Our blessed Lord, who knew the future, said: "There shall arise false Christs and false prophets, and they shall work signs and wonders." (Matthew 24:24)Our blessed Lord, who knew the future, said: "There shall arise false Christs and false prophets, and they shall work signs and wonders." (Matthew 24:24)
"Signs and wonders" have been worked in our days Mesmerism, spirit-rapping, table-turning, spiritualism, are the wonders that engage men's attention today. And yet these are not new; they are but the re-arisen sorceries of an earlier age. Tertullian says: "Magicians work wonders; they even call up the shades of the dead. They procure children to speak with the tone of oracles; they perform preternatural things by revolving affairs; they infuse sleep; and having received the aid of angels or demons, they cause tables to divine." - Apologia, 23
What is Mesmerism?
Of the sorceries of our days mesmerism is the oldest, and is therefore the first link in the chain that connects us with the witchcraft that flourished towards the close of the Middle Ages, and after they had passed away. Mesmerism is so called from its author, Franz Mesmer, a German. He was born in 1734, and studied medicine at Vienna; but, after taking out his degrees, he turned his attention to theory and experiments rather than to practice. Arguing from the relation that exists in minerals which we call magnetism, he concluded that such a connection must exist too between men. He set himself to find this connection, which he called animal magnetism; and in the year 1775 he published his theories regarding it. In the year 1782 a committee was appointed to investigate his work. He claimed that he had discovered an emanation or influence proceeding from the bodies of persons, and that this emanation had a certain action or power on the bodies of certain other persons more powerful over some, less powerful over others; just as mind has power, less over some, more over others; or as a certain expression of face will at once interest and (as it were) speak volumes to some parties, and will have no influence over, and be quite blank to, others. With his wonderful abilities and his patient investigations, he constructed a new system which at once engaged the learned of Europe at that day. The committee - one of whom was the celebrated Franklin - entirely reprobated the idea. They wind up their report by saying: "On blindfolding those who seemed most susceptible to the influence, all its ordinary effects were produced when nothing was done to them, but when they imagined they were magnetised; while none of its effects were produced when they were really magnetised, but imagined nothing was done. The effects actually produced were produced purely by the imagination."
Mesmer was so chagrined by the report that he retired into private life, still continued his experiments - they were his only consolation - and died in poverty in the year 1815, being over 80 years of age.
"The mesmeric state is produced by a steady gaze at some fixed object. There is no peculiar virtue in the eyes of the mesmerist or in a metallic disc, for a spot on the wall will produce the effect. The thing requisite is a monotonous and sustained concentration of the subject's will, producing weariness and vacancy of mind; and this resembles the condition that induces reverie and sleep. No wish of the mesmeriser was ever known to affect the subject until it was conveyed to him by voice or otherwise." - Chambers' Encyclopedia "It has been clearly established that the notion of a force of any kind whatever proceeding in such cases from a person or from a magnetising apparatus is a delusion" - Idem
What was the beginning and what the history of spirit-rapping?
The birth-place of spirit-rapping was the State of New York, and was first heard about the commencement of the year 1848. There is a village in New York State named Hydesville. A Mr. Fox and his family lived there in the above year. For some two or three months, there was heard night after night a knocking, now at the door, now at the windows - at one time on the floor, at another at the ceiling. Believing it to be some practical joke, they tried every means to discover the perpetrator - but all in vain. They grew weary of it, and wished they were done with it, but to no purpose; the knocking continued. "Wearied out by a succession of sleepless nights and of fruit less attempts to penetrate the mystery, the family had retired very early to rest, but scarcely had the mother seen the children in bed and was retiring to rest herself, when the children cried out: 'Here they are again'. Thereupon the noises became louder and more startling. Kate (one of the children, about nine years of age) remarked that as often as her father shook the windows (to know if it was they that were causing the noise) the rappings seemed to reply. Turning to where the noise was she snapped her fingers, and called out: 'Here, do as I do'. The knockings instantly responded. She called her mother: Only look, mother, she said, bringing her finger and thumb together, as before. And as often as she repeated the motion (even noiselessly), the rappings answered. Count ten, the mother said. Ten raps were given. Are you a man? No answer. Are you a spirit? It rapped." - Chambers' Encyclopedia
The neighbours flocked in. Questions were asked and answered. The rumour got abroad. The newspapers took it up and discussed it. A brochure, containing the statements of eye-witnesses, appeared in April, 1848. The invisible agents declared they were the spirits of deceased relatives and friends, and that they wished that the facts should be published. This, to a Catholic, was, or would be, evidence enough to damn them; for spirits from the other world do not return for such idle and vainglorious purposes as they seemed to seek. In Rochester, in the November of 1848, a lecture was delivered, at which it was promised the knockings would be heard. The knockings were heard, and a committee was straightway appointed to investigate. The committee failed to find any explanation of the knockings. Another was appointed on the spot. It failed. Disgusted with their failure, the assembly appointed a third. It likewise failed.
