Spiritist Vocabulary.

(Soul) (Universal soul) (Hallucination) (Angel) (Apparition) (Archangel) (Atheist, atheism) (Rapper) (Heaven) (Clairvoyance) (Classification of the Spirits) (Spiritist communication) (Crisiac) (Deist) (Demon) (Familiar demon) (Demonology, demonography) (Demonomancy) (Demonomania) (God) (Devil) (Imps) (Dryads) (Goblin) (Emancipation of the soul) (Incarnation) (Erraticity) (Spiritist scale) (Sphere) (Spiritism) (Spirit) (Rapping spirits) (Elementary spirit) (Familiar spirit) (Spiritualism) (Stereotite) (Evocation) (Expiation) (Ecstasy) (Fairies) (Fatality) (Sorcerers) (Fluidic) (Eternal fire) (Genie) (Gnomes) (Hamadryad) (Innate ideas) (Illuminated one) (Hell) (Instinct) (Intelligence) (Intuition) (Invisible) (Invocation) (Lares) (Free will) (Lucidity) (Magic, magus) (Animal magnetism) (Magnetizer, magnetist) (Manes) (Manifestation) (Materialism) (Medium) (Mediums of physical effects) (Mediums of moral effects) (Metempsychosis) (Mythology) (Death) (Corporeal world) (Spirit World or World of the Spirits) (Necromancy) (Nightwalker, nightwalking) (Oracle) (Paradise) (Eternal punishments) (Penates) (Perispirit) (Pythia, pythoness) (Pneumatophony) (Pneumatography) (Polytheism) (Possessed) (Prayer) (Trials) (Psychography) (Psychology) (Psychophony) (Absolute purity) (Purgatory) (Reincarnation) (Satan) (Sematology) (Seraph) (Sibyls) (Sylphs, sylphids) (Somnambulism) (Magnetic or artificial somnambulism) (Natural somnambulism) (Dreams) (Sleep-talking) (Magnetic sleep) (Natural sleep) (Superstition) (Thaumaturge) (Human telegraphy) (Typtology) (Universal whole) (Transmigration) (Seer) (Vision) (Visionary) (Sight, double) SOUL. — (From the Latin anima; Greek, anemos, breath, respiration). According to some, it is the principle of material life; according to others, it is the principle of intelligence, without individuality after death. According to the various religious doctrines, it is an immaterial being, distinct, of which the body is but an envelope, sur- viving the body and preserving its individuality after death.

This diversity of meanings given to one and the same word is a perpetual source of controversies, which would not occur if each idea had its representation clearly defined. To avoid any confusion as to the sense we give to this word, we shall call:

Spiritist soul, or simply soul, the immaterial, distinct and individual being, united to the body that serves it as a temporary envelope, that is, the spirit in a state of incarnation, and which belongs only to the human species;

Vital principle, the general principle of material life, common to all organic beings: men, animals and plants; and vital soul, the vital principle individualized in any given being;

Intellectual principle, the general principle of intelligence, common to men and animals; and intellectual soul, that same principle individualized.

UNIVERSAL SOUL. — Name given by certain philosophers to the general principle of life and of intelligence.

(See Universal Whole.)

HALLUCINATION. — (From the Latin hallucinare, to err). “Error, illusion of a person who believes he has perceptions that he does not in truth have.” (Academy.)

The Spiritist phenomena that proceed from the emancipation of the soul prove that what is termed hallucination is, very often, a real perception analogous to that of double sight, of somnambulism or of ecstasy, brought about by an abnormal state, an effect of the faculties of the soul freed from corporeal bonds. Sometimes, no doubt, there is true hallucination in the sense attached to the term; but the ignorance and the scant attention that, until now, have been given to these kinds of phenomena have caused what is frequently a real vision to be regarded as illusion. When one does not know how to explain a psychological fact, it is found simpler to term it hallucination. ANGEL. — (From the Latin angelus; Greek, aǵgelos, messenger). According to the common notion, angels are beings intermediary between man and the divinity, by their nature and power, who can manifest themselves, whether through hidden warnings or in a visible manner. They were not created perfect, since perfection supposes infallibility, and some among them revolted against God. One says: good and evil angels, the angel of darkness. Nevertheless, the most general idea attached to this word is that of goodness and of supreme virtue. According to the Spiritist Doctrine, angels are not separate beings of a special nature; they are the Spirits of the first order, that is, those who have reached the state of pure Spirits, after having undergone all the trials.

Our world has not existed from all eternity, and, long before it existed, there were already Spirits who had attained this supreme degree; men therefore believed that they had always been so.

APPARITION. — Phenomenon by which the beings of the incorporeal world manifest themselves to sight.

Vaporous or ethereal apparition: that which is impalpable and intangible and offers no resistance to the touch;

Tangible or stereotite apparition: that which is palpable and presents the consistency of a solid body.

The apparition differs from the vision in that it occurs in a waking state, by means of the visual organs and while man has full consciousness of his relations with the external world. The vision occurs in the state of sleep or of ecstasy. It likewise occurs in the waking state, by effect of the double sight. The apparition reaches us through the eyes of the body; it is produced in the very place in which we find ourselves. The vision has as its object absent or distant things, perceived by the soul in its state of emancipation, and when the sensitive faculties are more or less suspended.

(See Lucidity, Clairvoyance.)

ARCHANGEL. — Angel of a superior order (See Angel). The word angel is a generic term that applies to all pure Spirits. If we admit different degrees of elevation for the angels, we may, in order to use known terms, designate them by the words archangels and seraphs.

ATHEIST, ATHEISM. — (From the Greek atheos, composed of a, privative, and of theos, God: without God; one who does not believe in God).

Atheism is the absolute negation of the divinity. Everyone who believes in the existence of a supreme being, whatever attributes he may lend it and whatever worship he may render it, is not an atheist. Every religion necessarily rests on the belief in a divinity. This belief may be more or less enlightened, more or less in conformity with the truth; but an atheistic religion would be a contradiction in terms.

Absolute atheism has few proselytes, because the sentiment of the divinity exists in the heart of man in the absence of any teaching. Atheism and spiritualism are incompatible.

RAPPER. — (See Spirit.)

HEAVEN. — In the sense of the abode of the blessed.

(See Paradise.)

CLAIRVOYANCE. — Property inherent to the soul and which gives to certain persons the faculty of seeing without the aid of the organs of sight. (See Lucidity).

CLASSIFICATION OF THE SPIRITS. — (See Spiritist scale).

SPIRITIST COMMUNICATION. — Intelligent manifestation of the Spirits having as its object a continual exchange of thoughts between them and men. They are distinguished into:

Frivolous communications: those that refer to futile and unimportant subjects;

Coarse communications: those that are expressed by terms that offend decorum;

Serious communications: those that exclude frivolity, whatever their object;

Instructive communications: those whose main objective is an instruction given by the Spirits on the sciences, morality, philosophy, etc.

(As for the modalities of communications: See Sematology, Typtology, Psychography, Pneumatography, Psychophony, Pneumatophony, Human telegraphy)

CRISIAC. — One who is in a momentary state of crisis produced by magnetic action. This quality occurs more particularly in those in whom this state is spontaneous and accompanied by a certain nervous over-excitation. The crisiacs enjoy, in general, somnambulic lucidity or double sight.

DEIST. — One who believes in God, without admitting exterior worship. Sometimes, and mistakenly, deism is confused with atheism. (See Atheist.)

DEMON. — (From the Latin Daemonium and the Greek Daimonion, genie, fate, destiny, manes). Daemones, in both Greek and Latin: said of all incorporeal beings, good or evil, who are supposed to have knowledge and power superior to that of man.

In the modern languages this word is generally taken in a bad sense, its meaning being restricted to malevolent genies. According to the common belief, demons are beings essentially evil by nature. The Spirits teach us that, God being sovereignly just and good, He could not have created beings devoted to evil and wretched for all eternity. According to them, there are no demons in the absolute and restricted meaning of this word; there are only imperfect Spirits. All, however, can better themselves by their efforts and by their will. The Spirits of the ninth class would be the true demons, if this word did not imply the idea of a perpetually evil nature. FAMILIAR DEMON.

— (See Familiar Spirit .)

DEMONOLOGY, DEMONOGRAPHY. — Treats of the nature and influence of demons.

