MANIFESTATIONS OF SPIRITS.

Religious character and consequences of the manifestations of Spirits. — The perispirit as the principle of the manifestations.

— Visual manifestations.

— Transfiguration. Invisibility. — Emancipation of the soul.

— Apparition of living persons. Bicorporeity.

— Of mediums.

— Of obsession and possession.

Religious character and consequences of the manifestations of Spirits.

— The souls or Spirits of those who have lived here constitute the invisible world that peoples space and in the midst of which we live. From this it follows that, ever since there have been men, there have been Spirits, and that, if the latter have the power to manifest themselves, they must have had it in all ages. This is what the history and the religions of all peoples confirm. Nevertheless, in these latter times, the manifestations of Spirits have taken on great development and have assumed a more marked character of authenticity, because it was in the designs of Providence to put an end to the plague of incredulity and materialism by means of evident proofs, allowing those who have left the Earth to come and attest their existence and reveal to us the happy or unhappy situation in which they found themselves.

— The visible world living in the midst of the invisible world, with which it is in perpetual contact, it follows that they act incessantly upon one another, a reaction that constitutes the origin of an immensity of phenomena which have been considered supernatural because their cause was not known.

The action of the invisible world upon the visible world and reciprocally is one of the laws, one of the forces of Nature, as necessary to universal harmony as the law of attraction. If it ceased, harmony would be disturbed, as happens in a piece of machinery from which a part is removed. Such action deriving from a law of nature, the phenomena it produces evidently have nothing supernatural about them. They appeared so because the cause that produced them was unknown. The same occurred with certain effects of electricity, of light, etc.

— All religions have for their basis the existence of God and for their end the future of man after death. That future, which is of capital interest to the creature, is necessarily linked to the existence of the invisible world, wherefore the knowledge of that world has constituted, in all times, the object of his researches and his preoccupations. Man's attention was naturally drawn to the phenomena that tend to prove the existence of that world, and there have never been any so conclusive as those of the manifestations of Spirits, by means of which the very inhabitants of such a world revealed their existence. It was for this reason that these phenomena became fundamental to the greater part of the dogmas of all religions.

— Having instinctively the intuition of a superior power, man was always led, in all times, to attribute to the direct action of that power the phenomena whose cause was unknown to him and which passed, in his eyes, for prodigies and supernatural effects. The incredulous consider this tendency a consequence of the predilection that man has for the marvelous; they do not, however, seek the origin of this love of the marvelous. It resides, nonetheless, quite simply in the ill-defined intuition of an order of extracorporeal things. With the progress of Science and the knowledge of the laws of Nature, these phenomena passed little by little from the domain of the marvelous to that of natural effects, so that what once seemed supernatural is no longer so today, and what is still so today will no longer be so tomorrow. The phenomena arising from the manifestation of Spirits furnished, by their very nature, a large contribution to the facts reputed marvelous. A time would come, however, when, the law that governs them being known, they would enter, like the others, into the order of natural facts. That time has arrived, and Spiritism, by making known that law, has presented the key to the interpretation of the greater part of the misunderstood passages of the sacred Scriptures that allude to it, and of the facts held to be miraculous.

— The character of the miraculous fact is that it is unusual and exceptional; it is a derogation from the laws of Nature. Once, then, that a phenomenon reproduces itself under identical conditions, it follows that it is subject to a law, and then it is no longer miraculous. That law may be unknown, but its existence is not for that any less real. Time will take it upon itself to reveal it.

The movement of the sun, or rather of the Earth, stayed by Joshua, would be a true miracle, inasmuch as it would imply the manifest derogation of the law that governs the movement of the heavenly bodies. But if the fact could reproduce itself under given conditions, it would be subject to a law and would consequently cease to be a miracle.

— It is erroneous for the Church to be alarmed at the fact that the circle of miraculous facts is being restricted, inasmuch as God proves His power and His grandeur better by means of the admirable ensemble of His laws than by some infractions of those same laws. And its fear is all the more erroneous in that it attributes to the demon the power to work prodigies, whence it would result that, being able to interrupt the course of the divine laws, the demon would be as powerful as God. To dare to say that the Spirit of evil can suspend the course of the laws of God is blasphemy and sacrilege. Far from losing anything of its authority by the facts qualified as miraculous passing into the order of natural facts, religion can only gain by it; firstly, because, if a fact is falsely held to be miraculous, there is in it an error, and religion can only lose if it rests upon an error, above all if it persists in regarding as a miracle what is not one; secondly, because, not admitting the possibility of miracles, many persons deny the facts qualified as miraculous, denying, consequently, the religion that relies upon such facts. If, on the contrary, the possibility of those same facts be demonstrated as effects of the natural laws, there will no longer be any ground for anyone to reject them, nor to reject the religion that proclaims them.

— No religious belief, by being contrary to them, can invalidate the facts that Science peremptorily confirms. Religion cannot but gain in authority by accompanying the progress of scientific knowledge, just as it cannot but lose if it remains behind, or if it protests against that same knowledge in the name of its dogmas, seeing that no dogma can prevail against the laws of Nature, or annul them. A dogma that is founded on the negation of a law of Nature cannot express the truth.

Spiritism, which is founded on the knowledge of laws hitherto not understood, does not come to destroy the religious facts, but to sanction them, giving them a rational explanation. It comes to destroy only the false consequences that were deduced from them, by virtue of ignorance of those laws, or of having interpreted them wrongly.

— Ignorance of the laws of Nature, by leading man to seek fantastic causes for phenomena that he does not understand, is the origin of superstitious ideas, some of which are due to Spiritist phenomena that have been ill understood. The knowledge of the laws that govern the phenomena destroys those superstitious ideas, directing things toward reality and demonstrating, with respect to them, the limit of the possible and the impossible.

The perispirit as the principle of the manifestations.

— Spirits, as has already been said, have a fluidic body, to which the name perispirit is given. Its substance is drawn from the universal or cosmic fluid, which forms and feeds it, as the air forms and feeds the material body of man. The perispirit is more or less ethereal, according to the worlds and the degree of purification of the Spirit. In the inferior worlds and the inferior Spirits, it is of a more gross nature and comes very near to crude matter.

— During incarnation, the Spirit preserves its perispirit, the body being for it only a second envelope, more gross, more resistant, suited to the phenomena to which it has to lend itself, and of which the Spirit divests itself at the moment of death.

