By Frater S.C.F.V.
Société d’histoire des Îles-Percées
A. Reaching Across Space-Time in Spirit: Connecting with the Past in the Present
With my life recently plunged into a dark phase of tumult, destabilization, and remorse, I felt called to connect with an ancestral relative in the town of Boucherville in the hopes of finding strength and solace.
The colonial town of Boucherville was founded on unceded Haudenoshaunee Indigenous land as a seigneurial parish in 1667–that is, exactly 200 years before the 1867 Canadian Confederation–by Pierre Boucher, after whom the city was later named. Pierre Boucher came from Mortagne-au-Perche, Normandy, France. After having lived in Quebec City and Trois-Rivières, he moved to the Percées Islands by the southern shores of Saint Lawrence River, where he founded Boucherville (“Boucherville’s Origins,” 2020).
For thousands of prior to French colonization, the only spirituality practiced on the land that later came to be called Boucherville was Indigenous spirituality. Kanienʼkehá꞉ka Elders told stories in oral traditions, stories from and of the land which they saw as rich in spirits.
Many years later, the first Catholic church of the village of Boucherville was built in 1670. This church, made of wood, was eventually replaced in 1712 by a building made of brick. It was replaced in 1801 by the current Sainte-Famille Church. Several families left Boucherville in the 18th century to found the nearby communities of Sainte-Julie and Saint-Bruno-de-Montarville (“Boucherville’s Origins,” 2020). The Church remains a potent and valued spiritual site to this day, rich as it is in both history and spiritual power accrued over hundreds of years of use, itself built on lands rich in Indigenous spiritual history for thousands of years before that. .
However, my destination on this particular trip was not this church, but the house of a significant figure of Canadian history and ancestral relative, Louis-Hippolyte Lafontaine (1807 – 1864).
B. Prayers that Move Storms: Christian Weather Magic in Historical Context and Contemporary Practice
However, my story on this particular day did not start there.
The nearest bus dropped me off at some distance on the outskirts of Boucherville. When I saw the sky after disembarking, my heart sunk. Dark grey storm clouds cast shadowy figures across the sky and a mist below them indicated that it was presently pouring rain exactly where I was headed.
I felt a fleeting temptation to postpone the journey for another day, but a true Magician does not balk in the face of adversity, but rather, aims to transmute it into opportunity. To this end, an inner prompting, of the kind that often arises when one of my spirits is giving me a hint of inspiration, prodded me to attempt a simple form of folk rain magic to improve the situation.
Before we return to the approach used here, which could not have been simpler, it’s worth noting that the tradition of Western grimoires contains a variety of interesting approaches to weather magic, some of which could have been options here. To offer both historical context and contrast from the approach I employed, let us examine some of the historical examples of rain magic that are attested in the traditional sources.
First, a fascinating grimoire confiscated from a group of practicing witches in 1636 and recently published by Joseph H. Peterson, The Secrets of Solomon and the art Rabidmadar, features a spell using a a stone and salt water to “make it rain” (Peterson, 2022). Another later and equally relevant text, “The Clavicules du Roi Salomon, Par Armadel. Livre Troisieme. Concernant les Esprits & leurs pouvoirs” (from Lansdowne 1202), contains a version of the same ritual using salt water in the Circle, which Joseph H. Peterson translates as follows:
“Take natural or artificial Sea Water and place it in a circle which you will make on the ground in the manner that is indicated in the chapter on the Circle, and in the middle of the Circle there the stone Heliotrope, and to the right side the magic rod indicated above; write the characters of Bechard to the left side and of Eliogaphatel in the middle and holding it under the rod you pronounce Eliogaphatel [text in red] the heavens created of clouds, [???] and power to be resolved in water. Which words having been pronounced, the rain will fall in abundance.”
As an interesting side note, when curiosity drew me to the French of this latter manuscript in Landsdowne 1202 (“Ciel composé de nuages aille et puisse êtres resoud en Eau“), I was able to obtain some clarification of the [???] passage, which I have translated as “the sky being composed of clouds able to be resolved in water [i.e. rain].” The meaning, therefore, is that in order for this rain production ritual to work, conditions have to be in place to facilitate the rain, that is, the sky has to already be filled with grey clouds. The spell would then force the clouds, by means of the spirit names, to “spill their contents” to the earth in the form of rain.
