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The Devil Loveth No Salt in His Meat!
Every night in the year, four of us sat in the parlous of the Winchester Mansion. This particular night, there was a thin, bright moonshine: it was bitter cold, windy, and frosty; the town had not yet awakened, but an indefinable stir already preluded the noise and business of the day. The ghouls had come later than usual, and they seemed more than usually eager to be gone. They wished, and declared their wish, that their blood might be the last innocent blood shed. They prayed that God would discover the witchcraft were among us. They forgave their accusers. The fervency of the spirits were very affecting and drew tears from many. Affecting and melting to the hearts of some considerable spectators. They prayed earnestly for pardon for all other sin and for an interest in the precious blood of our dear Redeemer, and seemed to be very sincere, upright, and sensible of their circumstances. One of the ghouls said, “I have been put to death, and my grandfather suffered, and all his estate seized because of my own vile and wretched heart, confessed several things contrary to my conscience and knowledge, though to the wounding of my own soul—the Lord pardon me for it. But oh! the terrors of a wounded conscience, who can bear? Blessed be the Lord; He would not let me go in my sins, but in mercy I hope so my soul would not suffer me to keep it in any longer, but I was forced to confess the truth. Gunshots in the hills and the echo of that awful hellspawn voice in my head. I was sought after by a sorcerer, which resulted in fatal mishaps for those sorcerers because they caught me in the wrong mood, and I turned into a lethal weapon. Dear Mrs. Winchester, let me beg your prayers to the Lord on my behalf, and please send us a joyful and happy meeting in Heaven.” #RandolphHarris 1 of 13
Mrs. Winchester replied, “But the Lord He know it is, if it be possible, that no more innocent blood be shed, which undoubtedly cannot be avoided in the way and course you go in. I question not but your honours do to the utmost of your powers in the discovery and detecting of witchcraft and witches, and shall not be guilty of innocent blood for the World.” A horrible sense of blackness and the treachery of fate seized hold upon the soul of the unhappy student and the other ghouls. “My God! she cried, “but what have I done? and when did I begin?” Nothing could be explained any further because we realized that we had long since ceased to pay attention to anything said by the suspect. Our minds and hearts were so filled with the hideous torments of the afflicted and the frightful tales of the confessors that we were quite unable to absorb anything else. The student was violent, and it was said that she had beaten to death a former teacher and other students in the classroom before she and her accomplices were shot dead by a Winchester model 1866. They were much addicted to sorcery in the said town, and there were forty men in it that could raise the Devil as well as any astrologer. Time had little changed this small town. It stood then, as now, upon a crossroad, out of call of human habitations, and buried fathom deep in the foliage of six thousand cedar trees. The cries of the sheep upon the neighbouring hills, the streamlets upon either hand, one loudly singing among pebbles, the other dripping furtively from pond to pond, the stir of the wind in mountainous old flowering chestnuts, and once in seven days the voice of the bell and old tunes of the precentor, were the only sounds that disturbed the silence around the rural Winchester Mansion. #RandolphHarris 2 of 13
The Resurrection Man was not to be deterred by any of the sanctities of customary piety. It was part of his trade to despise and desecrate the scrolls and trumpets of old tombs found on the estate, the paths worn by the feet of legions of spirits and mourners, and the offerings and the inscriptions of bereaved affection. To rustic neighbourhoods, where love is more than commonly tenacious, and where some bonds of blood or fellowship unite the entire society of a parish, the body-snatcher, far from being repelled by natural respect, was attracted by the ease and safety of the task. To bodies that had been laid in Earth, in joyful expectation of a far different awakening, there came that hasty, lamp-Iit, terror-haunted resurrection that often happened at the Winchester Mansion, which was fully of uneasy ghosts. It was pitch dark; and we had just raised a few souls from the dead. Their bodies awaited them in the basement. Here and there a white gate or a white stone in the wall guided them for a short space across the night; but for the most part it was at a foot pace, and almost groping, that they picked their way through the resonant blackness to their solemn and isolated destination. In the basement the last glimmer failed them, and it became necessary to kindle a match and reillumine one of the lanterns of the gig. Thus, under the dripping pipes, and environed by huge and moving shadows, they reached the scene of their unhallowed labours. However, the devil, imagining that he had found the right moment for taking possession of one of these resurrected bodies. A creeping chill began to possess my soul. It grew upon my mind that some unnatural miracle had been accomplished, that some nameless change had befallen one of the dead bodies, and in fear of their unholy burden wolves were outside the mansion howling. #RandolphHarris 3 of 13
The curse of evil had come into one of the bodies, and the evil malediction spread into his parts with a strange kind of screaming sound that made me turn pale with fear. He then rose to his feet, proclaiming he was the Devil and that he would take these other resurrected bodies with him to the underworld and speak with the dead. Mrs. Winchester said, “I rebuke you, Satan!” The Devil laughed and said he was not at all afraid of us. “You insult me with these testimonies as if you were Divine Oracles!” he said. Then departed in a black cloud of smoke with the resurrected bodies. How often I have read in books written by Jesuits that Martin Luther was a wizard, and that he did himself confess that he had familiarity with Satan! The Holy Son of God himself was reputed a magician, and one that had familiarity with the greatest of Devils. The blaspheming Pharisees said, “He casts out the Devils through the Prince of Devils,” reports Matthew 9.34. There is then not the best saint on Earth, man or woman, that can assure themselves that the Devil shall not cast such an imputation upon them. At the time when Luther died all the possessed people in the Netherlands were quiet. The Devils in them said the reason was because Luther had been a great friend of theirs, and they owed him that respect as to go far as Germany to attend his funeral. But the Father of Lies is never to be believed. He will utter twenty great truths to make way for one lie; he will accuse twenty people of witchcraft if he can but thereby bring one innocent person into trouble. However, it is better that ten suspected witches should escape than one innocent person should be condemned. The Devil makes his witched to dream strange things of themselves and others which are not so. #RandolphHarris 4 of 13
The Greek philosopher Pythagoras of Samos, who invented the Pythagorean theorem, a^2+ b^2 = c^2, also lead seances in approximately 540 BC, using something like a Quija board. Grim reapers are purely psychic entities, with power over time and perception. They can change the way a human sees one’s surroundings, and change their own appearance, usually to ease the transition from life into death. If it is by virtue of some contract with the Devil that witches have the power to do such things, it is hard to conceive how they can be bid to do them without being too much concerned in that Hellish covenant. We ought not to practice witchcraft to discover witches. The Devil have of late accused some eminent persons. It is an awful thing which the Lord had done [id est, permitted] to convince some among us of their error. To take away the life of anyone merely because a specter or Devil in a bewitched or possessed person does accuse them will bring the guilt of innocent blood on the land where such a thing shall be done. What does such an evidence amount unto more than this: either such an one did afflict such an one, or the Devil in one’s likeness, or one’s eyes were bewitched. The natural way for a living person to see a reaper is as a wraith-like figure wearing tattered winding sheets or burial cloth. Black dogs are also buried in the foundations of churches to guard and protect the gates between here and the afterlife. What will be the issue of these troubles God only knows. I am afraid that ages will not wear off that reproach and those stains which these things will leave behind them upon our lands. It is possible that bewitched and possessed person are afflicted by the Devil, but without agency of witches. Yes, there are witches, and there have been since the beginning of the World. Their craft is performed with the Devil’s assistance. #RandolphHarris 5 of 13
During one evening at the mansion, Mrs. Winchester invited the maid in for a séance. She chanted, “By the virtue of the holy resurrection and the torments of the damned, I conjure and exorcise thee, spirit of Malphas, thirty-ninth Spirit, to answer my liege demands, being obedient unto these sacred ceremonies, on pain of everlasting torment and distress. Arise, arise, arise, I charge and command thee.” A black man appeared, I do not think he was human. His skin was black as midnight and I could not see his eyes, teeth, or any other features. He was just black and in the shape of a man. He offered her a book to sign. The book was supposed to contain witches’ pacts, and he told her that is she touched it, it would cure her of the hauntings. In all, Mrs. Winchester was tempted from three boos. The third she demanded that they let her read before she think of signing it. The man refused. In general the book seemed a journal of the chief things acted or designed a their great witch-meetings, not without some circumstances that carried an odd resemblance of the Koran. It has in it the methods to be used in seducing of people unto the service of the Devil, and the names of them that had been seduced, with terms which they were to serve. It particularly surprised some in the room, on the even of May 13, 1888, to overhear her, in the book then opened unto her, spelling a word that was in Latin. The letters she recited was “Quadragesima.” Mrs. Winchester conversed at length with the spirit(s) who visited her, and the voices were “big, low, thick,” as they had been reported to be in European witchcraft accounts. #RandolphHarris 6 of 13
We saw flames arise from the cauldron on the table, and the room smelled of brimstone. The spirit of a bird appears. It attacked the maid and the next morning, she was found tied to the tree top. She was excessively sore when we brought her down from the tree. There were blisters raised upon her. To cure the soreness which last night’s fiery trail gave to her, we were forces sometimes to apply oil commonly used for the cure of scads. And yet (like other witch-wounds) in a day or two all would be well again. Only the marks of some wounds thus given her, she will probably carry to her grave. I may add that once they thrust an hot iron down her throat, which though it were to us invisible, yet we saw he skin fetched off her tongue and lips. Indeed, her sufferings were so severe that Mrs. Winchester thought the rapid healing of her wounds was part of a design to keep her in continual torment. She was, Mrs. Winchester wrote, “wounded with a thousand pains all over, and cured immediately that the pains of these wounds might be repeated.” One of the maid’s symptom occurred when her hallucinations were peopled by specters bring her a little cup that had a whitish liquor in it (unto us wholly invisible), which they would pour down her throat, holding her jaws wide open, in spite of all [her] shriekings and strivings. We saw her swallow this poison, though we saw not the poison, and immediately she would swell prodigiously and be just like one poisoned with a dose of rats-bane [arsenic trioxide]. After these potions she was capable ordinarily to beg of us that we would he her to some salad-oil, upon the taking whereof the swelling would in a little while abate. Sometimes our laying our hands on the mouth of the maid, when she perceived the specters forcing their poisons into her mouth, did keep her from taking of them in. #RandolphHarris 7 of 13
The maid, Agnus, was unable to hear prayer or religious instruction directly. However, not only did she hear the spectral Christmas dance, but several times Agnus had her arms cruelly scratched and pins thrust into her flesh by Fiends while they were molesting her. Several persons did sometimes actually lay their hands upon these Fiend. The wretches were palpable while they were not visible, and several of our people though they saw nothing, yet felt a substance that seemed like a dog. And though they were not fanciful they died away [id est, fainted] at the fright. And at this time, Mrs. Winchester believed much of this unchristian practice was the result of someone delivering curses. A curse delivered by a woman, Margaret Rhodes Crocker, known to have dabbled in witchcraft, although again it is not absolutely certain that she practiced malefic witchcraft. It was upon the Lord’s Day, the 8th of September, in the year 1889, that Margaret Crocker, after some hours of previous disturbance in the Old St. Mary’s Cathedral, fell into odd fits, which caused her friends to carry her home, where her fits in a few hours grew into a figure that satisfied the spectators of their being preternatural. Some of the neighbours were forward enough to suspect the rise of this mischief in an house hard-by, where lived a miserable woman who had been formerly imprisoned on the suspicion of witchcraft, and who had frequently cured very painful hurts by muttering over them certain charms, which I shall not endanger the poisoning of my reader by repeating. This woman had, Mary Frances Sherwood Hopkins Searless, the evening before Margret fell into her calamities, very bitterly treated her and threatened her. #RandolphHarris 8 of 13
However, the hazard of hurting a poor woman that might be innocent, notwithstanding surmises that might have been more strongly grounded than those, caused the pious people in the vicinity to try whether incessant supplication to God alone might not procure a quicker and safer ease to the afflicted than hasty prosecution of any supposed criminal. Mary Francis was assaulted by eight cruel specters, whereof she imagined that she knew three or four, but the rest came still with their faces covered, so that she could never have a distinguishing view of the countenance of those who she thought she knew. She was very careful of my reiterated charges to forbear blazing the names, lest any good person should come to suffer any blast of reputation through the cunning malice of the great Accuser. Nevertheless, she having since privately named them to myself, I will venture to say this of them, that they are a sort of wretches who for these many years have gone under as violent presumptions of witchcraft as perhaps any creatures yet living upon Earth, although I am far from thinking that the visions of this young woman were evidence enough to prove them so. Margaret Crocker’s hallucinations were somewhat varied. She saw not only spectral witches and the “Black Man….their master” who was often seen in abandoned mansions, where he resisted new residents, but also a “White Spirit” who she took to be an Angel. Such a figure had also been seen at the Winchester and in several Oakland witchcraft cases, such as at the Ellen Kenna Mansion, Emma Bray’s Mansion, and at Alexander Dunsmuir’s mansion. The white spirit comforted and advised Margaret during her attack. Among other things, the Angel told her that Oliver Winchester was her spiritual father. #RandolphHarris 9 of 13
The Angel had always maintained the Devils might appear in the shape of an innocent person. Mrs. Winchester cried for the Lord, as for the deliverance of these women from the malice of Hell, for the deliverance of the powers of Hell has now seized upon all of them. And that the whole plot of the Devil to reproach her poor maid, Angus, be defeated by the Lord Jesus Christ. During a séance Mrs. Winchester was told that one of the several beings that was haunting her and these other grand estates was a Rakshasa. A being reincarnated from evil human beings. They are a type of demon. Rakshasa have the power to change their shape at will and appear as animals, as monsters, or in the case of female demons, as beautiful women. They also have magical powers, including invisibility. They are cannibalistic, and particularly target anything religious or holy. In addition to human flesh they, they will eat spoiled food. Their finger nails are poisonous. They are most powerful in the evening, particularly during the dark person of a new moon, but are dispelled by the rising sun. They especially detest sacrifices and prayer. Most powerful among them is their kind, the 10-headed Ravana. Many believe him to be Satan. Margaret had the common inability of afflicted persons to hear religious words, especially, in her case, the words of prayer. She had a full catalog of physical symptoms. She would be strangely distorted in her joins an thrown into such extravagant convulsions as were astonishing unto the spectators in general. She would be cruelly pinched with invisible hands very often in a day, and the black and blue marks of the pinches became immediately visible unto the standers by. She was also afflicted with pins, both real ones found about her person and spectral ones. The psychosomatic skin lesions would in a few minutes ordinarily be cured. #RandolphHarris 10 of 13
As with Mary Frances, her specters burnt her with spectral brimstone, and she would be so bitterly scorched with the unseen sulphur thrown upon her that very sensible blisters would be raised upon her skin. Like Angus, Margaret was forced to swallow spectral poison. She would sometimes have her jaws forcibly pulled open, whereupon something invisible would be poured down her throat. We all saw her swallow, and yet we all saw her try as she could that she might not swallow. She would cry out “as of scalding brimstone poured into her” and would be so monstrously inflamed that it would have broken a heart of stone to have seen her agonies. The spectators would testify also that the Crocker Mansion often reeked “so hot of brimstone that we were scarce able to endure it.” And one of the occasion “the standers by plainly saw something of that odd liquor itself on the outside of her neck.” There was a spectral powder thrown into her eyes, and “one time some of this powder was fallen actually visible upon her cheek, from whence the people in the room wiped it with their handkerchiefs.” Mrs. Winchester was also afflicted by spirits. “We once thought we perceived something stir upon her pillow at a little distance from her, whereupon one present [the Butler Clayton] laying his hand there, he to his horror apprehended that he felt, though none could see it, a living creature not altogether unlike a vampire bat, which nimbly escaped from him. And there were diverse other persons who were thrown into a great consternation by feeling, as they judged, at others times the same invisible animal.” #RandolphHarris 11 of 13
However, the most starling phenomenon in Mrs. Winchester’s case was levitation. “Once,” said Clayton, “her tormentors puled her up to the ceiling of the chamber and held her there before a very numerous company of spectators, who found it as much as they could all do to pull her down again.” Clayton obtained signed confirmations of this and other instances of levitation: “I do testify that I have seen Mrs. Winchester in her hauntings from the invisible World lifted up from her bed, wholly by an invisible force, a great way towards the top of the room where she lay. In her being so lifted she had no assistance from any use of her own arms or hands or any other part of her body, not so much as her heels touching her bed or resting on any support whatsoever. And I have seen her thus lifted when not only a strong person hath thrown his whole weight across her to pull her down, but several other persons have endeavoured with all their might to hinger her from being so raised up, which I suppose that several others will testify as well as myself when called unto it. Witness my hand,” Clayton Straus. “We can also testify that we have several times seen Mrs. Winchester so lifted up from her bed as that she had no use of her own limbs to help her up, but it was the declared apprehension of us, as well as others that saw it, impossible for any hands but some of the invisible World to life her.” Henry Brown, Frank Drew, Phillip Goodwin. “We whose names are underwritten do testify that one evening when we were in the chamber where Mrs. Winchester then lay in her haunting, we observed her to be by an invisible force lifted up from the bed whereon she lay, so as to touch the garret floor, while yet neither her feet nor any other parent of her body rested either on the bed or any other support, but were also by the same force lifted up from all that was under her, and all this for a considerable while. #RandolphHarris 12 of 13
“We judged it several minutes, and it was as much as several of us could do with all our strength to pull her down. All which happened when there was not only we two in the chamber, but we supposed ten or a dozen more whose names we have forgotten.” W. R. Leigh and Spenser T. Olin. These accounts could not be the power of suggestion because these people were not just bystanders. They believed that they witnessed levitation, and they were engaging in violent physical activity, trying to bring her body back to the bed. Such activity would, ordinarily, break the power of suggestion. And levitation has been so frequently reported, from so many times and places (from the 5th century to the 21st century), that one cannot be at all sure there is a satisfactory explanation for it, particularly since so many witnesses insisted that no part of Mrs. Winchester’s body was touching the bed. However, whatever the explanation for these symptoms, Mrs. Winchester and her estate are truly a mystery. However, it is also noted the other prominent Queen Anne Victorian Mansions and other built during the Victorian times experienced afflictions. Witchcraft is one of the most hidden works of darkness. Although some people and some estates were more haunted than others, the Bay Area, during Victorian Times, had its full share of obscurity. All publications on witchcraft and supernatural events have been forbidden by these prominent families at the time. Their desire was to quail tempers, and use wisdom to relax fear, while upholding their honour, integrity, and reverence for the Victorian era. “All things are possible to one that believeth,” reports Mark 9.23. Who that beareth it upon one shall not dread one’s enemies, to be overcome, nor with no manner of poison be hurt, nor in no need misfortune, nor with no thunder one shall be smitten nor lightning, no in no fire be burnt suddenly, nor in no water be drowned. Nor one shall not die without shrift, nor with thieves to be take. Also one shall have no wrong neither of Lord or Lady. This be in the names of God and Christ. #RandolphHarris 13 of 13
Winchester Mystery House
Winchester Mystery House will be going dark this weekend for All Hallows’ Eve, but we will be back to haunt you Thursday, September 30th! Purchase your tickets for next weekend early and let the ghoul times roll 👻
See link in bio for ticket info 🎟 winchestermysteryhouse.com
He Covenanted with the Devil Until He Should Arrive to the Age of Sixty Years!
He might be living, or he might be dead. There came no word of him, or from him. I was fond enough of her to be satisfied with this—he never disturbed us. While there were many individual acts of witchcraft in seventeenth-century Massachusetts, there was never an attempt or plot to make witchcraft a formal religion which would supplant Christianity. Yet we need not conclude that William Baker and his fellow-confessors were lying. It is probable that they, like the afflicted girls, were hysterics subject to hallucination. Certainly that is the conclusion to be drawn from Thomas Brattle’s opinion of them in his “Letter”: “my faith is strong concerning them that they are deluded, imposed upon, and under the influence of some evil spirit, and therefore unfit to be evidences either against themselves or anyone else.” Mr. Brattle wrote this in October 1692, when Massachusetts was retuning to stability. However, at the height of the excitement confessions like Mr. Baker’s seemed convincing enough. For one thing, they had a curious precision: he did not say there were about three hundred witches in the country but “about three hundred and sever”; he did not say there were about a hundred young wizards at the mustering of the Satanic militia but “about an hundred five.” However, what made these confessions most believable was that they offered a simple and comprehensive explanation for all the frightening events at Salem, at a time when explanations were not easy to discover. #RandolphHarris 1 of 16
There is also some testimony which remains ambiguous even today. Samuel Wardwell, for example, at his preliminary examination confessed himself a wizard. He had begun, he said, with white magic, “with telling of fortunes which sometimes came to pass” And, he said, “he used also when any creature came into his field to bid the Devil to take it, and it may be the Devil took advantage of him by that.” Eventually he had signed a pact: “He covenanted with the Evil until he should arrive to the age of sixty years.” He had renounced this confession at his trial, saying that he had made it, but that he had belied himself. He added that it was all one: “he knew he should die for it whether he owned it or no.” Ordinarily one would simply accept his renunciation. However, there are several puzzling circumstances here. For one thing, it was not all one whether he maintained or renounced his confession. People who maintained their confessions were not being brought to trail, much less executed. For another, at least a part of his confession was true; he had dabbled in the occult for some time, telling a great many fortunes, and boasting that he could make animals come to him when he wished. Finally, Mr. Wardwell was executed. However, in 1693, when the panic had subsided and the climate of opinion totally changed, there were three people who held to their confessions. Two of them were women long thought to be “senseless and ignorant creatures.” The third was Mr. Wardwell’s wife. All of these circumstances are puzzling and some of them are suspicious. However, on the other hand, there is no evidence to support his confessions of having made a pact. The only possible conclusion, it would seem, is that in this case the truth is not obtainable. #RandolphHarris 2 of 16
In a situation where the truth was so difficult to find the people of Massachusetts did what anybody else would do—they sought expert advice. In matters of witchcraft the experts were the clergy, and ultimately the advice was sought of the most distinguished clergymen in the colony. Indeed, at least one member of the trial court, Judge John Richards, asked the Reverend Cotton Mather to be present at the first trial. Reverend Mather was too ill to attend, but he did everything he could under the circumstances. He had suggested earlier (the exact date is not known) that the afflicted persons should be separated and an attempt made to cure them with prayer and fasting. He volunteered to take in as many as six of them himself. He had cured the Godwin children, and he might well have cured the Salem girls as well; certainly separation and private care would have been better treatment for hysterical fits than the excitements of a public courtroom. However, unfortunately Reverend Mather’s offer had not been accepted. Now, although he could not attend the first sitting of the court he wrote John Richards a letter offering him his opinions. In the first place, he expected that God would smile upon the labours of the court: “His people have been fasting and praying before Him for you direction, and yourselves are persons whose exemplary devotion disposeth you to such a dependence on the Wonderful Counselor, for his counsel in an affair this full of wonder, as He doth usually answers with the most favorable assistances. Yet he wanted to warn Mr. Richards. #RandolphHarris 3 of 16
Here is that warning: “And yet I most humbly beg you that in the management of the affair in your most worthy hands, you do not lay more stress upon pure specter testimony than it will bear. When you are satisfied or have good plain legal evidence that the Demons which molest our poor neighbours do indeed represent such and such people to the sufferers, though this be a presumption, yet I suppose you will not reckon it a conviction that the people so represented are witches to be immediately exterminated. It is very certain that the Devils have sometimes represented the shapes of persons not only innocent but very virtuous, though I believe that the just God then ordinarily provides a way for speedy vindication of the persons thus abused. Moreover, I do suspect that persons who have too much indulged themselves in malignant, envious, malicious ebullitions of their souls may unhappily expose themselves to the Judgment of being represented by Devils, of whom they never had any vision and with whom they have much less written any covenant. I would say this: if upon the bare supposal of a poor creature’s being represented by a specter too great a progress be made by the Authority in ruining a poor neighbour so represented, it may be that a door may be thereby opened for the Devils to obtain from the Courts in the Invisible World a license to proceed unto most hideous desolations upon the repute and repose of such as have yet been kept from the great transgression. If mankind have thus far once consented unto the credit of Diabolical representations, the Door is opened! Perhaps there are wise and good men that may be ready to style hum that shall advance this caution a witch advocate, but in the winding up this caution will certainly be wished for.” #RandolphHarris 4 of 16
Reverend Mather’s third point is that although he believes that Devils have sometime afflicted men on their own initiative, without being called up by witches, in this case he thinks that witches are involved: “there is cause enough to think that it is a horrible witchcraft which hath given rise to the troubles wherewith Salem Village is at this day harassed, and he indefatigable pains that are used for the tracing this witchcraft are to be thankfully accepted and applauded among all this people of God.” Fourth, he points out that although witchcraft is a spiritual matter and therefore “very much transacted upon the stage of imagination,” its effects are “dreadfully real” and therefore criminally punishable. “Our dear neighbours are most really tormented, really murdered, and really acquainted with hidden things which are afterwards proved plainly to have been realities.” In his fifth and six section he suggests what evidence may be used for convictions. The best evidence, he says, is “a credible confession…And I say a credible confession because even confession itself is sometimes not credible.” He was confident Mr. Richards’ ability to judge such matters: “a person of a sagacity many times thirty furlongs less than yours will easily perceive what confession may be credible and what may be the result of only a delirious brain or a discontented heart.” In obtaining confessions he was “far from urging the un-English method of torture,” but he thought that “cross and swift questions” might be used, along with anything else that “hath a tendency to put the witches into confusion” and this might bring them to confession. If the suspect had made threats or boasts which seemed to require occult power and which came true, this was valid evidence. So were such concrete matters as “puppets” (for image magic) and witch marks on the body. #RandolphHarris 5 of 16
Reverend Mather had never seen a witch mark on anyone, but he thought a surgeon ought to be able to tell if a bodily excrescence were magical. Finally, he was willing to countenance as experiments (but not as full evidence) some witch-finding techniques which themselves partook of the occult: setting a suspect to repeating the Lord’s Prayer; trying to wound a witch through striking her specter; putting the suspect to the water ordeal. Seventh, and finally, he recommended clemency for “come of the lesser criminals.” If such persons were not executed but “only scoured with lesser punishments, and also put upon some solemn, open, public, and explicit renunciation of the Devil” he thought it might discourage the Devils from afflicting those neighbourhoods in which they had been publicly renounced. Reverend Mather’s letter was written within the context of the Puritan method for arriving at the truth, and it can be fully understood only within that context. In dealing with the American Puritans we must remember always that they had rejected the formidable hierarchies of the Medieval and Renaissance church and state, with all their authority of tradition and inherited position. They had replaced these hierarchies with bodies of ministers and magistrates which, if they were not fully democratic in the twentieth-century sense of the word, were nevertheless elected. The clergyman was called to his position by the members of the church; the magistrate was elected by his constituency. Furthermore, the church had no central administration; every congregation was a law unto itself. The state did have a central administration—a governor and lieutenant-governor and their council—but this administration had nothing even faintly resembling the authority of a royal government. #RandolphHarris 6 of 16
My brother, the clergyman, looked over my shoulder before I was aware of him, and discovered that the volume which completely absorbed my attention was a collection of famous Trials, published in a new edition and in a popular form. He laid his finger on the Trial which I happened to be reading at the moment. I looked up at him; his face startled me. He had turned pale. His eyes were fixed on the open page of the book with an expression which puzzled and alarmed me. “My dear fellow,” I said, “what in the World is the matter with you?” He answered in an odd absent manner, still keeping his finger on the open page. “I had almost forgotten,” he said. “And this reminds me.” “Reminds you of what?” I asked. “You do not mean to say you know anything about the Trial?” “I know this,” he said. “The prisoner was guilty.” “Guilty?” I repeated. “Why, the man was acquitted by the jury, with full approval of the judge! What can you possibly mean?” “There are circumstances connected with that Trial,” my brother answered, “which were never communicated to the judge or the jury—which were never so much as hinted or whispered in court. I know them—of my own knowledge, by my own personal experience. They are very sad, very strange, very terrible. I have mentioned them to no mortal creature. I have done my best to forget them. You—quite innocently—have brought them back to my mind. They oppress, they distress me. I wish I had found you reading any book in your library, except that book!” Some people were opposed to prosecuting in any witchcraft case, on the grounds that witchcraft was a spiritual mater, a sin rather than a crime, and thus outside the domain of criminal law. However, the laws of every civilized nation provided the death penalty for witchcraft, and so did the Bible (Exodus xxii, 18: “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live”). #RandolphHarris 7 of 16
Another opinion Reverend Mather deals with is that the troubles at Salem were caused by Devils, but not by witches. That is, the idea had already been advanced that the afflicted girls were possessed—infested by Demons—but not bewitched; that the Devils had acted on their own initiative rather than that of witches. This is the idea that was eventually adopted by virtually all of Massachusetts to explain the events at Salem, once it was recognized that most of those executed had been innocent. The basic question, as the seventeenth century understood it, was whether God would permit the Devil to assume the shape of an innocent person. Most authorities, and especially most Protestant authorities, believed that He would, and thus held, like Hamlet, that “the Devil hath power/ to assume a pleasing shape. However, Mr. Richards would not be capable of clearing anybody if he was going to accept the appearance of a person’s specter as conclusive proof of guilt. If such infernal testimony were accepted, nobody could be safe from accusation. Reverend Mather put in forcefully enough. “If mankind have thus far once consented unto the credit of Diabolical representations, the Door is opened!” However, Reverend Mather knew there were people at Salem so committed to the validity of spectral evidence that they were willing to call anyone who challenged it, including himself, a “witch advocate.” All he could do was warn such people that when matters were finished “this caution will certainly be wished for.” And in this he could not possibly have been more right. #RandolphHarris 8 of 16
Do you believe that the spirits of the dead can return to Earth, and show themselves to the living? Promise me this, that you will keep what I tell you a secret as long as I live. After my death I care little what happens. Let the story of my strange experience be added to the published experience of those other men who have seen what I have seen, and who believe what I believe. The World will not be the worse, and may be the better, for knowing one day what I am now about to trust to your ear alone. On a fine summer evening, many years since, I left my chambers in the Temple to meet a fellow-student, who had proposed to me a night’s amusement in the Winchester estate. I had taken my degree at Oxford. I had sadly disappointed my father by choosing the Law as my profession, in preference to the Church. At that time, to own the truth, I had no serious intention of following any special vocation. I simply wanted an excuse for enjoying the pleasures of an American life. The study of Law supplied me with that excuse. And I chose the Law as my profession accordingly. On reaching the place at which we had arranged to meet, I found that my friend had not kept his appointment. After waiting vainly for ten minutes, my patience gave way, and I went into the gardens by myself. I took two or three turns round the mansion, without discovering my fellow-student, and without seeing any other person with whom I happened to be acquainted at that time. For some reason which I cannot now remember, I was not in my usual good spirits that evening. #RandolphHarris 9 of 16
I saw a woman in the gardens, she was quiet. She invited me into the estate. Her face was saddened; her eyes were dropped to the ground, I begged her pardon. She rose to leave me. I was determined to not part with her in that way. I begged to be allowed to see the Winchester mansion. She hesitated. Then she took my arm. We went away together. A walk of half an hour brought us to the Winchester mansion, the estate was quite large. We went through the beautiful jeweled doors and took an elevator to the 4th floor. She said Mrs. Winchester had been waiting to meet me. She had been suffering from an affection of the throat; and she had a white silk handkerchief tied loosely round her neck. She wore a simple dress of black merino, with a black-silk apron over it. Her face was deadly pale; her fingers felt icily cold as they closed around my hand. “Promise me one thing,” I said, “before I go. While I live, I am your friend—if I am nothing more. If you are ever in trouble, promise me that you will let me know it.” She started, and drew back from me as if I had struck her with a sudden terror. “Strange!” she said, speaking to herself. “He feels as I feel. He is afraid of what may happen to me, in my life to come.” I attempted to reassure Mrs. Winchester. I tried to tell her what was indeed the truth—that I had only been thinking of the ordinary chances and chances of life, when I spoke. She paid no heed to me; she came back and put her hands on my shoulders, and thoughtfully and sadly looked up in my face. “My mind is not your mind in this matter,” she said. “I believe I shall die young, and die miserably. If I am right, have you interest enough still left in me to hear of it?” #RandolphHarris 10 of 16