DEMONOMANCY. — (From the Greek daimon and manteia, divination). Pretended knowledge of the future through the inspiration of demons.

DEMONOMANIA. — Variety of mental alienation which consists in believing oneself possessed by the demon.

GOD. — Supreme intelligence, first cause of all things. He is eternal, immutable, immaterial, unique, all-powerful, sovereignly just and good, and infinite in all His perfections.

DEVIL. — (From the Greek diabolos, informer, accuser, defamer, slanderer). According to the common belief, it is a real being, a rebel angel, chief of all the demons and who has a power great enough to struggle against God Himself. He knows our most secret thoughts, instills all the evil passions and takes on all forms to induce us to evil. According to the Doctrine of the Spirits concerning demons, the devil is the personification of evil; it is an allegorical being, summarizing within itself all the evil passions of imperfect Spirits. Just as the Ancients gave to their allegorical divinities special attributes: to Time, a scythe, an hourglass, wings and the figure of an old man; to Fortune, a blindfold over the eyes and a wheel beneath one foot, etc., so too the devil had to be represented under the characteristic traits of baseness of inclinations. The horns and the tail are the emblems of bestiality, that is, of the brutality of the animal passions. IMPS. — (From the Latin fatus, fairy). Jesting Spirits; a kind of goblin, more cunning than evil, belonging to the class of frivolous Spirits. (See Goblin.)

DRYADS. — (See Hamadryad.)

GOBLIN. — According to some, it originates from the old word luicler, to struggle, whence, successively, luicton, luilon, luits and finally goblin (lutin, in French). According to others, luiclon, from nuiclon, derived from nuict, night, because goblins, according to the common belief, come chiefly at night to torment the living.

Under this denomination one may understand certain frivolous Spirits, more mischievous and malicious than evil. They like to cause slight vexations and small annoyances; they are ignorant, lying and mocking; they are the insufferable children of the spiritual world. Their language is, at times, witty, biting and satirical, rarely coarse. They delight in jesting expressions and sympathize with persons of a frivolous character. To address grave questions to them would be a pure waste of time and to expose oneself to ridiculous disappointments. EMANCIPATION OF THE SOUL. — Particular state of human life during which the soul, freeing itself from its material bonds, recovers some of its faculties as a Spirit and enters more easily into communication with the incorporeal beings. This state is manifested chiefly by the phenomenon of dreams, of sleep-talking, of double sight, of natural or magnetic somnambulism, and of ecstasy (See these words.)

INCARNATION. — State of the Spirits who clothe themselves in a corporeal envelope. One says: incarnate Spirit, in opposition to wandering Spirit. The Spirits are wandering in the interval of their different incarnations. Incarnation may occur on Earth or in another world.

ERRATICITY. — State of the wandering Spirits, that is, the non-incarnate ones, during the intervals of their various corporeal existences. Erraticity is not an absolute sign of inferiority for the Spirits. There are wandering Spirits of all classes, save those of the first order or pure Spirits who, having no more incarnation to undergo, cannot be considered as wandering. The wandering Spirits are happy or wretched according to the degree of their purification. It is in this state that the Spirit, having stripped off the material veil of the body, recognizes its previous existences and the errors that keep it from perfection and infinite happiness. It is then, likewise, that it chooses new trials, in order to advance more swiftly. SPIRITIST SCALE. — Table of the different orders of Spirits, indicating the degrees that they have to traverse in order to reach perfection. It comprises three principal orders:

imperfect Spirits, good Spirits and pure Spirits, subdivided into nine classes [ten, according to The Spirits' Book,] characterized by the progression of the moral sentiments and of the intellectual ideas.

The Spirits themselves teach us that they belong to different categories, according to the degree of their purification, but they also tell us that these categories do not constitute distinct species, and that all the Spirits are called to traverse them successively. (See the explanations relating to the character of each class of Spirits in the special chapter.)

SPHERE. — Word by which certain Spirits designate the different degrees of the Spiritist scale. They say that one has reached the fifth or the sixth sphere, as others say in the fifth or the sixth heaven. By the manner in which they express themselves, one might imagine that the Earth is a central point, surrounded by concentric spheres in which the different degrees of perfection are successively realized. There are even those who speak of the sphere of fire, of the sphere of the stars, etc. As the simplest astronomical notions are sufficient to show the absurdity of such a theory, it can only proceed from a false interpretation of the terms, or from Spirits still very backward, imbued with the systems of Ptolemy and of Tycho Brahe. If a man whom you deem learned maintains a thing that is evidently absurd, you doubt his learning; the same must occur with respect to the Spirits. It is by experience that we learn to know them. These expressions are, therefore, faulty, even taken in a figurative sense, because they may lead into error as to the true sense in which the progression of the Spirits is to be understood. (See Reincarnation). SPIRITISM. — Doctrine founded on the belief in the existence of the Spirits and in their communication with men.

Spiritist (espirita). — That which refers to Spiritism.

Spiritist (espiritista). — One who adopts the Spiritist Doctrine.

SPIRIT. — (From the Latin spiritus, from spirare, to breathe). In the special sense of the Spiritist Doctrine, the Spirits are the intelligent beings of creation and populate the Universe outside the corporeal world.

The intimate nature of the Spirits is unknown to us; they themselves cannot define it, whether through ignorance, or through the insufficiency of our language. We are, in this respect, like men blind from birth in relation to light. According to what they tell us, the Spirit is not material in the common sense of the word; nor is it immaterial in an absolute sense, because the Spirit is something and absolute immateriality would be nothingness. The Spirit is, therefore, formed of a substance, but one of which the gross matter that affects our senses can give us no idea.

It may be compared to a flame or a spark whose brightness varies according to the degree of its purification. It can take on all kinds of forms by means of the perispirit by which it is enveloped. (See: Perispirit.)

RAPPING SPIRITS. — Those who reveal their presence by means of raps. They belong to the inferior classes.

ELEMENTARY SPIRIT. — Spirit considered in itself, abstraction made of its perispirit or semi-material envelope.

FAMILIAR SPIRIT. — Spirit that attaches itself to a person or a family, whether to protect it, if it is good, or to harm it, if it is evil. The familiar Spirit need not be evoked; it is always present and answers instantly the call that is made to it. Often it manifests its presence by perceptible signs.

SPIRITUALISM. — Belief in the existence of a spiritual, immaterial soul, which preserves its individuality after death, abstraction made of the belief in the Spirits;

it is the opposite of materialism. (See Materialism;

Spiritism.) Everyone who believes that not all that exists in us is merely matter is a spiritualist, but it does not follow from this that he admits the Doctrine of the Spirits. Every Spiritist is necessarily a spiritualist, but one can be a spiritualist without being a Spiritist; the materialist is neither the one nor the other. As they are two essentially distinct ideas, it was necessary to distinguish them by different words, in order to avoid any misunderstanding. Even for those who regard Spiritism as a chimerical idea, it still becomes necessary to designate it by a special word ; this holds as much for false ideas as for true ones, in order that we may understand one another.

STEREOTITE. — (From the Greek stereos, solid). Quality of the apparitions that acquire the properties of resistant and tangible matter. It is said in opposition to the vaporous or ethereal apparitions, which are impalpable. The stereotite apparition presents temporarily to sight and to touch the properties of a living body.

EVOCATION. — (See Invocation.)

EXPIATION. — Punishment that the Spirits undergo as a penalty for the faults committed during corporeal life. As moral suffering, expiation occurs in the state of erraticity; as physical suffering, it occurs in the corporeal state. The vicissitudes and torments of corporeal life are, at the same time, trials for the future and expiation of the past.

ECSTASY. — (From the Greek ekstasis, transport of the spirit; from existemi, to be struck with astonishment). Paroxysm of the emancipation of the soul during corporeal life, from which results the momentary suppression of the perceptive and sensitive faculties of the organs. In this state the soul is no longer bound to the body except by frail bonds, which it seeks to break; it belongs more to the world of the Spirits, which it glimpses, than to the material world. Sometimes ecstasy is natural and spontaneous; it may also be brought about by magnetic action and, in this case, it is a superior degree of somnambulism.

FAIRIES. — (From the Latin fata). According to the common belief, fairies are semi-material beings, endowed with superhuman power . They are good or evil, protective or malevolent; they can, at will, make themselves visible or invisible and assume all kinds of forms.

