Mediumship, Hypnosis & Telepathy: Julian Ochorowicz & the Levitating Scissors

psychicmedium-domena_publiczna.jpg, default, A levitating table during a Parisian séance with the medium Eusapia, left of frame Julian Ochorowicz / 1894 / photo: public domain

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In many houses in the town of Wisła (translated as Vistula when referring to the river, left as is here as it refers to a town in southern Poland where the river supposedly springs from – translator’s note), burdened in the aftermath of the numerous spiritualist séances organized there, many people suffer to this day from anxieties – hear voices, noises, and experience depressions’, one could read in 2014 as people were reacting to the idea of opening a museum in the former estate of Julian Ochorowicz – psychologist, inventor and mediumship researcher.

Julian Ochorowicz and Bolesław Prus – of these two friends, the latter is clearly the more prominent in our collective memory, although Ochorowicz is seemingly a far more colorful and extravagant character. It was for good reason that Prus portrayed him in his most famous work: the inspiration behind the character of Julian Ochocki, the inventor-idealist we know from the The Doll, was precisely Ochorowicz (‘He seemed to have the features of Napoleon the First, obscured by some cloud of dreaminess’, wrote Prus about the experimenter and cousin of Izabela Łęcka). They first met in 1864 at a secondary school in Lublin, where they quickly found common ground and even founded informal school partisanships – the 'party of idealists' and the 'party of the sober'. Their friendship endured for many years – exactly three decades later, Prus would defend Ochorowicz's esoteric interests in the pages of the weekly magazine Kraj (the Country):

In what moral atmosphere do we live our lives if it is easier for us to accuse others of 'stupidity' or 'fraud' than to admit the existence of a new group of phenomena?

Indeed, some called Ochorowicz a 'charlatan', and the medical community made no secret of their dislike for his actions – some, for instance, had ostentatiously crossed themselves off the subscriber lists of the journals that announced his articles would be published. How come he got under the skin of the country's medical professionals to such an extent?

The Charlatan from Radzymin

Thumbnail — Julian Ochorowicz, photo: public domain

Julian Leopold Ochorowicz was born in 1850 in the town of Radzymin, near Warsaw, in a family with several generations of intellectual and pedagogical traditions (his father had been the head of the Institute of Elementary Teachers, and his mother – Jadwiga née Sumiński – was a pedagogue and superior of the Alexandrian–Marian Institute for the Education of Ladies). Ochorowicz himself published his first articles on spiritism already at the age of seventeen. His text, entitled The Current State of Animal Magnetism, was then published in the Weekly Review:

Animal magnetism! At the very sound of this expression, the reader's imagination brings the memory of all the wonders ever heard of clairvoyants, of table spirits, of modern sibyls being toured by fairground jugglers [...].

Ochorowicz, however, pointed out emphatically that true magnetism was more than a 'flow of fantastic images', and that those who regarded it merely as a 'toy and novelty' were doing a disservice to science itself. He was thus an active defender of the German physician Franz Anton Mesmer, who in the 18th century proposed a theory concerning the alleged existence of magnetic forces within man and the healing power of touch. Although Mesmerism had officially been rejected as pseudo–science, it still had its advocates, and the teenager from Radzymin was exactly one of them. Years later, in his work De la suggestion mentale, written in French, Ochorowicz recalled his first teenage experiments with mental suggestion:

In 1867 I first made an experiment in Lublin on a young man of 17, a fellow quite difficult to put to sleep, who, however, after falling into a somnambulic sleep, turned out to be a very sensitive medium. For example, he recognised every person who touched his back, even with one finger.

On the Soul, Crime & the Skull

Not long after his spiritistic press debut, Ochorowicz – already a student at the Faculty of Philosophy and History of the General School of Warsaw – won a silver medal in a dissertation competition. His article How Should One Study the Soul? On the Method of Psychological Studies is considered the first Polish work on the methodology of psychological research (as a student, he also published the text Love, Crime, Faith and Morality, considered to be a pioneering study of criminal psychology in Poland). Ochorowicz's first psychological dissertation was a bold and, considering the time period (1860s), controversial text, as the young psychology student proposed the separation of the logic-based sciences of the human soul from aesthetics and ethics, i.e., philosophical topics.

