Spiritualism, Mesmerism and the Occult, 1800–1920 Vol 3

Shane McCorristine

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000559477
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

This edition provides an insight into the dark areas between Victorian science, medicine and religion. The rare reset source material in this collection is organized thematically and spans the period from initial mesmeric experiments at the beginning of the nineteenth century to the decline of the Society for Psychical Research in the 1920s.

T. H. W., Light on the Future; Being Extracts from the Note Book of a Member of the Society for Psychical Research, Dublin (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., 1917).

DOI: 10.4324/9781003112808-19

“Day after day, we think what she is doing

In those bright realms of air;

Year after year, her tender steps pursuing,

Behold her grown more fair.

Not as child shall we again behold her;

For when with rapture wild

In our embraces we again enfold her,

She will not be a child

But a fair maiden, in her Father’s mansions,

Clothed with celestial grace;

And beautiful with all the soul’s expansion,

Shall we behold her face.”¹

Longfellow /

PREFACE

The contents of the following pages are offered as a contribution to the study of Psychical Research.

The communications were received at sittings of a small circle of friends, held in a private drawingroom in Dublin, from 1905 to the present year. No paid or professional medium was present on any occasion and the circle was limited to the wife of the writer (down to the time of her passing over in 1907), the writer himself, and a very few near relatives and personal friends.

The number present at each sitting, in nearly every case, did not exceed three, and was more frequently but two.

In the beginning the communications were obtained by means of a small table. The sitters’ hands were lightly laid on the surface of the table, which, when the psychic or mediumistic power was present in sufficient force, and the conditions were favorable, tilted to one side, and by a simple code, continued to tilt, in accordance with the alphabet, until an intended letter was reached. Then the tilting recommenced, / following the alphabet again, to the next intended letter, and so on. By this clear, but somewhat tedious, method, sentences were spelled out.

Subsequently the spelling was greatly accelerated by the use of the Ouija; a board with polished surface, of convenient size (about 22 inches by 15) on which the letters of the alphabet were traced. With this board there was a traveller: a piece of thin, heart-shaped wood (measuring about six inches by four inches) supported by three short legs, the front one of which served as a pointer. The sitter’s finger-ends were lightly laid on the traveller, keeping touch, without pressing or controlling. With the necessary conditions the traveller moved over the board, pointed to letter after letter and so spelled out the sentences, in some cases as rapidly as they could be written down.*

* A Ouija board can be obtained from the Office of “Light,”² 110 St. Martin’s Lane, London, W.C., for a few shillings; but, a sheet of cardboard or paper, with the alphabet traced on it, and an inverted wine glass as a traveller will answer quite as well.

The number of communications received was very large, running into thousands; and the individuals, purporting to speak, amounted to hundreds. The majority of the latter were relatives and friends (of the sitters) who had passed away. Messages from complete strangers occurred occasionally but were not encouraged. Many of the communications were simple greetings or messages of love of a / personal character and not of general interest. Those that are reproduced in the following pages are given in the ipsissima verba ³ of their authors, and have been selected as throwing Light on the Future and picturing to some extent the conditions of life in the world to which we all are bound.

While not claiming to be scientific or conclusive, or to command the belief of those who are rooted in old ideas, the results obtained, if compared with – and found to harmonize with – the experiences of other circles, will supply a cumulative body of evidence acceptable to the minds of most reasonable people.

The old static conception of the Future Life with its two spheres, one a condition of passive happiness, and the other of never ending misery, though sedulously conserved by Churchmen, no longer satisfies the mind of the present day.

The former has failed to impress by its indefiniteness and the absence of aspiration or purpose. To stand around, clothed in white robes, with palms in the hands, and, accompanied by the music of harps, to sing Hosannas, does not excite our hopes or swell our enthusiasm and fails to satisfy our ideals for the future, while the consciousness, which must ever be present that some of those we have known, perhaps loved, are shut down in the fiery pit, without hope of release, is calculated to qualify the measure of the everlasting joy. /

The terrible alternative, the conception of some anthromorphic god of former times, pictured as it has been by the genius of Dante, serves but to display the handiwork of the Creator as a failure, and is so unnatural, repulsive, and absurd that it excites the faculty of humour by its extravagance and unreason. At the same time, under the pressure of theologians, it has helped to fill our lunatic asylums.

Modern thought is no longer satisfied with these fixed conceptions of the future life. Motion, evolution, and progressive development supersede static conditions, and continuity of personal existence, identity and character, in a life of active and upward progress, inspired by a hope of a still higher future – to some extent pictured in the following pages – is more in accordance with the fuller knowledge of the truth which it is now our privilege to have, and with the highest aspirations of the immortal soul.

T. H. W.

Dublin, December, 1916.

[The initials at the head of each communication standfor the person purporting to speak from the other side, but, on account of the personal character of many of the communications, the initials have been altered. The letter “Q” stands for the querist in each case, but the querist is not always the same person.] /

References to Passing Over.

D.D.S.

1905, Oct. 18: D.D.S. “I am happy to meet you. I am happy with N – “

Q. “Would you mind telling us how you passed over?”

D.D.S. “I was washed overboard.”

1907, Nov. 7: D.D.S. “N – and her parents are happy.”

Q. “Are you happy?”

D.D.S. “Yes.”

Q. “Are they present now?”

D.D.S. “Yes. I feel glad to speak to you. I am to tell you I fell overboard in a gale. Another thing same day happened; as I attended, an angel taking me near an Island, I saw a beautiful bright Light and N – standing near it. The dear God was in the Light.”

T.S.W.

1905, Feb. 22: Q. “Can you tell us what happened when you passed over?”

T.S.W. “I remember nothing until I saw such a glorious Light and L – there.”

Q. “She was there to meet you?” /

T.S.W. “Yes.”

J.E.C.

Feb. 22: J.E.C. “You are wishing to hear how I came over?”

Q. “Yes, very much.”

J.E.C. “I remember waking in this beautiful world and saw so many friends. The Light was wonderful and I knew that my God was there.”

W.M.C. Feb. 23: Q. “Can you tell us about your passing over?”

W.M.C. “I remember being...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• Magic, Witchcraft and the Occult
• Marvels of the Otherworld
• Spiritualism and Anti-Spiritualism
• Morell Theobald, Spiritualism at Home (1884)
• T. H. W., Light on the Future; Being Extracts from the Note Book of a Member of the Society for Psychical Research, Dublin (1917)
• Editorial Notes