Patriarch Joseph and the Clairvoyant of ZimmerwaldWe got the following text from one of our Paris subscribers:
“When I read the October issue of the Spiritist Review it reported me to a passage of the Bible that contains a similar fact as that of the clairvoyant of the forest of Zimmerwald. It goes like this:
Genesis 44:4-5 They had gone only a short distance from the city. Now Joseph said to his steward, “Up, follow after the men, and when you overtake them, say to them, ‘Why have you repaid evil for good? Is it not from this that my lord drinks, and by this that he practices divination? You have done evil in doing this.’”
Genesis 44:14-15 When Judah and his brothers came to Joseph’s house, he was still there. They fell before him to the ground. Joseph said to them, “What deed is this that you have done? Do you not know that a man like me can indeed practice divination?”
The kind of mediumship that you described existed amongst the Egyptians and Jewish.”
C… Attorney
This is in fact very true. Joseph was gifted with the art of divination, that is, to be able to see hidden things, and he used a drinking goblet, like the clairvoyant of Zimmerwald used his glass. If mediumship is a demoniac faculty, here we have one of the most respectable characters of the sacred antiquity believing to act through the devil. If he was with God and our mediums with the devil then the devil does the same as God, and consequently equals God’s power. They are then surprised to serious people sustaining such a thesis that destroys their own doctrine.
Spiritism, therefore, did not discover nor invented the mediums, but discovered and explains the laws of mediumship. It is then the true key to the comprehension of the New as well as the Old Testament where there are plenty of similar facts. The lack of such a key led to so many contradictory comments about the Scriptures, explaining nothing. Disbelief increased incessantly regarding these facts and invaded the Church itself. From now on they shall be admitted as natural phenomena for they happen repeatedly in our days through now known laws. We are then right to say that Spiritism is a positive science that destroys the last vestige of the supernatural.
Suppose that the books from antiquity that explain the pagan theogony and the mythology had been lost. Could we understand today the meaning of the innumerable inscriptions that are discovered every day and that are more or less related to those beliefs? Could we understand the objectives and motives of the structures of monuments whose ruins we contemplate today? Would we understand the statues and inscriptions? Certainly not. Without the knowledge of mythology, it would all be dead letter to us, like the cuneiform scripture and the Egyptian hieroglyphs. Mythology is then the key for the reconstruction of history through a fragment of stone, like Cuvier reconstructed pre-diluvian animals from a bone. Just because we no longer believe in the fables of pagan divinities, will it follow that we must neglect mythology. Anyone that supported this would be considered barbarian.
Well, then! Spiritism, as a belief in the existence and manifestation of the souls, as a means for their communication; magnetism, as a means of cure; somnambulism, as the double sight, all these were mingled with all theogonies of the pas, even the Judaic theogony, and later on the Christian; this leads to a number of monuments and inscriptions that still persist. Spiritism that at the same time embraces magnetism and somnambulism, is a light shed onto Archeology and the study of antiquity. We are even convinced that it is a fecund source for the understanding of the hieroglyphs because those beliefs were much spread out in Egypt and its study was part of the mysteries hidden to the commoners. Here some facts that support this statement:
One of our friends, a wise Archeologist that lives in Africa, and who is also an enlightened Spiritist, a few years ago found in the outskirts of Setif, a tomb inscription whose meaning was unintelligible with the knowledge of Spiritism. We remember seeing in the Louvre, a long time ago, an Egyptian painting that portrayed a sleeping person and another one standing up with arms and hands stretching towards the first one, looking at that person as if positively applying a magnetic pass. One could say that it was a drawing based on the little vignette that in former times Mr. Baron Dupotet use to place on the headings of his Journal of Magnetism. The reason for that painting was unmistakable to any magnetizer. Any person that had no knowledge of magnetism would find that image meaningless. This fact alone would demonstrate, as if there weren’t many more, that in former times the Egyptians were skillful in magnetization and that they applied that more or less as we do. Hence, it was part of their culture and therefore stamped in a public monument. Without modern magnetism that gave us the key to certain allegories, we would not know it.
Another Egyptian painting, also in the Louvre, portrayed a standing mummy, surrounded by small layers of linen; a body of the same shape and size, but without the linen, was detached in the middle, as if coming out of the mummy, and another individual placed in front seemed to reach out to that body. We did not know Spiritism then and asked ourselves the meaning of all that.
Today it is clear that the allegoric painting represents the soul separating from the body, but keeping its human appearance; the detachment is facilitated by the action of another incarnate or discarnate person, as we are taught by Spiritism.
Believe not in Spiritism, if that is your wish. Consider it to be a fantasy. Nobody will impose it. Study it, as you do to mythology, just for learning and laughing at people’s beliefs, and you will then see how many horizons will open up before you, regardless of how serious you are.