Fairies succeeded, in the Middle Ages and among modern peoples, to the subordinate divinities of the Ancients. If we exempt their histories from the marvelous that the imagination of the poets and popular credulity lend them, we shall find there all the Spiritist manifestations of which we are witnesses and which have been produced in all epochs. It is incontestably to facts of this kind that this belief owes its origin. In the fairies who are supposed to preside over the birth of a child and to follow it in the course of its life, one recognizes without difficulty the familiar Spirits or genies. Their inclinations, more or less good and which are always the reflection of the human passions , place them naturally in the category of the inferior or little-advanced Spirits. (See Polytheism.)

FATALITY. — (From the Latin fatalitas, from fatum, destiny). Inevitable destiny. Doctrine that supposes all the events of life and, by extension, all our acts, determined beforehand and submitted to a law from which we cannot withdraw ourselves. There are two kinds of fatality: one proceeds from exterior causes, which strike us and react upon us, and which may be called reactive, external, eventual fatality; the other has its source within ourselves and determines all our actions: it is personal fatality. Fatality, in the absolute sense of the term, makes of man a machine, without initiative, without free will and, consequently, without responsibility: it is the negation of all morality. According to the Spiritist Doctrine, in choosing his new existence and the kind of trials he is to undergo, the Spirit makes of this an act of liberty. The events of life are the consequence of that choice and are in relation with the social position of the existence. If the Spirit is to be born in a servile condition, the milieu in which it will find itself will give rise to events entirely different from those it would have were it rich and powerful; but, whatever this condition may be, it preserves its free will in all the acts of its will and is not fatally dragged into doing this or that thing, nor into undergoing such or such accident. By the kind of struggle it has chosen, it has the chance of being led to perform certain acts or of meeting determined obstacles, which does not mean that this will happen infallibly and that it cannot avoid it by its prudence and by its will. It was for this that God gave it reason. The same occurs with a man who, to reach a goal, had three roads to follow: by the mountain, by the plain or by the sea. On the first he may meet with rocks and precipices; on the second with swamps and, on the third, be subject to storms; but it is not said that a rock will wound him, that he will sink in the swamp or that he will be shipwrecked in this place and not in that. The very choice of the road is not fatal in the absolute sense of the word; by instinct, man will take the one on which he is to find the chosen trial. If he is to struggle against the waves, his instinct will not lead him to take the road of the mountain. According to the kind of trials chosen by the Spirit, man will be exposed to certain vicissitudes. In consequence of those very vicissitudes, he will be subjected to impulses from which it depends on him to free himself. He who commits a crime is not fatally led to perpetrate it; he chose a road of struggle that may excite him to it; if he yields to temptation, it will be through weakness of his will. It is thus that free will exists for the Spirit in the wandering state as to the choice of the trials to which it submits, and, in the state of incarnation, with respect to the acts of corporeal life. Fatal there is only the instant of death, since the kind of death is still a consequence of the nature of the chosen trials. Such is the summary of the Doctrine of the Spirits concerning fatality.

SORCERERS. — (In French sorcier, from the Latin sors, sortis, lot). It was said primitively of individuals who were thought capable of casting spells and, by extension, of all those to whom a supernatural power was attributed. The strange phenomena produced under the influence of certain mediums prove that the power attributed to sorcerers rests on a reality, but one of which charlatanism has abused, as it abuses everything. If in our enlightened century there are still persons who attribute these phenomena to the demon, with all the more reason would they have believed so in times of ignorance. From this it resulted that the individuals who possessed, even without knowing it, some of the faculties of our mediums, were condemned to the fire. FLUIDIC. — Opposite of solid. Qualification given to the Spirits by some writers to characterize their ethereal nature. One says the fluidic Spirits. We judge this expression improper. Moreover, it represents a kind of pleonasm, more or less as if we were to say: gaseous air. The word Spirit says everything, enclosing within itself its own definition and revealing, necessarily, the idea of an incorporeal thing. A Spirit that was not fluidic would not be a Spirit. This word has another drawback: that of assimilating the nature of the Spirits to our material fluids. It recalls too much the idea of a laboratory. ETERNAL FIRE. — The idea of eternal fire, as a chastisement, goes back to the highest Antiquity and arises from the belief of the Ancients, who placed the hells in the bowels of the Earth, whose central fire was revealed to them by the geological phenomena. When man acquired more elevated notions of the nature of the soul, he understood that an immaterial being could not suffer the harms of a material fire. But fire did not, for all that, cease to remain as the emblem of the cruelest torture, and one finds no more energetic figure to describe the moral sufferings of the soul. It is in this sense that high Theology understands it today, and it is also in this sense that one says: to burn with love, to be consumed by jealousy, by ambition, etc. GENIE. — (From the Latin genius, formed from the Greek geino, to beget, to produce). In this sense it is said that a man capable of creating or of inventing extraordinary things is a man of genius. In the Spiritist language, genie is synonymous with Spirit. One says indifferently: familiar Spirit and familiar genie, good and evil Spirit, good and evil genie. The word Spirit encloses a more vague and less circumscribed sense; the genie is a kind of personification of the Spirit. We figure it under a determined form, more or less similar to the human form, although vaporous and impalpable, now visible, now invisible. The genies are the Spirits in their relations with men, acting upon them by a hidden superior power. FAMILIAR GENIE.

— (See Familiar Spirit.)

GNOMES. — (From the Greek gnomon, knower, skillful, formed from gnosko, to know): intelligent genies who are supposed to inhabit the interior of the Earth. By the qualities attributed to them, they belong to the order of the imperfect Spirits and to the class of frivolous Spirits.

HAMADRYAD. — (From the Greek ama, together, and drus, oak. Dryad, from drus, oak). Nymph of the woods, according to pagan mythology. The dryads were immortal nymphs who presided over trees in general and who could wander in liberty around those that were particularly consecrated to them. The hamadryad was not immortal; it was born and died with the tree whose keeping was entrusted to it and which it could never abandon. It is not doubtful today that the idea of the dryads and the hamadryads has its origin in manifestations analogous to those of which we are witnesses. The Ancients, who poeticized everything, deified the hidden intelligences that manifested themselves in the very substance of bodies. For us, they are merely rapping spirits. INNATE IDEAS. — Ideas or knowledge not acquired which, it seems, we bring at birth. Innate ideas have long been discussed, their existence having been combated by some philosophers, under the pretext that all are acquired. If this were so, how to explain certain natural predispositions that often reveal themselves at a tender age and apart from any teaching? The Spiritist phenomena cast great light on this question. Today experience leaves not the least doubt about these kinds of ideas, which find their explanation in the succession of existences. The knowledge acquired by the Spirit in previous existences is reflected in later existences by means of what we call innate ideas. ILLUMINATED ONE. — Qualification given to certain individuals who believe themselves enlightened by God, in a particular manner, and who are generally regarded as visionaries or diseased brains. One says: the sect of the illuminated. Under this denomination have been confounded all those who receive intelligent and spontaneous communications on the part of the Spirits. If among this number there were men over-excited by an exalted imagination, today it is already known what part should be attributed to reality. HELL. — (From the Latin inferna, from infernus, inferior, that which is in an inferior position, below; understood locus, place: inferior place). So called because the Ancients imagined it situated in the bowels of the Earth. In the plural it is almost only used in poetic language, or in referring to subterranean places. According to the pagans, souls went there after death. The hells comprise two parts: the Elysian Fields, enchanting abode of the men of good, and Tartarus, place where the wicked are punished for their crimes, by means of fire and eternal tortures. The belief relative to the subterranean position of the Spirits survived paganism. According to the Catholic Church, Jesus descended into the hells, where the souls of the just awaited His coming in the Limbo. The souls of the wicked will be cast down into the hells. Today, the meaning of this word is restricted to the abode of the reprobates; but, thanks to the progress of the geological and astronomical sciences, the structure of the terrestrial globe and its true position in space have been understood; hell was proscribed from its bosom and today no determined place is assigned to it. In the state of ignorance, man is incapable of apprehending abstractions and of embracing generalities. He conceives nothing that is not localized and circumscribed; he materializes immaterial things; he even goes so far as to debase the Divine Majesty. But, as the progress of positive science comes to enlighten him, he recognizes his error; his ideas, mean and limited as they were, expand, and the horizon of the infinite unfolds before his eyes. It is thus that, according to the Spiritist Doctrine, the punishments beyond the tomb, being able to be only moral, are inherent to the impure and imperfect nature of the inferior Spirits. There is no localized hell in the common sense attached to this word; each one carries his hell within himself by the sufferings he endures, sufferings that are no less burning for the fact of not being physical. Hell is everywhere where there are imperfect Spirits. (See Paradise, Eternal Fire, Eternal Punishments.)

