GHOSTLY DRINKS.

Cromwell Argus, Volume L, Issue 2648, 17 November 1919, Page 7

GHOSTLY DRINKS.

FHYCHIC PROPERTIES IN POISON By Elliot O'Donuell. In olden times, particularly in the fourteenth, fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries, when people wished to get rid of anyone, they consulted witches, who invariably recommended poisons which they declared were obtained through direct intercourse with the unknown. One of the most notorious of these witches was an Italian woman named Tofana, who lived in the seventh century, and was credited with being instrumental—through her poisons —in causing the deaths of over 600 people. Clients visited her from all over Europe, and the most popular of her poisons was the aqua della Tofana, administered in six drops, generally in wine or chocolate. The aqua delia Tofana came under the protection of the hooded ghost, or ghost that haunted the ruins of old abbeys and castles, and was supposed! by many to contain the psychic property of instilling the most sublime horror into the mind of the drinker of it, so that the latter, should his constitution offer any resistance to the destructive properties of the poison itself, would succumb to the shock produced by the frightful visions it conjured up. SPIRIT POISONS.

Then there was the poison in the nails of the younger females of certain of the gipsy tribes living in Hungary and North Italy. This poison was supposed to be obtained through the invocation of the spirits of suicides at cross roads, and was

introduced into the system tnrougn

the subtle administration of a scratch inflicted while the victim was having his fortune told. This ,iaii poison did not kill outright, but was supposed to bring about gradual paralysis of the brain accompanied by the most ungovernable desire to commit suicide and tempt others into doing the same thing.

It was often used in vendettas when the annihilation of whole families was desired, and its effects were wholly attributed to the influence of its guardian earthbound spirits. The power of prophecy was long supposed to be obtained by drinking a concoction of nightshade, hemlock, red wine made from a kind of elderberry, adders' tongues, and toads' insides, all the ingredients of which had to come from a dell or other secluded spot where a witches' sabbat had been held. This mixture was often given to a child that —for some reason or other —was not wanted in the world, in order to hear what Fate had in store for the administrator and his or her friends. SUPERNATURAL "DREAMS."

Opium is still taken by the Chinese populace of London, San Francisco, and other big cities, to produce clairvoyance as well as what are popularly believed to be only "dreams," but which —as the writer of this article has reason to know — are often projections. (Projection is the separation of the immaterial ego or self from the physical body, and when accomplished usually leads to the former visiting either the superi>h\sical world or some far distant material spot.) When in a state, of clairvoyance the taker of the drug sees spirits that warn, him of impending future events and convey to him messages from his friends at home. Projections form the explanation of that extraordinary knowledge the Orientals so frequently ■*. display of exact contemporary events in very remote lands.

A preparation of arsenic, powered glass, and a purple berry found only in the. Balkans was supposed to insure the taker of it remaining earthbound in the form of some repulsive and terrifying animal phantasm, and was given in revenge for some great anrt supposed irreparable wrong. This poison mixture is believed to have been invented by a lady called Hieronyma Spara, a disciple of Tofana, who flourished in Rome about the year 1059, and she is reported to have derived her knowledge of it through intercourse with the most abandoned type of spirits—in appearance half human and half dog or wolf —at a series of seances, at which only her oldest and most trusted uupils were allowed to be present.— "Tit-Bits."