This spell is interesting in that it influences the probability of rain given the right conditions, but does not promise to create rain clouds out of a blue sky. This could have been an option had I wished to banish the clouds by simply having them pour out all of their contents. But there were other historical options.
A third text, or rather a collection of two apocryphal texts, The Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses (see the fantastic edition by Peterson (2008), contains a fascinating section about the Angels attributed to each Sign of the Zodiac. The Sign of Libra section states that the Angels of Libra “derive from God great power, inasmuch as the Sun and Moon stand under this sign. Their power controls the friendship and enmity of all creatures. They have power over danger, warfare, over quarrels, and slander — lead armies in all quarters of the earth, cause rain, and give to man Arithmeticam, Astronomiam, Geometriam.” The application here would involve conjuring an Angel of Libra and petitioning it to cause rain in a particular area. This could have been employed here in a similar way to the above ritual.
A fourth text of note, Liber Juratus or the Sworne Book of Honorius is one of the oldest and most influential texts of Medieval magic. Joseph H. Peterson’s (2016) edition notes that four “Spirits of the Moon, Gabriel, Michael, Samyhel, and Acithael... have the nature to change thoughts and wills, to prepare journeys, to tell words that be spoken, and to cause rains. Their bodies are long and great; their countenances are whitish dim like crystal, [or a burnished sword,] or like ice, or a dark cloud, and their region is the West.”
In this text, either these spirits, or the demons under them (“a king and his three ministers, and all the other demons of the moon are obedient to those, and placed under them, and they are these: Harthan, the king, Bileth, Milalu, Abucaba, which rule the demons of the West winds, which are five: Hebethel, Arnochap, Oylol, Milau, Abuchaba, they may be compelled to serve, or they rest“) would be conjured and bound or petitioned to cause rain as desired.
A fifth text, The Key of Knowledge from Additional Manuscript 36674 provides a Name of Power that can be used to cause rain (“the name SYMAGOGION, which Elias named, and the Heaven did give rain, and the Earth brought forth fruit”) (Peterson, 2019). This Name could be woven into a rain-making ritual involving the conjuration of one or more of the sets of spirits given above.
A sixth text, Sepher Raziel from Sloane 3846, informs us of a stone that can be used to affect the weather, namely, “Cliotopia. And it is a stone of great power of which the colour is greene & faire & shineing & cleare with dropps like blood well red within. This stone is said the stone of wise men, of prophetes & of Philosophers. And this is honoured for twey things for the colour like to Smaragdo in greenesse, and in rednesse to Rubino. The price of this stone ouercometh the price of other, and of his vertues & proprieties. the power of this stone is that if it be put in any broad vessell full of water to the sunne it resolueth the water into vapour. And it maketh it to be raised upward till that into the forme of Rayn [rain] it be conuerted downeward. His vertue is that who that beareth it in the mouth or in the hand closed he may not be seene of any man. With this stone a man may haue power upon all deuills & make eich incantacion or enhantment [enchantment] that he woll.“
A seventh text, The Sword of Moses (see Peterson, 1998) provides a formula using Divine Names that can be used, not to cause rain, but to ward it off (“If thou wishest that the rain should not fall upon thy garden, write out No. 48.“).
My own approach on this particular day was closest to this last source, for it aimed, not to cause rain, but to ward it off. However, on the day at hand, I did not have these Names on hand, nor any of illustrious stones noted above. As a result, I had to rely on a much simpler approach than any of those given above. The approach I used, therefore, involved no tools apart from faith and prayer with precedent, not only in European Christian folk magic of the 17th to 18th centuries, but also in Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa (1533). To this point, in his Third Book of Occult Philosophy, Agrippa (1533) states, in Joseph H. Peterson’s edition thereof:
“Our mind being pure and divine, inflamed with a religious love, adorned with hope, directed by faith, placed in the hight [height] and top of the humane soul, doth attract the truth, and sudainly comprehend it, & beholdeth all the stations, grounds, causes and sciences of things both natural and immortal in the divine truth it self as it were in a certain glass of Eternity.
