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The Spiritist Review - Journal of Psychological Studies - 1863 > July > Spiritist Dissertations
Spiritist Dissertations
Parisian Society of Spiritist Studies, June 19th, 1863
(Medium Mr. Vézy)
NOTE: This communication was given with reference to a blind lady that was present at the session
“My good friends, it has been a long time since I last came here but here we are. I thank God for that and to the good Spirits that come to help you walk the good path. Why have you called me? To pass my hands onto the poor lady that is in suffering and cure her? And what a suffering, good Lord! She lost her vision and it became all darkness for her! Poor child. She must pray and wait! I cannot make miracles without God’s consent. All the healings that I was able to obtain and that have been reported to you can only be attributed to the Father of us all. When suffering you should always look above and say from the bottom of your heart: “My Father cure me but have my soul cured before the illnesses of the body. May the flesh be punished, if needed, so that my soul can rise to you with the whiteness it had when created by you!” After this prayer my dearest friends, that our good God will always hear, you shall be given strength and courage and perhaps also be granted the cure that you have so humbly requested as a reward for your carnal abnegation. But since I am here in this assembly where before anything we study, I must tell you that those precluded from sight should consider themselves like the blessed ones of atonement. Remember that Jesus said that it was necessary to pull the eye if the eye was bad and that it would be preferable to have it thrown into the fire than have it as a cause of your condemnation. How many among you on Earth that will one day, in darkness, be sorry for having seen light! Oh! Yes, how fortunate in their atonement the ones who have their vision damaged? Their eyes will not be reason for scandal and ruin! They can live entirely the life of the soul. They can see better than you do you who have the light… When God allows me to open the eyelids of some of these miserable ones and give them your light I say to myself: “Dear soul, why don’t you live all the joys of the Spirit that lives in contemplation and love? It would not demand to see images that are less pure and kind that those that they see in their blindness.
Oh Yes! Blessed be the blind who want to live with God! That person feels and touches happiness more than you who live here. They see the souls and can live in the spiritual spheres and reach regions that not even the predestined of Earth can. The open eye is always ready to ruin the soul.
The closed eye, on the contrary, is always ready to guide the soul to God. Believe me, my dear and good friends, the blindness of the eyes is frequently the light of the heart whereas vision is sometimes the terrible angel of death.
And now a few words to you, my poor and suffering soul. Wait and have courage! If I told you: “My child, your eyes will open”, how happy you would be! And who knows such a happiness would not be the cause of your loss? Have trust in our good God who made happiness and allows sadness. I will do everything in my power but you must pray and above all think about everything I have just said.
Before I leave, all of you here receive my blessings, my dear friends. I give them to all: to the mad ones, to the wise, to the believers and to the unfaithful of this assembly. May it be useful to each one of you!
Vianney, Cure d’Ars.”
OBSERVATION: We were asked if this is the language of devil and if one offends the Cure d’Ars by attributing such thoughts to him. An uneducated peasant who is also a natural somnambulist who sees the Spirits very well attended the session and was in a somnambulistic state. She did not know the Cure d’Ars, not even by name, however she saw him by the medium and described him with perfection of details.
(Medium Mr. Vézy)
NOTE: This communication was given with reference to a blind lady that was present at the session
“My good friends, it has been a long time since I last came here but here we are. I thank God for that and to the good Spirits that come to help you walk the good path. Why have you called me? To pass my hands onto the poor lady that is in suffering and cure her? And what a suffering, good Lord! She lost her vision and it became all darkness for her! Poor child. She must pray and wait! I cannot make miracles without God’s consent. All the healings that I was able to obtain and that have been reported to you can only be attributed to the Father of us all. When suffering you should always look above and say from the bottom of your heart: “My Father cure me but have my soul cured before the illnesses of the body. May the flesh be punished, if needed, so that my soul can rise to you with the whiteness it had when created by you!” After this prayer my dearest friends, that our good God will always hear, you shall be given strength and courage and perhaps also be granted the cure that you have so humbly requested as a reward for your carnal abnegation. But since I am here in this assembly where before anything we study, I must tell you that those precluded from sight should consider themselves like the blessed ones of atonement. Remember that Jesus said that it was necessary to pull the eye if the eye was bad and that it would be preferable to have it thrown into the fire than have it as a cause of your condemnation. How many among you on Earth that will one day, in darkness, be sorry for having seen light! Oh! Yes, how fortunate in their atonement the ones who have their vision damaged? Their eyes will not be reason for scandal and ruin! They can live entirely the life of the soul. They can see better than you do you who have the light… When God allows me to open the eyelids of some of these miserable ones and give them your light I say to myself: “Dear soul, why don’t you live all the joys of the Spirit that lives in contemplation and love? It would not demand to see images that are less pure and kind that those that they see in their blindness.
