The history of witchcraft and demonologySummers, Montague
History
The history of witchcraft and demonology
Summers, Montague
Demonology; Demonology -- History; Witchcraft; Witchcraft -- History
We have here the case of a woman who was mediumistic and clairvoyant
to an almost unexampled degree, and it is very certain that if these
would-be fortune-tellers and mages who so freely advertise their powers
in many spiritistic journals to-day truly realized to what terrible
dangers and very real psychic perils the use and even the mere possession
of such faculties expose them, they would, so far from trafficking in
the presumption of abnormal gifts, regard them with caution and indeed
shrink from any occult practice at all, lest haply they become the prey
of controls and influences so cunning, so potent for evil, as to merge
them body and soul in untold miseries and shadows darker even than the
bitterness of death.
The modern Spiritistic movement, so strongly supported by recent
scientific utterances, is increasingly affecting all classes and
conditions of society, and is beginning in every direction to undermine
and actually to usurp the religious belief and convictions of thousands
of earnest and seriously inclined but not very accurately informed or
well-instructed persons. The basis of the movement is the claim that the
spirits of the dead are continually seeking to communicate and, indeed,
communicating with us through the agency of sensitives, so that it is
possible to get into touch and to converse with our dear ones who have
passed from this life. It is hardly necessary to emphasize the almost
infinite consolation and comfort such a doctrine holds for the bereaved,
how eagerly and with what yearning mourners will embrace such teaching,
and how perseveringly and with what tender agonies of an hungered love
they will devote themselves to the practices they imagine will place
them in closest connexion and communion with those whom they have lost
awhile, but whose voices they ever long to hear, whose faces they long
to see once again. It is a matter of common knowledge that during and
since the Great War Spiritism has increased tenfold; many who were wont
to laugh at it, who refused to listen to its claims and scorned it as
futile nonsense, are now among its most enthusiastic devotees. In truth
there must be few of us who cannot appreciate the irresistible influence
such beliefs will have upon the mind. Spiritism is seemingly full of joy,
and hope, and promise, and happiness. It will wipe all tears of sorrow
from poor human eyes; it is balm to the wounded heart; divine solace and
sympathy; the barriers of death are broken down; mortality is robbed of
its terrors.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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