He completed his studies at the school that had been renamed in the meantime to the Imperial University of Warsaw in 1872, with a dissertation entitled The Human Skull, its Size in Primitives and in Contemporary Humans. Just two years later the University of Leipzig awarded him a doctorate based on his thesis Conditions of Consciousness (he thus became the first Pole with a doctorate in psychology). After returning to Warsaw, he was the editor of magazines that were part of the Warsaw positivist movement: Niwy (together with Henryk Sienkiewicz) or Opiekun Domowy (The Home Keeper). He had the Library of Positive Philosophy under his care, published the Introduction and General Perspective on Positivist Philosophy and – under the pseudonym Julian Mohort – wrote the poem Onward, regarded as the manifesto of Polish positivism (‘We want a fight, but not the bloody kind [...] / We want a fight, which will enlighten the country / From the cellars up to the attics!’).

Thermomicrophone in Paris

After completing his habilitation in Lviv, for a while he held extremely popular lectures on psychology and physiology at the University of Lviv (the Yearbook of the Literary and Artistic Club in Lviv informs us that in 1881 there were not enough seats for his lecture of 'On Animal Magnetism'). Concurrently, he was also working on various inventions, focusing primarily on the possibility of transmitting images and sound at a distance and audio recording. He published the articles On the Law of the Microphone and On the Possibility of Constructing an Instrument for Transmitting Optical Images at Any Distance in the Lviv periodical Kosmos. Ochorowicz's interest in technological innovations grew during his stay in Paris. The psychologist and inventor left for Paris in 1882, having failed to receive the scientific scholarship he had won earlier – because he had frankly announced his intention to work on hypnotism while in the French capital, which did not please the Council of the Cracow Academy.

Having been put to the street in a foreign city and contending with debts as he had made purchases of books and experimental equipment on account of his scholarship, he turned his initial attention to the field of inventions.

– wrote the occultist and teacher Józef Chobot in his study The New Spiritistic Movement with Special Reference to Poland, published in Wisła in 1937.

Ochorowicz successfully presented his achievements – created in the studio of a friend from his Lviv days, engineer Bruno Abdank-Abakanowicz, – at exhibitions abroad, in St. Petersburg, Vienna or Antwerp, not to mention Paris itself. He developed, among other things, three models of telephones and a ’thermomicrophone’. In 1885, on the pages of the Fashions & Novels Weekly, the poet and publicist Seweryna Duchińska published correspondence from Paris reporting on the trials of Ochorowicz's invention:

A small orchestra was placed on the third floor of the Geographical Society building: a piano, three violins and a piston [a wind instrument – editor's note]. An instrument was placed a few metres away, then another instrument, connected with the previous one by a wire, was placed in the hall below. And so, music rang throughout the entirety of the hall [...].

As early as the late 1870s, Ochorowicz wrote about the need to invent a 'telephotoscope', i.e., a 'telegraphic instrument for seeing from a distance'. Some researchers therefore consider Ochorowicz to be one of the precursors of television.

A Finger in the Hypnoscope

Ochorowicz also developed his interest in hypnotism, magnetism, mediumship and telepathy in Paris – parallel to his inventive activities. The result of the combination of both strands of the psychologist's activity was the hypnoscope – an invention used to test 'hypnotic sensitivity'.

The hypnoscope was a magnetised tube, cut along its length, into which the test subject was to place a finger for two minutes. If they felt tingling, numbness or a change in body temperature during this time, their hypnotic sensitivity was considered to be significant. While in Paris, he also conducted his research, among others, at the famous Salpêtrière hospital (where Jean–Martin Charcot conducted hypnotic experiments on alleged hysterics), and in 1895, at the invitation of physician and physiologist, Nobel-laureate-to-be Charles Richet, he published – in the words of Adam Cygielstrejch – a ’voluminous and sturdy’ article spanning as many as seventy pages – Hypnotisme et mesmérisme – as part of the French Physiological Dictionary; then co-organised the world's first Psychological Congress, attended by several hundred people.

