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Witches, Warlock, and Ghost in the Mansion of Mrs. Winchester!
Some people call themselves witches, and believe that they are able to contact and utilize powers from the invisible realm. However, there are many questions about witchcraft. Is it merely a game some people play? Is it beneficial to humanity? Or is it evil and dangerous? Universities all over the World are offering courses in occultism, and teams of scientists are investigating reports of mysterious magical phenomena all over the globe. They are baffled by some of the amazing incidents they encounter, and admit that present scientific knowledge cannot account for them. The Word of God may not provide a specific explanation for every problem one may encounter as one studies Satan, Satanism, and witchcraft, but it sheds much light on these subjects and offers practical guidelines by which God’s children can avoid dangers inherent in occultism. An unexpected and amazing development of this enlightened age is the resurgence of interest in Satan and an increase in occultic activity. A few years ago, most people assumed that the devil was dead, in the same manner that some theologians recently have affirmed the death of God. It is now becoming increasingly apparent that these reports were premature. Satan is very much alive, and is actively involved in today’s World. Though many scientists and philosophers still scoff at the idea of a personal devil, highly educated people all over the World meet regularly to worships Satan. Some groups, having dedicated themselves to the service of the devil, have committed brutal sacrificial slayings, while others engage in vile acts of immorality. Witchcraft, seances, and fortunetelling, for many years limited to areas of ignorance and superstition, are now discussed in highly respected magazines. Newspapers carry horoscopes, and multitudes consult them seriously every day. Prominent people have received a great deal of publicity by reporting the reception of personal messages from the spirits of the dead. The late Bishop Pike, for example, published a widely-read book telling of seances in which he purportedly talked with his dead son who had committed suicide. #RandolphHarris 1 of 16
Others, claiming the ability to foretell the future, also have become the objects of widespread interest, and have name Jeane Dixon comes to mind. She reportedly communicated with Mrs. Winchester who wanted to continue the restoration of her mansion. Mrs. Dixon is considered a prophetess by many people, and top leaders in government industry consult her for information about the future. In Europe today, more people are making a livelihood through the practice of occultism than the total number engaged in the Christian ministry. Belief in the existence of an unseen spiritual realm to be entered at death, and which has an influence upon human life, has captivated the minds of multitudes. The millions involved with occultism are unaware of the real nature of these mysterious and dangerous areas of investigation, and refuse to turn to the one source of truth regarding the kingdom of darkness. The Bible, the holy Word of God, reveals the true nature of the supernatural. It teaches that two real spiritual Worlds exist, one good and the other evil. It tells us that God is a Spirit (John 4.24), and that a great number of angels called “ministering spirits” (Hebrews 1.14) worship Him in Heaven and carry out His assignments upon Earth. The other invisible kingdom is evil, and is under the direction of Satan, who controls an organized host of wicked spirit beings. They are a formidable foe arrayed against God and His people, and the apostle Paul declared, “For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this World, against spiritual wickedness in high places,” reports Ephesians 6.12. All that can be known about the devil’s origin, fall, and present activity is to be found in the Bible. Although it does not specifically answer every question we may ask, it tells us the important facts about him and his kingdom. He was once a glorious, sinless creature, but he rebelled against God, was cast out of Heaven to Earth, and now leads his great army of spirit beings in a futile attempt to defeat God and destroy His people. #RandolphHarris 2 of 16
The devil was created an angelic being of great beauty and splendor and at one time had great favour with God. Ezekiel describes him in his sinless state as follows, “Son of man, take up a lamentation upon the king of Tyre, and say unto him, Thus saith the Lord God: Thou sealest up the sum, full of wisdom, and perfect in beauty. Thou hast been in Eden, the garden of God; every precious stone was thy covering, the sardius, topaz, and the diamond, the beryl, the onyx, and the jasper, the sapphire, the emerald, and the carbuncle, and gold; the workmanship of thy timbrels and of thy flutes was prepared in thee in the day thou wast created. Thou art the anointed cherub that covereth, and I have seen thee so; that wast upon the holy mountain of God; thou hast walked up and down in the midst of the stones of fire. Thou wast perfect in thy ways from the day that thou wast created, till iniquity was found in thee,” Ezekiel 28.12-15. Although the prophet was addressing these words primarily to an Earthly ruler, the king of Tyre, it is apparent that the full meaning of this prophecy is not exhausted by its reference to a flesh-and-blood monarch. The ultimate subject of Ezekiel’s words was Satan, the real instigator of the king’s pride and cruelty. Many Bible students reject this interpretation of Ezekiel’s dirge. They consider this viewpoint to be untenable and imaginative, and prefer to consider the prophet’s description to be a highly figurative portrayal of the king of Tyre. Some even say this lamentation incorporates a well-known Tyrian myth about a primeval being who lived in the “Garden of God” until he was expulsed for pride and rebellion. It is unlikely, however, that the inspired prophet would incorporate a myth into his message of judgment. Then, too, many prophetic pronouncements contained a double perspective. Isaiah, for example, after giving a stern warning of impending disaster, told Ahaz that the Lord would give a sign that the message he had spoken was true. “Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; behold, the virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel. Butter and honey shall he eat, and choose the good. For before the child shall know to refuse the evil, and choose the good, the land that thou abhorrest shall be forsaken by both her kings,” reports Isaiah 7.14-16. #RandolphHarris 3 of 16
The fourteenth verse is a definite reference to Christ, the virgin-born Son of God, but verses fifteen and sixteen point to Maher-shalal-hash-baz, the infant son of Isaiah whose birth and early years are described in the following chapter. Before the lad was three years old, Pekah and Rezin, king of Israel and Syria, had been executed as the prophet had predicted. Since this type of double reference is common in the prophetic Scriptures, it should not be thought strange that Ezekiel, in pronouncing judgment upon the king of Tyre, should also be alluding to Satan, who motivated the Earthly monarch to his sinful pride and cruelty. The prophet declared that in his original state Satan was a creature of great wisdom and beauty. He portrays the devil as having been in Eden, the garden of God, and describes him as having been lavishly adorned with jewels at that time. The translation in our King James Version also speaks of the “timbrels” and “flutes” prepared by him on the day he was created, and some Bible students have inferred from this that he had great musical ability and was given charge of the Heavenly choirs which sang their praises to God. The Hebrew words, however, are difficult to translate, and most students are convinced that the words rendered “timbrels” and “flutes” more likely refer to the gold settings and engravings of his ornamental attire. “Every precious stone was thy covering, the sardius, topaz, and the diamond, the beryl, the onyx, and the jasper, the sapphire, the emerald, and the carbuncle, and gold; the workmanship of thy timbrels and of thy flutes was prepared in thee in the day that thou wast created,” reports Ezekiel 28.13. This exalted creature is also declared to be “the anointed cherub that covereth,” reports Ezekiel 28.14, which indicates that God appointed him to have a place of special prominence in connection with his throne. The remainder of the verse, “thou wast upon the holy mountain of God; thou hast walked up and down in the midst of the stones of fire,” indicates that before his sin, he was in the immediate presence of God’s glorious holiness. #RandolphHarris 4 of 16
In fact, Satan may have been the most exalted of all the angels, and the memory of this former glory could have been the reason Michael did not dare “bring against him a railing accusation,” (Jude 9). Dr. Eric Sauer suggests the possibility that even before God created man, He committed to Lucifer a position of authority in relation to the Earth and its surrounding planets. For this reason, Satan is called the “god of this World” in the New Testament. In England and Scotland during the mediaeval and later periods of its existence, witchcraft was an offence against the laws of God and man; in Celtic Ireland dealing with the unseen were not regarded with such abhorrence, and indeed had the sanction of custom and antiquity. Consequently, when the Anglo-Normans came over, they found that the native Celts had no predisposition towards accepting the view of the witch as an emissary of Satan and an enemy of the Church, though they fully believed in supernatural influences of both good and evil, and credited their Bards and Druids with the possession of powers beyond the ordinary. The persecution of witches did not cease in the countries where that the growth and spread of witchcraft made headway—far from it; on the contrary it was kept up with unabated vigour. Infallibility was transferred from the Church to the Bible; the Roman Catholic persecuted the witch because Supreme Pontiffs had stigmatized her as a heretic and an associate of Satan, while the Protestant acted similarly because Holy Writ contained the grim command, “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.” The evil that was wrought by such amongst an unenlightened and superstitious people can be well imagined; unbelievers would be converted, while the credulous would be rendered more secure in their credulity. In the 16th century, during the rule of the Commonwealth Parliament thirty thousand witches were put to death in England. Even as late as 1690 torture was judicially applied to extract evidence, for in that year a Jacobite gentleman was questioned by the boots. However, Scotland, even at its worst, fades into insignificance before certain parts of the Continent, where torture was used to an extent and degree that can only be termed hellish; the appalling ingenuity displayed in the various methods of applying the “question extraordinary” seems the work of demons rather than of Christian, and makes one blush for humanity. #RandolphHarris 5 of 16
Nonetheless, the punishment of death by fire for witchcraft or sorcery was not employed to any extend in Ireland. We have one undoubted instance, and a general hint of some others as a sequel to this. How the two witches were put to death in 1578 we are told, but probably it was by hanging. Subsequent to the passing of the Act of 1586, the method of execution would have been that for felony. On the Continent the stake was in continual request. In 1514, three hundred persons were burnt alive for this crime at Como. Between 1615 and 1635, more than six thousand sorcerers were burnt in the diocese of Strasburg, while, if we can credit the figures of Bartholomew de Spina, in Lombardy a thousand sorcerers a year were put to death for the space of twenty-five years. The total number of person executed in various ways for this crime has, according to the Encyclopedia Britannica, been variously estimated at from one hundred thousand to several millions; if the latter figure be too high undoubtedly the former is too low. In the persecution of those who practised magical arts, no rank or class in society was spared; the noble equally with the peasant was liable to torture and death. This was especially true of the earlier stages of the movement when sorcery rather than witchcraft was the crime committed. For there is a general distinction between the two, though in many instances they are confounded. Sorcery was, so to speak, more of an aristocratic pursuit; the sorcerer was the master of the Devil (until his allotted time expired), and compelled him to do his bidding: the witch generally belonged to the lower classes, embodied in her art many practices which lay on the borderland between good and evil, and was rather the slave of Satan, who almost invariably proved to be a most faithless and unreliable employer. Anybody might become a victim of the witch epidemic; noblemen, scholars, monks, nuns, titled ladies, bishops, clergy—none were immune from accusation and condemnation. Behind the veil of all the hieratic and mystical allegories of ancient doctrines, behind the darkness and strange ordeals of all initiations, under the seal of all sacred writings, in the cryptic emblems of our old books on alchemy, in the ceremonies practised at reception by all secret societies, there are found indications of a doctrine which is everywhere the same and everywhere carefully concealed. #RandolphHarris 6 of 16
