Xenoglossis
From New Age Village
XENOGLOSSIS, speaking in tongues unknown to the medium. According to certain classifications the term should cover writing in tongues and glossolalia should be employed for speaking them; but others, like Ernesto Bozzano, reserve the term for speaking nonexistent pseudo -languages. Professor Richet uses xenoglossis inclusively.
Speaking in an unknown language is a far more impressive phenomenon than writing in it. Subconscious visual memory may account for occasional reproduction of foreign sentences but the explanation becomes more difficult if the problem of intonation is superadded as it necessitates an auditive memory, the subconscious retention of fragments of strange languages actually heard somewhere sometime.
H. Freeborn in Temporary Reminiscences of a Long Forgotten Language (Journal S.P.R., October, 1902, p. 279) quotes the instance of an old lady who, seized with delirium in the course of pneumonia, began to speak an unknown tongue, Hindustani, which she had neither spoken nor heard since she was brought to England at the age of four years. This is, however, about the only instance which successfully explains the gift of tongues by normal mental resources. The case is not very strong, as the language was known at an early age and the story itself is not sufficiently authenticated. Considering the frequency of the gift of languages with modern mediums it should have been expected that if the explanation were correct many similar instances would have been unearthed. Even then the complication which the direct voice introduces would have to be grappled with. Few people go so far as to suggest that subconscious memory can be externalized in an auditive form. Besides there are cases in which the assumption that an archaic language of a remote country have been heard, spoken and intelligently registered on the medium's brain presents unsurmountable difficulties.
The paramount question, therefore, is what is the evidence for xenoglossis. Speaking historically, in mediaeval times the speaking in foreign languages was one of the four principal signs of the presence of a demon. The belief was bound to have its subconscious effect. The Ursuline Nuns of Loudon, who-according to their earliest historian (La Veritable Histoire des Diables de Loudun, par un Temoin, a Poitiers, 1634)-spoke Latin, Greek, Turkish, Spanish and in a Red Indian tongue, confessed to have been obsessed by the devil. In later religious revivals the outbreak was a sign of celestial inspiration. The recitals of the refugees from the Cevennes (Le Theatre Sacre des Cevennes, London, 1707) contain numerous accounts of the gift among unlettered Camisard grown-ups and also of suckling babes who spoke French in the purest diction. The phenomenon was noticed among the Convulsionairies of St. Medard in 1730 and we have very interesting accounts of how the gift descended on the congregation of Edward Irving in 1831. Robert Baxter in his Narrative of Facts Characterising the Super-natural Manifestations in Members of Mr. Irving's Congregation, London, 1833, left behind a very interesting narrative of his own experiences: ". . . The power of the Spirit was so great upon me that I was obliged to call out, as in agony, for pardon and forgiveness and for strength to bear a faithful testimony. In these cryings I was, however, at the time conscious of a power of utterance carrying me beyond the natural expression of my feelings ... for the space of more than ten minutes I was, as it were, paralysed under a shaking of my limbs, my knees rapping one against the other, and no expression except a sort of convulsive sigh. During this period I had no other consciousness than this bodily emotion, and an inexpressible constraint upon my mind, which although it left me composed and sensible of all I was doing, yet prevented my utterance and gave no distinct impression, beyond a desire to pray for the knowledge of the Lord's will. This increased so much that I was led to fall on my knees and cry in a loud voice ' Speak, Lord, for thy servant hearest ' and this I repeated many times, until the same power of the Spirit which I had before felt, came upon me, and I was made to cry out with great vehemence, both of tone and action, that the coming of the Lord should be declared, and the messengers of the Lord should bear it forth upon the mountains and upon the hills, and tell it to the winds, that all the earth should hear it and tremble before the Lord."
The utterances often began in an unknown tongue and then passed into English. One witness described it thus: "The tongue invariably preceded, which at first I did not comprehend, because it burst forth with an astonishing and terrible crash, so suddenly and in such short sentences that I seldom recovered from the shock before the English commenced."
The phrases were mostly taken from the Scriptures and repeated again and again. The actual words of the tongues were not recorded. Baxter believed them to be a jargon of sounds. The fact, however, was that the possessed spoke with extraordinary fluency in those languages, too, with which they were but imperfectly acquainted. The utterances were grandiose both in manner and diction.