The perispirit serves as an intermediary between the Spirit and the body. It is the organ of transmission of all sensations. With respect to those that come from without, it may be said that the body receives the impression; the perispirit transmits it; and the Spirit, which is the sensible and intelligent being, receives it. When the act is at the initiative of the Spirit, it may be said that the Spirit wills, the perispirit transmits, and the body executes.

— The perispirit is not enclosed within the limits of the body, as in a box. By its fluidic nature, it is expansible, it radiates outward and forms, around the body, a kind of atmosphere that thought and the force of the will can dilate more or less. From this it follows that there are persons who, without being in bodily contact, can find themselves in contact through their perispirits and exchange, against their will, impressions and, sometimes, thoughts, by means of intuition.

— Being one of the constituent elements of man, the perispirit plays an important role in all psychological phenomena and, to a certain extent, in physiological and pathological phenomena. When the medical sciences take into due account the spiritual element in the economy [in the organism] of the being, they will have taken a great step and entirely new horizons will be opened to them. The causes of many maladies will at that time be discovered and powerful means of combating them found.

— It is by means of the perispirit that Spirits act upon inert matter and produce the various mediumistic phenomena. Its ethereal nature does not stand in the way of this, for it is known that the most powerful motive forces are found in us in the most rarefied and the most imponderable fluids. There is, then, no reason for astonishment when, with this lever, Spirits produce certain physical effects, such as raps and noises of every kind, the raising, transporting, or throwing of objects. To explain these facts, there is no need to have recourse to the marvelous, nor to the supernatural.

— Acting upon matter, Spirits can manifest themselves in many different ways: by physical effects, such as noises and the movement of objects; by the transmission of thought, by sight, by hearing, by speech, by touch, by writing, by drawing, by music, etc. In a word, by all the means that serve to put them in communication with men.

— The manifestations of Spirits may be spontaneous or provoked. The first occur unexpectedly and without warning. They are produced, many times, among persons wholly strangers to Spiritist ideas. In some cases and under the sway of certain circumstances, the will can provoke the manifestations, under the influence of persons endowed, for such an effect, with special faculties.

The spontaneous manifestations have always occurred, in all ages and in all countries. Without doubt, already in Antiquity the means of provoking them was known; but that means constituted the privilege of certain castes who revealed it only to rare initiates, under rigorous conditions, hiding it from the common people in order to dominate them by the prestige of an occult power. It, however, was perpetuated, through the ages down to our days, among some individuals, but almost always disfigured by superstition, or mixed with the ridiculous practices of magic, which contributed to discredit it. Up to that time it had been nothing more than germs cast here and there. Providence had reserved for our epoch the complete knowledge and the popularization of these phenomena, in order to purge them of their impure alloys and to render them useful to the betterment of Humanity, now ripe to understand them and to draw the consequences from them. Visual manifestations.

— By its nature and in its normal state, the perispirit is invisible, having this in common with an immensity of fluids that we know to exist, but that we have never seen. It can also, like some fluids, undergo modifications that render it perceptible to sight, whether by a kind of condensation, or by a change in the molecular disposition. It can even acquire the properties of a solid and tangible body and instantly resume its ethereal and invisible state. It is possible to form an idea of this effect from what happens with vapor, which passes from the state of invisibility to the misty state, then to the liquid, then to the solid, and vice versa. These different states of the perispirit result from the will of the Spirit and not from an exterior physical cause, as occurs with gases. When a Spirit appears, it is because it puts its perispirit into the state proper to render it visible. Nevertheless, the will does not always suffice to render it visible: there is needed, for the modification of the perispirit to be effected, the concurrence of certain circumstances that do not depend upon it. It is needed, moreover, that the Spirit be permitted to make itself visible to such a person, a permission that is not always granted to it, or is granted only under determined circumstances, for reasons that escape us. (See: The Mediums' Book, no.

Another property of the perispirit, peculiar to its ethereal nature, is penetrability. No matter offers it an obstacle; it traverses them all, as light traverses transparent bodies. Hence it comes that there is no way to prevent Spirits from entering an entirely closed enclosure. They visit the prisoner in his dungeon as easily as they visit one who is in the field at work.

— Visual manifestations ordinarily occur during sleep, by means of dreams: these are visions. Apparitions properly so called occur in the waking state, those who perceive them being in the full enjoyment of their faculties and of the liberty to use them. They present themselves, in general, under a vaporous and diaphanous form, sometimes vague and indistinct. Frequently, they are, at first sight, no more than a whitish gleam whose contours little by little become more accentuated. At other times, the forms present themselves clearly drawn, the slightest features of the face being distinguished, to the point that one can describe it with precision. The bearing and the aspect resemble those that the Spirit had when alive.

— Being able to assume all appearances, the Spirit presents itself under that which can render it most recognizable, if it so wills. It is thus that, although as a Spirit no bodily infirmity remains to it, it will show itself maimed, lame, wounded, with scars, if this be necessary to prove its identity. The same is observed with regard to dress. That of Spirits who retain nothing of earthly weaknesses ordinarily consists of ample floating cloths and of a flowing and graceful head of hair.

Often Spirits present themselves with the attributes characteristic of their elevation, such as: a halo, wings for those who may be considered angels, a resplendent luminous aspect, while others wear those that recall their terrestrial occupations. Thus, a warrior will appear with his armor, a sage with books, an assassin with a dagger, etc. The figure of the superior Spirits is beautiful, noble, and serene; the more inferior ones have something ferocious and bestial about them and, at times, still show vestiges of the crimes they committed or of the torments they underwent, those appearances being for them a reality, that is to say, they believe themselves to be as they appear, which is for them a punishment.

— The Spirit that wishes or is able to realize an apparition takes at times a still more precise form, of perfect resemblance to a solid human body, so as to cause a complete illusion and to give the belief that there is there a corporeal being.

In some cases and under certain given circumstances, tangibility can become real, that is to say, one can touch, feel the apparition, sense it resistant as a living body and with the warmth that is observed in the latter, which does not prevent it from vanishing with the swiftness of lightning. A person can, then, be in the presence of a Spirit, exchange with it ordinary words and gestures, and suppose that it is a question of a simple mortal, without even suspecting that he has before him a Spirit.

— Whatever be the aspect under which a Spirit presents itself, even under a tangible form, it can, at the moment in which this occurs, be visible only to some persons. It can, then, in a gathering, show itself only to one or to several of those who are in it. Of two individuals who find themselves side by side, it may happen that one sees and touches it and the other neither sees nor senses it.