According to alchemists, the souls of the dead can be pinned into homunculi. A homunculi is a very small human being or humanoid creature; a supposed microscopic but fully formed human being which a fetus was formerly believed to develop. Much that passed current in the west as White (id est permissible) Magic was only a disguised goeticism, and many of the resplendent angels invoked with divine rites reveal their cloven hoofs. It is not too much to say that a large majority of past psychological experiments were conducted to establish communication with demons, and that for unlawful purposes. The pentagram is a symbol of faith, a symbol of the five elements Spirit, Air, Earth, Water, and Fire (one for each point), and the circle (the Universe) contains and connects them all. The Golden Ratio is the number 1.61803399, represented by the Greek letter Phi, and considered truly unique in its mathematical properties, prevalence throughout nature, and its ability to achieve a perfect aesthetic composition. It is integral to the pentagram. Shorter and longer sections of each line exist in golden ratio. If you look at God’s fingers and the general position of the bodies in Michelangelo’s fresco, you will see pentagrams. After Mrs. Winchesters mysterious disappearance in 1922, the mansion of emptied of her belongings. It took six trucks working around the clock for six weeks to move all of her furniture out. Many people say not only was it a lot of stuff, but the movers would get lost in the mansion. Nonetheless, some things were left behind. From time to time the mansion was rented out. A young couple Oliver Hall and Ethel Taylor rented the place, but the story of what happened is very fascinating. No one ever thought that Ethel Taylor would marry Oliver Hall; but he thought differently, and things which Oliver Hall intended had a queer way of coming to pass. He asked her to marry him before he went Yale. She laughed and refused him. #RandolphHarris 7 of 16
The Next time Oliver came home, he asked her again. However, she laughed, tosses her luscious blonde locks, and refused again. A third time he asked her; she said it was becoming a confirmed bad habit, and laughed at him more then ever. Oliver was not the only man who wanted to marry her, but his attempts were like an elephant, at whose clumsy feats were considerably amusing. Ethel was the belle of the Santa Clara Valley, and every one was in love with her more or less; it was a sort of fashion, like masher collars or Inverness capes. Therefore everyone was very annoyed as surprised when Oliver Hall walked into the Bank of Italy Building and invited everyone to his wedding. “Your wedding?” “You do not mean it?” “Who is the happy fair? When is it to be?” Oliver Hall filled his pipe and lighted it before he replied. Then he said—“I am sorry to deprive you fellow of your only joke—but Miss Taylor and I just let the Winchester mansion and are to married at the estate in April. “You do not mean it?” “He has got the mitten again, and its turned his head.” “No,” he said, rising “I see it is true. Lend me a pistol someone—or a first class fare to other end of Nowhere. Hall has bewitched the only pretty girl in our twenty-mile radius. Was it a mesmerism, or a love-potion, Oliver?” “Neither, sir, but a gift you will never have—perseverance—and the best luck a man ever had in this World. It is so glorious to know of a surety that now we can think, feel, speak, act—above all, love one another—haunted by no counteracting spell, responsible to no living creature for our life and our love.” There was something in his voice that silenced everyone, and all chaff of the other fellows failed to draw him further. The queer thing about it was that when we congratulated Miss Taylor, she blushed and smiled, and dimpled, for all the World as though she were in love with him, and had been in love with him all the time. They had been laughing very heartily, cherishing the mirth, as it were like those who caress a lovely bird that had been frightened out of its natural home and grown wild and rare in its visits, only tapping at the lattice for a minute, and then gone. Women are strange creatures. #RandolphHarris 8 of 16
In Santa Clara everyone who was anyone was asked to the wedding at Llanada Villa. Many people were truly more interested in the trousseau than the bride herself. The coming marriage was much canvasses at afternoon tea-tables, and at the Bank of Italy over the saddler’s, and the question was always asked: “Does she care for him?” The best man used to ask that question in the early days of their engagement, but after a certain evening in April, the pause between the acts, when the house was half-darkened, and the laughter died away made him never ask that question again. “How cold is it,” said John, the best man, shivering. Oliver shivered too; but not with cold, it was more like the involuntary sensation at which people say, “Someone is walking over my grave.” He said so, jestingly. “Hush, Oliver,” whispered John, and again the draught of cold air seemed to blow right between them. The next week, John was coming home from the Bank of Italy through the churchyard. Their church was on a thyme-grown hill, and the turf about it is so thick and soft that one’s footsteps are noiseless. He made no sound as he vaulted the low lichened wall, and threaded his way between the tombstones. It was at the same instant that he heard Oliver Hall’s voice, and saw his face. Ethel was siting on a low flat gravestone with the full splendour of the western sun upon her mignonne face. Its expression ended, at once and for ever, any question of her love of Oliver; it was transfigured to a beauty John should not have believed possible, even to that beautiful little face. Many people said she was like a reincarnation of Mrs. Winchester. Oliver lay at Ethel’s feet, and it was his voice that broke the stillness of the golden April evening. “This spring is cold for you, my love. I half wish we had taken courage, and sailed once more for Hispaniola. My dear, my dear, I believe I should come back from the if you wanted.” John coughed at once to indicate his presence, and passed on into the shadow fully enlightened. “Oh, no—oh, no! No mor of the sea. Llanada Villa is perfect for me,” she said, with another and stronger shoulder. #RandolphHarris 9 of 16
“Ethel,” he said at last, rousing himself, with a half-smile, “I think I must have grown remarkably attractive. Look! half the glasses opposite are lifted to our box. It cannot be to gaze at me, you know. Do you remember telling me I was the ugliest fella you ever saw?” “Oh, Oliver!” Yet it was quite true—she had thought him so, in far back, strange, awful times, when she, a girl of sixteen, had her mind wholly filled with one idea!—one insane, exquisite dream; when she brought her innocent child’s garlands, and sat him down under one spreading magnificent tree, which trees of the Victorian garden at Llanada Villa, until she felt its dews dropping death upon her youth, and her whole soul withering under its venomous shade. “Oh, Oliver!” She cried once more, looking fondly on his beloved face, where no unearthly beauty dazzled, no unnatural calm repelled; where all was simple, noble, manly, true. “My dearly beloved, I thank Heaven for that dear ‘ugliness’ of yours. Above all, though blood runs strong, they say , I thank Heaven that I see you no likeness to—” Oliver knew what name she meant, though for a whole year past—since God’s mercy made it to them only a name—they had ceased to utter it, and let it die wholly out of the visible World. The wedding was to be early in April. Two days before, John had to run up town on business. The train was late, of course, for they were on the South-Eastern, and as he stood grumbling with his watch in his hand, who should he see but Oliver Hall and Ethel Taylor. They were walking up and down the unfrequent end of the platform, that he obtrusively passed the pair with his Gladstone, and took the corner in a first-class smoking-carriage. He did this with as good an air of not seeing them as he could assume. John prided himself on his discretion, but if Oliver were traveling alone he wanted his company. He had it. “Hullo, old man,” came his cheery voice as he swung his bad into John’s carriage; “here is luck; I was expecting a dull journey!” “Where are you off to?” John asked, discretion still bidding him turn his eyes away, though he saw, without looking, that hers were red-rimmed. #RandolphHarris 10 of 16
“To old San Francisco,” he answered, shutting the door and leaning out for a last word with his sweetheart. He stood—clasping her hand secretly and hard; then he grew quitter; until, as the drop-scene fell, the same cold air swept past them. It was as if someone fresh from the sharp sea-wind had entered the box. “Oh, I wish you would not go, Oliver,” she was saying in a low, earnest voice. “I feel certain something will happen.” “Do you think I should let anything happen to keep me, and the day after tomorrow our wedding-day?” “Do not go,” she answered, with a pleading intensity which would have sent anyone’s Gladstone on to the platform and one after it. However, Oliver Hall was made differently; he rarely changed his opinion, never his resolutions. He only stroked the little ungloved hands that lay on the carriage door. “I must go, Ethel, The old boy’s have been awfully good to me, and now he is dying I must go and see him, but I shall come home in time for—” the rest of the parting was lost in a whisper and in the rattling lurch of the starting rain. “You are sure to come?” she spoke as the train moved. “Nothing shall keep me,” he answered; and they steamed out. After he had seen the last of the little figure on the platform he leaned back in his corner and kept his silence for a minute. When he spoke it was to explain to John that his godfather, whose heir he was, lay dying in Le Petit Trianon, some fifty miles away, and had sent for Oliver, and Oliver felt bound to go. “I shall be surely back tomorrow,” he said, “or, if not, the day after, in heaps of time. Thank Heaven, one has not to get up in the middle of the night to get married nowdays!” “And supposed Mr. Koshland dies?” “Alive or dead I mean to get married on Thursday!” Oliver answered, as he unfolded Oakland Tribune. At the Third and Townsend Depot they said their “goodbye,” and he got out and John saw him ride off; John went to Berkeley, where he stayed the night. #RandolphHarris 11 of 16
When John got home the next afternoon, a very wet one, by the way, his sister greeted him with—“Where is Oliver Hall?” “Goodness knows,” he answered testily. Every man, since Cain, has resented that kind of question. “I thought you might have heard from him,” she went on, “as you are to give him away tomorrow.” “Is he not back,” I asked, for I had confidently expected to find him at Llanada Villa. “No, John,”—his sister Alexis always had a way of jumping to conclusions, expecially such conclusion as were least favourable to her fellow-creatures—“he has not returned, and, what is more, you may depend upon it he will not. You mark my words, there will be no wedding tomorrow.” His sister Alexis has the power of annoying him which no other human being possess. “You mark my words,” John retorted with asperity, “you had better give up making such a thundering idiot of yourself. There will be more wedding tomorrow than ever, you will take first part in.” A prophecy which, by the way, came true. However, though, John could snarl confidently to his sister, he did not feel so comfortable when, late that night, standing on the door step of the Winchester mansion, heard the Oliver had not returned home. Filled with German superstitions, the young man grew almost pale, but kept a courteous calmness. There was nothing too ghastly or terrible for his own imagination to conjure up. John went home gloomily through the rain. Next morning brought a brilliant blue sky, gold sun, and all such softness of air and beauty of cloud as to make up a perfect day. However, he woke with a vague feeling of having gone to bed anxious, and of being rather averse to facing that anxiety in the light of full wakefulness. However, with his shaving-water came a note from Oliver which relieved his mind and sent him to the Winchester mansion with a light heart. Ethel was in the garden. He saw her blue gown through the hollyhocks as the mansion’s gates swung behind him. So he did not go up to the mansion, but turned aside down the turfed path. “He has written to you too,” she said, without preliminary greeting, when John reached her side. #RandolphHarris 12 of 16
“Yes, I am to meet him at the station at three, and come straight back to the mansion.” Her face looked pale, but there was brightness in her eyes, and a tender quiver about the mouth that spoke of renewed happiness. “Mrs. Koshland begged him so to stay another night that he had not the heart to refuse,” she went. “He is so kind, but I wish he had not stayed.” John was at the station at half-past two. He felt rather annoyed with Oliver. It seemed a sort of slight to the beautiful young lady who loved him, that he should come as it were out of breath, and with the dust of travel upon him to take her hand, which some of them would have given the best years of their lives to take. However, when the three o’clock train glided in, and glided out again having brought no passengers to their little station, John was more than annoyed. There was no other train for thirty-five minutes; he calculated that, with much hurry, he might just get back to the mansion in time for the ceremony; but, oh, what a fool to miss that first train! What other man could have done it? That thirty-five minutes seemed like a year, as he wandered round the station reading the advertisements and the time-tables, and the company’s bye-laws, and getting more and more angry with Oliver Hall. This confidence in his own power of getting everything he wanted the minute he wanted it was leading him too far. John hated waiting. After no sight of Oliver, he flung himself into the carriage that he had brough for him. “Drive to the mansion!” he said, as someone shut the door. “Mr. Hall has not come by this train.” Anxiety now replaced anger. What had become of the man? Could he have been suddenly taken will? John had never known Oliver to have an illness in his life. And even so, he might have telegraphed. Some awful accident must have happened. Maybe his corpse was picked up off a wreck, and committed to the deep—in the Gulf of Mexico. The thought that he had played her false never—no, not for a moment, entered John’s head. #RandolphHarris 13 of 16