Oh Yes! Blessed be the blind who want to live with God! That person feels and touches happiness more than you who live here. They see the souls and can live in the spiritual spheres and reach regions that not even the predestined of Earth can. The open eye is always ready to ruin the soul.
The closed eye, on the contrary, is always ready to guide the soul to God. Believe me, my dear and good friends, the blindness of the eyes is frequently the light of the heart whereas vision is sometimes the terrible angel of death.
And now a few words to you, my poor and suffering soul. Wait and have courage! If I told you: “My child, your eyes will open”, how happy you would be! And who knows such a happiness would not be the cause of your loss? Have trust in our good God who made happiness and allows sadness. I will do everything in my power but you must pray and above all think about everything I have just said.
Before I leave, all of you here receive my blessings, my dear friends. I give them to all: to the mad ones, to the wise, to the believers and to the unfaithful of this assembly. May it be useful to each one of you!
Vianney, Cure d’Ars.”
OBSERVATION: We were asked if this is the language of devil and if one offends the Cure d’Ars by attributing such thoughts to him. An uneducated peasant who is also a natural somnambulist who sees the Spirits very well attended the session and was in a somnambulistic state. She did not know the Cure d’Ars, not even by name, however she saw him by the medium and described him with perfection of details.
Parisian Society of Spiritist Studies, medium Mrs. Costel
Repentance reaches God and it is more pleasing to him than some sacrifices and the smoke of incense spread around sacred rooms. It is a productive suffering, a reactive and acting force like the storms that purify the air. Jesus sanctified his virtues and Magdalene’s tears spread like dew upon the hardened hearts that ignored the grace of forgiveness. The sovereign virtue proclaimed the power of regret reverberated along the centuries and weakening the word of Jesus.
Time has come when Spiritism must renovate and vivify the very essence of Christianity. Thus, in all places and forever take the cruel sentence down that strips the guilty soul from regret. Repentance is a lively, strong virtue that only advanced Spirits or kind hearts can feel. The momentary and scorching sorrow of a fault does not carry along the atonement that leads to the knowledge of God’s justice, a strict justice in its conclusions, that applies the “eye for an eye” sentence to the moral as well as physical life, punishing by the logic of the events, all resulting from the good or bad use free-will.
You must love those in suffering and support repentance for this is the God given sign and expression impressed on every intelligent being to rise up to and approach Him.
John, disciple
Repentance reaches God and it is more pleasing to him than some sacrifices and the smoke of incense spread around sacred rooms. It is a productive suffering, a reactive and acting force like the storms that purify the air. Jesus sanctified his virtues and Magdalene’s tears spread like dew upon the hardened hearts that ignored the grace of forgiveness. The sovereign virtue proclaimed the power of regret reverberated along the centuries and weakening the word of Jesus.
Time has come when Spiritism must renovate and vivify the very essence of Christianity. Thus, in all places and forever take the cruel sentence down that strips the guilty soul from regret. Repentance is a lively, strong virtue that only advanced Spirits or kind hearts can feel. The momentary and scorching sorrow of a fault does not carry along the atonement that leads to the knowledge of God’s justice, a strict justice in its conclusions, that applies the “eye for an eye” sentence to the moral as well as physical life, punishing by the logic of the events, all resulting from the good or bad use free-will.
You must love those in suffering and support repentance for this is the God given sign and expression impressed on every intelligent being to rise up to and approach Him.
John, disciple
Parisian Society of Spiritist Studies,
December 26th, 1862, medium Mr. d’Ambel
NOTE: This communication was given with reference to a report given at the Society about the new Spiritist societies in formation everywhere, in France and abroad.