The phenomenon of the apparition to a single person, among many who find themselves gathered together, is explained by the fact that there is necessary, for it to be produced, a combination of the perispiritual fluid of the Spirit with that of the person. And, for this to occur, there must be between those fluids a kind of affinity that permits the combination. If the Spirit does not find the necessary organic aptitude, the phenomenon of the apparition cannot be reproduced; if the aptitude exists, the Spirit has the liberty to make use of it or not. From this it results that, if two persons equally endowed as to that aptitude find themselves together, the Spirit can effect the fluidic combination only with that one of the two to whom it wishes to show itself. If it does not effect it with the other, the latter will not see it. It is as if, in the case of two individuals whose eyes were blindfolded: if a third wished to show himself to only one of the two, he would remove the blindfold only from the eyes of that one. From one, however, who was blind, the removal of the blindfold would avail nothing: he would not, for that, acquire the faculty of seeing.

— Tangible apparitions are very rare, the vaporous ones being, nonetheless, frequent. They are so, above all, at the moment of death. The Spirit that has freed itself seems to be in haste to go and see again its relatives and friends, perhaps to warn them that it has just left the Earth and to tell them that it continues to live. Let each one have recourse to his remembrances and he will verify that many authentic facts of this kind, to which due attention was not given, have occurred, not only at night, but in full day and in the complete waking state. Transfiguration.

Invisibility.

— The perispirit of living persons enjoys the same properties as that of Spirits. As has already been said, that of the former is not confined within the body: it radiates and forms around it a kind of fluidic atmosphere. Now, it may happen that, in certain cases and under the same given circumstances, it undergoes a transformation analogous to that already described: the real and material form of the body vanishes beneath that fluidic layer, if we may so express ourselves, and takes for moments an appearance entirely different, even that of another person or that of the Spirit which combines its fluids with those of the individual, being able also to give to an ugly countenance a beautiful and radiant aspect. Such is the phenomenon that is designated by the name of "transfiguration," quite frequent and which is produced, principally, when the occurring circumstances provoke a more abundant expansion of fluid. The phenomenon of transfiguration can be effected with very different intensities, according to the degree of purification of the perispirit, a degree that always corresponds to that of the moral elevation of the Spirit. It is confined at times to a simple change in the general aspect of the physiognomy, while at other times it gives to the perispirit a luminous and splendid appearance.

The material form can consequently disappear beneath the perispiritual fluid, without it being for this necessary that the fluid assume another aspect. At times, it merely conceals an inert or living body, rendering it invisible to one or to many persons, as a layer of vapor would do.

We take present things solely as terms of comparison, without claiming an absolute analogy, which does not exist.

— These phenomena may perhaps seem singular, but only because the properties of the perispiritual fluid are not yet known. This is, for us, a new body, which must possess new properties and which can be studied only by the ordinary processes of Science, but which do not, for that, cease to be natural properties, having of the marvelous only their novelty.

Emancipation of the soul.

— During sleep, only the body reposes; the Spirit does not sleep; it takes advantage of the repose of the former and of the moments in which its presence is not necessary, in order to act in isolation and go wherever it wishes, in the enjoyment then of its liberty and of the plenitude of its faculties. During incarnation, the Spirit is never completely separated from the body; whatever be the distance to which it transports itself, it always remains bound to the latter by a fluidic bond that serves to make it return to the corporeal prison, as soon as its presence there becomes necessary. That bond is broken only by death. "During sleep, the soul partially frees itself from the body. When we sleep, we are, temporarily, in the state in which we shall find ourselves in a definitive manner after death. The Spirits who, after the death of their bodies, have detached themselves from matter, had intelligent slumbers; those, when they sleep, join the society of other beings who are superior to them; they travel, converse, and instruct themselves with them, they even work at works which, when they die, they find entirely finished. This should teach you not to fear death, for you die every day, as a saint said. "Thus it is with respect to the elevated Spirits. As for the general mass of men who, at the moment of death, have to pass through that perturbation, that uncertainty of which they themselves have spoken to you, those go either to worlds inferior to the Earth, where old affections call them, or in search of pleasures still more degrading, perhaps, than those of their predilection in this world. They go in quest of doctrines still more vile, more ignoble, more harmful than those that are professed among you. What generates sympathy on the Earth is merely the fact that the Spirit, on awakening, feels itself bound, by the heart, to those in whose company it has just spent eight or nine hours of happiness or of pleasure. On the other hand, what also explains those invincible antipathies that a creature sometimes experiences is that it feels, within its heart, that those who are antipathetic to it possess a conscience different from its own, for it knows them without ever having seen them. It is also what explains the indifference, which is born of the circumstance that the gaining of new friends does not interest us, when we know that we count others who love us and wish us well. In a word: sleep influences your life more than you suppose. "By means of sleep, the incarnate Spirits are always in relation with the world of Spirits, and it is this that makes the superior Spirits consent, without great repugnance, to incarnate among you. God wills that, while they find themselves in contact with vice, they may go to retemper themselves at the source of good, so that it may not happen that they too come to fail, when what falls to them is to instruct others. Sleep is the door that God has opened to them so that they may go to be with their friends in heaven; it is the recreation after work, while they await the great liberation, the final liberation that will restore them to the milieu that is proper to them. "The dream is the remembrance of what the Spirit saw during sleep. Note, however, that you do not always dream, for you do not always remember what you saw, or all that you saw. It is that your soul is not in the full development of its faculties; it is, many times, no more than the remembrance of the perturbation that it experiences at its departure or its return, to which is joined that of what you did or of what preoccupies you in the waking state. If it were not so, how would you explain the absurd dreams that both the wisest and the simplest have? The evil Spirits also make use of dreams to torment weak or pusillanimous souls. "The incoherence of dreams is further explained by the lacunae resulting from the incomplete recollection of what was seen during them. There then occurs what would occur with a narrative from which sentences were cut at random: gathered together, the fragments that remained would present no rational signification.

"In sum, before long you will see develop another kind of dreams, as ancient as those you know, but that you still ignore. The dream of Joan of Arc, the dream of Jacob, the dreams of the Jewish prophets and of certain Indian diviners are remembrances that the soul, entirely detached from the body, preserves of that other life of which I was speaking to you not long ago." (The Spirits' Book, no. 400 et seq.)