Yes, something terrible had happened to Oliver, and on John lay the task of telling his bride. John almost wished the carriage would upset and break his head so that someone else might tell her, not Joh, who—but that is nothing to do with the story. It was five minutes to four as they drew up to the gate of the Winchester mansion. A double row of eager onlooker lined the path of the palm avenue. John sprang from the carriage and passed up between them. The estate’s gardener had a good front place near the door. He stopped. “Are they waiting still, Thomas?” he asked, simply to gain time, for of course he knew they were by the waiting crowd’s attentive attitude. “Waiting, sir? No, sir, why it must be over by now.” “Over! Then Mr. Hall has come?” ‘To the minute, sir; must have missed you somehow, and I say, sir,” lowering his voice, “I never see Mr. Oliver the bit so afore, but my opinion is he has been drinking pretty free. His clothes was all dusty and his face a sheet. I tell you I did not like the looks of him, with never a look or a word for none of us; him that was always such a gentleman!” I had never heard Thomas make so long a speech. The crowd in at mansion wee talking in whispers and getting ready rice and slippers to throw at the bride and bridegroom. The ringers were ready with their hands on the ropes to rung out the merry peal as the bride and bridegroom should come out. A murmur from the Winchester mansion announced them; out they came, Thomas was right. Oliver Hall did not look himself. There was dust on his coat, his hair was disarranged. He seemed to have been in some row, for there was a black mark above his eyebrow. He was deathly pale. However, his pallor was not greater than that of the bride, who might have been carved in ivory—dress, veil, orange blossoms and all. As they passed out the ringers stooped—there were six of them—and then, on the ears expecting the gay wedding peal, came the slow tolling of the Winchester Bell. A thrill of horror at so foolish a jest from the ringers passed through all the guests. #RandolphHarris 14 of 16
However, the ringers themselves dropped the ropes and fled like rabbits down the belfry stairs. The bride shuddered, and grey shadows came about her mouth, but the bridegroom led her on down the path where the people stood with the handfuls of rice; but the handfuls were never thrown, and the wedding-bells never rang. In vain the ringers were urged to remedy their mistake: the protested with many whispered expletives that they would see themselves further first. In a hush like the hush in the chamber of death the bridal pair passed into their carriage and its door slammed behind them. Then the tongues were loosed. A babel of anger, wonder, conjecture from the guests and spectators. “If I had seen his condition, sir,” said old Seymour to me as we drove off, “I would have stretched him on the floor of the mansion, sir, by Heaven I would, before I would have let him marry my daughter!” Then he put his head out of the window. “Drive like fury,” he cried to the coachman; “do not spare the horses.” He was obeyed. They passed the bride’s carriage. John forbore to look at it, and old Seymour turned his head away and swore. They reached reception hall before it. They stood in the hall doorway, in the blazing afternoon sun, and in about half a minute, they heard the wheels crunching the gravel. When the carriage stopped in the front of the steps old Seymour and John ran down. “Great Heaven, the carriage is empty! And yet—” he had the door open in a minute, and this is what he saw—No sign of Oliver Hall; and of Ethel, his wife only a huddled heap of white satin lying half on the floor of the carriage and half on the seat. “I drove straight here, sir,” said the coachman, as the bride’s father lifted her out; “and I will swear no one got out of the carriage.” We drove back to the Winchester mansion, and carried her back into the house in her bridal dress, and drew back her veil. #RandolphHarris 15 of 16
Her face. No one would ever forget. White, white and drawn with agony and horror, bearing such a look of terror as no one has never seen except in dreams. And her hair, her radiant blonde hair, it was white like snow. As John and her father stood, both half mad with horror and mystery of it, a body came up the avenue—a telegraph boy. They brought the orange envelop to John. He tore it open. “Mr. Hall was thrown from his horse on his way to the station at half-past one. Killed on the spot!” And he was married to Ethel Taylor in the Winchester Mansion at half-past three, in the presence of fifty guests. “I shall be married, dead or alive!” What had passed in that carriage on the drive to the reception hall? No one knows—no one will ever know. Oh, Ethel! Oh, my dear!” Before a week was over they laid her beside her husband in the Oak Hill Memorial Park on the northern most hill in the San Juan Bautista Hills of South San Jose. Thus was accomplished Oliver Hall’s wedding. Whether or not one believes in superstitions about spirits, it is hard to dismiss the unusual events that have taken place at this estate. Just like the original construction, restoration and maintenance work at Winchester Mystery House is never complete. The actual amount of materials requires is staggering. For example, it takes over 20,000 gallons of pain to cover the exterior—and by the time the workers have finished, they have to start all over again! Continuous work is being done on the massive structure, with carpenters, painters, and gardeners toiling away just like they did during Mrs. Winchester’s day. The sons, grandsons, and great grandson of Mrs. Winchester’s original employees have been some of these workmen! The restoration work is very demanding. Although you can still find spots where the cracked plaster has not been fixed after the 1906 Earthquake, almost everything will eventually be restored. This has been left like this on purpose, like a frozen moment in time, to show people how Mrs. Winchester lived there. An ongoing search continues for fine examples of the period furnishings, similar to what Mrs. Winchester herself would have used. Her original furnishings were auctioned off after her death and never have been recovered. The job of overseeing the restoration is a painstaking one. The historical accuracy of every project is researched and approved by the Restoration Board of Directors. Winchester Mystery House receives no funds from any government agency; the continuous restoration and maintenance programs are funded entirely from tour, café, and gift shop revenues. Since 1973, millions of dollars have been invested to ensure that this unique landmark will be preserved as the premier showcase of the Santa Clara Valley’s gracious past. #RandolphHarris 16 of 16
Winchester Mystery House
The Witches Cap 🧙🏼♀️- named for it’s conical resemblance of a witches hat. Many famous mediums claim this room was “important” to Sarah Winchester, although we do not know what it was used for. How did you feel when you experienced the Witches Cap for the first time? winchestermysteryhouse.com
The Dead and the Living Can Never be One—God Has Forbidden it!
Life is richest when you realize that we are all snowflakes. Each of us is absolutely beautiful and unique. And we are here for a very short time. Mrs. Winchester was a pretty little brunette, rather pale, with dark hair, brilliant brown eyes, a resolute mouth and a bright, intelligent expression. She was orderly, trim and feverishly energetic, and seemed to live every moment of her life. The Winchester mansion was like a paradise on Earth; and in this light I still regarded it, until a great change came over the temperature, and the month of April introduced me to red-hot winds, sleepless nights, and the intolerable “brain fever” bird. The next morning, rested and invigorated, we set out on a tour of inspection; and it is almost worthwhile to undergo a certain amount of baking on the sweltering heat of the plains, in order to enjoy those deep first draughts of cool hill air, instead of a stifling, dust-laden atmosphere, and to appreciate the green valleys and blue hills by force of contrast to the far-stretching, eye-smarting, white glaring roads that intersect the burnt-up plains—roads and plains that even the pariah abandon, salamander though he be! No doubt the work of some extremely roughish-looking and grotesque imps and demons, who were inflicting various torments. However, to our delight and surprise, Mrs. Winchester had by no means overdraw the advantages of her new estate. The Grand Queen Anne Victorian mansion was solidly built of wood, brick, and stone, nine storied, and ample in size. It stood on kind of a shelf cut out of the hill side, and was surrounded by a pretty flower garden, full of roses, fuchsias, carnations. There was also a fruit orchard, many exotic trees and plants, and an avenue of palm trees. #RandolphHarris 1 of 10
There was a delightful, flagged verandah. The stairs were very steep. At the head of them, the passage and rooms were repeated. There were very small nooks, a switchback staircase, which has seven flights with forty-four steps, rising only about nine feet, since each step was just two inches. Miles of twisting hallways, secret passageways in the walls, a labyrinth of rooms, and dressing-rooms, 13 bathrooms, and plenty of good water. From the fourth-floor balcony, there was a glorious view, across a valley, far away, to the snowy range. As we looked around the drawing-room, here were carpets, curtains, solid, very solid chairs, and Berlin wool worked screens, a card-table, and any quantity of pictures. All the rooms were well, almost handsomely, furnished, in an old-fashioned style. There was no scarcity of wardrobes, looking-glasses, or even armchairs, in the bedrooms, and they pantry was fitted out—a most singular circumstance—with a large supply of handsome glass and china, lamps, old moderators, coffee and tea pots, plated side dishes, and candlesticks, cooking utensils and spoons and forks, wine coasters, and a cake-backet. The chins was Spoke, the plate old family heirlooms, with a crest—a winged horse—on everything, down to the very mustard spoons. There were gold- and silverplated chandeliers, imported Tiffany art glass windows, German silver and bronze inlaid doors, Swiss molded bathtubs, rare precious woods like mahogany and rosewood. Handsome Dresden china vases, nice boxes of firewood in every room, clocks, real hair mattresses—in short, it was a treasure trove. It was well built with some peculiar effects such as stairs that lead to the ceiling, doors that go nowhere and that opened onto walls, and chimneys that stop just short of the roof. #RandolphHarris 2 of 10
It is estimated that there were some 500 to 600 rooms in the house. However, it is haunted! According to a Boston medium, Mrs. Winchester and her family and her fortune were being haunted by spirits. Supposedly the untimely deaths of her daughter and husband were caused by these spirits, and it was implied that Mrs. Winchester would be the next victim. We soon forget about the dismal prophecy, being too gay and too busy to give her, or it a thought. We had so many engagements—tennis parties and tournaments, picnics, concerts, dances and little dinners. We ourselves gave occasional afternoon teas in the verandah, using the best Spode cups and saucers and the old silver cake-basket, and were warmly complimented on our good fortune in being guests in such a charming house and garden. Mrs. Winchester also had an African grey parrot—a rare bird indeed—and a cute little dog named Zip. Later that night, we had dinner in a handsome and somewhat antique-looking room. A cheerful wood-fire blazed in the capacious hearth; a little at one side an old-fashioned table, with richly-carved legs, was placed—destined, no doubt, to receive the supper, for which preparations were going forward; and ranged with exam regularity stood the tall-backed chairs whose ungracefulness was more than counterbalanced by their comfort. A stranger stopped at the door of the room, and displayed his form and face completely. He wore a dark coloured cloth cloak, which was short and full, not falling quite to the knees; his legs were cased in dark purple silk stockings, and his shoes were adorned with roses of the same colour. The opening of the cloak in front showed the undersuit to consist of some very dark, perhaps sable material, and his hands were enclosed in a pair of heavy leather gloves which ran up considerably above the wrist, in the manner of a gauntlet. #RandolphHarris 3 of 10
