We may conclude from these successive stages that the Martian handwriting is the result of a slow…
- Date of account
- English edition published 1900
- Source
- From India to the planet Mars: A study of a case of somnambulism with glossolalia
- Reference
- From India to the planet Mars: A study of a case of somnambulism with glossolalia · selected passage 177
- Rights
- public_domain
- Language
- English translation from French
- Translation
- English translation of Théodore Flournoy
- Record updated
- 2026-08-24
Record summary
We may conclude from these successive stages that the Martian handwriting is the result of a slow autosuggestion, in which the idea of a special writing instrument, and its handling, for a long time played the dominant rôle, then was abandoned, without doubt, as impracticable to realize
Published source text
Read the available text below. Archive transcriptions may contain OCR errors; later context is labelled separately. A recorded claim is not a finding that it happened.
Source passage
Source text · mention onlyWe may conclude from these successive stages that the Martian handwriting is the result of a slow autosuggestion, in which the idea of a special writing instrument, and its handling, for a long time played the dominant rôle, then was abandoned, without doubt, as impracticable to realize. The characters themselves then haunted for several weeks Hélène’s visual imagination before they appeared to her on the cylinders of the three Martians in a manner sufficiently clear and stable to enable her to copy them and afterwards to be capable of subduing her graphomotor mechanism. Once manifested outwardly, these signs, which I have assembled under the form of an alphabet in Fig.
Historical context
Contextual commentary · mention onlyThis comes from historical psychical research. Methods, witness handling and standards of evidence differ from present-day research and should be assessed from the cited passage and edition.
Modern context
Contextual commentary · mention onlyThe passage can support a history of claims and recurring descriptions. It does not establish a paranormal mechanism, and competing psychological, social and physical explanations remain relevant.
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