— The independence and the emancipation of the soul manifest themselves, in an evident manner, above all in the phenomenon of natural and magnetic somnambulism, in catalepsy and in lethargy. Somnambulic lucidity is nothing but the faculty that the soul has of seeing and feeling without the concurrence of the material organs. This faculty is one of its attributes and resides in its whole being, the organs of the body being merely narrow channels through which certain perceptions reach it. The vision at a distance which some somnambulists possess proceeds from a displacement of the soul, which then sees what is happening in the places to which it transports itself. In its peregrinations, it is always clothed in its perispirit, the agent of its sensations, but which never detaches itself completely from the body, as has already been said. The withdrawal of the soul produces the inertia of the body, which at times seems without life.

— That withdrawal or detachment can also be effected, in diverse degrees, in the waking state. But then the body never enjoys entirely its normal activity; there is always a certain absorption, a more or less complete estrangement from terrestrial things. The body does not sleep, it walks, it acts, but the eyes look without seeing, giving to understand that the soul is elsewhere. As in somnambulism, it sees distant things; it has perceptions and sensations that we do not know; at times, it has the prescience of some future events through the connection that it perceives to exist between them and present facts. Penetrating into the invisible world, it sees the Spirits with whom it is possible for it to enter into conversation and whose thoughts it is given to transmit. On its return to the normal state, ordinarily there supervenes the forgetting of what occurred. Sometimes, however, it preserves a more or less vague remembrance of what occurred, as if it had had a dream.

— Not rarely, the emancipation of the soul deadens the physical sensations so much that it comes to produce a veritable insensibility which, in moments of exaltation, enables it to bear with indifference the most acute pains. That insensibility proceeds from the detachment of the perispirit, the transmitting agent of the bodily sensations. Absent, the Spirit does not feel the wounds made in the body.

— In its simplest manifestation, the faculty that the soul has of emancipating itself produces what is called waking reverie. To some persons, that emancipation also gives prescience, which is translated by presentiments; in a more advanced degree of detachment, it produces the phenomenon known by the name of second sight, double sight, or waking somnambulism.

— Ecstasy is the emancipation of the soul in the highest degree. "In dream and in somnambulism, the soul wanders through the terrestrial worlds; in ecstasy, it penetrates into an unknown world, into the world of the ethereal Spirits, with whom it enters into communication, without, however, being able to pass beyond certain limits, which it could not cross without totally breaking the bonds that bind it to the body. A resplendent brilliance and an unaccustomed radiance surround it, harmonies that on the Earth are unknown lift it up, an indefinable well-being invades it;

it is given to it to enjoy in advance the celestial beatitude, and one may well say that it sets one foot on the threshold of eternity. In ecstasy, the annihilation of the body is almost complete; there no longer remains, so to speak, anything but organic life, and one perceives that the soul is bound to it only by a thread, which a little further effort would cause to break." (The Spirits' Book, no. 455.)

— As in none of the other degrees of emancipation of the soul, ecstasy is not exempt from errors, wherefore the revelations of the ecstatics are far from always expressing absolute truth. The reason for this resides in the imperfection of the human spirit; only when it has arrived at the summit of the scale can it judge of things lucidly; before that it is not given to it to see everything, nor to understand everything. If, after the phenomenon of death, when the detachment is complete, it does not always see with exactness; if there are many who remain imbued with the prejudices of life, who do not understand the things of the visible world in which they find themselves, with all the more reason must the same happen with the Spirit still retained in the flesh. There is at times, in the ecstatics, more exaltation than true lucidity, or rather, the exaltation impairs their lucidity, which is why their revelations are frequently a mixture of truths and errors, of sublime things and others ridiculous. Inferior Spirits also take advantage of that exaltation, which is always a cause of weakness when there is no one who knows how to govern it, in order to dominate the ecstatic, and, to attain their ends, they assume in his eyes appearances that fasten him to his ideas and prejudices, so that his visions and revelations come to be no more than reflections of his beliefs. It is a reef from which only the Spirits of an elevated order escape, a reef before which the observer should keep himself on guard.

— There are persons whose perispirit identifies itself with the body in such a manner that the detachment of the soul is effected only with extreme difficulty, even at the moment of death; they are, in general, those who have lived more for matter; they are also those for whom death is more painful, more full of anguish, the agony longer and more sorrowful. There are others, however, whose souls, on the contrary, are bound to the body by bonds so fragile that the separation is effected without shocks, with the greatest facility and frequently before the death of the body occurs. As the end of life approaches them, those souls catch a glimpse of the world into which they are going to penetrate and toward which they aspire at the moment of complete liberation. Apparition of living persons. Bicorporeity.

— The faculty that the soul possesses, of emancipating itself and detaching itself from the body during life, can give rise to phenomena analogous to those that disincarnate Spirits produce. While the body is plunged in sleep, the Spirit, transporting itself to diverse places, can become visible and appear under a vaporous form, whether in dream, or in the waking state. It can likewise present itself under a tangible form, or, at least, with an appearance so identical to reality that it becomes possible for many persons to be telling the truth when they affirm having seen it at the same time in two different points. It was, in effect, in both, but only in one was the true body, the Spirit being in the other. It was this phenomenon, indeed very rare, that gave rise to the belief in double men and that is called bicorporeity. However extraordinary it may be, such a phenomenon, like all the others, is comprised within the order of natural phenomena, for it arises from the properties of the perispirit and from a natural law.

Of mediums.

— Mediums are persons apt to feel the influence of Spirits and to transmit the thoughts of the latter.

Every person who, in any degree whatever, experiences the influence of Spirits is, by that simple fact, a medium. This faculty is inherent in man and, consequently, does not constitute an exclusive privilege, whence it follows that few are those who do not possess a rudiment of such a faculty. It may, then, be said that everyone is, more or less, a medium. Nevertheless, according to usage, this qualification is applied only to those in whom the mediumistic faculty manifests itself by ostensible effects, of a certain intensity.

— The perispiritual fluid is the agent of all Spiritist phenomena, which can be produced only by the reciprocal action of the fluids that the medium and the Spirit emit. The development of the mediumistic faculty depends on the more or less expansive nature of the perispirit of the medium and on the greater or lesser facility of its assimilation by that of the Spirits; it depends, therefore, on the organism and can be developed when the principle exists; it cannot, however, be acquired when the principle does not exist. The mediumistic predisposition is independent of sex, of age, and of temperament. There are mediums in all categories of individuals, from the tenderest age to the most advanced.

