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SPIRITS, MEDIUMS & THE AFTERLIFE by Jean Vernette
All booklets are published thanks to the generous support of the members of the Catholic Truth Society
CATHOLIC TRUTH SOCIETY PUBLISHERS TO THE HOLY SEE
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CONTENTS Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 The history of Spiritualism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 What do Spiritists believe? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 Spiritism, mediums, ectoplasm, tables: Looking at paranormal phenomena . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 Some initial conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 The Catholic Church and Spiritualism . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
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INTRODUCTION Can we communicate with the dead? When a loved one dies it is often only children who express the questions that are in all our minds: “Where are they now? Can they see us? Can we speak to them?…” Behind these questions lies the great metaphysical problem that faces every human being: where do we come from? And where are we going? Every time we think of our dear departed relatives or friends, the same questions come to the surface. Where is she now? What is she doing? Is she happy? Can she see me? Can she hear my voice? Can I do something for her? Can she do something for me? Can we get in touch with those who have gone before us? Or do they now live somewhere that is inaccessible to us? If they are accessible, then how can we contact them? Many people believe that we can contact the dead with the help of people who have a special ‘ability’ commonly known as mediums, and they have been portrayed in popular films like Ghost and ply their trade in every country. These use different methods, ranging from direct contact to ‘table tilting’ or ‘talking glasses’ or ‘ouija boards’. People whose close relatives have died prematurely in war or accidents believe they have received messages
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from them using any number of these and other techniques. Some of these messages which have been published in books or circulated to like-minded people, are expressed in highly spiritual language, and yet for a Christian, serious questions remain: can we truly believe these messages which claim to come from the beyond the grave? For a believer, whose faith is grounded in the Word of God, death is not the end of our existence. Our loved ones who have passed away have left this life but have not altogether disappeared. As it says in the rite of the funeral mass, for them “life is changed not ended”. The dead are invisible but close to us and we are in communion with them. Through the ‘communion of saints’ we can have an authentic communication with those who have gone before us. These are neither ghosts nor disincarnate beings, rather they are children of God, participating in eternal life in the house of the Father. Yes, we can communicate with the dead, with those on the other side of the “mirror” (cf. 1 Co 13:12) beyond the “veil” (Heb 6:19), but not by the tapping of round tables or a ouija board. Many of those who consult spirits and mediums do so in good faith, and deserve our concern; many have suffered terribly because of the death of a loved one, and some mediums may indeed possess genuine parapsychological skills, for which some explanation is needed. However, when someone embarks on this path thinking that this is the true way of direct
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contact with the dead it will only lead down a blind alley. Perhaps some momentary relief from one’s pain will be obtained, but in the long run it will lead to disappointment, or even harm. The good news given us by Jesus Christ can at times appear difficult, but it is the only sure way that can lead us to peace and a tranquil heart. It is a way based on the hope which Christ himself gave to us: “I am the resurrection. If anyone believes in me, even though he dies he will live, and whoever lives and believes in me will never die.” (Jn 11:25-26) Only in following Christ will we find the true method of communicating with those who have gone before us.
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THE HISTORY OF SPIRITUALISM1 If those who have died have passed “beyond the mirror” we might think that they know something more about the afterlife, about what is to come. If we could only communicate with them directly maybe we could ask them for advice, information or prophecies. Mankind has attempted to do this since time immemorial, and has always dabbled in ‘necromancy’2. All that has changed are the methods and the cultures in which these attempts have taken place. In the Bible, King Saul tries to communicate with the spirit of the prophet Samuel, using a female necromancer, despite the fact that the Jewish law expressly forbade such practices. (1 S 28) The Mesopotamians would attempt to contact the dead in the moment when they believed the spirits returned to haunt the houses where they had lived, while they were alive. The Egyptians on the other hand believed the dead could speak to you at night in dreams. Across a wide range of cultures it has been customary to make offerings of food and other items to deceased 1
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Throughout the booklet the terms Spiritism and Spiritualism will be used interchangeably. In the precise sense of the word, i.e. consulting the dead, rather than its more general usage as a blanket term for black magic.
