One such work is the book Spirit Teachings by William Stainton Moses, which can be read online here. William Stainton Moses was a highly regarded figure of the nineteenth century, very respected for his scholarship and character. The book Spirit Teachings consists mainly of words that William said he produced through what is called automatic writing. In automatic writing, a person will typically put a pen next to some paper, and then go into a kind of trance state. The person's hand will write, but the person may state he had no knowledge of what was being written. The person may claim that some spirit temporarily took control of his hand, and that what was written on the paper was the product of that spirit's mind, not his own mind.
In the book William Stainton Moses gives us writings that he identifies as coming from a mysterious personality called Imperator. William Stainton Moses claims that he has merely received the teachings of this Imperator individual through automatic writing. The teachings of Imperator often conflict with ideas previously held by William Stainton Moses.
Here from page 190 to 191 is an example of the sophisticated writing found in the book, teachings attributed to this Imperator source:
"You do not imagine God as an omnipotent, omnipresent man, living in a place where His throne is surrounded by a throng who do nought else but worship and adore, as men would worship were they to see God amongst them on earth. Such a heaven is but a baseless dream. Into spirit-life spirit alone can enter. You know that you have outgrown the fable of the bodily translation of a material frame somewhere into the skies, there to live as it had lived on earth, in the society of a God who was human in all respects save that He was superhuman, in a heaven which was borrowed from the images of a vision which typified under a symbol spiritual truth to John the Seer.... A translation will await each good and true man, but not of his human flesh and bones. His glorified spirit shall rise from the dead and worn-out shroud of flesh that has served its purpose, to a brighter life than man has pictured, in a brighter heaven than human seer has ever imaged."
There follow on page 191-192 a passage from this Imperator source which some will regard as being of high philosophical sophistication:
"Moreover, man has fancied that each revelation of God enshrines permanent truth of universal application, of literal and exact accuracy. He did not see that man is taught by us as man teaches his own children; and accurate definitions of abstract truth do not suit the comprehension of a child. With all the literalness of a child, he accepts the very words of revelation as mathematically and logically accurate, and builds upon them a number of theories, absurd in their nature, and conflicting among themselves. The child accepts the parent's word unhesitatingly, and quotes it as law. It is only later that he learns that he was being taught in parables. Man has dealt with Revelation in the same way. He has assumed literal exactness where there is only Oriental imagery, and mathematical accuracy where he has only a very fallible and frequently legendary record. So he has perpetuated ignorant ideas about a jealous God, and a fiery hell, and a heaven in the skies where the elect are gathered, and a physical resurrection, and a universal assize, and such notions, which belong to the age of childhood and are outgrown by the developed man. The man should put aside the notions of the child, and soar to higher knowledge.
But in place of that legendary belief, primitive superstitions, ignorant fancies, are perpetuated. The hyperbolical visions of an imaginative people are taken for hard fact ; and a medley of fancy, folly, and truth is jumbled together, which no reflecting mind on an advanced plane of knowledge can continue to accept as matter of belief. Faith is the cord that has bound together this incoherent mass. We cut that cord, and bid you use your reason to try that which has been received and held by faith alone. You will find much in the mass that is of human invention, dating from the infancy of man's mind. You will reject much that is both cumbersome and profitless. But you will find a residue that commends itself to reason, is attested by your own experience, and is derived from God. You will gather hints of what the good God destines for his creatures."
The words I have quoted are not untypical at all, but are representative of the literary skill with which this Imperator "spirit personality" typically speaks in the book.