— The relations between the Spirits and the mediums are established by means of their respective perispirits, the facility of those relations depending on the degree of affinity existing between the two fluids. There are some that combine easily, while others repel one another, whence it follows that it does not suffice to be a medium for a person to communicate indiscriminately with all Spirits. There are mediums who can communicate only with certain Spirits or with Spirits of certain categories, and others who can do so only by the transmission of thought, without any exterior manifestation.

— By means of the combination of the perispiritual fluids the Spirit, so to speak, identifies itself with the person it wishes to influence; not only does it transmit to him its thought, but it even comes to exercise upon him a physical influence, to make him act or speak according to its will, to oblige him to say what it wishes, to make use, in a word, of the organs of the medium, as if they were its own. It can, in short, neutralize the action of the very Spirit of the influenced person and paralyze his free will. The good Spirits make use of that influence for good, and the evil ones for evil.

— Spirits can manifest themselves in an infinity of ways, but they cannot do so except on the condition of finding a person apt to receive and transmit impressions of this or that kind, according to the aptitudes that he possesses. Now, as there is none who possesses in the same degree all the aptitudes, it results that some obtain effects that are impossible to others. From this diversity of aptitudes it follows that there are different kinds of mediums.

— The intervention of the will of the medium is not always necessary. The Spirit that wishes to manifest itself seeks the individual apt to receive its impression and makes use of him, many times against his will. Other persons, on the contrary, conscious of their faculties, can provoke certain manifestations. Hence two categories of mediums: unconscious mediums and facultative mediums.

In the case of the first, the initiative is the Spirits'; in the second, it is the mediums'.

— Facultative mediums are found only among persons who have a more or less complete knowledge of the means of communication with the Spirits, which enables them to make use, of their own will, of their faculties; unconscious mediums, on the contrary, exist among those who have no idea of Spiritism, nor of Spirits, even among the most incredulous, and who serve as instruments without knowing it and without wishing it. The Spiritist phenomena of all kinds can be effected by the influence of these latter, who have always existed, in all ages and in the bosom of all peoples. Ignorance and credulity attributed to them a supernatural power and, according to the times and the places, made of them saints, sorcerers, madmen, or visionaries. Spiritism shows that with them there occurs merely the spontaneous manifestation of a natural faculty.

— Among the different kinds of mediums, the following are distinguished principally: those of physical effects; the sensitive or impressible; the auditive, speaking, seeing, inspired, somnambulic, healing, writing or psychographic. Here we shall treat only of the essential kinds.

— Mediums of physical effects — These are the most apt, especially, to the production of material phenomena, such as the movement of inert bodies, the noises, the displacement, the raising and the translation of objects, etc. These phenomena may be spontaneous or provoked. In all cases, they require the voluntary or involuntary concurrence of mediums endowed with special faculties. In general, they have for their agents Spirits of an inferior order, since the elevated Spirits occupy themselves only with intelligent and instructive communications.

— Sensitive or impressible mediums — This denomination is given to persons susceptible of sensing in advance the presence of Spirits, by a vague impression, a kind of slight friction in all the limbs, a fact that they cannot manage to explain. This faculty can acquire such subtlety that he who possesses it recognizes, by the impression he experiences, not only the nature, good or bad, of the Spirit that is at his side, but also its individuality, as the blind man instinctively recognizes the approach of this or that person. A good Spirit always causes a soft and agreeable impression; that of an evil Spirit, on the contrary, is painful, afflicting, and disagreeable: there is a kind of odor of impurity.

— Auditive mediums — These hear the Spirits; it is, sometimes, as if they were listening to an inner voice that resounded in their innermost being; at other times it is an exterior voice, clear and distinct, like that of a living person. Auditive mediums can also converse with the Spirits. When they become accustomed to communicating with certain Spirits, they recognize them immediately by the sound of the voice. He who is not an auditive medium can communicate with a Spirit by way of an auditive medium who transmits its words to him.

— Speaking mediums — Auditive mediums, who do nothing more than transmit what they hear, are not properly speaking mediums, who, most of the time, hear nothing. With them, the Spirit acts upon the organs of speech, as they act upon the hand of writing mediums. Wishing to communicate, the Spirit makes use of the organ that it finds most malleable: of one, it makes use of the hand, of another of speech, of a third of hearing. In general, the speaking medium expresses himself without being conscious of what he says and often says things entirely outside the scope of his habitual ideas, of his knowledge, and even beyond the reach of his intelligence. It is not rare to see unlettered persons of common intelligence express themselves, in such moments, with true eloquence and treat, with incontestable superiority, of questions on which they would be incapable of emitting, in the ordinary state, an opinion. Although he is perfectly awake when he exercises his faculty, it is rare for the speaking medium to keep a remembrance of what he said. Not always, however, is his passivity entire. There are some who have an intuition of what they say, in the very instant in which they utter the words.

These, in the speaking medium, are the instrument of which the Spirit makes use, with whom a strange person can enter into communication, in the same way that he can do so with the concurrence of an auditive medium. Between the speaking medium and the auditive medium, there is the difference that the latter speaks voluntarily in order to repeat what he hears, whereas the other speaks involuntarily.

— Seeing mediums — This qualification is given to persons who, in the normal state and perfectly awake, enjoy the faculty of seeing Spirits. The possibility of seeing them in dream results, without dispute, from a kind of mediumship, but they are not seeing mediums, properly so called. We expounded the theory of this phenomenon in the chapter "Visions and Apparitions" of The Mediums' Book.

The apparitions of Spirits to the persons who loved them, or knew them on the Earth, are very frequent. Although those who are accustomed to have them may be considered seeing mediums, this denomination, as a rule, is given only to those who enjoy, in a more or less permanent manner, the faculty of seeing nearly all Spirits. In this number, there are those who see only the Spirits that are evoked and that they manage to describe with minute exactness. They describe their gestures with all the details, the physiognomic features, the clothing, and even the sentiments by which they seem animated. There are others in whom this faculty reveals a still more general character: these are those who see the whole ambient Spirit population moving about, as if it were occupied, one might say, with its affairs. These mediums are never alone; a society always surrounds them, in whose choosing they can proceed freely, inasmuch as they can, by the action of their own will, drive away the Spirits whom it is not fitting for them to have near them, or attract those who are congenial to them.