INSTINCT. — A kind of rudimentary intelligence that directs living beings in their actions, independently of their will and in the interest of their conservation. Instinct becomes intelligent when there is deliberation. By instinct one acts without reasoning; by intelligence one reasons before acting. In man, instinctive ideas are very frequently confused with intuitive ideas. The latter are those which he has drawn, whether in the state of spirit, or in previous existences, and of which he preserves a vague remembrance. INTELLIGENCE. — Faculty of conceiving, of comprehending and reasoning. It would be unjust to refuse to animals a kind of intelligence and to believe that they merely follow mechanically the blind impulse of instinct. Observation demonstrates that in many cases they act with deliberate purpose and according to circumstances; but this intelligence, however admirable it may be, is always limited to the satisfaction of material needs, whereas that of man permits him to raise himself above the condition of humanity. The line of demarcation between the animals and man is drawn by the knowledge that it is given to the latter to have, of the Supreme Being. (See Instinct). INTUITION. — (See Instinct;

Innate Ideas.)

INVISIBLE. — Name under which some persons designate the Spirits in their manifestations. This denomination does not seem to us a happy one, in the first place because, if invisibility is for us the normal state of the Spirits, it is known that it is not absolute, since they can appear to us; in the second place, this qualification has nothing that essentially characterizes the Spirits: it applies equally to all inert bodies that do not affect the sense of sight. The word Spirit has, by itself, a signification that awakens the idea of an intelligent and incorporeal being. Let us further note that, speaking of a determined Spirit, of Fenelon, for example, one will say: it was the Spirit Fenelon who said such a thing, and not the invisible Fenelon. It is always prejudicial to the clarity and purity of the language to divert words from their proper meaning. INVOCATION. — (From the Latin in, in, and vocare, to call). EVOCATION (From the Latin vocare, and e or ex, from, out of). These two words are not perfect synonyms, although they have the same root, vocare: to call. It is an error to employ one for the other. “To evoke is to call, to make come to oneself, to make appear by magical ceremonies, by enchantments. To evoke souls, Spirits, shades. The necromancers claimed to evoke the souls of the dead.” (Academy.) Among the Ancients, to evoke was to make the souls come out of the hells in order to make them come to the living. To invoke is to call to oneself or to one's aid a superior or supernatural power. One invokes God by prayer. In the Catholic religion one invokes the saints. Every prayer is an invocation. The invocation is in the thought;

the evocation is an act. In invocation the being to whom we address ourselves hears us;

in evocation it comes out of the place where it was to come to us and manifest its presence. The invocation is addressed only to the beings whom we suppose elevated enough to assist us. One evokes the inferior Spirits as well as the superior ones. “Moses forbade, on pain of death, to evoke the souls of the dead, a sacrilegious practice in use among the Canaanites. The 22nd chapter of the II Book of Kings tells [that Josiah sent his men to the prophetess Huldah so that she might invoke the LORD in order to verify whether the Book of the Law found in the temple was the true one:

“Go, and inquire of the LORD for me, for the people and for all Judah, concerning the words of this book that has been found.” And the chapter

of I Samuel] of the evocation of the shade of Samuel by the pythoness” [at the request of Saul]. n As is seen, the art of evocations goes back to the highest Antiquity; we find it in all epochs and among all peoples. Formerly evocation was accompanied by mystical practices, either because they were judged necessary, or, what is more probable, in order to attribute to themselves the prestige of a superior power. Today it is known that the power to evoke is not a privilege, that it belongs to all, and that the magical and cabalistic ceremonies were merely a vain show. According to the Ancients, all the souls evoked were either wandering or came from the hells which, as is known, comprised both the Elysian Fields and Tartarus, no bad interpretation being attached to that idea. In the modern language, the signification of the word hell having been restricted to the abode of the reprobates, it resulted from this that the idea of evocation became attached, for certain persons, to that of evil Spirits or of demons; but this belief falls as a more thorough knowledge of the facts is acquired; for this reason it is less widespread among all those who believe in the reality of the Spiritist manifestations. It could not prevail in the face of experience and of reasoning free of prejudices. LARES. — (See Manes;

Penates.)

FREE WILL. — Moral liberty of man; faculty that he has of guiding himself by his will in the realization of his acts. The Spirits teach us that the alteration of the mental faculties, by an accidental or natural cause, is the only case in which man is deprived of free will. Apart from this he is always master to do or not to do. He enjoys this liberty in the state of spirit, and it is by virtue of this faculty that he freely chooses the existence and the trials that he judges suitable for his progress; he preserves it in the corporeal state, in order to be able to struggle against those same trials. The Spirits who teach this doctrine cannot be evil Spirits.

(See Fatality.)

LUCIDITY. — Clairvoyance, faculty of seeing without the concurrence of the organs of sight. It is a faculty inherent to the very nature of the soul or of the Spirit, and which resides in its whole being; hence why, in all the cases in which there is emancipation of the soul, man has perceptions independent of the senses. In the normal corporeal state, the faculty of seeing is limited by the material organs; free of that obstacle, it is no longer circumscribed, extending everywhere where the soul exercises its action. Such is the cause of the seeing at a distance enjoyed by certain somnambulists. They see themselves in the very locale that they observe, even were it situated a thousand leagues away, inasmuch as, if the body is not there, the soul, in reality, is there. One may, therefore, say that the somnambulist sees with the eyes of the soul. The word clairvoyance is more general. Lucidity is said more particularly of somnambulic clairvoyance. A somnambulist is more or less lucid, according as the emancipation of the soul is more or less complete.

MAGIC, MAGUS. — (From the Greek magos, judicious, learned, formed from mageia, profound knowledge of Nature, whence was made magus, priest, learned man and philosopher among the ancient Persians). In its origin, magic was the science of the learned; all those who knew Astrology, who boasted of foretelling the future, who did extraordinary and incomprehensible things for the common folk, were magi or learned men who, later, were called magicians. Abuse and charlatanism discredited magic; nevertheless, the phenomena that we today reproduce by magnetism, by somnambulism and by Spiritism prove that magic was not a purely chimerical art, and that among many absurdities there were surely in it very real things. The popularization of these phenomena has the effect of destroying the prestige of those who formerly performed them, under the veil of secrecy, and abused credulity by attributing to themselves a pretended supernatural power. Thanks to this popularization, we know today that nothing supernatural exists in this world, and that certain things seem to derogate from the laws of Nature only because we do not know their causes. ANIMAL MAGNETISM. — (From the Greek and the Latin magnes, magnet), so called by analogy with mineral magnetism. Experience having demonstrated that this analogy does not exist, or is only apparent, the denomination is not exact; but, as it is consecrated by universal usage and, as, moreover, the epithet added to it permits no misunderstanding, there would be more inconvenience than utility in changing this name. Some persons substitute for it the word mesmerism; nevertheless, until now this expression has not prevailed. Animal magnetism may be thus defined: reciprocal action of two living beings by means of a special agent called the magnetic fluid.

MAGNETIZER, MAGNETIST. — This latter word is employed by some persons to designate the adepts of magnetism, those who believe in its effects. The magnetizer is the practitioner, the one who exercises it; the magnetist is the theoretician. One can be a magnetist without being a magnetizer, but one cannot be a magnetizer without being a magnetist. This distinction seems to us useful and logical.

MANES. — (From the Latin manere, to remain, according to some; from manes, manium, derived from manus, good, according to others). In Roman and Etruscan mythology, the manes were the souls or the shades of the dead. The Ancients had great respect for the manes of their ancestors, whom they thought to appease by means of sacrifices.

They figured them under their human form, but vaporous and invisible, wandering around their tombs or their dwellings and visiting their families.

Who would not recognize in these manes the Spirit under the semi-material envelope of the perispirit, and who themselves tell us they are among us under the form that they had in life? (See Penates.)

