Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson

32 Hypnotism

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“A certain Italian abbot, Pedrini by name, was in his town what is called a ‘confessor’ for a convent.

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“To this abbot confessor there often came for confession a nun named Ephrosinia.

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“From the stories told about her, it seems that she frequently fell into a certain particular state, and while in this state she displayed manifestations unusual for her environment.

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“During confession she complained to the abbot Pedrini that at times she was unmistakably under the influence of ‘diabolical suggestions.’

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“Everything she herself said and the stories circulated about her interested the abbot Pedrini and he became very desirous of convincing himself personally about them.

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“Once during confession he tried by all possible means to evoke frankness in this nun, and he got to know among other things that this ‘nun-novice’ had had a ‘lover,’ who had once given her his portrait framed in a very beautiful frame, and that she permitted herself during periods of ‘resting’ from her prayers to admire this picture of her ‘sweetheart’ and that, as it seemed to her, the diabolical suggestion proceeded in her, just at these said periods of her ‘resting.’

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“All this told frankly by the nun still further excited the interest of the abbot Pedrini and he decided at all costs to find out the cause of it, and with this aim in view he first of all asked the nun Ephrosinia to be sure to bring with her to the next confession the portrait of her sweetheart together with the frame.

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“At the next confession the nun took with her this said portrait.

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“There was nothing very special about it but the frame indeed was unusual, it being all encrusted with mother-of-pearl and various colored stones.

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“While the abbot and the nun were together examining the portrait in the frame, the abbot suddenly noticed that something particular began to proceed with the nun.

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“First she became pale and for a certain time she became, as it were, petrified, and then there began with her on the spot precisely in all details, the same manifestations which proceed there among the newly married at what is called the ‘first night.’

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“After all this, the abbot Pedrini desired still more to make clear to himself all the causes of such an unusual manifestation.

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“But as regards the nun, she recovered two hours after the beginning of this particular state of hers, and it was discovered that she knew and remembered nothing of what had happened to her.

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“As the abbot Pedrini himself alone could not unravel this phenomenon, he turned for help to his acquaintance, a certain ‘Doctor Bambini.’

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“Well, when the abbot Pedrini told everything in detail to the doctor Bambini, the latter also became very much interested, and from then on they both began to occupy themselves with the elucidation of it all.

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“They first made various elucidating experiments upon the nun Ephrosinia herself, and after several what are there called ‘seances’ they noticed that this nun invariably fell into such a peculiar state of hers only when her gaze rested rather a long time on one of the brilliant colored stones, on what is called a ‘Persian turquoise,’ which was among the adornments of the frame of this portrait.

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“But later when with this same Persian turquoise they continued to make their elucidating experiments upon others, they then soon became categorically convinced, firstly, that in almost any one of the three-brained beings without distinction of sex who gazes for a long time at shining and brilliant objects of a certain kind, there begins to proceed a state similar to the one which proceeded with the first subject of their experiments; and secondly, they noticed further that the form of manifestation of the subject during the state varies and is found to be dependent on the former being-experiences which chanced to be predominant and on the shining objects with which a connection was accidentally established during such experiences of theirs.

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“You must without fail also know that when beings of the period of the Tikliamishian civilization constated for the first time about this particular psychic property of theirs, and soon made it clear that by its means they could destroy in each other certain properties particularly unbecoming to be in them, then the process itself of bringing someone into this state began to be regarded by them as a sacred process and was performed only in their temples before the congregation.

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“But in the presences of your contemporary favorites not only does there absolutely not arise any being-impulse of ‘contrition’ about this essential property of theirs, and not only do they not consider its concentrated manifestation, intentionally yet unavoidably evoked by them, as ‘sacred’; but they have already adapted it, the process itself and the accidentally obtained results, for serving them as a means for ‘tickling’ certain consequences of the properties of the organ Kundabuffer firmly fixed in them.

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“For instance, even when they meet together for one or another established ‘patriarchal ritual’ like a ‘wedding,’ ‘baptism,’ ‘saint’s day,’ and so on, one of the great diversions is trying to bring one another into the said state.

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“It is lucky that they still do not know—and it must be hoped that they never will know—other methods besides the one first discovered by the beings of the community Italy, the abbot Pedrini and the doctor Bambini, namely, the gazing at a shining brilliant object, by means of which method, as I have already told you, certain of them can indeed be brought into such a mentioned ‘concentrated state.’”