ON THE PROHIBITION AGAINST EVOKING THE DEAD.

— The Church in no way denies the reality of the manifestations; on the contrary, as we have seen in the preceding citations, it admits them entirely, attributing them to the exclusive intervention of the demons.

It is in vain to invoke the Gospels, as some do, to justify their interdiction, since the Gospels say nothing on this subject.

The supreme argument that prevails is the prohibition of Moses. Below we give the terms in which the same pastoral letter that we cited in the preceding chapters refers to the matter:

“It is not permitted to maintain relations with them (the Spirits), whether directly, or through the intermediary of those who evoke and interrogate them. The Mosaic law punished the gentiles. Do not seek out the magicians, says Leviticus, nor seek to know anything from the soothsayers, so as to be contaminated by means of them.” (Chap. XIX, v. 31.) — “Let the man or the woman in whom there is a Pythonic Spirit die the death; let them be stoned, and let their blood fall upon them.”

(Chap. XX, v. 27.) Deuteronomy says: “Let there never be among you anyone who consults soothsayers, who observes dreams and omens, who uses spells, sorceries, enchantments, or consults those who have the pythonic spirit and give themselves to practices of divination by interrogating the dead. The Lord abhors all these things and will destroy, upon your entrance, the nations that commit such crimes.” (Chap. XVIII, vv. 10, 11 and 12.)

— It is useful, for a better understanding of the true meaning of the words of Moses, to reproduce in full the text that was somewhat abridged in the preceding citation. Here it is:

“Turn not away from your God to seek out magicians; do not consult the soothsayers, and beware lest you be contaminated by turning to them. I am the Lord your God.” (Leviticus, chapter XIX, v. 31.)

“The man or the woman who has a pythonic spirit, or that of a soothsayer, let them die the death. They shall be stoned, and their blood shall fall upon them.” (Idem, chapter XX, v. 27.)

“When you have entered the land that the Lord your God is to give you, guard yourselves; take care not to imitate the abominations of such peoples; — and let there be no one among you who would presume to purify a son or daughter by passing them through the fire; who uses spells, sorceries and enchantments: who consults those who have the Spirit of Python and propose to divine, interrogating the dead to learn the truth. The Lord abhors all these things and will exterminate all these peoples, upon your entrance, because of the crimes they have committed.” (Deuteronomy, chapter XVIII, vv. 9, 10, 11 and 12.)

— If the law of Moses must be so rigorously observed on this point, it must necessarily be so equally on all the others. Why would it be good with regard to evocations and bad in others of its parts? One must be consistent; 2 since it is acknowledged that the Mosaic law is no longer in accord with our epoch and customs in certain cases, the same reasoning holds for the prohibition we are dealing with.

Moreover, one must set forth the motives that justified that prohibition and that today have been completely annulled.

The Hebrew legislator wished his people to abandon all the customs acquired in Egypt, where evocations were in use and facilitated abuses, as may be inferred from these words of Isaiah: “The Spirit of Egypt shall annihilate itself, and I will overthrow its counsel; they shall consult their idols, their soothsayers, their pythons and their magicians.” (Chap. XIX, v. 3.)

The Israelites were not to contract alliances with foreign nations, and it was known that in those nations they were going to combat they would find the same practices. Moses had therefore, as a matter of policy, to inspire in the Hebrews an aversion to all the customs that might have similarities and points of contact with the enemy.

To justify that aversion, it was necessary that he present such practices as reproved by God himself, and hence these words: — “The Lord abhors all these things and will destroy, upon your arrival, the nations that commit such crimes.”

— The prohibition of Moses was quite just, because the evocation of the dead did not originate in sentiments of respect, affection or piety toward them, but was rather a resource for divinations, as in the auguries and presages exploited by charlatanism and superstition.

These practices, it seems, were also an object of business, and Moses, however much he did, did not succeed in rooting them out of the popular customs; the following words of the prophet justify the assertion:

“When they say to you: Consult the magicians and soothsayers who mutter enchantments, answer: “Does not each people consult its God? And does one speak to the dead concerning what pertains to the living?” (Isaiah, chapter VIII, v. 19.)

“It is I who point out the falsity of the magical wonders; who drive mad those who propose to divine, who confound the spirit of the wise and confuse their vain science.” (Chap. XLIV, v. 25.)

