be called preternatural

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