The Demon behind the Mask of the Counterfeit Vision of the Dead,—“Spirits of Demons Working Miracles.”
Since the Fox sisters first came before the public in their mysterious rappings in 1848 at Hydesville, near Rochester, New York, there has been tremendous change regarding the phenomena of Spiritualism. These manifestations, however, really began several years before this in a private way, but its publicity was assured by what was called “the Rochester knockings.”
Since that time these supernatural, or as scientists prefer to call them, “supernormal” manifestations have multiplied. There are millions who believe in Spiritualism, or what is the better term, “Spiritism,” at the present time. There is not a city of any size in the country but that has its regular professional mediums to whom people of all classes resort for information or advice. On the other hand, the phenomena have been denounced as trickery; and there has without question been a great deal of trickery connected with them. This is admitted by the most ardent Spiritualists. We are told again and again that mediums are almost always dishonest and deceptive, yet this does not interfere with their mediumship; that the very ones who resort to trickery are also genuine mediums, and form a means of communication with the other world.
Spirit Bureau
One of the recent developments in this line is a regular bureau organized by Mr. Stead, the famous English journalist. Something like six months ago Mr. Stead established two bureaus for the purpose of opening up communication with the “Other World,” in order to develop means and agencies on both sides of the gulf which could communicate with each other, and so establish a regular system for the interchange of thought with the spirit land. The system has been in operation nearly six months.
These bureaus he calls “Julia’s” bureaus. Julia is the alleged spirit of Julia A. Ames, who in life was one of the prominent W. C. T. U. workers. She is one with whom Mr. Stead has had more or less communication. She uses his hand and the hands of others in the giving of her messages. He feels that he has demonstrated, by various and decisive tests, that this writing is not of his volition, but solely of her dictation.
In the Hearst papers recently Mr. Stead has made a summary report of the working of his bureau for six months. He feels that during this time the progress has been eminently satisfactory. Altho having used the simplest means, results have been remarkable. He believes that he has “received as by some wireless telephone articulate, intelligible messages from a friend who has passed over the river of death some years ago, reporting that the undiscovered bourne from which no traveler was supposed to be able to return, was in reality a region the inhabitants of which were constantly returning to mingle in the busy haunts of men.”
Of the outcome we read: “The results have so far exceeded my most sanguine expectation. We have undertaken nearly two hundred cases, most of which are still in course of experiment. . . . In more than one half of the cases completed, whose dossiers are filed in our archives, the applicants have signed a statement declaring that they were satisfied they had been brought into communication with their beloved dead.”
He instances as one of these communicants that a warning was given concerning the Countess of Warwick, that she would that week have an accident to her motor car, and was urged to postpone motoring for a week. The report was sent to her, but unfortunately she had left home when the messenger arrived. At six o’clock the following night a telegram came from the lady saying that her car had been run down by a motor omnibus; she was seriously injured and in bed under the doctor’s care. In another instance the spirit of the late Lefebvre, the French aeronaut, came with a warning to a Russian aeronaut, Buletoff, to examine his engine, as there was something wrong about it. This warning was given to the Russian aeronaut, and he found that his engine, which had been working perfectly for twenty-four hours previously, was in such condition that it was not safe to use.
These messages are received through automatic writing, clairaudience, and by trance-mediumship.
Among those whom Mr. Stead believes to be in communication with his bureau now are Lord Beaconsfield, Mr. Gladstone, W. E. Forster, Charles Bradlaugh, Richard Cobden, Henry George, Cardinal Manning, and others. It need not be said that Mr. Stead’s bureau has many applications from leading persons.
Eusapia Palladino
One of the great mediums who has mystified, confounded, and also converted great men, is the Italian woman Eusapia Palladino. She has recently come from Italy to this country. On the way over, three seances marked by extraordinary phenomena, were held on board the ship.
One of the last investigators to be convinced of the marvelous powers of Eusapia is Mr. Hereward Carrington, member of the American Society for Scientific Research, and also of the English Society of Psychic Research. Mr. Carrington has devoted many years to the study of the alleged spiritistic phenomena, and especially to the investigation and exposure of fraudulent mediums. He states that up to the time he met Eusapia Palladino, he had never seen a genuine physical phenomenon produced at a spiritualistic seance.
Convinced Against Prejudice
He went to Italy skeptical, determined to prove if possible that the manifestations given through Eusapia were of the same character that he had witnessed in spiritistic circles in America. He came away convinced that the phenomena were beyond the human. He states, “I have seen tables suspended in the air without any visible support; I have seen curtains blown about, as tho by a strong breeze, within a closed room, doors and windows being securely locked; I have seen objects floating in the air, untouched by human hand; I have heard notes struck upon musical instruments which lay several feet away from Eusapia and from any of her investigators; and I have felt and been touched by white and apparently living hands, which were certainly not those of my colleagues or myself, and equally certainly were not those of the medium, since both of her hands were visibly resting upon the table, and were held in ours.”11
This we take from an article entitled “Eusapia Palladino the Despair of Science,” in “McClure’s Magazine” for October.
