I have long taken great interest (in this phenomenon) as I believe it will lead to important discoveries in regard to other planes than the physical. I have heard too many reports from "plain" people with no axes to grind to have any doubts of its existence. Therefore I wish to draw your attention to a report in the Science News Letter for November 18, 1933, where a photograph of ball lightning taken by Professor J. C. Jensen is reproduced. Physics for October 1933 contains further observations by him.

It appears to me that there is some connection between ball lightning and the will-o'-the-wisp, and if it is not too shocking to "common sense", that the influence of elementals, nature spirits (the Maruts of Hindu philosophy, for instance), is indicated in both cases... Why do the electric balls move quite slowly and show apparent choice of a track through a passage in a house which seems to have nothing to do with metallic conductors? No one seems to have been killed by such unpleasant visitors although they passed close by and sometimes exploded when they got safely out in the open air. In the case of will-o'-the-wisps some very strange behaviour is recorded, particularly the frequent slipping away from persons who approach too close for their apparent satisfaction, and the curious revolution of one round another without combining. There are several other characteristics which are common to both kinds of phenomena but which are admittedly not properly explained. We are told that will-o'-the-wisps are nothing but luminous patches of marsh gas, probably methane, rising from decomposed vegetation in wet marshy ground, but there are cases where the mystic flames have been seen in extremely dry territory where there was no water for miles. And why should there be sometimes a smell of phosphorus? Some very curious and well authenticated cases are given in the Scientific American (Supplement) for May 1920, where it is pointed out that no satisfactory or even plausible explanation has been given to cover the known phenomena. (italics ours, Ed.) The same might be said (by scientists) about the brilliant, slow moving globular lights often seen at spiritualistic seances. H. P. Blavatsky, in her Isis Unveiled, I, 106 et seq., in discussing Babinet's "meteor cat", definitely associates such slow moving examples of ball lightning with elemental activity.

* * *

The references given above, to scientific publications, should conclusively dispose of the inane repetition, "no scientist ever saw ball lightning". Also, the argument that "some will-o'-wisps are caused by marsh gas, therefore all similar appearances are caused in the same way" - or else by "radioactive ores" and the like, is of [7] course mere conjecture; it should not be necessary to contend with such childishness, even when uttered by alleged authority. Neither will any spiritist or occultist assert that all such phenomena are of "super-normal" origin; nevertheless, the association of lights and luminous appearances with spiritistic manifestations is so well known, that there is good a priori ground for assuming that it may be present here, in some instances. Elemental activity is equally probable at times, and there is an immense amount of occult lore in support of the idea.

The RR Editor at one time described, in the ASPR Journal, a so-called spirit light frequently seen at a place called Malakia, in a remote valley of Southern California. This was a large and very bright "fire ball", compared by many to the headlight of an automobile, and which seemed to possess a kind of directional ray. It moved about slowly, or else hung motionless for hours over the most impenetrable thickets of brush and cactus. When, as sometimes happened, it appeared on a road, it was possible to walk directly into the light, whereat it simply disappeared. The region is one of desert, without water or marshland, and expert examination failed to reveal any trace of radioactive elements in the soil. The phenomenon (which is said to have now ceased) was observed at intervals over many years, all accounts are in substantial agreement, and no "normal" explanation so far suggested is worth anything at all. From his own point of view, the Editor ranks this as a spirit or elemental manifestation, so far as the facts go, and in the absence of any intelligible alternative. One must either neglect such happenings, or adopt the best working hypothesis available - and any well informed occultist could collect a book-full of data on similar occurrences. But in such cases the burden of proof does not lie with the occultist, but on those who advance glib and pseudo-scientific "explanations" for which there is no ascertainable ground whatever.

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Hazlitt's Meditation: ". . . Before getting out of bed he lay an hour agaze at a wafer, big as a three-penny-bit, stuck on his ceiling, tears leaking from his fixed lids, and he had grown now to be greater than he that taketh a city, when with tears in his ears he lay dead to their tickling, unthinking, unwinking, the nail of his attention fixed in the wafer, 'seeing it steadily, seeing it whole', a citizen of the Kingdom of Nothingness, having a happy home in it, moving on and on and still immutably on, smoothly as the motion of a stone moving in a void without bottom or bound, in which there is nothing but a stone that journeys, and eternity is the journey of its inertia; until, having attained to carelessness and continuousness, living yet free of fret, stark as Death's rapture, he passes into the harbour of Nirvana, and far back of veil on veil is safe within a place of darkness, built of the absolute attar of Space and Persistence, wherein He stares who is careless and continuous ever, and His years shall know no end; in the ark of which darkness, to whose largeness the arch of heaven is as a shell, he abides a while entranced, imbibing wine of the sacrament of Romance, experiencing that, if a man ceases and is still, then the spirit of Being rushed-in to fill his vacant chambers, and the man passes through the passion of the taste of bliss..."

(M.P. Shiel. How the Old Woman Got Home, p. 271 f.)

References

  1. "Ball Lightning Apparently Connected with Dust." Science News Letter. 18 Nov 1933: n. page. Print. <https://www.sciencenews.org/archive/ball-lightning-apparently-connected-dust-0>
  2. Jensen, J.C. "Ball Lightning." Physics. 4.10 (1933): 372-374. Print. <http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.1745147>
  3. Whitney, Rich D. "Will o' the Wisp - Ignis Fatuus - Irrlichter - Feux Follet: Interesting Records of This Curious Phenomenon." Scientific American Monthly. May 1920: 390-391. Print. <http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015080301214>
  4. Blavatsky, H. P. Isis Unveiled: A Master-Key to the Mysteries of Ancient and Modern Science and Theology. I. 1877. 106-. Print. <http://www.theosociety.org/pasadena/isis/iu-hp.htm>
  5. Layne, N. Meade. "A 'Spirit Light' Phenomenon." The Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research 34.3: 51-54. Print. [May be available from aspr.com.]
  6. Shiel, M.P. How the Old Woman Got Home. New York: The Vanguard Press, 1928. Print. <http://amzn.to/1d6mjhi>