She paused, for a moment, shuddering—and added these startling words: “You shall hear of it.” The tone of steady conviction in which she spoke alarmed and distressed me. My face showed her how deeply and how painfully I was affected. “There, there!” she said, returning to her natural manner; “don’t take what I say too seriously. A poor girl who has led a lonely life like mine thinks strangle and talks strangely—sometimes. Yes; I give you my promise. If I am ever in trouble, I will let you know it. God bless you—you have been very kind to me—goodbye!” A tear dropped on my face as she kissed me. The door closed between us. The dark gardens received me. It was raining heavily. I looked up at her window, through the drifting shower. The curtains were parted; she was standing in the gap, dimly lot by the lamp on the table behind her, waiting for our last look at each other. Slowly lifting her hand, she waved her farewell at the window, with the unsought native grace which had charmed me on the night when we first met. The curtains fell again—she disappeared—nothing was before me, nothing was round me, but the darkness and the night. In two years from that time, I had returned to the Church. My relatives exerted themselves; and my good fortune still befriended me. I was offered an opportunity of preaching in a church, made famous by the eloquence of one of the popular pulpit-orators of our time. In accepting the proposal, I felt naturally anxious to do my best, before the unusually large and unusually intelligence congregation which would be assembled to hear me. At the period of which I am now speaking, the Santa Clara Valley had been startled by the discovery of a terrible crime, perpetrated under circumstances of extreme provocation. #RandolphHarris 11 of 16
I chose this crime as the main subject for my sermon. Admitting that the best among us were frail mortal creatures subject to evil promptings and provocations like the worst among us, my object was to show how a Christian man may find his refuge from temptation in the safeguards of his religion. I dwelt minutely on the hardship of the Christian’s first struggle to resist the evil influence—on the help which one’s Christianity inexhaustibly held out o one in the worst relapses of the weaker and viler part of one’s nature—on the steady and certain gain which was the ultimate reward of one’s faith and one’s firmness—and on the blessed sense of peace and happiness which accompanied the final triumph. Preaching to this effect, with the fervent conviction which I really felt, I may say for myself, at least, that I did no discredit to the choice which had placed me in the pulpit. I held the attention of my congregation, from the first word to the last. On the conclusion of my sermon, my soul was literally shaken. Ordering my horse to be saddled, I rode instantly to the Winchester mansion. When I arrived, my mind was blank. I had no thoughts. I had no tears. The butler, Amon, greeted me. I guessed him to be some two or three years younger than myself. He was undeniably handsome; his manners of a gentleman—and yet, without knowing why, I felt a strong dislike to him the moment he opened the door. While waiting in the parlor, little by little, I became conscious of a chilly sensation slowly creeping through and through me to the bones. The warm balmy air of a summer night was abroad. It was the month of August. In the month of August, was it possibly that any living creature (in good health) could feel cold? It was not possible—and yet, the chilly sensation still crept through and through me to the bones. I looked up. I looked all round me. #RandolphHarris 12 of 16
I looked around me again. Yes: I saw it. With my own eyes I saw it. A pillar of white mist—between five and six feet high, as well as I could judge—was moving beside me on my left hand. The white colour of it was the white colour of the fog which one might see over the ocean. And the chill which had then crept through me to the cones was that chill that was creeping through me now. I was awed rather than frightened. There was one moment, and one only, when the fear came to me that my reason might be shaken. The doctrine that the Devil could appear in any shape did come to mind. The slow utterance of these words, repeated over and over again: “Mrs. Winchester is dead. Mrs. Winchester is dead.” But my will was still my own: I was able to control myself, to impose silence on my own muttering lips. And I walked through the mansion. And the pillar of mist went quietly with me. I sat down on the stairs looking at the pillar of mist, hovering opposite to me. It lengthened slowly, until it reached to the ceiling. As it lengthened, it grew bright and luminous. A time passed, and a shadowy appearance showed itself in the center of the light. Little by little, the shadowy appearance took the outline of human form. Soft brown eyes, tender and melancholy, looked at me through the unearthly light in the mist. The dead and the rest of the face boke next slowly on my view. Then the figure gradually revealed itself, moment by moment, downward and downward to the feet. She stood before me as I had last seen her, in her black-merino dress, with the black-silk apron, with white handkerchief tied loosely round her neck. She stood before me, in the gentle beauty that I remembered so well; and looked at me as she had looked when she gave me her last kiss on the cheek—when her tears had dropped on my hand. #RandolphHarris 13 of 16
I fell on my knees at the table. I stretched out my hands to her imploringly. I said, “Speak to me—O, once again speak to me, Sarah.” Her eyes rested on me with a divine compassion in them. She lifted her hand, and pointed to the photograph on the desk. It was the butler. I looked up at her again. She lifted her hand once more, and pointed to the handkerchief round her neck. As I looked at it, the fair white silk changed horribly in colour—the fair white silk became darkened and drenched in blood. A moment more—and the vision of her began to grow dim. By slow degrees, the figure, then the face, faded back into the shadowy appearance that I have first seen. The luminous inner light died out in the white mist. The mist itself dropped slowly downwards—floated a moment in airy circles on the floor—vanished. Nothing was before me but the familiar Lincrusta wallpaper, and the photograph lying face downwards on the desk. I went home. The next day, the newspapers reported the discovery of a murder in the Winchester mansion. Mrs. Winchester was the victim. She had been killed by a wound in the throat. The crime had been discovered between ten and eleven o’clock on the previous night. There is conclusive proof that the butler had been trafficking with the Devil. If spectral evidence was convincing to the magistrates, the ministers, and the people at large, it was a nightmare to the suspects. A violent quarrel took place between them. Lastly, that man, variously described by different witnesses, was seen leaving the door of her mansion on the night of the murder. The Law—advancing no further than this—may have discovered circumstances of suspicion, but no certainty. The Law, in default of direct evidence to convict the prisoner, may have rightly decided in letting him go free. #RandolphHarris 14 of 16
However, the Winchester Repeating Arms Company issued a statement redacting the news report which was later destroyed: “Protecting Mrs. Winchester’s legacy is, and always will be, our focus. For decades, we have battled behind the scenes, enduring shadowy tactics of deception with unauthorized statements and projects created to tarnish. We have always been betwixted as to why there is such a tenacity in causing more pain alongside what we already have to cope with for the rest of our lives. Now, this unscrupulous endeavor to release a statement without official proof or full accounting to the estate compels our hearts to express a word—forgiveness. Although we will continue to defend ourselves and her legacy lawfully and justly, we want to preempt the inevitable attacks on our company by all the individuals who have emerged from the shadows to leech off of Mrs. Winchester’s life’s work. Ultimately, we desire closure and a modicum of peace so we can facilitate the growth of the Winchester Estate and other creative projects that embody Mrs. Winchester’s true essence, which is to inspire and get people to think critically. We welcome and accept people of all creeds, races and cultures in the Universe and beyond.” The official statement reported that Mrs. Winchester passed away peacefully in her sleep on September 5, 1922, and work on the still uncompleted house stopped. I leave you to draw your own conclusions, but just days before I saw her, she looked no older than 22 years old. My own faith in the reality of the apparition is immovable. I say, and believe Mrs. Winchester is immortal, which would explain a lot. Take up the Trial again, and look at the circumstances that were revealed during the investigation in the court. I persist in believing that the man was guilty. I declare that, he and he alone did it. And now, you know why. #RandolphHarris 15 of 16
O thou wicket spirit Amon that obeyeth not, because I made a law and invoked the names of the glorious and ineffable God of Truth, the creator of all, and thou obeyest not the might sounds that I make: therefore I curse thee in the depth of Abandon to remain until the day of judgment in torment in fire and in sulphur without end, until thou appear before our will and obey my power. Come, therefore, in the 24th of a moment, before the circle in the triangle in this name and by this name of God, Adni, Great Spirit, give us hearts to understand; never to take from creation’s beauty more than we give; never to destroy wantonly for the furtherance of greed; never to deny to give our hands for the building of Earth’s beauty; never to take from her what we cannot use. Give us hearts to understand that to destroy Earth’s music is to create confusion; that to wreck her appearance is to build us to beauty; that to callously pollute her fragrance is to make a house of stench; that as we care for her she will care for us. Tzabaoth, Adonai, Amioran. Come! Come! for it is the Lord of Lords Adni, that stirreth thee up. I stir thee up, O thou fire, in him who is thy Creator and of all creatures. Torment, burn, destroy the spirit Amon always whose end cannot be, I judge thee in judgment and in extreme justice, O spirit Amon, because thou art he that obeyeth not my power and obeyth not that law which the Lord God made, and obeyeth not the Mighty Sounds and the Living Breath which I invoke, which I send: Come forth, I, who am the Servant of the Same Most High governor Lord God powerful, Iehovohe, I who am exalted in power and am might in his power above ye, O thou who comest not giving obedience and faith to him that liveth and trirumpheth. Therefore I say the judgment: I curse thee and destroy the name Amon and the seal Amon, which I have placed in this dwelling of poison, and I burn thee in fire whose end cannot be; and I cast thee down unto the seas of torment, out of which thou shalt not rise until thou come to me eyes: visit me in peace: be friendly before the circle in the triangle in the 24th of a moment in the likeness of a man not unto the terror of the sons of men the creatures or all things on the face of the Earth. Obey my power like reasoning creatures; obey the living breath, the laws which speak. #RandolphHarris 16 of 16
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At His Preliminary Examination He Testified that He Has Been in the Snare of the Devil!
A weary and secretive darkness crept into her face, a distraction, as though her soul had traveled out of doors towards Heaven, and the she looked down sadly. When I came in sight of the house where John Procter live, there was a very hard blow struck on my breast which caused great pain in my stomach and amazement in my head. However, I did see no person near me, only my wife behind me on the same horse. And when I cam against said Mr. Procter’s house, according to my understanding, I did see John Procter and his wife at the said house. [They were, remember, in prison at this time.] Mr. Procter himself looked out of the window and his wife did stand just without the door. I told my wife of it, and she did look that way and could see nothing but a little maid at the door. I saw no maid there, but Mr. Procter’s wife according to my understanding did stand at the door. Afterwards, about half a mile from the aforesaid house, I was taken speechless for some short time. My wife did ask me several questions and desired me that if I could not speak I should hold up my hand, which I did. And immediately I could speak as well as ever. [Notice again that the fit was broken when the subject is able to move or speak.] And when we came to the way where Salem Road cometh into Ispwich Road, here I received another blow on my breast which caused much pain, so that I could not sit on my horse. And when I did alight off my horse, to my understanding I saw a woman coming towards us about sixteen or twenty pole from us, but did not know who it was. My wife could not see her. #RandolphHarris 1 of 16
When I did get up on my horse again, to my understanding there stood a cow where I saw the woman. [Witches were thought capable of transforming their shapes.] After that we went to Boston without any further molestation, but after I came home again to Newbury I was pinched and nipped by something invisible for some time. However, now through God’s goodness to me I am well again. That was testimony from Joseph Bailey of what he and his wife encountered. Testimony like this is careful and honest, and historians have been wrong in refusing to take it seriously. Mr. Baily was quite aware that he had been ill, and that the illness had created a difference between his perceptions and those of his wife. However, the fatal distinction between his understandings of the event and ours is that his culture led him to attribute his illness to witchcraft whereas ours permits us to attribute it to his fear of witchcraft. There are many similar instances of the specters of innocent people appearing to afflict the citizenry once they were suspected of witchcraft. One of the more interesting involves John Willard, who had at first been a deputy-constable employed in arresting persons who had been complained of. According to Robert Calef, an American author who wrote a book on the Salem Witch Trials of 1692-93, he became dissatisfied after being sent to arrest persons he believed innocent, and resigned his position. This immediately brought him under suspicion, and soon the afflicted girls were crying out against him. Shortly thereafter his grandfathers, Bray Wilkins, was ready for dinner when John Willard came into the house with my son Henry Wilkins, before I sat down, and said Mr. Willard to my apprehension looked after such a sort upon me as I never before discerned in any. #RandolphHarris 2 of 16
That is, Mr. Wilkins thought Mr. Willard had “overlooked” him—given him the evil eye. I did but step into the next room and I was presently taken so that I could not dine nor eat anything. I cannot express the misery I was in, for my water was suddenly stopped and I had no benefit of nature, but was like a man in a rock. And I told my wife immediately that I was afraid that Mr. Willard had done me wrong. My pain continuing and finding no relief my jealousy [id es, suspicion] continued. Mr. Lawson and others there were all amazed and knew not what to do for me. There was a woman accounted skillful [who] came hoping to help me, and after she had used means she asked me whether none of those evil persons had done me damage. I said I could not say they had but I was sore afraid they had. She answered, she did fear so too. As near as I remember I lay in this case three or four days at Boston, and afterwards, with the jeopardy of my life (as I though), I cam home. And then some of my friends coming to see me (and at this time John Willard was run away) one of the afflicted persons, Mercy Lewis, came in with them, and they asked whether she saw anything. She said, “Yes, they are looking for Jon Willard but here he is on his grandfather’s belly.” (And at that time I was in grievous pain in the small of my belly.) I continued so in grievous pain and my water much stopped till said Mr. Willard was in chains. And then as near as I can guess I have considerable ease. However, on the other hand, in the room of a stoppage I was vexed with a flowing of water so that it was hard to keep myself dry. #RandolphHarris 3 of 16
On the fifth [of] July last, talking with some friends about John Willard, some pleading his innocency and myself and some others arguing the contrary, within about one-quarter of an hour after that I was taken in the sorest distress and misery, my water being turned into real blood, or of a bloody color, and the old pain returned excessively as before, which continued for about twenty-four hours together. In this testimony, we come to understand the hysterical loss of appetite which was Mr. Wilkins’ first symptom we have seen before and shall see again. The inability to urinate we have seen in Mrs. Simms as a result of Manny Redd’s curse. However, there was clearly something organic as well as psychosomatic wrong with Bray Wilkins. The blood in the urine coupled with the extreme pain of relatively short duration suggests that it may have been a kidney stone. However, whatever it was, both Mr. Wilkins and the community at large were by this time ready to attribute it to witchcraft. William Baker’s confessions provide an excellent example that the Salem Witch Trials were carried in chiefly by the complaints and accusations of the afflicted and by the confessions of the accused, condemning themselves and others. Nothing is a first sight more surprising than the number of the confessors and the character of their confessions. There were about fifty of them, and the statements which they made far exceed in color and detail the simple statements of personal guilt that were necessary to save their lives. According to Mr. Baker, at his preliminary examination he testified that he has been in the snare of the Devil three years. #RandolphHarris 4 of 16
That the Devil first appeared to him like a black man, and he perceived he had a cloven foot; that the Devil demanded of him to give up himself soul and body unto him, which he promised to do. [The Devil promised in return to pay Mr. Baker’s debts and see that he lived comfortably. Mr. Baker signed the contract in blood.] Satan’s design was to set up his own worship, abolish all churches in the land (which some say politicians are currently doing), to fall next [id est, first] upon Salem and so go through the country. He saith the Devil promised that all his people should be equal, that there should be n day of resurrection or of judgment, and neither punishment nor shame for sin. That explains why people are trying to banish God and they church. They know they are bad people and believe they can avoid being held responsible for their crimes and sins by raising hell on Earth and raising the Devil. Mr. Baker said that the demonic “Grandess” had told him there were about “307 witches in the country” and he volunteered his opinion that all the persons arrested and imprisoned to date (August 29, 1692) were guilty. However, an oral confession was not enough for him. Mr. Hale prints another “which he wore himself in prison, and sent to the magistrate to confirm his former confession.” However, an oral confession was not enough for him. Mr. Hale prints another “which he wrote himself in prison, and sent to the magistrates to confirm his former confession.” Here is his testimony: God having called me to confess my sins and apostasy in that fall in giving the Devil advantage over me, appearing to me like a Black, in the evening, to set my hand to his book, as I have owned to my shame. He told me that I should not want [in] so doing. At Salem Village, there being a little off the Meeting-House about an hundred five blades [id est, young bucks], some with rapiers by their sides, which was called (and might be more for ought I know) by Bishop and Burroughs. #RandolphHarris 5 of 16
And the trumpet sounded, and [there was] bread and beverage which they called Sacrament, but I had none, being carried over all on a stick, never being at any other meeting. I being at carting a Saturday last, all the day of hay and English corn, the Devil brought my shape to Salem and did afflict Martha Sprague and Rose Foster by clitching my hand. And a Sabbath day my shape afflicted Abigail Martin. Elizabeth Johnson and Abigail Faulkner have been my enticers to this great abomination, as one have owned and charged her to her sister with the same. And the design was to destroy Salem Village, and to begin at the minister’s house, and to destroy the Church of God, and to set up Satan’s kingdom, and then all will be well. And now I hope God in some measure has made me something sensible of my sin and apostasy, begging pardon of God, and of the Honorable Magistrates and all God’s People, hoping and promising by the help of God to set to my heart and hand to do what in me leith to destroy such wicked worship, humbly begging the prayers of all God’s People for me [that] I may walk humbly under this great affliction and that I may procure to myself he sure mercies of David and the blessing of Abraham. Such testimony sheds light on the centuries long plot of some to remove God from America. Pray I must, my Lordly Friend, but what should I pray? Bless You, Heavenly Father, Father of my Lord Jesus Christ, for remembering me, pauper that I am? O Father of mercies and God of consolations, as Paul began his Second Letter to the Corinthians (1.3), I give You thanks, unworthy as I am of Your every consolation? #RandolphHarris 6 of 16
I bless You always, and I glorify You, with You Only Begotten Son and the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete, for ever and ever? O Lord God, my Holy Loving Friend, when You come into my heart, You make my blood dance? “You are my glory,” thrummed the Psalmist (3.3) and “the exaltation of my heart” (119.111)? You are my hope and—thrumming again—“my refuge in the day of my tribulation” (59.16)? I ask again, O Lord, what should I pray? At this point in my life, I find myself not only a little long in the tooth, but also a little short in the hoof; that is to say, a little short of breath in the pursuit of Love and Virtue. I have no one to turn to. You are the only One who can help me. Do not be surprised, then, when I ask You to visit me more often. I need to know more about the holy disciplines. Will they free my body from the itch, cure my heart from the worm? Cleanse me on the inside, scrub me on the outside, and I will be ready enough to love, strong enough to suffer, stable enough to preserve. And you say that these blood drinkers are worshiped in the hills. It was the spring of 1880, I had lost my way, and could not tell how far I might be from my destination. I was very tired and had a heavy knapsack on my shoulders, packed with stones and relics from the ruins of the Old Pelasgic fortress which I had been exploring, besides a number of old coins and a lamp or two which I had purchased there. I could discern no signs of any human habitation, and the hills, covered with wood, seemed to shut me in on every side. I was beginning to think seriously of looking out for some sheltered spot under a thicket in which to pass the night. I was so excited to get back to the Winchester estate. The mansion was a large rambling place, and was tolerably comfortable within. My room was situated at the end of a long passage; there were two rooms on the right side of this passage, and a window on the left, which looked out upon the garden. #RandolphHarris 7 of 16
Having taken a survey of the outside of the house while getting some fresh air after dinner, when the moon was up, I remembered exactly the position of my chamber—the end room of a long narrow wing, projecting at right angles from the main building, with which it was connected only by the passage and two side rooms already mentioned. Please to bear this description carefully in mind while I proceed. Before getting into bed, I drove into the floor close to the door a small gimlet which formed part of a complicated Winchester pocket-knife which I always carried with me, so that it would be impossible for any one to enter the room without my knowledge; there was a lock to the door, but the key would not turn in it; there was also a bolt, but it would not enter the hole intended for it, the door having sunk apparently from its proper level. I satisfied, myself, however, that the door was securely fastened by my gimlet, and soon fell asleep. How can I describe the strange and horrible sensation which oppressed me as I woke out of my slumber? I had been sleeping soundly, and before I quite recovered consciousness I had instinctively risen from my pillow, and was crouching forward, my knees drawn up, my hands clasped before my face, and my whole frame quivering with horror. I saw nothing, felt nothing; but a sound was ringing in my ears which seemed to make my blood run cold. I could not have supposed it possible that any mere sound, whatever might be its nature, could have produced such a revulsion of feeling or inspired such intense horror as I then experienced. It was not a cry of terror that I heard—that would have roused me to action—nor the moaning of one in pain—that would have distressed me, and called forth sympathy rather than aversion. #RandolphHarris 8 of 16
True, it was like the groaning of one in anguish and despair, but not like any mortal voice: it seemed too dreadful, too intense, for human utterance. The sound had begun while I was fast asleep—close to the head of my bed—close to my very pillow; it continued after I was wide awake—a long, hollow, protracted groan, making the midnight air reverberate, and then dying gradually away until it ceased entirely. It was some minutes before I could at all recover from the terrible impression which seemed to stop my breath and paralyse my limbs. At length I began to look about me, for the night was not entirely dark, and I could discern the outlines of the room and the several pieces of furniture in it. I then got out of bed, and called aloud, “Who is there? What is the matter? Is anyone ill?” I repeated these enquiries in Italian, German, and French, but there was none that answered. Fortunately I had some matches in my pocket and was able to light my candle. I then examined every part of the room carefully, and especially the wall at the head of my bed, sounding it with my knuckles; it was firm and solid there, as in all other places. I unfastened my door, and explored the passage and the two adjoining rooms, which were unoccupied and almost destitute of furniture; they had evidently not been used for some time. Search as I would, I could gain no clue to the mystery. Returning to my room I sat down upon the bed in great perplexity, and began to turn over in my mind whether it was possible I could have been deceived—whether the sounds which caused me such distress might be the offspring of some dream or nightmare; but to that conclusion I could not bring myself at all, much as I wished it, for the groaning had continued ringing in my ears long after I was wide away and conscious. #RandolphHarris 9 of 16
While I was thus reflecting, having neglected to close the door which was opposite to the side of my bed where I was sitting, I heard a soft footstep at a distance, and presently a light appeared at the further end of the passage. Then I saw the shadow of a man cast upon the opposite wall; it moved very slowly, and presently stopped. I saw the hand raised, as if making a sign to someone, an I knew from the fact of the shadow being thrown in advance that there must be a second person in the rear by whom the light was carried. After a short pause they seemed to retrace their steps, without my having had a glimpse of either of them, but only of the shadow which had come before and which followed them as they withdrew. It was then a little after one o’clock, and I concluded they were retiring late to rest, and anxious to avoid disturbing me, though I have since thought that it was the light from my room which caused their retreat. I felt half inclined to call to them, but I shrank, without knowing why, from making known what had disturbed me, and while I hesitated they were gone; so I fastened my door again, and resolved to sit up and watch a little longer by myself. However, now my candle was beginning to burn low, and I found myself in this dilemma: either I must extinguish it at once, or I should be left without the means of procuring a light in case I should be again disturbed. I regretted that I had not called for another candle while there were people yet moving in the house, but I could not do so now without making explanations; so I grasped my box of matches, put out my light, and lay down, not without a shudder, in the bed. #RandolphHarris 10 of 16
For an hour more I lay awake thinking over what had occurred, and by that time I had almost persuaded myself that I had nothing but my own morbid imagination to thank for the alarm which I had suffered. “It is an outer wall,” I said to myself; “they are all outer walls, and the house 9-inch-thick walls; it is impossible that sound could be heard through such a thickness. Besides, it seemed to be in my room, close to my ear. What an idiot I must be, to be excited an alarmed about nothing; I will think no more about it.” So I turned on my side, with a smile (rather a forced one) at my own foolishness, and composed myself to sleep. At that instant I heard, with more distinctness than I ever heard any other sound in my life, a gasp, a voiceless gasp, as if someone were in agony for breath, biting at the air, or trying with desperate efforts to cry out or speak. It was repeated a second and a third time; then there was a pause; then again that horrible gasping; and then a long-drawn breath, an audible drawing up of air into the throat, such as one would make in heaving a deep sigh. Such sounds as these could not possibly have been heard unless they had been close to my ear; they seemed to come from the wall at my heard, or to rise up out of my pillow. That fearful gasping, and that drawing in of the breath, in darkness and silence of the night, seemed to make every nerve in my body thrill with dreadful expectation. Unconsciously I shrank away from it, crouching down as before, with my face upon my knees. It ceased, and immediately a moaning sound began, which lengthened out into an awful, protracted groan waxing louder and louder, as if under an increasing agony, and then dying away slowly and gradually into silence; yet painfully and distinctly audible even to the last. #RandolphHarris 11 of 16
As soon as I could rouse myself from the freezing horror which seemed to penetrate even to my joints and marrow, I crept away from the bed, and in the further corner of the room lighted with shaking hand of my candle, looking anxiously about me as I did so, expecting some dreadful revelation as the light flashed up. Yet, if you will believe me, I did not feel alarmed or frightened; but rather oppressed, and penetrated wit an unnatural, overpowering, sentiment of awe. I seemed to be in the presence of some great and horrible mystery, some bottomless depth of woe, or misery, or crime. I shrank from it with a sensation of intolerable loathing and suspense. It was a feeling akin to this which prevented me from calling Mrs. Winchester. I could not bring myself to speak to her of what had passed; not knowing how nearly she might be involved in the mystery. I was only anxious to escape as quietly as possible from the room and from the house. The candle was now beginning to flicker in its socket, but the stars were shining outside, and there was space and air to breathe there, which seemed to be wanting in my room; so I hastily opened my window, tied the bedclothes together for a rope, and lowered myself silently and safely to the ground. There was a light still burning in the lower part of the house; but I crept noiselessly along, feeling my way carefully among the trees, and in due time came upon a beaten track which led me to a road, the same which I had been travelling on the previous night. I walked on, scarcely knowing whither, anxious only to increase my distance from the accursed house, until day began to break, when almost the first object I could see distinctly was a small body of men approaching me. #RandolphHarris 12 of 16
The men asked me what was wrong? “I was disturbed in the night. I could not sleep. I made my escape from the Winchester mansion, and here I am I cannot tell you more.” “But you must tell me more, dear sir; forgive me; you must tell me everything. I must know all that passed in that mansion. We have had in under our surveillance for a long time, and when I heard in what direction you had gone yesterday, and had not returned, I feared you had got into some mischief there, and we were even now upon our way to look for you. The mansion is so large that people seem to get lost inside and disappear.” I could not enter into particulars, but I told him I had heard strange sounds, and at his respect I went back with him to the mansion. He told me by the way that the mansion was haunted; that Mrs. Winchester e mansion, he placed his men about the premises and instituted a strict search, and Mrs. Winchester and the man who was found in the house being compelled to accompany him. The room in which I had slept was carefully examined; the wall was of plaster or cement, so that no sound could have passed through it; the walls were sound and solid, and there was nothing to be seen that could in any way account for the strange disturbance I had experienced. The room on the ground-floor underneath my bedroom was inspected; it contained a quantity of straw, hay, firewood, and lumber. It was paved with thick wooden slaps, and it was observed that the floors were uneven, as if they had been recently disturbed. #RandolphHarris 13 of 16
“Ply the board loose,” said the officer, “we shall find something hidden here, I reckon.” Mrs. Winchester was evidently much disturbed. “Stop,” she cried. “I will tell you what lies there; come away out of doors, and you shall know all about it.” “Dig, I say. We will find out for ourselves.” “Let the dead rest,” cried Mrs. Winchester, with a trembling voice. “For the love of Heaven come away, and hear what I shall tell you. It is the body of my son, my only son—let him rest, if rest he can. He was wounded in a quarrel, and brought home to die. I thought he would recover, but there was neither doctor nor priest at hand, an in spite of all that would could do for him he died. Let him alone now, or let a priest first be sent for; he died unconfessed and unacknowledged. No one ever knew of his existence. I had hope to spare him of the Winchester cruse that Annie and his father had succumbed to. He was buried here because I did not want to make a stir about it. Nobody knew of his death nor his existence, and we laid him down quietly; once place I thought was as good as another when once the life was out of him. We could not bare a scandal. That gasping attempt to speak, and that awful groaning—whence did they proceed? It was no living voice. Beyond that I will express no opinion on the subject. I will only say it was the means of saving my life, and at the same time putting an end to the series of bloody deeds which had been committed under my family’s name. Every year, I go to the edge of my estate and drop a pound of silver in a grave, and my prayers go up to Heaven in all sincerity!” #RandolphHarris 14 of 16
I invoke thee, and move thee, and stir thee up O Spirit Berith appear unto my eyes before the circle in the likeness of a man in the names and by the name Iah and Vau, which Adam spake and in the name of God, Agla, which Lot spake: and it was as pleasant deliverers unto him and his house and in the name Ioth which Iacob spake in the voice of the Holy ones who cast one down, and it was also as pleasant deliverers in the anger of his brother and in the name Anaphaxeton, which Aaron spake and it was as the Secret Wisdom and in the name Asher Ehyeh Oriston, which Mosheh spake, and all waters were brining forth creatures who wax strong, which lifted up unto the houses, which destroyed all things and in the name of Elion which Mosheh spake, and it was as stones from the firmament of wrath, such as was not in the ages of Time the beginning of the Earth and in the name of Adni, which Mosheh spake and there appeared creatures of Earth who destroyed what the big stones did not: and in the name Schema Amathia, which Ioshua invoked, and the Sun remained over ye, O ye hills the seats of Gibeon, and in the names Alpha and Omega which Daniel spake, and destoyed Bel and the Dragon: and in the nae Emmanuel which the sons of God sang praises in the midst of the burning plain, and flourished in conquest: and in the name Hagios, and by the Throne of Adni, and in Ischyros, Athanatos, Paracletos: and in O Theos, Ictros, Athanatos. And in these names of the secret truth, Agla, On, Tetragrammaton, do I invoke and move thee. And in these names, and all things that are the names of the God of Secret Truth who liveth for ever, the All-Powerful. I invoke and stie thee up, O’ spirit Berith. #RandolphHarris 15 of 16
Even by him who spake it was, to whom all creatures are obedient and in the Extreme Justice and Anger of God; and by the veil that is before the glory of God, mighty; and by the creatures of living breath before the Throne whose eyes are east and west; by the fire in the fire of just Glory of the Throne; by the Holy ones of Heaven; and by the secret wisdom of God, I, exalted in power, stir three up. Appear before this circle; obey in all things that I say; in the seal Basdathea Baldachia; and in this Name Primeumaton, which Mosheh spake and the Earth was divided, and Korah, Dathan, and Abiram fell in the depth. Therefore obey in all things, O Spirit Berith, obey thy creation. Come thou forth: appear into my eyes; visit us in peace, be friendly; come forth in the 24th of a moment; obey my power, speaking the secrets of Truth in voice and in understanding! I stir thee up, O Spirit Berith, in all things that are the names of glory and power of God the Great One who is greater than understanding, Adni Ihvh Tzabaoth, come forth in the 24th of a moment, let Thy dwelling-place be empty; apply thyself unto the secret truth and obey my power: appear unto my eyes, visit us in peace, speaking the secrets of truth in voice and understanding. I stir thee up and move thee, O spirit Berith, in all the names that I have said, and I add these one and sic names wherein Solomon, the lord of the secret wisdom, placed yourselves, spirits of wrath, in a vessel, Adonai, Preyai Tetragrammaton, Anaphaxeton Ineddenfatoal, Pathtomon and Itemon: appear before this circle; obey in all things my power. And as thou art he that obeys not and comes not I shall be in thy power, O God Most High that liveth for ever, who is the creator of all things n six days, Eie, Saraye, and in my power in the name Prieumaton that ruleth over the palaces of Heaven, Curse Thee, and destroy thy seat, joy, and power; and I bind thee in the depth of Abaddon, to remain until the day of judgment whose end cannot be. And I being thee in the fire of sulphur mingled with poison and the seas of fire and sulphur: come forth, therefore, obey my power and appear before this circle. Therefore come forth, therefore, obey my power and appear before this circle. Therefore come forth in the name of the Holy Ones Zabaoth, Adonia, Amioran. Come! For I am Adonai who stir thee up. #RandolphHarris 16 of 16
Winchester Mystery House
The attic spaces can get quite dark, but the lights shine through those beautiful glass panes! Come see this and more on the Explore More Tour!