Among those who have investigated the powers of Eusapia Palladino are the late expert criminologist Cesare Lombroso, of the University of Turin; Prof. Enrico Morselli, of the University of Genoa, author of several standard works on mental pathology and nervous diseases; the famous astronomers Professors Schiaparelli and Flammarion; the discoverers of radium, M. and Mme. Curie; Prof. Charles Richet, the eminent physiologist of the Sorbonne; Sir Oliver Lodge, one of the most famous of all-round physicists now living; and many other eminent men have investigated and held numerous seances with Eusapia Palladino. As Mr. Carrington remarks: “One and all of them have become converted to a belief in her supernormal powers. This may be said, indeed, of practically every group of scientists who have investigated her—in every instance they have come from the seances convinced. Yet in almost every case the investigators have approached the study of these phenomena in a state of complete skepticism; and their conversion was effected only after objection after objection had been disposed of, until none were left.”
Test Conditions
For instance, to prevent the medium from moving the table with her hands, both hands have been held, each by a separate party. Her feet have been tied to the chair in which she was sitting; at the same time both feet have been held. The legs of the table have been inserted in hollow cones which were nailed to the floor, and a strip has been nailed across the top of these cones so that it was utterly impossible for the feet of the medium or of the investigators to come in contact with any of the table legs or to lift the table with their knees; and yet the table has been repeatedly lifted. Visible hands have been seen; visible faces, not of the medium or like the medium, but faces of men, faces of children. These hands have slapped, pinched, caressed the investigators. At the same time the medium has been in bright light.
Sometimes during these manifestations she has been in the greatest agony, and by the actual weighing of herself and her chair together, she has lost within a few seconds of time as much as seventeen pounds.
Her hair is of a grayish brown mixed—she is now fifty-six years old—with the exception of one gray lock, and from that gray lock during some of the seances a cold stream of air has proceeded; so much so as to flutter a tissue paper flag and wind it around its staff; and this when every means possible has been used to hold back every agency by which air could be moved, including the breath of those who were observing. This air has been sufficiently cool to lower the mercury in a thermometer two or three degrees.
Many of these phenomena have taken place in bright light, so that everything in the room could be observed. The investigations have not been carried on in rooms prepared by the medium, but in rooms with which she was entirely unacquainted. They have not been carried on when she had friends with her who might have acted as confederates, but when all who were investigating were skeptical and desirous of ascertaining facts.
The Supposed Dead Appear
One of the facts which was brought before Professor Lombroso was a manifestation of what he believed to be the spirit of his mother. It came to him at one of these seances and embraced him. He recognized her perfectly, and all this time Eusapia had remained quite visible at the seance table, and no one could possibly have entered the room, which happened to be at that time a physical laboratory.
Another equally interesting incident was the appearance of his father to M. Yourievitch of the Psychological Institute of Paris. His father had been dead for some years. At one of the seances a solid tho unseen body made tangible through the curtain, came to him and called itself his father. His father had a peculiarly deformed finger; and he asked his father in Russian, a language absolutely unknown to Eusapia, that he would impress his hand in the wet clay which was in the cabinet behind the curtain, so that he could be assured that it was his father; and the impression was left there, the first finger of which bore identically the same marks of deformity as that of his long dead father.
These are only a few incidents of the many.
The Source
When these phenomena began with her at the early age of thirteen or fourteen, she considered that they were of the devil, but was encouraged to develop her mediumship.
These phenomena are explained in two ways: First as trickery, as we before remarked; but that has been entirely disproved, if we have any confidence whatever in some of the world’s most eminent men, who have investigated and have been compelled to admit the genuineness of the phenomena, in the face of the greatest skepticism on their part. Secondly, some of these scientists are endeavoring to explain them by what they call “astral bodies;” that is, that the medium has power to develop hands, faces, and various parts of the human, entirely apart from herself, out of her own substance. Yet every now and then something is revealed which upsets this theory. Then how is it that the astral body is formed? Eusapia seems to think that the spirits take of her substance and form these material bodies; and it would seem as tho there might be some truth in the matter, from the effect that the seances have upon her. Sometimes she is in the greatest agony. Sometimes when holding seances with those who were not particularly investigating, or who were easily duped, she has been caught in trickery. This she has done in order to save herself from the agonies of actual spirit obsession.
The Effects upon the Medium
Mr. Carrington says: “No one who has seen the effects of a seance upon Eusapia Palladino could doubt its genuine character, as far as the medium is concerned. At the conclusion of a seance she is faint, dizzy, nauseated, extremely weak, occasionally vomits, and remembers little that has occurred during the seance; while her face becomes deeply lined, greenish yellow in color, and appears to be shrunk almost to half its natural size.”
