Category Archives: Works

Transcriptions of Benjamin DeCasseres’s works in the site catalog.

Psychic Phenomena and Humble Horseradish

Reviews, Works, , , ,

Works · Reviews

By BENJAMIN DE CASSERES

YOUR PSYCHIC POWERS AND HOW TO DEVELOP THEM. By Hereward Carrington. New York: Dodd, Mead & Co.

MODERN SPIRITISM. By A. T. Schofield, M. D. Philadelphia: P. Blakiston’s Son & Co.

VOICES FROM THE VOID. By Hester Travers Smith. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co.

IN the heyday and freshness of our youth we used to laugh at Signor Mantalini’s bit of Apocalyptic humor that things mundane were going to the “demnition bow-wows.” Mantalini was a prophet. We, personally, were an ass. The torrential bombardment out of the void of a thousand thousand sick brains of books on psychic phenomena proves it.

Man is so sophisticated that he is sick. The earth, with its perpetual carnival of miracles, no longer gives him a thrill. He heaves with the great Flaubertian yawn of pan-ennui and calls on the Witch of Endor, the Eleusinian Abracadabrists and the sensibilities of jaded ex-scientists to give him a final thrill. He is tired of being the Great Wonder, Man; he wants to be a ghost. The Great Decay has set in. Universal repression and travail have released his insane complexes. The Far-Off Divine Event has issued in haunted houses, ouija boards, crystals, psychometric pussyfooting back to pre-Devonian Devas and other fallals. These things are all true and interesting, like cancer and fire-damp. But it is springtime, and the appearance of the tiniest bud is more amazing than all the ghosts and subconscious maunderings in the thousand and one tales of the New Arabian Nights of the Underworld.

Hereward Carrington seems to have taken over all syndicate rights on the “other world.” From the number of books to his credit on psychic phenomena we believe he must work in three shifts in the spiritist factory, catching cat-naps in some divinely intercalated hour. We have not read all his books merely because the rent problem has kept us in the courts so much of the time.

“Your Psychic Powers” is a complete angler in the sub-dimensions. How to fish for ghosts and tame them; how to trawl in the running river of Time and scoop up auras; how to bait your fingers for psychometric visions; how to tell a real “control” nibble from a false one—all these things are set forth in 358 pages of substantial English.

Mr. Carrington has a businesslike, direct style. We desire to persuade the Government to employ him to get up its next series of income tax blanks. These bureaucratic excursions in mystical mathematics could, under Mr. Carrington’s direction, be reduced to the simplicity of the auric egg, or the homogeneity of the akasic fluid, expounded and made so comprehensible in this book that the veriest child, whether in the primary, secondary or tertiary stage of his childhood, can understand it.

Credit must be given to Mr. Carrington for explaining in a preface that he doesn’t necessarily indorse all the “truths” or the practices recommended in the book; and it is without question the best and most complete, the clearest and the most sensibly compiled compendium of “dippy” lore that we have read.

“Modern Spiritism” is by A. T. Schofield, M. D., whose book on “The Unconscious Mind” was, he says, the first one on that tremendous subject ever written in English. Science received it then with “howls of derision.” That was then. Now nobody can get along without an unconscious mind. It is the rowdy rathskellar of our suppressed karmas.

Mr. Schofield, being an M. D., naturally runs to “cases.” He throws wide the doors of the psychic clinic and lectures on the “evidences” strewn around on the marble slabs. Mr. Schofield, being more of a religious turn of mind than Mr. Carrington, has installed an “Elijah Chorus” and an organ in the loft of the demonstrating room, and every hour or so the reader and the author knock off work together and take a cacophonic dose of the Glad Tidings in the Light of Modern Spiritistic Phenomena—and all that. There is nothing original in Dr. Schofield’s book. He is even “deeply conscious of its imperfections.” But it is an imperfect world, and we fear that even the psycho-ghost luminaries are made in its image.

“Voices from the Void” is by the daughter of the late Professor Edward Dowden, Mrs. Hester Travers Smith. Sir William Barrett has written the introduction and avouches for the genuineness of the experiments carried on by Mrs. Smith. All checks drawn on the other world nowadays have an endless number of indorsers, but is there any money in the bank?—that is, is there anybody or anything “over the line”?

A close reading of the book indicates to us that the title, “Voices from the Void,” is strictly true. There is a void—even a vacuum—and the human race is the victim of unconscious ventriloquy. It is listening to its own voice in the belly of the void.

These psychic books—what are they all worth beside this tremendous book of psychic phenomena that nature is opening before our eyes?

Sursum Corda! Here is springtime again—Spring, the perpetual, transfigurating, undecipherable miracle of a sublimely ironical Dieu.

Messrs. Carrington, Schofield and Madam Smith, come to the séance in my back yard, for the blush is on the horseradish!