MANIFESTATION. — Act by which a Spirit reveals its presence. The manifestations are:

Hidden. — When they have nothing ostensible and the Spirit limits itself to acting upon the thought;

Patent. — When they are appreciable by the senses;

Physical. — When they are expressed by material phenomena, such as noises, movement and displacement of objects;

Intelligent. — When they reveal a thought. (See Spiritist Communication.)

Spontaneous. — When they are independent of the will and occur without any Spirit being called;

Provoked. — When they are the effect of the will, of the desire or of a determined evocation;

Apparent. — When the Spirit becomes visible to sight.

(See Apparition.)

MATERIALISM. — System of those who think that all is matter in man and that, thus, nothing survives in him after the destruction of the body. It seems to us useless to refute this opinion, which, moreover, is personal to certain individuals and has nowhere been erected into a doctrine. If the existence of the soul can be demonstrated by reasoning, the Spiritist manifestations are its patent proof; by means of them we attend, in a certain manner, all the vicissitudes of the life beyond the tomb. Materialism, which is based only on a negation, cannot prevail against the evidence of the facts; this is why the Spiritist Doctrine has so often triumphed over those very persons who had resisted all other arguments. Its popularization is the most powerful means to extirpate this plague from civilized societies. MEDIUM. — (From the Latin medium, middle, intermediary): persons accessible to the influence of the Spirits, and more or less endowed with the faculty of receiving and transmitting their communications. For the Spirits, the medium is an intermediary; it is an agent or an instrument more or less convenient, according to the nature or the degree of the mediumistic faculty. This faculty depends on a special organic disposition, susceptible of development. Several varieties of mediums are distinguished, according to their particular aptitude for such or such mode of transmission, or such or such kind of communication. MEDIUMS OF PHYSICAL EFFECTS. — Those who have the power to provoke ostensible manifestations. They comprise the following varieties:

Motor mediums. — Those who provoke the movement and the displacement of objects;

Typtologist mediums. — Those who provoke noises and raps;

Mediums of apparition. — Those who provoke the apparitions. (See Apparition.)

Among the mediums of physical effects are distinguished:

Natural mediums. — Those who produce the phenomena spontaneously and without any participation of their will;

Facultative mediums. — Those who have the power to provoke them by an act of the will.

MEDIUMS OF MORAL EFFECTS. — Those who are more especially apt to receive and transmit intelligent communications. They are distinguished, according to their special aptitude, into:

Writing or psychographic mediums. — Those who have the faculty of writing under the influence of the Spirits (See Psychography);

Pneumatographic mediums. — Those who have the faculty of obtaining the direct writing of the Spirits (See Pneumatography);

Drawing mediums. — Those who draw under the influence of the Spirits;

Musician mediums. — Those who perform, compose or write music under the influence of the Spirits;

Speaking mediums. — Those who transmit by speech what the writing mediums transmit by writing;

Communicator mediums. — Persons who have the power to develop in others, by their will, the faculty of writing, whether or not they themselves are writing mediums;

Inspired mediums. — Persons who, in a normal state or in a state of ecstasy, receive, through thought, hidden communications, foreign to their preconceived ideas;

Mediums of presentiment. — Persons who, in certain circumstances, have a vague intuition of future things;

Seeing mediums. — Persons who have the faculty of double sight or that of seeing the Spirits. (See Sight.)

Sensitive or impressionable mediums. — Persons susceptible of feeling the presence of the Spirits by a vague impression, of which they cannot account to themselves. This variety has no very distinct character. All mediums are necessarily impressionable; thus, impressionability is rather a general quality than a special one. It is the rudimentary faculty indispensable to the development of all the others; it differs from the purely physical and nervous impressionability, with which it must not be confused. Observation. — Some persons say in the plural media, as one says errata. We see no advantage in multiplying, without necessity, the already so numerous exceptions of our language. All the grammarians are today in agreement, in giving to the greater part of the foreign words that pass into common usage the French sign of the plural. Several words of Latin termination are, besides, in this case: one says museums, factums, pensums, memorandums, etc. Why not say mediums (médiuns)? To say media would be a kind of pedantic affectation. METEMPSYCHOSIS. — (From the Greek meta, change, en, in, and psyke, soul): transmigration of the soul from one body to another. “The dogma of metempsychosis is of Indian origin. From India this belief passed to Egypt, whence, later, Pythagoras imported it into Greece. The disciples of this philosopher taught that the Spirit, when freed from the bonds of the body, remains in the empire of the dead in an intermediate state more or less long, in order, thereafter, to animate other bodies, of men or of animals, until the time of its purification is completed and it can return to the source of life.” As is seen, the dogma of metempsychosis is based on the individuality and the immortality of the soul; in it is found the Doctrine of the Spirits concerning reincarnation; that intermediate state, of duration more or less long between the different existences, is none other than the state of erraticity in which the Spirits find themselves between two incarnations. There is, however, between Indian metempsychosis and the doctrine of reincarnation, such as it is taught us today, a capital difference: in the first place, metempsychosis admits the transmigration of the soul into the body of animals, which would be a degradation; in the second place, this transmigration is operated only on Earth. The Spirits, on the contrary, tell us that reincarnation is an incessant progress; that man is a creation apart, whose soul has nothing in common with the vital principle of animals; that the different existences may be realized, now on Earth, now, by a progressive law, in a world of a superior order, and this, as Pythagoras says, “until the time of purification has been completed.” MYTHOLOGY. — (From the Greek mytos, fable, and logos, discourse). — Fabulous history of the pagan divinities. There is likewise comprised under this name the history of all the extra-human beings who, under various denominations, succeeded the pagan gods in the Middle Ages. It is thus that we have Scandinavian, Teutonic, Celtic, Scottish, Irish mythology, etc.

DEATH. — Annihilation of the vital forces of the body by the exhaustion of the organs. The body being deprived of the principle of organic life, the soul detaches itself from it and enters the world of the Spirits.

CORPOREAL WORLD. — The whole of the intelligent beings who have a material body.

SPIRIT WORLD OR WORLD OF THE SPIRITS. — The whole of the intelligent beings stripped of their corporeal envelope. The Spirit World is the normal world, primitive, pre-existing and surviving to everything. For the Spirits, the corporeal state is only transitory and passing. They change envelope as we change clothing; they abandon the one that is worn out as we set aside an old garment.

NECROMANCY. — (From the Greek nekros, death, and manteia, divination): art of evoking the souls of the dead in order to obtain revelations from them. By extension, this word was applied to all the means of divination, and one terms a necromancer whoever makes a profession of telling the future. This depends, no doubt, on necromancy having been, in the true acceptation of the word, one of the first means employed for that purpose; in the second place because, according to the common belief, the souls of the dead were supposed to be the principal agents in the other means of divination, such as chiromancy, divination by the examination of the hand, cartomancy, etc. Abuse and charlatanism discredited necromancy, as well as magic. NIGHTWALKER, NIGHTWALKING. — (From the Latin nox, noctis, night, and ambulare, to march, to walk). One who walks or strolls during the night, while sleeping; synonymous with somnambulist. This latter word is preferable, since nightwalker and nightwalking do not imply, at all, the idea of sleep.