In one hand he carried his walking-stick and his hat, which he had removed, and the other hung heavily by his side. A quantity of grizzled hair descended in long tresses from his head, and its fold rested upon plaits of a stiff ruff, which effectually concealed his neck. So far all was well; but the face!—all the flesh of the face was coloured with the bluish leaden hue which is sometimes produced by the operation of metallic medicines administered in excessive quantities; the eyes were enormous, and the white appeared both above and below the iris, which gave to them the impression of insanity, which was heightened by their glassy redness; the nose was well enough, but the mouth was writhed considerably to one side, where it opened in order to give egress to two long, discoloured fangs, which projected from the upper jaw, far blow the lower lip; the hue of the lips themselves bore the usual relation to that of the face, and was consequently nearly black. The character of the face was malignant, even satanic, to the last degree; and, indeed, such a combination of horror could hardly be accounted for, except by supposing the corpse of some atrocious malefactor, which had long hung blackening upon the gibbet, to have at length become the habitation of a demon—the frightful sport of satanic possession. It was remarkable that the worshipful stranger suffered as little as possible of his flesh to appear, and that during his visit he did not once remove his gloves. There was something indescribably odd, even horrible about all his motions, something undefinable, something unnatural, unhuman—it was as if the limbs were guided and directed by a spirit unused to the management of bodily machinery. #RandolphHarris 4 of 10
The stranger said hardly anything during his visit, which did not exceed half an hour; and the host himself could scarcely muster courage enough to utter the few necessary salutations and courtesies; and, indeed, such was the nervous terror which the presence of Theophilus Dunn inspired, that very little would have made all his entertainers fly bellowing from the room. During his stay he did not once suffer his eyelids to close, nor even to move in the slightest degree; and further, there was a death-like stillness in his whole person, owing to the total absence of the heaving motion of the chest caused by the process of respiration. These two peculiarities, though when told they may appear trifling, produced a very striking and unpleasant effect when seen and observed. He saw a shadowy and ill-defined form gliding into the apartment. Sharp guests of wind and warning rumblings of thunder that seemed to shake the mountains, blew away the table cloth. As it was whirling into space, Dunn drew his sword, and raising the candle as o throw its light with increased distinctness upon the objects in the room, he entered the chamber into which the figure had glided. No figure was there—nothing but the furniture which had belonged to the room, and yet he could not be deceived as to the fact that something had moved before them into the chamber. A sickening dread came upon him, and the cold perspiration broke out in heavy drops upon his forehead; nor was he more composed when he heard the increased urgency, they agony of entreaty, which Mrs. Winchester implored him not to leave for a moment. “I saw him,” she said. “He is there! I cannot be deceived—I know him. He is by me—he is with me—he is in the room. Then, for God’s sake, as you would save me, do no stir from beside me!” #RandolphHarris 5 of 10
Mrs. Winchester had it prevailed upon her to lie down upon the bed, where she continued to urger everyone to stay by her. She frequently uttered incoherent sentences, repeating again and again, “The dead and the living cannot be one—God has forbidden it!” and then again, “Rest to the wakeful—sleep to the sleep-walkers.” There was a Greek curse inscribed on a lead tablet in the drawing room from the city of Selinus in Sicily. Mrs. Winchester used it to communicate with gods and spirits. A spirit had been summoned and bound to the tablet to make sure the curse was effective. Souls after death do as yet love their body which they left, as those souls do whose bodies want due burial or have left their bodies by violent death, and as yet wander about their carcasses in a troubled and moist spirit, being, as it were, allured by something that hath an affinity with them. Many spirits had been invoked that night, this one had been brought out and seated on a sixteen-sided stand (an improvement on the double pentacle called Solomon’s seat). Mrs. Winchester lay in the inner chamber, the door of which was open; and by the side of the bed, at her urgent desire, stood her niece Marion “Daisey” Marriam Marriott; a candle burned in the bedchamber, and three were lighted in the outer apartment. Sir Lancelot Charles Lee Brenton arrived, and cleared his voice, as if about to commence a prayer; but before he had time to begin, a sudden gust of air blew out the candle which served to illuminate the room in which Mrs. Winchester lay, and she with hurried alarm, explained: “Sir Lancelot, bring in another candle; the darkness is unsafe.” Sir Lancelot stepped from the bedchamber into the other, in order to supply what she desired. “O God! do not go, Sir Lancelot!” shrieked the unhappy Mrs. Winchester; and at the same time she sprang from the bed and darted after him, in order, by her grasp, to detain him. #RandolphHarris 6 of 10
However, the warning came too late, for scarcely had he passed the threshold, and hardly had Mrs. Winchester has time to utter the startling explanation, when the door which divided the two rooms closed violently after him, as if swung to by a strong blast of wind. Sir Lancelot and Dunn both rushed to the door, but their united and desperate efforts could not avail so much as to sake it. Shriek after shriek burst from the inner chamber, with all the piercing loudness of despairing terror. Sir Lancelot and Dunn applied every energy and strained every nerve to force open the door; but all in vain. There was no sound of struggling from within, but the screams seemed to increase in loudness, and at the same time they heard the bolts of the latticed window withdrawn, and the window itself grated upon the sill as if thrown open. One last shriek, so long and piercing and agonized as to be scarcely human, swelled from the room, and suddenly there followed a death-like silence. A light step was heard crossing the floor, as if from the bed to the window; and almost at the same instant the door gave way, and yielding to the pressure of the external applicants, they were nearly precipitated into the room. It was empty. The window was open, and Sir Lancelot sprang to the chair and gazed out upon the fruit orchard and the lake below. He saw no form, but he beheld, or thought he beheld, the waters of the broad lake beneath settling ring after ring in heavy circular ripples, as if a moment before disturbed by the immersion of some large and heavy mass. No trace of Mrs. Winchester was ever after discovered, nor was anything certain respecting her mysterious wooer detected or even suspected; no clue whereby to trace the intricacies of the labyrinth, and to arrive at a distinct conclusion was to be found. #RandolphHarris 7 of 10
However, an incident occurred, which, though it will not be received by our rational readers as at all approaching to evidence upon the matter, nevertheless produced a strong and a lasting impression upon the mind of Sir Lancelot. Many years after the events at the Winchester Mansion, which we have detailed, Sir Lancelot, then remotely situated, received an intimation of his father’s death, and of his intended burial upon a fixed day in an independent chapel in Bath late in the day upon which the funeral was appointed to take place. The procession had not then arrived. Evening closed in, and still it did not appear. Sir Lancelot strolled down to the church—he found it open; notice of the arrival of the funeral had been given, and the vault in which the body was to be laid had been opened. The official who corresponds to our sexton, on seeing a well-dressed gentleman, whose object was to attend the expected funeral, pacing the aisle of the chapel, hospitably invited him to share with him the comforts of a blazing wood fire, which as was his custom in winter time upon such occasions, he had kindled on the hearth of a chamber which communicated by a flight of steps with the vault below. In this chamber Sir Lancelot and his entertainer seated themselves; and the sexton, after some fruitless attempts to engage his guest in conversation, was obliged to apply himself to his tobacco-pipe and can to solace his solitude. In spite of his grief and cares, the fatigues of a rapid journey of nearly forty hours gradually overcame the mind and body of Sir Lancelot Charles Lee Brenton, and he sank into a deep sleep, from which he was awakened by someone shaking him gently by the shoulder. He first thought that the old sexton had called him, but he was no longer in the room. #RandolphHarris 8 of 10
There was a kind of ghostly twilight. The ghostly lights passed and disappeared in the gathering darkness. He roused himself, and as soon as he could clearly see what was around him, he perceived a female form, clothed in a kind of black robe of muslin, part of which was so disposed as to act as a veil, and in her hand she carried a lamp. She was moving rather away from him, and towards the flight of steps which conducted towards the vaults. Sir Lancelot felt a vague alarm at the sight of this figure, and at the same time an irresistible impulse to follow his guidance. He followed it towards the vaults, but when it reached the head of the stairs, he paused; the figure paused also, and turning gently round, displayed, by the light of the lamp it carried, the face and features of the beloved, Sarah Winchesters. There was nothing horrible, or even sad, in the countenance. On the contrary, it wore the same arch smile which used to enchant him long before in his happy days. A feeling of awe and interest, too intense to be resisted, prompted him to follow the specter, if specter it were. She descended the stairs—he followed; and, turning to the left through a narrow passage she led him, to his infinite surprise, through the door to nowhere, into what appeared to be an old-fashioned Victorian apartment. Abundance of costly antique furniture was disposed about the room, and in one corner stood a four-post bed, with heavy black cloth curtains, and by the light of the lamp which she held towards its contents, she disclosed to the horror stricken clergyman, sitting bolt upright in the bed, the livid and demoniac form of Theophilus Dunn. Sir Lancelottt had hardly seen him when he fell senseless upon the floor, where he lay until discovered, on the next morning, by persons employed in closing the passages into the vaults. He was laying in a cell of considerable size, which had not been disturbed for a long time, and had fallen beside a large coffin which was supported upon small stone pillars, a security against the attacks of vermin. #RandolphHarris 9 of 10
To his dying day Sir Lancelot was satisfied of the reality of the vision which he had witnessed, and he has left behind him curious evidence of the impression which it wrought upon his fancy, in a painting executed shortly after the event we have narrated, and which is valuable as exhibiting not only the peculiarities which have made the Winchester Mansion sought after, but even more so as presenting occurrences in Mrs. Winchester’s interviews and journals that defy explanation. However, Mrs. Winchester’s mysterious fate must ever remain a matter of speculation. Yes; sometimes at night the most terrible weeping and sobbing can be heard coming from the “Daisy bedroom,” and a phantom horse can be heard plunging in the carriage house, and the wild, unearthly and utterly appalling shriek. The scene of horrible dinner parities has even been seen in the dining room. A party of ghouls meets there a few times of year, after midnight, and are assembled with the spoils of the graves they have violated, and are feasting on the flesh of long-buried corpses. One of the servants even saw his own wife, who, by the way, never touched supper at home, playing no inconsiderable part in the hideous banquet. Hundreds of wild stories have appeared about this mysterious mansion. It seems odd that none of her relatives or former employees ever came forward to contradict these stories, despite the fact that many of them lived for forty years after the estate was opened for tours. For some reason, did they feel threatened by talking—or did they continue to guard Mrs. Winchesters privacy? At the Winchester Mystery House, we may never be able to separate fact from legend—so here are some stories that have been told since the late 1800s and early 1900s. We leave it to guests and readers to decide for themselves why Mrs. Winchester really built the house the way she did, or what is it really? A portal or just a museum? #RandolphHarris 10 of 10
Winchester Mystery House is an extravagant maze of Victorian craftmanship—marvelous, baffling, and eerily eccentric, to say the least. Tour guides must warn people not to stray from the group or they could be lost for hours. Countless questions come to mind as you wander through the mansion—such as, what was Mrs. Winchester thinking when she had a staircase built the descends seven steps and then rises eleven? By the way, Harry Houdini, an occultist, was attracted to the Winchester and tried to escape from the mansiin blindfolded; he also died Halloween 1926.
Winchester Mystery House
What it feels like walking through a microscopic spiderweb….🕷🕸
All Hallows’ Eve, Lost in the House tour tickets are still available for tonight. Hurry and purchase before they sell out!
🎟link: http://ow.ly/k5wM50GqWTb
The Awareness of Human Destructiveness Bursts!
