To these assertions may be opposed a fact well known among spiritualists: The writer has publicly certified to having seen such materialized forms. We have most assuredly done so, and are ready to repeat the
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testimony. We have recognized such figures as the visible representations of acquaintances, friends, and even relatives. We have, in company with many other spectators, heard them pronounce words in languages unfamiliar not only to the medium and to every one else in the room, except ourselves, but, in some cases, to almost if not quite every medium in America and Europe, for they were the tongues of Eastern tribes and peoples. At the time, these instances were justly regarded as conclusive proofs of the genuine mediumship of the uneducated Vermont farmer who sat in the “cabinet.” But, nevertheless, these figures were not the forms of the persons they appeared to be. They were simply their portrait statues, constructed, animated and operated by the elementaries. If we have not previously elucidated this point, it was because the spiritualistic public was not then ready to even listen to the fundamental proposition that there are elemental and elementary spirits. Since that time this subject has been broached and more or less widely discussed. There is less hazard now in attempting to launch upon the restless sea of criticism the hoary philosophy of the ancient sages, for there has been some preparation of the public mind to consider it with impartiality and deliberation. Two years of agitation have effected a marked change for the better.
Pausanias writes that four hundred years after the battle of Marathon, there were still heard in the place where it was fought, the neighing of horses and the shouts of shadowy soldiers. Supposing that the spectres of the slaughtered soldiers were their genuine spirits, they looked like “shadows,” not materialized men. Who, then, or what, produced the neighing of horses? Equine “spirits”?
And if it be pronounced untrue that horses have spirits — which assuredly no one among zoologists, physiologists or psychologists, or even spiritualists, can either prove or disprove — then must we take it for granted that it was the “immortal souls” of men which produced the neighing at Marathon to make the historical battle scene more vivid and dramatic? The phantoms of dogs, cats, and various other animals have been repeatedly seen, and the world-wide testimony is as trustworthy upon this point as that with respect to human apparitions. Who or what personates, if we are allowed such an expression, the ghosts of departed animals? Is it, again, human spirits? As the matter now stands, there is no side issue; we have either to admit that animals have surviving spirits and souls as well as ourselves, or hold with Porphyry that there are in the invisible world a kind of tricky and malicious demons, intermediary beings between living men and “gods,” spirits that delight in appearing under every imaginable shape, beginning with the human form, and ending with those of multifarious animals.
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Before venturing to decide the question whether the spectral animal forms so frequently seen and attested are the returning spirits of dead beasts, we must carefully consider their reported behavior. Do these spectres act according to the habits and display the same instincts, as the animals during life? Do the spectral beasts of prey lie in wait for victims, and timid animals flee before the presence of man; or do the latter show a malevolence and disposition to annoy, quite foreign to their natures? Many victims of these obsessions — notably, the afflicted persons of Salem and other historical witchcrafts — testify to having seen dogs, cats, pigs, and other animals, entering their rooms, biting them, trampling upon their sleeping bodies, and talking to them; often inciting them to suicide and other crimes. In the well-attested case of Elizabeth Eslinger, mentioned by Dr. Kerner, the apparition of the ancient priest of Wimmenthal was accompanied by a large black dog, which he called his father, and which dog in the presence of numerous witnesses jumped on all the beds of the prisoners. At another time the priest appeared with a lamb, and sometimes with two lambs. Most of those accused at Salem were charged by the seeresses with consulting and plotting mischief with yellow birds, which would sit on their shoulder or on the beams overhead. And unless we discredit the testimony of thousands of witnesses, in all parts of the world, and in all ages, and allow a monopoly of seership to modern mediums, spectre-animals do appear and manifest all the worst traits of depraved human nature, without themselves being human. What, then, can they be but elementals?
Moe is the founder of GnosticWarrior.com. He is a father, husband, author, martial arts black belt, and an expert in Gnosticism, the occult, and esotericism.
