A man is wise when he seeks wisdom, he is mad when he thinks he has found it. (Talmud).

The greatest ignorance is the one that does not know and believes to know, because it gives rise to all the mistakes that we make with our intelligence. (Socrates).

One white crow is enough to prove that not all are black. (LOEFFLER).

INTRODUCTION – The favorite thesis of Quevedo and "Co. Limited" is that no person can know, through any psychic means, what happened in a range of up to 200 years. Although we searched for this thought on the internet, we were not successful in finding it. However, we got it from another parapsychologist, who thinks exactly the same as the mentioned “parapsycatholic”:

[…] Parapsychology, a science that studies this phenomenon and many others carried out by the unconscious, has experimentally proven us that our unconscious knows the past (retrocognition), the present (simulcognition) and the future (precognition) of someone (telepathy) or history (clairvoyance), in a range of up to 200 years. (SAMPAIO, 2006, Internet.)

Interesting is that this "has proven us" cannot be found anywhere. Therefore, we ask: where are the researches to prove this? If they exist, was the one who made them free from religious prejudices? Finally, there are many questions and we cannot find the right answers. But who knows if this proof cannot be found in the "unconscious" of some parapsychologist?

But as "a white crow is enough to prove that not all are black", we are going to present the following case, which we copy from the book Region in Litigation between this world and the other, by Robert Dale Owen: 

MANIFESTATION OF A FAVORITE MUSICIAN OF THE KING OF FRANCE – On not so distant days, when Paris - considered the center of civilization and intended to be the most joyful and brilliant of the capitals of the world, in 1865 – a man lived there, a respectable gentle man, who I believe still lives there and who had inherited from his ancestors the musical gift. 

Mr. N. G. Bach, then sixty-seven years old, was the great-grandson of the celebrated Sebastian Bach, who became known in the first half of the eighteenth century. Although his health was somewhat delicate, he was, at the time referred to, in the full enjoyment of his mental faculties, a diligent composer and liked by his art colleagues for both his professional talents and his honesty and kindness.

On May 4, 1865, the son of Mr. N. Bach, Leon Bach, an old-fashioned gentleman, found among the curiosities of a used stuff store in Paris an apparently very ancient spinet (musical instrument), but of remarkable beauty and perfection, and still in good conditions. It was made of oak, ornamented with delicate carvings of fine arabesques, encrusted with turquoise and gold fleur de Lys. It was evident that it had belonged to some rich and distinct person; the merchant, however, only knew that it had recently been brought from Italy by the person who sold it to him.

Imagining that his father would be very pleased with it, the young man bought it. He was right. Mr. Bach, who shared his son's taste for the relics of the past, was pleased with the new acquisition and spent most of the day admiring it, listening to its sounds and examining its mechanism. It was five feet long and two feet wide; it had no feet, but was enclosed in a wooden box that protected it, like a violin. To play it, the spinet was placed on a table. Despite the cost of its decoration, it was small, compared to those manufactured today with a wonderful power and superb shades. In its general work, however, it resembled those of today, and the small keyboard was set in the same order; but the keys, when played, moved a piece of wood of the thickness of a woman's finger, each equipped with a point meant to hit the corresponding rope. As for the quality of the sound, we can easily imagine it.

Before the end of the day, Mr. Bach made a discovery which, for him, compensated for the imperfections noted in the instrument, and he seemed to distinguish something written on the narrow strip of wood that supported the plank, only. Fixed on this strip, there were two easels that separated it from the mentioned board and hid part of what was written on it. However, moving the instrument into a convenient position and giving it a very lively light, one could read the following: ln Rome Antonins Nobilis; then came one of the easels and then: Brena Medislani Patrice; and then the other easel: Diexiy Aprillis 1564. Undoubtedly, these words were written before the construction of the instrument.

This was how Mr. Bach knew that his spinet was more than three hundred years old; and it was made in Rome in the year 1564 by a certain Anconeos Nobilis, apparently from the suburbs of Milan, and is likely to have been completed on April 14 of that year. The instrument had thus an indication of the place where it had been made and the name of the manufacturer. This, in the eyes of antique dealers, as with paleontologists, greatly increases the value of a relic.

