Xenoglossy

Speaking in a language unknown to the speaker in the normal waking state. It is different from what is commonly called glossolalia, or speaking in tongues, a form of vocalized religious experience characteristic of some religious movements, such as Pentecostalism. It has been compared with automatic writing, writing in a language unknown to the writer.

Speaking in an unknown language is perhaps a far more impressive phenomenon than writing in it. Subconscious visual memory may account for occasional reproduction of foreign sentences, but the explanation becomes more difficult if the problem of intonation is added, since it necessitates an auditive memory, the subconscious retention of fragments of strange languages actually heard somewhere at some time.

In medieval times speaking in foreign languages was one of the four principal signs of the presence of a demon. The belief was bound to have its subconscious effect. The Ursuline nuns of Loudon (according to their earliest historian in La Véritable Histoire des Diables de Loudun, par un Témoin, â Poitiers, 1634) spoke Latin, Greek, Turkish, Spanish, and a Native American tongue and confessed to having been obsessed by the devil.

In later religious revivals, the outbreak was a sign of celestial inspiration. The recitals of the refugees from the Cévennes, reported in Le Théâtre Sacré des Cevennes, by M. Misson (London, 1707) contains numerous accounts of the gift among unlettered Camisard (French Protestant) adults and infants, who spoke French in the purest diction (see also Tremblers of the Cevennes ). The phenomenon was also noted among the Convulsionaries of St. Medard in 1730.

It is interesting to note that the psychical researcher F. W. H. Myers did not believe in the phenomenon. He said that he knew of only a few instances when a few words, fragments of a language, came through the medium—some Italian and Hawaiian words in Leonora Piper's utterances and a few Kaffir and Chinese words through another medium, a Ms. Browne. "We have no modern case, no case later than the half-mythical Miracles of the Cevennes, where such utterance has proved to be other than gibberish."

Apparently Myers ruled out or was unaware of many early cases, among them the testimony of Judge John W. Edmonds. His daughter, Laura Edmonds, was the first medium in modern Spiritualism reportedly with a gift for xenoglossy. Supposedly, foreign sitters could converse through her with spirits in their native language, even if it was a country as remote as Greece or Poland. Judge Edmonds wrote in a letter dated October 27, 1857:

"One evening when some 12 or 15 persons were in my parlor, Mr. E. D. Green, an artist of this city, was shown in, accompanied by a gentleman whom he introduced as Mr. Evangelides, of Greece. He spoke broken English, but Greek fluently. Ere long, a spirit spoke to him through Laura, in English, and said so many things to him that he identified him as a friend who had died at his house a few years before but of whom none of us had ever heard. Occasionally, through Laura, the spirit would speak a word or a sentence in Greek, until Mr. E. inquired if he could be understood if he spoke in Greek. The residue of the conversation, for more than an hour, was, on his part, entirely in Greek, and on hers sometimes in Greek and sometimes in English. At times Laura would not understand what was the idea conveyed, either by her or him. At other times she would understand him, though he spoke in Greek, and herself when uttering Greek words….

"One day my daughter and niece came into my library and began a conversation with me in Spanish, one speaking a part of a sentence and the other the residue. They were influenced, as I found, by a spirit of a person whom I had known when in Central America, and reference was made to many things which had occurred to me there, of which I knew they were as ignorant as they were of Spanish…. Laura has spoken to me in Indian, in the Chippewa and Menomonie tongues. I knew the language, because I had been two years in the Indian country."

According to the book Modern American Spiritualism, by Emma Hardinge Britten (1870), in addition to Laura Edmonds, the gift was demonstrated at an early period by Jenny Keyes, who sang in trance in Italian and Spanish, and by a Mrs. Shepherd, Mrs. Gilbert Sweet, a Miss Inman, a Mrs. Tucker, Susan Hoyt, A. D. Ruggles, and several others whose names she was not permitted to make public. They frequently spoke in Spanish, Danish, Italian, Hebrew, Greek, Malay, Chinese, and Indian.

