Aldous Huxley - The Devils of Loudun

Notestein, op. cit ., p. 91.

Kramer and Sprenger, op. cit ., p. 56.

See Maud Oakes, The Two Crosses of Todos Santos (New York, 1951).

Gabriel Legué, Documents pour servir à l’Histoire Médicale des Possédées de Loudun (Paris, 1874).

Full and accurate accounts of psychiatric treatment and its results exist from the latter part of the eighteenth century onwards. A well-known psychologist, who has studied these documents, tells me that they all seem to point to one significant conclusion: namely, that in mental disorders the proportion of cures has remained, for nearly two hundred years, remarkably constant, whatever the nature of the psychiatric methods employed. The percentage of cures claimed by modern psycho-analysts is no higher than the percentage of cures claimed by the alienists of 1800. Did the alienists of 1600 do as well as their successors of two and three centuries later? No certain answer can be given; but I would guess that they did not. In the seventeenth century the mentally sick were treated with a consistent inhumanity, which must often have aggravated the disease. We shall have occasion, in a later chapter, to return to this topic.

Paracelsus, Selected Writings (New York, 1951), p. 318.

T. K. Oesterreich, Les Possédés . Translated by René Sudre (Paris, 1927).

Consult in this context Sir Charles Sherrington’s Gifford Lectures, published in 1941 under the title of Man on His Nature .

In Satan , a volume of the Études Carmélitaines (Paris, 1948).

See L. Sinistrari, Demoniality (Paris, 1879).

ESP=extra-sensory perception; PK=psycho-kinesis.

‘Whom do you worship?’ Answer: ‘Jesus Christ.’

‘Who is it whom you worship?’ She answered, ‘ Jesu Christe ’ (instead of Jesum Christum ).

‘I worship thee, Jesus Christ.’

See Jan Ehrenwald, M.D., Telepathy and Medical Psychology (New York, 1948).

When Sister Claire was ordered by the exorcist (as a test for ESP) to obey an order, secretly whispered by one of the spectators to another, she went into convulsions and rolled on the floor “relevant jupes et chemises, montrant ses parties les plus secrétes, sans honte, et se servant de mots lascifs. Ses gestes devinrent si grossiers que les témoins se cachaient la figure. Elle répétait, en s’… des mains, Venez donc, foutez-moi .” On another occasion this same Claire de Sazilly “ se trouva si fort tentée de coucher avec son grand ami, qu’elle disait étre Grandier, qu’un jour s’étant approchée pour recevoir la Sainte Communion, elle se leva soudain et monta dans sa chambre, où, ayant été suivie par quelqu’une des Sœurs, elle fut vue avec un Crucifix dans la main, dont elle se preparait… L’honnêteté (adds Aubin) ne permet pas d’écrire les ordures de cet endroit.”

See Ischlondsky, Brain and Behaviour (London, 1949).

In a letter dated 26th January 1923, Dom John Chapman writes as follows: “In the 17th-18th centuries most pious souls seem to have gone through a period in which they felt sure that God had reprobated them…. This doesn’t seem to happen nowadays. But the corresponding trial of our contemporaries seems to be the feeling of not having any faith ; not temptation against any particular article (usually), but a mere feeling that religion is not true…. The only remedy is to despise the whole thing and pay no attention to it except (of course) to assure our Lord that one is ready to suffer from it as long as He wishes, which seems an absurd paradox to say to a Person one doesn’t believe in.”

Behold the cross of the Lord, let its enemies take flight; the lion of the tribe of Juda has conquered, the root of David. I exorcize thee, creature of wood, in the name of God the Father Almighty, and in the name of Jesus Christ his Son our Lord, and in the power of the Holy Ghost….”

“These extraordinary sufferings, such as possession and obsession, are, like revelations, subject to ILLUSION; it is clear that we must never desire them; we must merely accept them, in spite of ourselves, as it were. If we desire to suffer, we have means of doing so by mortifying our pride and sensuality. In this way we avoid plunging into hazards, which we are powerless to control, and of which we do not know the issue. But our imagination delights in the marvellous; it requires those romantic virtues that take the public eye….

“And further; trials such as possession and obsession are a serious embarrassment, not only to the person involved, but to directors and the whole community where he or she resides. Charity forbids us to desire this kind of suffering.” (A. Poulain, S.J.— The Graces of Interior Prayer . English edition, p. 436.)

These outward manifestations of diabolic infestation did not appear until Good Friday, 6th April. From 19th January until that date, the symptoms of obsession had been purely psychological.

Printed for the first (and apparently the last) time in the European Magazine , February 1803.

“Superstition—Concupiscence,” says Pascal. And again: “A natural vice, like incredulity, and no less pernicious—superstition.”

For the only complete and authentic text of the autobiographica sections of this work, consult Vol. II of Lettres Spirituelles du P. Jean-Joseph Surin , edited by Michel and Cavalléra (Toulouse, 1928).

Surin’s condition, it is interesting to remark, is described and specifically prescribed for on p. 215 of Dr. Léon Vannier’s authoritative work, La Pratique de l’Homéopathie (Paris, 1950): “The Subject who is amenable to Actaea Racemosa has the impression that ‘his head is surrounded by a thick cloud.’ He sees badly, hears badly; around him and within him ‘everything is confused.’ The patient ‘is afraid of going mad.’ Oddly enough, if pains appear in any part of the organism (facial or uterine neuralgias, intercostal pains, or pains in the joints), he or she at once feels better. ‘When the patient is in pain, the mental state improves.’”

J. D. Unwin, Sex and Culture (London, 1934).