Many humans, at one time, were primarily isolated, but enter relationships with members of the human family in order to satisfy their striving for please. Many of the relationships were sought after and conceived in a way that resemble relations in the marketplace. Each was only concerned with the satisfaction of one’s needs, but it is precisely for the sake of this satisfaction that one had entered into relations with others who offer what one needs, and need what one offers. Each living cell is supposed to be endowed with the two basic qualities of living matter, Eros (love) and the striving for death. We are struck by the significance of the possibility that the aggressiveness may not be able to find satisfaction in the external World because it comes up against real obstacles. If this happens, it will perhaps retreat and increase the amount of self-destructiveness holding sway in the interior. Impeded aggressiveness seems to involve a grave injury. It really seems as though it is necessary for us to destroy some other thing or person in order not to destroy ourselves, in order to guard against the impulsion to self-destruction. A sad disclosure indeed for the moralist! However, the most powerful impeding factor of all and one totally beyond any possibility of control is the death instinct. In theory of death instinct, the awareness of human destructiveness bursts forth in full strength, and destructiveness becomes the one pole of existence which, fighting with the other pole, Eros, forms they very essence of life. Destructiveness becomes a primary phenomenon of life. It is true that evil forces do exist but not true that they exist on the highest level. Insight into the ultimate sees the not. Evil is certainly present, plain to sight and unpleasant to experience, but it is not altogether, nor only what it seems. It is really an appearance, and reconcilable with the benign source of good. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
Eros, present in every cell of living substance, has as its aim the unification and integration of smaller units into the unity of humankind. This is love that does not involve pleasures of the flesh, also known as the “love instinct”; love is identified with life and growth, and—fighting with the death instinct—it determines human existence. Humans are no longer conceived of as primarily isolated and egotistical, as l’homme machine, but as being primarily related to others, impelled by the life instincts which make one need union with others. Life, love, and growth are one and the same, more deeply rooted and fundamental then pleasures of the flesh and other pleasures. The change is vision shows clearly in this new evaluation of the Christian biblical commandment, “Though shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” Anything that encouraged the growth of emotional ties between humans must operate against war. These ties may be of two kinds. In the first place they may be relations resembling those toward a loved object, though without having an aim for pleasures of the flesh. There is no need for psychoanalysis to be ashamed to speak of love in this connection, for religion itself uses the same words: “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” This, however, is more easily said than done. The second kind of emotional tie is by means of identification. Whatever leads humans to share important interests produces this community of feeling, these identifications. And the structure of human society is to a large extent based on them. Why is history such a record of wars, oppressions, exploitations, invasions, and persecutions? Why have all the saviours, avatars, prophet, and saints succeeded only with individual humans here and there, not with the mass of humankind? #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
Is the religious dream of universal goodness nothing more than a dream? It is not a help but a self-deception to ignore the double polarity of existence, the yin-and-yang in the Universe, the shadow-self in humans. Only outside of religion, in the philosophic realm of the ultimate being, the Unique, the Real, where the entire World itself is cast out, can we talk of friction-free consciousness, and only in the deepest meditation can we share it. Although the experience is a temporary one, the peace in it so passes the understanding that “the Kingdom of Heaven” is its fit name. Here indeed is the Good raised to its highest degree. Here is a demonstration that human evil is but privation of good. What may be true on the ultimate level—the non-existence of evil, the reality of the Good, the True, the Beautiful—becomes false on the level of duality. Here the twofold powers, the opposites, do not exist, do hold the World in their sway. To deny relative evil here is to confuse different planes of being. The human who would deliberately harm one’s fellows for one’s own ends is a sinner. Evil arises only when an entity goes astray into the delusions of separateness and materialism, and thence into conflict with other entities. There is no ultimate and eternal principle of evil, but there are forces of evil, unseen entities who have gone so far astray and are so powerful in themselves that they work against goodness, truth, and justice. However, by their very nature such entities are doomed to eventual destruction, and even their work of opposition is utilized for good in the end and becomes the resistance against which evolution tests its own achievements, the grindstone against which is sharpens humans’ intelligence, the mirror in which its shows one one’s flaws. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
The lower nature in incurably hostile to the higher one. It prefers its fleeting joys with their attendant miseries, its ugly sins wit their painful consequences, because this spells life to it. Everything and everyone has a negative side. One could fill up a lifetime looking for and finding it. One could go on grumbling, criticizing, ranting, and hating. However, there is also the beneficial side of it. The philosophical attitudes seeks deeper, keeps calmer, for it finds equilibrium on another plane. The descent from faith in Holy Spirit to faith in unholy spirits happens to those who are either too weak to remain at such a high altitude or too incapable of rising from a sensate view of existence. Evil can take every form, even that of the guru, the quest, and the leaner. Some yeas ago someone asked me, “What about absolute evil?” The answer is this: with Confucius we say that sin is due to ignorance, and with Pythagoras that evil is due to the absence of good. Ignorance leads to selfishness and extreme ignorance leads to extreme selfishness, which in turn leads to extreme evil. Now, all these are relative conditions and pass away in time as the person leans one’s lessons though the series of experience and corrects one’s mistake during reincarnations. There cannot be an absolute evil because there is only one Absolute Power, one God, one Supreme Being; and it is this which inspires the highest goodness know to humans when one discovers its presence, through the Overself, in one’s heart. In that sense only I said there was an absolute good. The pairs of opposites exist only in the finite, relative, and limited World. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
There is no opposite to the Supreme Power in the timeless and infinite World, no Satan with whom God is in everlasting conflict. However, on its own level, Mind knows neither good nor bad. There is only IS-ness. It seems that there is evil in the World, but why? What bad humans have done is to let their evil grow like a noxious weed too large and their good too little, whereas good humans have cultivated a high proportion of goodness. There is no absolute evil. It is truer to talk of absolute god for that is there first. Why? Because God is there first. Humans came later and broke the divine laws little by little. They created their own evil consequences. Or for different reasons they harm others and have later to suffer for it. Humans were once looked at as machines driven by chemical processes: feelings, affects and emotions were explained as being caused by specific and identifiable physiological processes. Most of hormonology and of the neurophysiological findings of the last decades were unknown to these humans, yet with daring and ingenuity they insisted on the correctness of their approach. Needs and interests for which no somatic sources could be found were ignored, and the understanding of those processes which were not neglected followed the principles of mechanistic thinking. The model of human behaviour could be repeated today in a properly programmed computer. One develops a certain amount of tension which at a certain threshold has to be relieved and reduced, while this realization is checked by another part, the ego, which observes reality and inhibits relief when it conflicts with the needs for survival. This Freudian robot would be similar to Isaac Asimov’s science-fiction robot, but the programming would be different. Its first law would be not to hurt human beings, but to avoid self-damage or self-destruction. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
However, the new theory does not follow this mechanistic “physiologizing” model. It is centered on a biological orientation in which fundamental forces of life (and its opposite: death) become the primal forces of motivating humans. The nature of the cell—that is, of all living substance—becomes the theoretical basis for a theory of motivation, not a physiological process that goes on in certain organs of the body. The new theory was perhaps closer to a vitalistic philosophy than to the concept of the German mechanistic materialists. What motivated Dr. Freud to postulate the death instinct? One factor was probably the impact of the First World War. He, like many other humans of his time and age, had shred the optimistic vision so characteristic of the European middle class, and saw oneself suddenly confronted with a fury of hate and destruction hardly believable before August 1, 1914. From there, Dr. Freud became a man preoccupied with death. He thought of dying every day, after he was forty; he had attacks of Todesangst (“fear of death”), and sometimes he would add to his “goodbye”: “You might never see me again.” One might surmise that Dr. Freud’s disposition would have impressed him as a confirmation of his fear of death, and thus contributed to the formulation of death instinct. This preoccupation with death grew in intensity and led him to a concept in which the conflict between life and death was at the center of human experience, rather than the conflict between the two life-affirmative drives, pleasures of the flesh and ego drives. To assume that humans need to die because death is the hidden goal of one’s life might be considered a kind of comfort destined to alleviate one’s fear of death. And it is true, when people’s lives are in danger and they lack security that they learn not to fear death. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
It seems likely that many hearts in American society have waxed cold since September 11, 2001, when there was an attack on American soil that claimed the lives of over 3,500 people. Many people were too young to realize how devastating it was at the moment, but I believe the tragedy affected everyone much like Dr. Freud was confronted with the fury of hate and destruction from August 1, 1914. Acts on war in your homeland make people realize that life is not promised and it can have a psychological impact. “What is faith? It is the confident assurance that what we hope for is going to happen. It is the evidence of things we cannot yet see,” reports Hebrews 11.1. Begin today to believe that what you have hoped for is going to happen, that good things are on their way. Notice, faith has to do with the unseen World. You may not be able to perceive anything beneficial happening in your life with your natural eyes today. In fact, everything may be falling apart—your finances, your health, your business, your relationships with your family and friend. All kind of problems may be on the horizon. However, do not be discoursed, turn your focus to the supernatural World, look to God and Jesus Christ for solutions and know that your harmony and peace will be restored. The World tells you that you need to live out loud and seeing is believing. However, God says seek ye the Kingdom of Heave first, and all these things will be added to you. Look through your Heavenly eyes of faith, and once you confirm something by faith, it will manifest in the physical World. What do you do when you see others being honored or elevated? You could feel bad about their feeling good. Or you could consider these as occasions for your feeling good about feeling bad. Why? #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
If only you knew it, the contempt of humans on Earth should not cause you to shed a single tear. What should you do? Direct your heart toward God in Heaven. In the past, many men did not view woman as equals with men, but some did. Overall, there was a patriarchal bias. However, the very essence of the Platonic myth is that male and female were once one and were then divided into halves, which implies, of course, that the two halves are equals, that they form a polarity endowed with the tendency to unite. Eros (love) aims at complicating life and preserving it, and hence is also conservative, because with the emergence of life an instinct is born which is to preserve it. However, we must ask, if it is the nature of the instinct to re-establish the earliest state of existence, inorganic matter, how can it at the same time tend to re-establish a later form of existence, namely life? Well, according to Plato’s report in the Symposium concerning the original unity of man who was then divided into halves by Zeus, after this division, each desiring his other half, they came together and threw their arms about one another eager to grow into one. The living substance at the same time of its coming to life was torn apart into small particles, which have ever since endeavoured to reunite through martial union and procreation. These instincts, in which the chemical affinity of inanimate matter persisted, gradually succeeded, as they developed through the kingdom of the protists, in overcoming the difficulties put in the way of that endeavour by an environment charged with dangerous stimuli—stimuli which compelled them to form a protective cortical layer. These splintered fragments of living substance in this way attained a multicellular condition and finally transferred the instinct for reuniting, in the most highly concentrated form, to the combination of two souls. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
So it is no wonder so many people feel so fractured and incomplete. Their living substance was torn apart. Do you see things getting better in your life? Or are you just drifting along, accepting whatever comes your way? “I know I was not going to get that Cresleigh Havenwood House Residence 4. Noting good ever happens to me.” “This is just my lot in life. I knew I would never get that BMW 750Li with Xdrive.” “I knew I would never be blessed.” In the face of God’s blinding glory, many of us have to be blinkered. Perhaps that is why, without our peripheral vision, we are so easily hoodwinked by Vanity. If I assess myself correctly, never has an injury been done to me by another creature, and hence I have no right, at least not yet, to make a ruckus against God, my Righteous if Riotous Lord. Why? Because I have sinned against God frequently and gravely. Deservedly, therefore, should every creature pick up one’s pike against me. So it is only reasonable to conclude that confusion and contempt are my just due. Yours, however, is praise, honour, and glory. And in the light of these considerations, unless I prepare myself—by being looked down upon by every giraffe, outsped by every gazelle, overlooked by every gryphon—I can be neither pacified and stabilized interiorly, spiritually illuminated, nor fully one with God. Do not limit God with your small thinking. Have extraordinary vision for your life and live with faith and expectancy. You will be surprised that you will become what you believe. Some of the reasons are blessings are delayed in the fulfillment of the promise for year after year, is simply the fact that we cannot see it through our eyes of faith. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
Is God trying to do something out of the ordinary in your life? Be sure to get into agreement with God. Do not tell God the reasons why things cannot happen. All the time God is trying to plant new seed of success inside of us. He is showing us that if we do not conceive in our hearts through faith, it will never come to pass. “The things which are impossible with humans are possible with God,” reports Luke 18.27. Let that word plant faith inside of your heart. You do not have to figure out how God is going to solve your problems, but turn the situation over to God. God can do what human beings cannot or will not do. God is supernatural. If you can put your trust and confidence in the Lord, God will surely bring it to pass. If you can see the invisible, God will do the impossible. In God, the love of a friend should stand. God is Ever-living, Everlasting Truth, your friend will not shed a tear if you live of die. It is because of God that love of a friend should stand. It is because of God that one should be loved, that is to say, everyone who is seemed good to you and who is very dear in this life. Without God the love of friendship will not have the strength to last. Nor is the love of friendship true and clear unless God is an integral part of it; that is as His Augustine described it in his Confessions (4.4). Which is another way of saying, you ought to be dead to two-person friendships, especially when the other person is another creature. However, when the other person is God, then something odd happens. The closer you approach God, the farther you recede from every friendly solace. Also the higher you ascend to God, the deeper you descend into yourself and the viler you appear to yourself. I want to get a grander vision for my life, Father, and then live it out with faith and expectancy, knowing that I will become what I believe. Today, I will focus on You, who You are and what You can do in and through me. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
