Imaging Inscape: The Human Soul (1913)
In The Human Soul: Its Movements, Its Lights, and the Iconography of the Fluidic Invisible, originally published in French in 1896, Dr. Hippolyte Baraduc (1850–1909) postulates the existence of “the fluidic invisible” — a “vital cosmic force”, which he calls Odic liquid, that extends across the universe and “saturates the organism of living beings and constitutes our fluidic body”. Instead of all things being composed of one elementary substance, as in philosophical accounts of the monad, in this cosmic vision, we all live in a sea that we cannot see, which Baraduc names Somod.
And yet, he argues, it is possible to image the fluidic invisible with instruments more precise than the human eye — capturing the radiation of thoughts, feelings, and other emissions of soulscape. As Anthony Enns discusses in an essay on visualizing thoughts, Baraduc experimented with magnetometers and electrographs before deciding that photography was the best technology for “recording invisible forces emanating from the nervous system”. Unlike most photographers, the paranormal researcher did not always use a lens, preferring, instead, to have his subjects directly transmit their soul’s vibrations onto a chemical plate, which was sometimes placed against a person’s forehead to reduce latency. So as to distinguish this technology from photography, which uses solar light, Baraduc called his process iconography:
To harness this aqueous force requires replacing “the exterior luminous ray of the here-below” with “the electric breeze, projecting the emanated vibration of our soul”. Only then will the fluidic invisible allow itself to be magnetised — “one must, in a word, know how to induct the psycho-odo-fluidic current”.
And indeed, Baraduc knew how to induct something: interspersed in the original French text of 1896, and collected at the end of the English translation above, we find reproductions of these iconographic plates. Something strange happens as Baraduc’s book progresses (as if all this was not yet strange enough). The prose he uses to describe his iconographs glows with an energy stylistically akin to the very vitality that he claimed to capture: “Red obscurity. State of soul magnetising; desire-demand, prayer to the psychic universal spirit of the world. The prayer has elliptically inflected a very beautiful net of fine psychic lamellas; subtle cosmic pneuma, universal web of light, of remarkable purity.”
Unfortunately — and rather beautifully — Baraduc’s printed plates are less remarkably pure, but almost remarkable for their impurity. The lead image shows an underexposed figure surrounded by a web-like aura, which has sprouted something resembling a wing. It is captioned: “the Od attracted by the state of soul of a child lamenting over a recently killed pheasant”. Other plates look like shimmering refractions of light on mica or quartz, which are explained as the Od “individualising itself to repair the deficient sensitive soul” and “Life-animules”. In one image, Baraduc used a Nadar photograph, which he subsequently overlaid with “psychicon” — Baraduc’s thoughts made visible. Some plates evoke a night sky, showered with comets (“Large sized pearls of voluntary psychob”) and another contains a handprint in the negative, with caterpillar-like bristles frizzing outward from all fingers (what he elsewhere calls “soul germ”). For the scholar Jed Rasula, Baraduc’s occultism was merely an intensification of that encrypted presence of other life that we feel when viewing any media form. “Every transaction with a text, a musical score, a painting, or a sculpture, is a personal seance.” Baraduc was attempting to perform this “seance” in real time, accessing those aspects of other people — their internal spiritual lives — that we can only normally experience through translation.
If, in his attempt to access the “inner” world, Baraduc sounds rather “out there”, you would not be the first to try and discredit his claims. As Peter Geimer chronicles, the polymath Adrien Guébhard led a “ten-year crusade against Baraduc’s ‘false flames’”. Yet Baraduc was a respected physician, working on the edges of nineteenth-century medical and psychological research. Georges Didi-Huberman recounts, in Invention of Hysteria, that, despite his “delirium”, Baraduc “was, nonetheless, a very serious ‘specialist’”, researching in league with Jean-Martin Charcot and other neurologists associated with the Salpêtrière hospital and its violent legacy. No matter how disproven, Baraduc’s work, writes Didi-Huberman, “was far from marginal to the knowledge or practice of photography, or to the neuropathology of the time. Scientific teratology is effective in science’s own domain.”
While The Human Soul begins in the register of a scientist researching fringe and esoteric phenomena, it ends as a religious treatise. Nested in double negatives, we find a material vision of the Godhead. “Atheists, blasphemers, sceptics, madmen, believers and saints, we are not able not to be God, who only is.” Immersed in a fluidic invisible, of which we are both the container and contained, we float in the amniotic liquid of divinity.
