< The Soul and the Spirit (continued from page 4-220) >
become visible to clear-seeing persons, sometimes to make a voice heard, and certainly to impinge the thought. But this condition is not or should not be lasting. While the two entities remain together, the person is a ghost or demon capable of going about the earth for good or evil, and influencing the acts and thoughts of those en rapport with him. But in due time the two are separated as by another dying, and the good repair to heavenly places.
Newark, New Jersey, United States, February 1, 1878.
Madame Blavatsky – Spirit Photography in Paris
Sir,— Although I have said so much about that wonderful woman, Madame Blavatsky, who, I understand, is soon to pass through England on her way (back) to the Far East, I wish to tell a little more about her. If she stops at all in London, you cannot make too much of her, for I do not think you Londoners will ever look upon her like again. My belief is that she is a priestess of Buddhism on a missionary visit to the Occident, whose dust she is now only anxious to shake from her feet. She created in New York the “Theosophical Society,” of which that honest, genial, and first-rate man, Colonel Olcott, is the president, she being only the modest “secretary.” She has also created, through epistolary correspondence, a nucleus or branch society in your London. And they press close around (and with a natural, perhaps, too considerable, an influence) your 38, Great Russell-street. She and I from the first took well and kindly to each other. One can talk to her as to a man, and to a strong man, and she will talk back like a man, and like a man whom you feel inclined to recognise as greatly superior to yourself in vast and varied learning, even while you cannot quite abdicate yourself. I think she would have liked to draw me into “Theosophy,” but I said that I was a traveller on the wing, absorbed with cares and concerns and duties (to others) of a different order, and that if I was ever to study out and into and through their “Theosophy,” it must be at some more auspicious future period. She paid me, what was from her, the compliment of saying that I was “a natural-born Buddhist.” To which I replied that I was content to be only a humble and very unworthy “Christian,” according to that essential Christianity of Christ Himself, as I understood it, and as contradistinguished from the ecclesiastical, theological, dogmatic, so-called “Christianity” which priesthoods (Catholic and Protestant) had made it. I also admitted that in the thousands of years even of the historic period before the birth of our Lord and Saviour, there may have been similar or analogous anterior Messiahships, all derived from the same One Source, to diverse ages, countries, and climes, according to their needs, such as those of a Chrishna, a Buddha, a Confucius, a Zoroastor, to say nothing of other less grand figures in legend or history (in regard to whom it is wonderful that Virgin Conception and birth is claimed alike for all!)—sent to preach the same two fundamental ideas, on which hang all the law and the prophets, namely, the Fatherhood of One God, and the Brotherhood of all men, to illustrate them by their lives and their deaths, and to “save” mankind by the influence of their examples of all the virtues. On another piece of common ground there was room for both our feet. She admitted the occasional real communication of the spirits of our departed relatives and friends with us, just as the Hindoos assign a considerable part in their supernatural phenomena to the Pitris, or spirits of ancestors.” When I told her that I could never give into their “Theosophic” opposition to our “Modern Spiritualism,” because X knew that I had communicated with my mother (to say nothing of others), in true and real and certain personal identity, and that I would now willingly surrender life and all rather than give up that blessed certainty, which involved everything, I gave her the particulars, to which she listened attentively. She admitted that she believed that in that case it was really my mother, but she added that such a case was rare, and she held to her general denunciation of modern stances and mediums, physical,) materialising, and others, as, for the most part, false and fraudulent, i.e,, as the work of low and lying spirits “elementary” or “elemental.” With some directions of larger divergence, we thus had common ground enough to stand upon with reasonable understanding and sympathy. Kindness on her part, politeness, and on mine real affectionate liking and profound respect, did the rest. I do not feel bound by evidence to accept their “Theosophistic” or “Occultist” theory that the marvels or “miracles” which certainly do take place through them, are the work of their will or their psychic power, cultured and developed into adeptship,” and able to command the work and service of obedient, soulless spirits of an order lower than humanity. I do not pretend to deny it (who and what are any of us to pretend to set bounds to the possibilities of the infinite unknown?), but, so far as at present advised, I can reconcile all their phenomena with the positive and certain facts of our “Modern Spiritualism,” by assuming that they, the “adepts,” are cultured and highly developed mediums, far superior to the general run of ours through their education, their thousands of years old traditions, their ascetic purity of life, and their high, spiritualised condition; and that attendant spirits may do for them in response to their thought and wish, the things they fancy that they themselves do through commanding force of their human will or power. Witness, for instance, the marvellous things that this spirit, so-called “John King,” performs for the Count de Bullet, through or with the aid of the good medial conditions which happen to exist in the organism of Firman. The Count never wills nor commands anything, and yet these marvellous things take place. Attendant spirits, who one and all claim to have lived in the flesh, do them, spontaneously, of whom “John King” seems to be the master of ceremonies; and in the accomplishment of