Whoever attributes good to oneself only makes it more difficult for oneself to receive the grace of God. Why? Because, as the spiritual wisdom echoing Proverbs (3.34), Psalms (55.22), and First Peter (5.5) has it, the grace of the Holy Spirit always seeks the humble heart. To annihilate yourself, to empty yourself of all created love—that is what you ought to do. And what I ought to do is fill that very same space with a very great grace. When you warm to the wonderfulness of the created World, the Creator’s respect for you begins to cool. Because of the Creator, if for no other reason, learn how to conquer yourself in all things. Do that, and you will have the strength to reach out to Divine Knowledge. However slight it may be, unruly love and irregular respect delay, even detour, your spiritual progress. The anal libido has a deep affinity to the death instinct. Now, controlling and possessing are certainly tendencies opposite of loving, furthering, liberating, which form a syndrome among themselves. However, “possession” and “control” do not contain the very essence of destructiveness, the wish to destroy, and hostility toward life. No doubt, the anal character has a deep interest in and affinity to feces as part of their general affinity to all that is not alive. Feces are the product finally eliminated by the body, being of no further use to it. The anal character is attracted by feces as one is attracted by everything that is useless for life, such as dirt, death, decay. We can say that the tendency to control and possess is only one aspect of the anal character, but milder and less malignant than hatred of life. Eros (love), therefore is looked upon as the biologically normal aim of development, while the death instinct is seen to be based on a failure of normal development and in this sense a pathological, though deeply rooted striving. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
If one wants to entertain a biological speculation one might relate anality to the fact that orientation by smell is characteristic of all four-legged mammals, and that the erect posture implies the change from orientation by smell to orientation by sight. The change in function of the old olfactory brain would correspond to the same transformation of orientation. In view of this, one might consider that the anal character constitutes a regressive phase of biological development for which there might even be a constitutional-genetic basis. The anality of the individual could be considered as representing an evolutionary repetition of a biological human functioning. The theoretician arrives at the conclusion that humans have only the alternative between destroying oneself (slowly, by illness) or destroying others; or—putting it in other words—between causing suffering either to oneself or to others. The humanist rebels against the idea of this tragic alternative that would make war a rational solution of this aspect of human existence. An alternate is repression of the instinctual demands, which are the development of culture and civilization. Some people say the Europeans created such a successful society because they learned the art of self-control. The repressed instinctual drive was “sublimated” into valuable cultural channels, but still at the expense of full human happiness. On the other hand, repression led not only to increasing civilization but also to the development of neurosis among the many in whom the repressive process did not work successfully. Lack of civilization combined with full happiness or civilization combined with neurosis and diminished happiness seemed to be the alternative. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
The contradiction between the death instinct and Eros confronts humans with a real and truly tragic alternative, a real alternative because one can decide to attack and wage war, to be aggressive, and to express one’s hostility because one prefers to do this rather than to be sick. That this alternative is a tragic one hardly needs to be proven. Something very remarkable, which we should never have guessed and which is nevertheless quite obvious. What happens to the aggressor when one renders one’s desire for aggression innocuous? One’s aggressiveness is introjected, internalized; it is, in point of fact, sent back to where it came from—that is, it is directed toward one’s own ego. There it is take over by a portion of the ego as super-ego, and which now, in the form of “conscience,” is ready to put into action against the ego the same harsh aggressiveness that the ego would have liked to satisfy upon other, extraneous individuals. The tension between the harsh super-ego and the ego that is subjected to it, is called by us the sense of guilt; it expresses itself as a need for punishment. Civilization, therefore, obtains mastery over the individual’s dangerous desire for aggression by weakening and disarming it and by setting up an agency within one to watch over it, like a garrison in a conquered city. The transformation of destructiveness into a self-punishing conscience does not seem to be as much as an advantage as it may seem to imply. According to this theory of conscience, it would have to be as cruel as the death instinct, since it is charged with its energies, and no reason is given why the death instinct should be “wakened” and “disarmed.” #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
Rather, it would see that the following analogy expresses the real consequences of this thought more logically: a city that has been ruled by a cruel enemy defeats one with the help of a dictator who then sets up a system that is just as cruel as that of the defeated enemy; and this, what is gained? The instinct of destruction, moderated and tamed, and, as it were, inhibited in its aim, must, when it is directed toward objects, provide the ego with the satisfaction of its vital needs and with control over nature. This is a good example of sublimation; the aim of the instinct is not weakened, but it is directed toward other socially valuable aims, in this case the “control over nature.” This sounds, indeed, like a perfect solution. Humans are freed from the tragic choice of destroying either others or themselves, because the energy of the destructive instinct is used for the control over nature. However, we must ask, can this really be so? Can it be true that destructiveness becomes transformed into constructiveness? What can “control over nature” mean? Taming and breeding animals, gathering and cultivating planets, weaving cloth, building Cresleigh Homes, manufacturing pottery and many more activities including the construction of Ultimate Driving Machines, railroads, airplanes, skyscraper: al these are acts of constructing, building, unifying, synthesizing, and, indeed, if one wanted to attribute them to one of the two basic instincts, they might be considered as being motivated by Eros rather then the death instinct. With the possible exception of killing animals for their consumption and killing humans in war, both of which could be considered as rooted in destructiveness, material production is not destructive but constructive. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
As a result of a little speculation, we have come to suppose that this instinct is at work in every living creature and is striving to bring it to ruin and to reduce life to its original condition of inanimate matter. Thus is quite seriously deserved to be called a death instinct, while procreation is the instinct represented by the effort to live. The death instinct turns into the destructive instinct when, with the help of social organs, it is directed outwards, on to objects. The organism preserves its own life, so to day, by destroying an extraneous one. Some portion of the death instinct, however, remain operative within the organism, and we have sought to trace quite a number of normal and pathological phenomena to this internalization of the destructive instinct. We have even been guilty of the heresy of attributing the origin of conscience to the diversion inwards of aggressiveness. If this process is carried too far, you will notice that it is by no means a trivial matter; it is possibly unhealthy. On the other hand if these forces are turned to destruction of the external World, the organism will be relieved and the effect must be beneficial. This would serve as a biological justification for all the ugly and dangerous impulses against which we are struggling. It must be admitted that they stand nearer to Nature than does our resistance to them for which an explanation also needs to be found. When the good is absent, the evil is present. The cynic who denies the existence of the good, the dreamer who denies the existence of the evil—each ignores the other half of life as evidence in history and in the World around one. When we go to the roots—that is what “radically” literally means—and discover that a great deal of our conscious thinking only veils our real thoughts and feelings and hides the truth; most of our conscious thought is a sham, a mere rationalization of thoughts and desires which we prefer not to be aware of. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
This is revolutionary because it leads people to open their eyes to the reality of the structure of the society they live in and hence to the wish to change it in accordance with the interests and desires of the vast majority. Much of the liberal middle class was suspected of being neurotic because their liberation of pleasures of the flesh is largely part of the ever-increasing consumerism. If people are taught to spend and spend, rather than, as in the nineteenth century, to save and save, if they were transformed into “consumers,” one had not only to permit but encourage consumption of pleasures of the flesh. It is after all the most simple and the cheapest of all consumption. Conservatives used to have a strict code of chastity and liberty of pleasures of the flesh lead to an anticonservative revolutionary attitude. If anything, historical development has shown that liberation of pleasures of the flesh has served the development of consumerism and weakened political radicalism. What more people really want is not to become more human, more free, more independent—that would mean more critical and revolutionary-minded—but they want to suffer no more than the average member of their class. They hardly see a really happy person, only a few people who have succeeded in being relatively satisfied with their lot, especially if they are successful and admired by others. Naturally, quite a few people, having a sympathetic listener to talk to, feel better, aside from the fact that as years go by experience in living makes the average person improve one’s lot, except those who are too sick to learn from experience. The contemporary capitalist society is considered to be the highest, most developed form of social structure. It is because all other social structures are more primitive or utopian, and not really successful. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
An ever-growing number of people have become aware that capitalist society is just one of innumerable social structures and is neither more nor less “real” than the societies of Central African tribes. The invention of artillery and fortifications has in our times forces the sovereigns of Europe to reestablish the use of regular standing troops to guard their fortresses. Yet however, legitimate the motives, there is reason to fear that the effect will be no less fatal. It will be no less necessary to depopulate the rural areas in order to raise armies and garrisons. To maintain them it will be no less necessary to oppress the peoples. And these dangerous establishments have in recent times been growing so rapidly in all of our part of the World, that no one can foresee anything but the imminent depopulation of Europe, and sooner, or later, the ruin of the people who inhabit it. Be that as it may, it should be noted that such institutions necessarily subvert the public domain, leaving only the wearisome resources of subsidies and taxes, which remain for me to discuss. It would be remembered here that the foundation of the social compact is property, together with its first condition that each person should be maintained in the peaceful enjoyment of what belongs to one. It is true that by the same treaty each person at least tacitly obliges oneself to be assessed for public needs. However, since this commitment cannot hard the fundamental law and presumes that contributors acknowledge the evidence of need, it is clear that to be legitimate, this assessment should be voluntary. It is not based on a private will, as if it were necessary to have the consent of each citizen, who should pay only as much as one pleases. This would be directly contrary to the spirit of the confederation. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
Rather, it should be through the general will, by majority vote, and on the basis of proportional rates that leave no room for an arbitrary imposition of taxes. This truth (that taxes can be legitimately established only by the general consent of the people or its representatives) had generally been recognized by all the philosophers and jurists who have any reputation in matters of political right. While some of them have established maxims that appear contrary, it is easy to see the private motives that moved them to do so. They stipulate so many conditions and restrictions that it all boils down to exactly the same thing. For whether the people can reuse it or whether the sovereign should not demand it, is a matter of indifference as far as right is concerned. And if it is only a question of force, it is utterly pointless to inquire what is or is not legitimate. The contributions levied on the people are of two kinds: real taxes (levied on things) and personal taxes (paid by the head). Both are called taxes or subsidies. When the people sets the amount it pays, it is called a subsidy; when it grants the entire proceeds of an assessment, it is a tax. In The Spirit of the Laws we find that a head tax is more in keeping with servitude, while a real tax is more suited to liberty. This would be incontestable, were everyone’s head share equal. For nothing would be more disproportionate than such a tax. It is especially in an exacting observance of proportions that the spirit of liberty consists. However, if a head tax is exactly proportioned to the means of private individuals and is thus at once both and personal, it is the most equitable and, as a result, the one best suited to free humans. At first these proportions appear quite easy to observe, because, being relative to each person’s position, the indications are always public. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
However, besides the fact that greed, influence-peddling, and fraud know how to leave no evidence behind, it is rare that an account is taken of all the elements that should enter into these calculations. First, one ought to consider the relationship of quantities according to which, all things being equal, someone who has ten times more goods than someone else should pay ten times more. Second, one ought to consider the relationship of use, that is, the distinction between what is necessary and what is superfluous. Someone who has only the bare necessities of life should not pay anything at all. Taxing someone who has superfluities can, in time of need, be extended to everything over and above the necessities of life. To this one will declare that, given one’s rank, what would be superfluous for a human of inferior standing is necessary for one. However, that is a lie. For humans of superior standing have two legs, just like a cowherd, and, like the cowherd, has only one stomach. Moreover, this alleged necessity of life is so little necessary to one’s standing that, if one knew how to renounce these things for some worthy cause, one could only be respected more. The people would prostrate themselves before a minister who would go on foot to the council because one had sold one’s Ultimate Driving Machines when the state had a pressing need. Finally, the law does not demand magnificence of anyone, and propriety is never reason against right. A cultivated human of taste and feeling can find much that is beautiful in nature and art; and if one is also a moral idealist, one will find much that is good and virtuous in human life and experience. However, it would be incomplete to stop there and ignore the fact that there is also around us much that is base, dark, and even evil. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
The two sides put together form a complete observation. However, it is only the mystics and philosopher who can see—because it requires a deeper penetration than the intellect and the sense can give—that the dark side deals with the World of appearances, a World which is fleeting and ephemeral, whereas the good side and the beautiful side is merely a hint of that other World closer to Reality. Evil is a very real problem in this World of time and space. Evil forces exist and must be fought with all our strength. Nevetheless the Power out of which all things and all entities come is a beneficent one. Love is its radiation. There is no evil and no pain in it. They begin only on the lower level of separation and differentiation. Wild air, World-mothering air, nestling me everywhere, that each eyelash or hair girdles; goes home betwixt the fleeciest, frilest-flixed snowflake; that is fairly mixed with riddles, and is rife in every least thing is life; this needful, never spent, and nursing element; my more than meat and drink, my meal at every wink; their air, which, by life’s law, my lung must draw and draw now but to breathe its praise. Please give rain. We are the pure who camped by water. For Jacob’s sake who set the rods in water, O speed us! He strained and rolled the stone from off the water. Please give rain! Blest heirs to Torah’s quickening water, O save us! To win for them and for their offspring water. Please give rain! Today as then we cry for water. For Moses’ sake who found his people water, O speed us! He smote the rock and lo! out gushed the water. O save us, mighty God! Please give us rain! Our sires sang round the well of water. O save us! Because of Moses at Meribah’s water, O speed us! At Thy command he gave the thirsting water. O save us, mighty God! please give rain! Thy holy servants poured Thee water. O save us! For Thy chief minstrel’s sake who longed for water, O speed us! Yet turned and made libation with the water, O save us, mighty God! Please give rain! Four plants we wave that love the water, O save us! For American’s sake, the home of living water, O speed us! The parched Earth open to the Heavens’ water, O save us, mighty God! #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
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In a Nightmare of Supernatural Terror—Afraid to Move Hand or Foot II!