The Roman Medium

In May 1893, Ochorowicz departs for Rome to meet Eusapia Palladino and to examine the veracity of mediumistic phenomena. He publishes in the Illustrated Weekly his Observations on the Meditative Experiences of Eusapia Palladino. ‘From that moment on, I was very humbled, he wrote, admitting that the strict scientific attitude (‘the artificial blindness school had endowed me with’) was holding him off from understanding the incredible phenomena. 'It is only impossible for 2 times 2 to be 5', Ochorowicz claimed, regarding inexplicable phenomena as a field to be scientifically 'worked out' rather than dismissed as paranormal and anti–rational. Remarkably impressed by Palladino's mediumistic abilities (the séances took place in the Roman flat of Henryk Siemiradzki), Ochorowicz invited the Italian to Poland, where for fifty days he conducted spiritistic experiments with her, later describing them in the five–volume work Zjawiska medyumiczne (Mediumistic Phenomena). The séances were a real sensation in Warsaw, observed by local doctors and intellectuals – among them Bolesław Prus. A few months later, in one of Ochorowicz's 'defenses', the author of The Doll would admit:

I personally didn't like his classes on magnetism, tables, etc., and rather had a penchant for 'academic science', where everything is explicit and lends itself to calculus. However, I have the advantage or disadvantage of not making my tastes into dogmas and not demanding that everyone adhere to them. I also don't like champagne and lobster, and yet there are people who do....

As a side note, it is worth mentioning that in the following years Palladino was caught cheating several times by, among other things, moving a supposedly 'flying' table with her own hands.

Ochorow Builds a House

The turn of the 19th and 20th centuries was a time when, according to some researchers (including the psychologist Ryszard Stachowski), Ochorowicz was one of Europe's most famous Poles. He became an honorary member of psychological societies in Great Britain, New York, Budapest, Cologne, Berlin or Leipzig, and news of his practices appeared in many foreign-language magazines devoted to paranormal phenomena. For the most part, however, the Polish scientific community continued to treat him with hostility. His ambition to promote mediumship and to supplement conventional medicine with new areas of research had not been met with a favourable reception, to say the least. Ochorowicz believed that magnetism could 'be listed alongside the most reliable medical remedies, those closest to nature and incredibly helpful in the treatment of diseases of various types', but he did not find many supporters of his cause. That is perhaps why he decided to settle in a then little–known village in Cieszyn Silesia. (His divorce may also have contributed to his relatively radical decision to move to a Silesian village – in 1898 Ochorowicz separated from Maria Kazimiera Leszczyńska, who, under the double last name Ochorowicz–Monatowa, became famous as an author of popular inter–war cookbooks).

He came to Wisła in 1899 after being persuaded by his friend Bogdan Hoff – a visual artist and architect, the son of Bogusław Hoff, who initiated the promotion of Wisła as a summer resort and spa town. Although it is possible to encounter information that Ochorowicz was attracted to Wisła due to its esoteric ’properties’, for instance the power of the chakras present there, the truth is much more down–to–earth. Most likely, the main reason was... money. For Ochorowicz took on the role of a – as we would call it nowadays – property developer in Wisła. First, he built his own estate (‘we are going to Silesia to the village of Wisła, where it is supposed to be beautiful, healthy, cheap, and where Ochorow has built himself a house for 1,200 guilders with land!’, Prus wrote to Aleksander Jaworowski in the summer of 1900), and then he started building more guesthouses, counting on future profits from tourism.