Dr. Nicolls, in a work entitled Forty Years of American Life, gives some of the different phases it assumed, and of the works it performed: "Dials were made with movable hands, which pointed out letters and answered questions without apparent human aid. The hands of mediums without their volition wrote things beyond their knowledge. Some represented (most faithfully, it was said) the actions, voices,, and appearances of persons long since dead. Others, blindfolded, drew portraits of persons they had never seen. Ponderous bodies, such as heavy dining-tables and piano fortes, were raised from the floor. Mediums were raised in the air. Writings and pictures were produced without visible hands," etc., etc.
When one rises up from reading the humble, edifying, saintly works of any one of God's great servants on this earth, and compares them with these nonsensical vagaries of invisible beings, the conclusion is at once forced on one's mind, that these things, if they be the work of supernatural agents (as undoubtedly some of them were), they can be done by no agents sent from God. They can be done by no agents sent from the solemn assembly of the departed in purgatory, and can therefore be but the works of the agents of the demon in hell.
The further history of spirit-rapping. The report of the wonders crossed the Atlantic. In 1854 a Mrs. Haydon came over from America, but produced little or no impression. In the following year, however (1855), appeared in those islands the famous apostle of spiritualism or spirit-rapping, Mr. Daniel Dunglas Home. The manifestations which took place in his presence were of so startling a nature that all Europe was amazed - the third Napoleon opened the gates of the Tuilleries to him, and the Emperor of the Russias received him at Saint Petersburg. In 1869 a committee was appointed in London to investigate the new doctrine, and many of the members of the committee that came to mock, it seems, remained to pray. The committee issued its report, and it is merely a replication of the vain, silly, aimless, unedifying, though undoubtedly wonderful, things which have been already recited.
"One of the most recent phases of spiritualism in this country," says Chambers, "is spirit-photographs." Wonderful works surely! From their fruits you shall know them! Gigantic powers, angelic intelligences, debased to the poor renown of raising a weight, lifting a man in the air, moving hands or fingers that belonged to no visible body, making musical instruments play, producing paintings in pencil or colours, giving portraits of dead persons, and such silly trifling - and the agents of these nonsensical works are incensed and worshipped as deities. These be thy gods, O Israel!
Are all these the work of supernatural agents?
It is likely that they are not. Many of them may be attributed to sleight-of-hand, and it is wonderful what mysterious things may be done by sleight-of-hand, and to the uninitiated all but absolutely incredible things are thus performed. These, of course, are the result of natural causes; but many, and in the case of some mediums all, are to be attributed to preternatural agents - and if to preternatural agents, it is not to God, nor the angels, nor the saints, nor even to the shades or spirits of the dead, but to the agents of the demon.
Pere Matignon writes: "All these things have frequently been accompanied by extraordinary phenomena, apparitions of light, flames of fire, mysterious hands, phantoms visible to some of the bystanders, invisible to others, a repetition of unusual noises, mysterious knocks coming from several quarters at the same time, thunder-claps, voices which resembled those of men and sang unknown airs, harmonious sounds as if proceeding from musical instruments, sometimes even a complete concert, to which nothing was wanting except the figures of those who played or sang.
"Even in the physical order the unknown agent works wonders. He produces in some media insensibility and rigidity of limb; he will develop and enlarge bones and members of the body till they assume a monstrous proportion and shape sometimes sudden and unexpected cures have taken place, but more frequently disturbance of mind as well as sickness of body, which, in many cases, led to insanity and suicide." (La Question du Surnaturel)
"Now that invisible and intelligent cause (by which these things are wrought) cannot be God, nor an angel, nor a saint, but the demon. An effect always partakes of the nature of its cause. In the works wrought by the demon, neither the object, manner, medium, nor purpose, has any thing dignified, useful, or holy about it. Vanity, silliness, cruelty, violence, pride, uncleanness, characterises and condemns them. Whereas to God and His angels and His saints can be attributed those works only that are in consonance with the holiness of heaven." (Bonal)
But could souls from purgatory be the cause?