In a pamphlet, Drei Tage in Gros Almerode (Three Days in Great Almerode) J. Busching, a theological student of Leipzig, writes of ten cases of xenoglossis at a religious revival in 1907 at Almerode, a small town in Hesse. The phenomena began with a hissing or peculiar gnashing sound. These sounds were caused by the subject, not wishing to disturb the order of service by interrupting a prayer already commenced, exerting himself to repress the inward impulse acting on his organs of speech. But all that had to come came, and the momentarily repressed glossolalies only burst forth with increased vigor. The "interpretation of tongues" does not always occur even when it is prayed for. When it occurs the speakers may either see the translation written before them, or hear it inwardly, or perceive directly the meaning of the foreign words. It is interesting to note that F. W. H. Myers did not believe in the phenomenon. He said that he only knew of a few instances when a few words, fragments of a language, got through the medium, some Italian and Hawaiian words in Mrs. Piper's utterances and a few Kaffir and Chinese words through Miss Browne. "We have no modern case, no case later than the half-mythical Miracles of the Cevennes, where such utterance has proved to be other than gibberish."
Apparently Myers rules out many interesting early casts, among them the testimony of judge Edmonds. His daughter, Miss Laura Edmonds, was the first medium in modern spiritualism with the gift of tongues. Foreign sitters could converse through her with spirits in their native language, whether it be a country as remote as Greece or Poland. Judge Edmonds writes in a letter dated October 27, 1857: "One evening when some 12 or 15 persons were in my parlor, Mr. E. D. Green, an artist of this city, was shown in, accompanied by a gentleman whom he introduced as Mr. Evangelides, of Greece. He spoke broken English, but Greek fluently. Ere long, a spirit spoke to him through Laura, in English, and said so many things to him that he identified him as a friend who had died at his house a few years before but of whom none of us had ever heard. Occasionally, through Laura, the spirit would speak a word or a sentence in Greek, until Mr. E. inquired if he could be understood if he spoke in Greek. The residue of the conversation, for more than an hour, was, on his part, entirely in Greek, and on hers sometimes in Greek and sometimes in English. At times Laura would not understand what was the idea conveyed, either by her or him. At other times she would understand him, though he spoke in Greek, and herself when uttering Greek words. . ."
"One day my daughter and niece came into my library and began a conversation with me in Spanish, one speaking a part of a sentence and the other the residue. They were influenced, as I found, by a spirit of a person whom I had known when in Central America, and reference was made to many things which had occurred to me there, of which I knew they were as ignorant as they were of Spanish... Laura has spoken to me in Indian, in the Chippewa and Monomonie tongues. I knew the language, because I had been two years in the Indian country."
According to Emma Hardinge's Modern American Spiritualism, the gift was demonstrated, besides Miss Edmonds, at an early period by Miss Jenny Keyes who sang in trance in Italian and Spanish, and by Mrs. Shepherd, Mrs. Gilbert Sweet, Miss Inman,
Mrs. Tucker, Miss Susan Hoyt, A. D. Ruggles and several others whose names she was not permitted to make public. They frequently spoke in Spanish, Danish, Italian, Hebrew, Greek, Malay, Chinese and Indian. In 1859 nineteen people testified in the Banner of Light to 34 cases of persons who occasionally spoke or wrote in tongues. Prof. Mapes and Governor Tallmadge bore witness to numerous instances in which uneducated mediums conversed with poor. strangers in the streets in various foreign languages.
A Mr. Lowenthal testified in England before the Dialectical Society: "I am frequently made to speak the language of another nation. I believe it to be an Indian language. My mouth utters sounds that I do not understand and which have no meaning to me. I think it is the language of some North American tribe. It is a soliloquy, and I get an impression on the brain, an idea that it means so and so. A voice articulate, but not audible conveys a meaning to me. I have been among the Indians a great deal, and it sounds to, me like their language."
Archdeacon Colley wrote of having heard the "Mahedi," a materialized Egyptian of Dr. Monck, who, knew no English, speak in that language under the control of Monck's regular guide, "Samuel." This is the only instance on record where a materialized individual is used as an automatic instrument by another spirit.
