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.