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I, a Spiritualist, am absurd enough to confess that I do believe that the material living body of Mrs. Guppy was transported from one point to another in an instant of time, and I do not know any fact on record which is better attested. (See Spiritualist oi June 15, 1871.) I perhaps do not clearly comprehend what Mr. Massey means, as his admissions and denials appear to me contradictory, and I should have hesitated to comment upon them had I not met with a similar statement in that wonderful book Isis Unveiled, where Madame Blavatsky plainly asserts that no living body can pass through stone walls, Vol. II., p. 589. Her words are—“Hence we discredit all stories of the aerial flight of mediums in the body, for such would be miracle, and miracle we repudiate. Inert matter may be in certain cases, and under certain conditions, disintegrated, passed through walls and recombined, but living animal organisms cannot.” I am obliged to tell this excellent lady, who has herself performed a miracle in literature, that this is an erroneous statement. I assert that in my own experience living animals have been brought to me from a distance in compliance with an unexpressed wish, and, therefore, unknown to the medium, through brick walls, in an instant of time (see The Spiritualist, July 15, 1871), and Mrs. Guppy’s flight, which, from other circumstances, I predicted would happen, is an absolute fact, to which thirteen witnesses testify, and corroborate in the most complete manner.
Upper Norwood, February 2nd, 1878.
To "Inspired Evangelist of Naught"
Sir,— I am a plain man, of limited capacity. Till lately, however, I, in my egregious vanity, fancied that I knew, more or less, what Spiritualism was, and that I was a Spiritualist. But, sir, what with occultism, which, with its elementals, robs me of my belief in the humanity of the vast majority of the Spiritual agencies at work, without, so far as I can see, any sufficient evidence to counterbalance that which supported my belief; what with the medium’s-own-spirit-does-it-ism, which, on an even slenderer basis of probability, not to say on a basis of self-evident impossibility, seeks to do the same; what with metaphysics, which weave phantom ropes to tie into gordian knots; and what with the various other isms and ics too numerous to mention and too abstruse to explain, I am beginning to doubt, not only what Spiritulism is, but whether there is, or ever was, or ought to be, any such thing as Spiritualism, and am forcibly reminded of the lines in Rejected Addresses—
Junior U.S. Club, 4th February, 1878.
The Raven
“Prophet!” said I, “thing of evil!—prophet still, if bird or devil! |
Spirit Photography in the Dark – Manifestations with Mme. Blavatsky
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Editor's notes
London Spiritualist, No. 285, February 8, 1878, p. 69