21836337-Occult-Science-in-India

"You are welcome."

"What do you want of me?"

"You are said to possess the faculty of communicating movement to inert bodies without touching them. I should like to see a specimen of your power."

"Salvanadin-Odear has no such power; he merely evokes spirits, who lend him their aid."

"Well, let Salvanadin-Odear evoke the spirits, and show me what they can do."

The words were hardly out of my mouth when the Fakir resumed his squatting position upon the pavement, placing his seven-knotted stick between his crossed legs. [p. 212] He then asked to have my dobachy bring seven small flower-pots full of earth, seven thin sticks of wood each about two cubits long, and seven leaves taken from any tree, no matter what.

When these different articles had been brought, without touching them himself, he had them placed in a horizontal line, about two yards from his outstretched arm. He instructed my servant to plant a stick of wood in each pot of earth, and to put on each stick a tree leaf with a hole in the middle.

This being done, all the leaves dropped down the sticks, acting as covers to the pots. The Fakir then joined his hands and raised them above his head, and I heard him distinctly utter, in the Tamoul language, the following invocation: "May all the powers that watch over the intellectual principle of life (kche'tradjna) and over the principle of matter (boutatoma) protect me from the wrath of the pisatchas (evil spirits), and may the immortal spirit, which has three forms (mahatatridandi, the trinity), shield me from the vengeance of Yama."

At the close of the invocation he stretched out his hands in the direction of the flower-pots, and stood motionless, in a sort of ecstasy.