Do Animals Have Occult Faculties?
Hartmann, M.D.[1]
Translation from the German by Robert Hütwohl
Note by the Translator: Animals possess reason, intelligence, and even “occult” faculties, often surpassing humans in abilities like swimming, flying, and sensing. Instinct, a soul-power, guides many animal actions, and their inner life, less clouded by thought, can enhance their “occult” abilities. Animals demonstrate clairvoyance, hypnotism, and other abilities, challenging the notion of their irrationality.
Fresh blood attracts elemental beings, as evidenced by reports of monstrous creatures appearing around slaughterhouses. Animals, like humans, possess spirits and can think, work telepathically, and even project their astral bodies after death. Instances of animal telepathy, such as a dog appearing to its owner in a different city, and animals sensing death, like swallows avoiding a house before a death, are cited as evidence.
The universe is permeated by a spirit that manifests in all things, connecting all beings and driving their thoughts and actions. This unity leads to true morality and unselfishness, as seen in both humans and animals.
NOT long ago there was much debate in learned circles as to whether animals had souls, whether they acted by instinct or deliberation, whether they had reason and intelligence at all, etc., and even today animals in general are often regarded as “irrational creatures” and it is believed that these living beings are no longer owed consideration any more than as a lifeless and unfeeling piece of wood to be flayed or abused at will.
That animals possess reason and shrewdness, and also act with understanding and deliberation, requires no scholarly proof; any reasonable person can convince himself of this; for how often do we see that a dog is wiser than its master, a horse wiser than the driver who beats it, the deer more cunning than the hunter who pursues it! In India elephants are used as laborers, and show shrewdness and intelligence. Police sleuth dogs seem to know exactly what is expected of them, and even pigs can be trained in all sorts of arts. One case is known of a beaver stocking up on frogs for the winter. He couldn’t keep dead frogs, as they would have rotted, and healthy living ones would have skipped away; so he broke the backbone of his frogs and his daily fresh food was taken care of.
Volumes could be filled with tales of facts proving the intelligence of animals. A pair of storks inhabited a nest. During the male’s absence, the female received a visit from another stork. When the lawful husband returned he must have noticed what had happened; for he called together a gathering of storks from the neighborhood. These seemed to engage in a lively debate, at the end of which they killed the unfaithful stork with their beaks and threw her out of the nest.
The cat measures the distance before jumping on the mouse, the spider patiently waits for the best moment to pounce on its prey; the bird chooses whatever place it thinks safest for building its nest, and some inconspicuous little insects seem almost the cleverest of all animals. Things that man can only accomplish with external means, the animal accomplishes with its own strength and even surpasses man in doing so. The fish surpasses him in the art of swimming, the bird in flying, dogs in sensing, the spider in spinning, the eagle by distant viewing, the deer in running, the owl and bat in seeing in the dark, the elephant in strength, the monkey in climbing; in short, a multitude of animal actions show a high degree of deliberation, skill, artistry, and intelligence.
But if animals are guided in many of their actions only by instinct, so it is with man; when walking and standing, eating and drinking and in all involuntary movements. A man who had to calculate exactly where to put his foot at every step would only make slow progress; the pianist need not think about which string to strike; the soul in his finger finds the right keys by itself. What is called “instinct” is a soul-power; an activity which has its origin in the “soul,” the “I,” the so-called “unconscious.”
All inner soul impulses, instinctive or spiritual perceptions, premonitions, psychological, “occult” and magical powers and their effects emerge from this “soul consciousness” or inner emotional life. They are not necessarily guided by the mind; they can occur without one intending or wanting to. Paracelsus says that even the greatest magician could not provide any information about how and in what way he brings about his magical effects. Precisely because these mental activities are independent of brain activity and are not subject to its disturbing influences, they also appear in animals who do not think about them. Love and hate exert their effects without the need for intellectual speculation; and because the animal thinks and speculates less, its inner life is often more active than that of a human being and it can surpass them in “occult” abilities.
“Hypnotism” was used practically by animals long before our professors knew anything about it. It is well known that snakes can charm small birds with their eyes, so that they leap into their jaws, or are paralyzed due to terror.
Dogs, horses, birds and other animals surpass man in “clairvoyance”; for example, they perceive things in the astral which are invisible to the normal human being. Literature abounds with such reports. When the funeral procession of the murdered king of Portugal arrived at the spot where the assassination took place, the horses reared and could not be moved forward. In the “Theosophist” of January 1909[2] there is an interesting account of a person who was clairvoyant himself and was therefore able to convince himself of what his horse saw clairvoyantly. From this report, which is also instructive in other respects, we learn the following:
[Heavily paraphrased by Dr. Hartmann.] “I rode down a hill in a calm mood; on my right was a vineyard, and on my left a butchery. It was near sunset and a cow was being herded into the slaughterhouse. Terrified, she raced back and forth, forward and backward, her flesh twitching under the cruel lashes she received from her pursuers. Finally she lunged at a butcher who had purposely positioned himself at the entrance and dodged her thrust. She was trapped; a shot, a groan and all was still. I wanted to continue on my way; but suddenly my horse stopped, trembled, and sidestepped. I tried to take it further, but it was paralyzed with terror. I looked after the slaughter and saw the dead cow hanging; a man was carrying a bucket of blood. Then it seemed to me as if the air was full of a heaving mass of an indefinite something. I looked more closely and now realized that the air and the whole surroundings were filled with ugly creatures of indescribable disgust. Great serpentine beings with long proboscises, beasts that seemed to be made of some jelly-like substance, with long sucking organs hanging down on the blood they greedily suckled; Thousands of small worms with suckers like polyps, a mass of horrid ugliness, crowded around the man with the bucket. Some seemed to fight with others for possession of the bucket, others held their hideous bodies high in the air. Suddenly one of those hideous creatures leapt after me; my horse reared; I couldn’t hold it anymore; it galloped away with me. I looked back and saw a multitude of these monsters pursuing me; my horse raced on; it had evidently seen the same atrocities.”