Hence it comes to pass that we, though Natural, know those things which are above nature, and understand all things below, and as it were by divine Oracles receive the knowledg [knowledge] not only of those things which are, but also of those that are past and to come, presently, and many years hence;
Moreover not only in Sciences, Arts and Oracles the Understanding challengeth to it self this divine vertue, but also receiveth this miraculous power in certain things by command to be changed. Hence it comes to pass that though we are framed a natural body, yet we sometimes prædominate [predominate] over nature, and cause such wonderfull, sodain and difficult operations, as that evil spirits obey us, the stars are disordered, the heavenly powers compelled, the Elements made obedient;
So devout men and those elevated by these Theologicall vertues, command the Elements, drive away Fogs, raise the winds, cause rain, cure diseases, raise the dead, all which things to have been done amongst diverse Nations, Poets and Historians do sing and relate: and that these things may be done, all the famousest Philosophers, and Theologians do confirme; so the prophets, Apostles, and the rest, were famous by the wonderfull power of God;
Therefore we must know, that as by the influx of the first agent, is produced oftentimes something without the cooperation of the middle causes, so also by the work of Religion alone, may something be done without the application of naturall and Celestiall vertues” (bold sections added by me for emphasis) (Agrippa, 1533).
In more succinct and simpler words, Agrippa (1533) suggests here that in some cases, mere prayer, coming from a place of faith, love, and hope, can be enough to work “wonders” including affecting the weather.
Although I make no claims to be a “devout man elevated by Theologicall vertues”–indeed, like Paul, I am surely “the worst of all sinners” (1 Timothy 1:15)–I was at least, in this situation, motivated by sincere need, humble faith, a nudging from my Spirits, and possible assistance from my ancestral relative with whom I aimed to connect.
Therefore, I used the simplest of approaches. I turned my full attention, Will, and energy toward the Goal at hand, inflaming faith, love, ad hope as Agrippa recommends, to generate sympathy with the means and intent at hand, tuned into the Divine and simply prayed “Dear Lord, please move the clouds and rain away from Boucherville if it be your Will, b’shem Yeshua, Amen.” I ended the prayer with “b’shem Yeshua,” Hebrew for “in the name of Yeshua” or Jesus, in accordance with Christ’s words in John 14 that:
12 Truly, truly, I tell you, whoever believes in Me will also do the works that I am doing. He will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father.
13 And I will do whatever you ask in My name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son.
14 If you ask Me for anything in My name, I will do it.
Working within a folk Christian context, I paused to meditate on the Power of the Divine over rain and water–Agrippa recommends drawing on Scripture for “narrative charms” or historiolae in his Third Book of Occult Philosophy (1533). The historiola is a term for a kind of incantation that incorporates a short mythic story that provides the paradigm for the desired magical action. It can “be found in ancient Mesopotamian, Egyptian and Greek mythology, in the Aramaic Uruk incantation, incorporated in Mandaean incantations, as well as in Jewish Kabbalah.” There are also Christian examples evoking Christian legends (Frankfurter, 1995).
As sources of ancient biblical historiolae in prayers and stories relevant to weather magic, for instance, Job 37:6 Verse notes of YHVH that, “For to the snow He says, ‘Fall on the earth,’ And to the downpour and the rain, ‘Be strong.’
Jeremiah 51:16 expresses reverence for how “Ha Shem utters His voice, there is a tumult of waters in the heavens, And He causes the clouds to ascend from the end of the earth; He makes lightning for the rain And brings forth the wind from His storehouses.”
1 Kings 18:1 says that “it happened after many days that the word of the Lord came to Elijah in the third year, saying, “Go, show yourself to Ahab, and I will send rain on the face of the earth.”
Job 28:26 states that God “set a limit for the rain And a course for the thunderbolt.”
Psalm 68:8, a useful Psalm for weather magic in a Hoodoo context for instance says “the earth quaked; The heavens also dropped rain at the presence of God.”
Another relevant Psalm, Psalm 135:7 says that the Lord “causes the vapors to ascend from the ends of the earth; Who makes lightnings for the rain, Who brings forth the wind from His treasuries.”
Psalm 147:8 muses of God that He it is “Who covers the heavens with clouds, Who provides rain for the earth.”
Jeremiah 14:22 prays “Are there any among the idols of the nations who give rain? Or can the heavens grant showers? Is it not You, O Lord our God? Therefore we hope in You, For You are the one who has done all these things.”
Christ walking on Water (Matthew 14:22-36; Mark 6:45-56; John 6:16-24), God bringing forth and ending the rains of Noah in Genesis 6:9-9:28, Moses bringing forth water from a stone and crossing the Red Sea (Exodus 14:21) (“Then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and the Lord drove the sea back by a strong east wind all night and made the sea dry land, and the waters were divided”) can also be called on here as relevant Scriptural historiolae.