Very happy, the old gentleman went to sleep and, of course, dreamed of his son's gift. But this dream had some weird. In it a handsome young stranger appeared, with a beard carefully combed and dressed elegantly, in the fashion of the old French court: a rich doublet with a broad collar and the tight, battered sleeves at the top; wide shorts, long stockings and low entry shoes with tope. The tall, pointed, broad-brimmed hat was adorned with a white feather. This young man, bowing and smiling, went up to Mr. Bach's bed and said to him: "The spinet you have today belonged to me, it served me to please or entertain my master, King Henry. In his youth, he composed an aria that he liked to sing, accompanied by me, and whose lyrics were written in memory of a lady whom he loved very much and of whom, with great regret, he was separated. This lady died, and in his moments of sadness, he used to sing this aria".

After a while, this strange visitor continued: "I will play it and will find a way for you to remember it, since you have a poor memory”. He sat down beside the spinet, and accompanied the words he himself sang. The old man awoke crying, touched by the sadness of the singer.

Lighting a candle, he found that it was two o'clock. Thinking about the dream and imagining he was still listening to the mournful melody of that song, he began to sleep again.

There is nothing remarkable about all this. If something happened to Mr. Bach before he awoke the next morning, he could not remember it when he opened his eyes already full day. But then he found, with great astonishment, a piece of paper on the bed, on the top of which were written in ancient characters: Words of King Henry III. His astonishment grew as he studied the writing more closely. It was a rare archaeological specimen: the notes were small, the keys similar to those used once, in a careful and old-fashioned writing, appearing in another point the Gothic type, noted in certain letters, in the manuscripts of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries ; a spelling very similar to that used three hundred years ago.

Glancing through the first few notes, he recognized the music he had heard in a dream. Then he noticed the words in the corner: they were the same. He sat down at the piano and was convinced, with no doubt, that it was exactly the song and verses that the visitor in his dream had sung accompanied by the spinet.

At first he was puzzled, disturbed, and even frightened. What did all this mean?  When he awoke at night, he had not given great importance to the dream itself, though it was lively and remarkable. But what was that? Paying attention to the paper found on the bed, he saw that it was the fourth page of a music sheet, on which he had written the first two pages on the previous day when he wrote a song of his composition, which he had left on his working table. Could someone have taken it away during the night? But who was this person who had filled two blank pages with that mysterious song of a past time? Someone had been there…

Was it he himself? But he was not a somnambulist; it was not known that he had ever walked through the house or wrote in his sleep. e did not believHe did not believe and did not know about Spiritism; therefore, there was no possibility of even thinking that it could be a spiritual message. He was confused and bewildered, especially after he noticed the coincidence of names and dates. The man, who appeared in his dream, had spoken of his master, King Henry; at the top of the page on which the song was written, it was written that the handwriting was of Henry III; the spinet had been built in 1564, when Henry, then Duke of Anju, was fourteen years old. Was it not possible that he had found this instrument a few years later, in his trip to Rome to the court of France, and brought it with him, considering that History says he was a musical composer of some merit? 

Mr. Bach spoke of these wonders to his friends, who went on telling the story to others, and very soon a crowd of curious, literary, artists, antiques and others flocked to the well-known musician's quarters in order to hear from his own mouth the story and look, with their own eyes, at the marvelous spinet. Among these visitors were some committed Spiritists, and it was then that for the first time Mr. Bach heard of scribbling mediums and learned that his hand might have been guided to write in his sleep.

All this, though very unusual and strange to confirm his belief, made him think; and one day, three or four weeks after the dream, feeling his head heavy and a kind of a nervous shiver in his arm, he thought that perhaps some Spirit wished to write through him, in order to thereby give him any explanation of the mystery he could not explain. As soon as he held the pencil and paper, he lost consciousness of himself, and in that state the hand wrote in French: "King Henry, my master, who gave me the spinet, which belongs to you today, wrote four lines on a piece of paper and he made me fix it on the box on the morning he sent me the instrument. A few years later, when I had to travel and took the spinet with me, fearing to lose the paper, I took it out and for safety I placed it in a small opening, to the left of the keyboard, where it can still be found. “This communication was signed by Baldazzarini. After it were the following lines:

“King Henry gives this beautiful spinet

to Baldazzarini, an excellent musician.

