Premonition

An Encyclopaedia of Occultism (1920)

An impressional warning of a future event. Premonitions may range from vague feelings of disquiet, suggestive of impending disaster, to actual hallucinations, whether visual or auditory. Dreams are frequent vehicles of premonitions, either direct or symbolical, and there are countless instances of veridical dreams. In such cases it is hard to say whether the warning may have come from an external source, as spiritualists aver, or whether the portended catastrophe may have resulted, in part, at least, from auto-suggestion. The latter is plainly the explanation of another form of premonition-i.e., the predictions made by patients in the magnetic or mediumistic trance with regard to their maladies. The magnetic subject who prophesied that his malady would reach a crisis on a certain date several weeks ahead, probably himself attended subconsciously to the fulfilling of his prophecy. Might not the same thing happen in " veridical" dreams and hallucinations? We know that a subject obeying a post-hypnotic suggestion will weave his action quite naturally into the surrounding circumstances, though the very moment of its performance may have been fixed months before. That the dreamer and hallucinated subject also might suggest and fulfil their premonitions, either directly or by telepathic communication of the suggestion to another agent, does not seem very far-fetched or improbable. Then there is, of course, coincidence. It is impossible but that a certain proportion of verified premonitions should be the result of coincidence. Possibly, also, such impressions, whether they remain vague forebodings or are embodied in dreams or otherwise, must at times be subconscious inferences drawn from an actual, if obscure, perception of existing facts. As such, indeed, they are not to be lightly treated. Yet very frequently premonitions prove to be entirely groundless, even the most impressive ones, where the warning is emphasized by a ghostly visitant.