Explore More Tour:
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A 160-room mansion built to appease the spirits who died at the hands of the Winchester Rifle 👻
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What a Lovely Day for a Bit of Mystery!
It is rare for people to be asked the question which puts them squarely in front of themselves. I hear your words, My dear Devout; now you hear Mine. You will find them not only suasive, but also persuasive. In fact, they exceed in wisdom all the accumulated knowledge of Philosophy since the World began. My particular words for you today are “spirit and life.” My Beloved Disciple recorded them in his Gospel (6.63), but Humanity cannot seem to make any sense out of them. Important words, they should not be exegeted smugly, if I may allude to that hoary Preacher of Ecclesiastes (9.17), but listened to respectfully. That is to say, they should be received with all humility and yet great affection. Our seventeenth-century ancestors differed from us in most ways, but in nothing did they differ more than in their attitude toward the truth. In this they were closer to the Middle Ages than to us. For them a lie—a breaking of one’s faith—was the worst of sins. Today, many do not regard lying as a serious moral wrong. If the word “morality” is mentioned we think immediately of our bodily appetites, especially of pleasures of the flesh, barbiturates, paraphernalia, liquor and contraband. If the word “morality” is mentioned we think immediately of our bodily appetites very seriously—perhaps too seriously—but we do not regard lying as a mortal sin. We are one of the few civilizations in which entire professions (TV news media, for example, and public relations) are seriously devoted to bending the truth. Dante, in his Divine Comedy, divided sins into three kinds: those of lust, those of violence, and those of fraud. #RandolphHarris 1 of 13
The sins of lust—those we tend to take most seriously—were those that Dante thought most trivial; the sins of fraud—which we take lightly—were for Dante the worst of all. To create a “credibility gap” as our revealing phrase has it (as though the only relevant issue is whether a statement will compel belief), to lie, was for the medieval humans to break one’s faith, and it was faith which constituted the bonds between humans and their fellow humans, between humans and the state, between humans and God. To lie was to reduce all the most valuable relationships of life to chaos. And the seventeenth-century Puritan, like Dante, was still living by his faith. Just how important the truth was to the seventeenth-century Puritan may be gathered from the fact that all of the innocent persons who were executed—and the majority of those executed were innocent—could have saved themselves by lying. After the first execution—that of Bridget Bishop—took place in June it became obvious to everyone that persons who confessed, like Tituba and Dorcas Good, were not being brought to trial. Thus any suspected person might have one’s life by confessing. Twenty people died, nineteen of them hanged and one pressed for refusing to plead. Bridget Bishop, Mammy Redd, and George Burroughs were three of these. One cannot be at all certain of the guilt or innocence of several more. However, at least a dozen now seem to be clearly innocent. Twelve people, and probably more, chose to die rather than belie themselves. It is impressive evidence of the Puritan’s attachment to the truth. #RandolphHarris 2 of 13
Yet it was not really so simple as that, because the truth was not easy to find in Salem in 1692. The greatest difficulty was created by the genuineness of the afflicted persons’ fits. Their sufferings were so convincing that they often shook the confidence of the accused. One example is William Hobbes, who began by stoutly denying that he had anything to do with the afflicted girls’ convulsions. When he looked at them they fell down in fits, and Hathorne accused him of overlooking them (id est, of he evil eye), yet still he denied it. Abigail Williams cried out that she saw his specter going to hunt Mercy Lewis “and immediately said Mercy fell into a fit and diverse others.” “Can you now deny it?” said Hathorne. “I can deny it to my dying day,” said William Hobbes. However, he did not. Here, after all, were people in hideous convulsions, and saying that his specter was the cause. How could this be? Hathorne suggested that the Devil might be able to use Hobbes’ specter because of Hobbes’ sins; he had not observed either public or private worship. Might not the Devil have taken advantage of that? Hobbes “was silent a considerable space—then said yes.” The girls’ fits shook not only Hobbes’ confidence in himself, but also his confidence in his daughter Abigail, the wild young girl who had boasted that she had sold herself “body and soul to the Old Boy.” Hathorne wanted to know whether Hobbes had not known for a long time that his daughter was a witch. “No, sir,” was the reply. “Do you think she is a witch now?” asked Hathorne. And all that Hobbes could say was, “I do no know.” #RandolphHarris 3 of 13
Abigail Faulkner’s experience was similar. At her first examination, on August 11, she firmly denied that she had anything to do with the girls’ afflictions. When she looked at them they fell down in fits, and Hathorne asked her, “Do you not see?” Yes, she saw. However, she had nothing to do with it. Yet she would not doubt that the girls were suffering, and saw no reason to doubt their word that it was her specter afflicting them. Therefore the Devil must be appearing in her form: “It is the Devil does it in my shape.” However, by August 30 she was no longer so sure of her innocence. It was true, she said, that she had been angry at what people said when her cousin, Elizabeth Johnson, had been arrested. She had felt malice toward the afflicted persons then because they were the cause of her cousin’s arrest. She has wished them ill, and “her spirit being raised she did pinch her hands together.” Perhaps the Devil had taken advantage of that to pinch the girls, thus exploiting her malice. Even those whose confidence was not shaken bore testimony to the impressiveness of the fits. Mary Easty knew that has had not bewitched the girls, and she was confident as well of the innocence of her sisters, Rebecca Nurse and Sarah Cloyse. Yet she had to grant that there was something preternatural in the girls’ behaviour. “It is an evil spirit,” she said, “but whether it be witchcraft I do not know.” Even George Burroughs, who had been audacious enough to boast of occult powers, found himself stunned by the girls’ behaviour. “Being asked what he thought of these things he answered it was an amazing and humbling Providence, but he understood nothing of it.” #RandolphHarris 4 of 13
Indeed, these courtroom fits were so convincing that most of the indictments were for witchcraft committed during the preliminary examination rather than for the offenses named in the original complain. The typical order of events in the Salem witchcraft cases was: the swearing out of a complaint for acts of witchcraft; a preliminary examination during which the afflicted persons had convulsive fits; an indictment for acts of witchcraft performed during the preliminary examination; and the trial. The direct cause of these fits, in the courtroom or out of it, was, of course, not witchcraft itself, but the afflicted person’s fear of witchcraft. If fits were occasioned by fear of someone like Bridget Bishop, who was actually practicing witchcraft, they might also be occasioned by fear of someone who was only suspected of practicing it. We are what we always were in Salem, but now the little crazy children are jangling the keys of the kingdom, and common vengeance writes the law! The Winchester Estate had belonged to the family ever since the reign of George Washington, and there was a curious old wing and a cloistered quadrangle still remaining of the original edifice, and in excellent preservation. The rooms at the end of the house were ornate, and somewhat darksome and gloomy, it is true; but, though rarely used they were perfectly habitable, and were of service on great occasions when the Winchester was crowded with guests. The central portion of the Winchester had been rebuilt in the reign James K. Polk, and was of noble and palatial proportions. The southern wing, and a long music-room with thirteen tall narrow daisy-stained glass windows added on to it, were as modern as the time. Altogether, the Winchester was a very splendid mansion with 160 rooms, 2,000 doors, 10,000 windows, 47 stairways, 47 fireplaces, 13 bathrooms, 6 kitchens, and even once had a nine-story tower. It was one of the chief glories of our country. All the land in the Winchester estate, and for a long way beyond its boundaries, belonged to the Winchester family. #RandolphHarris 5 of 13
The Winchester estate grounds actually expanded all the way down to Steven’s Creek Boulevard. The community church was once within the park walls. The former estate was actually much larger than it is today, it was composed of 500 to 600 rooms at one time, but the 1906 Earthquake brought down the nine-story tower and much of the fourth floor with it. The death of William Wirt Winchester left his son, William Wirt Winchester II, unprovided for, and he was fain to go out into the bleak unknown World, and earn his living in a position of dependence—a dreadful thing for a Winchester to be obliged to do. Out of respect for the traditions and prejudices of his race, he made it his business to seek employment abroad, where the degradation of one solitary Winchester was not so likely to inflict shame upon the ancient house to which he belonged. Happily for himself, he had been carefully educated, and had industriously cultivated the usual modern accomplishments in the calm retirement of the University of Cambridge. He was so fortunate as to obtain a situation at Vienna, in a German family of high rank; and remained there for seven years, laying aside year by year a considerable portion of his liberal salary. When his pupils had grown up, his kind mistress procured for him a still more profitable position at St. Petersburg, where he remained for five more years, at the end of which time he yielded to a yearning that had been long growing upon him—an ardent desire to see his dear old country home once more. He loved the soil from which he had sprung. In all of her letter for some time past, his mother, Mrs. Winchester begged that whenever he felt himself justified in coming home, he would pay a long visit to the Winchester Estate. #RandolphHarris 6 of 13
“I wish you could come home at Christmas,” she wrote, in the autumn of the year of which I am speaking. “We shall be very gay, and I expect all kinds of pleasant people at the Winchester. When he arrived there, the Old Winchester was in its glory, at about nine o’clock on a clear starlit night. A light frost whitened the broad sweeping lawns, 12,000 boxwood hedges that were winding through the garden, and the other 1,500 plants, trees and shrubs. From the music room at the end of the southern wing, to the heavily framed gothic windows of the old rooms on the north, there shone one blaze of light. The scene was reminiscent of some unusual place in a German legend; and young William half expected to see the lights fade out all in a moment, and long shingled façade wrapped in sudden darkness. The old butler, whom he remembered from his very infancy, and who did not seem to have grown a day older during his twelve years’ exile, came out of the dining-room as the footman opened the hall-door for him, and gave him a cordial welcome, nay insisted upon helping to bring in his portmanteau with his own hands, an act of unusual condescension, the full force of which was felt by his subordinates. “It is a real treat to see your pleasant face once more, William,” said this faithful retainer, as he assisted William to take off his travelling-cloak. “You have not aged a day since you used to live at the Winchester twelve year ago, and you are looking uncommon well; and, Lord love your heart, sir, how pleased they all will be to see you!” They arrived at last at a very comfortable room—a square tapes-tried chamber, with high ceiling support by a great mahogany beam. The room looked cheery enough, with a bright fire roaring in the wide chimney; but it had a somewhat ancient aspect, which the superstitiously inclined might have associated with possible ghosts. “We are in the East Wing, are we not?” young William asked. “This room seems quite strange to me. if I have ever been here before, I doubt it.” #RandolphHarris 7 of 13
“Very likely not, sir. Yes, this is the old East Wing that your mother once had boarded up. Your window looks out into the old stable-yard, where the kennel used to be in the time of your grandfather, when the Winchester was even a finer place than it is now. We are so full of company this winter, you see, sir, that we are obliged to make use of all these rooms. You will have no need to feel lonesome. There is Captain and Mrs. Foster in the next room to this, and the two Miss Griffins in the blue room opposite.” (Some believe that reopening the East Wing is what upset the spirits and caused the 1906 Earthquake.) Young William admired the perfect comfort of his chamber. Every modern appliance had been added to the ornate and ponderous furniture of an age gone by, and the combination produced a very pleasant effect. As he awoke in the morning and opened the door, Mrs. Winchester sailed in, looking radiant in a dark-green velvet dress richly trimmed with old point lace. Above her beauty, she had a charm of expression which was to most more rare and delightful than her beauty of feature and complexion. She put her arms around her son, and hugged him. “I have only this moment been told of your arrival, my dear William,” she said; “you look just like your father. My dear child, I have been looking forward so anxiously to your coming, and I should not have liked to see you for the first time before all those people. Welcome home. Remember, William, this house is always to be your home, whenever you have need of one.” William, being a hunting man. Had, indeed, a secret horror of the sport; for more than one scion of the house had perished untimely in the hunting-field. #RandolphHarris 8 of 13
The family had not been altogether a lucky one, in spite of its wealth and prosperity. It was not often that goodly heritage had descended to the Winchesters or their only son, William. Death in some form or other—on too many occasions a violent death—had come between the heir and his inheritance. And when one pondered on the dark pages in the story of the house, many wonder if Mrs. Winchester was ever troubled by morbid forebodings about her only and fondly loved son. Was there a ghost at the Winchester—that spectral visitant without which the state and plendour of a grand old house seem scarcely complete? Yes, many have heard vague hints of some shadowy presence that had been seen on rare occasions within the precincts of the Winchester mansion. Those whom were questioned were prompt to assure investigators that they had seen nothing. They had heard stories of the past—foolish legends, most likely, not worth listening to. On the property, there was once a stable-yard, a spacious quadrangle, surrounded by the closed doors of stable and dog-kennels: low massive buildings of grey stones, with the ivy creeping over them here and there, and with an ancient moss-grown look, that gave them a weird kind of interest. This range of stabling must have been disguised for a long time. The stables that were more recently used were a pile of handsome red-brick buildings at the other extremity of the house, to the rear of the music room, and forming a striking feature in the back view of the Winchester. According to legend, some believed that spectral entities, had been haunting the Winchester estate for centuries. Several large black dogs, with eyes large as saucers, or something flaming, appear and disappear, often without a trace. In many of the legends, the dogs are malevolent: assaulting guests, frightening livestock to death, attacking other dogs, and heralding death or disaster. Perhaps that is why the heirs of Winchester who have come to an untimely end have all died tragically. Oliver Winchester was killed in a dual. William Winchester I was murdered; and William Winchester II broke his back on his return home to the Winchester Estate. #RandolphHarris 9 of 13
The butler concealed the death of William Winchester II from Sarah, telling her simply that he was called away and said he would never return. Her heart was so broken that she wrote him out of existence, as if her had never been born. After the heartbreaking news that her only son has abandoned her, Mrs. Winchester was sitting in her blue séance room; half meditating, half dozing, mixing broken snatches of thought with brief glimpses of dreaming, when she was startled into wakefulness by a sound that was strange to her. It was a huntsman’s horn—a few low plaintive noes on a huntsman’s horn—notes which had a strange far-away sound, that was more unearthly than anything her ears ever heard. She thought of the music in Der Freischutz; but the weirdest snatch of melody Weber ever wrote had not so ghastly a sound as these few simple noes conveyed to her ear. She stood transfixed, listening to that awful music. It had grown dusk, her fire was almost out, and the room in shadow. As she listened, a light suddenly flashed on the wall before her. The light was as unearthly as the sound—a light that never shone from Earth or Sky. She ran to the window; for his ghastly shimmer flashed through the window upon the opposite wall. The great gates of the stable-yard were open, and men in scarlet coats were riding in, a pack of hounds crowding in before them, obedient to the huntsman’s whip. The whole scene was gleams of a lantern carried by one of the men. It was this lantern which had shone upon the tapestried wall. She saw the stable doors opened one after another; gentlemen and grooms alighting from their horses; the dogs driven into their kennel; the helpers hurrying to and fro; and that strange wan lantern-light glimmering hither and tither was the gathering dusk. #RandolphHarris 10 of 13
However, there was no sound of horse’s hoof or of human voices—not one yelp or cry from the vicious looking hounds with flaming eyes. Since those faint far-away sounds of the horn had died out in the distance, the ghastly silence had been unbroken. As Mrs. Winchester stood at her window quite calmly and watched while the group of men and animals in the yard below noiselessly dispersed. There was nothing supernatural in the manner of their disappearance. The figures did not vanish nor melt into empty air. One by one she saw the horses led into their separate quarters; one by one the redcoats strolled out of the gates, and the grooms departed, some one way, some another. The scene, but for its noiselessness, was natural enough; and had she been a stranger in her own home, she might have fancied that those figures were real—those stables in full occupation. However, she knew that stable-yard and all its range of building to have been disused for more than half a century. Could she believe that, without an hour’s warning, the long-deserted quadrangle could be filled—the empty stalls tenanted? Had some hunting-party from the neighbourhood sought shelter there, glad to escape the pitiless rain? That was impossible, she thought. And yet the noiselessness, the awful sound of that horn—the strange unearthly gleam of that lantern! A cold sweat broke out on her forehead, and she trembled in every limb. Mrs. Winchester was pale as a ghost and trembling. Mrs. Winchester had kept the secret. That evening, the butler came to her. “Mrs. Winchester, there is no use in trying to hide it from you any longer. Your son was killed in the hunting-field, brought home dead one December night, an hour after his father and the rest of the party had come home to the Winchester. He was found by a labouring-man, poor lad, lying in a ditch with his back broken, and his horse beside him staked.” #RandolphHarris 11 of 13
Shortly after Mr. Winchester Sr. never rode to hounds again, though he was passionately fond of hunting. Dogs and horses were sold, and the north quadrangle had been empty from that day. Some evil have come upon the Winchester mansion, it was not in human power to prevent its coming. Some had beheld the shadows of the dead. Sudden terror overcomes some visitors, even to this day. There are reports of an ominous danger, as people’s hearts grow cold while on tour. Staff have been startled by seeing a man, with is hat in his hand not in evening costume; a man with a pale anxious-looking face, peering cautiously into the room. Their first thought is of evil; but in the next moment than man disappears, and they see no more of him. Sometimes when flowers are placed in the house, people see the drooping moments later and lights dying out one by one in the brass sconces against the walls. It is no wonder Mrs. Winchester shut herself from the outer World, burying herself almost as completely as a hermit in its cell. While great wealth brings some people joy, there is some times a hefty fee. Be careful what you wish for, you never know who or what you might invite in your doors. I invoke and move thee, O thou Spirit Gusion and being exalted above ye in the power of the Most High, I say unto thee, Obey! in the name Beralensis, Baldachinesis, Paumachia, and Apologiae Sedes: and of the mighty ones who govern, spirits, Liachidae and ministers of the House of Death: and by the Chief Prince of the seat of Apologia in the Ninth Legion, I do invoke thee and by invoking conjure thee. And being exalted above ye in the power of the Most High, I say unto thee, Obey! in the name of him who spake and it was, to whom all creatures and things obey. #RandolphHarris 12 of 13
Moreover I, whom God made in the likeness of God, who is the creator according to his living breath, stir thee up in the name which is the voice of wonder of the mighty God, El, strong and unspeakable, O thou Spirit Gusion. And I say to thee obey, in the name of him who spake and it was; and in every one ye, O ye names of God! Moreover in the names Adonai, El, Elohim, Elohi, Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh, Zabaoth, Elion, Iah, Tetragrammaton, Shaddai, Lord God Most High, I stir thee up; and in our strength I say Obey! O Spirit Gusion. Appear unto His servants in a moment; before the circle in the likeness of man; and visit me in peace. And in the ineffable name Tetragrammaton Iehovah, I say, Obey! whose mighty sound being exalted in power the pillars are divided, the winds of the firmament groan aloud; the sire burns not; the Earth moves in Earthquakes; and all things of the house of Heaven and Earth and the dwelling-place of darkness are as Earthquakes, and are in torment, and are confounded in thunder. Come forth, O Spirit Gusion, in a moment: let thy dwelling-place be empty, apply unto us the secrets of Truth and obey my power. Come forth, visit us in peace, appear unto my eyes; be friendly: Obey the living breath! For I stir thee up in the name of God of Truth who liveth for ever, Helioren. Obey the living breath, therefore continually unto the end as my thoughts appear to my eyes: therefore be friendly: speaking the secrets of Truth in voice and in understanding. Let it be so, Truefold, whatever ill news has come to us we will hear it together. He put is arm round his wife’s waist. Both were pale as marble, both stood in stony stillness waiting for the bow that was to fall upon them. It is said that perhaps you will see a glimpse of Mrs. Winchester and Mr. Winchester, Sr., while on tour, if you repeat the invocation thirteen times before your visit. Life is broken for her, there hah passed a glory from Earth, and that upon all pleasures and joys of this World she looks with the solemn calm of one for whom all things are dark with the shadow of a great sorrow. #RandolphHarris 13 of 13
Winchester Mystery House
A 160-room mansion built to appease the spirits who died at the hands of the Winchester Rifle 👻
We’re one week away from Friday the 13th! Missed out on tickets for Flashlight Tours? Don’t worry, we have ghoulishly fun plans All Hallows’ Eve 👻🎃🍿🏠
All Hallows’ Eve:
👉 link in bio. 🗝 winchestermysteryhouse.com
The Most Beautiful Adventures are Not those We Go to Seek!