Hundreds of similar reports could be attached here, but the knower has no need of them and they are of no value to the “know-it-all.” That fresh blood attracts such elementals is a fact known to every occultist. It is well known that an executioner in Paris gave up his craft because, unfortunately, he was clairvoyant and he was always filled with unbearable horror at the elemental beings that pounced on the freshly spilled blood of the decapitated man at the executions. Evidence that there are ghostly apparitions in “haunted houses” is that they are seen by animals as well as by humans.
The animal has no organization entirely different from that of man. In relation to his animal organism, man is also only an animal, composed of different animal species, as the crown of the animal kingdom. He has the same needs as the animal, the same sufferings and joys; the same sensations and is subject to the same diseases. Even with his learned morality, his outward virtues and vices, things are not far off. He loves what is pleasant to him, hates what is unpleasant, seeks to benefit his friends and harm his enemies. The dog surpasses him in fidelity, the goat in temperance, the ant in perseverance, the bee in industry, etc.; only he surpasses all in useless cruelty.
Since animals can think, they must also have spirit. They are just as “materialized spirits” as we are, and since they can think, they can also work “telepathically” at a distance, that is, put itself in a different place and appear there. A lady in Florence had a little dog who was very fond of me. Once while I was in Berlin, this dog appeared to me with a new collar that I had never seen before. On my return to Florence the dog was found with the collar which it had received during my absence. Of course, this does not mean that the dog intentionally projected his thought body to Berlin; he had simply thought of me and his thought brought forth the image of his being. Numerous such examples could be mentioned. Such phenomena are not uncommon.
But even with the physical death of an animal, everything is not over; for even the more highly developed animals have their “etheric double” or “astral body,” which continues to exist even when it has separated from the physical, gross body. Adolf d’Arrier [Adolphe d’Assier], in his work on “L’humanité posthume,”[3] cites numerous examples, not only of astral appearances of animals after death, but even of their visible and tangible materializations. I am aware of various cases of dogs whose “ghosts” made themselves felt after death and continued their habits of jumping on chairs or beds, scratching the floor, and the like.
There is no doubt that dogs and horses and other animals are susceptible to telepathy. If someone is afraid of a dog, the fear is easily transferred to the dog and they bark at you. A timid rider makes the horse unsteady and is thrown off; a good rider can govern his horse by his will alone. As far as I know, scholars have still not proved whether “clever Hans,” who not so long ago answered questions at shows, was not able to do so telepathically.
Certain signs of death, etc., are more difficult to explain. Recently my master of the house died and two days before his death the swallows, which had begun to build a nest in the house, stayed away. They returned a few days after his funeral. A landowner living in northern Germany died during a trip to Vienna. On the night of his death, a multitude of owls gathered on the roof of his native house and would not be driven away. Curiously, the house was never visited by owls before or after.
Nonsense! Superstition! Coincidence! Screams the mentally retarded skeptic, perhaps banging his fist on the table. But that still doesn’t clear things up. But perhaps the solution to the riddle lies in the realization that all of nature is permeated by the spirit of the universe, which manifests itself in the most varied of forms, and that often the most difficult questions are most easily explained if we find the key to explaining them. This lies in the intuitive recognition of the unity of the nature of all things and the world harmony which follows from this. No being stands totally isolated in the world; none create their own thinking and feeling; it is the Earth Spirit working in animal and human forms, driving them to feel and think, will and act, each creature in its own way, according to the nature of its organization. That is why one also speaks of “class souls”[4]; i.e. that this or that class of beings, minerals, plants, animals, and lower human beings, who have not yet attained spiritual self-consciousness of their own, have but one soul in common; but the person who has awakened to spiritual self-awareness and who recognizes himself attains through this knowledge a spiritually stable individuality and thereby the consciousness of his immortality.
From this realization of his oneness with the great whole, man’s true morality and unselfishness in thought and action arise. Our observation teaches us that even in the animal kingdom a certain degree of unselfish love is often revealed. To what extent individual immortality is possible in the animal kingdom may perhaps be decided by future science.
Notes:
[1] Do animals have occult faculties? Franz Hartmann, M.D. Neue Lotusblüten 2, no. 5-6 (May-June 1909), 129-140. [Haben die Tiere okkulte Fähigkeiten?] [This article was reformatted from the original, but with the content unchanged other than fixing minor typos, by Robert Hütwohl, ©2026]
[2] {R.H.—The Theosophist 30, no. 4 (January 1909), 370.}
[3] {R.H.—d’ Assier, Adolphe. Essai sur l’humanité posthume et le spiritisme par un positiviste. Paris: A. Ghio, 1883. Translated from the French: Posthumous Humanity. A Study of Phantoms by Adolphe d’Assier. Translated and Annotated by Henry S. Olcott London, 1887.}
[4] {R.H.—Also known as “group souls.” This is denied by academics. But until they can see clairvoyantly, astrally in particular, they are only guessing.}