The Italian Alfredo Pansini, who, with his brother Paolo, was the subject of remarkable bodily transportation by mediumistic power, spoke in a sort of hypnotic trance, at the age of seven, French, Latin and Greek, and recited in a wonderful manner several cantos of the Divina , Commedia. On one occasion he spoke successively in twelve different voices.
Dr. van Eeden records in Proceedings, S.P.R. Vol. XVII. a Dutch conversation with a deceased friend through Mrs. Thompson. "During a few minutes . . . I felt absolutely as if I were speaking to my friend myself. I spoke Dutch and got immediate and correct answers. The expression of satisfaction and gratification in face and gesture, when we seemed to understand one another was too vivid to be acted. Quite unexpected Dutch words were pronounced, details were given which were far from my mind, some of which, as that about my father's uncle in a former sitting, I had never known, and found to be true only on inquiry afterwards."
Many eminent German orientalists have testified that Therese Neumann when she lives through the Passion of Christ speaks in ancient Aramaic. The weakness of the case is that the phrases which she uses exist in print with translations in modern languages. But then otherwise the language could not be proved.
The New York Evening Post reported on November lot 1930, the case of a little four-year-old girl at Warsaw, Marie Skotnicki who, though her parents only speak Polish, developed the extraordinary habit of talking to herself in a foreign tongue which no one about her could understand but which has later been pronounced to be pure Gaelic. It is interesting to add that her great grandfather came from 'the Island of Lewis in the Scottish Hebrides.
In The Two Worlds, March 31, 1933, Dr. F. H. Wood writes of Rosemary and Lady Nona, her ancient Egyptian control: "The fact is now established beyond disproof that over 140 Egyptian word-phrases which were in common use when the great Temple of Luxor in Egypt was built, have been spoken fluently through an English girl who normally knows nothing about the ancient tongue." Mr. Howard Hulme of Brighton, the translator of the Egyptian phrases, after a preliminary test by post which resulted in an unexpected but correct Egyptian answer, has also heard Lady Nona speak. After an amazing dialogue in the dead tongue of the pyramid builders, "Nona cleared up many points of pronunciation, gave her own earthname and explained the full meaning of some of her previous language tests."
There is apparently no special difficulty of speaking in a foreign tongue through direct voice mediumship. If the explanation of the spirit communicators that an artificial larynx is built up out of ectoplasm in space, outside the medium's body, is to be accepted, the brain and vocal organs of the medium are almost entirely ruled out. Almost, because there are indications that the ectoplasmic matter for this artificial larynx is drawn from the oral cavity and may not be always adaptable to unusual inflections. John King, in direct voice, speaks English. Through Eusapia Paladino, he could only speak Italian. But there is very little ground for generalization. The strangeness of inflection did not prevent Mrs. Wriedt's direct voices from speaking in many unknown tongues, and no stranger inflection could be imagined than the Archaic Chinese which the voice of "Confucius" used in speaking through George Valiantine to Dr. Neville Whymant, the renowned Oriental scholar. He heard fourteen languages spoken in twelve seances, and the strangest of all was the speech which came to him in fluent classical Chinese Greetings, 0 son of learning, and reader of strange books," and gave a complete new reading of poems and of the Analects of Confucius over which learned scholars have differed for centuries. Dr. Whymant's little book: Psychic Adventures in New York, is the, most convincing record of the gift of tongues in the present age.
Spirit Languages-The Primeval Tongue.
The gift is not restricted to languages known to the sitters or known at all. Possibly such unknown tongues are pure gibberish or attempts at a subconscious creation of a new language.
Professor William James quotes in Proceedings of the S.P.R. Vol. XII., the experiences of Mr. Albert Le Baron (pseudonym), an American journalist in a spiritualist camp. He spoke automatically in an unknown tongue, fragments of which were written down by himself, others spoken into a phonograph in the presence of Professor James and Dr. Hodgson. The following is a specimen: Te rumete tau. llee lete leele luto scele. Impe re scele lee luto. Onko keere scete tere lute. Ombo te scele to bere te kure. Sinte lute sinte Kuru. Orumo imbo impe rute scelete. Singe, singe, singe eru. Imba, Imba, Imba.
