Bad Mediums Bad Mediums What You Gonna Do What You Gonna Do When They Come For You (Pun Intendend)

Spiritualism and Crime by Blewett Lee

This week I read about Spiritualism and Crime by Blewett Lee. It is important to note that this article was written in 1922. The thoughts and ideas presented in this article need to be taken in regards to the decade in which it was written.

D.D. Home "The Man Who Could Fly"

The article starts out with an interesting quote to define Spiritualism as a form of insanity

           “ mischievous nonsense, well calculated, on the one hand to delude the vain, the weak, the foolish, and the superstitious; and, on the other, to assist the projects of the needy and of the adventurer.” –Vice Chancellor Giffard (pg. 439).

Lee makes sure that readers know that the article is solely interested in how the beliefs in spiritualism affect the law. Several times throughout the article the author makes note that it is hard to say spiritualism phenomena doesn’t occur because it is seen in the literature, especially sacred literature. The law cannot also lawfully assumer every spiritualistic phenomenon is a delusion yet assures the reader that there are several cases in which fraudulence can occur. Fraudulent automatic writing in which the writer produces whatever they want and claims it to be automatic, sham trances, and materialization just to name a few.

Lee makes reference to Belshazzar’s feast in Daniel 5:5 as a resource of a genuine case of spiritualistic happenings. I myself and not religious and had to do some research on what Belshazzar’s feast was about I found http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Daniel+5&version=KJV . I located the verse that implied spiritualistic influences in the form of materialization of a man’s hand.



Belshazzar's Feast by Vasily Surikov

 

 

“5 In the same hour came forth fingers of a man's hand, and wrote over against the candlestick upon the pilaster of the wall of the king's palace: and the king saw the part of the hand that wrote.”

If you wish feel free to see the verse in its context by clicking on the link.

 

The article does not come right out and say that mediums are all frauds and that they are not any genuine ones out there. In the article it mentions that many mediums could very well possess actual abilities but occasionally produce fraud because the sitters attending the séance want results. Instant gratification at its worst. It would be a denial of human liberty to NOT allow a genuine medium to practice? But the never-ending paradox of genuine or not is always around. To force a medium to prove their selves would be a conviction in advance because if they are truly genuine and can communicate with spirits that does not mean that spirits will come on demand.

The article does make reference to several court cases that involved spiritualists, mediums and the like. One of these cases was Nurse v. State in which a man was accused of swindling because he communicated with spirits to find buried money for his clients, on his advice they reburied it and it later showed up missing. Nurse was not convicted. The court ruled that “since the money was actually found as the defendant represented it would be, there could be no conviction for swindling.” (pg. 443).  Other cases ended up in a similar manner. If a medium delivered a message in good faith she/he was not quality of any fraud. Other mediums close to her could strengthen a mediums case.

Lee calls for the sensible route for the law to take is for it to not deny a spiritualistic experience is possible but to call for proof. The article ends in a manner that I think is remarkable. Lee makes note that in regards to the law the communications should be looked at as if they were delivered by a real person since the spirit in all actuality is a real person. If the spirit does unlawful things then it, as a person, can be punished by law. On page 449 it states that “if by any chance some of the acts or communications should really come from dead men, that makes no difference from a legal point of view; they would be human actions just the same.” An interesting thought to ponder on.

 

 

 

* The article makes reference to a very famous male medium D.D. Home. I have included a link to an unscholarly websites that gives some background http://www.prairieghosts.com/ddhome.html. D.D. Home's is mentioned in this article because he did not charge for his services and therefore could not be charge for fraudulence by making his customers pay. D.D. Home's will show up again in my research.

D.D. Home

 

 

 

 

* http://www.jstor.org/stable/1112490