Original publication
Benjamin DeCasseres, “Psychic Phenomena and Humble Horseradish,” New York Times Book Review, April 18, 1920, p. 189 (index-supplied).

Books reviewed

Matriarchy?

Essays/Articles, Works, , ,

Works · Essays/Articles

By BENJAMIN DeCASSERES

A PUBLIC SOOTHSAYER some time ago said that somewhere in our country was now a young man who would be the first Fascist dictator of America.

This loud wish-thought brought to life a Communist soothsayer who predicted that somewhere on the high seas a stowaway was approaching America who would be the first commissar of the United States of Soviet Republics.

Both of these crystal gazers left out the obvious fact that there are just about one hundred and twenty-four millions of Americans left who, when it comes to a showdown, might object to both a native Fascist dictator or a foreign first commissar in the manner of the famous axe which smote the no less famous chicken in the neck.

But a prophecy that has more material ground than either is the statement of Miss Lillian D. Rock, vice president of the National Association of Women Lawyers, that she expected to see a woman as vice president of the United States before another decade, and, later on, a president.

The League for a Woman President and Vice President has already opened permanent headquarters in Brooklyn, and the drive for “recognition” will come next year at both conventions. All male delegates to both national conventions had better go with their wives and mothers.

The male has made such a bad mess of it in Washington in late years that it might pertinently be asked, why shouldn’t the hand that rocks the cradle ALSO help to rock the boat?

As Miss Rock, who is the organizer of this matriarchal movement, so wisely and pertinently says:

“The voice that sang the evening lullaby should play an important role in the legislative halls of the state and Nation.”

This logical connection between the evening excursion to Blanket Bay with the little darling and initiating legislation on taxation, drawing up a declaration of war and refunding the public debt will be instantly apparent even to the dullest masculine brain among the brain trusters at the national capital.

Another striking apothegm of Miss Rock’s is also worth recording:

“The brain that solved the economic problems of the home was certainly keen enough to play a part in politics.”

No mere male can gainsay this. As a matter of fact, the very first duty of a woman president, if she is true to her innate economic instincts, will be to create a secretary of charge accounts.

It must also be recorded, reluctantly and regretfully, that woman has already played “a part in politics”. The fate of a New York magistrate and a New York secretary of state, both evening lullaby singers, must grieve the judicious and even cause some quakings and forebodings among the masculine upholders of the honor of the Republic.

Man is, of course, naturally a scalawag. So we expect of woman better things. However, the several ladies who have sat in Congress have seemed, off the record, somewhat null and void, and certainly our grand old America would not dance with prideful and puffy joy at seeing a Ma Ferguson in the White House.

As a matter of truth, that estimable lady is too good for the job. Too much character is not desirable in high places in democracies. Ma is a dud at carrying water on both shoulders.

On the other hand, a woman president would give us many advantages, especially if she had with her a sound yes-and-yes, lollipop-sucking president consort at her heels.

Reason seems by way of rotting in Washington at the present time. A good dose of female intuition might snap us back into the good old days.

A cabinet of pure intuitionalists, especially a postmaster generaless who flipped out postmasterships on purely subconscious grounds, could decide the heavy problems of state just like THAT. Why waste the people’s time with reason, hindsight and foresight when we can get time-saving intuition F.O.B. and off the hoof?

Women have ruled great nations before. There are the instances of those profound stateswomen and humane law givers, Jezebel, Cleopatra, Catherine of Russia and Elizabeth.

Of course, there was Queen Victoria, but that good lady had the misfortune to have been doomed to reign in the Victorian era, so she was really not seen at her best.

With a woman in the White House, many states and legislative bodies would go feminine. This would eventually put man back just where he belongs: He could fight and die for his country, build the airways, finance big business, create the art and literature of a nation, and put up the ironwork on 80-story skyscrapers. Let the beast do the dirty work!

Meanwhile, Mrs. Roosevelt—who knows—says the country is not yet ready for a woman president.

With the highest respect for that sagacious lady’s opinion, I think the country is just about ready for anything short of total extinction.

Original publication
Benjamin DeCasseres, “Matriarchy?,” Syracuse Journal, March 9, 1935, editorial page (number unresolved).

Also collected in 10 from “March of Events”.

Threshold

Poetry, Works, , ,

Works · Poetry

By Benjamin De Casseres.

An elfin thought on the marge of my mind,
    Like a glittering butterfly flown from a
        drownéd sky,
Or like a sudden strain of windy music heard at
    the edge of a star—
An elfin thought on the marge of my mind
That touches me with innuendoes of past ecstasies
And whistles from its puckered heart wild airs
Learned in the Bedlams of spiritual unreason.

Copyright, 1920, by Benjamin De Casseres.

Original publication
Benjamin De Casseres, “Threshold,” The Sun, Books and the Book World, January 11, 1920, p. 4. The index additionally identifies section 6; section number unverified.

Poetry bibliography