— Somnambulic mediums — Somnambulism may be considered a variety of the mediumistic faculty, or rather, they are two orders of phenomena that are frequently found linked. The somnambulist acts under the influence of his own Spirit; it is his own soul that, in moments of emancipation, sees, hears, and perceives beyond the limits of the senses. What he expresses he draws from himself; his ideas are, in general, more correct than in the normal state, his knowledge more extensive, because his soul is free. In sum, he lives in advance the life of the Spirits. The medium, on the contrary, is the instrument of a strange intelligence; he is passive and what he says does not come from his own self. In summary: the somnambulist gives forth his own thoughts and the medium expresses those of another. But the Spirit that communicates with any medium can also communicate with a somnambulist. It is even frequent for the state of emancipation of the soul, during somnambulism, to render that communication easier. Many somnambulists see the Spirits perfectly and describe them with as much precision as seeing mediums; they can converse with them and transmit to us their thoughts; if what they say is outside the scope of their personal knowledge, it is that other Spirits suggest it to them.

— Inspired mediums — In these mediums, the exterior signs of mediumship are much less apparent than in the others; the action that the Spirits exercise upon them is wholly intellectual and moral and reveals itself in the smallest circumstances of life, as in the greatest conceptions. It is above all under this aspect that it may be said that all are mediums, inasmuch as there is no one who has not protecting and familiar Spirits employing every effort to suggest salutary ideas to him. In the inspired one, it often becomes difficult to distinguish the ideas that are his own from what is suggested to him. Spontaneity is principally what characterizes the latter. It is in the great works of the intelligence that inspiration is most evidenced. The men of genius, of all categories, artists, sages, men of letters, orators, are without doubt advanced Spirits, capable, by themselves, of understanding and knowing great things; now, precisely because they are considered capable, it is that the Spirits who aim at the execution of certain works suggest to them the necessary ideas, so that in the majority of cases they are mediums without knowing it. They have, however, a vague intuition of a strange assistance, inasmuch as he who appeals to inspiration does nothing more than an evocation. If he did not expect to be heeded, why would he exclaim, as happens so often: My good genius, come to my aid!

— Mediums of presentiments — There are persons who, under given circumstances, have an indistinct intuition of future things. That intuition may proceed from a kind of double sight, which enables them to catch a glimpse of the consequences of present things; but, at other times, it results from occult communications, which make of such persons a variety of inspired mediums.

— Prophetic mediums — This is likewise a variety of inspired mediums. They receive, with the permission of God and with more precision than the mediums of presentiments, the revelation of future things of general interest, which they receive the charge of making known to men, to serve them as instruction.

In a certain way, presentiment is given to the majority of men, for their personal use; the gift of prophecy, on the contrary, is exceptional and implies the idea of a mission on the Earth.

Nevertheless, if there are true prophets, greater is the number of the false, who take the reveries of their imagination for revelations, when they are not knaves who out of ambition pass themselves off as prophets.

The true prophet is a man of good, inspired by God; he can be recognized by his words and by his actions. It is not possible that God should make use of the mouth of the liar to teach the truth. (The Spirits' Book, no. 624.)

— Writing or psychographic mediums — This denomination is given to the persons who write under the influence of Spirits. Just as a Spirit can act upon the vocal organs of a speaking medium and make him pronounce words, so it can make use of his hand to make him write. Psychographic mediumship presents three quite distinct varieties: the mechanical mediums, the intuitive, and the semi-mechanical.

With the mechanical medium, the Spirit acts directly upon his hand, impelling it. What characterizes this kind of mediumship is the absolute unconsciousness, on the part of the medium, of what his hand writes. The movement of the latter is independent of the will of the writer; it moves without interruption, in spite of the medium, as long as the Spirit has something to say, and stops as soon as the latter has concluded.

With the intuitive medium, the Spirit of the medium serves as intermediary for the transmission of thought. The other Spirit, in this case, does not act upon the hand to move it, it acts upon the soul, identifying itself with it and impressing upon it its will and its ideas. The soul receives the thought of the communicating Spirit and transcribes it. In this situation, the medium writes voluntarily and is conscious of what he writes, although he does not put down his own thoughts.

It frequently becomes difficult to distinguish the thought of the medium from what is suggested to him, which leads many mediums of this kind to doubt their faculty. The suggested thoughts can be recognized by the fact of their never being preconceived; they arise in proportion as the medium goes on writing and not rarely are opposed to the idea that he had previously conceived. They can even be outside the knowledge and the capacity of the medium.

There is great analogy between intuitive mediumship and inspiration; the difference consists in that the former is restricted almost always to questions of current matters and can be applied to what is outside the intellectual capacities of the medium; by intuition the latter can treat a subject that is completely strange to him. Inspiration extends over a vaster field and generally comes in aid of the capacities and the preoccupations of the incarnate Spirit. The traces of mediumship are, as a rule, less evident.

The semi-mechanical, or semi-intuitive, medium partakes of the other two kinds. In the purely mechanical medium, the movement of the hand is independent of his will; in the intuitive medium, the movement is voluntary and facultative. The semi-mechanical medium feels in his hand an impulse given against his will, but at the same time he is conscious of what he writes, as the words are formed. With the first, the thought comes after the act of writing; with the second, it precedes it; with the third, it accompanies it.

— The medium being no more than an instrument that receives and transmits the thought of a strange Spirit, which obeys the mechanical impulse given to it, there is nothing that he cannot do outside the field of his knowledge, if he possesses the necessary malleability and mediumistic aptitude. It is thus that there are mediums who are draftsmen, painters, musicians, versifiers, although strangers to the arts of drawing, of painting, of music, and of poetry; unlettered mediums, who write without knowing how to read or write; polygraphic mediums, who reproduce writings of diverse kinds and, sometimes with perfect exactness, that which the Spirit had when incarnate; polyglot mediums, who write or speak in languages that are unknown to them, etc.

