The following example, by no means unique, shows the view taken by savages of their own magic, after they have become Christians.  Catherine Wabose, a converted Red Indian seeress, described her preliminary fast, at the age of puberty.  After six days of abstention from food she was rapt away to an unknown place, where a radiant being welcomed her.  Later a dark round object promised her the gift of prophecy.  She found her natural senses greatly sharpened by lack of food.  She first exercised her powers when her kinsfolk in large numbers were starving, a medicine-lodge, or ‘tabernacle’ as Lufitau calls it, was built for her, and she crawled in.  As is well known, these lodges are violently shaken during the magician’s stay within them, which the early Jesuits at first attributed to muscular efforts by the seers.  In 1637 Pere Lejeune was astonished by the violent motions of a large lodge, tenanted by a small man.  One sorcerer, with an appearance of candour, vowed that ‘a great wind entered boisterously,’ and the Father was assured that, if he went in himself, he would become clairvoyant.  He did not make the experiment.  The Methodist convert, Catherine, gave the same description of her own experience:  ’The lodge began shaking violently by supernatural means.  I knew this by the compressed current of air above, and the noise of motion.’  She had been beating a small drum and singing, now she lay quiet.  The radiant ‘orbicular’ spirit then informed her that they ‘must go westwards for game; how short-sighted you are!’ ’The advice was taken and crowned by instant success.’  This established her reputation.[17] Catherine’s conversion was led up to by a dream of her dying son, who beheld a Sacred Figure, and received from Him white raiment.  Her magical songs tell how unseen hands shake the magic lodge.  They invoke the Great Spirit that

    ’Illumines earth
    Illumines heaven! 
  Ah, say what Spirit, or Body, is this Body,
    That fills the world around,
    Speak, man, ah say
  What Spirit, or Body, is this Body?’

It is like a savage hymn to Hegel’s fuehlende Seele:  the all-pervading Sensitive Soul.  We are reminded, too, of ’the doctrine of the Sanscrit Upanishads:  There is no limit to the knowing of the Self that knows.’[18]

Unluckily Catherine was not asked to give other examples of what she considered her successes.

Acosta, who has not the best possible repute as an authority, informs us that Peruvian clairvoyants ’tell what hath passed in the furthest parts before news can come.  In the distance of two or three hundred leagues they would tell what the Spaniards did or suffered in their civil wars.’  To Du Pont, in 1606, a sorcerer ’rendered a true oracle of the coming of Poutrincourt, saying his Devil had told him so.’[19]

We now give a modern case, from a scientific laboratory, of knowledge apparently acquired in no normal way, by a person of the sort usually chosen to be a prophet, or wizard, by savages.