Theos-Talk Archives (May 1996 Message tl00169)

Liesel wrote:


>Dear Dan,
>
>I printed out those whole 14pp, because I thought it would be an important
>historical document, & I wanted to read it carefully. It was really
>disappointing. What was your purpose in sending that much misinformation
>about the (to us) rather unimportant subject of mediums and "Phenomena"?
>skimming through, it said mesmerism is evil. I was aware that stuff like
>that was frowned upon in the past. It's being used today by therapists,
>(even though I would never allow anyone to mesmerize me) & people are quite
>curious as to how it works. The article says that spiritism was being
>welcomed by those who pioneered socialism. How is that supposed to jive?
>What do politics have to do with mediumship? That's like witches fly on a
>brooom. Nobody can prove it logically. It says people who use it are
>immoral. Well, I'd say the're amoral rathr than immoral. I think lots of
>mediums cheat, but they mostly think they're helping people, so it's not
>intentional. I find this whole article rather of the caliber of those who
>described witches & non-believers in the Middle Ages. Flapdoodle!
>They don't know very much what they're talking about. Just reminded me - the
>very important topic of live people communicating via ESP is completely left
>out. Probaby quite unknown to the writers of this article. I wish you'd
>explain to me why you took the trouble to put that on theos-l.
>
>Liesel


Daniel comments:

Well, I thought the article was pretty informative.  The section outlining
the history
was fairly well done and accurate.  And some of the views on the phenomena
seemed
sorta similar to the views of some Theosophists.

Of course, I assume this article was the
official Catholic view of the subject.  But I thought it raised some
important issues which
are still around more than 80 years later.

I thought someone might notice and compare the view of "demons" with HPB's
teachings
about "elementals" and "elementaries".

Just food for thought.

Daniel