Healing mediumship.

— We are written from Lyon on July 12, 1865:

“Dear Mr. Kardec, “As a Spiritist, I come to appeal to your kindness and to ask some advice regarding the practice of healing mediumship by the laying on of hands. A simple article on the subject in the Spiritist Review, containing some developments, would be received, I am certain, with great interest, not only by those who, like myself, occupy themselves with this question with ardor, but also by many others in whom the reading might inspire the desire to occupy themselves with it as well. I always remember the words of a somnambulist whom I had trained. During magnetic sleep I would send her to visit a sick person at a distance, and to my question as to how I might cure her, she said: There is someone in your village who could do it. It is so-and-so. He is a healing medium, but he knows nothing of it. “I do not know to what extent this faculty is special; it is for you to appraise it, more than for anyone else. But if it really is, how desirable it would be that you should call the attention of Spiritists to this point. All who read you, even outside our opinions, could feel no repugnance in trying a faculty which calls only for faith in God and prayer. What could be more general and more universal? It is no longer a matter of Spiritism, and on that ground each one may keep his convictions. How many sisters of charity, how many good country priests, how many thousands of pious people, ardent for charity, could be healing mediums! That is what I dream of in all religions, in all sects. This faculty, this divine gift of the Creator’s goodness, instead of being the prerogative of a few, would fall, if I may so express myself, into the public domain, since it is accepted everywhere. It would be a beautiful day for those who suffer, and there are so many of them! “But, in order to exercise this faculty, independently of a living faith and of prayer, there are conditions to gather, procedures to follow, so that its action may be as effective as possible. What is the part of the medium in the laying on of hands? What is that of the Spirits? Must one employ the will, as in magnetic operations, or limit oneself to praying, letting the hidden influence act at will? Is this faculty really special, or accessible to all? Does the organism play a role in it? and what role? Is this faculty developable? and in what sense?

“It is here that your long experience, your studies on the fluidic influences, the teaching of the elevated Spirits who assist you, and, finally, the documents that you gather from every corner of the globe, can enable you to enlighten and instruct us; no one is placed in this unique position as you are. I am certain that all who occupy themselves with this question desire your advice as much as I do, and I believe I am making myself the interpreter of all. What a fertile mine healing mediumship is! The body will be relieved or cured, and, through the relief or the cure, the path to the heart will be found, where often logic had failed. How many resources Spiritism possesses! How rich it is in means which it is called to serve! Let us leave none unproductive; let everything contribute to elevate and spread it. For this you will spare nothing, Mr. Kardec; and after God and the good Spirits, Spiritism owes you what it is. You already have a reward in this world through the sympathy and the affection of millions of hearts who pray for you, not to mention the true reward that awaits you in a better world. “I have the honor, etc.”

A. D.

— What our honored correspondent asks of us is nothing less than a treatise on the matter. The question was sketched in The Mediums’ Book and in many articles of the Review, with regard to cases of cures and of obsessions; it is summarized in The Gospel According to Spiritism, with regard to prayers for the sick and to healing mediums. If a regular and complete treatise has not yet been made, this is due to two causes: the first is that, despite all the activity we deploy in our works, it is impossible for us to do everything at once; the second, which is more serious, lies in the insufficiency of the notions one possesses on the subject. The knowledge of healing mediumship is one of the conquests we owe to Spiritism; but Spiritism, which is just beginning, cannot yet have said everything; it cannot, at a single stroke, show us all the facts it encompasses; daily it shows us new ones, from which new principles follow, which come to corroborate or complete those we already knew, but we need material time for everything. Healing mediumship was to have its turn; although an integral part of Spiritism, it is, by itself, a whole science, because it is linked to magnetism, and not only encompasses all diseases properly so called, but all the varieties, so numerous and so complex, of the obsessions, which, in their turn, also influence the organism. It is not, then, in a few words that one can develop so vast a subject. We are working on it, as on all the other parts of Spiritism; but as we wish to introduce nothing there on our own account that is hypothetical, we proceed by way of experience and observation.

— As the limits of this article do not permit us to give it the development it admits of, we summarize some of the fundamental principles that experience has consecrated.

