The Progress of Spiritualism
By L. A. S.
SPIRITUALISM began as a manifestation of occult phenomena; it grew into a religion, based on the doctrines of the immortality of the soul and communication between the living and the dead. To-day, it has clothed itself in the garb of science, and is attracting attention as a field of scientific investigation and discovery. In the latter phase it gains access to, and weaves its spell about, multitudes who would not be interested in it as a form of religious belief. The following quotations from an article entitled “The Invisible World,” in the March issue of Everybody’s Magazine, will give the reader an idea of the nature and extent of the alliance which has been established between spiritualism and science. After referring to the skeptical character of the age and the dominance of materialism in its intellectual life, the author, Mr. Vance Thompson, says:— And yet the paradox is curious—never was the world so ghost ridden. Never has it turned so wistfully to the occult. Never has it listened with an expectation so painful at that closed door behind which mysterious silences stretch away—the door of the tomb. I dare say it is natural enough. Always in epochs of unbelief, when the conservative forms of faith are weakened, there is an immense growth of vague supernaturalism. It was in the cynical eighteenth century, when Voltaire had sneered religion out of fashion, that sorcerers, fortune-tellers, magicians—all the Mesmers and Cagliostros—ruled the world. [Striking proof of the oppositeness of faith and superstition.] Our new century, quite as skeptical, is equally in love with the marvelous. Only the fashion in wizards has changed. The modern magician comes from the laboratory. He speaks in the name of science, for there is a science of the immaterial,—a science of witchcraft,—a science which has its professors and learned societies, its journals and magazines. The very ghosts that haunt the societies for psychical research have taken on a scientific air; they walk no more in windy corridors, clanking spectral chains; in a practical, modern way they exhibit themselves to scientific congresses. World over, psychic phenomena are being studied by trained scientists. Dismissing theories, they give themselves to the observation of scientifically established facts. Their labors range from the study of hysteria, of hypnosis and the transmission of psychic forces, to the time-old mysteries of enchantment and apparitions. The scientists, physicians, experimenters, those who are interested in psychic phenomena, are grouped in the various societies for psychical research. A yearly congress was held. The last was held in London,—at 20 Hanover Square, W.,—and Dr. Charles Richet, of Paris, was chosen president, succeeding men so diversely eminent as the Right Hon. Arthur J. Balfour and Sir William Crookes. The purpose of the association is to study by positive methods the phenomena called mysterious and abnormal. . . . So eager are they to escape from any taint of supernaturalism, that they have discarded the old phrases,—spiritualism, spiritism, and the like,—and have decreed the existence of a new science, metapsychics. The name “spiritualism” has been discarded, but that for which the old name stood remains the same as before. That has not been discarded. Wonderful things are sometimes accomplished by a mere change of name. Science recognizes the existence of an invisible world, wherein unknown forces flit to and fro; what ghostly things they are it knows not, but they are very real, very strong and terrible. They are not material; they are the masters of matter. Occult forces, but no longer unknown; science has given them passports and names. And then, following Lombroso and Maxwell, science admits the reality of the transmission of psychic force. . . . Second sight, and the telepathy by which personality communicates with personality across infinite space,—an old acquirement of the magi,—and the clairvoyance that reads the sealed letter or the document hidden in the black heart of an iron safe,—these are psychic phenomena licensed now by science. It was well said, I think, that science itself is becoming mystic, phantomic, ghost ridden. All doubt that there is a clear connection between modern occultism and satanic agencies ought to be removed by the following:— The dark forces which science recognizes, but does not define, exercise marvelous attraction on minds of a certain order. In scores of temples they are worshiped under different names. I know a little temple in Bruges where the followers of Lucifer gather, and not far from the Pantheon in Paris there is an altar to Pandoemon. . . . A couple of years ago I visited one of the “chapels;” it was in the rue Rochechouart. The Black Mass, which I have no desire to describe, was celebrated. It was Friday, at three o’clock. . . . Every Friday the Luciferians gather. I could name many of them,—men not unknown in the learned professions. Some of them have influence enough to secure, now and then, a right of midnight entry to the catacombs. There amid skulls and bones, with orgies I do not care to describe, they have worshiped the spirit of evil. . . . This attempt to re-establish the worship of the fallen archangel is, I think, the most remarkable manifestation of modern occultism. The modern necromancers deal most in hope and consolation; they fill the future with bright expectations and useful warnings; they bring messages from the dead whom love has not forgotten. . . . Paris, the city of light and laughter, is dotted over with spiritualistic temples; there is a notable one in the rue St. Jacques; another is in the rue des Martyrs. One and all they derive from the Fox sisters who amazed New York a half century ago. Among the faithful are such men as Sardon—himself a medium—and Saint Rene Taillandier, the French envoy to Morocco, and Camille Flammarion. If they are to be believed, the ghosts are more active in unbelieving Paris than in any other city at this present moment. French spiritualism is a positive science. Recently a writer in the New York World dwelt at some length on the study of occultism in that city, beginning with the statement that “some men and women of wealth and learning in this city believe they have lifted the veil that hides the spirit world.” Spiritualism has become “scientific,” and is engaging the attention of men of wealth and learning throughout the world. The danger in studying science to find out truth having to do with the welfare of the soul—a science which, so far from being able to expose and banish occultism, has itself “become ghost ridden”—ought to be clear to all. If we would know the truth, we must know it “as it is in Jesus.” L. A. S.