1744 - Swedish scientist and mystic Emmanuel Swedenborg began to spread in his books information about the world of spirits and revelations that he allegedly received from saints, angels and other highly spiritual beings through dreams and visions. Swedenborg often traveled to other worlds, where he received advice and guidance from the spirits of deceased kings, priests, and various biblical characters.
Swedenborg was not the only famous scientist who believed in the existence of spirits, or mysticism. René Descartes, Isaac Newton, and Benjamin Franklin also believed this. With his books, Swedenborg aroused the curiosity of the European public about the issue of life after death and gave rise to a new understanding of the nature of the continued existence of the human individual.
Before the works of Swedenborg appeared, the dominant point of view of Christianity was that the soul after death goes either to heaven or hell, and the souls of Catholics go to purgatory. The life of the soul in these mysterious worlds, according to believers, was absolutely different from life in the physical world. According to Swedenborg's concept, which turned out to be revolutionary for those times, life in the spirit world is very similar to life in our material world. His communication with the spirits of the dead became as confirmation of the fact that direct contact can be established between the world of people and the world of spirits.
About 75 after Swedenborg's death, a simple shoemaker's apprentice had a vision in which Swedenborg and the Greek physician Galen told him about the continuation of life after death. This man named Andrew Jackson Davis, despite his young age and lack of formal education, began to write scientific works about the supernatural capabilities of the human body, which he called magnetism and electricity. 1845 - he fell into a trance, in which he dictated a voluminous work "The Principles of Nature, Its Divine Revelations and a Voice to Humanity", including such a prophecy.
I am convinced that spirits communicate with each other, despite the fact that some of them are enclosed in the human body, while others are on higher planes of being. Objective evidence will soon appear to support this truth. When this happens, humanity will delightfully enter a new era, which marks the revelation of the mystery of the life of the spirit after the death of the physical body. Three years later, on March 31, 1848, Davis said he felt a warm breath on his neck and heard a quiet voice that said: “Brother, work has begun. The first material evidence has been received."
It happened in the small town of Poughkeepsie, New York. That afternoon, in the nearby village of Hydesville, the three Fox sisters, Margaret, Kate and Leah, were playing in the house where they lived with their parents. Margaret was 10, Lea was 9, and Kate had just turned 7.
For several days, the Fox family heard a mysterious tapping on one of the walls of the house. On the same day, March 31st, when Davis received his mysterious message, the sisters wanted to establish contact with the spirit, which, they believed, was the cause of these strange sounds.
The younger sister Kate asked the spirit to repeat her actions, and then began to clap her hands. Almost immediately, there were several bangs on the wall that sounded like Kate's sounds. Then Margaret also wanted to join this fun and asked the spirit to count to four. Immediately, the girls heard 4 consecutive blows on the wall. The children were so frightened that they ran out of the room. A little later, they returned with Lea, after which the three girls, for the first time in modern history, established contact with the spirit world.
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The girls invented a system of questions and answers to communicate with the spirit. Through this system, they learned that during his lifetime this spirit was a scrap iron merchant and that he had been killed and walled up in the foundations of a house. Almost 50 years later, excavations were made at the base of the house to confirm what the sisters said. In the basement, the remains of a man were found, apparently killed and buried along with the tools of a hardware dealer.
The event that happened to the Fox sisters and predicted by Andrew Jackson Davis was the beginning of a movement called spiritualism. The sisters became famous mediums, and spiritualism spread with incredible speed in America and Europe. In European countries, the practice of getting in touch with spirits became fashionable and contributed to the emergence of a large number of mediums who claimed to have exceptional abilities for communicating with spirits. Many of these mediums were outright crooks, but there were those who showed an unusual talent in establishing contact with the spirit world, which could not find an obvious explanation.
One of the most famous mediums of the time was an Englishman named Daniel Douglas Home, who was able to levitate, rising several feet above the floor and sometimes reaching the ceiling. Home could not only levitate; when he entered the room, the floor began to sway, like an earthquake. The results of his communication with the spirits were always very accurate. One person reported witnessing how Home grew a full foot in the course of the session without lifting his feet off the floor. Among the famous personalities, Home's regular clients were the English poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning and the French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte.
Shortly after the death of Queen Victoria's husband, Prince Albert, in 1861, a 13-year-old boy named Robert James Leese fell into a trance state during a seance at his home. While he was in a trance, a spirit who claimed to be Prince Albert asked to convey a message to the queen. Among those present was a reporter from a London newspaper, who published a note the next day about the spirit's request. This article caught the attention of Queen Victoria, and she immediately ordered two courtiers to take part in a seance at the home of Robert James Lees.
During the second meeting, the spirit of Prince Albert, speaking through the lips of Lisa, recognized these courtiers and greeted them with the correct names, despite the fact that they had previously introduced themselves under assumed names. This time the spirit dictated a letter to the queen, addressing her only in a way known to them. What was happening so impressed Queen Victoria that she ordered the young Master Lisa to appear at the palace so that she could speak with Prince Albert with his help.
Robert lived in the palace for some time, but then the spirit left him as unexpectedly as it appeared, apparently deciding to communicate with the queen through one of the servants at Balmoral Castle in Scotland. This man named John Brown became Queen Victoria's personal lackey. He was considered a very talented medium who served the Queen for many years to establish contact with her beloved Albert.
While Robert James Lees worked as a medium for Queen Victoria, President Abraham Lincoln was also influenced in America by spiritualism.