Years later, the Silesian daily Worker’s Tribune would declare Ochorowicz the ’discoverer of Wisła for tourism’. After all, it was the psychologist from Radzymin who was behind the creation of such guesthouses as the Maja, the Placówka – dedicated to Prus – or the Sokół; he was also the man behind the pull of the creative and intellectual elite of the time to Cieszyn Silesia. It was thanks to him (and his efforts to create suitable conditions) that Reymont, Konopnicka or Sienkiewicz came to Wisła. Prus would often visit his friend, even though he suffered from agoraphobia and could not take full advantage of the ‘circumstances of nature’ (‘I confine my tourist activity within the limits of one kilometer, so I cannot say much about all the wonders of the hereabouts’).

Torn Chapters, Broken Bones

It was exactly in his villa, the Ochorowiczówka, that Reymont created the framework of his Nobel Prize–winning work. 'There is a huge, beautiful village at the source of the Wisła, recently coming into fashion. I've got a lot of work to do, so I'm going to stay here for a month, because it's nice here and it's completely quiet,' he reported in letters to his family. However, the first pages of The Peasants were read by Ochorowicz, who advised the author to... start from scratch (‘I'm going through the chapters written so far and tearing them up mercilessly – I'm starting all over again’), we read in Reymont's letters written from Wisła. Another famous work born in Ochorowicz's publicized village was the Rota. The would–be anthem of Poland was first published in The Star of Cieszyn in 1908.

It can be inferred from Ochorowicz's correspondence that the psychologist and psychic researcher was personally involved in the design of his vacation lodges and the drawing up of cost estimates, as well as supervising the construction. In letters written to his cousin, the Warsaw actress Wanda Barszczewska, he boasted that he had bought another property 'as a capital investment' and reported on progress from the construction site ('the peasants are working in the rain and snow, though their hands are shaking from the cold'). In 1904 he fell from a scaffolding, breaking his femur and crushing his arm and part of his hand. He also suffered from other health problems, as we may learn from the letters Prus wrote to him, among others:

What are you doing there, poor lad, in that Siberia? Today is Christmas Eve, everyone's hankering for their own, and you've moved dozens of miles away from Warsaw, where, whatever you may say, you have family and people who wish you well. […] I know that you were ill, apparently even seriously; I refuse however to believe in pericarditis. I cannot come to terms with your seclusion. [...] Will you at least write a few words about your health and whether the past illness has left you weakened for the coming years?

Prus wrote these words in 1901, but apparently Ochorowicz's seclusion did not bother the man – indeed, one might even say that it allowed him to reflect on matters of mediumship, hypnosis and telepathy. He spent several more years in Wisła, becoming actively involved in the life of the town: he founded the Society of Wisła Lovers (1906), built a brickyard, designed several parks and donated six hundred books to the local library. He also animated cultural life, organizing excursions, performances and lectures, and ‘above all, he proclaimed for all of Poland that Wisła was the most beautiful village under the sun’, as we read in the guidebook Wisła: At the Foot of Mutton Mountain published in 1936.

Séances in the Villa

Despite his being a committed advocate of the countryside in Cieszyn Silesia, Ochorowicz was held at a distance by the locals. Stanisława Valis-Schyleny, a Wisła-native doctor born in 1915, would cite overheard recollections of the peculiar figure of the psychologist–medium:

He never smiled; his stroll was pensive. He would answer ’good morning’, but nothing more. The village children were afraid of him, they would run away at the sight of him, because it was scary in the Ochorowiczówka, there were ghosts hanging around there...

For several years, Ochorowicz had conducted experiments in Wisła with Stanisława Tomczykówna, the most famous Polish medium. Her psychic abilities were supposedly awakened as a result of the shock of her arrest during the 1905 revolution – it was then, during interrogation, that unexplainable phenomena began to occur, such as the spontaneous shifting of objects, sounds of knocks coming from unknown sources, and so on. Similar phenomena were experienced by the participants of the Wisła experiments. In 1933, the Hejnał (Signal) – a monthly magazine on spiritual knowledge published in Wisła – published the ’True story of Little Stasia’ (for this is how the ‘mediumistic entity’ had named itself). At the time, Tomczykówna demonstrated telekinetic skills, including stopping a roulette by force of will on numbers indicated by Ochorowicz; she was also able to make snowflakes fall on the séance participants, although the windows were tightly closed. In the surviving photographs, we see Tomczyk demonstrating the levitation of scissors and Ochorowicz watching the event intently.

