American cinematographer (Nov 1921-Jan 1922)

12 THE AMERICAN CINEMATOGRAPHER December 1, 1921 Photographing the Unseen (Continued from page 10) Difficult to Grasp "It is difficult for many students to understand how it is possible for any kind of creature thus to inhabit the solid substance of the rock or the crust of the earth. Creatures possessing bodies of etheric matter find the substance of the rock no impediment to their motion or their vision. Indeed, for them physical matter in its solid state is their natural element and habitat — the only one to which they are accustomed and in which they feel at home. * * * "The etheric matter of their bodies is not, under ordinary conditions, visible to physical eyes, so that when they are seen, one of two things must take place; either they must materialize themselves by drawing round them a veil of physical matter, or else the spectator must experience an increase of sensitiveness which enables him to respond to the wave-lengths of the higher ethers, and to see what is not normally perceptible to him. "The slight temporary exaltation of faculty necessary for this is not very uncommon nor difficult to achieve, and on the other hand materialization is easy for creatures which are only just beyond the bounds of visiblity; so that they would be seen far more frequently than they are, but for the rooted objection to the proximity of human beings which they share with all, but the lowest types of nature-spirits. * * * The Fairies "The type best known to man is that of the fairies, the spirits who live normally upon the surface of the earth, though, since their bodies are of etheric matter, they can pass into the ground at will. Their forms are many and various, but most frequently human in shape and somewhat diminutive in size, usually with a grotesque exaggeration of some particular feature or limb. Etheric matter being plastic and readily moulded by the power of thought, they are able to assume almost any appearance at will, but they nevertheless have definite forms of their own, which they wear when they have no special object to serve by taking any other, and are therefore, not exerting their will to produce a change of shape. They have also colours of their own, marking the difference in their tribes or species, just as the birds have differences of plumage. "There are an immense number of subdivisions or races among them, and individuals of these subdivisions vary in intelligence and disposition precisely as human beings do. Again, like human beings, these divers races inhabit different countries, or sometimes different districts of the same country, and the members of one race have a general tendency to keep together, just as men of one nation do among ourselves. They are on the whole, distributed much as are the other kingdoms of nature; like the birds, from whom some of them have been evolved, some (F ~ -ft // / // Cinema Studio Supply Co. 7F/T/IEyUN 1442 GOWER ST. I 7 1 / / Holly 819 LIGHTING EQUIPMENT FOR RENT WIND MACHINES R. (SPEED) HOSTETTER \> -J) cf — ' ft SUBSCRIPTION ORDER Herewith $3.00 to pay for The American Cmematoqrapher for one year beginning with the issue of Name Address City State or Country 4 -i varieties are peculiar to one country, others are common in one country and rare elsewhere, while others again are to be found almost anywhere. Again, like the birds, it is broadly true that the most brilliantly coloured orders are to be found in tropical countries. National Types "The predominant types of the different parts of the world are usually clearly distinguishable and in a sense characteristic; or is it perhaps that their influence in the slow course of ages has moulded the men and animals and plants who lived near them, so that it is the nature-spirit who has set the fashion and the other kingdoms which have unconsciously followed it? For example, no contrast could well be more marked than that between the vivacious, rollicking orange-and-purple or scarlet-and-gold mannikins who dance among the vineyards of Sicily, and the almost wistful grey-and-green creatures who move so much more sedately amidst the oaks and the furze-covered heaths in Brittany, or the golden-brown 'good people' who haunt the hillsides of Scotland. California Variety "In England the emerald-green variety is probably the commonest, and I have seen it also in the woods of France and Belgium, in far-away Massachusetts and on the banks of the Niagara River. The vast plains of the Dakotas are inhabited by a blackand-white kind, which I have not seen elsewhere, and California rejoices in a lovely white-and-gold species which also appears to be unique.* * * New Field For the Camera But what has all this to do with cameramen and motion pictures? Just this: If these pictures are authentic it is evident that the camera has established in truth the existence of the unseen, and it will, in all probability, be the camera which will be first to go deeper into this unseen world and set before us its secrets which may have a tremendous bearing upon our human evolution. Here is, therefore, a field infinitely wide and new and fascinating for original research and it now remains for a motion camera to record for us what the still camera in the hands of these children caught upon their sensitized film. Sir William Crookes, Wallace, Lodge and others have brought Western science close to the spiritual world. "Open vision," or clairvoyance, was told of in the Bible as early as Isaiah's time, and it is almost as familiar to the public as aviation. That two little girls should see the fairies will not seem so remarkable as the fact that the camera picked them up for we have always thought that cameras must have something material to shoot at. In this connection, Mr. Leadbeater explains that the ether which forms the bodies of nature-spirits does belong to the physical plane and that it may be seen. He says also that while these creatures love and trust children, they hate or dispise grown-ups. On this point he says: "Most nature-spirits dislike and avoid mankind, and we cannot wonder at it. To them man appears a ravaging demon, destroying and spoiling wherever he goes. He wantonly kills, often with awful tortures, all the beautiful creatures that they love to watch; he cuts down the trees, he tramples the grass, he plucks the flowers and casts them carelessly aside to die; he replaces all the lovely wild life of nature with his hideous bricks and mortar, and the fragrance of the flowers with the polluting smoke of his factories. Can we think it strange that the fairies should regard us with horror, and shrink away from us as we shrink from a poisonous reptile? "Not only do we thus bring devastation to all that they hold most dear, but most of our habits and emanations are distasteful to them; we poison the sweet air for them (some of us), with loathsome fumes of alcohol and tobacco; our restless, illregulated desires and passions set up a constant rush of astral currents which disturbs and annoys them, and gives them the same feeling of disgust which we should have if a bucket of filthy water were emptied over us. For them to be near the average man is to live in a perpetual hurricane — a hurricane that has blown over a cesspool." Let the Children Do It If we accept these things as true, it looks like our only hope for research along these lines will be to put motion cameras in the hands of children and turn them loose in the bosky dells, away from the haunts of the monster man to bring back records of the doings of the fairy people in motion pictures. What a triumph that would be! Who'll be first to give proof to The American Cinematographkr that it has been done?