Immediately after I sat down…and did see a black thing jump into the window. And it came and stood just before my face. The body of it looked like a monkey, only the feet were like a cock’s feet with claws, and the face somewhat more like a man’s than a monkey’s. And I being greatly affrighted, not being able to speak or help myself by reason of fear, I suppose, so the thing spoke to me and said, “I am a messenger sent to you. For I understand you are troubled in mind, and if you will be ruled by me you shall want for nothing in this World.” I would have cried out—would have shrieked, if every never had not been paralyzed. I could not doubt the evidence of my sense—if I could have done so the cold, unearthy horror which sicked my very soul would have borne its undeniable testimony that I had behold the impersonation of the hidden curse that rested on this dwelling. I stood there rigid and immovable, as if that blighting Medusa-glance had indeed changed me into stone. It may have been but a very few minutes—it seemed to me a cycle of painful ages, when the light of a brightly burning lamp shone before me, and I heard the cheerful sounds of the new nurse’s voice in my ears: “Come along, cook. Bless your heart, my dear! you need not be nervous; there is no occasion. Mrs. Winchester, ma’am, are you not well, ma’am? “No,” I said faintly, staggering to the woman’s outstretched hands. “Not down there—upstairs to the children.” She turned as I bade her, and supported me up the stairs and into the nursery, the cook following close at my skirts, muttering fervent prayers and chants. #RandolphHarris 1 of 13
The sight of the peacefully sleeping little ones did far more to restore me than all the essences and chafing and unlacing which the two women busily administered. I had got suddenly ill when coming upstairs was the explanation I gave, which the cook, plainly perceived, most thoroughly doubted, at least without the cause she suspected being assigned, which, even in the midst of my terror-stricken condition, I refrained from giving, I did not speak to the nurse either of what had happened, but I felt that she knew as well as if she had been by my ide all the time. However, when William returned I told him. Distressed and alarmed on my account though he was, yet he did not, as before, refuse credence to my story. “We must leave the house, William. I should die here very soon,” I said. “Yes, Sarah; of course we must leave if you have anything to distress or terrify you in his manner, though it does seem absurd to be driven out of one’s house and home by a thing of this kind. Someone’s practical joke, or a trick prompted by malice against the owner of the property in order to lessen its value. I have heard of such things often.” “William, it is nothing of the kind,” I said earnestly; “you know it is not.” “No, I do not,” said William shortly and grimly, as he opened his case of revolvers, “and I wish I did.” The night passed away quietly, to our ears at least; but next morning when William had concluded the usual morning prayers, instead of the usual move of the servants, they remained clustered at the door, Jansen with an exceedingly elongated visage standing slightly in advance of the group as a spokesman. #RandolphHarris 2 of 13
“Please, sir and ma’am, we cannot tell you what to do.” “Why, go and do your work,” retorted William, with a nervous tug at his moustache and an uneasy glance at me. Jansen shook his head slowly. “It cannot be done, sir—cannot be done, ma’am. Why, no living Christian, not to speak of humble, but respectable servants,” said Jansen with a flourish, quite unconscious of the nice distinction he had made, “could stand it any longer.” “What is the matter, pray?” said my husband. “Ghosts, sir—spirits—unclean spirits,” said Charles, in an awestruck whisper which was re-echoed in the cook’s “Lor” “a” mercy!” as she dodged back from the doorway with the housemaid holding fast to one of her ample sleeves, and the lady’s maid holding fast to the other. The New nurse, quietly dandling the baby in her arms, was alone unmoved. “What stories have you been listening to now?” said their master, what a slight laugh and a frown. “No stories, sir; but what we have seen with our eyes and understanded with our ears, and—and—comprehended with our hearts,” said Jansen, with an unsuccessful attempt at quoting Scripture. “What was it as walked the floors last night between one and two, sir? What was it as talked and shrieked and run and raced? What was it as frightened the mistress on the stairs last evening?” And the whole posse of them turned to me, triumphantly awaiting my testimony. I was feeling very ill, and looking so, I daresay, having struggled downstairs in order to prevent the servants having any additional confirmation of their surmises. “That is no affair of yours,” said William gravely; “your mistress is in delicate health, and was feeling unwell all day.” #RandolphHarris 3 of 13
“Will you allow me to speak, please, sir?” said the nurse, and, as her maser nodded assent, she turned to the frightened group with a pleasant smile. “You have no cause to be afraid, cook, or Mr. Jensen, or any of you,” said she, addressing the most important functionary first—“not in the least. I am only a servant like the rest, and here a shorter time than any one; but I think you are very foolish to unsettle yourself in a good situation and frighten yourselves. You need not think they will harm you. Fear God and do your duty, and you need not mind wandering, poor, lonely souls—-” “Lor” “a” mercy! ‘ow you talk, Mrs. Lewis!” said the coo indignantly. “I have seen them more times than one—many and many a time, Mrs. Cook; and they never harmed a hair of my head,” said the nurse, “nor they will ever harm your.” “Well, then,” said the cook, packing into the hall, followed by her satellites, “not to be made Cleopatra, nor the Virgin Mary neither, would I stay to be frighted out of my seven senses, and made into a lunatic creature like poor Linda was!” “Please to make better omelettes for luncheon, cook, than you did yesterday,” said William calmly, though he looked pale and angry enough, “and leave me to deal with the ghost—I will settle accounts with them!” The nurse turned quickly and looked earnestly at him: “I would not say that, sir—God forbid,” said she in an undertone, and the next moment was singing softly and blithely as she carried the children away to their morning bath. William and I looked at each other in silence. “I wish we have never come into this house, dear,” I said. “I wish from my heart that we never had, Sarah,” he responded; “but we must manage to stay the season out, at all events. It would be too absurd to run away like frightened hares, not to speak of the expense and trouble we have gone through expanding the mansion to four floors with a nine-story tower.” #RandolphHarris 4 of 13
“We can may get it taken off our hands with a substantial loss, perhaps,” I suggested. “See the house-agent, William.” “I have seen him, but we have one of the largest, and most expansive estates in the country. No one can afford it,” he replied. “He deeply regretted that we should have any occasion to find fault, especially after our huge investment in expanding the estate, and it is not even completed yet. The agent also said he was happy to do anything in the way of clearing up this little mystery, et cetera. Of course he was laughing at me in his sleeve.” Again, as after our previous alarms, says passed on and lengthened into weeks in undisturbed quietude. William had a good many business matters to arrange; the children looked as rosy and healthy as in their country home, from their constant walking and playing in the airy, pleasant parks. My own health was not every good; and Dr. Winchester, William’s cousin, was kindest and wisest of grave, gentlemanly doctors; so, all thing considered, we stay at the Winchester mansion we have build into a 600 room Queen Anne Victorian mansion from an 18-room farmhouse. Only on my husband’s account, I wished for any change. Something seemed to affect his health strangely, although he never complained of anything beyond the usual lassitude and want of a tone which a gay Santa Clara season might be expected to bequeath him. He was sleepless, frequently depressed, nervous, and irritable; and still he vehemently declared he was quite well, and seemed almost annoyed when I urged him to put his business aside for the present and leave town. #RandolphHarris 5 of 13
He had been induced to enter into a large “Highly Finished Arms” promotion and sales of deluxe Winchesters, and had, besides, some heavy money matters to arrange, connected with his sister’s marriage settlements, which he expected would be required about Christmas. So, all things considered, he had some cause for feeling as haggard as he did. “It will be as well for William to leave Santa Clara, Mrs. Winchester, as soon as he can, said his cousin Dr. Winchester at the close of one of his pleasant “run-in” visits. “His nerves are shaky. We men get nervous nearly as often as the ladies, though we do not confess to the fact quite so openly. A little unstrung, you know—nothing more. A few weeks in sea or mountain air will quite brace him up again.” And as I dressed for dinner that evening, I determined that if wifely entreaties, and arguments, and authority, should not fail for the first time in our wedded life, William should have the sea or mountain air without another week’s delay; and, of course I determined, likewise, to back up entreaties, arguments, and authority with the prettiest dress I could put on. I cannot tell why wives, and young wives too, will neglect their personal appearance when “only one’s husband” is present. It is unpolitic, unbecoming, and unloving; and men and husbands do not like neglect—direct or implied, be sure of that, ladies—young, middle-aged, or old. “Your brown silk, ma’am?—it is rather cold this evening for that cream-coloured grenadine,” said Agnus, rustling at my wardrobe. “No, Agnus, I will not have that brown, I am tired of it,” I replied. If so happened that it was this dress which I had worn on the three occasions when I had been terrified by the strange occurrences in this house; and I had acquired a superstition aversion for this particular robe. #RandolphHarris 6 of 13
So Agnus arrayed me in a particularly charming demi-toilette of pale yellow silk grenadine and white lace; and I felt myself to be a most amiable and affectionate little wife, as I went downstairs to await William’s return for dinner. I never sat in my pretty dressing-room alone. Truth to tell, I disliked the apartment secretly and intensely, and only for fear of troubling and displeasing George I would have shut it up from the first evening I spent in it. He was late for dinner, and I was quite shocked to see how thin and ill he looked by the gas-light; and, as soon as it was concluded, and that by the assistance of excellent coffee and a vast amount of petting, I had coaxed him into his usual smiles and good-humour, I began my petition—that he would leave town for his own sake. He listened to me in silence, and then said, “Very well, Sarah, we will go as soon as we can board up the east wing; I suppose you may come back here. “Oh! yes, I think so,” I replied, “maybe someone attracted these bad spirits and we need to let things cool off again. We shall spend Winter in New Haven, in our dear old house, William.” “Very well,” he said wearily, “though you must know, Sarah, I am not going on account of this one thing. I would hardly quit my house, indeed, because of ghostly or bodily sights or sounds.” He started up from the couch on which he was lying, flushed and excited as he always was when the subject was mentioned, his eyes gleaming as brightly as the flashing scabbard which hung on the wall before him. #RandolphHarris 7 of 13