I did not overtly include these verses in my prayer on this occasion, but one certainly could do so to fortify a prayer with a chain of passages that have been prayed and used in rituals for thousands of years. Instead, these passages hovered, as it were, in the a background of my simple prayer.
Having prayed it, I simply took faith and continued walking towards the storm.
And, as it turned out, the prayer was granted.
When I arrived at the childhood house of my ancestral relative Louis-Hippolyte Lafontaine, I was amazed to find that the clouds had broken into blue sky and the unobstructed radiance of the Sun.
Divine Power, either directly or through mobilizing spirits down the hierarchy to do the work in accordance with the Will, appeared to have driven the storm-clouds down a completely different trajectory away. While the clouds should have been bombarding thick curtains of rain upon my destination, they were simply… gone.
I couldn’t help but imagine that the spirit of Louis-Hippolyte had there been praying with me to aid the result.
And what a result it was.
Looking over the river across the street from his ancestral home, I saw this:
C. The Revolutionary Rebel Turned Unifier of Canada: The Life and Death of Louis-Hippolyte Lafontaine
Louis-Hippolyte Lafontaine (1807 – 1864) was much more than simply a family relative; he was a significant figure in Canadian history. At once jurist and statesman, La Fontaine was first elected to the Legislative Assembly of Lower Canada in 1830. He was a supporter of Papineau and member of the Parti canadien (later the Parti patriote). After the severe consequences of the Rebellions of 1837 against the British authorities, he advocated political reforms within the new Union regime of 1841. The Union united the previously separate Lower Canada and Upper Canada into a single United Canada (Ville de Bourcherville, 2022; Saul, 2010; Shrauwers, 2009).
Under this Union of the two Canadas he worked with Robert Baldwin in the formation of a party of Upper and Lower Canadian liberal reformers. He and Baldwin formed a government in 1842 but resigned in 1843. In 1848 he was asked by the Governor-General, Lord Elgin, to form the first administration under the new policy of responsible government” (Ville de Bourcherville, 2022; Saul, 2010; Shrauwers, 2009). Baldwin and Lafontaine would prove to be fiercely loyal friends as well as skilled co-politicians who ruled with a remarkable synergy and aimed to unify French and English-speaking Canadians (Ville de Bourcherville, 2022; Saul, 2010; Shrauwers, 2009).
The La Fontaine-Baldwin government, formed on March 11, battled for the restoration of the official status of the French language, which was abolished with the Union Act, and the principles of responsible government and the double-majority in the voting of bills. While Baldwin was reforming Canada West (Upper Canada), La Fontaine passed bills to abolish the tenure seigneuriale (seigneurial system) and grant amnesty to the leaders of the rebellions in Lower Canada who had been exiled. The bill passed, but it was not accepted by the loyalists of Canada East who protested violently and went so far as to burn down the Parliament in Montreal.
After burning down the parliament, the rioters shot up Louis-Hippolyte’s Montreal home, which was recently restored and can still be visited today. About this home, John Ralston Saul, author of Louis-Hippolyte LaFontaine & Robert Baldwin (2010), said that the building witnessed a great extent of the planning of Canada’s democracy. “Of all the buildings that are central to Canada becoming a democracy,” Saul told National Post in 2015, “it’s the only important one left.”
Until 1851, La Fontaine was a member of the Executive Council and Attorney General of Lower Canada, a position that corresponds to our current conception of the office of Prime Minister.
La Fontaine retired to private life in 1851 but was appointed Chief Justice of Canada East in 1853. In 1854 he was created a baronet by Queen Victoria and a knight commander in the pontifical Order of St. Sylvester by Pope Pius IX in 1855. He died in Montreal in 1864″ (Ville de Bourcherville, 2022; Saul, 2010; Shrauwers, 2009).
The story of his death was notably described by Jacques Monet (1976):
On 25 Feb. 1864 La Fontaine had an apoplectic fit in the judges’ chambers. He was taken home, where he gathered his son in his arms, made the sign of the cross, and lost consciousness. He received extreme unction from the vicar general, Alexis-Frédéric Truteau*, and died during the night. At his funeral, presided over by Bishop Bourget, 12,000 persons gathered. Lady La Fontaine gave birth to a second son on 15 July, but he died in 1865; his elder brother, Louis-Hippolyte, followed him to the grave in 1867.