Powerful ideas do not die with those who gave them birth, as long as those seeds are planted in their followers. At this point in history, Jesus is surrounded with flocks wherever He is, but all is not well. Sometimes one will feel that one is being led into an experience, a mood, or an idea. At other times one may feel oneself being drawn inward quite deeply as if the very roots of one’s egoic being were penetrated; more rarely as if one has been drawn beyond the ego itself. When this consciousness takes hold of a human, it takes one by surprise. Infinity is so utterly different from what one was experiencing a few minutes earlier that its wonder, its truth, its beauty, its love fills one abruptly, as if in descent from the skies. The element of surprise and the delight of novelty are present and give the Glimpse its rapturous turn. The glimpse may come to one with a suddenness which makes the surrounding circumstances quite incongruous. The glimpse takes you unawares. When the humor of a particular situation or scene, happening or idea strikes a person one may burst out into sudden laughter. It is not long-forming but explosive, not built-up like a wall brick-by-brick but flashed across the darkness like lighting. One’s mind has this possibility of an abrupt move, and unexpected leap. Just so does it still possess this same possibility with regard to the discovery of truth. Enlightenment is always “sudden” in the sense that during meditation or reverie or relaxation the preliminary thought-concentrating gustatory period usually moves through consciousness quite slowly until, at some unexpected moment, there is an abrupt deepening, followed by a slipping into another dimension, a finding oneself alive in a new atmosphere. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21
A passing sign of progress in arousing latent forces and a physical indication that one is on the eve of noteworthy mystical experience may be a sudden unexpected vibratory movement in the region of the abdomen, in the solar plexus. It usually comes when one has been relaxed for a short time from the daily cares, or after retiring to bed for the night. The diaphragmatic muscle will appear to tremble violently and something will seem to surge to and fro like a snake behind the solar plexus. This bodily agitation will soon subside and be followed by a pleasant calm and out of this calm there will presently arise a sense of unusual power, of heightened control over the terrestrial nature and human self. With this there may also come a clear intuition about some truth needed at the time and a revelatory expansion of consciousness into supersensual reality. These moods descend without invitation and depart without permission. This is the crucial point when ordinary compulsive mental activity fades away and stillness supervenes, perhaps very briefly, perhaps for some minutes. For some time, one is tense with the feeling of being about to receive a new revelation. Many are happy to make the trip to the Heavenly Kingdom, but few there are who will cart and haul that cross of Jesus’s. Many enjoy the sweet sentiments He utters, but few, that tart words He sometimes has to say. Many will wolf down the food with the Famous Man, as Jesus son of Sirach put it in his Book of Wisdom (6.10), but few will join Him in the fasts. They are all there in the good times, but few will take on the tough tasks He inevitably asks. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21
Yes, many like to be seen breaking bread with Jesus but, as Matthew has described (20.22), they are nowhere to be found when the passion cup is passed. Many are wowed by His miracles; few are wooed by His cross. Many just love chatting with Jesus so long as He is not rude about their not embracing His rood. What is the moral? Many praise Jesus Christ and bless Him as long as the good times roll. However, when He absents Himself for a few moments or just goes off for a while to pray, they become bellicose, then lachrymose, then comatose. We should love Jesus for His own sweet sake, and not because of any magic He will do in our behalf. And so when the bad times rock, we will bless Him as though the good times had never left. Even if He will never want to give us consolation again, we will still praise Him and thank Him for what He once did. Here are some questions for us. How can the love of Jesus, pure as it is, have no particular price tag, not terrestrial taint? Can those who spend all their time hunting down consolations not be called mercenaries? Are not those who think of nothing but their own comfort and profit hoarders of stuff rather than lovers of Christ? Can anyone be found who wants to serve God without counting the cost? Some considerations. Rare is the person who is so spiritual that one is denuded oneself of every material thing! Is there anyone who is truly poor in spirit and bereft of every creaturely thing? Can any of us be discovered whose interior life is like the Proverbial “gift of great price from a foreign land” (31.10)? If a Devout gave all one’s substance, that is good, but it is not everything. If one’s penitential practices were punishing and public, that is good too, but one still has a long way to go. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21
If one understands all knowledge, that is fine, but there is so much more to know. “If I speak in the tongues of humans and of angles, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or clanging cymbal,” reports 1 Corinthians 13.1. Even if one has great virtue and indeed flaming devotion, it is still a long way to Purgatory. Why? For one has one step farther to go and according to Luke 10.41-42, “you are worried and upset about many things, but only one thing is needed.” It is the most important step of all. What is that? That one leave behind not only all created things, but also oneself. That is to say, dump one’s selfish pride by the side of the road. Empty out one’s petty pockets. And when one has done all this, which one knows has yet to be done, then and only then will one come to the realization that of oneself one is nothing. One day we ay come to think we are rather skilled in the service of the Lord. Some of our peers may even encourage us to think we are slick. However, even if there is some truth to it, we should still describe ourselves as just another clumsy oaf. “When you have done everything that is required of you, repeat after me,” Revealed Truth has spoken in the Gospel of Luke, “we are truly the bumbling and stumbling servants,” (17.10). We have to be truly poor in body and spirit before we can say with the Psalmist, “Yes, I am a leper, and a pauper too” (25.16). Nevertheless, no one is richer or stronger than the person who knows how to leave one’s material self and all one’s trash behind and place oneself on the rutted, deeply rutted, road to Humbletown. Each glimpse is not just a repeat performance, it is a fresh new experience. Each time the glimpse comes, it is as if it had never come before, so fresh, so sparkling is its never-failing wonder. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21
The higher awareness comes on imperceptibly and little by little. However, as it silently gathers itself, like a cloud, it also breaks like a renovating cloud—vehement, sparkling, and splashing. The belief, which prevails in Japan, China, and other lands, in a sudden abrupt enlightenment when one thinks quietly or says aloud, “Ah! so this is IT,” has a factual basis. This satori, as the Japanese call it, may be either a temporary or a permanent glimpse. The most beautiful adventures are not those we go to see. Such is the coming of a glimpse—at the moment of arrival, unsought. Although such glimpses come mostly when a human is alone, come in quiet solitude, they need not do so. They have sometimes come to one in a crowded street or on a well-filled ship. The signs of this visitation are not always the same. It may delicately brush one with the feeling of its presence or forcefully stimulate one with the strength of its being. The beginner usually has to go through an emotional experience in order to receive a mystical experience, but the proficient is under no necessity to do so. It comes into the orb of one’s awareness as an unstruggled and unsensational happening, so easily, so smoothly, that there is no dramatic emotion. The sensitive informed and experienced person may get intimations, may feel the glimpse coming even before the actual joyous event. In tat moment one feels on the very verge of eternity, about to lose oneself in its impersonal depths. When the opportunity to gain a glimpse of one’s Overself draws near, it will be foreshadowed by certain happenings, either of an inward or an outward nature, or both. The book of life may be understood in two senses. In one sense as the inscription of those who are chosen to life; thus we now speak of the book of life. #RandolphHarris 5 of 21
In another sense the inscription of those things which lead us to life ay be called the book of life; and this also is twofold, either as of things to be done; and thus the Old and New Testament are called a book of life; or of things already done, and thus that divine energy by which it happens that to each one one’s deeds will be recalled to memory, is spoken of as the book of life. Thus that also may be called the book of war, whether it contains the names inscribed of those chosen for military service; or treats of the art of warfare, or relates the deeds of soldiers. It is the custom to inscribe, not those who are rejected, but those who are chosen. Whence there is no book of death corresponding to reprobation; as the book of life to predestination. Predestination and the book of life are different aspects of the same thing. For this latter implies the knowledge of predestination. The book of life implies a conscription or a knowledge of those chosen to life. Now a human is chosen for something which does not belong to one by nature; and again that to which a human is chosen has the aspect of an end. For a soldier is not chosen or inscribed merely to put on armor, but to fight; since this is the proper duty to which military service is directed. However, the life of glory is an end exceeding human nature. Wherefore, strictly speaking, the book of life regards the life of glory. The divine life, even considered as a life of glory, is natural to God; whence in His regard there is no election, and in consequence no book of life; for we do not say that anyone is chosen to possess the power of sense, or any of those things that are consequent on nature. For there is no election, nor a book of life, as regard the life of nature. The life of grace has the aspect, no of an end, but of something directed towards an end. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21
Hence nobody is said to be chosen to the life of grace, except so far as the life of grace is directed to glory. For this reason those who, possessing grace, fail to obtain glory, are not said to be chosen simply, but relatively. Likewise they are not said to be written in the book of life simply, but relatively; that is to say, hat it is in the ordination and knowledge of God that they are to have some relation to eternal life, according to their participation in grace. “Let them be blotted out from the book of living,” reports Psalms 68.29. Some have said that none could be blotted out of the book of life as a matter of fact, but only in the opinion of humans. For it is customary in the Scriptures to say that something is done when it becomes known. Thus some are said to be written in the book of life, inasmuch as humans think they are written therein, on account of the present righteousness they see in them; but when it becomes evident, either in this World or in he next, that they have fallen from that state of righteousness, they are then said to be blotted out. And thus a gloss explains the passage: “Let them be blotted out of the book of the living.” However, because not to be blotted out of the book of life is placed among the rewards of the just according to the text, “One that shall overcome, shall thus be clothed in white garments, and I will not blot one’s name out of the book of life,” reports Apocalypse 3.5. And what is promised to holy humans, is not merely something in the opinion of humans, it can therefore be said that to be blotted out, and not blotted out, of the book of life is not only to be referred to the opinion of humans, but to the reality of the fact. For the book of life is not only to be referred to the opinion of humans, but to the reality of the fact. For the book of life is the inscription of those ordained to eternal life, to which one is directed from two sources; namely, from predestination, which direction never fails, and from grace; for whoever has grace, by this very fact becomes fitted for eternal life. This direction fails sometimes; because some are directed by possessing grace, to obtain eternal life, yet they fail to obtain it through moral sin. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21
Therefore those who are ordained to possess eternal life through divine predestination are written down in the book of life simply, because they are written therein to have eternal life in reality; such are never blotted out from the book of life. Those, however, who are ordained to eternal life, not through divine predestination, but through grace, are said to be written in the book of life not simply, but relatively, for they are written therein not to have eternal life in itself, but in its cause only. Yet though these latter can be said to be blotted out of the book of life, this blotting out must not be referred to God, as if God foreknew a thing, and afterwards knew it not; but to the thing known, namely, because God knows one is first ordained to eternal life, and afterwards not ordained when one falls from grace. The act of blotting out does not refer to the book of life as regards God’s foreknowledge, as if in God there were any change; but as regards things foreknown, which can change. Although things are immutably in God, yet in themselves they are subject to change. To this it is that the blotting out of the book of life refers. The way in which one is said to be blotted out of the book of life is that in which one is said to be written therein anew; either in the opinion of human, or because one begins again to have relation towards eternal life through grace; which also is included in the knowledge of God, although not anew. Probability is founded on the presumption of a resemblance between those objects of which we have had experience and those of which we have had none; and therefore it is impossible that this presumption can arise from probability. The argument up to date shows that miracles are possible and that there is nothing antecedently ridiculous in the stories which say that God has sometimes performed them. #RandolphHarris 8 of 21
This does not mean, of course, hat we are committed to believing all stories of miracles. Most stories about miraculous events are probably false: if it comes to that, most stories about natural events are false. Lies, exaggerations, misunderstandings and hearsay make up perhaps more than half of all that is said and written in the World. We must therefore find a criterion whereby to judge any particular story of the miraculous. In one sense, of course, our criterion is plain. Those stories are to be accepted for which the historical evidence is sufficiently good. However, then, as we saw at the outset, the answer to the question, “How much evidence should we require for this story,” depends on our answer to the question, “How far is this story intrinsically probable?” We must therefore find a criterion of probability. The ordinary procedure of the modern historian, even if one admits the possibility of miracle, is to admit no particular instance of it until every possibility of “natural” explanation has been tried and failed. That is, one will accept the most improbable “natural” explanations rather than say that a miracle occurred. Collective hallucinations, hypnotism of unconsenting spectators, widespread instantaneous conspiracy in lying by persons not otherwise known to be liars and not likely to gain by the lie—all these are known to be very improbably events: so improbably that, except for the special purpose of excluding a miracle, they are never suggested. However, they are preferred to be the admission of a miracle. Such a procedure is, from the purely historical point of view, sheer midsummer madness unless we start by knowing that any Miracles whatever is more improbable than the most improbable natural event. Do we know this? We must distinguish the different kinds of improbability. Since miracles are, by definition, rarer than other events, it is obviously improbable beforehand that one will occur at any given place and time. In that sense every miracle is improbable. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21
It is immensely improbable beforehand that a pebble dropped from the stratosphere over London will hit any given spot, or that any one particular person will win a large lottery. However, the report that the pebble has landed outside such and such a shop or that Mr. So-and-So has won the lottery is not at all incredible. When you consider the immense number of meetings and fertile union between ancestors which were necessary in order that you should be born, you perceive that it was once immensely improbable that such a person as you should come to exist: but one you are here, the report of your existence is not in the least incredible. With probability of this kind—antecedent probability of chances—we are not there concerned. Our business is with historical probability. Ever since Hume’s famous Essay it has been believed that historical statements about miracles are the most intrinsically improbable of all historical statements. According to Hume, probability rests on what may be called the majority vote of our past experiences. The more often a thing has been known to happen, the more probable it is that it should happen again; and the less often the less probable. Now the regularity of Nature’s course, says Hume, is supported by something better than the majority vote of past experiences: it is supported by their unanimous vote, or, as Hume says, by “firm and unalterable experience.” There is, in fact, “uniform experience” against Miracle; otherwise, says Hume, it would not be a Miracle. A miracle is therefore the most improbable of all events. It is always more probable that the witnesses were lying or mistaken than that a miracle occurred. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21
Now of course we must agree with Hume that if there is absolutely “uniform experience” against miracles, if in other words they have never happened, why then they never have. Unfortunately we know the experience against them to be uniform only if we know that all reports of them are false. And we can know all the reports to be false only if we know already that miracles have never occurred. In fact, we are arguing in a circle. There is also an objection to Hume which leads us deeper into our problem. The whole idea of Probability (as Hume understands it) depends on the principle of the Uniformity of Nature. Unless Nature always goes on in the same way, the fact that a thing had happened ten million times would not make it a whit more probable that it would happen again. And how do we know the Uniformity of Nature? A moment’s thought shows that we do not know it by experience. We observe many regularities in Nature. However, of course all the observations that humans have made or will make while the race lasts cover only a minute fraction of the events that actually go on. Our observations would therefore be of no use unless we felt sure that Nature when we are no watching her behaves in the same way as when we are: in other words, unless we believed in the Uniformity of Nature. Experience therefore cannot prove uniformity, because uniformity has to be assumed before experience proves anything. And mere length of experience does not help matters. It is no good saying, “Each fresh experience confirms our belief in uniformity and therefore we reasonably expect that it will always be confirmed”; for that argument works only on the assumption of Uniformity under a new name. Can we say that Uniformity is at any rate very probable? Unfortunately not. We have just seen that all probabilities depend on it. Unless Nature is uniform, nothing is either probable or improbable. And clearly the assumption which you have to make before there is any such thing as probability cannot itself be probable. The odd thing is that no human knew this better than Hume. His Essay on Miracles is quite inconsistent with the more radical, and honourable, scepticism of his main work. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21
Throughout the Second Wave era the mass media grew more and more powerful. Today a startling change is taking place. As the Third Wave thunders in, the mass media, far from expanding their influence, are suddenly being forced to share it. They are being beaten back on many fronts at once by what I call the “de-massified media.” Newspapers provide the first example. The oldest of the Second Wave mass media, newspapers are losing their readers and staff. The estimated total U.S. daily newspaper circulation (print and digital combined) in 2020 was 24.3 million for weekday and 25.8 million for Sunday, each down by 6 percent from the previous year. Nor were such losses due merely to the rise of television. Each of today’s mass-circulation dailies now faces increasing competition from burgeoning flock of mini-circulation weeklies, biweeklies, and so-called “shoppers” that serve not the metropolitan mass market but specific neighbourhoods and communities within it, providing far more localized advertising and news. Having reached saturation, the big-city mass-circulation daily is in deep trouble. De-massified media are snapping at its heels. The United States of America has experienced and explosion of electronic journals and mini-magazines—thousands of them aimed at small, special-interest, regional, global, or even local markets. And it is not all bad news. Their programs focus on things their producers like. They are not really targeting an audience, but producing and sharing things they are interested and that they believe will help others, so their content is not the same as the doom and gloom of the mass media, which people find appealing because no one wants made to feel sad, fearful or anxious. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21
For instance, pilots and aviation buffs today can chose among literally scores of periodicals edited just foe them. Teenagers, scuba divers, retired people, women athletes, collectors of antique camera, tennis enthusiasts, skiers, and skateboarders each have their own press. Every organization, community group, political or religious cult and cultlet today can afford to produce is own publication. Even smaller groups churn out periodicals on the Internet that have become ubiquitous in American and International offices, homes, and classrooms. The news media and magazines have lost their powerful influence in national life, especially with people trying to safe trees and also the fact people now know news is not necessarily true nor honest work. It is entertainment which is trying to compete with fictional television shows. Many people, however, have the intentions to maintain the peaceful enjoyment of what belongs to one, and prefers on every occasion the public utility to one’s own interest. Between the 1920s and the end of the second World War, the very limited amount of African American suburbanization generally took one of two forms. The first was the all-African American suburb. Almost all of these suburbs were poor, and the majority were unincorporated. In the south, it was common for non-European Americas to live in small hamlets and less-developed areas on the city’s periphery. These low-income shantytown neighbourhoods often even lacked community water and sewage and were suburban in name only. While such small communities were technically in the suburbs, socially and economically they were not of the suburbs. An example of this type of suburb was the African American suburb of Kinloch, 6 miles outside the city limits of St. Louis. Kinloch, surrounded by more affluent European America suburbs, did not become incorporated until 1948. It was typical of early African American suburbs insofar as because of a limited tax base, it had poor school, potholed roads, and minimal government services. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21
The roads from Ferguson, the suburb east of Kinloch, actually stopped short of Kinloch at an overgrown easement only to start up again on the Kinloch side of the border. As late as 1970 some of these African American “suburban” neighbourhoods could be seen south of Washington, D.C., across the district line. During the interwar period, some solid working class-African American suburbs also existed, such as Robbins, southwest of Chicago. At this time the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) directly supported segregated housing by refusing to make loans in other than all-one-race areas. Until 1950 FHA regulations specially prohibited making loans that would permit racial integration. The Federal Housing Administration’s official manuals cautioned against infiltration of inharmonious racial and national groups, a lower class of inhabitants, or the presence of incompatible racial elements, in the new neighbourhood. Thus, federal policies prohibited loans that would encourage the integration of neighbourhoods. During World War II, the FHA consistently refused to insure war-housing projects for African American workers. The formal regulations were not changed until the Kennedy years of the early 1960s, and the policies really did not change until the Open Housing Act of 1968 barred housing discrimination. However, the outlawing of discriminatory policies did not eliminate informal practices of racial steering, where African Americans were shown housing only in areas already having African American residents. The second form of African American suburbanization prior to World War II included small communities of African Americans found in the most elite suburbs. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21
African Americans living in such suburbs were not equal-status homeowners. Some of them did not have professional jobs. The 1930s census showed, for example, that along Chicago’s prestigious North Shore, 5 percent of Glencoe’s and 4.3 percent of Kenilworth’s residents were African American. Overtime some of the African Americans without professional jobs purchased or built small homes in the less desirable sections of the community. Such African American populations contained the seeds of social change. For example, Evanston, on Chicago’s North Shore, as of 1930 listed 7.8 percent of is population as African American. Evanston as of that date already had a separate aspiring middle-class African American neighbourhood for those working on the North Shore. Overtime this nucleus would grow to be a substantial portion of the Evanston community. One reason for the new interest in human spirituality is that its source in intuition is radically different from the rational, densely factual nature of science and therefore generates feelings. New Age Spirituality—alternative and usually individualistic forms of spiritual consciousness illustrated by New Age bookstore sections—feeds off both waning of communal religion and the advance of science. In an age where many religions—and ever more—coexist, religious dogma may seem less credible. Yet science fails to answer our ultimate questions: Why are we here? How should be live? What is our ultimate destiny? If the old faith seems unbelievable and the new science seems to demystify life, then people will find mystery and meaning in new places. It has been said that when some people cease believing in Gog, they do not believe nothing, they believe anything. Nature abhors a spiritual vacuum. The quest for meaning is fundamental to our being. The human mind has a genuine desire to plumb the depths of the unspoken, to find deeper significance and truth, to reach out to another realm of existence. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21
New Age “soft spirituality” is essentially irreligious. “I am not religious,” one hears, “but I am very spiritual.” This is the privatized spirituality of radical individualism, the solo spirituality of pop cultural. This is the spirituality of religion, minus the things one does not like about religion, such as the authoritative status of sacred texts and communally shared beliefs. New Age spirituality differs from biblical spirituality not only in its individualism but also in its understanding of human nature. Biblical spirituality places its most basic distinction between all of creation (both people and animals) and God who is creator. In the Old Testament book of Isaiah God declares, “I am God; there is none like me.” The Holy Spirit is given to provide us with a deeper knowledge of both God and a wisdom that goes beyond rational and scientific forms of knowing. However, biblical spirituality still maintains the distinction between God and mortal, finite humans. New Age spirituality replies that we are emanations of God: The divine is within you. You are immortal. You are a soul who inhabits your body, and thus able to travel out of body, read others’ minds, and glimpse the future. Your spirit or soul may also have inhabited another being, and may again be reincarnated in someone to come. You are undying and capable of communicating with those who, also undying, have passed to the other side, the spirit World. You do not need God to give you hope of life beyond death, because there is no death. You are already an eternal spirit. At your body’s death, you will meet a gentle being of light (which already had been experienced by those near-death survivours whose spirits temporarily vacated their bodies). #RandolphHarris 16 of 21
New Age spirituality offers other comforting messages. Angels protect us. There are no fortunate random coincidences, but rather angelic or divine interventions. Evil is not real (though some are spiritually impoverished). Fear, loneliness, and pain can be dismissed. Given positive attitudes, optimum health, serene bliss, and joy of pleasures of the flesh awaits us. And then there is the New Age elevation of intuition. IF you feel it, it is true. Truth is much less a matter of logic and verification than of personal experience and testimony. Neale Donald Walsch illustrates this radical individualism in his disdain for history and community and in his elevation of the individua self. Walsch has had “conversations with God” (so reads the title of the book he has written), and here is what God says: The wisdom of faith traditions is “not authoritative.” So “listen to your feelings. Listen to your Highest Thoughts. Listen to your experience. Whenever any one of these differ from what you have been told by your teachers, or read in your book, forget the words.” We are being held together by some kind of bonding or gluing, or held together by some central unifying force that rules the other parts and holds them together as the force of gravity does or the focus around which perspectives organize themselves—such a power, central and hierarchically organized, is postulated by Plato and has been the most generally accepted metaphor in Western thought from its beginnings. No doubt there are minds almost entirely held together in one or other of these ways. As a rule, however, which metaphor is most useful at any time depends on a number of factors: the kind of person under discussion, the kind of structures which are falling apart, and so on. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21
When we think of neural connections, and when we think of the association of ideas, we tend to think of structures held together by connecting bonds. Neural connections exemplify this kind of cohesion. Sense-impressions build up into perceptions, which integrate into concepts and ever more complex structures. Variations in integration and coherence are seen to determine structure so that the very nature of structure could be defined in terms of bonds—there are more neural associations within a structure than between structures. Regions of the personality are bonded together more or less strongly depending on the number of associations between them. The number of associations determines the extent of integration. A relative absence of associations defines a gap or fissure—the fewer the associations, the wider the split. As anyone knows who has glued things, the things to be stuck together need to be held firmly in a kind of frame until the glue holds. Then the frame is no longer needed. The concepts of boundary and space are boundaries and frames of this kind. Frames provide restrictions or limitations which can be used to further the integration within. A picture must be painted on a certain canvas; a poem must be written in sonnet form. Within the frame there is space for a creative live. When there is a frame that gives space and protection, all the resonances and echoes and reverberation of an individual’s experiences have time to work themselves out. They do not get lost; they are not cut off prematurely. Ego-relatedness normally provides a frame. It provides the safety within which various experiences may come to be connected and associated, although they occurred at different times in different contexts. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21
Good parenting provides the frame within which psychological associations can ramify and become strong. In this way, good parenting leads to personalities which have strong and well-integrated structures. With less ego-relatedness, the individual has less space and time to get this inter-connecting process going, and so it retains more dissociated experiences. When people experience themselves as lacking a containment, something is rushing through them—a noise, a sensation, an impression—which they cannot hold on to. This sense, of something rushing through, may be how we experience unintegrated sensory streams of unprocessed uncontained stimulation. It is what falling apart sometimes feels like: what is going on does not make sense to us. Not making sense is the same as not being organized into a meaningful pattern. Or we may be unable to find a framework of meaning into which to organize what is happening. Boundaries seems to facilitate organization; insecure boundaries seem often to hinder it. There is an interesting connection between uncontained state and the autistic individual’s desperate clutching of hard objects. In some states of mind, holding one to something with firm contour might feel much like being something with firm contours. The common element would be there is something firm for holding something formless. Firm contours seem to be needed, whether they belong to the infant (in us) or they belong to whatever the individual feels held and contained by. Whether the something firm is my skin or yours seems less important than the fact that it prevents me feeling a rushing shapeless flowing away. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21
The function of the boundary frame are reminiscent of Pribram’s “bag of skin,” and Winnicott’s “membrane.” Our skins provide a compelling metaphor for such holding functions, more flexible and organic than the idea of a frame. The skin protects. The vulnerable skinless self and its care, means that especially when an infant, something or someone is needed to give one space and protect against impingement from without, and also from within—from loneliness, pain, rage. Failure in the holding environment, perhaps because of illness in the mother (or caregiver), can mean that the individual’s line of life is interrupted and its development hindered by the need for defence against primitive anxiety. However, it can also be seen that failure of the father to protect the mother in the crucial weeks after one’s birth can contribute to this state of affairs. If the circle made by the father, or by some person fulfilling the father’s function is broken, the mother cannot abandon herself without anxiety to her infant’s needs. The parents, who are normally the child’s holding environment, may at times be fiercely tested, especially at times when feelings are strong. Once again, we have reached a set of ideas where parallels can be perceived between what good parents do and what psychotherapists do. The reader has probably practiced at recognizing these passages by now. It is important that whoever hold the infant (of the older child or the adolescent or the adult) is strong enough to hold on to, either to prevent explosion and fragmentation, or to form the framework for such disintegration and for subsequent integration. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21
The survival of the mother who does not retaliate, together with the father who comes to represent the indestructible environment, allows for freedom of the instinctual life—the source of spontaneity—within the family circle. In the earliest days, it is the caring adult whose insightful and coping skills protect, as with a shielding skin, the helpless and defenceless infant. In favourable circumstances, however, these functions will gradually be taken over by the competent developing infant. Blessed sister, holy mother, spirit of the fountain, spirit of the garden, suffer us not to mock ourselves with falsehood. Please teach us to care and not to care. Please teach us to sit still, even among these rocks. Our peace in one’s will and even among these rocks, sister, mother, and spirit of the river, spirit of the sea. Please suffer me not to be separated and please let my cry come unto Thee. O inscribe all the children of Thy covenant for a happy life. May all the living do homage unto Thee forever and praise Thy name in truth, O God, who are our salvation and our help. Blessed be Thou, O Lord, Beneficent One, unto whom our thanks are due. Grant lasting peace unto America Thy people, for Thou art the Sovereign Lord of peace; and may it be good in Thy sight to bless Thy people America at all times with Thy peace. In this book of life, blessing, peace and ample sustenance, may we, together with all Thy people, the house of America, be remembered and inscribed before Thee for a happy life and for peace. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, who establisest peace. In every system throughout antiquity there is an ascetic preliminary side which purifies the mind and the body and then only does meditation start. Without such purification, that is, asceticism, all the dangers of meditation—hallucination, misuse of occult powers, egotistic fancies, mediumship, and so on—are free to raise, but with it there is better protection against them. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21
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If Speak You Must, then Let Loose Your Own Wretched Spiritual Condition!
My Dear Winchester—We have had a terrible shock this morning. Jean did not come down to breakfast, and Clara went to see if she was ill. We heard her scream, and rushing up, there was poor Jean sitting at the old bureau, quite dead. She had fallen forward on the desk, and her housekeeping-book was crumpled up under her. She had been so all night long, we suppose, for she was not undressed, and was quite cold. The doctors say it was disease of the heart.
We would like to believe that everything we think and say is right, but we cannot. That is because we do not have grace enough or sense enough. Of course, there is a wit in each of us, but even this is dimmed through negligence. What we really fail to notice is that we are losing our interior vision. How do you know?? When we act so daily, and the excuses we cook up are so abysmal! When we explode with passion and think, no I am not angry, I am just defending the faith. When we peck at the peccadillos of others, and our own whoppers we let pass unchallenged, as the Evangelist Matthew has pointed out (7.3)! When we ponder what we will put up with from others, but pay little attention to how much others will have to put up with from us! Is there a moral anywhere in this? Whoever wants one’s own actions to be tolerably received would do well not to judge the behaviour of others so intolerably. Whoever has an interior life should put the spiritual care of oneself before the care of others. You will never be internal and devout until you hold your tongue about others. If speak you must, then let loose your own wretched spiritual condition. If you focus entirely on your relationship to God, precious little of the hubbub of the World will be able to penetrate your recollection. When you have that vacant stare in your eye, you might well ask yourself, before someone else does, just where are you? When you have run through everything the World has to offer, why, if I may echo Matthew (16.26), do you seem to have advance to the real? The moral? #RandolphHarris 1 of 21
If you want True Peace and True Union, then you just have to postpone everything else and attend to your own case. If only you drag your torso away from every temporal festival, you will make spiritual progress. When you put a value on each temporal thing, you will lose spiritual ground. All of which means, you can keep nothing as your own nothing big, nothing small, nothing nice, nothing new; that is to say, nothing except God and everything that smacks of God. However, all hose lovely creaturely consolations that came your way, what about them? Forget about them! The soul that loves God loathes everything that is not God. God Eternal, God Immense, “fulling all the space,” as Jeremiah phrased it (23.24); the soul’s solace, the heart’s True Joy. Although already a thriving business—having sold over 100,000 lever-action repeaters by the early 1880s—Winchester was ready to expand its market with different-action firearms. The Hotchkiss, a bolt action designed by American inventor Benjamin B. Hotchkiss and produced in hopes of military sales, appeared in 1883. In the same year, Winchester bought the rights to the falling block single-shot rifle invented and patented by John M. Browning. Spawned by the Browning connection with Winchester, the single-shot appeared in the Winchester catalogue for 1885. The single-shot would not reach the market until 1885 and remained in product line until approximately 1920. There are so many variations in calibers, barrels, overall configurations, finishes, triggers, sights, and other feature that sportsmen, the military, and target shooters were all offered every variety of possible use for a single-shot rifle. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21
The number of cartridge chamberings for this model exceeds that of any other firearm made by Winchester: approximately sixty-five. The single-shot was made at a time when target shooting was as popular as golf is today and a major match like the Creedmoor (on New York’s Long Island) was very much the Masters of its day. Not only were the single-shots beautifully constructed and of a solid, virtually unbreakable design, but they were phenomenally accurate, used in international matches which were shot at distances up to 1,000 yards, with exquisitely constructed open sights and finely built tubular scope sights. The champion target shooters were international celebrities, and elaborate trophies were designed and built by such silversmiths as Gorham and Tiffany. The Browning-Winchester single-shot rifles were also a favourite of sportsmen-hunters as the wide selection of chamberings meant that cartridges were available for every type of North American game animal. Then, as now, hunters preferred the simplicity and reliability of a single-shot mechanism, as well as the challenge of having only one shot available, without the rapid-repeating capability of magazine arms. Taking a grizzly bear with a nonrepeating rifle required cool nerves and a steady hand. When Oliver Winchester brought out a John Browning design, the company certainly got its money’s worth. The $8,000.00 ($231,230.64 inflation adjusted for 2021) went a long way with the single shot. The Winchester rifles were highly successful. In June of 1888, John and Matt Browning were issued a patent for a slide-action magazine rifle, which—as the Model 1890—became Winchester’s first rifle of that type. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21
The model 1890, in two basic grades only (Sporting Rifle and Fancy Sporting Rifle, all having 24-inch octagonal barrels and rifle-style steel buttplates), remained in production through 1932, with a total production of nearly 850,000. The 1890 was Winchester’s all-time sales leader in .22 rimfire, and many 1890s are still in use around the World today. As an economical version of the Model 1890, the factory brought out the 1906 pump-action. And the 1906 thereby also became the factory’s first rifle advertised and sold which accommodated the three cartridges interchangeably. A further sales factor was that all Model 1906s featured takedown capability. Serial numbering on the 1906 was in its own range, and, like the 1890, the 1906 achieved an extraordinary sales total—nearly 850,000 made—before being discontinued in 1932. Hundreds of thousand of Winchester rifles were produced and they were assembled in what is called the Winchester Complex, which is in New Haven, Connecticut USA. In 1862, William Wirt Winchester, the son of Oliver Fisher Winchester, married Sarah Lockwood Pardee. (Oliver Fisher Winchester was a very wealthy and prominent man, not only the owner of Winchester Repeating Arms, but also Lieutenant Governor of Connecticut.) Sarah and William’s life together was happy, and they moved in the best of New England society. However, in 1866, disaster struck when their infant daughter, Annie died of the then mysterious childhood disease marasmus. Mrs. Winchester fell into a deep sadness. Fifteen years later, her husband William Wirt Winchester who was at the time president of Winchester Repeating Arms Company suffered a premature death. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21