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ancestors. Ancestor worship was common from China and India to the Greek and Roman world. These however were not particularly concerned with having a conscious response from those ancestors. Only in the modern scientific era have people felt it necessary to have objectively verifiable responses from the dead, through things seen, touched or heard. The number of these so-called manifestations mushroomed at a rapid rate with the rise of Spiritualism in the nineteenth century. One day on a farm in America Modern Spiritualism began in the USA in 1847-1848 on a farm in Hydesville (New York State) which was reputed to be inhabited by spirits. There were stories of furniture which moved of its own accord, and above all of knocking sounds heard from walls all around the house. These were a source of much amusement to the two youngest daughters in the house, Margaret and Katie Fox (aged 15 and 12). The girls would clap their hands and the tapping wall would imitate their rhythm. Mrs Fox asked the wall to count to twenty and twenty taps were heard. They began to ask questions: “tap if you are human!” no response. “Tap twice if you are a spirit!”… “Tap! Tap!” came the response. Within a short time the trio had invented a method of “conversation” based on a simple premise, they would give two choices and one tap indicated the former and two the latter. Thus was the method of communication with the
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dead uncovered. The girls even succeeded in discovering the identity of the spirit: his name was Charles, a travelling salesman who had been murdered by a former occupant of the house who then buried him in the cellar. Neighbours, friends and others ensured that the news spread like wildfire. Spiritualism was born, and was immediately a great success. Margaret and Katie, accompanied by their older sister began to put on public performances across the United States. It became clear that communication with spirits was best achieved through certain people called “mediums”, who acted as intermediaries between this world and the next. Just six years later, there were already over ten thousand mediums in the USA alone, some three million followers of Spiritualism and around twenty specialist magazines and reviews. The Birth of a new religion As a new religion, the spiritualist faith was spread by zealous missionaries who took it across the Atlantic to Britain and Germany. It became popular among those who frequented the most elegant drawing rooms of London and salons of Paris. The famous novelist Arthur Conan Doyle attended sittings in London and Victor Hugo questioned the spirits using the turning tables at Madam de Girardin’s in Paris. In 1857 what would become the core text of Spiritualism was written by a man named Léon-Hippolyte Rivail (18041869). He wrote it under the pseudonym Allan Kardec, which were the names he claimed to have had in his previous
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lives as a druid. The title of the book gives a good idea of the pretensions of the author: The Book of Spirits, containing the principles of Spiritist doctrine on the immortality of the soul: the nature of spirits and their relations with men; the moral law: the present life, the future life, and the destiny of the human race. According to the teachings of spirits of high degree, transmitted through various mediums, collected and set in order by Allan Kardec. In all the major Western countries, at the beginning of the twentieth century many learned scientists from varied backgrounds devoted themselves to the study of psychic and paranormal phenomena, and the number of specialist publications grew very quickly. The movement suffered a loss of popularity with the advent of pure materialist rationalism and the general scepticism towards anything supernatural which accompanied the technological advances of the mid twentieth century. Recently however, riding the crest of a backlash against rationalism, and the rise of new age beliefs, this trend has been reversed and the practice of Spiritualism is again on the increase. Many have attempted to contact relatives who have died, presuming nonetheless to remain faithful to their religious convictions. Messages have reputedly been received from beyond the grave which include responses from the saints, the Virgin Mary and God himself. However, a brief look at the doctrines of Spiritism will soon show us that between them and the Christian faith there is a great abyss.
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WHAT DO SPIRITISTS BELIEVE? We will not enter immediately into a discussion of the paranormal phenomena (often the result of elaborate hoaxes) which accompanied the rise of Spiritism: spontaneously moving objects, strange knocking sounds on walls, spiritmaterialisations of the dead, sudden changes of temperature, ectoplasms and the like. Especially since the conditions under which most of these manifestations took place led to serious doubts as to their scientifically provable veracity: most sittings took place in darkened rooms with observers kept at a distance and in a pre-determined place. They were also unable to move around since they all had to hold hands, the medium was often isolated behind a curtain or in an adjoining room, all circumstances which cast considerable doubt on proceedings. Nevertheless, the teachings of Allan Kardec and his disciples have not needed these suspect phenomena to create an entire system based on God, the cosmos, spirits and communication with the dead. What is a spirit? “Spiritualism (according to Allan Kardec) is the doctrine founded on the existence manifestation and teaching of the spirits�.
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What then is a ‘spirit’? (again according to Allan Kardec) It is the immortal part of a human being, his or her soul. The soul is the ethereal part of man, which is the source of thought, love and will, and is enclosed in the physical body by means of an ‘astral body’ or ‘perispirit’. And what in turn does he believe a perispirit is? It is a semi-material body of energy, like a cluster of vibrations or a vital fluid which is a manifestation of cosmic energies. It is similar to our physical body in that it shares its shape, its illnesses and injuries as well as its positive attributes. Therefore it is for the spiritualist the best intermediary between the physical world (i.e. the body) and the spiritual realm (i.e. the spirit). In fact when the physical body dies, it corrupts and disappears. The soul is free of it, and continues its own individual existence, still enveloped in the perispirit. A spirit is therefore, for spiritualists, a human being who has been freed from his or her mortal body. So why not contact spirits? Especially since they desire to be contacted, having retained all the affections and ties of their past physical life. They cannot help but desire to be in contact with us who remain on earth in order to help us and do good to us. This is the premise of all the spiritualist techniques. ‘Revelations’ regarding the other world One way in which spirits have been said to help the living is by revealing the mysteries of the world beyond.