“Let those soothsayers, who study the heavens, contemplate the stars and count the months to make predictions, claiming to reveal to you the future, come now to save you. — They have become like the straw, and the fire has devoured them;

they shall not be able to deliver their souls from the burning fire; there shall remain of the flames they give off neither coals that can warm, nor fire by which one can sit. — Behold to what shall be reduced all these things with which you have busied yourselves with such zeal: the traffickers who have trafficked with you from infancy are gone, each one to his own side, without a single one of them being found to deliver you from your ills.” (Chap. XLVII, vv. 13, 14 and 15.)

In this chapter Isaiah addresses the Babylonians under the allegorical figure “of the virgin daughter of Babylon, daughter of the Chaldeans.” (verse 1.)

He says that the soothsayers will not prevent the ruin of the monarchy. In the following chapter he addresses himself directly to the Israelites.

“Come here, you others, children of a sorceress, race of an adulterous man and of a prostituted woman. — At whom do you laugh? Against whom have you opened your mouth and shown wounding tongues? Are you not perverse children of a bastard race — you who seek comfort in your gods beneath all the leafy boughs, sacrificing to them your tender little children in the torrents, under the overhanging rocks? You placed your confidence in the stones of the torrent, you poured out and drank liquors in their honor, you offered sacrifices. After this, how should my indignation not be kindled?”

(Chap. LVII, vv. 3, 4, 5 and 6.)

These words are unequivocal and prove clearly that in that time the evocations had as their end divination, while at the same time they constituted a commerce, associated with the practices of magic and sorcery, accompanied even by human sacrifices. Moses was right, therefore, in prohibiting such things and affirming that God abhorred them.

These superstitious practices were perpetuated until the Middle Ages, but today reason predominates, while at the same time Spiritism has come to show the exclusively moral, consoling and religious end of relations from beyond the grave; 10 since, however, the Spiritists do not sacrifice little children nor make libations to honor gods; since they do not interrogate stars, the dead and augurs to divine the truth wisely veiled from men; since they repudiate trafficking with the faculty of communicating with the Spirits; since they are moved neither by curiosity nor by cupidity, but by a sentiment of piety, a desire to instruct and improve themselves, relieving suffering souls; since this is so, because it is so — the prohibition of Moses cannot be extended to them; 11 this is what those who invoke it against them would have seen, had they delved more deeply into the meaning of the biblical words; they would recognize that nothing exists, in the principles of Spiritism, analogous to what took place among the Hebrews; 12 the truth is that Spiritism condemns everything that motivated the interdiction of Moses; but its adversaries, in their eagerness to find arguments with which to rebut the new ideas, do not even perceive that such arguments are negative, being completely false.

Contemporary civil law punishes all the abuses that Moses had in view to repress.

However, if he pronounced the ultimate penalty against the delinquents, it is because he lacked gentle means to govern so undisciplined a people;

this penalty, moreover, was much lavished in the Mosaic legislation, for there was not much to choose from among the means of repression. With no prisons nor houses of correction in the desert, Moses could not gradate the penalty as is done in our days, besides the fact that his people were not of a nature to be frightened by purely disciplinary penalties.

They are therefore without reason who lean upon the severity of the punishment to prove the degree of culpability of the evocation of the dead. Would it be fitting, out of consideration for the law of Moses, to maintain capital punishment in all the cases in which he prescribed it? Why, then, revive with such insistence this article, while at the same time keeping silent about the principle of the chapter that forbids the priests the possession of earthly goods and the sharing of any inheritance, because the Lord is their own inheritance? (Deuteronomy, chapter XVIII, v. 1 and 2.)

— There are two distinct parts in the law of Moses: the law of God properly so called, promulgated upon Sinai, and the civil or disciplinary law, suited to the customs and character of the people; 2 one of these laws is invariable, whereas the other is modified with time, and it occurs to no one that we could be governed by the same means by which the Jews were in the desert, nor that the capitularies of Charlemagne should be molded to the France of the nineteenth century.

Who would think today, for example, of reviving this article of the Mosaic law: “If an ox gore a man or woman, so that they die thereof, let the ox be stoned and let no one eat of its flesh; but the owner of the ox shall be judged innocent?” (Exodus, chapter XXI, v. 28 and following.)

This article, which seems to us so absurd, had, however, no other object than to punish the ox and absolve the owner, amounting simply to the confiscation of the animal, cause of the accident, in order to compel the proprietor to greater vigilance. The loss of the ox was the punishment, which had to be quite keenly felt by a people of shepherds, to the point of dispensing with any other; meanwhile, this loss profited no one, since it was forbidden to eat the flesh. Other articles prescribe the case in which the proprietor is responsible.