In 1859, 19 people testified in the Banner of Light to 34 cases of persons who occasionally spoke or wrote in tongues. J. J. Mapes and Governor Nathaniel P. Tallmadge bore witness to numerous instances in which uneducated mediums conversed with strangers in the streets in various foreign languages.

A decade later, a Mr. Lowenthal testified in England before the Committee of the London Dialectical Society: "I am frequently made to speak the language of another nation. I believe it to be an Indian language. My mouth utters sounds that I do not understand and which have no meaning to me. I think it is the language of some North American tribe. It is a soliloquy, and I get an impression on the brain, an idea that it means so and so. A voice articulate but not audible conveys a meaning to me. I have been among the Indians a great deal, and it sounds to me like their language."

Archdeacon Thomas Colley wrote of having heard the "Mahedi," a materialized Egyptian in the mediumship of Francis W. Monck (who knew no English), speak in that language under the control of Monck's regular guide, "Samuel." This appears to be the only instance on record where a claimed materialized individual was used as an automatic instrument by another spirit.

The Italian medium Alfredo Pansini, who, with his brother Paolo, was the subject of reported bodily transportation (see teleportation ) by mediumistic power, spoke in a sort of hypnotic trance at the age of seven, in French, Latin, and Greek, and recited several cantos of the Divina Commedia. On one occasion, according to accounts, he spoke successively in twelve different voices. Frederik van Eeden recorded in the Proceedings of the Society of Psychical Research (vol. 17, 1901, pp. 59, 75) a Dutch conversation with a deceased friend through the medium Rosina Thompson:

"During a few minutes … I felt absolutely as if I were speaking to my friend myself. I spoke Dutch and got immediate and correct answers. The expression of satisfaction and gratification in face and gesture, when we seem to understand one another was too vivid to be acted. Quite unexpected Dutch words were pronounced, details were given which were far from my mind, some of which, as that about my father's uncle in a former sitting, I had never known, and found to be true only on inquiry afterwards."

Many German Orientalists testified that when the stigmatic subject Thérèse Neumann relived the Passion of Christ, she spoke in ancient Aramaic. The weakness of the case is that the phrases she used exist in print with translations in modern languages.

The New York Evening Post reported on November 10, 1930, the case of a four-year-old girl at Warsaw. Although the parents of Marie Skotnicki spoke only Polish, she developed the extraordinary habit of talking to herself in a foreign tongue that no one about her could understand but was later established to be pure Gaelic. It is important to add that her great-grandfather came from the Island of Lewis in the Scottish Hebrides.

In The Two Worlds (March 31, 1933), F. H. Wood wrote of the medium Rosemary and "Lady Nona," her ancient Egyptian control: "The fact is now established beyond disproof that over 140 Egyptian word-phrases which were in common use when the great Temple of Luxor in Egypt was built, have been spoken fluently through an English girl who normally knows nothing about the ancient tongue." Howard Hulme of Brighton, Sussex, the translator of the Egyptian phrases, after a preliminary test by mail which resulted in an unexpected but correct Egyptian answer, had also heard Lady Nona speak. After an amazing dialogue in the dead tongue of the pyramid builders, "Nona cleared up many points of pronunciation, gave her own earth name and explained the full meaning of some of her previous language tests."

In the early 1980s, Dr. William H. Kautz also announced a computer-based project at the Research Center for Applied Intuition (of which he is founder and director) involving the preparation of a translation and lexicon of the Rosemary Egyptian language text, to be studied in conjunction with all relevant publications relating to Egyptian language of the Eighteenth Dynasty, and a reconstitution of vocal Egyptian of the same period. The lexicon was to be compared with written Egyptian language and also with the reconstitution of the spoken form.

The medium Etta Wriedt reportedly spoke in many unknown tongues, and no stranger inflection could be imagined than the archaic Chinese that the voice of "Confucius" used in speaking through the medium George Valiantine to Neville Whymant, the renowned Oriental scholar. Whymant heard 14 languages spoken in 12 séances, and the strangest of all was the speech that came to him in fluent classical Chinese: "Greetings, O son of learning, and reader of strange books," and gave a complete new reading of poems and of the analects of Confucius, over which learned scholars have differed for centuries. Whymant's book Psychic Adventures in New York (1931) is among the most convincing twentieth-century records of xenoglossia.