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Therefore Spiritualism purports to give a new revelation which supplements and completes that which Christ has given to the world. The 1019 questions and answers of Kardec’s ‘catechism’ of Spiritualism effectively develops a new religion. This picks up many strands of Christianity, but at the same time diverges radically from it. His teachings are attributed to a diverse range of spirits, and are not always completely coherent, in fact there are some fundamental contradictions. Spiritualist revelation is rooted in information that was gleaned from spirits in the lifetime of Kardec, i.e. the nineteenth century, while other branches of the movement lay claim to different sources. Various other syncretistic New Age groups who are close to Spiritualism, like Anthroposophy and the ‘Universal Great White Brotherhood’ and the Theosophical Society, lay claim to more ancient and universal esoteric knowledge which has been available to the initiated since time immemorial. What is man? The spiritualist view of man is very different from that of the Bible, since they teach that man is neither unique nor a unity of body mind and spirit. The body is simply a shell which the soul inhabits temporarily before moving on to the next one, much like a person would change clothes. Reincarnation is a fundamental tenet of
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Spiritualism and it is well known that this belief is in direct opposition to Christianity which holds that every soul, every human person is created individually by God for a unique plan, without the burden of having to be reincarnated in a succession of new bodies. Spiritists even purport to find evidence for the existence of the perispirit in the letters of St Paul! While it is true that Paul speaks of a “spiritual body” the context is altogether different. The apostle reflects on the resurrection of the dead and asks himself: “How are dead people raised, and what sort of body do they have when they come back?”. His answer is that our body will be transformed, but that it will still be very much our own body: “what is sown is a natural body, and what is raised is a Spiritual body” (1 Co 15:35.44). This spiritual body is not therefore a third ethereal part of man but the new condition of the natural body in “the new heavens and the new earth”. What is man’s destiny? Where is he going? For spiritualists all spirits are created equal. Through the various trials that God gives them they acquire knowledge and experience. Through a process which takes an indeterminate length of time they will all become perfect and fulfill their final destiny by becoming angels. Every human being therefore is nothing more than an angel in waiting. If this is the case it is difficult to see a role for human freedom, since sooner or later, we will all become angels regardless.
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Thus, we have arrived at a point which is very far indeed from the teachings of the Gospel in which God places salvation before every human being who in his own free will can choose it or reject it. Christ has redeemed us, but this redemption is not imposed upon us, neither is it automatically accepted. God respects the decision of each and every man whom he created in total freedom. It is precisely in this that we see the greatness and at the same time the riskiness of the destiny of man. Communication with spirits According to the ‘revelations’ of the spirits collected together by Kardec and others, at the point of death, the soul becomes a wandering spirit. It continues to mix with our daily life and attempts to contact us. Then it enters the spirit world where it meets up with all those whom it has met on earth. In this realm it remembers all its previous lives and then it continues on to inhabit the various globes or spheres of the universe. At each of these stages it is still possible to contact the spirits, be it Julius Caesar or Joan of Arc, a dear departed husband or a child who died prematurely. We will now explore how this purports to be done. Kardec warns that one must be careful because sometimes ‘inferior spirits’ take the place of those whom we are invoking and we can be tricked… As the fashion for séances grew, they attracted people who were in search of something really sensational in the
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already unwholesome and disturbing atmosphere of the sittings. Séances were already organised to target people’s imagination and heightened sensibilities (believing that you are in communication with the spirits of the dead is a truly disconcerting experience) so much so that many people fell victim to nervous breakdowns and mental disturbances and these were of course, conveniently blamed on inferior spirits. From the very beginning, the Bible has always warned us of the ways in which the Evil One sneaks through doors that are opened to him. Here are some explicit warnings from the Bible: “There must never be anyone among you who… practises divination, who is soothsayer, augur or sorcerer, who uses charms, consults ghosts or spirits, or calls up the dead. For the man who does these things is detestable to Yahweh your God.” (Dt 18:10-12) “Do not have recourse to the spirits of the dead or to magicians; they will defile you. I am Yahweh your God.” (Lv 19:31) “Any man or woman who is a necromancer or magician must be put to death by stoning; their blood shall be on their own heads.” (Lv 20:27)