— Healing mediums — The mediumship of this kind consists in the faculty that certain persons possess of healing by simple contact, by the imposition of the hands, by the gaze, by a gesture, even without the concurrence of any medicament. Such a faculty incontestably has its principle in the magnetic force; it differs from the latter, however, by the energy and instantaneity of the action, whereas magnetic cures require a methodical treatment, more or less long. All magnetizers are more or less apt to heal, if they know how to proceed suitably; they dispose of the science that they have acquired. In healing mediums, the faculty is spontaneous and some possess it without ever having heard magnetism spoken of. The faculty of healing by the imposition of the hands derives evidently from an exceptional force of expansion, but diverse causes concur to augment it, among which are to be placed, in the first rank: purity of sentiments, disinterestedness, benevolence, the ardent desire to afford relief, fervent prayer, and confidence in God; in a word: all the moral qualities. The magnetic force is purely organic; it can, like muscular force, be the portion of everyone, even of the perverse man; but only the man of good makes use of it exclusively for good, without hidden ideas of personal interest, nor of the satisfaction of pride or vanity. More purified, his fluid possesses beneficent and restorative properties, which that of the vicious or self-interested man cannot have. Every mediumistic effect, as has already been said, results from the combination of the fluids that a Spirit and a medium emit. By their conjugation those fluids acquire new properties, which separately they would not have, or, at least, would not have in the same degree. Prayer, which is a true evocation, attracts the good Spirits always solicitous to second the efforts of the well-intentioned man; the beneficent fluid of the former weds itself easily with that of the latter, whereas that of the vicious man joins with that of the evil Spirits who surround him. The man of good, who did not dispose of fluidic force, would be able to accomplish little by himself, there remaining to him only to appeal for the assistance of the good Spirits, for his personal action would be almost nil; a great fluidic force, allied to the greatest possible sum of moral qualities, can work, in the matter of cures, true prodigies.

— The fluidic action, moreover, is powerfully seconded by the confidence of the patient, and God nearly always rewards his faith, granting him good success.

— Only superstition can lend any virtue to certain words, and only ignorant or lying Spirits can foster such ideas, prescribing formulas. It may, however, happen that, for persons little enlightened and incapable of understanding purely spiritual things, the use of a formula of prayer or of a determined practice contributes to instill confidence in them. In this case, however, it is not in the formula that the efficacy lies, but in the faith that has increased with the idea attached to the employment of the formula.

— Healing mediums should not be confused with prescribing mediums, who are simple writing mediums whose specialty consists in serving more easily as interpreters of the Spirits for medical prescriptions; they do absolutely nothing more than transmit the thought of the Spirit, without exercising, of themselves, any influence.

Of obsession and possession.

— Obsession consists in the dominion that the evil Spirits assume over certain persons, with the object of enslaving them and submitting them to their will, for the pleasure they experience in doing evil.

When a Spirit, good or evil, wishes to act upon an individual, it envelops him, so to speak, in its perispirit, as if it were a mantle. The fluids interpenetrating, the thoughts and the wills of the two become confounded, and the Spirit, then, makes use of the body of the individual, as if it were its own, making him act according to its will, speak, write, draw, like the mediums. If the Spirit is good, its action is gentle, beneficent, it does not impel the individual save to the practice of good acts; if it is evil, it forces him to evil actions. If it is perverse and malevolent, it grips him as in a web, paralyzes even his will and even his judgment, which it smothers with its fluid, as fire is smothered beneath a layer of water. It makes him think, speak, act in his place, impels him, against his will, to extravagant or ridiculous acts; it magnetizes him, in sum, casts him into a state of moral catalepsy, and the individual becomes an instrument of its will. Such is the origin of obsession, of fascination, and of subjugation, which are produced in very diverse degrees of intensity. To subjugation, when at its paroxysm, is that the name of possession is commonly given. It is to be noted that, in that state, the individual is often conscious that what he does is ridiculous, but he is forced to do it, just as if a man more vigorous than himself obliged him to move, against his will, his arms, his legs, and his tongue.

— Since Spirits have existed in all times, they have also, from all times, played the same role, because that role is of nature, and the proof is in the great number that there have always been of obsessed, or possessed, persons, if it be preferred, before Spirits were spoken of, or before, in the present days, Spiritism was heard spoken of, nor mediums. The action of Spirits, good or evil, is, then, spontaneous; that of the latter produces an immensity of disturbances in the moral and even physical economy [organization], disturbances which, through ignorance of the true cause, were attributed to erroneous causes. The evil Spirits are invisible enemies, all the more dangerous in that their action was not suspected. By unmasking them, Spiritism reveals a new cause of certain ills of Humanity. The cause being known, one will no longer seek to combat the evil by means already known to be useless; others more efficacious will be sought. Now, what was it that caused that cause to be discovered? Mediumship. It was by mediumship that those hidden enemies betrayed their presence; it was for them what the microscope was for the infinitely small: it revealed a whole world. Spiritism did not attract the evil Spirits: it unveiled them and furnished the means of paralyzing their action and, consequently, of driving them away. It was not Spiritism that brought the evil, seeing that the evil has existed from all times; it, on the contrary, gives a remedy for the evil, by pointing out its cause. Once the action of the invisible world is recognized, one will have the explanation of a countless number of phenomena not understood, and Science, enriched with the knowledge of that new law, will see new horizons open before it. WHEN WILL IT ARRIVE AT THIS? When it ceases to profess materialism, inasmuch as materialism arrests its flight, opposing to it an insurmountable barrier.

— Since there are evil Spirits that obsess and good Spirits that protect, many ask whether the former are more powerful than the latter.

It is not that the good Spirit is weaker; it is that the medium does not have force enough to throw off himself the mantle that has been cast over him, to free himself from the arms that enlace him and in which, it must be said, he sometimes takes pleasure. In this case, it is understood that the good Spirit cannot prevail, since the other is preferred. Let us admit, however, that the victim wishes to rid himself of the fluidic envelope that penetrates his own, as moisture penetrates clothing. That wish will not always suffice. The will itself is not always sufficient. It is a question of struggling against an adversary. Now, when two men struggle hand to hand, the one who disposes of the stronger muscles is the one who brings down the other. With a Spirit one has to struggle, not hand to hand, but Spirit to Spirit, and it is still the stronger that triumphs.

Here, the strength resides in the authority that one can exercise over the obsessor, and that authority is subordinate to moral superiority. This is like the sun that dispels the fog by the potency of its rays. To strive to be good, to become better if one is already good, to purify oneself of one's imperfections, in a word, to elevate oneself morally as much as possible, such is the means for the incarnate one to acquire the power to command the inferior Spirits, in order to drive them away. Otherwise these will mock his injunctions.

(The Mediums' Book, no. 252 and no. 279.)

Nevertheless, it will be objected, why do the protecting Spirits not order them to withdraw? Without doubt, they can do so and at times they do. But, by permitting the struggle, they leave to the one attacked the merit of the victory. If they consent that creatures who, under certain aspects, have their merits, should struggle, it is in order to test their perseverance and to lead them to acquire more strength in the field of good. The struggle is a kind of moral gymnastics.

