POLAND

Poland's history of staunch Roman Catholic beliefs has offered an interesting perspective on that country's interest in parapsychology and the paranormal. For observers, the belief in miracles and other spiritual phenomena alone might have qualified as testimony to belief in the supernatural. In 2000 the country's Roman Catholic population was estimated at 80 percent of all Poles. Eastern Orthodoxy shares the majority of the remaining population but remaines isolated to the eastern frontier, representing approximately one percent-still making it second to Roman Catholicism. Other communities of Protestants and Buddhists exist on a small scale. Prior to World War II, psychical phenomena not necessarily related to religioncould be found throughout Poland. In the nineteenth century, Poland was the home of psychical researcher Julien Ochorowicz (1850-1917). He investigated the medium Eusapia Palladino who visited Warsaw from 1892 through 1894. Ochorowicz testified to the levitation of Palladino. He also experimented with the medium Stanislawa Tomczyk. His 1887 book, Mental Dominance-Classics of Personal Magnetism and Hypnotism was considered by experts to be the most comprehensive work on mental suggestion to appear in the nineteenth century.

After World War I, in the 1920s, a Metapsychical Society was founded in Crakow with approximately one hundred members, including authors and lecturers. The medium Stefan Ossowiecki, born in Moscow to Polish parents, served as the honorary chairman of the society. He also "demonstrated" telepathy, clairvoyance, psychokinesis, and the projection of the astral body (also known as out-of-the-body travel).

Ossowiecki was investigated by researchers such as Charles Richet, Gustave Geley, and Baron Schrenck-Notzing. His psychic abilities were also investigated by the Polish Society for Psychical Research. Ossowiecki was murdered by the Nazis in the final days of World War II.

Also active in the 1930s, was the Psycho-Physical Society in Warsaw. Its president, P. de Szmulro, edited the journal Zagadnienia Metapsychiczne.

As Poland began to recover from World War II, psychical research reappeared with an informal parapsychological network in Western Europe and North America. Psychical research in Poland has developed its own terminology.

Research on radiesthesia, hypnosis, and clairvoyance was conducted by the Bio-Electronic Section of the Copernicus Society of Naturalists, whose president was Dr. Franciszek Chmielewski. The section's activities included investigations of electric phenomena in living organisms, higher nerve activity in connection with parapsychological phenomena and hypnosis, and the influence on living organisms of cosmic and earth radiation.

Psychotronika embodies the papers of the proceedings presented at the biennial symposium of the Society of Radiesthesists held annually in Poland. Address: Towarzystwo Psychotroniczne w Warszawie, ul Noakowskiego 10 m 54, 00-666 Warszawa. The Polish monthly journal Trzecie Oko (Third Eye) is published by Stowarzyszenie Radiestetow, ul Noakowskiego 10 m 54, Warzawa.

In a country that can boast of a cultural life especially in literature and music that has crossed several centuries, and with education a top priority, Poland is shaping its future in the twenty-first century with the political freedom for which its people have fought. An economy and lifestyle that will open to more Western and American influences could broaden the landscape in a way yet to be determined.