Progress in regenerating ideas that we bring to your world today occurs in a clamorous fashion because it does need to be demonstrated now. Blind is the one that does not see the triumphant march of our ideas! When the most eminent persons, in the most liberal functions, people of study and science, doctors, philosophers and magistrates resolutely throw themselves onto the search for the truth in the avenues opened by Spiritism. When the working class come to find new forces and consolations, who among humans would be strong enough to oppose a barrier to the development of this new philosophical science? Lamennais said the other day in his concise and eloquent style that you are aware that the future points to Spiritism. Today I have the right to say: Isn’t that an accomplished fact? The road actually becomes broader; yesterday’s creek becomes a river and from the transposed valleys its majestic course will laugh at the feeble gates and late barricades that a few late inhabitants of the riverbanks will try to build to block its flow to the great ocean of infinity. Poor people! The currents will drag you along and soon we will also hear your screams: “It is true! Earth turns!”
If the bloody waves that spill over America did not draw the attention of every serious thinkers and of every friend of peace whose hearts bleed before the reports of those fratricide and bloody fights; if the weak, established nations were not seeking normality in their whole territory; finally if everyone’s aspirations did not tend to the moral and physical betterment that has been sought for so long one could then deny the utility of moral cataclysm announced by some Spirits of vanguard. But all these characteristic signs are very evident for not recognizing the need, the urgency of a new lighthouse that can save the endangered world. In the past when the pagan world undermined by the most absolute demoralization, vacillating on its own foundation, prophetic voices announced everywhere the soon arrival of a redeemer. Haven’t you heard, oh Spiritists, the same prophetic voices for a few years now? Ah! I know. None of you forgot. Rest assured then that the time has come and let us scream together like one day in Judea: - Glory to God in the highest heaven!” Erastus
December 26th, 1862, medium Mr. d’Ambel
NOTE: This communication was given with reference to a report given at the Society about the new Spiritist societies in formation everywhere, in France and abroad.
Progress in regenerating ideas that we bring to your world today occurs in a clamorous fashion because it does need to be demonstrated now. Blind is the one that does not see the triumphant march of our ideas! When the most eminent persons, in the most liberal functions, people of study and science, doctors, philosophers and magistrates resolutely throw themselves onto the search for the truth in the avenues opened by Spiritism. When the working class come to find new forces and consolations, who among humans would be strong enough to oppose a barrier to the development of this new philosophical science? Lamennais said the other day in his concise and eloquent style that you are aware that the future points to Spiritism. Today I have the right to say: Isn’t that an accomplished fact? The road actually becomes broader; yesterday’s creek becomes a river and from the transposed valleys its majestic course will laugh at the feeble gates and late barricades that a few late inhabitants of the riverbanks will try to build to block its flow to the great ocean of infinity. Poor people! The currents will drag you along and soon we will also hear your screams: “It is true! Earth turns!”
If the bloody waves that spill over America did not draw the attention of every serious thinkers and of every friend of peace whose hearts bleed before the reports of those fratricide and bloody fights; if the weak, established nations were not seeking normality in their whole territory; finally if everyone’s aspirations did not tend to the moral and physical betterment that has been sought for so long one could then deny the utility of moral cataclysm announced by some Spirits of vanguard. But all these characteristic signs are very evident for not recognizing the need, the urgency of a new lighthouse that can save the endangered world. In the past when the pagan world undermined by the most absolute demoralization, vacillating on its own foundation, prophetic voices announced everywhere the soon arrival of a redeemer. Haven’t you heard, oh Spiritists, the same prophetic voices for a few years now? Ah! I know. None of you forgot. Rest assured then that the time has come and let us scream together like one day in Judea: - Glory to God in the highest heaven!” Erastus
Parisian Society of Spiritist Studies,
June 19th 1863, medium Mr. Alfred Didier
The centuries of transition in the history of mankind are similar to vast landscape spotted by terrain features that looked sporadic and unorganized. The facts are that the integration of these features are understood in the detail not in the whole. The centuries abandoned by faith and hope are somber pages in which mankind ,guided by skepticism, consumes itself in the deafness of refined civilizations arriving at reactions that frequently replaced them by other civilizations.