Spirit Languages—The Primeval Tongue

The appearance of xenoglossy is not restricted to languages known to the people present when the words are spoken. On occasion, such vocalizations may turn out to be pure gibberish, or possibly attempts at a subconscious creation of a new language. Often they seem to be instances of glossolalia. An example of the latter was reported by William James in an article, "A Case of Psychic Automation …," published in the Proceedings of the Society of Psychical Research, vol. 12, 1896. Albert Le Baron (a pseudonym), an American journalist at a Spiritual-ist camp, spoke automatically in an unknown tongue. Fragments of the discourse were written down by himself, others were spoken into a phonograph in the presence of both James and Richard Hodgson. The following is a specimen: "Te ru-mete tau. Ilee lete leele luto scele. Impe re scele lee luto. Onko keere scete tere lute. Ombo te scele to bere te kure. Sinte lute sinte Kuru. Orumo imbo impe rute scelete. Singe, singe, singe eru. Imba, Imba, Imba."

The medium went on to supply the translation, "The old word! I love the old word of the heavens! The love of the heavens is emperor. The love of the darkness is slavery. The heavens are wise, the heavens are true, the heavens are sure. The love of the earth is past. The King now rules in the heavens."

Some spirit languages were allegedly extremely condensed. Psychical researcher Frank Podmore, for instance, reported that the phrase "Ki-e-lou-cou-ze-ta" required no less than 45 words to furnish an adequate translation in English. This relative difference in the number of words spoken and translation is again typical of glossolalia.

A Primeval Language?

The primeval language and the claimed "Martian" languages (see Hélène Smith ) present the most interesting problems. The primeval or nature language has been described as the inner language of the soul, the universal tongue of men before the Fall, of which Hebrew is a corrupted form. In origin it is the language of the angels, of which the seer Emanuel Swedenborg writes in his book The True Christian Religion as follows:

"There is a universal language, proper to all angels and spirits, which has nothing in common with any language spoken in the world. Every man, after death, uses this language, for it is implanted in every one from creation; and therefore throughout the whole spiritual world all can understand one another. I have frequently heard this language and, having compared it with languages in the world, have found that it has not the slightest resemblance to any of them; it differs from them in this fundamental respect, that every letter of every word has a particular meaning."

In his book Heaven and Hell, Swedenborg further states: "Writing in the inmost heaven consists of various inflected and circumflected forms and the inflections and circumflections are according to the form of heaven. By these the angels express the arcana of their wisdom, many of which cannot be uttered by words; and, what is wonderful, the angels are skilled in such writing without being taught, for it is implanted in them like their speech … and therefore this writing is heavenly writing, which is not taught, but inherent, because all extensions of the thoughts and affections of the angels, and thus all communication of their intelligence and wisdom, proceeds according to the form of heaven, and hence their writing also flows into that form. I have been told that the most ancient people on this earth wrote in the same manner before the invention of letters, and that it was transferred into the letters of the Hebrew language which in ancient times were all inflected. Not one of them had the square form in use at this day; and hence it is that the very dots, iotas and minutest parts of the word contain heavenly arcana and things Divine."

The first record of the existence of a primeval language seems to be in the experiments of Elizabethan magician John Dee (1527-1608). The next, apart from Swedenborg's insights, was in the visions of the Seeress of Prevorst (Frederica Hauffe ), which were confirmed by a somnambule patient of Heinrich Werner's a few years later and cited in Werner's book Die Schutzgeister, oder Merkwürdige Blicke zweier Seherinnen in die Geisterwelt (Stuttgart, 1839).