No; and for the very same reason that the angels or saints in heaven could not; for it would be all but blasphemy to assert that the angel enjoying eternal bliss would, at the command of some person on earth, not to say an unholy person, leave his home in heaven to play at silly nonsensical tricks, always to obey such a person's nod and will, and to pander to the idle curiosity of the public when ordered. In the same way it would be outrageous to assert that a soul from the ever blessed stillness and silence of the sacred prison-house of the dead - the Christian limbo - would be brought to this life for no other purpose than to take part in vain and ridiculous antics.
115. Could then a soul from hell assume a spiritual body and be the cause?
A soul that is in hell cannot leave it without God's special permission. God permits the demons to do these things, as, from the beginning of the world, He has all along permitted them to seduce men by all kinds of wiles and temptations - by assuming power, by doing extraordinary things, by pandering to men's passions - to seduce them from their allegiance to the Creator, and induce them to serve and obey the demon. But never has He permitted a soul from hell to come to earth. "Between us and them there is fixed a great chaos; so that they who would pass from hence to them cannot, nor from thence come hither." (Luke 16:26)
But perhaps they can come to testify to brethren, lest they also go to that place of torments?
No; they cannot come. "They have Moses and the prophets, let them hear them." And assuredly if they be not permitted to come to testify to brethren, they are not permitted to come on such vain errands, or for such foolish purposes as the ends and aims spirit-rapping professes and exhibits.
Is it lawful then to ask questions of those turning-tables or spirit-rappings?
It is not lawful, even under a protest, or when done for a joke; for if tables be turned round without any natural cause, then they can be turned by the devil only; or if knocks take place or rappings be heard without any explanatory cause, then it must be by diabolic agency; and any person holding communications with the works of the devil plainly does a forbidden thing. It would, of course, be quite a different thing if the tables were turned (as they usually are) by sleight-of-hand, and that answers were given by the same, and the whole meant for a pastime.
Is there anything wrong in being present at these seances?
If it be evident and incontrovertible that these manifestations take place by diabolic agency, then it would be wrong to assist at them. "It is not lawful," says Bonal, "to be present at those gatherings where table-turning, spirit-rapping, and question and answer take place; for, then those assisting are by their presence countenancing, and therefore participating in the sin of the promoters. Even should they go with the motive of seeing for themselves, or, more laudably still, endeavouring to refute them, it is not lawful - we are not to do evil, that good should come out of it."
Where, on the other hand, it is done by sleight-of-hand, and known to be such, there can be no sin. It is however, at best, very silly and not very commendable pastime.
"Properly, therefore, has the practice of invoking the demon by table-turning, spirit-rapping, etc., and consulting him, or holding any commerce with him, been reprobated and condemned by the bishops all over the world as superstitious and damnable." (Bonal)
"In the nineteenth century, as in the most remote and illiterate ages, the human race, with its inborn curiosity for the marvellous, leaves behind it, as worthless of regard or inquiry, the only thing that is really marvellous namely, the religion of Christ, and casts itself into the arms of superstition and devilry." (Monsignor Pie, Bishop of Pictavia)
What is meant by clairvoyance?
Clairvoyance is one of the effects claimed by the advocates of animal magnetism or mesmerism as the result of that connection existing between human bodies. First is the state of sleep brought on by the action of the magnetiser on "the subject". Second is the state of somnambulism, in which "the subject," while deprived of consciousness, speaks and hears, and even answers questions put to him. The third is the state of vision or clairvoyance, in which "the subject" preternaturally understands not alone his own mind and person, but likewise of others, understands sickness and its remedies, can read mysterious writing, speak in unknown languages, and can tell with accuracy and detail the most hidden or the most distant things.
What is its lawfulness?