Mrs. Winchester inherited 777 shares of Winchester Repeating Arms Company, and $20,000,000.00 ($532,737,254.90 inflation adjusted for 2021). She was told she could rest assure that her life was not in danger and by building a house similar to the Winchester Complex, which was 3,250,000 square feet, would give her eternal life. Now, no one really knows how much the Winchester’s were worth. In 1915, for instance, they may a deal with the British government in the sum of $47,500,000.00 ($1,277,778,217.82 inflation adjusted for 2021), so Mrs. Winchester’s inheritance was just a fraction of their cumulative wealth. In the late 1800s, the Santa Clara Valley presented sweeping visas of rural open space. It was a serene setting for Mrs. Winchester to begin her building project. In 1884 she purchased an unfinished eighteen-room farm house just three miles west of San Jose—and over the next thirty-eight years she produced the sprawling complex we know today as the Winchester Mystery House. The death of the child cannot be explained on natural grounds except by suggesting that there was something wrong with it quite unrelated to the father’s experience. However, there is eloquent testimony about evidence of the power of witchcraft. There were known to witches in New Haven, Connecticut in 1646. A servant named Mary Johnson was accused of being a witch. Others were known to practice black magic. However, it did not occur to anyone to notice that the evidence suggested that the malignant power must also reside not only in the witch but in the charms hey use or in the Devil’s power that lay behind them, since they worked equally well whether they were manipulated by a confessed witch or by a Godly magistrate. I am a believer of words, I believe everything depends on who says them. What if the direful creatures, whose report lingers in these tales of the Winchester, should have an origin far older still? What if they were the remnants of a vanishing period of the Earth’s history long antecedent to the birth of mastodon and iguanodon; a stage, namely, when the World, as we call it, had not yet become quite visible, was not yet so far finished as to part from the invisible World that its mother, and which, on its part, had no then become quite invisible—was only almost such. #RandolphHarris 5 of 21
When, as a credible consequence, strange shapes of those now invisible regions, of Eden and Hell, might be expected to gloom out occasionally from the awful Fauna of an ever-generating World upon that one which was being born of it. Hence, the life-periods of a World being long and slow, some of these huge, unformed bulks of half-created matter might, somehow, like the megatherium of later times, a baby creation to them, roll at age-long intervals, clothes in a might terror of shapelessness into the half-recognition of human beings, whose consternation at the uncertain vision were barrier enough to prevent all further know of its substance. Ever since I was born, I suppose the changes of a World are not to be measured by the changes of its generations. When one’s discrimination is no greater than to lump everything marvellous—demons, Angels, kelpies, ghosts, vampires, doppelgangers, witches, fairies, nightmares under the one head of ghost—it upsets the reappearing of the of the departed. It matters very little whether we believe in ghost, or not, provided that we are ghosts—that within this body, which so many people are ready to consider their own very selves, their lies a ghostly embryo, at least, which has an inner side to it God only can see, which says I concerning itself, and which will soon have to know whether or not it can appear to those whom it has left behind, and thus solve the question of ghosts for itself, at least. Is telling a person about a ghost, affording one the source of one’s conviction? It is the same as a ghost appearing to one? Not at all. The impression may be deeper and clearer on your mind than any fact of the next morning will make. Not everyone can feel it, but the person who does is convinced. It cannot be conveyed. It is something you have to experience. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21
In the year 1825 Oliver Fisher Winchester fell in love. This was before he met and married his wife Jane Ellen Hope. Here are notes from his journal: Well, I was walking along Chapel Street, and feeling a little bewildered in consequence—for it was quite the dusk of the evening. There was a haze in the air, when, from the crossing that cuts off the corner in the direction of Crown Street, just as I was about to turn towards it, a lady stepped upon the kerbstone of the pavement, looked at me for a moment, and passed—an occurrence not very remarkable, certainly. However, the lady was remarkable and so was her dress. I am not good at observing, and I am still worse at describing dress, therefore I can only say that hers reminded me of an old picture—that is, I had never seen anything like it, except in old pictures. She had no bonne, and looked as if she had walked straight out of an ancient drawing-room in her evening attire. The next instant I met a man on the crossing, who stopped and addressed me. So betwixt was I that, although I recognized his voice as one I ought to know, I could not identify him until he got closer, which I did instinctively in the act of returning his greeting. At the same time, I glanced over my shoulder after the lady. She was nowhere to be seen. “What are you looking at?” asked Gary James. “I was looking after that lady,” I answered, “but I cannot see her.” “What lady?” said James, with just a touch of impatience. “You must have seen her,” I retuned. “You were not more than three yards behind her.” “Where is she then?” “She must have gone down one of the areas, I think. However, she looked a lady, though an old-fashioned one.” “Have you been dining?” asked James, in a tone of doubtful enquiry. “No,” I replied, not suspecting the insinuation; “I have only just come from the Museum.” “Then I advise you to call on your medical man before you go home.” “Medical man!” returned; “I have no medical man. What do you mean? I never was better in my life.” #RandolphHarris 7 of 21
“I mean that there was no lady. It was an illusion, and that indicates something wrong. Besides, you did not know me when I spoke to you. “That is nothing,” I returned. “I had just taken a moment to recall your name.” “How was it you saw the lady, then?” The affair was growing serious under by friend’s interrogation. I did not a all like the idea of his supposing me subject to hallucinations. So I answered, with a laugh, “Ah! to be sure, that explains it. I was just confused.” It was a drizzly afternoon in the beginning of the last week of October when I left the two of New Haven. I hard hardly left the town, and the twilight had only in a post-chaise to ride to East Haven, the property of my friend’s father. I had hardly left the town and the twilight had only begun to deepen, when, glancing from one of the windows of the chaise, I fancied I saw, between me and the hedge, the dim figure of a horse keeping pace with us. I thought, in the first interval of unreason, that it was a shadow from my own horse, but reminded myself the next moment that there could be no shadow where there was no light. When I looked again, I was at the first glance convinced that my eyes had deceived me. At the second, I believed once more that a shadowy something, with the movements of a horse in harness, was keeping pace with us. I turned away again with some discomfort, and not till we had reached an open moorland road, whence a little watery light was visible on the horizon, could I summon up courage enough to look out once more. Certainly then there was nothing o be seen, and I persuaded myself that it had been all a fancy. As we turned into the avenue that led up to East Haven, I found myself once more glancing nervously out the window. #RandolphHarris 8 of 21
The moment the trees were about me, there was, if not a shadowy horse out there by the side of the chaise, yet certainly more than half that conviction in here in my consciousness. When I saw my friend, however, standing on the doorstep, dark against the glow of the hall fire, I forgot all about it; and I need not add that I did not make it a subject of conversation when I entered, for I was well aware that it was essential to a man’s reputation that his senses should be accurate, though his heart might without prejudice swarm with shadows, and his judgment be a very stable of hobbies. I was kindly received. Mrs. James had been dead for some years, and Florence Ida, the eldest of the family, was at the head of the household. She had two sisters, little more than girls. The father was a burly, yet gentlemanlike Yorkshire squire, who ate well, drank well, looked radiant, and hunted twice a week. In this pastime his son joined him when in the humour, which happened scarcely so often. I, who had never crossed a horse in my life, took his apology for not being able to mount me very coolly, assuring him that I could rather loiter about with a book than be in at the death of the best-hunted werewolf or Hellhound in East Haven. I very soon found myself a home with the James’s; and very soon again I began to find myself no so much at home; for Miss James—Florence Ida as I soon ventured to call her—was fascinating. There was an empty place in my heart. Florence’s figure was graceful, and her face was beautiful. Order was a very idol with her. Hence the house was too tidy for any sense of comfort. If you left a book on the table, you would, on retuning to the room a moment after, find it put aside. What the furniture of the drawing-room was like, I never saw; for not even on Christmas Day, which was the last day I spent there, was in uncovered. Everything in it was kept in bibs and pinafores. Even the carpet was covered with a slippery sheet of brown holland. Mr. James never entered that room, and therein was wise. Gary remonstrated once. She answered him quite kindly even playfully, but no change followed. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21
What was worse, she made very wretched tea. Her father never took tea; neither did Gary. I was rather fond of it, but I soon gave it up. Everything her father partook of was first-rate. Everything else was somewhat poverty-stricken. My pleasure in Florence’s society prevented me from making practical deductions from such trifles. The first day of November was a very lovely day, quite one. I was sitting in a little arbour I had just discovered, with a book in my hand—not reading, however, but day-dreaming—when, lifting my eyes from the ground, I was startled to see, through a thin shrub in from of the arbour what seemed the form of an old lady seated, apparently reading from a book on her knee. The sight instantly recalled the lady from Chapel Street. I started to my feet, and then, clear of the intervening bush, saw only a great stone such as abounded on the moors in the neighbourhood, with a lump of quartz set on top of it. Some childish taste had put it there for ornament. Smiling at my own folly, I say down again, and reopened my book. After reading for a while, I glanced up again, and once more started to my feet, overcome by the fancy that there verily sat the lady reading. You will say it indicated an excited condition of the brain. Possibly; but I was, as far as I can recall, quite collected and reasonable. I was almost vexed this second time, and sat down once more to my book. Still, every time I looked up, I was startled afresh. I doubt, however, if the trifle is worth mentioning, or had any significance even in relation to what followed. I wondered if Florence practiced witchcraft. There were others who may or may not have practiced it—the evidence is insufficient—but who had clearly used their reputation for occult power to gain illegitimate personal ends. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21
Gary said that Florence had been dabbling in the occult for years; about five years ago he said she had borrowed a book on palmistry, containing rules on how to know the future. However, he told her it was an evil book and evil art. His charity was wasted, however, since Florence continued telling people’s futures, somethings through reading their faces as well as through reading their palms. Fortunetelling is often only white magic. However, it easily becomes black magic when it concerns itself with the time or manner of the subject’s death. After dinner I strolled out by myself, leaving father and son over their claret. I did not drink wine; and from the lawn I could see the windows of the library, whither Florence commonly retired from the dinner-table. It was a very lovely soft night. There was no moon, but the stars looked wider awake than usual. Dew was falling, but the grass was not yet wet, and I wandered about on it for half and hour. The stillness was somehow strange. It had a wonderful feeling it as if something were expected—as if the quietness were the mould in which some even or other was about to be cast. Even then I was a reader of certain sorts of recondite lore. Suddenly I remembered that this was the eve of All Souls. This is the night on which all the faithful departed, those baptized Christians who are believed to be in purgatory because they died with the guilt of less sin on their souls, came out of their graves to visit their old homes. “Poor dead!” I thought with myself; “have you any place to call a home now? If you have, surely you will not wander back here, where all you have called home has either vanished or given itself to others, to be their home now and yours no more! What an awful doom the old fancy has allotted you! To dwell in your graves all he year, and creep out, this one night, to enter at the midnight door, left open for welcome! A poor welcome truly!—just an open door, a clean-swept floor, and a fire to warm your rain-sodden limbs! The household asleep, and the houseplace swarming with the ghost of ancient times—the miser, the spendthrift, the profligate, the coquette—for the good ghosts sleep, and are troubled with no walking like yours! Not one man, sleepless like yourself, to question you.” #RandolphHarris 11 of 21
“Yet who can tell?” I went on to myself. “It may be your hell to return thus. It may be that only on this one night of the year you can show yourself to one who can see you, but that the place were wicked is the Hades to which you are doomed for ages.” I thought and thought till I began to feel the air alive about me, and was enveloped in the vapours that dim the eyes of those who strain them for one peep through the dull mica windows that will not open on the World of ghosts. At length I cast my fancies away, and feld from them to the library in hopes that no one would raise the Devil to kill or bewitch me. There were many books of fortune-telling and grimoires, of course, full of diagrams. The bodily presence of Florence made the World of ghosts appear shadowy indeed. “What a reality there is about a bodily presence.” I said to myself, as I took y chamber-candle in my hand. “But what is there more real in a body?” I said again, as I crossed the hall. “Surely nothing,” I went on, as I ascended the broad staircase to my room. “The body must vanish. If there be a spirit, that will remain. A body can but vanish. A ghost can appear.” I woke in the morning with a sense of such discomfort as made me spring out of bed at once. When I looked at my watch after I was dressed, I found I had risen an hour earlier than usual. I groped my way downstairs to spend the hour before breakfast in the library. No sooner was I seated with the book than I heard the voice of Florence scolding the butler, in no very gentle tones, for leaving the garden door open all night. The moment I heard this, the strange occurrences I am about to relate began to dawn upon my memory. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21
The door had been open the night long between All Saints and All Souls. In the middle of the night I awoke suddenly. I knew it was not the morning by the sensations I had, for the night feels altogether different from the morning. It was quite dark. My heart was beating violently, and I either hardly could or hardly dared breathe. A nameless terror was upon me, and my sense of hearing was, apparently by the force of its expectation, unnaturally roused and keen. There it was—a slight noise in the room!—slight, but clear, and with an unknown significance about it! It was awful to think it would come again. I do believe it was only one of those creaks in the timers which announced the torpid, age-long, skin flow of every house back to the dust—a motion to which the flow of the glacier is as a torrent, but which is no less inevitable and sure. Day and night it ceases not; but only in the night, when house and heart are still, do we hear it. No wonder it should sound fearful! for we are we not the immortal dwellers in ever-crumbling clay? The clay is no near us, and yet not of us, that it is every movement starts a fresh dismay. For what will its final ruin disclose? When it falls from about us, where shall we find that we have existed all the time? My skin tingled with the bursting of the moister from its pores. Something was in the room besides me. Sometimes apparitions had the reputation for torture and the torture included choking. People should teach their children to fear God, should come to persuade poor creatures to give their souls to the Devil. A confused, indescribable sense of utter loneliness, and yet awful presence, was upon me, its blood did cry for vengeance against me. Nobody seemed to have noticed that the specters differed about the means by which the supposed murders were done. The Devil himself did no know so far. This presence was mingled with a dreary, hopeless desolation, as of burnt-out love and aimless life. All at once I found myself sitting up. The terror that a cold hand might be laid upon me, or a cold breath blow on me, or a corpselike face bend down through the darkness over me, had broken my bonds!—I would meet half-way whatever might be approaching. The moment that my will burst into action the terror began to ebb. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21
The room in which I slept was a large one, perfectly dreary with tidiness. I did not know till afterwards that it was Florence’s room, which she had given up to me rather than prepare another. The furniture, all but one article, was modern and commonplace. I could not help remarking to myself afterwards how utterly void the room was of the nameless charm of feminine occupancy. I had seen nothing to wake a suspicion of its being a lady’s room. The article I have excepted was an ancient bureau, elaborate and ornate, which stood on one side of the large bow window. They very morning before, I had seen a bunch of keys hanging from the upper part of it, and had peeped in. Finding, however, that the pigeon-holds were full of papers, I closed it at once. I should have been glad to use it, but clearly it was not for me. At that bureau the figure of a woman was now seated in the posture of one writing. A strange dim light was around her, but whence I proceeded I never thought of enquiring. As if I, too, had stepped over the bourne, and was a ghost myself, all fear was now gone. I got out of bed, and softly crossed the room to where she was seated. “If she should be beautiful!” I thought—for I had often dreamed of a beautiful ghost that was pleased with me. The figure did not move. She was looking at the faded brown paper. “Some old love-letter,” I thought, and stepped nearer. So cool was I now, that I actually peeped over her shoulder. With mingled surprise and dismay I found that the dim page over which she was bent was that of an old account-book. Ancient household records, in rusty ink, held up to the gliosis of the waning moon, which shone through the parting in the curtains, their entries of shillings and pence!—Of pounds there was not one. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21
No doubt pounds and fathers are much the same in the World of thought—the true spirit-World; but in the ghost-World this eagerness over shillings and pence must mean something awful! To think that coins which had since been worn smooth in other pockets and purses, which had gone back to the Mint, and been melted down, to come out again and yet again with the heads of new kings and queens—that diners, eaten by the worms—that polish for the floors inches of whose thickness had since been worn away—that the hundred nameless trifled of a life utterly vanished, should be perplexing, annoying, and worst of all, interesting the soul of a ghost who had been in Hades for centuries! The writing was very old-fashioned, and e words were contracted. I could read nothing but the moneys and one single entry—“Corinths Vs.” Currans for a Christmas puffing, most likely! Ah–, poor lady! the pudding and not the Christmas was her care; not the delight of the children over it, but the beggarly pence which it cost. And she cannot get it out of her head, although her brain was “powdered all as thin as flour” ages ago in the mortar of Death. “Alas, poor ghost!” It needs no treasure hoard left behind, no floor stained with the blood of the murdered child, no wickedly hidden parchment of landed rights. Was this a demonic conspiracy? Witches cannot send the Devil to torment people by making a covenant with the Devil. Some people in this town had a lot of evidence against them for trafficking in the occult. In fact, if you recall, during the Salem Witch Trials, renegade members of the clergy had played a large part in the history of witchcraft in fact and in fiction. It should be recalled that Morgan le Fey, King Arthur’s sister, was supposed to have learned her evil craft in the nunnery where she was educated, that Benvenuto Cellini’s sorcerer-friend was a priest, and that a renegade priest is supposed to be necessary to the performance of Black Mass. An old account-book is enough for the hell of the house-keeping gentlewoman! She never lifted her face, or seem to know that I stood behind her. I left her, and went into the bow window, where I could see her face. I was right there. It was the same lady I had met at Chapel Street, walking in front of Gary James. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21
Her withered lips went moving as if they would have uttered words she had the breath been commissioned thither; her brow was contracted over her thin nose; and once and again her shining forefinger wen up to her temple as if she were pondering some deep problem of humanity. How long I stood gazing at her I do not know, but at last I withdraw to my bed, and left her struggling to solve that which she could never solve thus. It was the symbolic problem of her own life, and she had failed to read it. I remember nothing more. She may be sitting there still, solving at the insolvable. I should have felt no inclination, with the broad sun of the squire’s face, the keen eyes of Gary James, and the beauty of Florence before me at the breakfast table, to say a word about what I had seen, even if I had not been afraid of the doubt concerning my sanity which the story would certainly awaken. What with the memories of the night, I passed a very dreary day, dreading the return of the night, for, cool as I had been in her presence, I could not regard the possible reappearance of those ghost with equanimity. I had a belly ache. Gary James said he would take a pipe of tobacco and light it. I told him that I thought it was not lawful. [The idea that this remedy was unlawful is probably a result of the use of tobacco in it. Tobacco was an “Indian Weed” and used in Indian ceremony and medicine. The Puritans, like other seventh-century Christians, thought the Indians to be Devil worshippers and thought of their medicine men as magicians.] He said it was lawful for man or beast. However, when the night did come, I slept soundly to the morning. The next day, not being able to read with comfort, I went wandering about the place, and at length began to fit the outside and inside of the house together. #RandolphHarris 16 of 21
The house was a large and rambling edifice, parts of it very old, parts comparatively modern. I first found a beautiful stained-glass window, which looked out back. It was kind of a countercharm and verged on black magic because it was supposed not only to break the witch’s spell but to injure the witch or compel her presence. Below this window, on one side, there was a door. I wondered whiter it led, but found it locked. At the moment Gary James approached from the stables. “Where does this door lead?” I asked him. “I will get the key,” he answered. “It is rather a queer old place. We used to like it when we were children.” “There is a stair, you see,” he said, as he threw the door open. “It leads up over the kitchen.” I followed him up the stair. “There is a door into your room,” he said, “but it is always locked now. And here is Grannie’s room, as they call it, though why, I have not the least idea,” he added, as he pushed open the door of an old-fashioned parlour, smelling very musty. A few old books lay on a side table. A china bowl stood besides them, with some shrivelled, scented rose-leaves in the bottom of it. The cloth that covered the table was riddled by moths, and the spider-legged chairs were covered with dust. A conviction seized me that the old bureau must have belonged to this room, and I soon found the place where I judged it must have stood. However, the same moment I caught sight of a portrait on the wall above the spot I had fixed upon. “Good Lord!” I caried, involuntarily, “that is the very lady I met at Chapel Street!” “Nonsense!” said Gary James. “Old-fashioned ladies are like babies—they all look the same. That is a very old portrait.” “So I see,” I answered. “It is like a Zucchero.” “I don’t know whose it is,” he answered hurriedly, and I thought he looked a little queer.” #RandolphHarris 17 of 21
“Is she one of the family?” I asked. “They say so; but who or what she is, I don’t know. You must ask Jean,” he answered. “The more I looked at it,” I said, “the more I am convinced it is the same lady.” “Well,” he returned with a laugh, “my old nurse used to say she was rather restless. But it’s all nonsense.” “That bureau in my room looks about the same date as this furniture.” I remarked. “It used to stand just there,” he answered, pointing to the space under the picture. “Well, I remember with what awe we used to regard it; for they said the old lady kept her accounts at it still. We never dared touch the bundles of yellow papers in the pigeon-holes. I remember thinking Jean a very heroine once when she touched one of them with the tip of her forefinger. She had got yet more courageous by the time she had it moved into her own room.” “hen that is your sister’s room I am occupying?” I said. “Yes.” “I am ashamed of keeping her out of it.” “Oh! she’’ do well enough.” “If I were she though,” I added, “I would send that bureau back to its own place.” “What do you mean, Oliver? Do you believe ever old wife’s tale that ever was told?” “She may get a fright some day—that’s all! I replied. He smiled with such an evident mixture of pity and contempt that for the moment I almost disliked him; and feeling certain that Florence would receive any such hint in a somewhat similar manner, I did not feel inclined to offer her any advice with regard to the bureau. Little occurred during the rest of my visit worthy of remark. Somehow or other I did not make much progress with Florence. I believe I had begun to see into her character a little more, and therefore did not get deeper in love as the days went on. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21
I know I became less absorbed in her society, although I was still anxious to make myself agreeable to her—or perhaps, more properly, to give her a favourable impression of me. I do not know whether she perceived any difference in my behaviour, but I remember that I began again to remark the pinched look of her nose, and to be a little annoyed with her for always putting aside my book. At the same time, I daresay I was provoking, for I never was given to tidiness myself. At length Christmas Day arrived. After breakfast, the squire Mr. James, and the two girls arranged to talk to church. Florence was not in the room at the moment. I excused myself on the ground of a headache, for I had had a bad night. When they left, I went up to my room, threw myself on the bed, and was soon fast asleep. How long I slept I do not know, but I work again with that indescribable yet well-known sense of not being alone. The feeling was scarcely less terrible in the daylight than it had been in the darkness. With the same sudden effort as before, I sat up in the bed. There was the figure at the open bureau, in precisely the same position as on the former occasion. However, I could not see it so distinctly. I rose as gently as I could, and approached it, after the first physical terror. I am not a coward. Just as I got near enough to see the account book open on the folding cover of the bureau, she started up, and, turning, revealed the face of Florence. She blushed crimson. “I beg your pardon, Mr. Winchester,” she said, in great confusion; “I thought you had gone to church with the rest.” “I had lain down with a headache, and gone to sleep,” I replied. “But forgive me, Miss James,” I added, for my mind was full of the dreadful coincidence, “don’t you think you have been better at church than balancing your accounts on Christmas Day?” “The better day the better deed,” she said, with a somewhat offended air, and turned to walk from the room. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21
“Excuse me, Florence,” I resumed, very seriously, “but I want to tell you something.” She looked conscious. It never crossed me, that perhaps she fancied I was going to make a confession. Far other things were then in my mind. For I thought how awful it was, if she too, like the ancestral ghost, should have to do an age-long penance of haunting that bureau and those horrid figures, and I had suddenly resolved to tell her the whole story. She listened with varying complexion and face half turned aside. When I had ended, which I fear I did with something of a personal appeal, she lifted her head and looked me in the face, with just a slight curl on her thin lip, and answered me. “If I had wanted a sermon, Mr. Winchester, I should have gone to church for it. As for the ghost, I am sorry for you.” So saying she walked out of the room. The rest of the day I did not find very merry I pleaded my headache as an excuse for going to be early. How I hated the room now! Next morning, immediately after breakfast, I took my leave of East Haven. If I lost a wife at all, it was a stingy one. I should have been ashamed of her all my life long. However, extravagant runs the rich, and the stingy robs the poor. I have kept up my friendship with her brother. All he knows about the matter is, that either we had a quarrel, or she refused me—he is not sure which. I must say for Florence, that she was no tattler. Well, here is a letter I had from Gary James this very morning, I will read I to you. My Dear Winchester—We have had a terrible shock this morning. Jean did not come down to breakfast, and Clara went to see if she was ill. We heard her scream, and rushing up, there was poor Jean sitting at the old bureau, quite dead. She had fallen forward on the desk, and her housekeeping-book was crumpled up under her. She had been so all nigh long, we suppose, for she was not undressed, and was quite cold. The doctors say it was disease of the heart. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21
Some people thought the ghost had come to tell that she had hidden away money in some secret place in the old bureau, one would see why she was permitted to come back. And of course, those wretched accounts were not over and done with, you see. That is the misery of it. Good night. Then I walked out into the wind. We who have lost our sense and our senses—our touch, our small, our vision of who we are; we who frantically force and press all things, without rest for body or spirit, hurting our Earth and injuring ourselves: we call a halt. We want to rest. We need to rest and allow the Earth to rest. We need to reflect and to rediscover the mystery that lives in us, that is the ground of every unique expression of life, the source of the fascination that calls all things to communion. We declare a Sabbath, a space of quiet; for simply being and letting be; for recovering the great, forgotten truths; for learning how to live again. Our God and God of our fathers, please accept our rest. Please Sanctify us through Thy commandments, and grant our portion in Thy Torah. Please give us abundantly of Thy goodness and make us rejoice in Thy salvation. Please purify our hearts to serve Thee in truth. In Thy loving favour, O Lord our God, please grant that Thy holy Sabbath be our joyous heritage, and may America who sanctified Thy name, rest thereon. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, who halowest the Sabbath. O Lord our God, be gracious unto Thy people America and accept their prayer. Please restore America and accept their prayer. Please restore the worship to Thy sanctuary and please receive in love and favour the supplication of America. May the worship of thy people be ever acceptable unto Thee. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21
Winchester Mystery House
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Labour More that By Good Works You May Make Sure Your Calling and Election!
Man creates law to maintain his World. But what happens when the laws of man define the laws of nature? High Society may be for you or against you, Paul to the Romans (8.31)—but do not hand your life on such a supercilious judgment. Just take care that the Supernatural is with you in everything you do; in other words, keep a good conscience. In return, God will defend you well, and He will steer you clear of oncoming perversities. However, just in case you swerve unawares, know that there is no trick to extricating you from the ditch. God is faithful and quick; He knows the when and the how; at least according to the Acts of the Apostles (1.7) His modus operandi? He rescues, and He sweeps up after. You know you are in good hands. However, what if other discover your defects and throw them in your face? Well, that is humility. And if you suffer that exquisite pain in silence, it will lead to, of all things, greater humility. Yes, there are rascals who spend their days standing on the corner watching all the World go by. And yes, they are waiting for just such an oaf as yourself to trip up on your own defects. One moment you are humble, and the next? Well, you have given the ruffians a good laugh. Anyone humbled in this way God shields from further harm, dusts one off, patches one up. This is the sort of person He takes a liking to, according to Second Corinthians (7.6), and enriches with spiritual generosity according to First Peter (5.5) and James (4.6). He raises one from the street and lifts one up to Glory. In to one’s ear, or so the Gospel of Matthew intimates (11.25), He whispers the most extraordinary things, even asking one if one would like to be friends. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19
What is the result of this sudden humility? Whenever the person trips, one falls, but the bloodied nose no longer shakes one’s peace of mind. That is because one’s standing is not with the rowdies on the next corner, but with the Angles in the next World. Now that is how God looks at it, but the view from your promontory–if needed there is one—is entirely different. Supposedly, you have made all this spiritual progress, but that is no reason to puff yourself up. Know that, compared with the rest of Humankind, none of whose spiritual condition you have any true knowledge of, you are still a very flat and uninspired person. Some, regarding the certainty of divine predestination, said that prayers were superfluous, as also anything else done to attain salvation; because whether these things were done or not, the predestined would attain, and the reprobate would not attain, eternal salvation. However, against this opinion are all the warnings of Holy Scripture, exhorting us to prayer and other good works. Others declared that the divine predestination was altered through prayer. This is stated to have the opinion of the Egyptians, who thought that the divine ordination, which they called fate, could be frustrated by certain sacrifices and prayer. Against this also is the authority of Scripture. For it is said: “But the triumpher in Israel will not spare and will not be moved to repentance,” reports 1 Kings 15.29; and that “the gifts and the calling of God are without repentance,” reports Romans 11.29. Wherefore we must say otherwise that in predestination two things are to be considered—namely, the divine ordination; and its effect. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19
As regards the former, in no possible way can predestination be furthered by the prayers of the saints. For it is not due to their prayers that anyone is predestined by God. As regards for the latter, predestination is said to be helped by the prayers that anyone is predestined by other good works; because providence, of which predestination is a part, does not do away with secondary causes but so provides effects, that the order of secondary causes falls also under providence. So, as natural effects are provided by God in such a way that natural causes are directed to bring about those natural effects, without which those effects would not happen; so the salvation falls under the order of predestination; whether it be one’s own prayers or those of another; or other good works, and such like, without which one would not attain to salvation. Whence, the predestined must strive after good works and prayer; because through these means predestination is most certainly fulfilled. For this reason it is said: “Labour more that by good works you may make sure your calling and election,” reports 2 Peter 1.10. This argument shows that predestination is not furthered by the prayers of the saints, as regards the preordination. One is said to be helped by another in two ways: in one way, inasmuch as one receives power from one: and to be helped thus belongs to the weak; but this cannot be said of God, and thus we are to understand, “Who hath helped the Spirit of the Lord?” In another way one is said to be helped by a person through whom one carries out one’s work, as a master through a servant. In this way God is helped by us; inasmuch as we execute His orders, according to 1 Corinthians 3.9: “We are God’s coadjutors.” Nor is this on account of any defect in the power of God, but because He employs intermediary causes, in order that the beauty of order may be preserved in the Universe; and also that He may communicate to creatures the dignity of causality. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19
Secondary causes cannot escape the order of the first universal cause, as has been said above, indeed, they execute that order. And therefore predestination can be further by creatures, but it cannot be impeded by them. After the work of translation was completed and the eleven men had seen the plates, an Angel came for the golden plates and Urim and Thummim, and Joseph returned the precious things he had carefully watched over for so many months. The work of translating was over, but there still remained the work of printing the book that all might know the wonderful story. Oliver Cowdery made a copy of all the writings. One copy was for the printers to use, and one was to be kept in case the other was lost. In August, 1829, Oliver Cowdery began taking the writings to the printers in Palmyra, New York. He took a few pages at a time and stayed right with the work, proofreading the printed pages to see that the printing was correct. By March, 1830, the Book of Mormon was printed. Five thousand copies cost $3,000 (2021 inflation adjusted: $88,596.52). Martin Harris advanced the money, and as the books were sold the money was returned to him. The Book of Mormon tells the story of people who lived long ago in the Americas, having been led by God from Jerusalem across the sea to the promised land in America. It tells about God’s dealings with them. These ancient people knew about Jesus. The Lord gave them a sign of His birth and after His resurrection Jesus visited them and taught them His gospel. These ancient people kept records of their history. They wrote them on plates of gold because gold was durable and plentiful. God told his prophet Mormon to prepare the golden plates so they might be preserved and brought forth by the power of God at such time as the Lord desired. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19
The records were hidden in a stone box in a hill and there they remained hidden in the care of the Lord until God chose to bring them forth by His wonderful power. God wanted the people who were to live hundreds of years later to know the story of the people Columbus called “Indians” when he arrived at the New World in his search for a new route to India. It is their story which was written upon the golden plates and was translated into the Book of Mormon. Now that the book was printed people could read for themselves the strange story told on the golden plates. The men went among the people, showing them the Book of Mormon, telling the wonderful story, and preaching the restored gospel of Jesus Christ. The World did not then know anything about those who had lived hundreds of years ago in the land of America. When some read the book, they believed it. Others, however, would not listen and in a cruel and wicked manner persecuted those who believed. One complete copy of the manuscript of the Book of Mormon has been carefully preserved for all the years since 1829. It is now in the custody of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. It is kept in a bank vault, and for very special occasions it is brought from the vault and displayed, always under special police guard. The other copy was put in the cornerstone of the Nauvoo House in Nauvoo, Illinois. When his building was rebuilt any years later, it was found that water had seeped into the cornerstone and little of it was legible. Most of this manuscript was completely ruined, but some pages of it are still in existence. When the sacred moment comes, let one not hesitate to let oneself go, to adore the Overself ecstatically, and to let one’s heart be ravished. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19
The rapt return to mental indrawnness may come to the practising meditator quite unexpectedly and suddenly. It may find one engaged in some ordinary daily activity or caught speaking in the middle of a sentence, but whatever it be, one should instantly surrender oneself and one’s time to it. In the result, the meditation will gradually deepen into a mild ecstasy. The Overself throws out a clue to its existence and presence. This comes in various ways to different persons. One form is a delicate feeling drawing one inward either to deeper thought or to no thought at all. If one goes along with it even through hardly aware and half-involuntarily, one will be led by this clue to a glimpse. One could learn to recognize that these moments, which comes so suddenly and so delightfully, have a special value. As soon as they come one ought to suspend all activities, put aside whatever it is that one is doing, even stop what one is speaking, and concentrate all one’s attention in a passive submissive way upon the delicate feelings and deep understanding that come with them. When confronted with a compelling anecdote, people are often strangely insensitive to statistical information indicating that the anecdote is but an exception rather than the rule. Before buying his new car, Ken consults the Consumer Reports surveyof car owners and Bimmertips on the social media page of Instagram.com, and finds high ratings given to the 2022 BMW M760Li xDrive he is considering purchasing. Hearing of his intention, Jillian says, “Oh! Those are great cars. Justin and I were considering buying one on Father’s Day.” The research (and our own experience) suggests that Ken will go ahead and buy the car because his friends liked it. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19