In 1909, Ochorowicz embarked with Tomczykówna on a 'guest appearance' in Paris, where Maria Skłodowska–Curie and the aforementioned Charles Richet took part in séances. In the same year, the psychologist–mediumist published a detailed account in the French journal Annales des Sciences Psychiques portraying a woman with supernatural abilities:

Stanisława Tomczykówna is a pretty, modest, intelligent maiden. Although without education, she is extraordinarily gifted. She has been staying at my villa for two months, where I am trying to improve her health and guide the development of her medial abilities. I expect to make her a medium truly useful for science.

Science & Mediumship

The phrase ‘useful to science’ is the answer to the question of why the co–founder of the positivist movement based on rationalism took up such mysterious, obscure issues as mediumship, hypnosis or telepathy. Ochorowicz, who referred to himself as a ’colonist of the springs of the Vistula’, wanted to popularise controversial mediumship as a scientific field, based on empirically measurable phenomena. He believed that ’there is a force in the human organism that can act beyond the surface of the body’, and he differentiated mediumship of a lower order, i.e., deception resulting from autosuggestion, from mediumship of a higher order, of which telekinesis was to be an example. The philosopher Barbara Skarga proved that Ochorowicz's beliefs were not self–contradictory – she stated that positivism taken to its logical conclusion must have necessarily led Ochorowicz towards esotericism and the occult, as positivism per se did not provide satisfactory answers to questions concerning the intricacies of the human soul. As the philosopher wrote: ‘it was positivism itself that, having radicalised some of its philosophical rules, strayed into the realm of the fantastical and, consequently, began to defend fantasy ardently, wanting to revive science through it’.

Death in the Medium's Home

‘I have grown to deplore Wisła’, Ochorowicz wrote in 1913, and soon afterwards Tomczykówna, in whom he had bestowed his high hopes for the development of his mediumistic research, left for England for good. Ochorowicz still remained solitary, his theories did not find many supporters and his readings no longer aroused any – not even negative – emotions. He decided to sell his Wisła properties, settled for a short time in Żerań (then a village near Warsaw, now a settlement in Białołęka), and then moved to Warsaw. He died on 1 May 1917 of an attack of angina pectoris in the flat of medium Jadwiga Domańska located in a now non-existent tenement house at 44 Krucza St. Less than two months later, Adam Cygielstrejch gave a lecture at an evening dedicated to his memory:

Ochorowicz came too early, far too early. He spoke a new, creative, bold language. At home, he was not understood; it was thought that he was against science. [...] He looked further than the compatriots who attacked him; he saw deeper and clearer than his opponents. Even though he was alone, he kept moving forward, towards the light he saw ahead, following the ignis fatuus (Latin for ‘foolish fire’ – translator’s note) that attracted him and often – all too often – misled him.

Accusations of Occultism

Ochorowiczówka was the villa that, of all those built through Ochorowicz's initiative, survived the longest. However, it was damaged by an attic fire in 2014. The building was extensively renovated, and in 2017 the Museum of Magical Realism opened there, presenting not only Ochorowicz's achievements, but also the works of contemporary surrealists. Earlier, upon hearing of the plans to create such a facility in the former psychic's villa, Wisła’s clergymen of many faiths reacted with an open letter stating that 'the consequences in terms of spiritism and the occult' are still borne by the residents today. Apparently, it was Ochorowicz's former mediumistic and hypnotic research that was responsible for the problem of alcoholism in Wisła. According to the clergymen, the source of the illness was an 'occult burden'.

Translated from Polish by Michał Niedzielski

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