On page 209 we have this remarkable testimony from William Stainton Moses:
"From this time forward repeated evidence of individuality perpetuated after bodily death was brought home to me. I do not interrupt the course of the teachings to detail them. Some were written communications, in which peculiarities of handwriting, spelling, and diction were accurately reproduced. Some were verbal communications made through my own guide. Some were laboriously rapped out in the circle. Some were corroborated by my clairvoyant vision. The ways used to convey the information were various, but all agreed in one particular. The facts given were invariably literally and exactly true. In most cases they related to persons not known to us except by name, sometimes not even by so much as that. In other cases they related to friends and acquaintances. This course of evidence continued for a long time ; and collaterally I developed a power of clairvoyant vision which rapidly increased, until I was able to see and converse at length with my invisible friends. The inner faculties seemed to be opened, so that the information given received new confirmation from my clairvoyant sight. This power eventually developed to a very high degree. I had a number of extremely vivid visions in which my spirit appeared to act independently of the body. During some of them I was conscious of living and acting among scenes not of this earth ; in others dramatic tableaux were enacted before me, the object evidently being to represent some spiritual truth or teaching to me. In two cases only was I able to satisfy myself by collateral evidence of the reality of my vision. I was in deep trance during each occasion, and could not distinguish between the subjective impressions of a dream and the real occurrence of what I so vividly saw before me, save that I could confirm in these two cases what I saw and heard in vision by what I afterwards discovered from external sources. The scene in these cases was real, and I do not doubt that it was so in all."
Charlton Templeman Speer claims to have witnessed a variety of paranormal phenomena at seances of William Stainton Moses, a 19th-century figure greatly admired for his scholarship and moral character. One thing he claims to have witnessed is something resembling teleportation. He states this:
"The passage of matter through matter was sometimes strikingly demonstrated by the bringing of various articles from other rooms, though the doors were closed and bolted. Photographs, picture-frames, books, and other objects were frequently so brought, both from rooms on the same floor and from those above. How they came through the closed doors I cannot say, except by some process of de-materialisation, but come they certainly did, apparently none the worse for the process, whatever it might have been."
Besides also describing numerous inexplicable scents and mysterious music, Speer tells us that orbs were seen rising up from the ground and apparently passing through a heavy table. We read this:
"These lights were of two different kinds— objective and subjective. The former usually resembled small illuminated globes, which shone brightly and steadily, often moved rapidly about the room, and were visible to all the sitters. A curious fact in connection with these lights always struck me, viz., that looking on to the top of the table one could see a light slowly ascending from the floor, and to all appearance passing out through the top of the table — the table itself apparently not affording any obstacle to one’s view of the light."
On page 187 of the April 1861 edition of The Spiritual Magazine, we have a poem "recited by Miss Lizzie Doteny a spiritual trance speaker, of America, at the close of a recent lecture in Boston," who "professed to give it impromptu, so far as she was concerned, and to speak under the direct influence of the spirit of Edgar A. Poe." The poem has a stylistic resemblance to Poe's famous poem "The Raven," but the tone of the poem is far more optimistic than that poem famous for its gloom. The very skillfully written poem is below:
From the throne of life eternal,
From the home of love supernal,
Where the angel feet make music over all the starry floors
Mortals, I have come to meet you,
Come with words of peace to greet you,
And to tell you of the glory that is mine for evermore.
Once before I found a mortal
Waiting at the heavenly portal—
Waiting but to catch some echo from that ever-opening door;
Then I seized his quickened being,
And through all his inward seeing,
Caused my burning inspiration in a fiery flood to pour!
Now I come more meekly human,
And the weak lips of a woman,
Touch with fire from off the altar, not with burnings as of yore;
But in holy love descending,
With her chastened being blending,
I would fill your souls with music from the bright celestial shore.
As one heart yearns for another,
As a child turns to its mother,
From the golden gates of glory turn I to the earth once more,
Where I drained the cup of sadness,
Where my soul was stung to madness,
And life’s bitter, burning billows swept my burdened being o’er.
Here the harpies and the ravens,
Human vampires—sordid cravens,
Preyed upon my soul and substance till I writhed in anguish sore;
Life and I then seemed mismated,
For I felt accursed and fated,
Like a restless, wrathful spirit, wandering on the Stygian shore.
Tortured by a nameless yearning,
Like a frost-fire, freezing, burning,
Did the purple, pulsing life-tide through its fevered channels pour,
Till the golden bowl—Life’s token—
Into shining shards was broken,
And my chained and chafing spirit leapt from out its prison door.
But while living, striving, dying,
Never did my soul cease crying;
" Ye who guide the fates and furies, give! oh, give me, I implore,
From the myriad hosts of nations—
From the countless constellations,
One pure spirit that can love me—one that I, too, can adore !”