Vivid testimony often makes it hard to forget an object and discount it. Likewise, vivid terrorist acts in early 1986, although harming fewer than one in a million persons in Europe, caused fearful Americans to shun travel to Europe in favour of more dangerous vacations on American highways. The September 11, 2001, terrorist assaults motivated millions more people to drive where they would have flown, despite the much lower risk of flying (even after allowing for September 11). Indeed, had terrorist crashed fifty more similarly loaded plans in 2001, Americans (if they kept on flying) would still have ended the year safer in planes than cares. The human understanding is most excited by that which strikes and enters the mind at once and suddenly, and by which the imagination is immediately filled and inflated. It then begins almost imperceptibly to conceive and suppose that everything is similar to the few objects which have taken possession of the mind, whilst it is very slow and unfit for the transition to the remote and heterogenous instances by which axions are tried as by fire. This way of thinking has several implications. For psychologists, knowing our vulnerability to error beckons us not to disparage psychological science, but to restrain our unchecked speculations. Aware that we can conceive and defend almost any theory, we must be candid about our presuppositions and check our theories against the data of God’s created World. To appreciate the unreliability of unchecked intuition (that sixth sense that tells us we are right, whether we are or not) is to admit that we need to do science—to wed creative intuition with systematic observation. Our method and that of the skeptics agree in some respects at first setting out, but differ most widely, and are completely opposed to each conclusions: for they roundly assert that nothing can be known; we, that but a small part of nature can be known, by the present method; their next step, however, is to destroy the authority of the sense and understanding, whilst we invent and supply them with assistance. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19
The accumulating research on human error also beckons us to a personal humility. It helps us understand why Jesus admonished us not to judge. We can easily wrong people by our overconfident judgements—that John’s depression stems from his demanding parents, or that the quiet woman next door harbours suppressed hostility. Nor need we feel intimidated by other people’s cockiness, least of all by strict and rigid doctrines of heresy hunters who are so absolutely sure they are right that they dare to practice spiritual ventriloquism—by putting their words into the mouth of God and believing the voice they throw to be the word of the Lord. When we make our own words our absolute truth, then, said the theologian Karl Barth, we have made an idol out of our religion. We have forgotten that we are not gods, but finite humans who peer at reality in a mirror dimly. Oliver Cromwell’s 1650 plea to the Church of Scotland is worth hearing over and again: “I beseech ye in the bowels of Christ, think that ye may be mistaken.” The one belief of which we cannot be overconfident is the conviction that some of our beliefs contain error. Although that may sound threatening, it should actually be reassuring. For it means that it is okay to have doubts. Doubt reveals a mind that asks questions, a humble mind, one that does not presume its own ideas to be certainties, one that checks it presumptions against the data of God’s creation. Indeed, the intellectually honest words, belief, faith, and hope acknowledge uncertainty. We do not believe that three times three equals nine or have faith that what we throw upward will come down, or hope that day will follow night; we know these things with psychological if not logical certainty. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19
To take the leap of faith is to bet one’s life on a presumed truth that makes sense of the Universe, that gives meaning to life, that provides hope in the face of adversity and death. One need not await 100 percent certainty before risking a thoughtful leap across the chasm of uncertainty. One can choose to marry in the hope of a happy life. One can elect a career, believing it will prove satisfying. One can fly across the ocean, having faith in the pilot and plane. To know that we are prone to error does not negate our capacity to glimpse truth, nor does it rationalize living as a fence straddler. Sometimes, said the novelist Albert Camus, life calls us to make a 100 percent commitment to something about which we are 51 percent sure. When we consider the structure of the personality, it is important to keep in mind the withdrawn “regressed” ego. There are three stages in the process called the withdrawal of the regressed ego. At stage one, there is a deepening of the split between the (already existing) Central Ego (more in touch with the World of other people and things) an the (also already existing) Libidinal Ego (where a person’s more bodily feelings originate). This is a true “vertical” split. At stage two, an Anti-Libidinal structure interposes between the Central Ego and the Libidinal Ego. This makes it additionally difficult for people to be in touch with their libidinal feelings, and for their libidinal needs to find expression in the World of other people and things. People then experience (rejecting) anger, because of the (frustrated) existence of these (excited) feelings, but they are not conscious of the source of their anger. The structure here under consideration is a repressive one, more a horizontal “lid” than a vertical split. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19
At stage three, a further vertical split occurs, this time within the Libidinal Ego, that is within the structures which involve libidinal feeling. This split ensures that, while some libidinal needs eventually find expression, however painfully they may be hampered by their connection with anti-libidinal anger and rejection, others are withdrawn from communication with any source of pain. These latter are then out of touch with the realities mediated by the Central Ego, and out of touch with the moralities of Anti-Libidinal Ego, and out of touch with other (libidinal) feelings, needs, hopes, wishes. They exist, but they are unknown to the person. The result is a (vertically) split-off personality of which the person is no usually conscious. This is the passive repressed ego which seeks to return to the ante-natal state of absolute passive dependent security. Here, in quietude, repose, and immobility, it may find the opportunity to recuperate and grow to a rebirth. The phenomenon of the regressed ego is a very important one. However, one of the first misconceptions about regression we must clear up is the ambiguity in the term “regression.” Regression is a reversion to an earlier state of mode of functioning. However, what kind of a reversion? To an earlier state of feeling? Or to an earlier mode of personality organization? The answer is that there are two kinds of regression at least. One involves reversion to earlier feelings, and more generally regression to an earlier way of experiencing self and others. The other involves a relaxation of integrating process and hence a reversion to an earlier and less integrated organization of structures, with more splits, more isolated regions, more “islands.” #RandolphHarris 10 of 19
Even in normal states of mind, some people have to make efforts to hold themselves together. When they relax in a therapeutic situation, they relax those efforts. This is the aspect of what is usually called regression which I shall call relaxation. Sometimes when it is believed that people are retreating to some earlier state of being, I believe them to be relaxing the connections which hold them together. Secondly, we must that sometimes what people are describing as regression, is a sequence of events in a child’s life. We must not be misled by this; it is in fact a sequence of stages which some people go through in some kinds of psychotherapy. People do regress in an appropriately holding therapeutic environment. As they feel more and more secure with their therapist, they give up their self-protective devices more and more. This allows them to revive and express (and even act upon) more and more strongly protected thoughts, feelings, wishes, memories, phantasies. Many of these do indeed have their roots in childhood and infancy, and were part of our young minds, but they indicate more about how we felt than and feel now, than about the stages by which we got those feelings. Thirdly, our troubles are aggravated by the assumption that we start with a unified self which is destroyed by subsequent misfortunes. As for instance, in this complex pattern of ego-splitting or loss of primary psychic unity, with all the weakness and internal conflict it involves, is the root cause of personality disorders in later life: and the most vulnerable part of the self is the most hidden part, cut off from all human relationships. This is an accurate description of how it is with some people. However, it also contains the misleading assumption that the self has a primary unity and then splits. Sometimes what psychologists lead in the consulting room can be misleading. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19
In a relationship of trust, as self-protective devices are abandoned, some people relax and show themselves to be less integrated than they at first appear to be. In my view, they are then as they have always been, at heat. Many, many people have a hidden, tender, vulnerable side, and it would be good if this were more in touch with the rest of the personality. However, this hidden “regressed” withdrawn ego is not necessarily the result of splits in a region or a structure which was once whole. Although it is true that sometimes a more developed part of the self withdraws from involvement in everyday sensory life, it seems to me equally true that many people have parts which have never developed or which have never been allowed to come to the fore. These parts are hidden, but they have always been hidden—they have not retreated from a more visible position. There is a vulnerable, tender part of the personality, something that is very sensitive, like a flower that shrinks at the slightest touch. Often this part has been split off or repressed, because it has been hurt. Shrinking, wincing, wounded, skinless, are the adjectives which best describe those regions then. Many psychologists are familiar with these tender, vulnerable states of mind, none more so than maybe yours, but they are often misled by what their adult patients say and do. Not having a background in pediatrics can be detrimental because a medical professional may be led to an over-reliance on the evidence one gets from one’s adult patients. However, if we disregard one’s developmental assumptions, what the medical professional may be saying on the structure of the personality, particularly as regards the vulnerable feelings, is absolutely valid, and can be used to understand uniquely important aspects of the schizoid state of mind. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19
With information on genetics doubling every two years, with the gene mechanics working overtime New Scientist magazine reports that “genetic engineering has been going through an essential tooling up phase; it is not ready to go into business.” The distinguished science commentator, Lord Ritchie-Calder, explains that “Just as we have manipulated plastics and metals, we are now manufacturing living materials.” Major companies are already in hot pursuit of commercial applications of the new biology. They dream of placing enzymes in the automobile to monitor exhaust and send data on pollution to microprocessors that will then adjust the engine. They speak of what is called metal-hungry microbes that might be used to mine valuable trace metals from ocean water. They have already demanded and won the right to patent new life forms. General Electric, Asklepois BioPharmaceutical , CRISPR Therapeutics, Editas Medicine, Pfizer and many others are all in the race. Nervous critics including many scientists, justifiably worry that there is a race at all. They conjure up images not of oil spills, but of “microbe spills” that could spread disease and decimate entire population. The creation and accidental release of virulent microbes, however, is only one cause for alarm. Completely sober and respectable scientists are talking about possibilities that stagger the imagination. Should we breed people with cowlike stomachs so they can digest grass and hay—thereby alleviating the food problem by modifying us to eat lower down on the food chain? Should we biologically alter to fit workers to fit job requirements—for example, creating pilots with faster reaction times or assembly-line workers neurologically designed to do our monotonous work for us? #RandolphHarris 13 of 19
Should we attempt to eliminate “inferior” people and breed a “super-race”? (Some have tried this, but without the genetic weaponry that may son issue from our laboratories.) Should we clone soldiers to our fighting? Should we use genetic forecasting to pre-eliminate “unfit” babies? Should we grow reserve organs for ourselves—each of us having, as it were, a “saving bank” full of spare kidneys, livers, or lungs? Wild as these notions may sound, every one has its advocates (and adversaries) in the scientific community as well as its striking commercial applications. As two critics of genetic engineering, Jeremy Rifkin and Ted Howard, state in their book Who Should Play God?, “Broad scale genetic engineering will probably be introduced to America much the same way as assembly lines, automobiles, vaccines, computers and all the other technologies. As each new genetic advance becomes commercially practical, a new consumer need…will be exploited and a market for the new technology will be created.” The potential applications are myriad. The new biology, for example, could potentially help solve the energy problem. Scientists are now studying the idea of utilizing bacteria capable of converting sunlight into electrochemical energy. They speak of “biological solar cells.” Could we breed life forms to replace nuclear power plants? And if so, might we substitute the danger of a bioactive release for the danger of radioactive release? In the field of health, many diseases now untreatable will no doubt be cured or prevented—and new ones, perhaps worse, introduced through inadvertence or even malice. (If it developed and secretly spread some new disease for which it alone had the cure, think what a profit-hungry company could do. Even a mild, coldlike ailment could create a massive market for the appropriate, monopolistically controlled cure.) #RandolphHarris 14 of 19
According to the president of Cetus, a California company to which many World-famous geneticists are commercially linked, “biology will replace chemistry in importance” in the next thirty years. And in Moscow an official policy statement urges “the wider use of micro-organisms in the national economy.” Biology will reduce or eliminate the need for oil in the production of plastics, fertilizer, cloths, paint, pesticides, and thousands of other products. It will sharply alter the production of wood, wool, and other “natural” goods. Companies like United States Steel, Fiat, Hitachi, ASEA, or IBM will undoubtedly have their own biology divisions as we begin to shift, over time, from manufacture to “bio-facture,” giving rise to a range of products unimaginable until now. Says Theodore J. Gordon, the head of The Futures Group, “In biology, once we get stated, we’ll have to think about things like…can you make a “tissue-compatible shirt” or a “mammary mattress”—created out of the same stuff as the human” organ of milk secretion. Long before then, in agriculture, genetic engineering will be employed to increase the World food supply. The much-publicized Green Revolution of the 1960’s proved, in large measures, a colossal trap for farmers in the First Wave World because I required enormous inputs of petroleum-based fertilizer that had to be brought abroad. The next bio-agricultural revolution aims at reducing that dependence on artificial fertilizer. Genetic engineering points toward high-yielding crops, crops that grow well in sandy or salty soil, crops that fight off pests. It also seeks to create entirely new foods and fibers, along with simpler, cheaper, energy-conserving methods for storing and processing foods. As though to balance off some of its awesome peril, genetic engineering once more holds out for us the possibility of ending widespread famine. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19
One must remain skeptical of these glowing promises. Yet if some of these advocates of genetic farming are half right, the impact on agriculture could be tremendous, ultimately altering, among other things relations between the poor countries and the rich. The Green Revolution made the poor more, not less, dependent on the rich. The bio-agricultural revolution could do the reverse. It is too early to say with confidence how biotechnology will develop. However, it is too late to turn back to zero. We cannot undiscover what we know. We can only fight to control its application, to prevent hasty exploitation, to transnationalize it, and to minimize corporate, national, and interscientific rivalry in the entire field before it is too late. One thing is immutably clear: we are no longer locked into the four-hundred-year-old electromechanical frame of traditional Second Wave technology, and can only begin to glimpse the full significance of this historic fact. Just as the Second Wave combined coal, steel, electricity, and rail transport to produce automobiles and a thousand other life-transforming products, the real impact of the new changes will not be felt until we reach the stage of combing the new technologies—linking together computers, electronics, new materials from outer space and the oceans, with genetics, and all of these, in turn with the new energy base. Bringing these elements together will release a flood of innovation unlike any seen before in human history. We are constructing a dramatically new techno-sphere for a Third Wave civilization. The power of human emotion can neither be control by the laws we create nor by the will we impose. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19
Prior to the mass suburbanization following the second World War, working-class suburbs were almost certain to be older industrial or factory suburbs. An example would be Cudahy, south of Milwaukee, which was established when the Milwaukee city government refused to allow Patrick Cudahy to build a stockyard and slaughterhouse within the city. As a consequence, the meat packer established a new suburb outside the city limits, which he named after himself. Another example would be the working-class suburb of Cicero, west of Chicago. Cicero achieved national notoriety during the 1920s as the headquarters of Al Capone’s operations when a short-lived reform administration in Chicago temporarily forced the organization to move to the suburbs. Most prewar working-class suburbs, however, were simply factory towns. They were in no way distinctive. Plain but generally well-kept houses with small yards were the norm. Following World War II, the GI Bill allowed blue-collar workers as well as the traditional middle class to successfully apply for long-term mortgages. Growing prosperity also made it possible for working-class workers to purchase a family automobile. At the same time new interstate and other road networks made new suburban locations a reasonable alternative for aging inner-city factories. Industries could relocate beyond streetcar lines without fearing they would be unable to recruit a work force. As a result, factories and labour forces decentralized. It is sometimes forgotten that the new postwar working-class suburbanites that followed the factories to the suburbs were not fleeing decaying city neighbourhoods. More often than not, they were somewhat reluctantly leaving tight ethnic neighbourhoods with high levels of social interaction. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19
In the 1960s, when they were forced to move from Richmond, California, to the suburb of Milpitas, California, in order to work at the new automobile plant, the lifestyle of one hundred blue-collar Ford assembly workers and their families changed. What was found was that suburbanization had little or no effect on the workers’ style of life. They did not see the move in terms of social mobility; they had no great hopes of getting ahead in their jobs. They had no illusions of wealth; their wage level was dependent on the union contract. At a consequence of becoming suburbanites, they did not change their political affiliations (81 percent Democrat), go to church more, or join community organizations. They participated only minimally in formal groups. What they did do is continue their traditional working-class pattern of tight, informal socialization, with long-term friends and neighbours. While they enjoyed the creature comforts of suburban living, they remained peer-group- and ethnic-group-centered. In brief, they lived life patterns quite similar to those workers living in blue-collar central-city neighbourhoods. Their new suburban homes were not seen as way stations on the road to social mobility, but rather as permanent places of residence. Now many of the postwar blue-collar suburbs are experiencing the same downward economic pressures suffered by central cities. Declines in nearby heavy-industry and manufacturing jobs mean that those living in older inner-ring suburbs have long commutes to service jobs in outlying edge suburbs. Commercial tax bases are also eroding in working-class suburbs. Additionally, older working-class suburbs, with their more affordable housing, have been most likely to attract a diverse group of people escaping the city. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19
The deterioration of job prospects for blue-collar workers in a postindustrial economy suggest that such workers may now find themselves trapped in declining work-class suburbs. These suburbs lack the affluence of other suburbs, and even the basic amenities of the central city. Hey! Lean to hear my feeble voice. At the center of the sacred hoop. You have said that I should make the tree bloom. With tears running, O Great Spirit, my Grandfather, with running eyes I must say the tree has never bloomed. Here I stand, and the tree is withered. Again, I recall the great vision you gave me. It may be that some little root of the sacred tree still lives. Nourish it then that it may leaf and blood and fill with singing birds! Hear me, that the people may once again find the good road and the shielding tree. When I call upon the Lord, ascribe greatness unto our God. O Lord, open Thou my lips and my mouth shall declare Thy praise. Praised art Thou, O Lord our God and God of our fathers, God of Abraham, God of Isaac, and God of Jacob, mighty, revered and exalted God. Thou bestowest lovingkindness and possessest all things. Mindful of the patriarchs’ love for Thee, Thou wilt in Thy love bring a redeemer to their children’s children for the sake of Thy name. Remember us unto life, O King who delightest in life, and inscribe us in the Book of Life so that we may live worthily for Thy sake, O Lord of life. O King, Thou Helper, Redeemer and Shield, be Thou praised, O Lord, Shield of Abraham. Thou, O Lord, art mighty forever. Thou callest the dead to immortal life for Thou art mighty in deliverance. It is needful to look into the self in depth, to a level where psychoanalysts are seldom able to reach. For the real aim is to penetrate through thoughts to Thought itself, through the personal being to the impersonal one. Further, according to the ancient tradition, not only must meditation penetrate deeply, it must also be continuous. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19
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O Wicked Wit and Gifts that Have the Power So to Seduce!
I have always noticed a prevalent want of courage, even among persons of superior intelligence and culture, as to imparting their own psychological experiences when those have been of a strange story. Almost all humans are afraid that what they could relate in such wise would find no parallel or response in a lister’s internal life, and might be suspected or laughed at. A truthful traveller who should have seen some extraordinary creature in the likeness of a devil, would have no fear mentioning it; but the same traveller having had some singular presentiment, impulse, vagary of thought, vision (so-called), dream, or other remarkable mental impression, would hesitate considerably before one would own to it. To this reticence I attribute much of the obscurity in which subjects are involved. We do not habitually communicate our experiences of these subjective things, as we do our experiences of objective creation. The consequences is, that the general stock of experiences in this regard appears exceptional, and really is so, in respect of being miserably imperfect. The Devil had been raised among us, and his rage was vehement and terrible; and, when he shall be silenced, the Lord only knows. It does not signify how many years ago, or how few, a certain Murder was committed in Boston in 1688, which attracted great attention. We hear more than enough of Murders as they rise in succession to their atrocious eminence, and if I could, I would bury the memory this this atrocious eminence, as hi body was buried, in the Witch House’s basement. When the murder was first discovered, no suspicion fell—or I ought rather to say, for I cannot be too precise in my facts, it was nowhere publicly hinted that any suspicious fell—on the man who was afterwards brought to trial. #RandolphHarris 1 of 13
As no reference was at the time made to him in the newspapers, it is obviously impossible that any description of him at that time have been given in the newspapers. It is essential that this fact be remembered. Unfolding at breakfast my morning paper, containing the account of that first discovery, I found it to be deeply interesting, and I read it with close attention. I read it twice, if not three times. The discovery had been made in a bedroom, and, when I laid down the paper, I was aware of a flash—rush—flow—I do not know what to call it—no word I can find is satisfactorily descriptive—in which I seemed to see that bedroom passing through my room, like a picture impossibly painted on a running river. Though almost instantaneous in its passing, it was perfectly clear; so clear that I distinctly, and with a sense of relief observed the absence of the dead body from the bed. As the circumstances of the Murder, gradually unravelling, took stronger and stronger posses of the public mind, I kept them away from mine, by knowing as little about them as was possible in the midst of the universal excitement. John Hathorne asked most of the questions and established the judicial attitude that was to prevail throughout most of the examinations and the trials. Many people suspected that the devil killed this man and he had been summoned by Sarah Good because she had also been accused of bewitching a few girls in the town. Mr. Hathorne asked the children to look at Sarah God and say whether she was one who afflicted them. #RandolphHarris 2 of 13
They accused her to her face, “upon which they were all dreadfully tortured and tormented for a short space of time.” When they recovered from their fits, they charged her with causing them, saying that her specter had come and tormented them although her body remained “at a considerable distance from them.” This was spectral evidence, that is, evidence concerning a specter or apparition of the accused, rather than her bodily person. It was eventually to become the central legal issue of the trials, but at the moment we need only see why it seemed initially so convincing to the examining magistrates. Here were girls afflicted with violent physical symptoms which had no known physical cause, but which a physician had attributed to witchcraft. There was a malicious old woman accused of causing them. When the sufferers accused her they were immediately thrown into convulsions. What could be more plausible than that the convulsions were inflicted as revenge for the accusation? Yet such behaviour was still unfamiliar enough in Salem so that one of the recorders noted that “none here see the [specters of the] witches but the afflicted and themselves.” However, the change was so startling that I fully believed the girls derived their impression in some occult manner. For instance, we knew there was something occult going on because the throat of the murdered man had been cut straight across. In the opening speech for the defense, it was suggested that the deceased might have cut his own throat in the dreadful condition referred to. Yet, it would have been impossible for such a wound to be self-inflicted by either hand. #RandolphHarris 3 of 13
Certainly, Mr. Hathorne was convinced; when the children had recovered and repeated their accusation he turned to the accused woman. “Sarah Good, do you not see now what you have done? Why do you not tell us the truth? Why do you this torment these people children?” Certainly many of her neighbours though her malicious, since they attributed to her a number of inexplicable events, including the death of a cow which perished in a “sudden, terrible and strange unusual manner.” Such testimony was common in witchcraft cases, and it has caused much unseemly hilarity among the modern historians. It is likely, they have asked, that His Satanic Majesty the Devil or any of his minions would stop to concern themselves with the fate of a New England cow? The answer is that nothing is more likely. What else would a fertility god concern himself with but the health or sickness of crops, of animals, and of humans? From the standpoint of a society that still remembered who the Devil was, no testimony could be more relevant. As a matter of fact, the village witches who still exist in rural England are often expert in folk medicines, human and animal, as well as charms, and until recently many of them were midwives. Sarah Osburn also denied that she had hurt anyone, but the girls feel again into fits. Mr. Hathorne asked her how this happened. Perhaps, she said, the Devil went about in her likeness doing harm, but she knew nothing about it. Sarah Osburn was the first at Salem to assert the principle that the Devil can impersonate an innocent person. #RandolphHarris 4 of 13
Whether the devil could or not was a matter of debate in the seventeenth century, but most Protestant authorities agreed with Goodwife Obsurn that, as Hamlet put it, “The Devil hath power/ to assume a pleasing shape.” However, the principle was not discussed at this hearing, since Sarah Osburn was a likely a suspect as Sarah Good, if for no other reason than her lying. Lying was still considered a serious sin in the seventeenth century, and a crime as well, legally punishable by the courts. Nine of us had not the smallest doubt about those passages, neither, I believed, had any one in Court. When Mr. Hathorne tried to find out how well Sarah Osburn knew Sarah Good she said she did not know her by name. Mr. Hathorne asked if Sarah Osburn had been tempted by the devil, and she said no. Why then, he asked, had not she been at church? She had been sick, she said, and unable to go. However, her husband and others contradicted her. “She had not been at meeting,” they said, “this year and two months.” To understand why the matter of church attendance was considered so significant one must remember that the seventeenth century saw witchcraft as literal Devil worship, and therefore as a rival religion to Christianity. This is why the magistrates sometimes asked accused persons, as they asked Sarah Good, what God they served. And if the accused person avoided speaking the name of God (as Sarah Good did), they had reason to think it a suspicious circumstance. The murdered man at that time stood directly opposite the judge, on the other side of the court. He slowly shook a great grey veil, which he carried on his arm for the first time, over his head and whole form. Then he collapsed, all was gone, and his place was empty. #RandolphHarris 5 of 13
The examinations of Sarah Good and Sarah Osburn afford grounds for suspicion and for further examination. However, the major event of that first day of March was the examination of Tituba. It began like the others, but it changed very quickly: “Tituba, what evil spirit have you familiarity with?” “None.” “Why do you hurt these children?” “I do not hurt them.” “Who is it then?” “The Devil, for aught I know.” “Did you never see the Devil?” “The Devil,” said Tituba, “came to me and bid me serve him.” She went on, with a minimum of judicia prodding, to provide a detailed confession of witchcraft, the first of approximately fifty that were made during the Salem trials. On March first and second, in her examination, Tituba said that the Devil had come to her in the shape of a man—a tall man in black, with white hair. Other times he had come in the shape of an animal. He had told her he was God, that she must believe him and serve him six years, and he would give her many fine things. He had shown her a book and she had made a mark in it, a mark that was “red like blood.” Many people thought this to be a revelation. “Then I saw another beast, coming out of the Earth. He had two horns like a lamb, but he spoke like a dragon. He exercised all authority of the first beast on his behalf, and made the earth and its inhabitants worship the first beast, whose fatal wound had been healed. And he performed great and miraculous signs, even causing fire to comedown from Heaven to Earth in full view of men. Because of the signs he was given power to do on behalf of the first beast, he deceived the inhabitants of the Earth. #RandolphHarris 6 of 13
“He ordered them to set up an image in honour of the beast who was wounded by the sword and yet lived. He was given power to give breath to the image of the first beast, so that it could speak and cause all who refused to worship the image to be killed. He also forced everyone, small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on his right hand or on his forehead, so that no one could buy or sell unless one had the mark, which is the name of the beast or the number of his name,” reports Revelation 13.11-17. Sarah Osburn was to die there on the tenth of May. Tituba, like later confessors, was never brought to trial. She lay in jail until she was sold to pay the jailer’s fees, her master refusing to pay them. Sarah Good was brought to trial. Another reaction to Tituba’s confession was to confirm the community in its fear of witchcraft, and particularly its fear of the three accused women. The night of March First William Allen and John Hughes heard a strange noise; it continued frightening them, but the approached and “saw a strange and unusual beast lying on the ground. Going up to it, the said beast vanished away and in the said place started up two or three women fled, not after the manner of other women but swiftly vanished out of sight, which women we took to be Sarah Good, Sarah Osburn, and Tituba.” #RandolphHarris 7 of 13
The next night William Allen again had hallucinations: “Sarah Good visibly appeared to him in his chamber, said Allen being in bed, and brought an unusual light with her. The said Sarah came and sat upon his foot. The said Allen went to kick at her, upon which she vanished and the light with her.” Notice that in this hallucination as in many others the hallucination stops as soon as the subject is able to move or speak. A curse is any expressed wish that some form of adversity or misfortune will befall or attach to one or more persons, a place, or an object. In particular, “curse” may refer to such a wish or pronouncement made effective by a supernatural or spiritual power, such as a god, or gods, a spirit, or natural force, or else as a kind of spell by magic or witchcraft. The Winchester rifle is a handsome gun that legend has it was forged in Hell. Whoever possesses the cursed rife either suffers disaster or fortune. Oliver Fisher Winchester was an American businessman and politician, best known as being the founder of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company. Oliver Winchester was born November 30, 1810 and dead December 10, 1880. Oliver Winchester was known for manufacturing and marketing the Winchester repeating rifle, which was a much re-designed descendant of the Volcanic rifle of some years earlier. Mr. Winchester was more learned than his kind in the mysteries of a deep and thrilling lore of peculiar fascination. He was a man highly honoured for his natural gifts and knowledge of learned books which nobody else could read, that was when he took his second orders the bishop gave him a mantle of scarlet silk to wear upon his shoulders in which, and his lordship had put such power into it that, when the parson has it rightly on, he could govern any ghost or evil spirit, and even stop an Earthquake. #RandolphHarris 8 of 13
Such a powerful man, in combat with supernatural visitations discovered that a division of Smith & Wesson firearms was failing financially with one of their newly patented arms. Having an eye for opportunity, Mr. Winchester assembled venture capital together with other stockholders and acquired the Smith & Wesson division, better known as the Volcanic Repeating Arms Company, in 1855. By 1857, Mr. Winchester had positioned himself as the principle stockholder in the company and relocated to New Haven, Connecticut, and changed the name to New Haven Arms Company. After experiencing a slow start, and then a booming success with the Henry rifle, the company reorganized once again and the first Winchester rifle was the Model 1866, which had been nicknamed the Yellow Boy. The gun was called Yellow Boy because it should be remembered that, howsoever strange and singular it may sound to us that a mere lad should formally solicit such a performance at his own hands. Gradually Mr. Winchester amassed a considerable fortune. When Mr. Oliver Winchester died on December 10, 1880, his ownership in the company passed to his son, William Wirt Winchester (who married Sarah Lockwood Pardee in 1862), and died March 7 1881 at the young age of 43. The couple has also had a child, Annie Pardee Winchester, born June 15, 1866, and died 6 weeks later on July 25, 1866. Mrs. Winchester was deeply troubled by the loss of her daughter. In the course of her daily walk, she had to pass a certain heath or down where the road wound along through tall blocks of granite with open spaces of grassy sward between them. #RandpolphHarris 9 of 13
There in a certain spot, and always in the same place, she declared that she encountered, every day, a baby with a pale and troubled face, clothed in a little dress of white pique, made with two skirts. The pique was cut slightly Gabriele, and rounded off in the front with scallops, bound with white braid, with a button in each scallop, and ribbon-sash, tied at the left side, with one hand always stretched forth, and the other pressed against her side. “She is my baby,” Mrs. Winchester would say, and she often used to come to her parents house in New Haven; but that which troubled her was, that she had now been dead three years, and she had seen her body laid in the grave at her burial, this that she saw every day must needs be her soul or ghost. The hair of the appearance, sayth Mrs. Winchester, is not like anything alive, but it is so soft and light that it seemth to melt away while you look; but her eyes are set, and never blink—no, not when the sun shineth full upon her face. She maketh no steps, but seemth to swim along the top of the grass; and her hand, which is stretched out alway, seemth to point to something far away, out of sight. It is her continual coming; for she never failth to meet Mrs. Winchester, and to pass on, that hath quenched her spirits; and although she never seeth her by night, yet cannot she get her natural rest. Mrs. Winchester went to see a doctor who told her, “The case is strange but by no means impossible. It is one that I will study, and fear not to handle, if you will be free with me, and fulfill all that I desire.” Mrs. Winchester was overjoyed, but she perceived that the doctor turned pale, and was downcast with some thought which, however, he did not express. #RandolphHarris 10 of 13
The doctor knew that this might be a doemonium meridianum, the most stubborn spirit to govern and guide that any human can meet, and the most perilous withal. He made an appointment to go with Mrs. Winchester to the spot where she had these encounters. They had hardly reached the accustomed spot, when they both saw her at once gliding towards them; punctually as the ancient writers describe their “lemures, which swoon along the ground, neither marking the sand nor bending the herbage.” The aspect of the baby girl was exactly that which had been related by Mrs. Winchester. There was a pale and stony face, the strange misty hair, the eyes firm and fixed, that gazed, yet not on them, but on something that they saw far, far away; one hand and arm stretched out, and the other grasping the girdle of her waist. She floated along the field like upon a stream, and glided past the spot where they stood, pausingly. But so deep was the awe that came over the doctor, as he stood there in the light of day, face to face with a human soul separate from her bones and flesh, that his heart and purpose both failed him. He had resolved to speak to the spectre in the appointed form of words, but he did not. He stood like one amazed and speechless, until she had passed clean of out sight. When they returned to the house, and after he had said all he could to pacify Mrs. Winchester, he took leave for that time, with a promise that when he had fulfilled certain business elsewhere, when then he alleged, he would return and take orders to assuage these disturbances and their cause. #RandolphHarris 11 of 13
The doctor later told Mrs. Winchester that he thought it was best that they try an exorcism, but his Church, as is well known, hath abjured certain branches of her ancient powers, on grounds of perversion and abuse. So he referred her to a medium. The medium told Mrs. Winchesters, “There is a danger from the demons, but so there is in the surrounding air every day.” There was a kind of trouble in the air, a soft rippling sound, and all at once the shape appeared, and came towards the medium gradually. She opened her parchment scroll, and read aloud the command. The spirit paused, and seemed to waver and doubt; stood still; then she rehearsed the sentence again, sounding out every syllable like a chant. The spirit then swam into the midst of the circle, and there stood still, suddenly. Her knees shook under her, and the drops of sweat ran down her flesh like rain. But, although face to face with the spirit, the medium’s heart grew calm, and her mind was composed. The spirit then commanded Mrs. Winchester to move West and build a mansion in honour of the spirit killed by the Winchester rifle and “as long as the hammer keep pounding, her heart would continue to beat.” The medium dismissed the troubled ghost, until she peacefully withdrew, gliding towards the west. Mrs. Winchester moved to San Jose, which was near her family Member, Enoch Pardee, an occultist, prominent physician, free mason, and Mayor of Oakland, California USA, had built his family’s mansion in 1868, which is now known as the Pardee House Museum. Masonry has influenced more the modern witchcraft; it has influenced dozens of occult orders. Mrs. Winchester bought a farm house and built a massive mansion. There was something very painful and peculiar in the position of the Winchester mansion through the nineteenth century. The estate in those days was in a transitory state, and Mrs. Winchester, like her formularies, embodied a strange mixture of the old belief with the new interpretation. #RandolphHarris 12 of 13
However, the mansion is now flanked by a pleasantness, a beautiful garden and lawn, and it is surrounded by a sole grove of palm trees. It has also the aspect of age and of solitude, and looks the very scene of harmony and supernatural events. A legend might well belong to every beautiful glade of grass around, and there must surely be a haunted room somewhere within its walls. The incredible mansion, scenery of the legend still survives, and, like the field of the forty footsteps in another history, the place is still visited by those who take interests in the supernatural tales of old and new. Freemasons supposedly conducted a séance in the mansion in August of 2019. A phantom made an answer willingly. It stated, “before the next Yule-tide, a fearful pestilence will lay waste the land, and myriads of souls will be loosened from the flesh, until our valleys will be full.” The general facts stated in this diary are to these matters of belief accounted a strong proof of the veracity of the Ghost that the plague, fatal to so many millions, did break out in the global village at the close of the year. How sorely must the infidels and heretics of this generation be dismayed when they know that this Black Death, which is now swallowing its thousands in the streets of the great city, was foretold several months before the outbreak, under the séance of a freemason, by a visible and suppliant ghost! And what pleasure and improvements do such deny themselves who scorn and avoid all opportunity of intercourse with souls separate, and the spirits, glad and sorrowful, which inhabit the unseen World! May they who observe the Sabbath and call it a delight, rejoice in Thy Kingdom. May the people who sanctify the seventh day be sated and delighted with Thy bounty. For Thou didst find pleasure in the seventh day, and didst sanctify it, calling it the most desirable of the days, in remembrance of creation. #RandolphHarris 13 of 13
Winchester Mystery House
Today is the return of our guided Mansion Tour! The tour guide-led experience allows guests to access areas of the mansion that have been closed since March 2020. Click the link in our bio for more information. winchestermysteryhouse.com/recent-links
Scripture Does Not Confine “Soulishness” to Humans and Neither Does Biology!