Everything had its reason for being in the legislation of Moses, since it foresees everything in its smallest details, but the form, as well as the substance, adapted themselves to the occasional circumstances.

If Moses returned in our days to legislate for a civilized nation, he would certainly not give it a code equal to that of the Hebrews.

— To this objection they oppose the affirmation that all the laws of Moses were dictated in the name of God, just as those of Sinai. But judging them all to be of divine source, why do they limit the commandments to the decalogue? What is the reason for the difference? For is it not certain that if all these laws emanate from God they must all be equally obligatory?

And why have they not kept circumcision, to which Jesus submitted and which he did not abolish?

Ah! they forget that, in order to give authority to their laws, all the ancient legislators attributed to them a divine origin. Well then: Moses, more than any other, had need of this resource, given the character of his people; and if, despite this, he had difficulty in making himself obeyed, what would have happened if the laws had been promulgated in his own name!

Did not Jesus come to modify the Mosaic law, making of his law the code of the Christians?

Did he not say: “You know what was said to the ancients, such and such a thing, and I say to you such other thing?” Meanwhile Jesus did not proscribe, but rather sanctioned the law of Sinai, of which all his moral doctrine is an unfolding.

Now, Jesus never anywhere alluded to the prohibition against evoking the dead, when this was a matter grave enough to be omitted from his preachings, especially since he treated of other secondary matters.

— Finally it is fitting to know whether the Church places the Mosaic law above the evangelical, or in other words, whether it is more Jewish than Christian.

It is fitting also to note that, of all the religions, precisely the Jewish is the one that makes the least opposition to Spiritism, inasmuch as it does not invoke the law of Moses as contrary to relations with the dead, as the Christian sects do.

— But we have yet another contradiction: — If Moses forbade evoking the dead, it is because these could come, for otherwise the prohibition would have been useless.

Now, if the dead could come in those times, they can also do so today; and if it is Spirits of the dead who come, they are not exclusively demons.

Moreover, Moses in no way speaks of these latter.

The motive is therefore twofold for which the authority of Moses cannot logically be accepted in this case, namely: first, because his law does not govern Christianity; and, second, because it is unsuited to the customs of our epoch.

But let us suppose that this law has the fullness of authority granted to it by some others, and even so it could not, as we have seen, be applied to Spiritism.

It is true that the prohibition of Moses encompasses the interrogation of the dead, but in a secondary way, as accessory to the practices of witchcraft.

The very word interrogation, joined to those of soothsayer and augur, proves that among the Hebrews the evocations were a means of divining; meanwhile, the Spiritists evoke the dead only to receive wise counsels and to obtain relief in favor of those who suffer, never to obtain illicit revelations.

Certainly, if the Hebrews had used the communications as the Spiritists do, far from prohibiting them, Moses would have encouraged them, because his people would have had only to gain.

— It is certain that some jocose or ill-intentioned critics have described the Spiritist meetings as assemblies of necromancers or sorcerers, and the mediums as astrologers and gypsies, this perhaps because some charlatans have fitted such names to their practices, which Spiritism cannot, moreover, approve; 2 in compensation, there are also many people who do justice and bear witness to the essentially moral and grave character of the serious meetings; besides, the Doctrine, in books within the reach of all the world, protests quite loudly against the abuses, so that the calumny may fall upon whoever deserves it.

— Evocation, they say, is a lack of consideration toward the dead, whose ashes ought to be respected. But who is it that says such a thing? They are the antagonists of two opposite camps, that is, the unbelievers who do not believe in souls, and the believers who maintain that only the demons, and not the souls, can come.

When the evocation is made with recollection and religiously; when the Spirits are called, not out of curiosity, but out of a sentiment of affection and sympathy, with a sincere desire for instruction and progress, we see nothing irreverent in appealing to the dead persons, as one would do with the living.

There is, however, another peremptory answer to this objection, and it is that the Spirits present themselves spontaneously, without constraint, very often even without being called; 4 they also bear witness to the satisfaction they experience in communicating with men, and complain at times of the forgetfulness in which they are left.

If the Spirits were disturbed or vexed by our calls, they would certainly say so and would not return; but, in these evocations, free as they are, if they communicate, it is because it suits them.