Through this fervent aspiration
Found my fainting soul salvation,
For, from out its blackened fire crypts, did my quickened spirit soar;
And my beautiful ideal—
Not too saintly to be real—
Burst more brightly on my vision than the fancy-formed Lenore.
’Mid the surging seas she found me,
With the billows breaking round me,
And my saddened, sinking spirit in her arms of love upbore;
Like a lone one, weak and weary,
Wandering in the midnight dreary,
On her sinless, saintly bosom, brought me to the heavenly shore.
Like the breath of blossoms blending,
Like the prayers of saints ascending,
Like the rainbow’s seven-hued glory, blend our souls for evermore.
Earthly love and lust enslaved me,
But divinest love hath saved me,
And I know now, first and only, how to love and to adore.
Oh, my mortal friends and brothers!
We are each and all another’s,
And the soul that gives most freely from its treasure hath the more.
Would you lose your life, you find it ;
And in giving love, you bind it,
Like an amulet of safety, to your heart for evermore."
The 1854 book "Voices from Spirit Land" (which lists Nathan F. White as its author) attempts to persuade us in its introduction that the poetry that makes up most of the book was written by spirits. We read this:
"Here is a volume of more than two hundred pages, spoken and written in obedience to superior influences by one who, in a normal condition, possesses no such power of utterance. This volume of 'Voices From the Spirit Land' is, to our belief, no more the conscious product of the Medium through whom its utterance is claimed to have occurred, than it is the work of some Patagonian yet unborn."
The author Nathan F. White is described like this: "A gentle-hearted, simpleminded young man ; diffident and unpretending in whatever sphere ; with only the limited common-school education of a humble New-England farmer's son ; a daily hand-toiler since his early youth ; without imagination or ideality beyond the measure of Pollock's happy man." Later it is claimed, "Under the influence of other spirits he has been made to speak in various languages, with all the ease and grace of persons native to them ; and to write in German, or Hebrew, or Arabic, with a rapidity and perfection of chirography impossible to natural skill." We hear this description of White entering into a trance:
"The slowly-growing rigidity, death-like pallor, spasmodic tremors, and icy-cold sweat gathering like 'beaded dew' upon the brow of the Medium while in process of entrancement, preparatory to speaking, were what no man could counterfeit. And when the voice issued, as it were from a body dead to outward impression and appearance, the veriest skeptic felt that this was more than mortal."
The volume contains very high quality poetry. It includes the poem "Weep Not for the Dead" which is below:
Rejoice for the day,
When that mansion of clay
The spirit no longer confines ;
When 'tis free to arise
To its home in the skies,
Where love's light eternally shines.
When a spirit oppressed
Flies away to the rest
It sought for in vain on the earth,
And forgets every wrong
In the triumphant song
That welcomes the new angel-birth ;
When it leaves all its fears,
All its sad, bitter tears
Behind with the moldering form ;
For bright regions of bliss.
Leaves a world of distress,
And bids a farewell to earth's storm —
...
Once, o'erburdened with care,
And weighed down with despair,
Of hope and of comfort bereft —
Now, 'tis gazing with love
On those angels above.
Forgetting the sorrows it's left.
Then no longer weep
For the loved ones that sleep —
Though taken away from thy sight ;
For you'll meet them again,
Free from anguish and pain.
In mansions of eternal light."
In 1861 there began the American Civil War, which would rage for four years, and end in the abolition of slavery in the United States. The events seem to have been predicted by an 1859 book entitled "Twelve Messages from the Spirit of John Quincy Adams." The first page of the book says the book was written in a trance state by the medium Joseph D. Stiles, " in an almost perfect fac-simile of that peculiar, tremulous handwriting of Mr. Adams in the last years of his earthly life, — a handwriting which probably no man living could, in his natural state of mind, so perfectly imitate, and which is wholly unlike the usual handwriting of the medium."