California is part of the United States of America, the most powerful country in the World. Now, I am not expecting you to believe me, but what I tell you is he truth. No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear. Every civilization has a hidden code—a set of rules or principles that run through all its activities like a repeated design. As industrialism pushed across the planet, its unique hidden design became visible. It consisted of a set of six interrelated principles that programmed the behaviour of millions. Growing naturally out of the divorce of production and consumption, these principles affected every aspect of life from romance and sports to work and national security. Much of the angry conflict in our schools, businesses, and governments today actually centers on these half-dozen principles, as Second Wave people instinctively apply and defend them and Third Wave people challenge and attack them. However, this is getting ahead of the story. The most familiar of these Second Wave principles is standardization. Everyone knows that industrial societies turn out millions of identical products. Fewer people have stopped to notice, however, that once the market became important, we did more than simply standardize Coca-Cola bottles, light bulbs, and automobile transmissions. We applied the same principle to many other things. Among the first to grasp the importance of this idea was Theodore Vail who, at the turn of the century, built the American Telephone & Telegraph Company into a giant. (Not to be confused with the multinational ITT, the International Telephone & Telegraph Corporations.) #RandolphHarris 1 of 26
Working as a railway postal clerk in the late 1860’s, Mr. Vail had noticed that no two letters necessarily when to their destination via the same route. Sacks of mail traveled back and forth, often taking weeks or months to reach their destinations. Mr. Vail introduced the idea of standardized routing—all letter going to the same place would go the same way—and helped revolutionize the post office. When he later formed AT&T, he set out to place an identical telephone in every American home. Mr. Vail standardized not only the telephone handset and all its components but AT&T’s business procedures and administration as well. In a 1908 advertisement he justified his swallowing up small telephone companies by arguing for “a clearing-house of standardization” that would ensure economy in “construction of equipment, lines and conduit, as well as in operating methods and legal work,” not to mention “a uniform system of operating and accounting.” What Mr. Bail recognized is that to succeed in the Second Wave environment, “software”—id est, procedures and administrative routines—had to be standardized along with hardware. Mr. Vail was only one of the Great Standardizers who shaped industrial society. Another was Frederick Winslow Taylor, a machinist turned crusader, who believed that work could be made scientific by standardizing the steps each worker performed. In the early decades of this century Mr. Taylor decided that there was one best (standard) way to perform each job, one best (standard) tool to perform it with, and a stipulated (standard) time in which to complete it. #RandolphHarris 2 of 26
Armed with this philosophy, Mr. Taylor became the World’s leading management guru. In his time, and later, he was compared with Dr. Freud, Karl Marx, and Benjamin Franklin. Nor were capitalist employers, eager to squeeze the last ounce of productivity from their workers, alone in their admiration for Taylorism, with its efficiency experts, piecework schemes, and rate-busters. Communists shared their enthusiasm. Indeed, Vladimir Lenin urged Mr. Taylor’s methods be adapted for use in socialist production. An industrializer first and a Communist second, Mr. Lenin, too, was a believer in standardization. In Second Wave societies, hiring procedures as well as work were increasingly standardized. Standardized tests were used to identify and weed out the supposedly unfit, especially in the civil service. Pay scales were standardized throughout whole industries, along with fringe benefits, lunch hours, holidays, and grievance procedures. To prepare youth for the job market, educators designed standardized curricula. Men alike Alfred Binet and Lewis Terman devised standardized intelligence tests. School grading policies, admission procedures, and accreditation rules were similarly standardized. The multiple-choice test came into its own. The mass media, meanwhile, disseminated standardizing imagery, so that millions read the same advertisements, the same news, the same short stories. The repression of language used by marginalized ethnicities and cultures was implemented by central governments, combined with the influence of mass communications, led to the near disappearance of local and regional dialects or even whole languages, such as Welsh and Alsatian. #RandolphHarris 3 of 26
“Standard” American, English, French, or, for that matter, Russian, supplanted “nonstandard” languages. Different parts of the country began to look alike, as identical gas stations, billboards, and houses cropped up everywhere. The principle of standardization ran through every aspect of daily life. At an even deeper level, industrial civilization needed standardized weights and measures. It is no accident that one of the first acts of the French Revolution, which ushered the age of industrialism into France, was an attempt to replace the crazy-quilt patchwork of measuring units, common in preindustrial Europe, with the metric system and a new calendar. Uniform measures were spread through much of the World by the Second Wave. Moreover, if mass production required the standardization of machines, products, and processes, the ever-expanding market demanded a corresponding standardization of money, and even prices. Historically, money had been issued by banks and private individuals as well as by kings. Even as late as the nineteenth century privately minted money was still in use in parts of the United States of America, and the practice lasted until 1935 in Canada. Gradually, however, industrializing nations suppressed all nongovernmental currencies and managed to impose a single standard currency in their place. Until the nineteenth century, moreover, it was still common for buyers and sellers in industrial countries to haggle over every sale in the time-honoured fashion of a Cairo bazaar. #RandolphHarris 4 of 26
In 1825 a young Northern Irish immigrant named A. T. Stewart arrived in New York, opened a dry-goods store, and shocked customers and competitors alike by introducing a fixed price for every item. This one-price policy—price standardization—made Mr. Stewart one of the merchant princes of his era and cleared away one of the key obstacles to the development of mass distribution. Whatever their other disagreements, advanced Second Wave thinks shared the conviction that standardization was efficient. At many levels, therefore, the Second Wave brought a flattening out of differences through a relentless application of principle of standardization. Speculators were quick to see the financial opportunities in building commuter suburbs. Many of those who invested in streetcar lines were primarily interested in real estate profits rather than managing transit companies. Real estate speculators realized that having a streetcar line running to their properties did wonders for sales. The trolley was a subdivider’s dream, since previously marginal land that had been purchased at low cost could not be subdivided and sold at tremendous profit. Thus, for example, in Boston, the West End Line was originally established from Boston to Brookline by Henry Whitney to attract customers to his land. Nor was land speculation restricted to the largest cities. In Richmond, Virginia, where the electric streetcar had been invented, William Ginter built a streetcar line at his own expense in order to boom his north side upper-class commuter suburb of Ginter Parl. The streetcar line lost money, but the development more than made up for it in sold lots. #RandolphHarris 5 of 26
The most extensive system created primarily to sell real estate was developed by Henry E. Huntington in the Los Angeles, California USA area. His Pacific Electric Railway Company operated an extensive system of “Big Red” interurbans (heavier built streetcars for longer runs). Interurbans radiated out from Los Angeles throughout the Los Angeles basin area. Huntington consciously operated interurban streetcar lines to new areas at a loss in order to spur sales of his real estate holdings. Decades before the automobile was a potent force, Huntington’s interurbans had invented urban sprawl. Trying together spatially separate new communities of homeowners, the streetcars created the multicentered Los Angeles of today. Automobiles are often blamed for the sprawl of Los Angeles area; but the automobile did not create the sprawl—it simply allowed the orange groves between communities to be filled in. None of this is to suggest that trolley lines were not economic money-makers in their own right. Electrification of existing horsecar lines and consolidation of smaller companies into traction franchises made huge fortunes for company owners. The handful of owners of New York’s Metropolitan Street Railway Company made $100,000, 000 USD (approximately $3,130,174, 418.60 in 2021 dollars). In Chicago, Charles Yerkes, by astute business sense and a willingness to use bribery and unethical practices, had consolidated most of that city’s streetcars under his control. In so doing, he also became one of the most hated men in the city. His arrogant demand that he be given the sole franchise for the city for fifty years only failed to pass a bribed Chicago City Council because of the outage of an armed mob of city residents who stormed City Hall. (Unrepentant, Yerkes moved to England and bought the London Underground.) #RandolphHarris 6 of 26
Only after World War I did the streetcar companies, with their fixed nickel fares, increasing operating and maintenance costs, and aging equipment, becomes money-loosing operations. By this time, earlier excesses of the traction companies had made fare increases virtually impossible. In city after city transit companies were being sandwiched between rising costs and fixed revenues. Particularly during World War I, there were sharp increases in the wages paid transit operators, and older, heavily used equipment needed replacement. Most transit system, however, were tied to a 5-cent fare, and any attempt to raise fares led to massive public outcries. Given the fortunes made by earlier transit owner “robber barons,” there was little public sympathy for transit companies. Now was there any support for public subsidies or tax relief for what were seen as private companies. The use of public monies for the building and maintenance of roads for automobile usage was, on the other hand, viewed as necessary. Streetcar companies thus cut back on service and equipment, which in turned caused them to lose more riders to the faster and more flexible automobiles. Nor could bus lines ever win back automobile users. In spite of the riches initially going to the owners and investors, the electric street railways were a bargain for passengers. The standard fare was 5 cents, which was half the cost of the horsecars. Moreover, the consolidated trolley lines would take one anywhere in the system, and transfers were free. At the turn of the century, the trolleys were transporting customers to the extent of 2 billion trips a year. The streetcar had become an American way of life. From this point on, American city dwellers, and more important, suburbanites, would take easy and rapid mobility for granted as a basic right. #RandolphHarris 7 of 26
While the electric streetcar made middle-class suburbanization possible, the automobile was to make suburbanization the dominant residential pattern. As the twentieth century opened, the automobile was strictly a novelty—a rich man’s plaything. In all North America, there were only 8,000 horseless carriages, and most of these both expensive and highly unreliable vehicles. What changed North America into a continent of automobiles was Henry Ford’s Model T. The Model T was first introduced in 1908 and remained in production until 1927. The use of assembly line techniques and few variations (exempli gratia, Model T’s came in one colour—black) meant that the price of the “flivver” kept dropping during the two decades of its production. By the mid-1920s, a new basic Model T, which, when introduced, had cost $950.00 ($14,613.44 in 2021 dollars), could be bought for under $300 ($4,614.77 in 2021 dollars), while used models sold for as little as $50.00 ($769.13 in today’s dollars). (This promoted a social revolution as well, for it meant that young people with autos could easily escape the chaperonage of adults.) Ford’s assembly lines revolutionized auto manufacture by turning out a thousand completed cars every working day. The Model T looked ungainly, but although modestly powered, it was remarkably durable and dependable. Its high ground clearance meant it could navigate even rutted country roads, and it was so simple to repair that any farm boy could fix it. Moreover, the “Tin Lizzie” was inexpensive enough for the average middle-class urban or farm family to own. #RandolphHarris 8 of 26
By the time Ford finally brought out his new Model A in 1927, some 16 million Model T’s had been built, and every second vehicle on the road was a Ford. The rise in automobile registrations indicated how Ford’s assembly lines were bringing a revolution that was changing the face of America. Registrations jumped from 2.5 million in 1915 to 9 million in 1920. This was in spite of automobiles being defined as nonessential for production during the 1917-1918 period, when he United States of America was in World War I. By 1930 auto registrations has skyrocketed to 26.5 million, and in spite of the Great Depression, another 4.5 million cars were added during the 1930s. (Today the United States has 276 million cars registered with a population of 332 million people.) The widespread usage of automobiles by the 1920s meant that cars were being increasingly viewed as necessities rather than as simply recreational vehicles. The Sunday afternoon ride in the car might still take place, but for those suburbanites located near a rail or streetcar track, the auto was a commuting necessity. The automobile made possible the development of previously inaccessible land not served by mass transit. The consequence was a suburban middle-class housing boom in the 1920s. The wide interstitial areas between the transit lines could now be profitably developed. Land speculators, home builders, and those middle-class families owning an automobile no longer were tied to narrow corridors of development. By 1941 the Bureau of Public Roads reported that over 2,100 communities ranging in size up to 50,000 population were without any form of public transportation. Those commuters who could afford the cost of an auto could now drive to work and live where they pleased within a reasonable commuting distance. #RandolphHarris 9 of 26
Automobile suburbs were built at lower densities than earlier suburbs that were tied to fixed transit lines. Both newer and more established suburbs also began using the newly developed planning tool of zoning in order to exclude not only commercial activities but also inexpensive homes on small lots. Zoning laws came into widespread usage following the pioneering New York City Zoning Resolution of 1916 and subsequent court cases that ruled that zoning was a legal use of the police power of a municipality. Suburbs, whether upper or middle class, also sought to exclude not only less expensive homes, but also residents who did not match the racial, ethnic, and even religious makeup of existing residents. This was done in two ways. The simplest and most effective was through pressure on realtors not to show or sell homes to unwanted groups. Thus, if it were an all-Protestant suburb, Catholics or Jewish would be “steered” to other areas. The second method used was that of establishing for an area exclusive “restrictive covenants.” Restrictive covenants placed legal restrictions on property deeds, which prevented the resale of the property to specific groups. Some groups would have to pay well above market price, even if others were not interested in the home, just to be able to buy into the community because no one would sale to them or would not sale to them unless it was well above market value. As of 1950 over thirty-three percent of the homes in Los Angeles, California had restrictive covenants. By means of restrictive covenants and informal real estate practices, pre-World War II suburbs were stratified tightly according to race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status. Only in 1948 did the Supreme Court say such restrictions were unenforceable, and not until the 1968 Fair Housing Act were restrictive covenants declared illegal. #RandolphHarris 10 of 26
During the 1920 middle-class, auto-based suburbs sprang up surrounding every major city. The pattern of auto-based suburbs continued, although at a far reduced pace, throughout the Depression years of 1930s. By the eve of World War II, the auto had become the prime means of suburbanites, and even many city dwellers, commuting to work. This was true even in the older suburbs having public transit. In fact, by the beginning of the 1930s, over half of the commuter in all but the largest cities already were driving to work. Commuters in New York and Chicago still relied primarily on mass transit lines, but mot of those in Washington, Cincinnati, St. Louis, Milwaukee, Kanas City, and Los Angeles drove. New York, and to a lesser extent Chicago, retained reliance on public transport in the center of the city both because there were few places for commuters to park their automobiles. Even today one finds New Yorkers who do not and cannot drive. However, in smaller cities, even before the mass suburbanization following World War II, the American suburbanite was committed to automobile commuting. Commuter suburbs built before the second World War largely were bedroom suburbs. They remained dependent on the central city for employment, entertainment, major shopping, and most services. However, they were fiercely politically and legally independent. The result was that the city, which had earlier lost it ability to annex suburbs along the railroad and streetcar corridors, now was virtually surrounded by suburban entities. The city had been encircled and banded by a ring of municipalities so that annexation was virtually impossible. #RandolphHarris 11 of 26
All of the consequences of this inability to expand were not perceived in the 1920s and 1930s. During the 1920s, the cities were economically strong, and during the Depression the focus was on retrenchment. There was little concern about the problems of suburbs liming city growth. Only during the housing boom following World War II did all of the consequences of banding the city with a ring of independent suburbs become evident. Evolutionary psychologists have explored our presumed human special capacity for altruism—for selflessly helping and caring for others. The theologian Jurgen Moltmann has said that self-giving is “God’s trinitarian nature, and is therefore a mark of all His works.” Clearly, self-giving is found not just in God’s human work. “Aiding others at the cost or risk to oneself is widespread in the animal kingdom,” notes Frans de Waal. So, there goes another claim to our uniqueness. Scripture does not confine “soulishness” to humans and neither does biology. However, as we have also seen, just because two behaviours are superficially similar is no reason to assume that the underlying mechanism and thinking patterns are identical. Self-giving, self-sacrificing behaviours are superficially similar is no reason to assume that the underlying mechanisms and thinking patterns are identical. Self-giving, self-sacrificing behaviour appears in different animals. However, that in itself tell us nothing about what underlies those behaviours. Self-giving behaviour may, for example, occur with or without self-awareness. Dr. De Waal had no doubt that “evolution has produced the requisites for mortality: a tendency to develop social norms and enforce the, to capacities of empathy and sympathy, mutual assistance and a sense of fairness, the mechanisms of conflict resolution, and so on.” #RandolphHarris 12 of 26
It seems, therefore, that there are good arguments for believing that some aspects of self-giving and self-limiting behaviour have developed over evolutionary history and become more and more pronounced among nonhuman primates. Those of us who begin from theistic presuppositions can see embedded with creation the seeds, development, and fruit of self-giving behaviour, which is built into the brain and has fully flowered in humankind. Such behaviour is not rigidly determined but is expressed moment to moment as people live in community and make personal choices. We need not deny the emergence of self-giving behaviour, which is built into the brain and has fully flowered in humankind. Such behaviour is not rigidly determined but is expressed moment to moment as people live in community and make personal choices. We need not deny the emergence of self-giving altruism in primate in order to defend the unique self-emptying sacrifice of Jesus Christ. That, we believe, was a unique and ultimate act that sets Christ apart from all others. If evolutionary science nevertheless seems to erode one’s sense of our mystery and spiritual significance, consider this: knowing how something came to be and how it works need never destroy our appreciation for its beauty and uniqueness. A music student who comes to understand the physics of organ sound can still savour the grandeur of Bach played on a great organ. As long ago as the fifth century, St. Augustine was able to express this awe from human creatures embedded in a long history: “The Universe was brought into being in a less than fully formed state, but was gifted with the capacity to transform itself from unformed matter into a truly marvelous array of structures and life forms.” #RandolphHarris 13 of 26
Looking back to the birth of the Universe also evokes our sense of awe. It blows our minds—the entire Universe apparently inflating in an essential instant from a mere point to cosmological size. Scientists tells us that if energy in this Big Bang hand been infinitesimally less, the Universe would have collapsed back on itself. Had it been the teeniest bit more, the resulting thin Universe would never have supported life. As it is, the Universe is exquisitely “fine-tuned,” just precisely right to produce intelligent beings. Is there a benevolent Creator behind it? Although science is silent on that, it does offer us an amazing picture of an extraordinary nature that over time has given rise to everything from bacteria to the human brain. Our nature may be, as the Bible says, from dust to dust, but we are also amazing, priceless creatures, made in God’s own image for relationship with one another and with our creator. Therefore, the study of animal behaviour and cognition has a long history in psychology and poses no troubling issues for Christians. Attempts to specify uniquely human traits, such as the ability to read others’ minds, to display self-giving altruism, or to use language, have foundered with observations of animal mind reading and animal altruism, and with the training of chimpanzees to communicate by sign. However, then, scholars remind us that surface behaviour similarities between humans and other animals need not signify identical underlying processes. Moreover, animal cognition and helping is only a budding form of human thinking and altruism, and but a pale reminder of the infinite intelligence and love of God. #RandolphHarris 14 of 26
Finally, acknowledging the long emergence of life on Earth need not diminish by one iota our sense of awe at our own mysterious workings and spiritual significance. We must infer that the first words humans used had a much broader meaning in their minds than do those used in languages that are already formed; and that, being ignorant of the division of discourse into its constitutive parts, at first they gave each word the meaning of a whole sentence. When they began to distinguish subject from attribute and very from noun, which was no mean effort of genius, substantives were at first only so many proper nouns; the [present] infinitive was the only verb tense; and the notion of adjectives must have developed only with considerable difficulty, since every adjective must have developed only with considerable difficulty, since every adjective is an abstract word, and abstractions are difficult and no particularly natural operations. At first each object was given a particular name, without regard to genus and species which for those first founders were not in a position to distinguish; and all individual things presented themselves to their minds in isolation, as they are in the spectacle of nature. If one oak tree was called A, another was called B. [For the first idea one draws from two things is that they are not the same; and it often requires quite some time to observe what they have in common.] Thus the more limited the knowledge, the more extensive becomes the dictionary. The difficulty inherent in all this nomenclature could not easily be alleviated, for in order to group beings under various common and generic denominations, it was necessary to know their properties and their differences. Observations and definitions were necessary, that is to say, natural history and metaphysics, and far more than men of those times could have had. #RandolphHarris 15 of 26
Moreover, general ideas can be introduced into the mind only with the assistance of words, and the understanding grasps them only through sentences. That is one reason why animals cannot form such ideas or even acquire the perfectibility that depends on them. When a monkey moves unhesitatingly from one nut to another, does anyone think the monkey had the general idea of that type of fruit and that one compares its archetype with these two individuals? Undoubtedly not; but the sight of one of these nuts recalls to one’s memory the sensations one received of the other; and one’s eyes, modified in a certain way, announce to one’s sense of taste the modification it is about to receive. Every general idea is purely intellectual. The least involvement of the imagination thereupon makes the idea particular. Try to draw for yourself the image of a tree in general; you will never succeed in doing it. In spite of yourself, it must be seen as small or large, barren or leafy, light or dark; and if you were in a position to see in it nothing but what you see in every tree, this image would no longer resemble a tree. Purely abstract beings are perceived in the same way, or are conceived only through discourse. The definition of a triangle alone gives you the true idea of it. As soon as you behold one in your mind, it is a particular triangle and not some other one, and you cannot avoid making its lines to be perceptible or it plane to have a colour. It is therefore necessary to utter sentences, and thus to speak, in order to have general ideas. For as soon as the imagination stops, the mind proceeds no further without the assistance of discourse. If, then, the first inventors of language could give names only to idea thy already had, it follows that the firs substantives could not have been anything but proper nouns. #RandolphHarris 16 of 26
However, when, by means I am unable to conceive, our new grammarians began to extend to extend their ideas and to generalize their words, the ignorance of the inventors must have been subjected this method to very strict limitations. And just as they had at first unduly multiplied the names of individual things, owning to their failure o know the genera and species, they later made too few species and genera, owing to their failure to have considered beings in all their differences. Pushing these divisions far enough would have required more experience and enlightenment than they could have had, and more investigations and work then they were willing to put into it. Now if even today new species are discovered everyday that until now had escaped the attention of humans who judged things only on first appearance! As for primary classes and the most general notions, it is superfluous to add that they too much have escaped them. How, for example, would they have imagined or understood the words “matter,” “mind,” “substance,” “mode,” “figure,” and “movement,” when our philosophers, who for so long have been making use of them, have a great deal of difficulty understand them themselves; and when, since the ideas attached to these words are purely metaphysical, they found no model of them in nature? I stop with these first steps, and I implore my judge to suspend their reading here to consider, concerning the invention of physical substantives alone, that is to say, concerning the easiest part of the language to discover, how far language still had to go in order to express all the thoughts of humans, assume a durable form, be capable of being spoken in public, and influence society. #RandolphHarris 17 of 26
I implore them to reflect upon how much time and knowledge were needed to discover numbers, abstract words, aorists, and all the tenses of verbs, particles, syntax, the connecting of sentences, reasoning, and the forming of all logic of discourse. As for myself, being shocked by the unending difficulties and convinced of the almost demonstrable impossibility that languages could have arisen and been established by merely human means, I leave to anyone who would undertake it the discussion of the following difficult problem: which was the more necessary: an already formed society for the invention of languages, or an already invented language for the establishing of society? Whatever these origins may be, it is clear, from the little care taken by nature to bring humans together through mutual needs and to facilitate their use of speech, how little she prepared them for becoming habituated to the ways of society, and how little she contributed to all that humans have done to establish the bonds of society. In fact, it is impossible to imagine why, in that primitive state, one human would have done to establish the bonds of society. In fact, it is impossible to imagine why, in that primitive state, one human would have a greater need for another human than a monkey or a wolf has for another of its respective species; or, assuming this need, what motive could induce the other human to satisfy it; or even, in this latter instance, how they could be in mutual agreement regarding the conditions. I know that we are repeatedly told that nothing would have been so miserable as a human in that state; and if it is true, as I believe I have proved, that it is only after many centuries that humans could have had the desire and the opportunity to leave that state, that would be charge to being against nature, not against one whom nature have thus constituted. #RandolphHarris 18 of 26
However, if we understand the word miserable properly, it is a word which is without meaning or which signifies merely a painful privation and suffering of the body of the soul. Now I would very much like someone to explain to me what kind of misery can there be for a free being whose heart is at peace and whose body is in good health? I ask which of the two, civil, or natural life, is more likely to become insufferable to those who live it? We see about us practically no people who do not complain about their existence; many even deprive themselves of it to the extent they are able, and the combination of divine and human laws is hardly enough to stop his disorder. I ask if anyone has ever heard tell of a savage who was living in liberty ever dreaming of complaining about one’s life and of killing oneself. Let the judgment therefore be made with less pride on the side real misery lies. On the other hand, nothing would have been so miserable as savage humans, dazzled by enlightenment, tormented by passions, and reasoning about a state different from one’s own. It was by a very wise providence that the latten faculties one possessed should develop only as the occasion to exercise them presents itself, so that they would be neither superfluous nor troublesome to one beforehand, nor underdeveloped and useless in time of need. In instinct alone, humans had everything they needed in order to live in the state of nature; in a cultivated reason, one has only what one needs to live in society. #RandolphHarris 19 of 26
Others have said that pre-existing merits in this life are the reason and cause of the effect of predestination. For the Pelagians taught that the beginning of doing well came from us; and the consumption from God: so that it came about that the effect of predestination was granted to one, and not to another, because the one made a beginning by preparing, whereas the other did not. However, against this we have the saying of the Apostle (2 Corinthians 3.5), that “we are not sufficient to think anything of ourselves as of ourselves.” Now no principle of action can be imagined previous to the act of thinking. Wherefore it cannot be said that anything begun in us can be the reason of the effect of predestination. And so others said that merits following the effect of predestination are the reason of predestination; giving us to understand that God gives grace to a person, and pre-ordains that He will give it, because He knows beforehand that He will make good use of that grace, as if a king were to give a horse to a soldier because he knows he will make good use of it. However, these seem to have drawn a distinction between that which flows from grace, and that which flows from free will, as if the same thing cannot come from both. It is, however, manifest that what is of grace is the effect of predestination; and this cannot be considered as the reason of predestination, since it is contained in the notion of predestination. Therefore, if anything else in us be the reason of predestination, it will outside the effect of predestination. Now there is no distinction between what flows from free will, and what is of predestination; as there is no distinction between what flows from a secondary cause and form a first cause. For the providence of God produces effects through the operation of secondary causes. Wherefore, that which flows from free-will is also of predestination. #RandolphHarris 20 of 26
We must say, therefore, that the effect of predestination may be considered in a twofold light—in one way in particular; and this there is no reason why one effect of predestination should not be the reasons or cause of another; a subsequent effect being the reason of a previous effect, as its final cause; and the previous effect being the reason of the subsequent as its meritorious cause, which is reduced to the disposition of the matter. Thus we might say that God pre-ordained to give glory on account of merit, and the He pre-ordained to give grace to merit glory. In another way, the effect of predestination may be considered in general. Thus, it is impossible that the whole of the effect of predestination in general should have any causes coming from us; because whatsoever is in humans disposing them towards salvation, is all included under the effect of predestination; even the preparation for grace. For neither does his happen otherwise than by divine help, according to the prophet Jeremias (Lam 5.21): “covert us, O Lord, to Thee, and we shall be converted.” Yet predestination has in this way, in regard to its effect, the goodness of God for its reason; towards which the whole effect of predestination is directed as to an end; and from which it proceeds, as from its first moving principle. The use of grace foreknown by God is not the cause of conferring grace, except after the manner of a final cause; as was explained above. Humans kill for love, for revenge, for survival, even for ideas. Perhaps it is part of human nature, but in this survival, must we also be taught to hate? Predestination has its foundation in the goodness of God as regards its effects in general. Considered in its particular effect, however, one effect is the reason of another; as already stated. #RandolphHarris 21 of 26
The reason for predestination of some, and reprobation of others, must be sought for in the goodness of God. Thus He is said to have made all things through His goodness, so that the divine goodness might be represented in things. Now it is necessary that God’s goodness, which it itself is one and undivided, should be manifested in many ways in His creation; because creatures in themselves cannot attain to the simplicity of God. Thus it is that for the completion of the Universe there are required different grades of being; some of which hold a high and some a low place in the Universe. That this multiformity of graces may be preserved in things, Go allows some evils, lest many good things should never happen, as was said above. Let us then consider the whole of the human race, as we consider the whole of the Universe. God will to manifest His goodness in humans; in respect to those whom He predestines, by means of His mercy, as sparing them; and in respect of others, whom He reprobates, by means of His justice, in punishing them. This is he reason why God elects some and rejects others. To this the Apostle refer, saying (Romans 9.22, 23): “What if God, willing to show His wrath [that is, the vengeance of His justice], and to make His power known, endured [that is, permitted] with much patience vessels of wrath, fitted for destruction; that He might show the riches of His glory on the vessels of mercy, which He hath prepared unto glory,” and (2 Timothy 2.20): “But in a great house there are not only vessels of gold and silver; but also of wood and of Earth; and some, indeed, unto honour, but some unto dishonour.” #RandolphHarris 22 of 26
Yet why God chooses some for glory, and reprobates others, has no reason, expect the divine will. Whence Augustine says (Tract. Xxvi. In Joan): “Why He draws one, and another He draws not, seek not to judge, if thou dost not wish to err.” Thus too, in the things of nature, a reason can be assigned, since primary matter is although uniform, why one part of it was fashioned by God from the beginning under the form of fire, another under the form of Earth, that there might be a diversity of species in things of nature. Yet why this particular part of matter is under this particular form, and that under another, depends upon the simple will of God; as from the simple will of the artificer it depends that this stone is in part of the wall, and that in another; although the plan requires that some stones should be in this place, and some in that place. Neither on this account can there be said to be injustice in God, if He prepares unequal lots for unequal things. This would be altogether contrary to the notion of justice, if the effect of predestination were granted as a debt and not gratuitously. In things which are given gratuitously, a person can give more or less, just as one pleases (provided one deprives nobody of one’s due), without any infringement of justice. This is what the master of the house said: “Take what is thine, and go thy way. It is not lawful for me to do what I will? (Matthew 20.14, 15). Hail, holy Light. Saint John of the Cross, held unjustly as a prisoner, found his cell filled with light as he dreamed one night the Virgin appeared to him promising help if he escaped. Marinus, the Danish mystic, told me that Jesus appeared to him in meditation surrounded by a ball of light. #RandolphHarris 23 of 26
We want peace, of course, but sometimes we do not want to spend a lot of time trying to acquire it. Instead, we lose ourselves in the crowd, intrude ourselves into foreign affairs—that is to say, in affairs outside the monastery walls. Continue to do that, and we will surely lose what little peace we have. What is the attraction outside? Why do we pounce on every invitation, attend every function? Why do we ignore every chance to gather ourselves within? Blessed are those who live uncomplicated lives, for they shall have heads without headaches. Why have some Saints been such perfect models of the contemplative life? Because they strove to deaden their Earthly desires. In doing so they were not without some spiritual guile. They emptied out the innermost parts of their hidden hearts so they could cling to God. Inside the walls we play too much with our pet distractions; outside, we mingle too often with the passing parade. Rarely do we stamp out a vice completely. Daily do we forget to light a candle under ourselves. Rarely do we achieve the perfection that is possible within one day. And so we remain neither particular pretension. If we were maximally dead to ourselves and only minimally involved with others, then we could divine the divine, that is to say experience some of the delights in the Heavenly Garden. However, are we not, so we cannot. Our passion and concupiscences are plants, wildly successful plants chocking everything in sight. About to swing on down the road to perfection in the merry hope of following the Saints, we take a header on the first cobble and howl to high Heaven! Bruised knees, bruised feelings, we decide to stay home and nurse our hurts, not all that unhappy, it has to be admitted, about postponing the trip for the thousandth time. #RandolphHarris 24 of 26
Hold your ground like the brave embroiled in battle; that is what we should do. Have no fear. God will give us a sign from above. For He is prepared to help those who slug it out for a greater glory. After all, He promotes the fights, He says, so we can enjoy the victories. Spiritual progress, that is what we are concerned about here. Observing only the externals of our religion is not enough. Devotion will dry up if that is all we are going to do. Our garden’s overrun. Let us put ax to the root. Let us purge ourselves of the spurge, the gorse and the vetch, the cattail and the creeper. That is to say, as the Gospel of Matthew exhorts (3.10), let us root out our passions, the deadly nightshades that haunt our patch. Only then will the roses emerge. Stamp out just one vice a year, and you will soon be a perfect individual. That is a piece of common wisdom but, apparently, experience tells us otherwise. In the beginning of our monastic life, we were more obedient and more observant than we are today, many years after our first vows. Or so it seems in retrospect. Fervor and progress ought to inch along each day—that is the way it was in the Great Bernard’s day, or so he said in one of his sermons (27.5), when many of his monks managed to retain their firs fervor for a lifetime. However, nowadays it is an eyebrow raider if some boke can retain just a smidge of his first fervor for a few weeks! What is the moral? No pan, no gain. If we had undergone more pain at the beginning, we would have more gain by now. And would not that be nice? #RandolphHarris 25 of 26
Not to do what you are used to is hard. Harder still, to do what you are not accustomed to. However, if you do not make it a practice of dealing with the small annoyances, you will be helpless in the face of a big challenge. Make no mistake about it. Self-denial is what we are talking about here. Now is the time to make a new start. Resist your inclination. Unlearn your bad behaviour, lest it lead you little by little to worse behavior. Oh, if you would only make a turnaround! You would start pleasing yourself and stop annoying others. Living your life well, that is the way to pay more attention to your spiritual progress. O God, my mother, my father, lord of the hills, lord of the valleys, lord of the forest, please be patient with me. I am about to do what has always been done. Now I make you an offering, that you may be warned: I am about to charm your heart. Perhaps you will have the strength to endure it. I am going to work you in order that I may live. Let no animal purse me, no snake, no scorpion, no wasp annoy me, no failing timber hit me, no ax, no machete catch me. With all my heat I am going to work you. Thou art our Almighty God, O Lord eternal; how mighty is Thy name in all the Earth! And the Lord shall be King over all the Earth; on that day shall the Lord be One and His name one. As it is written in holy Scripture: The Lord shall reign forever; Thy God, O Zion, shall be Sovereign unto all generations. Hallelujah. Unto all generations we will declare Thy greatness, and to all eternity we will proclaim Thy holiness. Our mouth shall ever speak Thy praise, O our God, for Thou art a great and holy God and King. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, the Holy God. #RandolphHarris 26 of 26
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Next to Life and Liberty, We Consider Education the Greatest Blessing!