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Photograph of the Od attracted by the state of soul of a child lamenting over a recently killed pheasant.
Life-animules, fragments of Od in movement. This iconography was spontaneously produced whilst wishing to inverse a plate for the most part positive, on which was an image representing a heart. The sign of love and of charity is drawing the electro-vital particles. (With neither electricity nor apparatus.)
Somod, skeleton, fluidic frame of the nutritive soul, composed of lines and columns of subtile force as well as thousands of cellular vital souls retained in a thread of odic shower.
Iconography of a hand obtained by bringing the hand near the sensitive side of a plate fastened to the pole of a Wimhurst machine. One can remark the formation of electro-vital particles coming from an odic cloud showing the thumb and the fingers as well as small life-animules, white points.
Electro-vital particles incorporated animistic specks, globularised by electro-static tension.
Electro-vital particles drawn from an artificial forehead (pad of chamois leather) impressed by the hand. In the neighbourhood of a psychodic centre, one of the particles is breaking loose.
The signature of the spiritual soul has been produced on a plate, by the glass side, with the north pole of a magnet, with this formula: “prayer to the superior, command to the inferior to obtain the graphy, the sign of my spiritual soul”. The following morning at 7 o'clock I develop and find, corresponding to the centre of the magnet surrounded by an atmosphere of odic cloud, a very clear circumference of animo-fluidic force circumscribing a point, a very regular ring, formed by the subtilised gelatinous substance. From this pearl like form appeared 4 luminous rays going to each of the cardinal points. This sign was produced by my overheated will. Thus the prayer acted directly on the plate by a spark of my spirit, which has given the sign of the spiritual soul, the four rayed pearl. The spiritual soul elevated by prayer is not a ring, like the soul intelligence germ, it is a circle in communication with the four winds of the spirit.
This icone was obtained by Mme Darget in her cellar, with red light, by the projection of her hand: it is the signature of the odic somod body, projected in conical form, consequently modulated, with the intention of reproducing the features of a person, but without success.
This iconography, produced following the method of psychic projection, shows a condensation of vital fluid surrounded by subtilised black zones, that is to say, the silver salts of which have disappeared whilst they are reduced in the oval tending to produce a form.
This iconography was obtained by Dr. Baraduc after a visit to the Church of Sacré-Cœur. He was under the impression of the teaching of Christ preaching the forgiveness of injures.
Psychicone produced by Mr. Hasdeu of Bucharest. This image shows the possibility of the creative spirit acting on a plate without the help of the hand. On the upper part a burst of odic projection is seen, in the centre a large spot, the profile of which is turned towards the left represents the features of Mr. Hasdeu's brother. The icone is due to the spirit of Mr. Hasdeu, who has modulated the image of his brother in his brain and then projected it over the lamp. Here is a psychicone without the intervention of the hand, by the single tension of the creative spirit.
The two icones of this light are emanations of the human soul Somod. It is the fluidic expiration. I am able to confirm this fact all the more as these plates were obtained while investigating the form of expansion repelling the biometric needle.
Major Darget, placing his fingers together, projected his will on a sensitive plate, saying “In the interest of science, I want this plate to receive an impression. Numerous pearls are seen on it, produced by the exterioration of the will. (Without apparatus and electricity, in red light, in Major Darget's cellar.)
Photog. of Nadar in red light, his form appears very clearly in electric light on ground glass. — Large sized pearls of voluntary psychob, sparkling pearled of the will with well-marked circle of peripheric Od.
Explanation XXVII. — Iconography produced in April 1894 in the dark, both hands stretched towards the plate without photographic apparatus. Animistic state very thoughtful. The doctor wished to know if prayer is a force having a special signature. He obtained a small flange of thin pearls with a single ray; the pearl is the act of exterioration of the spirit which has left its covering to reascend to its psychical source.
Luminous spectre of the north pole magnet, obtained by the red electric photographic lamp, surrounded by fine pearls of psychecstasis.
Pure electography of the hand by Iodko's method. The hand of an over-electrified person, placed on a plate gives a very remarkable impression of the electrified cutaneous surface. One can here easily note the difference between electrography and iconography, where the vital waves are produced by themselves and are graphed by themselves without electricity.
Black points. Nocturnal photography of black points, small entities of subtilising force (soul germ) without apparatus, night, plate near the head.