– The mediums who obtain indications of remedies from the Spirits are not what we call healing mediums, for they do not cure by themselves; they are simple writing mediums, who have a more special aptitude than others for this kind of communication and who, for this reason, may be called consulting mediums, as others are poet or drawing mediums. Healing mediumship is exercised by the direct action of the medium upon the sick person, with the aid of a kind of magnetization, whether actual or by thought.

– Whoever says medium says intermediary. There is a difference between the magnetizer properly so called and the healing medium: the first magnetizes with his personal fluid, and the second with the fluid of the Spirits, for which he serves as a conductor. The magnetism produced by the fluid of man is human magnetism; that which comes from the fluid of the Spirits is spiritual magnetism.

– The magnetic fluid has, then, two quite distinct sources: incarnate Spirits and disincarnate Spirits. This difference of origin produces a great difference in the quality of the fluid and in its effects.

The human fluid is always more or less impregnated with the physical and moral impurities of the incarnate one; that of the good Spirits is necessarily purer and, for this very reason, has more active properties, which lead to a more rapid cure. But, in passing through the incarnate one, it may be altered, as happens with limpid water in passing through an impure vessel, and as happens with any remedy, if it remains in a dirty vessel, losing, in part, its beneficial properties. Hence, for every true healing medium, the absolute necessity of working at his purification, that is, at his moral improvement, according to the common principle: clean the vessel before using it, if you wish to have something good. This alone suffices to show that not just anyone can be a healing medium, in the true sense of the word.

– The spiritual fluid will be all the more purified and beneficial as the Spirit who furnishes it is purer and more detached from matter. One conceives that that of the inferior Spirits must approach the [fluid] of man and may have maleficent properties, if the Spirit is impure and animated by evil intentions.

For the same reason, the qualities of the human fluid present infinite shades, according to the physical and moral qualities of the individual. It is evident that the fluid emanated from an unhealthy body can inoculate morbid principles into the one magnetized. The moral qualities of the magnetizer, that is, purity of intention and of feeling, the ardent and disinterested desire to relieve one’s fellow being, allied to the health of the body, give the fluid a reparative power which may, in certain individuals, approach the qualities of the spiritual fluid.

It would be, then, an error to regard the magnetizer as a simple machine of fluidic transmission. In this, as in all things, the product is in proportion to the instrument and to the producing agent. For these reasons, it would be imprudence to submit to the magnetic action of the first stranger. Apart from the indispensable practical knowledge, the fluid of the magnetizer is like the milk of a wet nurse: salutary or unwholesome.

– The human fluid, being less active, requires a continued magnetization and a true treatment, sometimes very long. In expending his own fluid, the magnetizer exhausts himself, for he gives of his own vital element; that is why he must, from time to time, recover his strength. The spiritual fluid, more powerful by virtue of its purity, produces more rapid and often almost instantaneous effects. As this fluid is not that of the magnetizer, it results that the fatigue [of the medium who transmits it] is almost nil.

– The Spirit can act directly, without intermediary, upon an individual, as has been ascertained on many occasions, whether to relieve and cure him, if possible, or to produce the somnambulic sleep. When it acts through an intermediary, that is the case of healing mediumship.

– The healing medium receives the fluidic influx of the Spirit, whereas the magnetizer draws everything from himself. But healing mediums, in the strict sense of the term, that is, those whose personality is completely effaced before the spiritual action, are extremely rare, because this faculty, raised to the highest degree, requires a combination of moral qualities rarely found on Earth; only these can obtain, by the laying on of hands, those instantaneous cures which seem prodigious to us. Very few people can lay claim to this favor. Pride and selfishness being the principal sources of human imperfections, it results from this that those who boast of possessing this gift, who go everywhere extolling the marvelous cures they have made, or that they say they have made, who seek glory, reputation, or profit, are in the worst conditions for obtaining it, because this faculty is the exclusive privilege of modesty, humility, devotion, and disinterestedness. Jesus said to those whom he had cured: Go and give thanks to God, and tell it to no one.

– Pure healing mediumship being, then, an exception here on Earth, there almost always results a simultaneous action of the spiritual fluid and of the human fluid; that is to say: healing mediums are all more or less magnetizers, which is why they act according to the magnetic processes. The difference lies in the predominance of one or the other fluid, and in the greater or lesser rapidity of the cure. Every magnetizer can become a healing medium, if he knows how to have himself assisted by good Spirits. In this case the Spirits come to his aid, pouring out upon him their own fluid, which can multiply tenfold or a hundredfold the action of the purely human fluid.

