Some spiritualists claim that Jesus Christ was nothing more than a highly developed medium gifted with extrasensory perception and the gift of healing. There is evidence that communication with the dead was practiced in the early Christian church until the 3rd century, after which it was abandoned.
The Fox Sisters:
The founders of the spiritualist movement, which began to emerge in 1848. Inexplicable bangs and knocking were heard in their house. Through this knocking, a spirit communicated various pieces of information that people asked for. For example, it could tap out the ages of a person’s children. It tapped the ages of living children quietly, whereas if a child had already died, it gave the number of years that child had lived with loud bangs.
When asked “Are you a spirit?“, the spirit answered YES by knocking. In the end, however, the Fox sisters were accused of fraud, and one of the sisters reportedly admitted that she had been cracking her toe joints. Spiritualism also includes other phenomena – telekinesis, the forming of human bodies out of ectoplasm, the voices of the dead sounding just as they did in life, and musical instruments playing by themselves.
Spiritualism in Britain:
well-known followers of spiritualism included Oliver Lodge, Sir William Crookes and Sir William Barret, Sir Conan Doyle, Victor Hugo and Hanner Swaffer.
The Spiritualist Religion:
Spiritualism was a religion of the “new age“. Unlike Christianity, which built everything on faith, spiritualism offered evidence that could be examined by science. Christian churches, however, began to object that mediums were not speaking with the dead but with demons sent by Satan, so that through them we would sell ourselves to him and become his slaves. Spiritualists sometimes faced various problems, whether fierce opposition from the church or sometimes from the state and its laws, when spiritualists were prosecuted, for example, for witchcraft.
Spiritualists mostly share the same view of how the universe is structured, in terms of 7 planes of existence (which is probably similar to the Myers report). The next photo tells you more about this:
The Spread of Spiritualism:
In the 1850s, spiritualism crossed the borders of the USA and Britain and reached Europe and South America. The latter was remarkable, because it happened thanks to a single man – Allan Kardec. He achieved his greatest influence in Brazil, where so-called Kardecist temples were built. In 1957, the Brazilian government officially recognized this religion by having Kardec’s portrait printed on five million postage stamps.
Mediums:
Spiritualism stands or falls with its mediums, see the list below:
Mrs. Leonora Piper:
She was investigated many times, yet she was never caught committing fraud. Richard Hodgson tried as well, but he was literally stunned when Mrs. Piper told him some intimate details about his relatives.
Daniel Dunglas Home:
He was born in Scotland in 1833. At the age of 9, he emigrated to America. At 17, after his mother died, he began to experience poltergeists (noisy spirits). Home never did anything by halves. His seances were always well lit; he made tables levitate and musical instruments play, and caused spirit hands to materialize. The audience could also feel “something” touching them and tugging at their clothes. He became most famous, however, for levitating his own body. He was examined under laboratory conditions, but no fraud was ever proven against him.
Rudi and Willi Schneider:
Willi was the first to show paranormal abilities, but when they weakened in him, his brother Rudi came to the fore. With the help of his spirit companion, Rudi was able to make objects move and to produce materializations. He was examined by various researchers, but nobody proved him a fraud.
Doris Stokes:
This lady cheated, which she eventually admitted herself, so I will not go into her in more detail here.
The New Age Message:
This is a movement of spirits from the beyond on one side, who have an important message for people, and of people on earth on the other. This is how spiritualists describe God through automatic writing: “God is the core of the universe, from Him everything else springs. He is truth and energy. He is matter and spirit… He is also the essence of our being”. The messages gradually began to warn of drastic and irreversible changes that would be terrible in a psychic sense, but would usher in a “New Age” at the beginning of the 21st century. The movement focuses on energy pockets, for example Stonehenge. Hand in hand with this, the number of crop circles, UFOs and poltergeists kept rising up to the year 2000. It is said that a person can be possessed by an evil spirit as well as by a good one. A walk-in is a highly developed being that has earned the right not to be reincarnated as a child, but to take over a body in situations such as a near-death experience, suicide or others. The pioneer was Ruth Montgomery. She predicted a lot of things, none of which, however, apparently came true quite the way she revealed them. She wrote many books; one about walk-ins, for example, is Strangers Among Us (Stangers Amongst Us). In another book, Aliens Among Us (Aliens Amongst us), she announces that many walk-ins are actually spiritual beings from Sirius, Arcturus and other star systems. They are the ones behind the mysteries of UFOs, and they plan to rescue a few people in their spaceships when the catastrophe comes. Those few lucky ones will stay in orbit until the poles stop shifting, and then a new, far more enlightened age of humanity will begin. Coming back to the crop circles, the Hopi Indians of Arizona are able to recognize them.
What Mediums Do:
Mediums see themselves as radio receivers tuned to a frequency that carries information from the beyond. They are divided into “mental” and “physical” mediums. Mental mediums are more numerous; they receive information and then simply pass it on themselves. Contact with the dead can occur in an altered state of consciousness, which can be reached even in amateur conditions by gazing into a glass of water or a crystal ball. Physical mediums are responsible for the following: levitation of objects and people. Musical instruments playing without anyone touching them, and likewise voices speaking.
Today’s Medium and Their Craft:
Ectoplasm:
…is a whitish substance, usually exuded from the medium’s natural body openings – genitals, breasts, navel, ears and eyes – although this is not always the case. Ectoplasm has been described as a living substance, sensitive to touch and light; when touched, it could quickly retract into the medium’s body and cause them pain. Its consistency has been described in various ways – from muslin to liquid to paste – and the substance is always cold, faintly luminous and with a characteristic smell. Ectoplasm was examined in a laboratory only once, but no traces of any substances unknown to us were found in it. It is in fact a transformation of the medium’s body, because after it is exuded the body weight drops. Ectoplasm is used by spiritual entities so that they can materialize here. What can be shaped depends on the amount of ectoplasm – a hand, faces, or even whole figures, which is rare, however.
Return from the War:
There were 2 friends – Henry Thomson and Alfie Hall. Hall stepped on a mine and was blown apart. One day, when a medium came to his town, Thomson went to a seance purely out of curiosity. The room was filled to the last seat, and during the evening 6-7 figures had materialized so far, each of them recognized by someone in the audience. The figures formed from ectoplasm spoke.
Then suddenly the tall figure of Corporal Hall stepped out from behind the screen, still looking 22 years old. He walked up to Thomson and offered him his hand, which Thomson felt was warm. For a full 5 minutes the 2 of them talked about life in the army, and Hall reminded him of a few things he had already forgotten. Finally, Hall assured his friend that he felt happy where he was, and turned to leave. Before he reached the screen, his figure dissolved.
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These are my notes, and sometimes direct “copies”, from the book Life After Death (subtitle Investigating the Mysteries of Life and Death) by Jenny Randles and Peter Hough (ISBN 80-85928-04-3). I have to return the book to the library, so I am at least keeping a memory of it in this form. If you want to find all the chapters I have written up like this on this blog, type something like “These are my notes from the book Life After Death” (without the quotation marks, of course) into the search on the right, because this intro will be included in all of these notes and blog posts. If you want to tell me anything, use the e-mail sunamocz@gmail.com .
You can ask for ICQ, Jabber or anything else, and I will try to give you everything. You can also tell me off, express sympathy, or even give me praise. I really have no desire, mood or anything else to copy out the whole book. I have tried to capture here the main ideas I came across, and since this book was packed with brilliant and remarkable ideas from the first letter to the last, I cannot cover absolutely everything here.
I hope it will make sense to you. I apologize for any spelling mistakes; this has not been through proofreading or any spell-checker. Enjoy!