The researchers of thought, more than the scientists, in our time and through a rational eclecticism, study in depth this concatenation of history, the darkness in its uniformity cast upon civilizations not long ago still lively and fertile like a thick fog and cloud. Strange destiny of peoples! It is almost near the birth of Christianity, in the most opulent cities, headquarters of the greatest Sea of the East and West that the devastations of decadence begins. It is amongst civilization itself, before the intelligent splendor of Arts, Sciences, Literature and the sublime teachings of Christ that the confusion of ideas and religious dissent begin. It is in the very cradle of the Roman Church, proud and stained by the blood of the martyrs that heresy, generated by the superstitious dogmas and by the ecclesiastic hierarchy, sneaks like an imminent serpent to bite the human heart, infiltrating into their veins amidst political and social chaos the most profound of all scourges: doubt.
The downfall this time is immense. The religious apathy of the priests, added to the heresy of the fanatical, removes any political strength, any love for the country and the Church of Christ becomes human but no longer humanitarian. It is useless to compare here, I believe, the horrific reports of those days with our time. The same commotions shake our civilization living side by side with the traditions of Christianity and the hopes for the future; the divide is present in the same ideas and the same doubt torments humanity, precursor signs of a social and moral renovation that is in preparation.
Ah Pray, Spiritists! Your troubled and blasphemous time is a rough time that the Spirits come to instruct and reassure.
Lamennais
June 19th 1863, medium Mr. Alfred Didier
The centuries of transition in the history of mankind are similar to vast landscape spotted by terrain features that looked sporadic and unorganized. The facts are that the integration of these features are understood in the detail not in the whole. The centuries abandoned by faith and hope are somber pages in which mankind ,guided by skepticism, consumes itself in the deafness of refined civilizations arriving at reactions that frequently replaced them by other civilizations.
The researchers of thought, more than the scientists, in our time and through a rational eclecticism, study in depth this concatenation of history, the darkness in its uniformity cast upon civilizations not long ago still lively and fertile like a thick fog and cloud. Strange destiny of peoples! It is almost near the birth of Christianity, in the most opulent cities, headquarters of the greatest Sea of the East and West that the devastations of decadence begins. It is amongst civilization itself, before the intelligent splendor of Arts, Sciences, Literature and the sublime teachings of Christ that the confusion of ideas and religious dissent begin. It is in the very cradle of the Roman Church, proud and stained by the blood of the martyrs that heresy, generated by the superstitious dogmas and by the ecclesiastic hierarchy, sneaks like an imminent serpent to bite the human heart, infiltrating into their veins amidst political and social chaos the most profound of all scourges: doubt.
The downfall this time is immense. The religious apathy of the priests, added to the heresy of the fanatical, removes any political strength, any love for the country and the Church of Christ becomes human but no longer humanitarian. It is useless to compare here, I believe, the horrific reports of those days with our time. The same commotions shake our civilization living side by side with the traditions of Christianity and the hopes for the future; the divide is present in the same ideas and the same doubt torments humanity, precursor signs of a social and moral renovation that is in preparation.
Ah Pray, Spiritists! Your troubled and blasphemous time is a rough time that the Spirits come to instruct and reassure.
Lamennais
Spiritist Group of Sétif, Algeria
You are frequently surprised when finding mental or physical mediumistic faculties that, in your opinion, should be a proof of personal merit in people that, given their moral character, are placed at a level below such a gift. That is due to the false idea you have about the laws that regulate such things and you want to consider them constant. The question is what is constant. The means vary to infinity so that your freedom may be respected. This one has a skill, the other has another one; one is led by pride, the other by greed and a third one by fraternity. God employs the capabilities and passions of each one, in their respective spheres and from evil itself He knows how to produce good. The actions of men that seem so important to you are nothing to God. It is the intention that carries merit or demerit to His eyes. Hence fortunate is the one that is guided by fraternal love.
Providence has not created badness. Everything was made aiming at the good. Badness only exist by the ignorance of man and the bad use made of passions, tendencies and the instincts acquired by the contact with matter. Great God! When you have them inspired by the wisdom of having in their own hands the direction of this powerful instrument – passion – how much badness will disappear! How much good will be produced by that power that today he only knows the bad side, his own work! Eagerly continue your work my friends! Finally, may humanity foresee the route that one day it will follow in order to achieve the happiness that is allowed on Earth!
Don’t be surprised if the communications that you are given by the elevated Spirits, entirely supported by the moral of the Savior, confirming and developing it, offer you so many points of contact and similarity with the mysteries of antiquity. The former peoples had the intuition of things of the invisible world and of what was to come and several of them were assigned with the mission of paving the way.
