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Perfumes

Perfumes are substances, generally made by blending plant oils, selected animal secretions, and synthetic chemicals, to produce a pleasant odor. Such substances were highly valued and sought after throughout human history, especially before regular bathing and the widespread use of deodorants altered the significance of human body odors. During earlier centuries, for a body to smell of a pleasant odor was noteworthy. Modern medicine has observed that in certain illnesses the skin gives out a scent of violets, pineapple, and musk, among others.

Whatever the explanation may be, this observation helps one understand the perfumes produced by mediums and makes the phrase "the odor of sanctity " appear in a new light. Christian saints are said to exhale a sweet perfume which increases at death and may remain for weeks, months, or even years afterwards. When the body of St. Casimir, Patron of Poland, was exhumed in 1603, 120 years after his death, it was found entire and exhaled a sweet smell. St. Cajetan emitted the scent of orange blossoms, St. Francis that of musk. Other saints stated to have given forth fragrance include St. Clare of Ferriol (660 C.E.), St. Hermann of Britanny (714 C.E.) and St. Patrick (461 C.E.).

Some Hindu yogis are credited with the ability to create perfumes by miraculous means. In his famous book Bengal Lancer (1930), F. Yeats-Brown described his encounter with a Mahatma named Babu Bisudhanan Dhan at Puri, Calcutta. With nothing more than a magnifying-glass and a piece of cotton-wool, the Mahatma conjured perfumes out of the air by focusing light on the cotton-wool through the glass. Each scent was waved away with the hand, to be succeeded by the next request. He produced in quick succession the scents of violets, musk, sandalwood, opium, heliotrope, flowering bamboo, nicotine plant, jasmine, and even cow-dung. A later book, Naked Ascetic by Victor Dane (1933), described a Tantric yogi in Bhawanipore who produced on request the smell of violets on Dane's handkerchief without it leaving Dane's hand; the perfume lasted for twelve hours.

In the records of William Stainton Moses, we find highly illustrative experiences recorded. For example, at the closing of a séance, scents were often found to be issuing out of his head. The more they were wiped away, the stronger and more plentiful they became. The most common scents were musk, verbena, new-mown hay and an unfamiliar odor which was assumed to be a "spirit scent." During the séance it usually came down in showers. On Dr. Stanhope Templeman Speer's request a good tablespoonful was once poured into a glass. Moses was fully aware that his body played an important part in the production of scents. He wrote on July 4, 1874:

"While in the garden, before we began to sit, I was conscious of scent all round me, especially on my hair. When I rubbed my hair my hand was scented strongly. I tried the experiment many times. When the peppermint came I was conscious of its presence first near my head, and it seemed, as it were, to be evolved out of the hair. I have before noticed the same thing, but not so markedly on this occasion."

He suspected that the process was remedial, as the scent from his scalp was most marked when he was suffering pain. He believed that scents were employed to harmonize conditions. As he noted,

"If a new sitter is present, he or she is sensed, and so initiated. The chair which the stranger occupies is surrounded by luminous haze, from which issues the perfume; and very frequently wet scent, more or less pungent, according to conditions, is sprinkled from the ceiling at the same time. If a new intelligence is to communicate, or special honour to be paid to a chief, the room is pervaded by perfume which grows stronger as the spirit enters. This scenting of the room in which we are about to meet will sometimes commence many hours before we begin. There is a subtle odour in it which is perpetually being changed. Sometimes the aroma of a flower from the garden is drawn out, intensified, and insinuated throughout the house. Sometimes the odour is like nothing of this earth's production, ethereal, delicate, and infinitely delightful. Sandal-wood used to be a favourite, and rose, verbena, and odours of other flowers have been plentifully used.

"I find it difficult to convey any idea of the subtle odours that have been diffused throughout the room, or of the permanence of the scent. It is usually the first manifestation and the last. The perfume is sprinkled in showers from the ceiling, and borne in waves of cool air round the circle, especially when the atmosphere is close and the air oppressive. Its presence in a particular place is shown to me by the luminous haze which accompanies it. I can trace its progress round the circle by the light … and can frequently say to a certain sitter: 'You will smell the scent directly. I see the luminous form going to you.' My vision has always been confirmed by the exclamations of delight which follow.