ORACLE. — (From the Latin os, oris, the mouth): answer of the gods, according to the pagan beliefs, to the questions that were addressed to them; so called because the answers were generally transmitted by the mouth of the Pythonesses (See this word). By extension, oracle was said at the same time of the answer, of the person who pronounced it, as well as of the various means employed to know the future. Every extraordinary phenomenon, apt to impress the imagination, was regarded as the expression of the will of the gods and became an oracle. The pagan priests, who scorned no occasion to exploit credulity, made themselves its interpreters and consecrated, with solemnities, the temples where the faithful came to deposit their offerings, in the chimerical hope of knowing the future. The belief in oracles has, evidently, its origin in the Spiritist communications which charlatanism, cupidity and the love of domination had surrounded with prestige, and which we see today in all their simplicity. PARADISE. — Abode of the blessed. The Ancients placed it in the part of the hells called the Elysian Fields (See Hell). Modern peoples situate it in the elevated regions of space. This word is synonymous with heaven, taken in the same acceptation, with the difference that the word heaven is attached to an idea of infinite beatitude, whereas the word paradise is more circumscribed and recalls somewhat more material enjoyments. One says also to ascend to heaven, to descend to hell. These opinions are founded on the primitive belief, fruit of ignorance, that the Universe is formed of concentric spheres, whose center is occupied by the Earth. It was in these spheres, called heavens, that the abode of the just was placed; hence the expression of 5th, of 6th heaven to designate the various degrees of beatitude. But, from the moment when Science directed its investigating gaze into the ethereal depths, it showed us universal space without limits, sown with an infinite number of globes, among which ours circulates, to which no place of distinction has been assigned, and without there being for it high or low. The learned man, seeing nowhere anything but infinite space and innumerable worlds, where heaven had been indicated to him; finding in the bowels of the Earth, in place of hell, nothing but geological strata in which its formation is inscribed in irrefutable characters, begins to doubt heaven and hell, and from there to absolute negation there is only a step. The doctrine taught by the Superior Spirits is in accord with Science. It has nothing more that shocks reason or that is in contradiction with exact knowledge. It shows us the abode of the good, no longer in an enclosed locale, or in those pretended spheres with which ignorance had surrounded our globe, but everywhere where there are good Spirits, in space for those who are wandering, in the more perfect worlds for those who are incarnate; there is the Terrestrial Paradise, there are the Elysian Fields, whose primitive idea comes from the intuitive knowledge that had been given to man of this state of things, and which his ignorance and his prejudices reduced to mean proportions. It shows us the wicked finding the chastisement of their faults in their own imperfection, in their moral sufferings, in the inevitable presence of their victims, chastisements more terrible than physical tortures, incompatible with the doctrine of the immateriality of the soul; it shows them to us expiating their errors by the tribulations of new corporeal existences, which they realize in imperfect worlds, and not in a place of eternal torments, from which hope has been forever banished. There is hell. How many men have said to us: If we had been taught this from our infancy, we would never have doubted! Experience teaches us that the Spirits not sufficiently dematerialized are still under the empire of the ideas and prejudices of the corporeal existence; those who, in their communications, employ a language in accord with the ideas whose material error is demonstrated, prove by that very fact their ignorance and their inferiority. (Paradise, from the Greek paradeisos, garden, orchard.)

ETERNAL PUNISHMENTS. — The Superior Spirits teach us that only good is eternal, because it is the essence of God, and that evil will have an end. In consequence of this principle, they combat the doctrine of the eternity of punishments as contrary to the idea that God gives us of His justice and of His goodness. But light is made for the Spirits only in proportion to their elevation; in the inferior classes their ideas are still obscured by matter; the future for them is covered by a veil: they see only the present. They are in the position of a man who climbs a mountain; at the bottom of the valley the mist and the windings of the road limit his view; he must reach the summit to behold the whole horizon, to gauge the road he has made and the one that remains for him to make. The imperfect Spirits, not discerning the term of their sufferings, judge that they suffer always, and this very thought is a chastisement for them. If, then, certain Spirits speak to us of eternal punishments, it is because they themselves believe in them in consequence of their inferiority. PENATES. — (From the Latin Penates, interior, that which is within; formed from penus, a retired, hidden place). Domestic gods of the Ancients, so called because they placed them in the most retired part of the house. LARES (From the name of the nymph Lara, because they were thought to be children of that nymph and of Mercury). Like the penates, they were domestic gods or genies, with the difference that the penates, in their origin, were the manes of the ancestors, whose images were kept in a secret place, sheltered from profanation. The lares, beneficent genies, protectors of families and of houses, were considered as hereditary, because, once attached to a family, they continued to protect its descendants. Not only did each family, each residence have its particular lares, but there were also some for the cities, hamlets, streets, public buildings, etc., which were placed under the invocation of such or such lares, as they are, among Christians, under that of such or such patron saint. The lares and the penates, whose worship may be said to have been universal, although under different names, were none other than the familiar Spirits, whose existence is revealed to us today; but the Ancients made of them gods, to whom superstition erected altars, whereas, for us, they are simply Spirits who animated men like us, sometimes our relatives and our friends, and who attach themselves to us by sympathy. (See Polytheism.)

PERISPIRIT. — (From peri, around, and spiritus, spirit). Semi-material envelope of the Spirit after its separation from the body. The Spirit draws it from the world in which it finds itself and exchanges it in passing into another; it is more or less subtle or gross, according to the nature of each globe. The perispirit can take on all forms at the will of the Spirit; ordinarily it assumes the image that the latter had in its last corporeal existence. Although of an ethereal nature, the substance of the perispirit is susceptible of certain modifications that render it perceptible to our sight. This is what happens in apparitions. It may even, through its union with the fluid of certain persons, become temporarily tangible, that is, offer to the touch the resistance of a solid body, as is seen in the stereotite or palpable apparitions.

The intimate nature of the perispirit is not yet known; but one might suppose that the matter of bodies is composed of a solid and gross part and of a subtle and ethereal part; that only the first undergoes the decomposition produced by death, whereas the second persists and follows the Spirit. The Spirit would thus have a double envelope; death would strip it only of the grosser one; the second, which constitutes the perispirit, would preserve the impression and the form of the first, of which it is as the shadow; but its essentially vaporous nature permits the Spirit to modify this form at its will, to make it visible or invisible, palpable or impalpable. The perispirit is, for the Spirit, what the perisperm is for the germ of the fruit. The almond, stripped of its woody envelope, encloses the germ under the delicate envelope of the perisperm.

PYTHIA, PYTHONESS. — Priestess of Pythian Apollo, at Delphi, so called on account of the serpent Python, which Apollo had slain. The Pythia gave the oracles, but, as they were not always intelligible, the priests took it upon themselves to interpret them according to the circumstances. (See Sibyl).

PNEUMATOPHONY. — (From pnuma, and from phone, sound or voice). Verbal and direct communication of the Spirits without the aid of the organs of the voice. Sound or voice that they make heard in the vagueness of the air and which seems to resound in our ears. (See Psychophony.)

Observation. — We do not employ the word pneumatology, because it already has a determined scientific acceptation and, in the second place, because this word would be improper when it is a matter only of vague, non-articulated sounds.

PNEUMATOGRAPHY. — (From the Greek pneuma, air, breath, wind, spirit, and grapho, I write). Direct writing of the Spirits without the concurrence of the hand of the medium.

(See Psychography.)

POLYTHEISM. — (from the Greek polis, several, and theos, God). Religion that admits several gods. Among the ancient peoples the word God revealed the idea of power; for them, every power superior to the common was a God; even the men who had done great things became gods for them. The Spirits manifesting themselves by effects that seemed to them supernatural, they were, in their eyes, so many divinities, among which it is impossible not to recognize the Spirits of all degrees, from the rapping spirits to the Superior Spirits. In the gods of human form, transporting themselves through space, changing form and becoming visible or invisible at will, one recognizes all the properties of the perispirit. By the passions that were lent to them, we recognize the Spirits not yet dematerialized. In the manes, lares and penates, we recognize our familiar Spirits, our tutelary genies. The knowledge of the Spiritist manifestations is, therefore, the source of polytheism; but, from the most remote Antiquity, enlightened men judged these pretended gods at their just value and recognized in them creatures of a supreme God, sovereign master of the world. Christianity, confirming the doctrine of the unity of God and enlightening men with the sublime morality of the Gospel, marked a new era in the progressive march of Humanity. Meanwhile, as the Spirits did not cease to manifest themselves, instead of gods, men made of them genies and fairies. POSSESSED. — According to the idea attached to this word, the possessed is one in whom the demon has come to lodge itself. The demon possesses him, this signifying that the demon has taken hold of his body. Taking the demon not in its common acceptation, but in the sense of evil Spirit, impure Spirit, malevolent Spirit, imperfect Spirit, the matter would be to know whether a Spirit of this nature or any other can take up domicile in the body of a man, at the same time as the one who is incarnate in it, or substituting itself for it. One might ask what becomes, in this latter case, of the soul thus expelled. The Spiritist Doctrine says that the Spirit united to the body cannot be separated from it definitively except by death; that another Spirit cannot place itself in its stead nor unite itself to the body simultaneously with it; but it also says that an imperfect Spirit can attach itself to the incarnate Spirit, subjugate it, dominate its thought, oblige it, if it has not the force to resist it, to do such or such thing, to act in such or such direction; it constrains it, so to speak, under its influence. Therefore, there is no possession in the absolute sense of the word, there is subjugation. It is not a matter of expelling an evil Spirit, but, to use a material comparison, of making it let go of its prey, which one can always do when one sincerely desires it. Nevertheless, there are persons who take pleasure in a dependency that flatters their tastes and their desires. Common superstition attributes to the possession of the demon certain illnesses that have no other cause than an alteration of the organs. This belief was very widespread among the Jews. For them, to cure these illnesses was to expel the demons. Whatever the cause of the illness, provided that the cure occurs, this takes nothing away from the one who operates it. Jesus and his disciples could, therefore, say that they expelled the demons, in order to use the common language. If they had spoken otherwise, they would not have been understood, nor, perhaps, even believed. A thing may be true or false, according to the sense attributed to the words. The greatest truths may seem absurd when one considers only the form. PRAYER. — Prayer is an invocation and, in certain cases, an evocation by which we call to us this or that Spirit. When it is addressed to God, He sends us His messengers, the good Spirits. Prayer cannot annul the decrees of Providence; but, by it, the good Spirits can come to our aid, whether to give us the moral force that we lack, or to suggest to us the necessary thoughts: hence comes the relief that we experience when we pray with fervor; hence comes also the relief that the suffering Spirits experience when we pray for them; they themselves ask for these prayers under the form that is most familiar to them and that is most in relation with the ideas they have preserved from their corporeal existence; but reason, in accord in this with the Spirits, tells us that the prayer of the lips is a vain formula when the heart takes no part in it. TRIALS. — Vicissitudes of corporeal life by which the Spirits purify themselves according to the manner in which they bear them. According to the Spiritist Doctrine, the Spirit, freed from the body, recognizing its imperfection, chooses itself, by an act of its free will, the kind of trials that it judges most suitable to its advancement and that it will undergo in a new existence. If it chooses a trial beyond its forces, it succumbs and its progress is retarded. PSYCHOGRAPHY. — (From the Greek psyke, butterfly, soul, and grapho, I write). Transmission of the thought of the Spirits, by means of writing, by the hand of a medium.

