First, it turns out that Helen was not familiar with the Purgatorio: she read the Cantos only in May 1908, after Piddington had informed her of the multiple allusions. Second – why that particular section of the gigantic Divina Commedia? Why the allusions to number seven?
I see.
Hold on - let’s continue with the following scripts, as we are entering in the paroxysm of this case.
On 8 May Mrs. Piper in America, during the waking-stage that followed her trance, said “Ye are Seven. I said Clock! Tick, tick, tick.” Do you remember? “We are seven” is one of the phrases Piddington mentioned in his posthumous letter, and “tick, tick, tick” may well allude to the tic that Piddington twice speaks of.
On 11 May 1908, six thousand kilometres away, Helen Verrall wrote a script including references to a) Jacob's ladder, b) a spinning top with many colours that blend into one, c) the seven-branched candlestick and the seven colours of the rainbow, and the words “many mystic sevens... we are seven.” The script is signed “F. W. H. Myers”.
On 12 May 1908 Mrs. Piper gave a sitting at which Dorr, the American investigator, asked her to explain some of the words she had spoken on 8 May, including “We are seven”. She wrote “We were seven in the distance as a matter of fact” and, after questions on other subjects, “Seven of us, 7, seven”.
On 11 June Mrs. Frith wrote a poem including the following lines:
“Pisgah is scaled the fair and dewy lawn Invites my footsteps till the mystic seven Lights up the golden candlestick of dawn."
On 23 July 1908 Mrs. Holland, then at sea, wrote:
“There should be at least three in accord and if possible seven.”
She proceeds to describe symbolically the seven who should be in accord, specifying six of the actual seven correctly, but leaving out Piddington and apparently including a minor automatist, Mrs.
Forbes, who was not in fact concerned.
On 24 July 1908 ‘Myers’, purporting to speak through Mrs. Home, said
“Seven times seven and seventy-seven send the burden of my words to others”.
The drama draws towards conclusion in November 1908. On the 19th Alice Johnson told Piddington that she herself had noticed a sevens cross-correspondence with Dante allusions in the scripts of Mrs. Verrall, Helen Verrall, Mrs. Holland, Mrs. Piper, Mrs. Frith and Mrs. Home. On the 27th, after he and she had examined the case more thoroughly, he told her that the subject of his posthumous letter was variations on the theme of Seven. She then got out the sealed envelope from the locked drawer where she had kept it. They examined it, found the seals intact and opened it. Until that day she had had no inkling what the contents might be.
On 27 January 1909 Mrs. Verrall, who did not even know that such an envelope existed, wrote a script ending with the following passage:
“And ask what has been the success of Piddington's last experiment? Has he found the bits of his famous sentence scattered among you all? And does he think that is accident, or started by one of you? But even if the source is human, who carries the thoughts to the receivers? Ask him that. F.W.H.M.”
Bingo.
Aye – bingo. Do you understand why I said that this would have been a tough day?
Yes, I do. Very complicated things. But I have to admit that the story is astounding.
Astounding it is indeed, but believe me – it’s just one in literally dozens of similar examples amid the Myers cross-correspondences. The Sevens cum Dante looks intricate, but compared with other cases is really not. Another well-known and not too complicated example is the Hope, Star and Browning Case, where the words Star and Hope are repeatedly given, together with quotations from the poet Browning which his friends said were characteristic of Myers. These were given by both Mrs. and Miss Verrall, but they were only pulled together when Myers, communicating through Mrs Piper in America, indicated that he had completed a cross correspondence and gives the words Browning, Hope and Star as the clues.
The case started on 16 January 1907, when Mr. Piddington asked Myers (through Mrs. Piper) if in future he could indicate that a cross correspondence was being attempted by drawing, say a circle with a triangle inside. Naturally, he did not mention this request to the other automatists.
On 23 January Mrs Verrall wrote in her script:
“... an anagram would be better. Tell him that - rats, stars, tars and so on ... or again tears, stare.”
This was followed by another anagram which Mrs Verrall afterwards remembered had also been devised during their lives by Myers, her husband and Sir Richard Jebb. Some time later, when Piddington was going through Richard Hodgson's papers - Hodgson died in 1905 - he found that Hodgson and Myers had been exchanging anagrams for years and that both the star anagram and the other quoted were among the papers.
On 28 January Mrs Verrall's 'Myers' set about elaborating the Star idea (Aster in Latin). He wrote:
“Teras [an anagram for Aster, occasionally used in Greek for a constellation and also meaning a wonder or a sign]. The world's wonder. And all a wonder and a wild desire.
The very wings of her. A WINGED DESIRE. Hupopteros eros [Greek = winged love].
Then there is Blake. And mocked my loss of liberty. But it is all the same thing - the winged desire. Eros potheinos [Greek = love, the much desired] the hope that leaves the earth for the sky. That is what I want. On earth the broken sounds - threads - in the sky the perfect arc. The C major of this life. But your recollection is at fault.”
After this was drawn:
and the script concluded:
“ADB is the part that completes the arc.”
Helen Verrall had not seen these scripts of her mother's but on February 3rd she wrote:
“... where the song birds pipe their tune in the early morning”, and followed this by
“Therapeutikos ek exoticon”' (a healer from aliens)
which was a veiled hint of what was to come later. Next came a monogram, the drawing of a star and a crescent moon and the words:
“A monogram, the crescent moon, remember that and the star.”
Finally she drew a bird.
Can you please tell me what you picked up so far?
Umm… Let me think. First, the incredible drawing from Mrs Verrall: a circle with a triangle inside, exactly as Piddington had suggested. And then variations on the theme of star – anagrams and the drawings and specific references by Helen Verrall. “Winged love”, “winged desire”, “song birds” and the drawing of a bird. One only explicit reference to hope, though.
Excellent! And here’s your “hope”: on 11 February Mrs Piper's 'Myers' asked Piddington if Mrs.
Verrall had received the word Evangelical. He answered that he did not know, and ‘Myers’ went on:
“I referred also to Browning again. I referred to Hope and Browning ... I also said Star.”
Later on he said that the word Evangelical was wrong. He had meant to say Evelyn Hope (the title of a poem by Browning) but in transmission the words had been distorted into Evangelical.
Next came a nice touch. Miss Verrall had so far done comparatively little automatic writing and to stimulate and encourage her she was told that she had taken part in a cross correspondence which included the words Planet Mars, Virtue and Keats (a deliberate disguise of the real theme of the cross-correspondence). On 17 February , ‘Myers’ wrote through her:
“That was the sign. She will understand when she sees it ... No arts avail ... and a star above it all rats everywhere in Hamelin town.”