In Dee's notes, the invocation of the spirits was given in the "primeval language." It was accompanied by a word-for-word translation. The properties of this ancient tongue, claimed to be that which Adam employed and the angels speak, are singular, according to Dee: "Every letter signifieth the member of the substance whereof is speaketh: every word signifieth the quiddity of the substance … signifying substantially the thing that is spoken of in the centre of his Creator, whereby even as the mind of man moveth at an ordered speech, and is easily persuaded in things that are true, so are the creatures of God stirred up in themselves, when they hear the words wherewithal they were nursed and brought forth … the creatures of God understand you not. You are not of their Cities: you are become enemies, because you are separated from Him that governeth the City, by ignorance…. Men in his Creation, being made innocent was also authorised and made partaker of the Power and Spirit of God, whereby he did know all things under his Creation, and spoke of them properly, naming them as they were."

In plain language, this apparently means that the original speech bore an organic relation to the outer world, that each name expressed the properties of the thing spoken of, and that the utterances of that name had a compelling power over that creature. This has analogues in the mystical traditions of the Hebrew shemhamphorash, the secret name of God, and the mystical traditions connected with Hindu mantras.

In his book The Seeress of Prevorst (1845), Justinus Kerner writes:

"In her sleep-walking state, Mrs. H. frequently spoke in a language unknown to us, which seemed to bear some resemblance to the Eastern tongues. She said that this language was the one which Jacob spoke, and that it was natural to her and to all men. It was very sonorous, and as she was perfectly consistent in her use of it, those who were much about her gradually grew to understand it. She said, by it only could she fully express her innermost feelings; and that, when she had to express these in German, she was obliged first to translate them from this language. It was not from her head, but from her epigastric region that it proceeded. She knew nothing of it when she was awake. The names of things in this language, she told us, expressed their properties and quality. Philologists discovered in it a resemblance to the Coptic Arabic and Hebrew: for example, the word 'Elschaddai,' which she often used for God, signifies, in Hebrew, the self-sufficient, or all-powerful. The word 'dalmachan' appears to be Arabic, and 'Bianachli' signifies in Hebrew: I am sighing, or in sighs.

"Here follow a few of the words of this inner language, and their interpretations: 'Handacadi,' physician: 'alentana,' lady; 'chlann,' glass; 'schmado,' moon; 'nohin,' no; 'mochiane,' nightingale; 'bianna fina,' many coloured flowers; 'moy', how; 'toi,' what; 'optini poga,' thou must sleep; 'mo li arato,' I rest, etc.

"The written characters of this language were always connected with numbers. She said that words with numbers had a much deeper and more comprehensive signification than without. She often said, in her sleep-walking state, that the ghosts spoke this language; for although spirits could read the thoughts, the soul, to which this language belonged, took it with it when it went above; because the soul formed an ethereal body for the spirit."

Further on Kerner adds:

"With respect to the inner language, the Seherin [Seeress] said, that one word of it frequently expressed more than whole lines of ordinary language; and that, after death, in one single symbol or character of it, man would read his whole life. It is constantly observed that persons in a sleep-walking state, and those who are deep in the inner-life, find it impossible to express what they feel in ordinary language. Another somnambule used often to say to me, when she could not express herself 'Can no one speak to me in the language of nature?'

"The Seherin observed by Mayers said, that to man, in the magnetic state, all nature was disclosed, spiritual and material; but that there were certain things which could not be well expressed in words, and thus arose apparent inconsistencies and errors. In the archives of animal magnetism, an example is given of this peculiar speech; the resemblance of which to the eastern languages doubtless arises from its being a remnant of the early language of mankind. Thus, sleep-walkers cannot easily recall the names of persons and things, and they cast away all conventionalities of speech. Mayers' Seherin says, that as the eyes and ears of man are deteriorated by the fall, so he has lost in a great degree the language of his sensations; but it still exists in us, and would be found, more or less, if sought for. Every sensation or perception has its proper figure or sign and this we can no longer express.

"In order to describe these perceptions, Mrs. H. constructed figures which she called her 'sun sphere,' her 'life sphere' and so forth.

"Many instances proved how perfect her memory for this inner language was. On bringing her the lithograph of what she had written a year before, she objected that there was a dot too much over one of the signs; and on referring to the copy which I had by me, I found she was right. She had no copy herself."