Photograph taken by me in July 1895, in the country. The gamekeeper Crepet is giving to 300 young partridges some ant eggs, which he is taking from a sack. The small birds are covered over by he entire black part of the negative, whilst a quantity of small life animules are freeing themselves from the eggs or from the ants. Is it the emanation of the gamekeeper, or that of the partridges? I took two photos whilst the gamekeeper was throwing handfuls of dust and of eggs. Both are identical. I took two other photos when he was giving them cooked chicken eggs mixed with bread crumbs. In these there is nothing special, the photograph is sharp. It may be concluded from this, that the signature of the life-animules and the black volative odic shower come from he ants giving upt their vitality.
Graphy of the cosmic Od. The experiment was undertaken to show the possibility of the passage of the cosmic Od, of the vital force of the world, across the glass.
Vital Force, cosmic od, obtained by the pole of a magnet directed northwards, on a photographic plate with neither apparatus nor electricity. Glass side placed against the rectangular extremity of the magnet. Length of experiment, 12 night hours, without red light. The experiment is very important, as it was done by itself, instinctively, apart from man.
Photograph taken at 1 1 a. m., in dull light, an exposure of 15 minutes, at a distance of 5 feet, with apparatus, without electricity. I desired (once more to obtain the vital waves of the group of two very sympathetic and very nervous children. I took them in the middle of their play and stopped them suddenly. A veil is produced which hides them and covers the plate. They underwent a sort of thrill, of appeal modifying their peripheric atmosphere, intensely enough to affect the plate at 5 feet, a distance at which these phenomena were produced invisible to the human eve. One also observes a luminous texture, like a network with stitches and knots. The fluid is condensed, specialised, individualised into rounded peas. The form seems to represent the equilibrium and the fusion of two fluidic forms, opposed as regards direction and abruptly stopped at the moment of the animistic contraction of the two children making only a single soul during a certain time.
This iconography was obtained in 1894, in experiments on the hereafter, without apparatus, with red light. State of soul: restless desire to have phenomena of the hereafter. One observes: The electric signature of positive fluid. Above, a wave or veil of light, permitting numerous forms to be seen. Below, masses of Od in dappled clouds, in luminous peas, taking angular aspects, appearances, vague forms.
This iconography obtained without light, electricity or photographic apparatus, is due to the right hand of Dr. M. Adam. In the researches which he kindly undertook for me relating to these so troubling questions, he was taken by a great movement of mental sadness at the moment when this vortex was produced.
Movement of cosmic vital force mod- ulated in a psychodic aerolith by the human will with an elevated intention. It is not the human Somod which projects an image made with its own fluidic body, as in the production of a psychicone by thought; it is a thought which acts on the Universal Psychod, and models it in a form of light and of Intelligence.
Large anses of Psychod: tissue of light and of intelligence, incurved by the appeal to the spirit of intelligence.
This iconography was obtained after a prayer to the spirit of intelligence and of light to reveal itself by a form. A shower of lights and of intelligences. Luminous olives with trails and bent stem. Projected rays. These falls of lights, intelligences, understandings, according to the degree of their virtue will constitute the spirits of varied hierarchy and the beings which will reach carnal incorporation.
The plate is covered with badger grease on the underneath face: It is placed on a table with glass legs. Appeal to the invisible: “that something may come.“Positive plate of the hereafter. The icone represents on the right side, the image, the shadow of M.D. concierge, dead from an open abscess in the peritoneum. I was able to have a sketched portrait of M.D. and verify de visu, that my memory had served me well. This form is the shadow, the spectre of M.D. magnetised by me.
This iconography of the light life of the Word was obtained in the dark, with red light, by the electro-negative method, called appeal, by N.P. and myself, our three hands joined in front of the plate without photographic instruments. Demand, desire of having a sign of our animistic trinity, re-united by a single feeling of pure affection. On developing, three whirlwinds of fine vitalo-psychic force, of universal psychod being amalgamated, owing to the intermediary whirlwind causing a node. The whole forms a complete trinity, our unity united and re-made: such is the phenomenon comprehensible by a few human spirits, others too absorbed in the first material plane.
Photography with neither light nor electricity, of N. and P. at 5 feet from the lense in red dimness. After the preparations, electric light which was finally turned off. Pose 10 minutes. State of soul: prayer, meditation, appeal to the universal spirit. Result: on the left side of the group, descent of fine tongues in the form of feathers. It is a projection of horizontal tongues or from top to bottom. The importance of this plate is capital, it is the experimental proof of the reply of the psychestasis, ascending towards the Spirit; it is the universal shower, the illumination of the proven prayer, the descent of the Spirit.
Nov 17, 2021