He now rests in Cimetière Notre-Dame-des-Neiges here in Montreal, in a family tomb.
To anyone interested in learning more about this incredibly significant figure of Canadian history, I would highly recommend reading the article on Louis-Hippolyte Lafontaine by Jacques Monet in the Dictionary of Canadian Biography, which is available online for free here.
Our Family Connection
Interestingly, Louis-Hippolyte was originally named, not Lafontaine, but Ménard. Lafontaine was for him what here in Quebec, we call a “nom-dit.” A “dit (pronounced like the last name of John Dee) name” is an alternate last name that French Canadian people in the period chose to take on, usually to distinguish themselves from other people with similar names in the region.
It was through my father that I first learned of our family’s connection to him through my father’s mother, my grandmother Pierrette Ménard. Her bloodline was connected to Louis-Hippolyte’s father, Antoine Ménard. And through my father and my grandmother, my own blood connects me back to Louis-Hippolyte.
Funny enough, Lafontaine was in some ways the first proto-Prime Minister of Canada and my family are also related to Canadian Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson on my father’s side and American President Richard Nixon’s family on my mother’s side. The Fates must have not been pleased when I chose not to go into politics!
D. Touching Ruins, Honouring Spirits: Ancestral Work and Psychometry at the Maison Dite Louis-Hippolyte Lafontaine
The house to which my travels in Boucherville took me on this particular day was built in 1766, many years before the birth of Louis-Hippolyte. François Truillier had the house built for his family; when he died, it passed to his son Joseph, who married Louis-Hippolyte’s mother Marie-Josephte Bienvenue after Louis-Hippolyte’s father Antoine Ménard died. This is how from 1813 to 1822, the young Louis-Hippolyte came to live in this house.
As fate should have it, I walked onto the property for the first time in one of its oldest sections, where I saw this old ruin from the late 19th-early 20th century:
Past that, I came across the ruined wall of one of the oldest buildings from the property:
Invoking the rebellious spirit of Louis-Hippolyte, I dipped under the DANGER tape and placed my hand on the wall to do a brief session of Psychometry.
For those who may not be familiar with the term, the word Psychometry (from the Greek: ψυχή, psukhē, “spirit, soul” and μέτρον, metron, “measure”) was coined by American physician and Professor of physiology Joseph Rodes Buchanan (December 11, 1814 – December 26, 1899) in 1842. The term came to refer to the metaphysical practice of obtaining information about the history of an object or place by “tuning into” it while touching it or placing it to one’s forehead (New World Encyclopedia, 2007).
In his Manual of Psychometry: The Dawn Of A New Civilization, Buchanan stated the following about the practice as he saw it:
“The past is entombed in the present, the world is its own enduring monument; and that which is true of its physical is likewise true of its mental career. The discoveries of Psychometry will enable us to explore the history of man, as those of geology enable us to explore the history of the earth. There are mental fossils for psychologists as well as mineral fossils for the geologists; and I believe that hereafter the psychologist and the geologist will go hand in hand, the one portraying the earth, its animals and its vegetation, while the other portrays the human beings who have roamed over its surface in the shadows, and the darkness of primeval barbarism. Aye, the mental telescope is now discovered which may pierce the depths of the past and bring us in full view of the grand and tragic passages of ancient history.”
As I understand the practice, what we essentially do with Psychometry is open up our astral senses and then attempt to tune into the the region of the Astral Plane that corresponds to the physical object or location. Then we attempt to surrender to the reception of images, sounds, smells, touches, and other impressions that sometimes show “snapshots” or, as it were, “movies” of things that happened there in the past (I call these “psychic history traces’“), and at other times allow us to tune into the spirits of the dead who still have a connection to the place or object in question (I call these “connected spirits“). I had no success with it at all for years until I started to develop my astral senses and also improve at spirit conjuring, divination, and scrying, after which I found it to be a very similar practice. Psychometry is almost like doing a divination and reading, assisted by touch, of an object or place instead of a set of Tarot cards, Runes, Geomancy markings, etc. combined with the kind of reception of spirit impressions that we experience in an evocation.
Funny enough, the good old New Thought pioneer William Walker Atkinson, who wrote the infamous Kybalion under the pseudonym of “The Three Initiates” also wrote a book touching on Psychometry under yet another alias, namely, that of Swami Panchadasi.