Among all the theories for explaining these remarkable phenomena, there is one that the scientists and investigators invariably ignore. They will start in as skeptics, believing that it is trickery. As they proceed, especially in the case with Eusapia Palladino, they become convinced of supernormal powers, and those who investigate the most will at last accept the spiritistic theory that some of the phenomena are caused by the spirits of those who have died.
Yet the Only Reasonable Theory
which is presented at all is that of the Word of God. In the truth there revealed, which is brought out elsewhere in this number, every phenomena is readily explained. God’s Word reveals the great fact that there are beings above the human, spirit beings both good and evil; the good known as the angels of God; the evil those who were once angels of God, but who have fallen, even as sinful man has fallen; that these malign spiritual agencies are everywhere throughout this world; that at their head is the devil, Diabolos, he who once was among the angels of God, Lucifer; that these malign spirits, or demons, are under his control; that the devil laid the very foundation of the spiritistic theory in the beginning of man’s existence; that when God declared to the sinner, “Thou shalt surely die,” the devil deceived man into believing that he would not die, but would be as God. On that first great falsehood of earth—deceiving the human race to believe that man did not die when he did—are based all the false religions and isms which have arisen since, including Spiritualism. The devil has led them to believe the further delusion that there is something which survives the death of the physical man, and that something is conscious, intelligent, capable of existence without any sort of material body; is able to return to this earth or is in constant connection with it, altho in a higher sphere of intelligence and action; and that it is able to communicate with those who are sensitive to the impressions which these spirits are able to give.
Out of that falsehood grew ancestor worship, hero worship, deification of kings and great men; and therefore the word of warning that “the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to devils [demons], and not to God.” 1 Cor. 10:20. When the Israelites ate the sacrifices of the dead at Baal-peor, they were sacrificing to demons who personified the spirits of the dead. When those ancients believed that they were worshiping dead and deified heroes, they were bowing to demons. It was for this reason that God gave the strong prohibitions that He did against His children’s having anything to do with enchanters, or witches, or necromancers, or any class whatsoever that had to do with the pretended spirits of the dead. He tells us on the other hand that “the dead know not anything;” “Put not your trust in princes, nor in the son of man, in whom there is no help. His breath goeth forth, he returneth to his earth; in that very day his thoughts perish.” “His sons come to honor, and he knoweth it not.” The pertinent question is asked: “Should not a people seek unto their God? On behalf of the living should they seek unto the dead?” And the test is given, “To the law and to the testimony! if they speak not according to this word, surely there is no morning for them.”
Grant, skeptical friend, that the Bible theory is true; grant that there are, as the Bible declares, and as the tradition of all nations confirm, malefic spirits or demons surrounding this world, mingling among the children of men; and all is clear. Here they have existed for thousands of years. They have learned all the various ways and means and customs of our forefathers, of our friends who have died; they are skilled in the arts of deception; they have had millenniums of practise in the deceiving of the human family. They know of the intense agony, the suffering, the sorrow of those who have lost friends; they know of the desires which burn in many human hearts to know of what lies beyond; and so they come in the guise of the spirits of the dead.
A demon may come to one as a mother who fell asleep in death. It bears the same appearance in which we knew her, speaks in the same tone of voice, caresses us in the same way that she once did; but the being that is doing it all is a demon who is using his powers for the one purpose of deceiving. Sometimes the spirit comes in the form of the father, sometimes of a beloved and beautiful wife; but the one behind the mask, as our artist well shows, is a black demon from the ranks of the devil who comes thus to deceive.
This deception is shown in the very character of mediums; in the deceit that is manifest all through Spiritualism; in the doctrines12it teaches; in the fact that it matters very little what the morality of the medium is, she has no difficulty in holding communication with the “familiar spirits.”
God’s Messengers
Not so with the angels of God. They are under His control. God has His human messengers. To these human messengers He sends His angels. They ever meet the one great test, His moral law. “To the law and to the testimony.” If a spirit speak contrary to that, we know that it is an evil spirit. If a spirit speak in harmony with it, it is a message worthy of our consideration. Read the record of His Word. Note where those angels came to Daniel, to John. Before their surpassing glory God’s servant sometimes fell powerless; but the angel touches him; strength is restored; disease is taken away; the human messenger is made strong; like Moses, he comes down from the mount after a forty days’ fast, his face shining with the glory and power of God. How opposite to all this is the experience of mediums who come from their seances utterly exhausted, powerless! Some of them go into hopeless insanity.
Why not believe God’s Word? Why not see in the utterly unscriptural theory of the immortality of the soul and the conscious state of the dead, the very foundation of one of the most insidious and fatal deceptions that the world has ever known? On the other hand, why not see in the truth of God, life through Jesus Christ alone; power from Him to meet all these deceptions of the enemy; angelic help from Him, in harmony with His holy Word, to overcome all the conflicts of this life? When earth’s travail is past, when Christ Himself shall come again, then Satan and all his hosts shall be forever swept out of existence; God’s children in heaven and earth, coworkers in His great plan of salvation, will abide forever in that kingdom which shall have no end.
