Back to Home Page or
Contents Page or Paranormal or Index
Kirlian photography
A photographic
process that captures the auras or biofields of persons or objects within
the photograph. The technique involves the photographing of subjects in
the pressence of a high-frequency, high-voltage, low-amperage-electrical
field, which display glowing, multicolored emanations known as auras or
biofields.
The process of Kirlian photography is named after Seymon Kirlian, an amateur
inventor and electrician of Krasnodar, Russia, who pioneered the first efforts
on the process in the early 1940s. Even thought the process has produced
results it still is controversial.
There seems to be no evidence that Kirlian photography is a paranormal phenomenon.
Some experimenters think it reveals a physical form of psychic energy. Another
theory is that it reveals the etheric body, one of the layers of the aura
thought to permeate all animate objects. The understanding of this latter
aspect of the process gives rise to the prospects of beneficial benefits
of gaining significant insights in medicine, psychology, psychic healing,
psi, and dowsing.
Critics repudiate the process by saying that it shows nothing more that
than electricity being discharged which can be produced under certain conditions.
Experiments in photographing objects in electrical fields, prior to Kirlian,
was called "electrography" or "electrographic photography."
Little value was seen in the process, so scant attention was given to it.
Electrographic photographs were exhibited as early as 1898 by the Russian
Yakov Narkevich Yokdo (also given as Todko. Research in the fields was published
by a Czech, B. Narvratil, also in the early 1900s. The published evidence
of photographs of leaves coronas was presents by two Czechs, S. Pratt and
J. Schlemmer, in 1939.
The initial Kirlian experiments were simple. In his first experiment Kirlian
just photographed his hand, noting a strange orange glow radiating from
the fingertips. His wife Valentina was a biologist, and together they photographed
both animate and inanimate objects. Over the years, they refined their equipment
and graduated from back and white to colored photography.
The principle of Kirlian photography, as well as all electrography, is the
corona discharge phenomenon, that takes place when an electrically grounded
object discharges sparks between itself and an electrode generating the
electrical field. When these sparks are captured on film they give the appearance
of coronas of light. These discharges can be affected by temperature, moisture,
pressure, or other environmental factors. Several Kirlian techniques have
been developed, but the basic ones generally employ a Tesla coil connected
to a metal plate. The process is similar to the one which occurs in nature,
when electrical conditions in the atmosphere produce luminescences, auras,
such as St. Elmo's fire.
Kirlian's work mainly gained attention in the west during the 1960. Its
reception was mixed. However, scientist met on the process at Alma Ata in
1966. Biophysicist Viktor Adamenko theorized that the energy field was the
"cold emission of electrons," and the patterns they formed might
suggest new information concerning the life processes od animate objects.
One finding of Adamenko and other Soviet scientists was that the biological
energies of human beings were brightest at 700 points on the body which
concurs with Chinese acupuncture.
There is evidence that Kirlan photographs do give indications of the health
and emotional changes in living things by changes in the brightness, color,
and patterns of light. At the University of California Center for Health
Sciences, a plant's leaf showed changes when being approached by a human
hand and pricked. Even when part of the leaf was cut off, the glowing portion
of the amputated portion still appeared on film.
Other researchers have found that changes in the emotional conditions of
humans can be detected by changes in the brightness, color and formation
patterns in the photographs. When psychic healers and the psychokinetic
metal-bender Uri Geller were photographed flares of light were seen streaming
from their fingertips as they performed their respective activities.
Many Kirlain enthusiasts declare that the leaf phenomenon is evidence for
the existence of an etheric body. But, critics state the phenomenon completely
disproves Kirlin photography. The latter contention is that "If the
method truly photographed a biofield, then the aura should disappear when
an organism dies. The effect is produced solely by a high-voltage electric
field breakdown of air molecules between two condenser plates."
Supporters of Kirlain photography do, however, foresee its applications
in diagnostic medicine. It has been used in the detection of cancer with
only a sporadic success rate. Some envision that it will eventually be connected
to computerized tomography (CT) scanners (advanced versions of axial tomography
or CAT scanners, which utilize a thin beam of X-rays to photograph an object
from 360 degrees) and magnetic resonance imaging(MRI). This latter method
uses no X-rays, but employs magnetic fields to produce images of body cells
and water in tissues.
Kirlain photography has been used by the Soviets in sports psychology to
access an athlete's metabolic process and fitness. A.G.H.
Sources: 29,
Gertrude Schmeidler, The City College,
New York, 61.