The preface is by Josiah Brigham, who tells us Joseph D. Stiles is a printer of "common education," seemingly someone without the intellectual or educational background to have produced the lofty writings that came from his pen. Brigham tells of an event that led him to believe some paranormal agency was occurring. Brigham says this:
"My first acquaintance with Mr. Stiles was in June of 1854. He came to my house to hold a circle in the evening, and a number of personal friends were present by invitation. On seating ourselves around the table, the medium was soon influenced to make a prayer, and, immediately after the prayer, was influenced to write, and the very first communication written out by him there was one purporting to be from a brother of mine, who died in 1818, which commenced as follows :
'Dear brother Josiah : I am very glad, after the lapse of many years, to be able to communicate to you. I am glad that you feel an interest in the cause of Spiritualism, for it is a beautiful theory, which, when you can believe with sincerity, cannot but help to smooth the declivity of life. It is doubly sweet to me to communicate to you, because I do it under the roof where my spirit took its flight from the things of earth. * * * *
Winslow Brigham.'
This last sentence struck me very forcibly ; for truly it was in the house where I now live, and in which I then lived, that my brother died ; and this fact was wholly unknown to the medium, as was also the fact that I ever had a brother by that name."
In that 1859 book on pages 318 to 319 we read this:
"We are able to discern the period rapidly approximating when man will take up arms against his fellow-man, and go forth to contend with the enemies of Republican Liberty, and to assert, at the point of the bayonet, those rights, of which so large a portion of their fellow-creatures are deprived. Again will the soil of America be saturated with the blood of freedom loving children, and her noble monuments, those sublime attestations of patriotic will and determination, will tremble, from base to summit, with the heavy roar of artillery, and the thunder of cannon. The trials of that internal war will far exceed those of the War of the Revolution, while the cause contended for will equal, if not excel, in sublimity and power, that for which the children of '76 fought."
"But when the battle-smoke shall disappear, and the cannon's fearful tones are heard no more, then will mankind more fully realize the blessings outflowing from the mighty struggle in which they so valiantly contended! No longer will their eyes meet with those bound in the chains of physical slavery, or their ears listen to the heavy sobs of the Oppressed child of God. But o'er a land dedicated to the principles of impartial liberty the King of Day will rise and set, and hearts now oppressed with care and sorrow will rejoice in the blessings of uninterrupted freedom."
" In this eventful revolution, what the patriots of the past tailed to accomplish, their descendants will perform, with the timely assistance of invisible powers. By their sides the heavenly hosts will labor, imparting courage and fortitude in each hour of despondency, and urging them onward to a speedy and magnificent triumph. Deploring, as we do, the existence of slavery, and the means to be employed to purge it from America, yet our sympathies will culminate to the cause of Right and Justice, and give strength to those
'Who seek to set the captive free
And crush the monster, Slavery.'
"The picture which I have presented is, indeed, a hideous one. You may think that I speak with too much assurance when I thus boldly prophesy the dissolution of the American Confederacy, and, through it, the destruction of that gigantic structure, Human Slavery ! But this knowledge was not the result of a moment's or an hour's gleaning, but nearly half a century's existence in the Seraph Life. I have carefully watched my country's rising progress, and I am thoroughly convinced that it cannot always exist under the present Federal Constitution, and the pressure of that most terrible sin, Slavery !"
The prediction was remarkably accurate. A war largely over whether slavery would persist did indeed start soon after the prediction, beginning in 1861. That civil war (indeed an "internal war") did cause bloodshed greater than that occurring in the American Revolutionary War. There did indeed occur " the dissolution of the American Confederacy, and, through it, the destruction of that gigantic structure, Human Slavery." The southern states of the United States formed a government called the Confederate States of America, and that was often called simply the Confederacy. That Confederacy was dissolved when the North won the war in 1865, and the result of that dissolution was the end of slavery in the United States. The "present Federal Constitution" existing in 1859 did not persist unchanged, being altered in the 1860's with a constitutional amendment prohibiting slavery.
"Twelve Messages from the Spirit of John Quincy Adams" holds up pretty well to the scrutiny of the modern reader. The book mainly tells long accounts of afterlife glories, and accounts of the narrator meeting various famous deceased people.
On one page the book gives this sample of the late handwriting of John Quincy Adams in 1845 (he died in 1848):
In Part 2 of this series (which may not be my next post) I will look at what are perhaps the two most astonishing cases of alleged sprit writings: the case of Patience Worth and the case of Chico Xavier.
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