In the writing medium the hand is the instrument, but his soul, or the Spirit incarnate in him, is the intermediary or the interpreter of the foreign Spirit that communicates. In pneumatography, it is the foreign Spirit itself who writes, without intermediary. (See Pneumatography.)

Immediate or direct psychography. — When the medium himself writes, taking the pencil as for ordinary writing;

Mediate or indirect psychography. — When the pencil is adapted to some object that, in a certain manner, serves as an appendage to the hand, such as a basket, a planchette, etc.

PSYCHOLOGY. — Dissertation on the soul; science that treats of the nature of the soul. This word would be, for the speaking medium, what psychography is for the writing medium, that is, the transmission of the thought of the Spirits by the voice of a medium. Meanwhile, as it already has a consecrated and well-defined acceptation, it is not fitting to give it another. (See Psychophony).

PSYCHOPHONY. — (From the Greek psyke, soul, and phone, soul, sound or voice). Transmission of the thought of the Spirits by the voice of a speaking medium.

ABSOLUTE PURITY. — State of the Spirits of the first order or pure Spirits; those who have traversed all the degrees of the scale and have no more incarnations to undergo.

PURGATORY. — (From the Latin purgatorium, made from purgare, to purge; root purus, pure, which is derived from the Greek pyr, pyros, fire, ancient emblem of purification). — Place of temporary expiation, according to the Catholic Church, for the souls that have still to purify themselves of some stains. The Church does not define in a precise manner the place where purgatory is to be found; it places it everywhere, in space, perhaps at our side. It explains itself no more clearly as to the nature of the punishments suffered there; they are sufferings more moral than physical. And yet, there is fire, but high Theology recognizes that this word must be taken in a figurative sense and as an emblem of purification. The teaching of the Spirits is much more explicit in this respect; it is true that they reject the dogma of the eternity of punishments (See Hell;

eternal punishments), but they admit a temporary expiation, more or less long, which is no other thing, except in name, than purgatory. This expiation occurs through sufferings moral, of the soul in the wandering state; the wandering Spirits are everywhere : in space, at our side, as the Church says. The latter admits in purgatory certain physical punishments; the Spiritist Doctrine says that the Spirit purifies itself, purges itself of its impurities in its corporeal existences; the sufferings and tribulations of life are the expiations and the trials by which it raises itself, whence it results that here on Earth we are in full purgatory. What the Catholic doctrine leaves in vagueness, the Spirits make precise and make one touch with the finger and see with the eyes. The Spirits who suffer can, therefore, say that they are in purgatory, to use our language. If, by reason of their moral inferiority, it is not given them to see the term of their sufferings, they will say that they are in hell.

(See Hell.)

The Church admits the efficacy of prayers for the souls of purgatory.

The Spirits tell us that, by prayer, we call the good Spirits, who give to the weak the moral force that they lack to bear their trials.

The suffering Spirits can, therefore, ask for prayers without there being in this contradiction with the Spiritist Doctrine; now, according to what we know of the different degrees of the Spirits, we understand that they can ask for them according to the form that was familiar to them in life. (See Prayer.)

The Church admits only one corporeal existence, after which the lot of man is irrevocably fixed for all eternity. The Spirits tell us that a single existence, whose duration, often abridged by accidents, is but a point in eternity, does not suffice for the soul to purify itself completely, and that God, in His justice, does not condemn without remission him on whom it did not depend, very often, to be sufficiently enlightened about the good in order to practice it. Their doctrine leaves to the soul the faculty of realizing, in a series of existences, what it could not realize in a single one: here is the principal difference. But, if all the dogmatic principles were carefully scrutinized and if account were always taken of the part that must be taken in a figurative sense, certainly many apparent contradictions would disappear. REINCARNATION. — Return of the Spirit to corporeal life. Reincarnation may occur immediately after death, or after a lapse of time more or less long, during which the Spirit remains wandering. It may occur on this Earth or in other spheres, but always in a human body, and never in that of an animal. Reincarnation is progressive or stationary; it never retrogrades. In its new corporeal existences the Spirit may fall in social position, but not as a Spirit, that is, from master it may become servant, from prince, artisan, from rich, wretched, but always progressing in science and morality. Thus the scoundrel may become a man of good, but the man of good cannot become a scoundrel. The imperfect Spirits, who are still under the influence of matter, do not always have complete ideas about reincarnation. The manner in which they explain it reflects their ignorance and the terrestrial prejudices, more or less as a peasant would do who was asked whether it is the Earth or the Sun that turns. They have of their previous existences only a confused remembrance; the future for them is vague. (It is known that the remembrance of past existences is elucidated as the Spirit purifies itself). Some still speak of the concentric spheres that surround the Earth and in which the Spirit, rising gradually, attains the seventh heaven which, for them, is the apogee of perfection. But, in the very midst of the diversity of expressions and the extravagance of the figures, an attentive observation easily lets one recognize a dominant thought, that of the successive trials that the Spirit must undergo, and of the various degrees that it must traverse in order to reach perfection and supreme happiness. Often things seem to us contradictory only because we have not sounded their intimate sense. SATAN. — (From the Hebrew satan, adversary, enemy of God); the chief of the demons. This word is synonymous with devil, with this difference: the latter term belongs more than the former to familiar language. In the second place, according to the idea attached to this word, satan is a unique being: the genie of evil, the rival of God. Devil is a more generic term, which applies to all the demons. There is only one satan, but there are several devils. According to the Spiritist Doctrine, satan is not a distinct being, inasmuch as God has no rival with whom He can struggle, power against power; it is the allegorical personification of evil and of all the evil Spirits. (See Devil; Demon.)

SEMATOLOGY. — (From the Greek sema, semato, sign, and logos, discourse). Transmission of the thought of the Spirits by means of signs, such as raps, movement of objects, etc. (See Typtology.)

SERAPH. — (See Angel.)

SIBYLS. — (From the Aeolic Greek, sios, employed for theos, God, and from leouli, counsel; divine counsel). — Prophetesses who gave oracles and whom the Ancients judged inspired by the Divinity. Taking into account the part of charlatanism and the prestige with which those who exploited them surrounded them, one recognizes in the sibyls and pythonesses all the faculties of the somnambulists, of the ecstatics and of certain mediums.