"When we first observed this manifestation, it was attended by a great peculiarity. The odour was circumscribed in space, confined to a belt or band, beyond which it did not penetrate. It surrounded the circle to a few feet, and outside of that belt was not perceptible; or it was drawn across the room as a cordon, so that it was possible to walk into it and out of it again— the presence and absence of the odour and the temperature of the air which accompanied it being most marked…. Within it the temperature was cool and the scent strong, outside of it the air was decidedly warmer, and no trace of the perfume was perceptible. It was no question of fancy. The scent was too strong for that.

"I have known the same phenomenon to occur in the open air. I have been walking with a friend, for instance, and we have walked into air laden with scent, and through it again into the natural atmosphere … I have even known cases where wet scent has been produced and showered down in the open air. On one special occasion, in the Isle of Wight, my attention was attracted by the patter of some fine spray on a lady's [Mrs. Speer's] silk dress, as we were walking along a road. One side of the dress was plentifully besprinkled with fine spray, which gave forth a delicious odour, very clearly perceptible for some distance round.

"During a séance the scent is either carried, as it seems, round the circle, and is then accompanied by cool air, or it is sprinkled down from the ceiling of the room in liquid form. In the clairvoyant state I am able to see and describe the process before the scent is sprinkled, and can warn a special sitter not to look upwards. For, on certain occasions, when conditions are not favourable, the scent is pungent and most painful if it gets into my eye, and it has caused no more pain than water would. On the contrary, I have seen the effect caused on another [Mrs. Speer] by a similar occurrence. The pain caused was excruciating, the inflammation was most severe, and the effects did not pass off for 24 hours or more. In fact, whatever the liquid was, it caused severe conjunctivitis.

"This variety in the pungency and potency of perfume I attribute to variety in the attendant circumstances. The illness of one of the sitters will cause the scent to become coarse and pungent. Harmonious conditions, physical and mental, are signalised by the presence of delicate subtle odours which are infinitely charming. I have said that sometimes the odour of flowers, either in the house or garden, will be intensified. A vase of fresh flowers put on the table causes the natural perfume in this way. We used frequently to gather fresh flowers, and watch the process. Flowers which had a very slight smell when gathered would, by degrees, throw off such a perfume as to fill the room and strike anyone who came into it most forcibly. In this case the natural odour of the flower was intensified and the bloom received no harm. At other times, however, some liquid was apparently put upon the blossom, and an odour, not its own given to it. In that case it invariably withered and died very rapidly. I have frequently had flowers in my buttonhole scented in this way.

"Great quantities of dry musk have been from time to time thrown about in the house where our circle meets. On a late occasion it fell in very considerable quantities over a writing-desk at which a lady was sitting in the act of writing letters. It was mid-day, and no one was near at the time, yet the particles of musk were so numerous as to pervade the whole contents of the desk. They were placed, for no throwing would have produced such a result, at the very bottom of the desk, and between the papers which it contained. The odour was most pronounced; and the particles, when gathered together, made up a considerable packet. Some time after this when at a séance, I saw something which looked like luminous dust on the table. No odour was perceptible, but in my clairvoyant state I saw a heap of luminous particles which appeared to be extremely brilliant. I described it, and putting out my hand I found that there was really a heap on the table. I inquired what it was and musk was rapped out. We demurred, for no odour was perceptible, but the statement was reiterated. After the séance we gathered up the dust, which looked like musk, but had no smell whatsoever. The next morning, however, the odour was powerful enough; and the powder still exists, and is indubitably a very good powdered musk. By what imaginable process can that phenomenon have been accomplished?"