Theologians as well as medical doctors differ as to whether, in the first place, such a force exists in nature, as the advocates of magnetism claim; or whether such a questionable knowledge or power be not from the agency and influence of the demon. Some medical men hold that such a force does exist, others deny it in toto. Again, some would hold that as far as inducing sleep, pure and simple, by the passes of the hands, or by magnetised plates, and even somnambulism, such lies within the force of nature; but, clairvoyance is admitted by all to be beyond its power, and is to be attributed solely to diabolic agency.
What, then, is to be our conduct on this grave question?
Luckily, it has been settled for us. In a pronouncement of the Sacred Congregation (28th July 1847), the matter is thus referred to: "In case of all error being removed, all fortune-telling, and all invocation of the demon, implicit as well as explicit, the use of magnetism - i.e., the merely having recourse to physical media otherwise lawful - is not morally forbidden (usus magnetismi, nempe merus actus adhibendi media physica aliunde licita, non est morabiter vetitus), provided also it does not lead to any immoral or wicked end. But the application of principles and media which are purely physical, to things and effects which are preternatural, and then explaining them by physical means, is nothing but a deception absolutely illicit and non-Catholic."
About somnambulism and clairvoyance, it teaches in an Encyclical to all the bishops: "When by the aid of somnambulism or clairvoyance, as they call it, women of doubtful character, and with gesticulations that can hardly be deemed modest, and who declare that they see invisible things, and who even preach sermons on religion - invoke the dead, receive responses, profess to discover distant or unknown things - when they dare to practise such and the like abominable superstitions; in all these things, no matter how the result may be produced, by art or sleight-of-hand, while physical media are directed to performing preternatural wonders, there is always a deception which is unlawful, contrary to the spirit of the Catholic Church, and a scandal against good morals."
"Hence," says Bonal, "though the use of magnetism be not in every case forbidden, in no case is it allowable where the prescriptions of Christian decency be violated or in fringed."
Every recurrence, therefore, to preternatural agencies for the sake of finding out secret things, or lost things, or to obtain the possession of things - by improper means - is always forbidden; as it is holding a commerce or communication with the devil.
"The soul that shall go aside after magicians and diviners, and shall commit fornication with them, I will set My face against that soul, and destroy it out of the midst of its people." (Leviticus 20:6)
"If any man of the children of Israel, or of the strangers that dwell in Israel, give of his seed to the idol Moloch, dying let him die; the people of the land shall stone him, and I will set My face against him, and will cut him off from the midst of his people: and if the people of the land neglecting, and, as it were, making little of My commandment, let alone the man that hath given of his seed to Moloch and will not kill him, I will set My face against that man and his kindred, and will cut off both him and all that consented with him to commit fornication with Moloch out of the midst of their people. (Leviticus 20:2,3,4,5)
"A man or woman in whom there is a pythonical or divining spirit, dying let them die; they shall stone them; their blood be upon them." (Leviticus 20:27)
"These two things shall come upon thee suddenly in one day, barrenness and widowhood. All things are come upon thee, because of the multitude of thy sorceries, and for the great hardness of thy enchanters. Evil shall come upon thee, and thou shalt not know the rising thereof; and calamity shall fall violently upon thee, which thou canst not keep off; misery shall come upon thee suddenly, which thou shalt not know: Stand now with thy enchanters and the multitude of thy sorceries, in which thou hast laboured from thy youth; if so be, it may profit thee anything, or if thou mayest become stronger. Thou hast failed in the multitude of thy counsels; let not the astrologers stand and save thee: they that gazed at the stars and counted the months, that from them they might tell the things that are to come to thee. Behold, they are as stubble there is none that can save thee." (Isaias 47:9)
"Let them come and tell us all things that are to come, and we will set our heart upon them. Show the things that are to come hereafter, and we shall know that ye are gods. Behold, you are of nothing, and your work of that which hath no being. He that hath chosen you is an abomination. I have raised up one from the north, and He shall come from the rising of the sun. He shall call upon My name, and He shall make princes to be as dirt, and as the potter treading clay. Behold My servant; I will uphold Him: My soul delighteth in Him. He shall not cry, nor have respect to person, neither shall His voice be heard abroad. The bruised reed He shall not break, and the smoking flax He shall not quench." (Isaias 46:22. . .)
We now turn from these subjects of irreligion, horror, and detestation, to subjects of beauty, blessedness, and peace: (1) The state of man in the garden of Paradise, and (2) his future state in the blissful and eternal hereafter.