According to Colonel Simon F. Keyes, then a member of the highest government circles in America, the president was a frequent visitor to seances. During one of these gatherings, a young medium named Nettie Colburn Maynard fell into a trance under the influence of a spirit claiming to be a representative of one of the angelic orders. In a trance state, the medium approached Lincoln and began to talk about the importance of abolishing slavery. The Spirit informed that the Civil War would not end until the slaves were free, because God commanded that all human beings should be free. Colonel Keyes, who was present at this session, wrote in his book that the medium expressed her thoughts very convincingly and intelligently, using arguments that could hardly be formulated by a young girl like Nettie.
Two days later, in a second session, the same spirit appeared in front of Lincoln, again advising him to free the slaves. At the outbreak of the Civil War, Lincoln had no intention of abolishing slavery; however, in September 1862, almost 8 months after he received the messages of the spirit with Nettie's help, the Emancipation Proclamation was signed by the president, which freed four million slaves. Although the history books do not confirm this information, the Civil War ended soon after the abolition of slavery in accordance with the prediction of the spirit.
In those days, the basis of spiritualism was the activity of mediums, who claimed that they had unusual abilities to establish contact with the spirits of the dead, and in some cases helped people communicate with their friends and relatives who had gone into the spirit world. Mediums began to be called "horses" or "houses" of spirits, because the latter "straddle" or "inhabit" the body of the medium during the practice of spiritualism.
Ouija sessions began with all participants sitting around a round table, holding hands. As a rule, the lights in the room were turned off, because it was believed that it could distract the medium while he was in a trance state.
Usually during the session, the medium would provide some evidence of his ability. These could be ringing bells, the sounds of a flute, tambourine and other musical instruments. Some mediums, such as the famous Daniel Dunglas Home, levitated, moved chairs and tables through the air and created glowing images of hands and other objects. One of the more popular sights was a trumpet floating through the air, which made sounds while Home did not even touch it.
However, by far the most impressive effect of mediums was the release of a strange substance called ectoplasm from the mouth or solar plexus of a transient medium. Eyewitnesses described ectoplasm as a transparent substance. This technique was very popular over the years until it was proven that it was nothing more than the result of cheating mediums who claimed to be able to secrete ectoplasm.
Participation in these very entertaining seances was not free, and the price depended on the reputation of the medium. Unfortunately for mediums, technological progress has exposed much of their cunning techniques. As a result, all types of material demonstrations during the sessions ceased, and the focus of attention shifted towards the medium, who is able to establish direct contact with the spirits and communicate to those present at the session things that are known only to them.
Sometime in 1850, a Frenchman named Hippolyte Léon Denisard-Rivaille undertook a thorough study of the theoretical positions and practice of Spiritualism. With the help of 10 mediums, Rivail established contact with several spirit guides and asked them to tell about life after death and cosmic laws. The responses received were analyzed and presented in The Book of Spirits, which Rivail wrote under the pseudonym Allan Kardek.
This book contains 1018 questions and answers about the creation of the world, the life of the spirit, spiritual development and reincarnation. According to Rivaille, spirits not only reincarnate, but also develop and improve, moving to higher levels of being in the spiritual and technical sense. Allan Kardek's ideas were consolidated into a separate teaching, which came to be called spiritualism.
One of the basic tenets of spiritualism is the conviction of the need for mercy and charity to save the soul. The most generous of all possible gifts is the gift of physical, mental or mental health to another person. Therefore, the main task of the medium is to perform charitable actions, especially those related to spiritual healing.
After the resounding success of The Book of Spirits, Kardek created other, no less significant works: The Gospel in Explaining Spiritualism and Collection of Selected Prayers. Many of these prayers are so popular in Latin America that millions of people know them by heart.
Kardek believed that spiritual development is possible only through a series of successive reincarnations. One of his firm convictions was that God provides each person from the moment of his birth with several spirit guides. These are highly developed beings who protect and help people on the path of their spiritual development. Some of these spirit guides are deceased relatives of a person in his current or even previous incarnations.
Kardek insisted on the importance of establishing contact with these highly evolved spirits in order to receive help in dealing with difficult situations. To this end, he tried to adapt some of the ideas of spiritualism to the norms and rules of Christianity. He later wrote a series of prayers and commentaries based on fairly strict norms of morality and behavior. This teaching eventually became part of his books. One of the most famous adherents of spiritualism was the French astronomer Camille Flammarion, whose poems were included in Kardek's Collection of Selected Prayers.
The followers of the direction of spiritualism, which Kardek adhered to, were more concerned about the spiritual development of mankind and the observance of divine laws than his original representatives, who were solely interested in profiting from the supposed supernatural abilities of mediums. That is why he decided to draw a line between these directions, calling his teaching spiritism.
Allan Kardek's books received such a widespread response in Europe that they were quickly translated into several languages, including Spanish and Portuguese. Despite the strict ban imposed by the Catholic Church on Kardek's books, his works were smuggled into Latin America at the end of the 19th century - especially Argentina, Brazil, Cuba, Puerto Rico and other countries of the Caribbean. Spiritualism quickly spread throughout these countries, and soon began to be practiced in the rest of the Latin American continent. Today, Argentina and Brazil are home to the largest number of spiritualists, and about 90% of Caribbean residents are passionate adherents of the Cardeca teachings.
Migene Gonzalez-Whippler