The scents were not always welcome. In his note of July 4, 1874, Moses referred to a pungent odor of peppermint which was very unpleasant. Stanhope Speer described this happening more outspokenly:

"The other evening a newcomer slipped in, and stank us out of the room by throwing down from the ceiling a large quantity of Sp. Pulegii. Everything that it touched was impregnated for 24 hours. The dining-room cloth and my own nether habiliments had to be exposed to view in the back garden; and on the following morning our dining-room floor and passage had to be freely fumigated with pastilles. That spirit has not been invited to join us again."

The experience suggests that the stench observed in some curious cases of haunting have a similar cause. Dr. Justinus Kerner recorded the case of Frau Eslinger who, in 1835, in the prison of Weinberg, was visited and talked to by a ghost that emitted an intolerable stench, felt by many others, as well.

The sickening stench of a charnel house was reported in a house near London (Daily Chronicle, April 15, 1908). On examination it was revealed that a body had been left unburied in the house until advanced putrefaction had occurred.

Florence Marryat wrote about the phantom "Lenore" of Mary Showers: "On one occasion … there was a charnel house smell about her, as if she had been buried a few weeks and dug up again…. One evening at Mrs. Gregory's … I nearly fainted from the smell. It resembled nothing but that of a putrid corpse, and when she returned to the cabinet, I was compelled to leave the room and retch from the nausea it had caused me."

The medium Carlos Mirabelli of São Paolo once produced a skeleton via materialization. An odor as that of a cadaver was emitted from his body.

The withdrawal of the scents of flowers of which Moses wrote was the only physical phenomenon known in Leonora Piper 's mediumship. "Mrs. Piper's fingers," wrote Richard Hodgson, "moved near the flower, as if withdrawing something from it; and in a few hours it had withered."

Lord Adare witnessed the famous medium D. D. Home extending his hand towards the flowers on a small table, the fingers pointing towards them. "His hand remained there for few seconds, and was then brought round, and with a motion like sprinkling, cast the perfume of the flowers towards each of us in turn; the perfume was so strong that there could be no mistake about it. This was done twice. Home then made some very curious experiments with flowers; he separated the scent into two portions—one odor smelling exactly like earth; the other being sweet.

Essences were also similarly withdrawn,

"I am going to take the strength from the brandy—and he began to make passes over the glass and flipping his fingers, sending a strong smell of spirit through the room; in about five minutes he had made the brandy as weak as very weak brandy and water, it scarcely tasted at all of spirit; both Lindsay and I tasted it, at the moment, and also some time after the séance was over.

"He withdrew the acid flavour from a half a lemon, freshly cut and tasted. He held it up above his head; a yellowish light came over it, and when offered to taste again the lemon was found most disagreeable, the flavour was like magnesia or washing soda. He then restored the acid. Holding it up, a rose coloured flame came over it. After a little while, he offered it and it was found all right." (See Experiences in Spiritualism with D. D. Home by Viscount Adare [1870]).

The psychical researcher Dr. Joseph Maxwell found the luminous phenomena of the medium Eusapia Palladino at the sittings of Choisy not very convincing because a strong aroma of phosphorus permeated the room. Later, however, he found this odor characteristic and discovered that it was more like the odor of ozone than that of phosphorus. It was like the odor perceptible in the vicinity of frictional electrical machines when in activity.

It is curious to note that this smell often disturbed clairvoyants during their visions. Emanuel Swedonborg was one of the first to record his annoyance over it. In the poltergeist disturbance of the Drummer of Tedworth in 1661, the manifestations were sometimes accompanied by "a bloomy noisome smell" as of sulphur.

There are early records of paranormal scents in the correspondence of Dr. G. P. Billot with J. P. F. Deleuze in 1839. Billot stated that superior intelligences presented themselves through his somnambules, presided at séances, and manifested themselves by the delicious odors which they diffused around them.

In the séances of the medium David Duguid, perfumes were administered to one sitter at a time, and the recipient felt the cooling odors gently blown over his face. The manifestation was not confined to the séance room; it was sometimes experienced in the open air.

Among later mediums in whose séances the phenomenon was often recorded the Marquis Centurione Scotto and Mina Crandon ("Margery") stand foremost.