Observe and study carefully the received communications; accept what is not rejected by reason; repel what shocks it; request clarification about those who leave doubts. You have here the guidelines to be followed and to transmit to future generations, without fear of seeing the truths denatured, truth that you will separate effortlessly from its unavoidable entourage of mistakes.
Work, become useful to your brothers and to yourselves. You cannot envisage the happiness that the future spares you after the contemplation of your works.
Saint Augustine
You are frequently surprised when finding mental or physical mediumistic faculties that, in your opinion, should be a proof of personal merit in people that, given their moral character, are placed at a level below such a gift. That is due to the false idea you have about the laws that regulate such things and you want to consider them constant. The question is what is constant. The means vary to infinity so that your freedom may be respected. This one has a skill, the other has another one; one is led by pride, the other by greed and a third one by fraternity. God employs the capabilities and passions of each one, in their respective spheres and from evil itself He knows how to produce good. The actions of men that seem so important to you are nothing to God. It is the intention that carries merit or demerit to His eyes. Hence fortunate is the one that is guided by fraternal love.
Providence has not created badness. Everything was made aiming at the good. Badness only exist by the ignorance of man and the bad use made of passions, tendencies and the instincts acquired by the contact with matter. Great God! When you have them inspired by the wisdom of having in their own hands the direction of this powerful instrument – passion – how much badness will disappear! How much good will be produced by that power that today he only knows the bad side, his own work! Eagerly continue your work my friends! Finally, may humanity foresee the route that one day it will follow in order to achieve the happiness that is allowed on Earth!
Don’t be surprised if the communications that you are given by the elevated Spirits, entirely supported by the moral of the Savior, confirming and developing it, offer you so many points of contact and similarity with the mysteries of antiquity. The former peoples had the intuition of things of the invisible world and of what was to come and several of them were assigned with the mission of paving the way.
Observe and study carefully the received communications; accept what is not rejected by reason; repel what shocks it; request clarification about those who leave doubts. You have here the guidelines to be followed and to transmit to future generations, without fear of seeing the truths denatured, truth that you will separate effortlessly from its unavoidable entourage of mistakes.
Work, become useful to your brothers and to yourselves. You cannot envisage the happiness that the future spares you after the contemplation of your works.
Saint Augustine
OBSERVATION: This communication was obtained by a young man, an illiterate somnambulist. It was sent to us by Mr. Dumas, a dealer in Setif, member of the Parisian Society of Spiritist Studies, informing that the sensitive person ignores the meaning of most words and provide us with the names of ten renowned persons that attended the session.
Illiterate mediums that receive messages above their intellectual reach are freqent. A short while ago we were shown a message that was received in Lyon by a lady that cannot read or write and does not know a single word of what she writes. Her husband, who is almost like her, deciphers it out of intuition during the session but that becomes impossible on the following day. The other persons read them without much difficulty.
Isn’t that the application of Jesus’ words: “Your wives and your daughters will prophesize and make prodigies?” Isn’t that a prodigy to write, paint, draw and compose music and poetry without the skills?
You demand material signs? Here you have them. Will the unbelievers say that it is the result of imagination? If it is they should know that such persons have imagination in their hands and not in their brains. Still once more a theory is only good with the condition that it can explain all the facts. If it is contradicted by a single one it means that it is false or incomplete.
Allan Kardec[1]
Illiterate mediums that receive messages above their intellectual reach are freqent. A short while ago we were shown a message that was received in Lyon by a lady that cannot read or write and does not know a single word of what she writes. Her husband, who is almost like her, deciphers it out of intuition during the session but that becomes impossible on the following day. The other persons read them without much difficulty.
Isn’t that the application of Jesus’ words: “Your wives and your daughters will prophesize and make prodigies?” Isn’t that a prodigy to write, paint, draw and compose music and poetry without the skills?
You demand material signs? Here you have them. Will the unbelievers say that it is the result of imagination? If it is they should know that such persons have imagination in their hands and not in their brains. Still once more a theory is only good with the condition that it can explain all the facts. If it is contradicted by a single one it means that it is false or incomplete.
Allan Kardec[1]
[1] Paris, typography Cosson & Co., Rue de Four-Saint-Germain, 43