In the book, titled Clairvoyance and Occult Powers (1916), he rightly–in my experience, at least!—writes
“Many persons suppose that it is necessary to travel on the astral plane, in the astral body, in order to use the astral senses. This is a mistake. In instances of clairvoyance, astral visioning, Psychometry, etc., the occultist remains in his physical body, and senses the phenomena of the astral plane Clairvoyance and Occult Powers 21 quite readily, by means of the astral senses, just as he is able to sense the phenomena of the physical plane when he uses the physical organs−−quite more easily, in fact, in many instances. It is not even necessary for the occultist to enter into the trance condition, in the majority of cases.
In Psychometry some object is used in order to bring the occulist “en
rapport” with the person or thing associated with it. But it is the astral
senses which are employed in describing either the past environment of the
thing, or else the present or past doings of the person in question, etc. In
short, the object is merely the loose end of the psychic ball of twine which
the psychometrist proceeds to wind or unwind at will. Psychometry is
merely one form of astral seeing; just as is crystal gazing.”
“Swami Panchadasi” goes on to share some information about the kind of use of Psychometry as a vision into the past of an object or place that we will explore with more practical examples later:
“Still another form of psychometric discernment is that in which the
psychometrist gets en rapport (in connection) with the past history of an object, or of its
surroundings, by means of the object itself. In this way, the psychometrist
holding in his hand, or pressing to his head, a bullet from a battle field, is
able to picture the battle itself. Or, given a piece of ancient pottery or stone
implement, the psychometrist is able to picture the time and peoples
connected with the object in the past−−sometimes after many centuries are
past.”
As a relevant and interesting side note, The New World Encyclopedia offers the following interesting information on three famous examples of Psychometry in practice:
“William F. Denton: In 1854, Denton, an American professor of geology, was fascinated by Buchanan’s work. A professor of physiology, Buchanan had found that his students could often successfully identify a drug in a glass vial simply by holding the vial in their hand. Denton enlisted the help of his sister, Ann Denton Cridge, to see if she would be able to correctly identify geological specimens wrapped in cloth. By holding the wrapped specimens to her forehead, she was able to accurately identify many specimens.
Stephan Ossowiecki: Born in Russia in 1877, Ossowiecki claimed several psychic abilities, including aura reading and psychokinesis. Ossowiecki was well-known for being able to perceive the contents of sealed envelopes. It was claimed that he perceived the ideas of handwritten letters, but was unable to do so if a statement were typed or printed. Ossowiecki was also tested at the University of Warsaw, where he produced apparently accurate information about the detailed lives of prehistoric humans by holding a 10,000 year old flint tool. After the Nazis invaded Poland, Ossowiecki used his abilities to help people find out what had happened to their loved ones, by holding a photograph of the missing person. He refused to accept payment for these services. Ossowiecki died before the end of the war, having accurately predicted such a thing would happen.
George McMullen: McMullen, a carpenter and wilderness guide, was tested by educator J. Norman Emerson in 1971. McMullen was able to correctly identify a fragment of clay as belonging to an Iroquois ceremonial pipe, as well as describing how it was made and used. McMullen went on to assist Emerson and other archaeologists with their research, providing information about prehistoric Canada, ancient Egypt, and the Middle East that were later confirmed by research. When he visited an Iroquois site with Emerson, McMullen claimed he could actually hear the Iroquois talking, and that he could also understand what they were saying.”
Interest in Psychometry seems to have waned from the late 19th century into the 20th century. This is unfortunate, as it is a fascinating domain of occult practice that deserves more contemporary attention. I hope that this article will spark some curiosity to practice with it and record your results in some of you, dear Readers. As a word of advice, the key thing to keep in mind with Psychometry experiments, is that it should not result in merely Unverifiable Personal Gnosis (UPG). As much as possible, to fully explore the power of the practice and the results it can yield, we should aim to use Psychometry to find out testable and verifiable information. I’ll provide some examples to illustrate this point below.
I am by no means an expert at Psychometry, but have had some meaningful experiences with doing Psychometry readings on old places, which sometimes led to contacting spirits who had lived there in the past. For instance, while doing Psychometry on different regions of the Manoir Papineau house in Montebello, Quebec, a former home of another famous figure of Canadian political history, Louis-Joseph Papineau, I experienced a number of visions of different people who had lived in the home over its long and robust history.
There, I had a vision of a man I later recognized in a photograph as having been Talbot Mercer Papineau (great grandson of Louis-Joseph Papineau), a lawyer and decorated soldier, walking through the sitting room in his uniform. Archival documents from Parks Canada (2022) confirmed he had lived in the home from 1903 to 1929.