— Yet another reason is alleged: — “The souls remain in the abode that divine justice assigns them, which is to say in hell or in paradise”; thus, those who are in hell cannot leave it, even though for this the amplest liberty is granted to the demons; those of paradise, wholly given over to their beatitude, are far too superior to mortals to occupy themselves with them, and are happy enough not to return to this earth of miseries, in the interest of relatives and friends they might leave here.

Then can these souls be compared to the nabobs who turn their eyes away from the poor for fear of disturbing their digestion? But if it were so, these souls would show themselves little worthy of the supreme blessedness, transforming themselves into a model of selfishness!

There remain still the souls of purgatory, but these, suffering as they must be, ought, before anything else, to attend to their own salvation; in this way, neither the one nor the other souls being able to respond to our appeal, only the demon presents itself in their place.

Then it is the case to say: if the souls cannot come, there is no reason to fear for the disturbance of their repose.

— But here arises another difficulty. If the blessed souls cannot leave the glorious mansion to succor mortals, why does the Church invoke the assistance of the saints, who must enjoy an even greater sum of beatitude?

Why does it counsel invoking them in cases of illness, of affliction, of scourges? For what reason, and according to that same Church, do the saints and the Virgin herself appear to men and work miracles? These leave Heaven to descend to the Earth; meanwhile those who are less elevated cannot do so!

— That the skeptics deny the manifestation of the souls, let it pass, since they do not believe in them; but what becomes strange is to see those very ones whose beliefs rest upon the existence and the future of the souls fiercely set themselves against the means of proving their existence, striving to demonstrate the impossibility of those means!

It would seem that it would be more natural for them to welcome as a benefit of Providence the means of confounding the skeptics with irrefutable proofs, since these are the deniers of religion itself.

Those who have an interest in the existence of the soul constantly deplore the avalanche of incredulity that invades, decimating it, the flock of the faithful: meanwhile, when the most powerful means of combating it is presented to them, they refuse it with as much or more obstinacy than the unbelievers themselves.

Then, when the proofs grow so as to leave no doubts, behold, they seek as a resource of supreme argument the interdiction of the subject, seeking, to justify it, an article of the Mosaic law of which no one had thought, lending to it, by force, a meaning and application that do not exist.

And so happy do they deem themselves with the discovery, that they do not perceive that this article is yet another justification of the Spiritist Doctrine.

— All the reasons alleged to condemn relations with the Spirits do not withstand a serious examination. From the ardor with which they combat in this direction it is easy to deduce the great interest attached to the subject. Hence the insistence. In seeing this crusade of all the cults against the manifestations, one would say that they are afraid of them.

The true motive might well be the fear that very enlightened Spirits should come to instruct men on points that they wish to keep obscure, giving them knowledge, at the same time, of the certainty of another world, together with the true conditions for being happy or unhappy in it.

The reason must be the same as that by which one says to the child: “Do not go there, for there are werewolves.” To the man they say: — “Do not call the Spirits: They are the devil.”

It matters not, however: — They prevent men from evoking them, but they will not be able to prevent them from coming to men to raise the lamp from under the bushel.

The cult that is with the absolute truth will have nothing to fear from the light, for the light makes the truth shine and the demon can do nothing against it.

— To repel the communications from beyond the grave is to repudiate the most powerful means of instructing oneself, whether by the initiation into the knowledge of the future life, or by the examples that such communications furnish us.

Experience teaches us, besides, the good we can do, by turning imperfect Spirits away from evil, helping those who suffer to free themselves from matter and to perfect themselves; to interdict the communications is, therefore, to deprive the suffering souls of the assistance we can and ought to give them.

The following words of a Spirit admirably summarize the consequences of evocation, when practiced with a charitable end:

“Every suffering and desolate Spirit will recount to you the cause of its fall, the aberrations that ruined it. Hopes, struggles and terrors; remorse, despair and sorrows, it will tell you all, showing God justly irritated in punishing the guilty one with all severity. On hearing it, two sentiments will seize you: that of compassion and that of fear! compassion for it, fear for yourselves. And if you follow it in its laments, you will then see that God never loses sight of it, awaiting the repentant sinner and extending to him his arms as soon as he seeks to regenerate himself. Of the guilty one you will see, at last, the beneficial progress to which you will have the happiness and the glory of contributing, with the solicitude and tenderness of the surgeon following the healing of the wound that he dresses daily.” (Bordeaux, 1861.)