Spontaneous communication
Parisian Society, November 19
th, 1864 – medium Mr. Leymarie
The printing press was invented in the XV century. Like many other known and unknown inventions it had to take the chalice and drink the gall. I do not come to you, Spiritists, to tell you about my annoyances and sufferings because in those days of ignorance and sadness when your predecessors had on their chests the nightmare called feudalism and a blind theocracy that was much aware of its own power every person of progress had too much of a head. I only want to tell you a few words about my invention, about its results and the affinity with you, with the elements that make your power expansive.
The mother revolution, the one that carried from behind the way humanity expressed itself, human thoughts moving away from the past, from the symbolical skin, that was the invention of the printing press. Thoughts are mixed in the air in that format, turn spiritual, and becomes indestructible. Master of future centuries, it takes off an intelligent flight to connect all points in space and from that day onwards dominates the old way of speaking.
The primitive peoples needed monuments to represent them, mountains of stones telling those that could read: this is my religion, my law, my hopes and my poetry. In fact, the printing press replaced the hieroglyph. Its language is light and accessible to all. A book only requires a little bit of ink and paper and some hands whilst a cathedral demands many lives of a people and tons of gold.
Allow me a digression here. The alphabet of the first peoples was formed by chips of stones that had not been touched by iron. The stones erected by the Celtic are also found in Siberia and America. They were the confusing human memories written in durable monuments. The Hebrew Galgal, the megaliths, the dolmens, and the tombs later on expressed words. Then came the tradition and the symbols.
Since those first monuments were not enough anymore the edifice was created and architecture became monstrous; it remained like giants telling the new generations about the symbols of the past. Such were the pagodas
[1], the pyramids and the temple of Solomon.
It was the edifice that contained the Verb, that mother idea of all nations. Their shape and situation represented a whole thought and that is why that all symbols have their great and magnificent pages in stone.
Freemasonry is the written and intelligent idea belonging to those men that became united by a symbol, taking Iram by their patron and forming the French-Freemasonry so much dishonored and that carried over the embryo of freedom. It knew how to spread its monuments and the symbols of the past all over the world replacing the theocracy of the first civilizations by democracy, that law of freedom. After the theocratic monuments of Egypt and India come their sisters, the Greek-Roman architectures and later the romantic and somber style representing the absolute, the unit and the priest. The crusades bring us the weapon and the Lord wants to share, waiting for the people that will take its place. Feudalism sees the birth of the communes and the face of Europe changes because the warhead dethrones the romantic; the Brickman becomes an artist and adds poetry to matter: it gives it the privilege of freedom in architecture because that was the only way of expressing thoughts those days. How many incitements written on the façades of monuments! That is why the poets, the thinkers, the disinherited and everything that was intelligent covered Europe with cathedrals!
As you see, up until the poor Guttenberg architecture was the universal writing. Printing press, in turn, knocks down the gothic; theocracy is the horror of progress, the mummified preservation of the primitive types; the warhead is the transition from darkness to the twilight zone in which one can easily read and understand the stone but the printing press is day light, destroying the manuscript, demanding more space that since then nothing can stop.
Like the Sun, the printing press will fecund the world with its beneficial rays. Society will no longer be represented by architecture because it will be classic and Renaissance’s and that world of artists breaking away from the past open up large voids in human Theogony to follow the avenue designed by God; it is now tired of being simple artisans of monuments from the Renaissance to become sculptor, painter and musician. The force of harmony wears out in books and already in the XVI century it is so much strong that printing press of Nuremberg that it is the advent of a literary century. It is at the same time Luther, Jean Goujon, Rousseau and Voltaire. The printing press is that slow fight against the old Europe that rebuilds after the destruction. And now that thought is emancipated which power could write the architectural bool of our times? All the millions of our planet would not be enough and nobody could lift up what is in the past and exclusively belongs to the past. Without neglecting the great book of architecture that the past and its teachings are we thank God that knows, at the right time, to give us the strength of such a powerful weapon that becomes the bread to the Spirit, the emancipation of the body, the free-will of mankind, the idea that is common to everyone, science, the foundation that fertilizes Earth and making us better. But if the printing press has emancipated you electricity will make you truly free and will dethrone the printing press of Guttenberg to put in your hands a much more fearful power and that will come soon.
The Spiritist science, that safeguard of humanity, will help you understand the new power that I am talking about. Guttenberg to whom God gave the providential mission will undoubtedly take part in the second one, that is, the one that will guide you in the study of the fluids. You shall soon be ready, dear friends. Nonetheless, it is not only about being eager Spirits. You also need to study so that everything that was taught about electricity and all fluids in general becomes well understood. Nothing is strange to the science of the Spirits. The stronger your intellectual foundation the lesser you shall be surprised by the new discoveries. You must be the initiators of new ways of thinking, strong and reassured of your spiritual skills. I was therefore right to speak about my mission, sister to yours. You are the elected ones in humanity. The good Spirits give you a book that goes around the world but you would do nothing without the printing press. The obsession that wakes the truth of men will disappear. But I insist: be ready and study so that you are worth of the new benefit and more intelligently than others you must be able to spread and make it accepted.
Guttenberg
OBSERVATION: The printing press produced an intellectual revelation that nobody can ignore considering the diffusion of ideas made imperishable and spread on all corners of the world. Because such a result was initially foreseen by some it was called diabolic invention. This is another point in common with Spiritism that Guttenberg did not mention.
If some people were heard it would seem that the devil has the monopoly of every great idea since all of those that push humanity a step forward are attributed to the devil. Jesus himself was accused of acting through the devil that in turn must be proud of having all good and beautiful things removed from God and attributed to him. Wasn’t the devil that inspired Galileo and every scientific discovery that made humanity progress? Following that the devil must be too modest to not consider himself the owner of the universe! Yet what can seem strange is the devil’s inability since there isn’t a single progress in science that has not contributed to the ruin of the devil’s empire. It is a detail about which people have not given enough thought.
If that was the power of such an absolutely material means of propagation how much more wouldn’t be that of the teachings of the Spirits that communicate everywhere even penetrating where books cannot go, being heard even by those that cannot hear! Which human power could resist such force?
The remarkable dissertation above provoked the following reflections from another Spirit at the heart of the Society.
[1] Buddhist religious monuments (TN)