Many persons would certainly prefer another, easier recipe for repelling the evil Spirits: for example, some words to be uttered, or some signs to be made, which would be simpler than for one to correct oneself of one's defects. We are very sorry; but we know no efficacious means of conquering an enemy save that of becoming stronger than he. When we are ill, we have to resign ourselves to taking a medicament, however bitter it may be; but, also, if we have had the courage to drink it, how well and strong we feel! We have therefore to persuade ourselves that there are, in order for us to attain that result, neither sacramental words, nor formulas, nor talismans, nor any material signs whatsoever. At all of this the evil Spirits laugh, and not rarely they take pleasure in indicating some, always taking care to affirm them infallible, the better to capture the confidence of those whom they wish to deceive, because, then, these, confident in the virtues of the process advised, give themselves up without fear. Before anyone whomsoever undertakes to tame an evil Spirit, he must take care to tame himself. Of all the means of acquiring strength to arrive at this, the most efficient is the will seconded by prayer, the prayer of the heart, be it understood, and not that of words, in which the mouth participates more than the thought. We must ask our guardian angel and the good Spirits to assist us in the struggle; it does not suffice, however, that we ask them to drive away the evil Spirit; we must remember this maxim: help yourself and heaven will help you, and beg of them, above all, the strength that we lack in order to conquer our evil inclinations, which are, for us, worse than the evil Spirits, inasmuch as it is those inclinations that attract them, as rottenness attracts birds of prey. By praying also for the obsessing Spirit, we shall repay with good the evil that it wishes us, and we shall show ourselves better than it, which is already a superiority. With perseverance, one ends most of the time by inducing it to the possession of better sentiments and by transforming it from a persecutor into a grateful friend. In summary: fervent prayer and the serious efforts that the creature makes to improve himself constitute the only means for him to drive away the evil Spirits, who recognize as their masters those who practice good, whereas formulas provoke their laughter, just as anger and impatience excite them. The persecuted one must wear them out, showing himself more patient than they.

At times it happens that the subjugation grows to the point of paralyzing the will of the obsessed person, from whom no serious concurrence can be expected. There, principally, is it that the intervention of third parties becomes necessary, whether by means of prayer, or by magnetic action. But the strength of that intervention also depends on the moral ascendancy that the interveners can have over the Spirits; if they are worth no more than the latter, the action they develop will be unfruitful. The magnetic action, in this case, has for its effect to introduce into the fluid of the obsessed person a better fluid and to eliminate that of the evil Spirit. In operating, the magnetizer should aim at a double end: that of opposing to one moral force another moral force, and of producing upon the patient a kind of chemical reaction, to make use of a material comparison, expelling one fluid with the aid of another fluid. In this way, not only does he effect a salutary detachment, but he likewise strengthens the organs weakened by long and vigorous constriction. It is understood, in sum, that the power of the fluidic action is in direct ratio not only to the energy of the will, but, above all, to the quality of the fluid introduced, and, according to what we have said, that that quality depends on the instruction and the moral qualities of the magnetizer. From this it follows that an ordinary magnetizer, who acted mechanically, merely to magnetize, would produce weak or no effect. A Spiritist magnetizer is of all necessity, one who acts with knowledge of the cause, with the intention of obtaining, not somnambulism or an organic cure, but the results that we have just described. It is, besides, evident that a magnetic action directed in this sense cannot but be very profitable in cases of ordinary obsession, because, then, if the magnetizer has to aid him the will of the obsessed person, the Spirit finds itself combated by two adversaries instead of one. It must also be said that often there are attributed to Spirits wickednesses of which they are innocent. Some morbid states and certain aberrations that are charged to the account of an occult cause derive from the Spirit of the individual himself. The vexations that ordinarily each one concentrates within himself, principally the sorrows of love, give rise, frequently, to eccentric acts, which it would be erroneous to consider the fruit of obsession. Man is not rarely the obsessor of himself.

Let us add, finally, that some tenacious obsessions, above all in persons of merit, sometimes form part of the trials to which those persons are subject. It even happens that obsession, when simple, is a task imposed upon the obsessed person, such as that of working for the regeneration of the obsessor, as a father for that of a vicious son. (For greater particulars, see The Mediums' Book.)

In general, prayer is a powerful auxiliary means of the liberation of the obsessed; never, however, will prayer of words only, said with indifference and as a banal formula, be efficacious in such a case. There is need of an ardent prayer, which is at the same time a kind of mental magnetization. By thought, one can direct toward the patient a salutary fluidic current, whose potency bears a relation to the intention. Prayer, then, has not only the effect of invoking a strange aid, but of exercising a fluidic action. What one person, alone, cannot do, many persons united by the intention in a collective and reiterated prayer can almost always do, seeing that number augments the potency of the action.

— Experience confirms the inefficacy of exorcism, in cases of possession, and it is proven that it almost always increases the evil, instead of attenuating it. The reason is found in the fact that the influence lies wholly in the moral ascendancy exercised over the evil Spirits and not in an exterior act, in the virtue of words and of gestures. Exorcism consists in ceremonies and formulas which the evil Spirits mock, while, however, they yield to the moral authority that is imposed upon them. They see that they are wished to be dominated by impotent means, that it is thought to intimidate them by a vain display, and then they apply themselves to showing themselves the stronger, and for this they redouble their efforts. They are like skittish horses that throw down the unskillful rider and that obey when they meet with one who governs them. Now, here, he who really commands is the man of purest heart, because it is to him that the good Spirits by preference attend.

— What one Spirit can do with one individual, many Spirits can do with many individuals simultaneously and give to obsession an epidemic character. A cloud of evil Spirits invades a locality and there manifests itself in diverse manners. It was an epidemic of this kind that fell upon Judea at the time of the Christ. Now, the Christ, by his immense moral superiority, had over the demons or evil Spirits such authority that it sufficed for him to order them to withdraw for them to do so, and, for this, he employed neither formulas nor gestures or signs.

— Spiritism is founded on the observation of the facts that result from the relations between the visible world and the invisible world. Being in the order of those of nature, these facts have been produced in all ages and abound principally in the sacred books of all religions, for they served as the basis for the majority of the beliefs. It is because men did not understand them that the Bible and the Gospels present so many obscure passages, which were interpreted in different senses. Spiritism brings the key that will facilitate the understanding of them. [1] For complete clarifications, consult The Mediums' Book.