The Human Aura made Visible With Dr. Kilners Dicyanin Screens
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This historical article discusses Dr Kilner’s Dicyanin Method for viewing the human aura through chemical screens, controlled lighting, and careful observation.
Original Source: “Human Aura Made Visible,” Light, August 5, 1911.
Human Aura Made Visible
Mr. W. J. Colville, in a lecture reported on page 344, gave some account of Dr. W. J. Kilner’s method of rendering visible the human aura. A more detailed description of the process adopted has been furnished by a representative of the Daily Express, who attended a series of experiments conducted by Dr. Felkin, an earnest student of Dr. Kilner’s discovery.
The Spectauranine Glass Screens
The apparatus, if apparatus it can be termed, consists of a number of what are technically termed “spectauranine” (dicyanin) glass screens, each about four inches in length by an inch and a half in breadth.
These screens are made each of two plates of very thin glass, between which, hermetically sealed in, is a wonderful fluid that Dr. Kilner has discovered.
Preparing the Subject
The subject was a well-made woman of medium height, and apparently in the best of health. Dr. Felkin first of all told her exactly the nature of the experiments he was about to make.
Then, having instructed the Express representative to look steadily at the daylight through one of the spectauranine screens, and set the patient standing upright with legs together and hands on hips, about a foot away from a dead, dark background, facing the only window in the room, he proceeded to draw a dark blind half-way down this window.
Then from below he drew up a blind of dark serge until it overlapped the upper blind sufficiently to allow light so dim to filter into the room that only the white form of the subject’s body could be discerned in the gloom.
How Dr KilnerS Dicyanin Screens Were Used to View the Aura
“Now turn round,” Dr. Felkin said to the Express representative, “and tell me what you see, or if you see anything at all, for there are, perhaps, four or five people out of every hundred who, through some inherent defect in the eyesight, are physically unable to perceive the aura.”
For some moments, perhaps a quarter of a minute, the only object that could be made out in the darkness was the subject’s form and its outline.
Then gradually, as the eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, a sort of double mist or halo, the one within the other and the inner one denser than the outer, became more and more distinctly visible.
The outlines of this mist exactly followed the curves and the contour of the subject’s body. The colour of the outer aura seemed to be a blue-grey; that of the inner aura was darker. Also, apparently, the inner aura was denser.
In the triangular space formed by the sides of the body and the angle of the arms, as the subject remained with her hands resting lightly on her hips, the halo could be seen most clearly.
The Aura Following the Body
Presently, acting upon Dr. Felkin’s instructions, the subject raised and extended first one arm, then the other. Then she joined her hands at the back of her neck and always the mist of aura followed, as though it were itself an outline of some sort of shadow of the limbs.
Photography and the Human Aura
The writer of “Table Talk” in the Daily News of July 19th mentions that another development of photography is announced.
After referring to the human aura and its alleged visibility through a screen composed of two pieces of glass treated with certain chemicals, he says it is claimed that:
“Until death, the radiation is always present; at the moment of the dissolution of the spirit it vanishes—not, however, as a gas light vanishes when turned out, but by actually leaving the body and disappearing in the air.”
This Dr. Patrick O’Donnell, of Chicago, claims to have proved by photographing the aura as it left the body of a man at the instant he died last week in the Mercy Hospital, Chicago.
Dr. O’Donnell has no doubt that what he photographed was “the guiding power or current of life”; but he is not prepared to say it is the soul.
