WRITING OR PSYCHOGRAPHIC MEDIUMS.

Mechanical mediums.

— Intuitive ones.

— Semi-mechanical ones.

— Inspired or involuntary ones. — Of presentiments.

Of all the means of communication, handwriting is the simplest, most convenient and, above all, most complete.

Toward it all efforts should tend, for it allows the establishment, with the Spirits, of relations as continuous and regular as those that exist among ourselves.

It should be employed with all the more diligence, since it is through it that the Spirits best reveal their nature and the degree of their perfection or of their inferiority.

By the ease they find in expressing themselves through this means, they reveal to us their most intimate thoughts and enable us to judge them and to appraise their worth.

For the medium, moreover, the faculty of writing is the most capable of developing through exercise. Mechanical mediums.

Whoever examines certain effects that are produced in the movements of the table, of the basket, or of the little board that writes will not be able to doubt an action directly exercised by the Spirit upon these objects.

The basket sometimes shakes with such violence that it escapes from the hands of the medium and not rarely directs itself toward certain persons of those present to strike them. At other times, its movements give sign of an affectionate feeling.

The same occurs when the pencil is placed in the hand of the medium; frequently it is thrown far away with force, or else the hand, like the basket, shakes convulsively and strikes the table in a choleric manner, even when the medium is possessed of the greatest calm and is astonished at not being master of himself.

Let us say, in passing, that such effects always demonstrate the presence of imperfect Spirits; the superior Spirits are constantly calm, dignified and benevolent; if they are not heeded properly, they withdraw and others take their place.

The Spirit can, then, express its ideas directly, whether by moving an object to which the hand of the medium serves as a simple point of support, or by actuating the hand itself.

When it acts directly upon the hand, the Spirit gives it an impulse entirely independent of the will of the latter. The hand moves without interruption and without hindrance from the medium, as long as the Spirit has something to say, and it stops thus when the Spirit finishes.

In this circumstance, what characterizes the phenomenon is that the medium has not the least consciousness of what it writes. When, in the case, absolute unconsciousness occurs, one has the mediums called passive or mechanical.

This faculty is precious, because it permits no doubt whatever about the independence of the thought of the one who writes. Intuitive mediums.

The transmission of thought also takes place by means of the Spirit of the medium, or, better, of his soul, for by this name we designate the incarnate Spirit.

The free Spirit, in this case, does not act upon the hand to make it write; it does not take it, it does not guide it. It acts upon the soul, with which it identifies itself. The soul, under this impulse, directs the hand and this directs the pencil.

Let us note here an important thing: it is that the free Spirit does not substitute itself for the soul, since it cannot displace it. It dominates it, despite the soul, and imprints upon it its will.

In such a circumstance, the role of the soul is not one of entire passivity; it receives the thought of the free Spirit and transmits it.

In this situation, the medium is conscious of what it writes, although it does not express its own thought. This is what is called the intuitive medium.

But, this being so, it will be said, nothing proves that it is a foreign Spirit who writes and not that of the medium. Effectively, the distinction is sometimes difficult to make, but it may happen that this presents little importance.

Nevertheless, it is possible to recognize the suggested thought, because it is never preconceived; it is born as the writing is being traced and, often, is contrary to the idea that had been formed beforehand. It may even be beyond the limits of the knowledge and capacities of the medium.

The role of the mechanical medium is that of a machine; the intuitive medium acts as an interpreter would.

The latter, in fact, in order to transmit the thought, needs to understand it, to appropriate it, in a certain way, in order to translate it faithfully and, nevertheless, that thought is not his, it only passes through his brain. Such, precisely, is the role of the intuitive medium. Semi-mechanical mediums.

In the purely mechanical medium, the movement of the hand is independent of the will; in the intuitive medium, the movement is voluntary and optional. The semi-mechanical medium partakes of both these kinds.

He feels that an impulse is given to his hand, despite himself, but, at the same time, he is conscious of what he writes, as the words are formed.

In the first, the thought comes after the act of writing; in the second, it precedes it; in the third, it accompanies it.

These last mediums are the most numerous.

Inspired mediums.

— Everyone who, whether in the normal state, or in that of ecstasy, receives, through thought, communications foreign to his preconceived ideas, may be included in the category of inspired mediums.

These, as may be seen, form a variety of intuitive mediumship, with the difference that the intervention of an occult force is there much less perceptible, for, to the inspired one, it is still more difficult to distinguish his own thought from what is suggested to him.

Spontaneity is what, above all, characterizes the thought of this last kind.

Inspiration comes to us from the Spirits who influence us for good, or for evil, but it proceeds, principally, from those who desire our good and whose counsels very often we commit the error of not following.

It applies, in all the circumstances of life, to the resolutions that we must take. Under this aspect, it may be said that all are mediums, for there is no one who does not have his protecting and familiar Spirits, striving to suggest salutary ideas to those they protect.

If all were thoroughly imbued with this truth, no one would fail to resort frequently to the inspiration of his guardian angel, in the moments when one does not know what to say, or do.

Let each one, then, invoke it with fervor and confidence, in case of need, and very often he will be astonished at the ideas that come to him as if by enchantment, whether it be a matter of a resolution to take, or of something to compose.

If no idea arises, it is because one must wait.

The proof that the idea that comes is foreign to the person concerned lies in this: that, if such an idea had existed in his mind, that person would be master of using it at any moment and there would be no reason for it not to manifest itself at will.

Whoever is not blind needs do nothing more than open his eyes, in order to see when he wishes. In the same way, he who possesses his own ideas has them always at his disposal. If they do not come to him when he wishes, it is because he is obliged to seek them somewhere other than within himself.

One may also include in this category persons who, without being endowed with intelligence out of the ordinary and without leaving the normal state, have flashes of an intellectual lucidity that gives them momentarily an unaccustomed facility of conception and of elocution and, in certain cases, the presentiment of future things.

In these moments, which are aptly called inspiration, ideas abound, under an involuntary and almost feverish impulse. It seems that a superior intelligence comes to help us and that our spirit has rid itself of a burden.

Men of genius, of all kinds, artists, scholars, men of letters, are without doubt advanced Spirits capable of understanding by themselves and of conceiving great things. Now, precisely because they are judged capable, it is that the Spirits, when they wish to execute certain works, suggest to them the necessary ideas and thus it is that they, most often, are mediums without knowing it.

They have, nevertheless, a vague intuition of a foreign assistance, since everyone who appeals to inspiration does nothing more than make an evocation.

If he did not expect to be answered, why would he exclaim, so frequently: my good genius, come to my aid?

The following answers confirm this assertion:

a— What is the primary cause of inspiration?

“The Spirit that communicates through thought.”

b — Is it not the revelation of great things that constitutes the sole object of inspiration? “No, inspiration occurs, many times, with respect to the most common circumstances of life.

For example, you wish to go somewhere: a secret voice tells you not to do it, because you will run into danger; or else it tells you to do something of which you were not thinking. That is inspiration.

There are few persons who have not been more or less inspired at certain moments.” c — An author, a painter, a musician, for example, could they, in the moments of inspiration, be considered mediums? “Yes, for, in those moments the soul becomes more free in them and as it were detached from matter; it recovers a part of its faculties of Spirit and receives more easily the communications of the other Spirits that inspire it.” Mediums of presentiments.

Presentiment is a vague intuition of future things.

Some persons have this faculty more or less developed. It may be due to a kind of double sight, which permits them to glimpse the consequences of present things and the affiliation of events.

But, many times, it is also the result of occult communications and, above all in this case, it is that one can give to those who are endowed with it the name of mediums of presentiments, who constitute a variety of inspired mediums.