We had a sense of importance that would have led us to risk our lives for our rhetoric. The precondition of any civilization, old or new, is energy. First Wave societies drew their energy from “living batteries”—human and animal muscle-power—or from sun, wind, and water Forests were cut for cooking and heating. Waterwheels, some of them using tidal power, turned milestones. Windmills creaked in the fields. Animals pulled the plow. As late as the French Revolution, it has been estimated, Europe drew energy from an estimated 14 million horses and 24 million oxen. All First Wave societies thus exploited energy sources that were renewable. Nature could eventually replenish the forests they cut, the wind that filled their sails, the rivers that turned their paddle wheels. Even animals and people were replaceable “energy slaves.” All Second Wave societies, by contrast, began to draw their energy from coal, gas, and oil—from irreplaceable fossil fuels. This revolutionary shift, coming after Newcomen invented a workable steam engine in 1712, meant that for the first time a civilization was eating into nature’s capital rather than merely living off the interest it provided. This dipping into the Earth’s energy reserves provided a hidden subsidy for industrial civilization, vastly accelerating its economic growth. And from that day to this, wherever the Second Wave passed, nations built towering technological and economic structures on the assumptions that cheap fossil fuels would be endlessly available. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21
In capitalist and communist industrial societies alike, in East and West, this same shift has been apparent—from dispersed to concentrated energy, from renewable to non-renewable, from many different sources and fuels to a few. Fossil fuels formed the energy base of all Second Wave societies. The leap to a new energy system was paralleled by a gigantic advance in technology. First Wave societies had relied on what Vitruvius, two thousand years ago, called “necessary inventions.” However, these early winches and wedges, catapults, winepresses, levers, and hoists were chiefly used to amplify human or animal muscles. The Second Wave pushed technology to a totally new level. It spawned gigantic electromechnical machines, moving parts, belts, hoses, bearings, and bolts—all clattering and ratcheting along. And these new machines did more than augment raw muscle. Industrial civilization gave technology sensory organs, creating machines that could hear, see, and touch with greater accuracy and precision than human beings. It gave technology a womb, by inventing machines designed to give birth to new machines in infinite progression—id est, machine tools. More important, it brought machines together in interconnected systems under a single roof, to create the factory and ultimately the assembly line within the factory. On this technological base a host of industries sprang up to give Second Wave civilization its defining stamp. At first there were coal, textiles, and railroads, then steel, auto manufacture, aluminum, chemicals, and appliances. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21
Huge factory cities leaped into existence: Lille and Manchester for textiles, Detroit for automobiles, Essen and—later—Magnitogorsk for steel, and a hundred others as well. From these industrial centers poured million upon endless millions of identical products—shirts, shoes, automobiles, watches, toys, soap, shampoo, camera, machine guns, and electric motors. The new technology powered by the new energy system opened the door to mass production. Mass production, however, was meaningless without parallel changes in the distribution system. In First Wave societies, goods were normally made by handcraft methods. Products were created one at a time on a custom basis. The same was largely true of distribution. It is true that large, sophisticated trading companies had been built up by merchants in the widening crack of the old feudal order in the West. These companies opened trade routes around the World, organized convoys of ships, and camel caravans. They sold glass, paper, silk, nutmeg, tea, wine and wool, indigo and mace. Most of these products, however, reached consumers through tiny stores or on the backs of wagons of peddlers who fanned out into the countryside. Wretched communications and primitive transport drastically circumscribed the market. These small-scale shopkeepers and itinerant vendours could offer only the slenderest of inventories, and often they were out of this or that item for months, even years, at a time. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21
The Second Wave wrought changes in this creaking, overburdened distribution system that were as radical, in their ways, as the more publicized advances made in production. Railroads, highways, and canals opened up the hinterlands, and with industrialism came “palace of trade”—the first department stores. Complex networks of jobbers, wholesalers, commission agents, and manufacturers’ representatives sprang up, and in 1871 George Huntington Hartford, whose first store in New York was painted vermilion and had a cashier’s cage sharped like a Chinses pagoda, did for distribution what Henry Ford later did for the factory. He advanced it to an entirely new stage by creating the World’s first mammoth chain-store system—The Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company. Customer distribution gave way to the mass distribution and mass merchandising that became as familiar and central a component of all industrial societies as the machine itself. What we see, therefore, if we take these changes together, is a transformation of what might be called the “techno-sphere.” All societies—primitive, agricultural, or industrial—use energy; they make things; they distribute things. In all societies energy system, the production system, and the distribution system are interrelated parts of something larger. This larger system is the technosphere, and it has a characteristic form at each stage of social development. As the Second Wave swept across the planet, the agricultural techno-sphere was replaced by an industrial techno-sphere: non-renewable energies were directly plugged into mass production systems which, in turn, spewed goods into a highly developed mass distribution system. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21
This Second Wave techno-sphere, however, needed an equally revolutionary “socio-sphere” to accommodate it. It needed radically new forms of social organization. Before the industrial revolution, for example, family forms varied from place to place. However, wherever agriculture held sway, people tended to live in large, multigenerational households, with uncles, aunts, in-laws, grandparents, or cousins all living under the same roof, all working together as an economic production unit—from the “joint family” in India to the “zadruga” in the Balkans and the “extended family” in Weser Europe. And the family was immobile—rooted to the soil. This is why the Victorian homes were so large, often three and four stories, with an average of 5,000 square feet, and several acres of land; so the families could live at home, have their own space without overcrowding the house, and farm to grow their food and meat. As we are now experiencing a global pandemic in 2021, houses are getting larger again, more people are living in multigenerational households, and even growing their own food. As the Second Wave began to move across First Wave societies, family felt the stress of change. Within each household the collision of wave fronts took the form of conflict, attacks on patriarchal authority, altered relationship between children and parents, new notions of propriety. As economic production shifted from the field to the factory, the family no longer worked together as a unit. To the free workers for factory labour, key functions of the family were parceled out to new, specialized institutions. #RandolphHarris 5 of 21
Education of the child was turned over to schools. Care of the aged was turned over to poorhouses or old-age homes or nursing homes. Above all, the new society required mobility. It needed workers who would follow jobs from place to place. Burdened with elderly relatives, the sick, the disabled, and a large brood of children, the extended family was anything but mobile. Gradually and painfully, therefore, family structure began to change. Torn apart by the migration to the cities, battered by economic storms, families stripped themselves of unwanted relatives, grew smaller, more mobile, and more suited to the needs of the new techno-sphere. The so-called nuclear family-father, mother, and a few children, with no encumbering relatives—became the standard, socially approved, “modern” model in all industrial societies, whether capitalist or socialist. Even in Japan, where ancestor worship gave the elderly an exceptionally important role, the large, close-knit, multigenerational household began to break down as the Second Wave advanced. More and more nuclear unis appeared. In short, the nuclear family became an indentifable feature of all Second Wave societies, marking them off from First Wave societies just as surely as fossil fuels, steel mills, or chain stores. As work shifted out of the fields and the home, moreover, children had to be prepared for factory life. The early mine, mill, and factory owners of industrializing England discovered, as Andrew Ure wrote in 1835, that it was “nearly impossible to convert persons past the age of puberty, whether drawn from rural or from handicraft occupations, into useful factory hands.” #RandolpHarris 6 of 21
If young people could be prefitted to the industrial system, it would vastly ease the problems of industrial discipline later of on. The result was another central structure of all Second Wave societies: mass education. Built in the factory model, mass education taught basic reading, writing, and arithmetic, a bit of history and other subjects. This was the “overt curriculum.” However, beneath it lay an invisible or “covert curriculum” that was far more basic. It consisted—and till does in most industrial nations—of three courses: one in punctuality, one in obedience, and one in rote, repetitive work. Factory labour demanded workers who showed up on time, especially assembly-line hands. It demanded workers who would take orders from a management hierarchy without questioning. And it demanded men and women prepared to slave away at machines or in offices, performing brutally repetitious operations. Thus from the mid-nineteenth century on, as the Second Wave cut across country after country, one found a relentless educational progression: children started school at a younger and younger age, the school year became longer and longer (in the United States of America it climbed 35 percent between 1878 and 1956), and the number of years of compulsory schooling irresistibly increased. Mass pubic education was clearly a humanizing step forward. As a group of mechanic and workingmen in New York City declared in 1829, “Next to life and liberty, we consider education the greatest blessing bestowed upon mankind.” #RandolphHarris 7 of 21
Nevertheless, Second Wave schools machined generation after generation of young people into a pliable, regimented work force of the type required by electromechanical technology and the assembly line. Taken together, the nuclear family and the factory-style school formed part of a single integrated system for the preparation of young people for roles in industrial society. In this respect, too, Second Wave societies, capitalist or communist, North or South, were all alike. For many decades the ecological model was “the” model of urban growth. However, during recent decades it has increasingly come under attack by the scholars favouring neo-Marxian or political economy models. These models challenge the mainstream urban ecology perspective by emphasizing that urban patterns are not the result of “hidden hand” economic forces, but rather that urban patterns are deliberately shaped for private profit by elites in business and government. Thus, unlike ecological approaches, which explain suburbanization as occurring as a consequence of technological factors such as street-car or automobile, political economy, or neo-Marxian, views stress the role played by corporate and real estate interests in manipulating land usage and markets. Suburbia is not a consequence of individuals homeowner choice, but a consequence of a deliberate decision by elites to disinvest in the cities. These elites are composed of “the industrial executives, developers, bankers, and their political allies. This approach is sometimes also identified as the “new urban sociology.” #RandolphHarris 8 of 21
The new urban sociology is usually based on assumptions of neo-Marxism and conflict theory. The term “new urban sociology” is a bit of a misnomer, since advocates of this approach or paradigm often are geographers, urban planners, or political scientists rather than sociologists. Although these perspectives differ in specifics, they all stress that urban development is a consequence of capitalist modes of production, capital accumulation, exploitation of he powerless, and conflictual class relations. Societies are specified according to their mode of production. In the United States of America and Western Europe as well as elsewhere societal development is dominated by the capital accumulation process. A central role in the process of accumulation is assigned to labour power—its use, management, and reproduction. Social spatial relationships, particularly the relationship between capitalistic processes and space, are an intrinsic part of social development. Methodological individualism is overcome through specification of structure and its relationship to the agency, although the articulation of this relationship varies among the new urbanists. Real-estate and its supporting infrastructure constitute a “second circuit” of capital. Certain assumptions are common to the new critical urbanists. These are: Societal interaction is dominated by antagonistic social relationships. Consequently society is not a unified biotic community that experiences change from the outside, but a stratified and highly differentiated form of organization characterized by its own fissures, contradictions, and patterns of uneven development—features that flow from the (for example, the capitalistic) mode of production itself. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21
Social development is unstable in societies with antagonistic owner relationships. Contradictions of development and inequalities of growth fuel antagonism and define the nature of political activities. Power inequality is a basic element in societal relationships and the exercise of power can be a factor in societal development. No society can be adequately analyzed without reference to either its long-term history or its global context. Urban sociology has become captive of its own comfortable assumptions and resonates strongly with younger academics. Some also believe strongly that the social inequality, social conflict, and social problems in many American cities is the predictable consequences of capitalist political economy determining real estate and land usage because certain groups of people had their homes red tagged (scheduled for demolition) as cities were planning to redevelop them. This led to many years of generational wealth being lost for certain groups of people are these homes appreciated to become worth millions just 40 to 40 years later. However, capitalists tend to be republican, but some of these policies that led to certain groups of people being displaced from the homes they owned and robbed of future equity, for example, were policies created by the governors Pat Brown and his son Jerry Brown, who are both democrats. Even today as California brags about having a nearly $40 billion budget surplus, there is a major homeless crisis that is being overlooked by democratic Governor Gavin Newsom and the TV news media, but they can conjure up sports complexes and have them operational in two years, but no move being made on the construction and management of affordable housing. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21
However, there is a conflict about affordable housing because many of their buildings tend to rent to people and do not manage them and there is a lot of violence, crime, rule breaking, and noise, so people do not want income based, or low-income properties in their community because rules are not enforced and it makes the community unlivable for people who pay market rate and often well above market rate prices for their homes. Yet, the answer is not to leave people on the streets to endure unhygienic and unsafe conditions. Well have to acknowledge and deal with gentrification, displacement, and neighbourhood revitalization. We also have to acknowledge the opposite of gentrification is happening: middle- and upper-income residents are moving out, and lower-income residents moving in. Urban space (as well as space at other scales) is the specific effect of the kind of society in which this urban space is developed and the capitalist city is developed according to a logic that is internal to capital itself. The trend of the affluent moving out of their communities has implications for millions of Americans who own a home or are thinking of buying one. In a neighbourhood that is losing its more affluent residents, home prices are likely to underperform, just as they tend to outperform in areas that are gentrifying, as incomes rise. As a buyer, you may value new construction and/or home prices that appreciate above all, and thus be attracted only to rising-income areas where the lawns are all manicured, houses are nice and well-maintained, and not too many cars on the street and in the driveway. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21
As a systematic statement of how non-Marxian new sociology political economy approach can be used to study how property markets work as social phenomena is done by understanding that place is valued in two ways: first, as an object of exchange to be bought and sold, and second, when it is used to do business in or live in. In the latter case place has a sentimental and symbolic value associated with jobs, neighbourhood, hometown, and community. However, the urban growth machine of corporate political elites is interested in land strictly as an investment and commodity to be bought and sold. Their interest is in creating a good business environment so that investments and new residents will come to the area and increase market value of the land, and aggregate rent levels will increase. This governmental and corporate emphasis on growth is at the expense of the interest of local residents and their communities. The needs of the general public are captive to the “growth machine” whose principal interest is in the transfer of wealth rentier groups. Use values of the majority are sacrificed for the exchange values of a few. Thus, community groups that advocate slow growth or neighbourhood preservation are fought by the business elites that profit from maintaining the growth machines. For how can the source of the inequality among humans be known unless one begins by knowing humans themselves? And how will humans be successful in seeing themselves as nature formed one, through all the changes that the succession of time and things must have produced in one’s original constitution, and in separating what one derives from one’s own wherewithal from what circumstances and one’s progress have added to or changed in one’s primitive state? #RandolphHarris 12 of 21
Like the Winchester mansion, which time, sea, earthquakes, humans, and storms have caused wear and damage to while the owners and historians fight to preserve this priceless treasure some consider a god, the human soul, altered in the midst of society by a thousand constantly recurring causes, by the acquisition of a multitude of bits of knowledge and errors, by changes that to place in the constitution of bodies, by the constant impact of the passions, as, as it were, changed its appearance to the point of being nearly unrecognizable or not fully displaying its original intent. And instead of a being active always by certain and invariable principles, instead of that Heavenly and majestic simplicity whose mark its author had left on it, one no longer finds anything but grotesque contrast of passion which thinks I reasons and an understanding in a state of delirium. What is even more cruel is that, since all the progress of the human species continually moves away from its primitive state, the more we accumulate new knowledge, the more we deprive ourselves of the means of acquiring the most important knowledge of all. Thus, in a sense, it is by dint of studying humans that we have rendered ourselves incapable of knowing them. It is easy to say that it is in these successive changes of the human constitution that we must seek the first origin of the differences that distinguish humans, who, by common consensus, are naturally as equal among themselves as were the terrestrial beings of each species the varieties we now observe among some of them. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21
In effect, it is inconceivable that these first changes, by whatever means they took place, should have altered all at once and in the same manner all the individuals of the species. However, while some improved or declined and acquired various good and bad qualities which were not inherent in their nature, the others remained longer in their original state. And such was the first source of inequality among humans, which it is easier to demonstrate thus in general than to assign with precision its true causes. Let my readers not imagine, then, that I dare flatter myself with having seen what appears to me so difficult to see. I have begun some lines of reasoning; I have hazarded some guesses, less in the hope of resolving the question than with intention of clarifying it and of reducing it to its true state. Others will easily be able to go farther on this same route, though it will not be easy for anyone to reach the end of it. For it is no light undertaking to separate what is original from what is artificial in the present nature of humans, and to have a proper understanding of a state which no longer exists, which perhaps never existed, which probably never will exist, and yet about which it is necessary to have accurate notions in order to judge properly our own present state. One who would attempt to determine precisely which precautions to take in order to make solid observations on the subject would need even more philosophy than is generally supposed; and a good solution of the following problem would not seem to me unworthy of the Aristotles and Plinys of our century: What experiments would be necessary to achieve knowledge of natural man? And what are the means of carrying out these experiments in the midst of society? #RandolphHarris 14 of 21
Far from undertaking to resolve this problem, I believe I have meditated sufficiently on the subject to dare respond in advance that the greatest philosophers will not be too good to direct these experiments, nor the most powerful sovereigns to carry them out. It is hardly reasonable to expect such a combination, especially with the perseverance or rather the succession of understanding and good will needed on both sides in order to achieve success. These investigations, so difficult to carry out and so little thought about until now, are nevertheless the only means we have left of removing a multitude of difficulties that conceal from us the knowledge of the real foundations of human society. It is this ignorance of the nature of humans which throws so much uncertainty and obscurity on the true definition of natural right. For the ideal of right, and even more that of natural right, are manifestly ideas relative to the nature of humans. Therefore, one continues, the principles of this science must be deuced from this very nature of humans, from human’s constitution and state. It is not without surprise and a sense of outrage that one observes the paucity of agreement that prevails among the various authors who have treated it. Among the most serious writers one can hardly find two who are of the same opinion on this point. The Roman jurists—not to mention the ancient philosophers who seem to have done their best to contradict each other on the most fundamental principles—subject human and all other terrestrial beings indifferently to the same natural law, because they take this expression to refer to the law that nature imposes on itself rather than the law she prescribes, or rather because of the particular sense in which those jurists understood the word “law,” which on this occasion they seem to have taken only for the expression of the general relations established by nature among all animate beings for their common preservation. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21
The moderns, in acknowledging under the word “law” merely a rule prescribed to a moral being, that is to say, intelligent, free, and considered in one’s relations with other beings, consequently limit the competence of the natural law to the only terrestrial being who know of endowed with reason, that is, to humans. However, with each other defining this law in one’s own fashion, they all establish it on some metaphysical principles that even among us there are very few people in a position to grasp these principles, far from being able to find them by themselves. So that all the definitions of these wise humans, otherwise in perpetual contradiction with one another agree on this alone that it is impossible to understand the law of nature and consequently to obey it without being a great reasoner and a profound metaphysician, which humans do not naturally have, and from advantages the idea of which they cannot conceive until after having left the state of nature. Writers begin by seeking the rules on which, for the common utility, it would be appropriate for humans to agree among themselves; and then they give the name natural law to the collection of these rules, with no other proof than the good which presumably would result from their universal observance. Surely this is a very convenient way to compose definitions and to explain the nature of things by virtually arbitrary views of what is seemly. However, as long as we are unaware of natural man, it is futile for us to attempt to determine the law he has received or which is best suited to his constitution. #RandolphHarris 16 of 21
All that we can see very clearly regarding this law is that, for it to be law, not only must he will of one who is obliged by it be capable of knowing submission to it, but also, for it to be natural, it must speak directly by the voice of nature. Leaving aside therefore all he scientific books which teach us only to see humans as they have made themselves, and meditating on the first and most simple operations of the human soul, I believe I perceive in it two principles that are prior to reason, of which one makes us ardently interested in our well-being and our self-preservation, and the other inspires in us a natural repugnance to seeing any sentient being, especially our fellow humans, perish or suffer. It is from the conjunction and combination that our mind is in a position to make regarding these two principles, without the need for introducing that of sociability, that all the rules of natura right appear to me to flow; rules which reason is later forced to reestablish on other foundations, when, by its successive developments, it has succeeded in smothering nature. In this way one is not obliged to make a human a philosopher before making one a human. One’s duties toward others are not uniquely dictated to one by the belated lessons of wisdom; and as long as one does no resist the inner impulse of compassion, one will never harm another human or even another sentient being, except in the legitimate instance where, if one preservation were involved, one is obliged to give preference to oneself. By this means, an end can also be made to the ancient disputes regarding the participation of non-human terrestrial beings in the natural law. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21
For it is clear that, lacking intelligence and liberty, some terrestrial beings cannot recognize this natural law; but since they share to some extent in our nature by virtue of the sentient quality with which they are endowed, one will judge that they should also patriciate in natural right, and that humans are subject to some sort of duties toward them. It seems, in effect, that if I am obliged not to do any harm to my fellow humans, it is less because one is a rational being than because one is a sentient being: a quality that, since it is common to both non-human terrestrial beings and human beings, should at least give the former the right not to be needlessly mistreated by the latter. This same study or original man, of his true needs and the fundamental principles of his duties, is also the only good means that can be used to remove those multitudes of difficulties which present themselves regarding the origin of moral inequality, the true foundations of the body politic, the reciprocal rights of is members, and a thousand other similar questions that are as important as they are poorly explained. In considering human society from a tranquil and disinterested point of view it seems at firs to manifest merely the violence of powerful men and the oppression of the weak. The mind revolt against the harshness of the former; one is inclined to deplore the blindness of the latter. And since nothing is less stable among men than those external relationships which chance brings about more often than wisdom, and which are called weakness or power, wealth or poverty, human establishments appear at first glance to be based on piles of shifting sand. It is only in examining them closely, only after having cleared away the dust and sand that surround the edifice, hat one perceives the unshakable base on which it is raised and one learns to respect its foundations. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21
Now without a serious study of man, of his natural faculties and their successive developments, one will never succeed in making these distinctions and in separating, in the present constitution of things, what the divine will has done from what human art has pretended to do. The political and moral investigations occasioned by the important question I am examining are therefore useful in every way; and the hypothetical history of governments is an instructive lesson for man in every respect. In considering what we would have become, left to ourselves, we ought to learn to bless him whose beneficent hand, in correcting our institutions and giving them an unshakable foundation, has prevented the disorders that must otherwise result from them, and has brought about our happiness from the means that seemed likely to add to our misery. Learn whom God has ordered you to be, and in what part of human affairs you have been placed. As it stands, 52 percent of evangelicals do not accept or do not believe in absolute moral truths! What is happening? When the church does not get it right, the World certainly cannot get it right. Revival is coming! The Heavenly messengers will quiet your fears as you learn to find Jesus Christ. “Then I saw another mighty Angel coming down from Heaven. He was robed in a cloud, with a rainbow above his head; his face was like the sun, and his legs were like fiery pillars. He was holding a little scroll, which lay open in his hand. He planted his right foot on the sea, and his left foot on the land, and he gave a loud shout like the roar of a lion. When he shouted, the voices of the seven thunders spoke. And when the seven thunders spoke, I was about to write; but I heard a voice from Heaven say, ‘Seal up what thunders have said and do not write it down.’ #RandolphHarris 19 of 21
“Then the Angel I had seen standing on the sea and on the land raised his right and to Heaven. And he swore by him who lives for ever and ever, who created the Heavens and all that is in them, the Earth and the sea and all that is in it, and said, ‘There will be no more delay! However, in the days when the seventh Angel is about to sound his trumpet, the mystery of God will be accomplished, just as he announced to his servants the prophets.’ Then then voice that I had heard from Heaven spoke to me once more: ‘Go, take the scroll that lies open in the hand of the Angel who is standing on the sea and on the land.’ So I went to the Angel and asked him to give me the little scroll. He said to me, ‘Take it and eat it. It will turn your stomach sour, but in your mouth it will be as sweet as honey.’ I took the little scroll from the Angel’s hand and ate it. It tasted sweet as honey in my mouth, but when I had eaten it, my stomach turned sour. Then I was told, “You must prophesy again about many people, nations, languages and kings,” reports Revelation 10.1-11. With tender regard for human weaknesses, the Angel will give humans time to become accustomed to the divine radiance. Then the joy and glory will no longer be hidden. The whole plain will light up with the bright shinning of the hosts of God. Earth will be hushed, and the Heavens will stoop to listen to the son—“Glory to God in the highest, and on Earth peace, good will towards humans.” “For the Lord your God is brining you into a good land, a land of flowing streams, with springs and underground waters welling up in valleys and hills, a land of wheat and barley, of vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a long of olive trees and honey, a land where you may eat bread without scarcity. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21
“God is blessing us with a land where we will lack nothing, a land whose stones are iron, and from whose hills you may mine copper, blue sapphires and diamond. You shall eat your fill and bless the Lord your God for the good land He has given you,” reports Deuteronomy 8.7-11. Tall, lush rain forest dripping in the morning wild orchids banana flowers, thick vines drape los palos del sol and great white cedar; others with five foot green elephant ears flopping, hundreds of butterflies, orange caterpillars, blue birds, pink mushrooms, through billion of green leaves quivering moist in the patchy sunlight. There are exalted but rare occasion when inspiration, peace, and spiritual majesty conjoin their blessed presence within us. It is with one for the flicker of a second—an unfathomable tranquility, an indefinable beauty—and then gone. Some enter into this experience only once in a lifetime; others repeat it a few times. Only a rare individual here and there enters it frequently. In the book of life, blessing, peace, and ample sustenance, may we, together with all Thy people, the house of America, be remembered and inscribed before Thee for a happy life and for peace. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, who establishest peace. O Lord, please guard my tongue from evil and my lips from speaking guile, and to those who slander me, let e give no heed. May my soul be humble and forgiving unto all. Please open Thou my heart, O Lord, unto Thy sacred Law, that Thy statutes I may know and all Thy truths pursue. Please bring to naught designs of those who seek to do me ill; speedily defeat their aims and thwart their purposes for Thine own sake, for Thine own power, for Thy holiness and Law. That Thy loved ones be delivered, answer us, O Lord, and save with Thy redeeming power. May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable unto Thee, O Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer. Thou who establishes peace in the Heavens, please grant peace unto us and unto All America. Amen. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21
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Randolph Harris II International Institute 