Heinrich Werner in his book Die Schutzgeister oder Merkwürdige Blicke Zweier Seherinen in die Geisterwelt (1839), gave a dissertation on the inner language, traces of which he found in the babbling of children, and stated that in rare states of exaltation the inner spirit can recover the lost vocabulary.

With the advent of modern Spiritualism, the idea of the primeval tongue faded out. Nor did spirit languages hold out for long. Camilla Crosland was one of the last of its recorders in Britain. In her book Light in the Valley (1857) she writes:

"Three years ago a young lady, a medium whom I shall designate The Rose was taught by spirits, directly communicating with her, three spirit languages; that is to say, she was taught the meaning of certain characters and inflections, which are quite distinct, so far as I have been able to ascertain, from any known languages ancient or modern…. Introduced last au tumn to another medium, a young lady whom we have been instructed to call Comfort, The Rose discovered that her new acquaintance wrote by spirit power the first-taught of these mystic languages…. Subsequently five other mediums, all personally known to me, have developed as writers of the first spirit language; and one of them, an author of repute and M.A. of the University of Oxford, has also on two or three occasions written in the second of the spirit languages, the characters of which seem mainly composed of dots."

The universal language of Swedenborg, according to Cros-land, developed dialects. Unfortunately the sample of spirit writing in Light in the Valley is the plainest scribble and no evidence whatever was introduced to show how the identity, if any, was established among the strange ornaments of spiral and shell forms, with dots and scroll-like ciphers adorning the spirit drawing illustrations.

Writing in Tongues

Writing xenoglossic script is a comparatively frequent phenomenon. According to Richard Hodgson, "the chief difficulty, apparently, in getting another language written by the hand is that strange words tend to be written phonetically unless they are thought out slowly letter by letter. The medium William Eglinton, caught in fraudulent activity on several occasions, produced messages in a séance with the statesman Gladstone in Spanish, French, and Greek in direct writing. He did not know Spanish or Greek. An apparition at a séance held by Elizabeth d'Esperance, calling herself "Nepenthes," wrote in classic Greek in Professor L.'s notebook, "I am Nepenthes, thy friend. When thy soul is oppressed by overmuch pain, call on me, Nepenthes, and I will speedily come to assuage thy trouble."

According to Charles Richet, Mrs. X. (Laura Finch), a young woman of thirty, "wrote long sentences in Greek, with some errors, that clearly show mental vision of one or more Greek books. After much research … I was able to discover the book from which Mrs. X. had drawn most of the long Greek sentences that she had written in my presence. The book is not to be found in Paris except in the National Library—the Greco-French and Franco-Greek dictionary by Byzantios and Coromelas. As it is a dictionary of modern Greek, it is not in use in any school."

Richet further stated that Mrs. X. wrote some twenty lines of Greek with about 8 percent of small errors, that she was looking into space as if she were copying from the text of a language unknown to her of which she saw the characters without knowing their meaning, and that Mrs. X. knew no Greek at all and could not understand the sentences that appeared before her mental vision.

Several other examples of this phenomenon are to be found in Florizel von Reuter's books, Psychic Experiences of a Musician (1928) and The Consoling Angel (1930). The Chinese cross-correspondences of Mina Crandon (known as "Margery" in the literature) furnish especially striking instances.

Recent Research

The emergence of the charismatic movement in the 1970s led to a revival of claims that the glossolalia commonly experienced in Pentecostal services was in fact xenoglossy. To bolster this argument anecdotal accounts of xenoglossy in church services and on the mission field were reprinted. However, rather thorough research largely laid these claims to rest.

The most impressive reported incidents of xenoglossy were collected in Unlearned Language: New Studies in Xenoglossy, by psychical researcher Ian Stevenson, more known for his research on cases of reincarnation. Additionally, through the 1970s and into the 1980s, he supposedly recorded some cases of speaking an unlearned language that he had witnessed. He also noted that the publication of his first book on the subject brought numerous reports that, while interesting, were poorly documented.