The translation was furnished by the medium himself: 199 The old word! I love the old word of the heavens! The love of the heavens is emperor. The love of the darkness is slavery. The heavens are wise, the heavens are true, the heavens are sure. The love of the earth is past. The King now rules in the heavens."
Governor Tallmadge has seen a lady translating the Old Testament into hieroglyphics which were said to be the original language in which it was written.
Some of the spirit languages were so condensed that-as Frank Podmore quotes-the phrase Ki-e-lou-cou-ze-ta required no less than 45 words to furnish an adequate translation in English.
The primeval language and the Martian languages present the most interesting problems. The primeval language or nature language was described as the inner language of the soul, the universal tongue of men before the Fall of which Hebrew is a corrupted form. In origin it is the language of the angels of which Swedenborg writes in The True Christian Religion as follows:
"There is a universal language, proper to all angels and spirits, which has nothing in common with any language spoken in the world. Every man, after death, uses this language, for it is implanted in every one from creation; and therefore throughout the whole spiritual world all can understand one another. I have frequently heard this language and, having compared it with languages in the world, have found that it has not the slightest resemblance to any of them. It differs from them in this fundamental respect, that every letter of every word has a particular meaning."
Further in Heaven and Hell Swedenborg says
"Writing in the inmost heaven consists of various inflected and circumflected forms, and the inflections and circumflections are according to the form of heaven. By these the angels express the arcana of their wisdom, many of which cannot be uttered by words; and, what is wonderful, the angels are skilled in such writing without being taught, for it is implanted in them like their speech ... and therefore this writing is heavenly writing, which is not taught, but inherent, because all extensions of the thoughts and affections of the angels, and thus all communication of their intelligence and wisdom, proceeds according to the form of heaven, and hence their writing also flows into that form. I have been told that the most ancient people on this earth wrote in the same manner before the invention of letters, and that it was transferred into the letters of the Hebrew language which in ancient times were all inflected. Not one of them had the square form in use at this day; and hence it is that the very dots, iotas and minutest parts of the word contain heavenly arcana and things Divine."
The first record of the existence of such a language we find in Dr. Dee's experiments. The second, leaving Swedenborg, in the visions of the Seeress of Prevorst, confirmed by another somnambule of Heinrich Werner a few years later.
In Dr. Dee's notes the invocation of the spirits is given in the primeval language. It is accompanied by a word for word translation. The properties of this ancient tongue which Adam employed and the angels speak are singular. To quote: "Every letter signifieth the member of the substance whereof it speaketh every word signifieth the quiddity of the substance ... signifying substantially the thing that is spoken of in the center of his Creator, whereby even as the mind of man moveth at an ordered speech, and is easily persuaded in things that are true, so are the creatures of God stirred up in themselves, when they hear the words wherewithal they were nursed and brought forth ... the creatures of God understand you not. You are not of their Cities: you are become enemies, because you are separated from Him that governeth the City, by ignorance. . . . Men in his Creation, being made innocent was also authorised and made partaker of the Power and Spirit of God, whereby he did know all things under his Creation, and spoke of them properly, naming them as they were."
In plain language this means that the original speech bore an organic relation to the outer world, that each name expressed the properties of the thing spoken of and that the utterances of that name had a compelling power over that creature.
In The Seeress of Prevorst Justinus Kerner writes: In her sleep-waking state, Mrs. H. frequently spoke in a language unknown to us, which seemed to bear some resemblance to the Eastern tongues. She said that this language was the one which Jacob spoke, and that it was natural to her and to all men. It was very sonorous., and as she was perfectly consistent in her use of it, those who were much about her gradually grew to understand it. She said, by it only could she fully express her innermost feelings; and that, when she had to express these in German, she was obliged first to translate them from this language. It was not from her head, but from her epigastric region that it proceeded. She knew nothing of it when she was awake. The names of things in this language, she told us, expressed their properties and quality. Philologists discovered in it a resemblance to the Coptic Arabic and Hebrew: for example, the word 'Elschaddai,' which she often used for God, signifies, in Hebrew, the self-sufficient, or all-powerful. The word 'dalmachan' appears to be Arabic, and 'Bianachli’ signifies in Hebrew: I am sighing, or in sighs."