SYLPHS, SYLPHIDS. — According to the mythology of the Middle Ages, the sylphs were the genies of the air, as the gnomes were those of the earth and the undines those of the waters. They were represented under a human, semi-vaporous form, with gracious features; their transparent wings were the symbol of the rapidity with which they traversed space. They were attributed the power of becoming visible or invisible at will; their character was gentle and affable. “Doubt not the multitude of light sylphs that you have at your command. Continually occupied in gathering your thoughts, as soon as you pronounce a word they seize upon it, repeating everything around you. Their lightness is so great that they traverse a thousand paces in one second. They are the sylphs of Paracelsus and of Gabalis.” (A. Martin.) The belief in the sylphs has its evident source in the Spiritist manifestations. They are Spirits of an inferior order, frivolous, but benevolent.

SOMNAMBULISM. — (From the Latin somnus, sleep, and ambulare, to march, to walk). State of emancipation of the soul more complete than in the dream. (See Dream.)

The dream is an imperfect somnambulism. In somnambulism the lucidity of the soul, that is, the faculty of seeing, which is one of the attributes of its nature, is more developed. It sees things with more precision and clarity; the body can act under the impulse of the will of the soul.

The absolute forgetting at the moment of awakening is one of the characteristic signs of true somnambulism, because the independence of the soul and of the body is more complete than in the dream.

MAGNETIC OR ARTIFICIAL SOMNAMBULISM. — That which is brought about by the action that one person exercises over another by means of the magnetic fluid that the one pours over the other.

NATURAL SOMNAMBULISM. — That which is spontaneous and is produced without provocation and without the influence of any exterior agent.

DREAMS. — Effect of the emancipation of the soul during sleep. When the senses are numbed, the bonds that unite the body and the soul loosen; the latter, becoming more free, recovers in part its faculties as a Spirit and enters more easily into communication with the beings of the incorporeal world. The remembrance that it preserves on awakening, of what it saw in other places and in other worlds, or in its past existences, constitutes the dream properly so called. This recollection being only partial, almost always incomplete and mixed with recollections of the waking state, there result from this, in the sequence of facts, breaks in continuity that rupture their concatenation and produce those bizarre assemblages that seem without sense, more or less as would be a narration in which fragments of lines or of phrases had been truncated, here and there. SLEEP-TALKING. — (From the Latin somnus, sleep, and loqui, to speak). State of emancipation of the soul, intermediate between the dream and natural somnambulism. Those who speak while dreaming are sleep-talkers.

MAGNETIC SLEEP. — In acting upon the nervous system, the magnetic fluid produces in certain persons an effect that has been compared to natural sleep, but which differs from it essentially under several aspects. The principal difference consists in that, in this state, the thought is entirely free, the individual has perfect knowledge of himself and the body can act as in the normal state, by reason of the physiological cause of magnetic sleep not being the same as that of natural sleep. Meanwhile, natural sleep is a transitory state that always precedes magnetic sleep; the passage from one to the other is a veritable awakening of the soul. Hence why those who are put for the first time into magnetic somnambulism almost always answer no to this question: are you sleeping? And, indeed, since they see and think freely, for them this is not sleeping in the common sense of the word. NATURAL SLEEP. — Momentary suspension of the life of relation. Numbing of the senses during which the relations of the soul with the external world by means of the organs are interrupted.

SUPERSTITION. — However absurd it may be, a superstitious idea almost always rests upon a real fact, but one that ignorance has denatured, exaggerated or falsely interpreted. It would be an error to believe that to popularize the knowledge of the Spiritist manifestations is to propagate superstitions. One of two things: either these phenomena are a chimera, or they are real; in the first case, one would be right to combat them; but, if they exist, as experience demonstrates, nothing will prevent them from being produced. As it would be puerile to combat positive facts, what must be attacked is not the facts, but the false interpretation that ignorance may give them. No doubt, in remote centuries, they were the origin of a number of superstitions, like all natural phenomena whose cause was unknown; little by little the progress of the positive sciences goes on destroying some; the Spiritist science, better known, will cause the others to disappear. The adversaries of Spiritism rely upon the danger that these phenomena represent for reason. All causes capable of terrifying weak imaginations can produce madness. What is necessary, above all, is to cure the malady of fear. Now, the means of achieving this is not to exaggerate the danger, by making it believed that all these manifestations are the work of the devil. Those who propagate this belief with the aim of discrediting it miss the mark completely, first because, to attribute any cause whatever to the Spiritist phenomena is to recognize their existence; in the second place, in wishing to convince that the devil is their sole agent, the morale of certain individuals is dangerously affected. As the manifestations will not be prevented from being produced, even among those who do not wish to occupy themselves with them, one will see everywhere, around persons, only devils and demons even in the simplest facts, which they will take for manifestations; there is more than enough reason to disturb their brain. To render this belief plausible is to propagate the malady of fear, instead of curing it. There is the true danger; there is the superstition. THAUMATURGE. — (From the Greek thauma, thaumatos, marvel, and ergon, work); maker of miracles: Saint Gregory Thaumaturge. It is sometimes said, in derision, of those who, with or without reason, boast of having the power to produce phenomena outside the laws of Nature. It is in this sense that certain persons qualify Swedenborg as a thaumaturge.

HUMAN TELEGRAPHY. — Communication at a distance between two living persons, who evoke one another reciprocally. This evocation provokes the emancipation of the soul, or of the incarnate Spirit, which comes to manifest itself and can communicate its thought by writing or by any other means. The Spirits tell us that human telegraphy will one day be a usual means of communication, when men are more moralized, less egoistic and less attached to material things. While this does not occur, human telegraphy is only the privilege of choice souls. TYPTOLOGY. — (From the Greek typto, blow, and logos, discourse). Intelligent communication of the Spirits by means of raps.

Typtology by movement. — When the raps are produced by some object that moves, for example, a table that beats with its legs by a rocking movement;

Intimate or passive typtology. — When the raps are made to be heard in the very substance of a completely immobile object;

Alphabetic typtology. — When the raps designate the letters of the alphabet, whose union forms words and phrases. It can be produced by the two means above.

Typtology is a very imperfect means of communication by reason of its slowness, which does not permit developments as extensive as those that can be obtained by psychography or by psychophony (See these words).

UNIVERSAL WHOLE, the great whole. — According to the opinion of certain philosophers, there is a universal soul, of which each one of us possesses a parcel; at the time of death, all these particular souls return to the general source, without preserving their individuality, as the drops of rain merge in the waters of the ocean. This common source is, for them, the great whole, the universal whole.

This doctrine is as disheartening as materialism, inasmuch as, without individuality after death, it would be absolutely as though one did not exist. Spiritism is the patent proof of the contrary. But the idea of the great whole does not necessarily imply that of the fusion of beings into one. A soldier who returns to his regiment enters into a collective whole, but does not, for all that, cease to preserve his individuality. The same occurs with the souls that enter the world of the Spirits, which, also for them, is a collective whole: the universal whole. It is in this sense that this expression is to be understood in the language of certain Spirits. TRANSMIGRATION. — (See Reincarnation;

Metempsychosis.)

SEER. — One who is endowed with double sight. Some persons designate under this name the magnetic somnambulists in order to better characterize their lucidity. This word, in this acceptation, has almost the same value as the word invisible applied to the Spirits, besides the drawback of not being special to the somnambulic state. When one has a term to express an idea, it is superfluous to create another. It is necessary to avoid, above all, that words be diverted from their consecrated acceptation. VISION. — (See Apparition.)

VISIONARY. — One who, through false perception, believes himself to have visions, revelations. In the figurative sense, one who has mad or chimerical ideas (Academy). This word would apply perfectly to designate the persons endowed with double sight, and who have real visions, were it not for the pejorative sense that it encloses. And yet, the necessity of a special word to designate these persons is indisputable. (See Seer.)

DOUBLE SIGHT. — Effect of the emancipation of the soul, which manifests itself in a waking state; faculty of seeing absent things as if they were present. Those who are endowed with this faculty do not see by the eyes, but by the soul, which perceives the image of objects wherever it transports itself, as though it were a kind of mirage. This faculty is not permanent; certain persons possess it, in spite of themselves, it seeming to them a natural effect. It produces what is called visions. [1] Translator's Note: With some additions and suppressions, this “Spiritist Vocabulary” was inserted by Allan Kardec in the 1st edition of The Mediums' Book, chapter I, being excluded by the author from the 2nd edition of the said work onward.

[2] Translator's Note: In truth, the correct reference is in I Samuel, chapter 28.