If it is not good, if it is believed to be very simple,

may this gift be kept at least as a remembrance”.

After all, there was some probability of obtaining tangible evidence in relation to these mysteries. There was a test to be made to find out whether Baldazzarini was a myth or a real character, able to clarify the facts in question.

To satisfy the public’s curiosity, the spinet was exposed for a few days in the Retrospective Museum of the Palace of Industry; and it was during this time that the communication was written. Immediately, they sent for it.

Imagine the nervous yearning father and son were feeling awaiting for its arrival to confirm if the story of the paper written by the king's own hand and hidden in an opening in the instrument box, was a novel or reality.

For an hour or two, Mr. Bach says, they explored every corner of the old instrument, finding nothing. Then, when all hope seemed lost, Leon Bach, rereading what his father's hand had written, proposed that they should carefully disassemble the instrument without disabling it. When they had removed the keyboard and removed some hammers, they discovered underneath and on the left side a narrow crevice in the wood, in which was hidden a strip of parchment of eleven or twelve inches in length by two quarters of width, on which one could see written, with a firm hand, four lines similar to those that Mr. Bach's hand had drawn; but the newly found lines had the handwritten signature of Henry. They cleaned it as best as they could, and then they were able to read: 

"I, King Henry the Third, offer this spinet

to Baltazzarini, my esteemed musician,

if he finds it poor in tone, or of small value,

may he keep it in its box and may I be remembered,

Henry”.

It is difficult, to translate in simple words the emotion of the exalted researchers  when, finally, they took out from the secret hiding place, discolored by time and covered in the dust of centuries, this silent witness. The father, when he saw this, was aware that the warning that had led him to make this discovery was both his own and the pen that had written it. When he awoke from the trance, during which he had written, he read it as if it were written by a strange person. However, in substance, what was written was real and the proof of the evidence was there!

The differences that appear in what was obtained by Mr. Bach and what is read on the parchment are insignificant. There you see: Le Roy Henry; here: Moy le roy Henry trois; There: très bon musicien, here gay musicien; there: si elle n'est bonne; and here: s'il dit mal sone; there: pas assez coquette, and here: ou bien (ma) moule simplette; and so on. The meaning is the same.

Astonished as they were, I doubt it had occurred to them, as it happens to me that the evidence thus obtained is much stronger, much more convincing, because, since the two blocks are substantially identical in form, one is not a copy of the other. In the third verse of the parchment block, the word (ma) is inserted, which was not understood at first, but was later perfectly explained. When Mr. Bach showed the original parchment to the friend from whom I obtained this story, he said to him: "No one understood the meaning of the word ma in quotation marks, which is seen there, but one day my hand again involuntarily moved and wrote: "My friend, the king liked to tease me because of my French accent, for I always said ma rather than more. That is why he wrote thus. "It is a simple observation that the Italian, speaking French or Portuguese, says ma instead of more. The original parchment, blackened by age, was taken by Mr. Bach to the Imperial Library (if the Grand Library of France is still called like this), and was compared there with the original manuscripts. In these it was noted that Henry's handwriting did not have a constant type; but as regards the signature, the concordance of the parchment with the others was perfect, as Mr. Bach said. The examination of the antiquaries came to the same conclusion.

The little holes that were seen along the edges of the parchment indicated that it had been nailed to a wooden surface, as the communication had said; on the lines written on the parchment was a red cross; it is also an additional proof of authenticity, for it is a sign of devotion which always appears in all the writings of Henry III, which have come to us. (Continued on next issue.) 

 

References:

OWEN, R. D. Region in Litigation between this world and the other, Rio de Janeiro: FEB, 1982.