"Here follow a few of the words of this inner language, and their interpretations: ' Handacadi, ) physician; 'alentana,' lady; 'chlann,' glass; 'schmado,' moon; 'nohin.' no; 'mochiane,' nightingale; 'bianna fina,' many colored flowers; 'moy,' how; C toi,' what; 'optini poga,' thou must sleep mo Ii arato,' I rest, etc."
"The written characters of this language were always connected with numbers. She said that words with numbers had a much deeper and more comprehensive signification than without. She often said, in her sleep-waking state, that the ghosts spoke this language; for although spirits could read the thoughts, the soul, to which this language belonged, took it with it when it went above; because the soul formed an ethereal body for the spirit."
Some pages further Kerner says (( With respect to the inner language, the Seherin (Seeress) said, that one word of it frequently expressed more than whole lines of ordinary language; and that, after death, in one single symbol or character of it, man would read his whole life. It is constantly observed that persons in a sleep-walking state, and those who are deep in the inner-life, find it impossible to express what they feel in ordinary language. Another somnambule used often to say to me, when she could not express herself Can no one speak to me in the language of nature?
"The Seherin observed by Mayers said, that to man, in the magnetic state, all nature was disclosed, spiritual and material; but that there were certain things which could not be well expressed in words, and thus arose apparent inconsistencies and errors. In the archives of animal magnetism, an example is given of this peculiar speech; the resemblance of which to the eastern languages doubtless arises from its being a remnant of the early language of mankind. Thus, sleep-walkers cannot easily recall the names of persons and things, and they cast away all conventionalities of speech. Mayers' Seherin says, that as the eyes and ears of man are deteriorated by the fall, so he has lost in a great degree the language of his sensations; but it still exists in us, and would be found, more or less, if sought for. Every sensation or perception has its proper figure or sign and this we can no longer express."
"In order to describe these perceptions, Mrs. H. constructed figures which she called ' her sun sphere,' ' her life sphere ' and so forth."
"Many instances proved how perfect her memory for this inner language was. On bringing her the lithograph of what she had written a year before, she objected that there was a dot too much over one of the signs; and on referring to the copy which I had by me, I found she was right. She had no copy herself."
Werner in Die Schutzgeister oder Merkwurdige Blicke Zweier Seherinen in die Geister Welt, Stuttgart and Tubingen, 1839, gives a dissertation on the inner language traces of which he finds in the babbling of children and says that in rare states of exaltation the inner spirit can recover the lost vocabulary. The confirmation of R. D. Werner's somnambule of the revelations of the Seeress of Prevorst has no evidential value as it cannot be supposed that she was unacquainted with Werner's very popular book.
With the advent of Modern Spiritualism the idea of the primeval tongue faded out. Nor did spirit languages hold out for long. Mrs. Newton Crosland is about the last of its recorders in England. In Light in the Valley, 1857, she writes:
"Three years ago a young lady, a medium whom I shall designate The Rose was taught by spirits, directly communicating with her, three spirit languages; that is to say, she was taught the meaning of certain characters and inflections, which are quite distinct, so far as I have been able to ascertain, from any known languages ancient or modern. . .. Introduced last autumn to another medium, a young lady whom we have been instructed to call Comfort, The Rose discovered that her new acquaintance wrote by spirit power the first-taught of these mystic languages. ... Subsequently five other mediums, all personally known to me, have developed as writers of the first spirit language; and one of them, an author of repute and M.A. of the University of Oxford, has also on two or three occasions written in the second of the spirit languages, the characters of which seem mainly composed of dots."
The universal language of Swedenborg, if we are to trust the revelations of Mrs. Crosland, developed dialects. Unfortunately the sample of spirit writing in Light in the Valley is the plainest scribble and no evidence whatever is introduced as to how the identity, if any, was established among the strange ornaments of spiral and shell forms, with dots and scroll like ciphers which adorn the spirit drawing illustrations.
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