those marvellous things figure some spirits confessedly of a much higher degree or sphere than himself at his present stage of progress; whom he helps to produce the manifestations, through the possession of a “fluidic force” derived from the fact of his being, while a good, yet a less elevated or advanced spirit than they; of his being more in or near to the material or earth-plane than they; of his having therefore connecting relations with matter which they have not, which they would seem to have risen above. They cannot, for instance, speak, yet “John King” and the “little Indian” can do so with great volubility, and the former often with great strength of the vocal organs. “Glaucus” and my mother have several times tried hard to speak close to my ear, and yet they could only utter a few whispered sounds, in which I could catch a single word here and there, and nothing more (in the case of “Glaucus” it was Latin; in the case of my mother, it was the word “Herbert,” the name of a brother of mine, long ago deceased). Only once has “Glaucus” been able to whisper three consecutive words, and my mother only twice; both under strong stress of motive to speak. And yet, I repeat, “John King” and the “Little Indian” can generally speak with great freedom and force, either seriously, or about nothing, or good-natured fun or nonsense. It seems that the lower can do things which the higher cannot; those things being manifestations in what we may call the material plane. And yet the higher desire to do them—strive to do them—for the sake of those here in the flesh whom they still love, but need the help of the lower to be able to do them, and are grateful for that help; while the lower, a “John King,” an “Ernest,” a “Joey,” or a “Lillie,” actuated by the best of feelings towards them and towards us, seems to be a sort of manager of matters, a sort of stage-manager, to “bring forward” the others, to work the wondrous chemistry of materialisation for them, of the collection of the invisible actinic light by means of which they can be photographed, &c., &c. Most of the good mediums seem to have such a stage-manager, as it were. It was so in California. It is so here. It seems to be so in England. This is a curious point in the observation of seances. These workers seem to be, I repeat, to be good spirits, labouring to progress by good work and service in a good cause, possessing a “fluidic force” greater than that of spirits in spheres higher away from the material plane, and possessing it for the very reason that they are still nearer to, or move in, that material plane.
Jan. 28.—Another beautiful photograph of “Angela” to-day, perhaps u the best yet obtained. Again a failure for my mother, though “Alexandrine” had tried to “help her.” A fresh flower (a camellia) was brought this morning for “Angela,” and in the photograph it duly appeared in her bosom. We had also asked her to pose this time less draped up to her throat. She accordingly appears in the picture as reasonably decolletee, showing her beautifully shaped shoulders and throat, and also the gold chain and turquoise cross given to her by the Count some three years ago, which we have often seen her wear in materialisations.
There occurred to-day the following little incident, perhaps worth mentioning. John King had remarked on his always finding a pin in the gauze veil, put into the cabinet to be used by the spirits in their telegraphic poses (this pin was put in by Mrs. Firman, when she would afterwards fold up the six metres of fine stuff, so as to bind it together into small volume). This led to this colloquy between me and John:—“Do you mean that you prick your fingers with the pin when yon open the stuff?”—“No, I always see it.”—“But if you should happen to overlook it, would it prick your finger and hurt you?’’—“Oh, no.”—“Well, I don’t suppose you are materialised there as you are when you come out to us, and shake our hands with a strong, warm, cordial hand like our own; but when you do thus take our hands with yours, which feels as natural and life-like as our own, would the prick of a pin or a cut or wound hurt you then, as it would us?”—“No, you could not hurt me.”—“A case is recorded as having taken place in America, in which a rifle-ball was fired at a materialised spirit.”—“Yes, and you are quite welcome to do the same to me. It won’t hurt me.” We all disclaimed any willingness to do such a thing. But he was quite persistent, and seemed to urge us to do it. “I will come out before you with my light, and you may fire as many shots into me as you like. They won’t hurt me.” He tried to persuade us to it. We all three replied that we could not bear that even in imagination. I said, “But when you, as is sometimes the case, take out from the medium’s organism to help make up your own materialisation, might not a pistol shot into you then hurt him?”—“In that case, it might, but it should only be done when I am fully prepared. Then you might fire a cannon-ball into me, and I should not care.” We all recoiled from the idea. And yet what would there be in it after all worse than our having witnessed “Angela’’ for the first time plunge her lovely young girl face into paraffin, at the temperature of almost boiling water? It was a horrid and truculent act, as once really done in America (at St. Louis, I believe), because it was in pursuance of a challenge by a sceptic, and, therefore, involved his willingness to fire into what he believed to be a man personating a materialised spirit. But it was actually done with a rifle placed on a rest, in exact line of aim. If there were any worthy and adequate object to be attained, I should not shrink from pulling the trigger now, in response to John’s repeated invitations. If, for example, the Academy of Sciences of Paris, the Royal Society of London, &c. (including disbelieving professors), would attend the “execution,” on their own premises and under their <... continues on page 4-222 >
Editor's notes
- ↑ Madame Blavatsky – Spirit Photography in Paris by O'Sullivan J.L., London Spiritualist, No. 287, February 22, 1878, pp. 95-6
London Spiritualist, No. 287, February 22, 1878, pp. 95-6