At the Manoir, I also saw a vision of Papineau’s children playing on one of the porches. I received clairaudient impressions of their voices in French and laughter as they played.
Near another part of the house, I saw a woman who turned out to be Azélie Papineau, mother to Henri Bourassa the famous journalist and founder of Canadian newspaper Le Devoir. I later confirmed that she had lived in the home.
I also encountered the spirit of an unknown servant who had died at the home in one area where the energy felt considerably darker and heavier. Him, I prayed with and for, that he might find the Light and pass on, for part of him still lingered in that place.
Returning to this particular day in Boucherville, when I placed my hand upon the aforementioned ruined wall on the Louis-Hippolyte Lafontaine family home property, I received an immediate and unwelcoming feeling of severity. I had impressions of serious men, some dressed in suits and overcoats and others in religious garb. They seemed to be very concerned with rules and propriety and I had the feeling they did not take kindly to my tuning in to them, so I stopped immediately. I later found out who the religious men were; they were Jesuits who had previously lived in a structure on that very property in 1902, as I confirmed through an archival photograph of the area in question:
Tuning in to an area at the edge of the property near the road, I received impressions of some spirits who were eying the home with a cold and resentful gaze. They appeared jealous that they had not been able to live there. I prayed for them to find acceptance and peace with the past and release it that they may be released.
Walking on, I came to a beautiful and stately statue of Louis-Hippolyte himself:
Unfortunately, however, and as I soon discovered, spiders had covered his face and body in thick, tangled webs! I climbed onto the statue and removed the webs with a stick as a gesture of love and devotion to my ancestral relative. It bears repeating that acts of service can be a fitting gesture of devotion and means of connection in Ancestral Work.
Having done this, I greeted his spirit with love and respect and asked for his permission to connect with him and learn from his experience in this place. I received a warm, affirmative feeling in return.
When I tuned into him, however, I was surprised that I did not see his adult form step forward. Instead, I saw a little boy. When I later walked closer to the house he had lived in, this image got stronger. I saw him playing with a ball with another boy. I did not know at the time, but later learned, that the reason for this was that the adult Louis-Hippolyte had not lived there from 1813 to 1822, but in Montreal, and he had only lived there as a child! As it turned out, baseball was one of his favourite pastimes.
Not far from the ruined wall, I came across this beautiful Cross, a replica of a Cross that stood nearby facing the St. Lawrence River, and which was made and blessed in 1879:
For my final Psychometry experiments on the site, I finally approached the main house. I started with the front wall of the house in front of the room on the left. Immediately, I received the image of a welcoming woman with her hair tied up. She appeared to be greeting me as a guest to her home. She presented as proud of her home and happy to welcome guests to it. It took me a while to figure out who this lady was, but I finally came to believe she was Marie-Josephte Fontaine dit Bienvenu (b.1782). She was Louis-Hippolyte’s mother, who lived in the house with him when he was a child.
The energy of this house, unlike the Manoir Papineau, which had had its dark regions, was entirely light and positive. When I connected with it at different places and on different sides of the building, I received visions of a family eating a meal together, Louis-Hippolyte’s mother washing clothes in a grey basin and hanging them in back of the house, men sitting, smoking, and sipping whisky in the sitting room. I received a clairolfactory impression of the smell of the cigar smoke outside that area of the house. I heard whisps of French Canadian songs being sung with joyful feelings accompanying them. Overall, the energy was strong and positive. I had the feeling that a lot of love had been expressed here and many fond memories lived.
At last, with final prayers for the spirits who had lived and still lived there, I said goodbye to Louis-Hippolyte and the other spirits who had been linked to the land there over the years.
As I left, I could almost see Louis-Hippolyte’s son playing with a wheel and laughing a wild, free laugh.
E. Conclusion: Personal Experiences Offering Fruit for Your Journey
This was a beautiful day filled with magic linked to weather, ancestral connections, the history that informs places both materially and physically, and the surprises yielded by Psychometry.
My hope in sharing these memories is that these personal reflections might inspire some new ideas and practical applications that can serve you in your own practice. If you undertake any Psychometry experiments or Operations in weather magic, I’d love to hear your results in the comments. Pax Profundis!
References
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denotes performing the Sign of the Cross]
Light in Extension: A Magical Journal 