8.

What should be thought of the prohibition by Moses to the Hebrews, that they not evoke the souls of the dead? What consequence could be drawn from the fact, with regard to the present evocations?

The first consequence to be drawn from that prohibition is that it is possible to evoke the souls of the dead and to converse with them, for the prohibition of doing a thing implies the possibility of doing it. Would it be necessary, for example, to make a law prohibiting the ascent to the Moon? n It is truly curious to see the enemies of Spiritism claim from the past what they think can serve them, and repudiate that same past every time it does not suit them. If they invoke the legislation of Moses in this circumstance, why do they not demand its full application? Yet I doubt that any of them would be tempted to revive his code, above all his draconian penal code, so prodigal in penalties of death. Do they think that Moses was right in certain cases, and was mistaken in others? But, then, why would he be right in what concerns the evocations? It is, they say, that Moses made laws appropriate to his time and to the ignorant and unruly people whom he led; but those laws, good in that time, no longer accord with our customs and with our intelligence. It is exactly what we say with regard to the prohibition of evocations. To forbid it, he must have had a motive. Here it is:

The Hebrews, in the desert, keenly lamented the delights of Egypt, and this was the cause of the incessant revolts that Moses, so many times, was unable to repress except by extermination; hence the excessive severity of his laws. In this state of things, he found himself forced to make his people break with the usages and customs that might remind them of Egypt. Now, one of the practices that the Hebrews preserved was that of evocations, practiced in that country from time immemorial. And that is not all. This custom, which seemed to be well understood and judiciously practiced in the intimacy of a small number of those initiated into the mysteries, had degenerated into abuse and superstition among the people, who saw in it only an art of divination, no doubt exploited by charlatans, as the fortune-tellers do nowadays. The Hebrew people, ignorant and coarse, had taken from it only the abusive aspect. In forbidding it, Moses performed an act of good policy and wisdom. Today, things are no longer the same, and what might once have been a drawback is no longer so in the present state of society. But we too rise up against the abuse that might be made of relations with the beyond, and we affirm that it is a sacrilege, not the fact of establishing relations with the souls of those who have lived on Earth, but doing so with levity, in an irreverent manner, or for speculation. This is why true Spiritism repudiates all that might take from these relations their grave and religious character, for that would be the true profanation. Since the souls can communicate, they do so only with the permission of God, and there is no evil in doing what God permits. The evil, in this as in all things, consists in abuse and in misuse. [see: Is it permitted to evoke the dead, since Moses forbade it?] [1] Translator's Note: It was impossible for Allan Kardec, in 1862, to foresee the arrival of man on the Moon, which would only take place in 1969, without which he would not have used this example to justify his point of view.