– The Spirits come to those they wish; no will can constrain them; they yield to prayer, if it is fervent, sincere, but never by injunction. From this it results that the will cannot give healing mediumship [because it needs the aid of the Spirits], and no one can be a healing medium by premeditated design. The healing medium is recognized by the results he obtains, and not by his pretension of being one.

– But if the will is ineffectual as regards the concurrence of the Spirits, it is omnipotent for imparting to the fluid, spiritual or human, a good direction and a greater energy. In the indolent and distracted man, the current is weak, the emission is slow; the spiritual fluid stops in him, but without his profiting from it. In the man of energetic will, the current produces the effect of a shower-bath. Energetic will must not be confused with obstinacy, because the latter is always a consequence of pride or selfishness, whereas the humblest may have the will of devotion.

The will is also omnipotent for giving to the fluids the special qualities appropriate to the nature of the ill. This point, which is capital, is connected with a principle still little known, but which is under study: that of the fluidic creations and of the modifications which thought can produce in matter. Thought, which provokes a fluidic emission, can operate certain transformations, molecular and atomic, such as are seen to be produced under the influence of electricity, of light, or of heat.

– Prayer, which is a thought, when fervent, ardent, and made with faith, produces the effect of a magnetization, not only by calling for the concurrence of the good Spirits, but by directing upon the sick person a salutary fluidic current. In this regard we call attention to the prayers contained in The Gospel According to Spiritism, for the sick or for the obsessed.

– If pure healing mediumship is the privilege of choice souls, the possibility of alleviating certain sufferings, even of curing certain diseases, though not in an instantaneous manner, is given to all, without there being any need to be a magnetizer. The knowledge of the magnetic processes is useful in complicated cases, but not indispensable. As it is given to all to appeal to the good Spirits, to pray, and to will the good, it often suffices to lay the hands upon a pain in order to calm it; this is what any person can do, if he brings faith, fervor, will, and confidence in God. It is to be noted that the majority of unconscious healing mediums, those who are absolutely unaware of their faculty and who are sometimes found in the humblest positions, and among people deprived of any instruction, recommend prayer and have recourse to it by praying. Only their ignorance makes them believe in the influence of this or that formula; sometimes they even mix in evidently superstitious practices, to which one should attach the value they deserve.

– But because satisfactory results have been obtained, once or several times, it would be rash to consider oneself a healing medium and to conclude from it that one can overcome every kind of ill. Experience proves that, in the restricted sense of the word, even among the best endowed there are no universal healing mediums. This one will have restored health to a sick person and will produce nothing upon another; that one will have cured an ill in an individual, but will not cure the same ill another time, in the same person or in another; finally, that other one will have the faculty today and will no longer have it tomorrow, and may recover it later, according to the affinities or the fluidic conditions in which he finds himself.

– Healing mediumship is an aptitude inherent in the individual, like all kinds of mediumship; but the effective result of this aptitude is independent of his will. Incontestably it develops through exercise and, above all, through the practice of good and of charity; but as it could not have the fixity, nor the punctuality, of a talent acquired through study and of which one is always master, it could never become a profession. It would be, then, abusive for anyone to announce himself to the public as a healing medium. These reflections do not apply to magnetizers, because the force is in them and they are free to use it.

– It is an error to believe that those who do not share our beliefs would have not the slightest repugnance in trying this faculty. Rational healing mediumship is intimately linked to Spiritism, since it rests essentially upon the concurrence of the Spirits. Now, those who believe neither in the Spirits, nor in the soul, and, still less, in the efficacy of prayer, could not place themselves in the required conditions, for this is not a thing that can be tried mechanically. Among those who believe in the soul and in its immortality, how many even today would not recoil in horror before an appeal to the good Spirits, for fear of attracting the demon, and still believe in good faith that all these cures are the work of the devil? Fanaticism is blind; it does not reason. To be sure, it will not always be so, but much time will yet pass before the light penetrates into certain brains. While waiting, let us do the greatest good possible with the aid of Spiritism; let us do it even to our enemies, even if we were to be repaid with ingratitude, for it is the best means of overcoming certain resistances and of proving that Spiritism is not so black as some claim it to be.