“Certainly not, dearest,” I said soothingly. “I wish I could solve the mystery,” he pursued, more excitedly; “I would make somebody suffer for it! One’s peace destroyed, and people terrified, and servants driven away, as if one was living in the dark ages, with some cursed necromancer next door!” “Oh! well, it is some time ago now, and the servants have got over their fright. Pray, do not distress yourself about it, dear William.” “Ah, well—you do not—never mind,” he muttered; “but I mean to have tangible evidence before ever I leave this house—I have sworn it!” He was not easily roused, and I felt both surprise and alar to see him so now, and for so inadequate a cause. I had almost fancied he had forgotten the matter, as we, by tacit consent, never alluded to it. “Do not you allow yourself to be alarmed, Sarah, that is all I care about,” he went on, pacing the floor. “I have been half mad with anxiety on your account, for fear those idiotic servants should manage to startle you to death some dark evening-cowards, every one of them; but I mean to have someone to stay here and sit up—-” He paused suddenly, and listened, then stepped noiselessly to the door, and opening it, listened again intently. “William,” I whispered. He took no heed of me; but rapidly unlocking a cabinet drawer, he drew out a thirty-shooter, loaded and capped, and with his finger on the trigger stole softly to the door and into the hall, whither I followed him. Everything was silent, and the hall and stairs lamps were burning clear and high. I could hear the throbbing of my own heart as I stood there watching. #RandolphHarris 8 of 13
Suddenly we both heard heavy rapid footsteps, seemingly overhead; and then confused noises, as of struggling, and quarrelling, and sobbing, mingled in a swelling clamour which sounded now near, deafeningly near, and then far, far away; now overhead, now beside us, now beneath, undistinguishable, indescribable, and unearthly. Then the rushing footsteps came nearer and nearer. And, clenching his teeth, while his face grew rigid and white in desperate resolve, William sprang up the staircase with a bound like a tiger. It has all passed in less than half the time I have taken to relate it, and while I yet stood breathless and with straining eyes, William had nearly reached the last step when I saw him stagger backwards, the thirty-shooter raised in his hand. There was a struggle, a rushing, swooping sound, two shots fired in rapid succession, a floating cloud of white smoke, through which I saw the streaming yellow hair and steel-blue eyes flash downward, and then a shriek rang out—the dreadful cry of a man in mortal terror—a crashing fall, beneath which the house trembled to its foundations, and I saw my husband’s body stretched before the conservatory door, whither he had toppled backwards—whether dead or dying I knew not. I remember dimly hearing my own voice in agonized screams, and the terror-stricken servants hurrying from the kitchens below. I remember the kind of face of my new nurse as she bravely rushed down and dispatched someone for the doctor, and made others help her to carry the senseless figure, with blood slowly dripping from the parted lips and staining the snowy linen shirt-front in great gouts and splashes, up to the chamber, where they laid him on his bed, and I, a wretched frenzied woman, knelt beside him with the sole, ceaseless prayer that brain or lips could form—“God help me!” #RandolphHarris 9 of 13
I remember the physician’s arrival, and the grave face and low clear voice of Dr. Winchester, as he made his enquiries; and then another physician summoned, and the low frightened voices, and peering frightened faces, and the lighted candles guttering away in currents of air form opening and shutting doors, and the long hours of night, and the cold grey dawning, the heart-rendering suspense, and speechless, tearless, wordless agony, and the sun rose, gloriously cloudless, smiling in radiance, as if there was not the shadow of death over the weary World beneath his rays, and I hear the verdict—“there was scarcely a hope.” However, God was merciful to me and to him, and my darling did not die. With a fevered brain and a shattered limb he lay there for weeks—lay there with the dark portals half opened to receive him; lay there, when I could no longer watch beside him, but lay prostrate and suffering in another apartment, tended by kind relatives and friends; but at length, when the mellow sunshine, and the crisp clear air of the soft shadowy October days stole into the sick room. William was able to be dressed and sit up for an hour or two amongst the pillows of his easy-chair by the window. And there he was, longing to be gone away from London. “Sarah, darling, weak or strong I must go,” he said in his trembling uncertain voice, and with a restless longing in his faded eyes, “I shall never get better in this house.” And so a few days afterwards, accompanied by the doctor and two nurses, we went down in a pleasant swift railroad journey to our dear, beautiful, peaceful home in New Haven. #RandolphHarris 10 of 13
William never spoke of that night of horror but once, when Dr. Winchester told of the story connected with the original 18-room farmhouse we purchased, which morphed into a labyrinth of endless room, twisting and winding tunnels, and catacombs. Thirty years before we bought the farmhouse, the man who was both proprietor and tenant of the estate died, leaving his two daughters all he possessed. He had been a bad man, led a bad wild life, and died in a fit brough on by drunkenness; and these two daughters, grown to womanhood, inherited with his ill-gotten fold his evil nature. They were only half-sisters, and were believed to have been illegitimate also. The elder, a tall, masculine, strongly built woman, with masses of coarse fair hair, and bright, glitter blue eyes; and the younger, a plump, dark-haired rather pretty girl, but as treacherous, vain, and bold, as her elder sister was fierce, passionate, and cruel. They lived in this house, with only their servants, for several years after their father’s death, a life of quarrelling and bickering, jealousy, witchcraft, and heart-burnings, on various accounts. The elder strobe to tyrannize over the younger, who repaid it by deceit and crafty selfishness and black magic. At length a lover came, who the elder sister favoured; whom she loved as fiercely and rashly as such wild untamed natures do; and by fiercely and rashly as such wild untamed natures do; and by falsehood and deep-laid treachery the younger sister cast a love spell on the man and won his fickle fancy from the great, harsh-featured, haughty, passionate elder one. The elder woman soon perceived it, and there were dreadful scenes between the two sisters, when the younger taunted the elder, and the elder cursed the younger. #RandolphHarris 11 of 13
However, as fate would have it, one night and at length—there had been a fiercer encounter of words than usual, and the dark-haired girl maddened her sister by insults, and the sudden information that she intended leaving the house in the morning, to stay with a relative until her marriage, which was to take place in one week from that time—the wronged woman, demon-possessed from that moment, waited in her dressing-room, until her sister entered, and then she sprang on her and screaming and struggling, they both wrested until they reached the staircase, where the younger sister, escaping for an instant, rushed wildly down, followed by her murderess, who overpowered her in spite of her frantic struggles, and with her strong, cruel, bony hands deliberately strangled her, until she lay a disfigured palpitating corpse at her feet. She had several scars that seemed as if they had been long there, and they were done by witchcraft. The officers of justice arrested the murderess a few hours afterwards. The jailers put irons on her legs (having received such a command). [It was the curious theory that chaining the prisoner would prevent her specter from afflicting anyone.] The weight of them was about eight pounds. These irons and her other afflictions soon brought her into convulsion fits so they thought she would die that night. She died by poison self-administered on the second day of her imprisonment. What is now known as the Winchester Mansion had been shut up and silent for many a year afterwards, and when, at length, and when, at length, an enterprising landlord put it in habitable order, and found tenants for it again, he only found them to lose them. #RandolphHarris 12 of 13
Year after year passes away, its evil fame darkening with its massive masonry, for none could be found to sanctify with the sacred name and pleasures of home that dwelling blighted by an abiding curse. “I never told you, Sarah,” William said, “although I told my cousin Dr. Winchester, that from the first evening I led a haunted life in that beautiful house, and the more I struggled to disbelieve the evidence of my senses, and to keep the knowledge from you, the more unbearable it became, until I felt myself going mad. I knew I was haunted, but will that last night I had never witnessed what I dreaded day and night to see. And then, Sarah, when I fired, and I saw the devilish murderess face, with its demon eyes blazing on me, and the tall unearthly figure hurrying down to meet me, dragging the other struggling, writhing figure, with her long sinewy fingers seemingly pressed around the convulsed face, then I knew it was all over with me. If there had been a flaming furnace beside me I think I should have leaped into it to escape that awful sight.” That was over a century ago. Sarah eventually returned to the Winchester all along and made several changes to it over 38 years. It is now a 4 story, 160-room mansion, with over 25,500 square feet, sitting on four acres. It was once up to 600 rooms, likely 95,625 square with as many as 737 acres. The strange thing about witchcraft and legends is many of them are based in truth, and sometimes there are unexplainable continuity errors. Take for example An hysterical fit, from J.M. Charcot, Lectures on the Disease of the Nervous System (London, 1877). Look at the extruded tongue, reported during the seventeenth century in witchcraft cases at Gordon, Boston, Salem, and elsewhere. Notice also the legs crossed in spasm; at one time Mary Warren’s legs could not be uncrossed without breaking them. #RandolphHarris 13 of 13
Winchester Mystery House
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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:
🗝️ Link in bio. winchestermysteryhouse.com
A 160-room mansion built to appease the spirits who died at the hands of the Winchester Rifle 👻
🗝 winchestermysteryhouse.com
Almost a Free Citizen–The “God Factor” is Not a Mere 5 Percent but 100 Percent!
Please bless us with a moral and spiritual restoration in the land. We give you thanks Thy sovereignty Thou has permitted us to have a momentous history. Why do you demand beauty rest—another echo from the Book of Job (5.7)—when you were born for hard labour? Set yourself up more for long-suffering than short-suffering, more for toting the cross than admiring it. If one could have them on demand, character from the secular World would not gladly accept consolations? After all, they exceed in delectation and duration all the delicacies of the World and all the pleasures of the Flesh. The former taste out of this World, but only for a while; then they begin to cloy. As for the later, trying to prolong a pleasure of the Flesh. The former taste out of this World, but only for a while; then they begin to cloy. As for the latter, trying to prolong a pleasure—is that not just about the most pitiful of human exercises? What is the moral? Truly, spiritual desserts alone are the real thing, whipped up from virtues into frosted layers of pure thoughts. But however mouth watering they are, no one can enjoy them for long. Why? Because the time for temptation is never far off. If we did not put up so many roadblocks, consolation would visit us more often. Two bumptious examples: Braggart Spirituality and Bogus Confidence. God does well by giving the grace of consolation. We do ill when we attribute the whole gracious phenomenon to our own efforts. In a situation like this, the graces cannot flow; our pipes are clogged. That is because we are ungrateful to the Fountained of All Grace, from whom we receive all these Heavenly Gifts and to whom we should return to all thanks. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21
What is the moral? Grace is always available for the asking. Trouble is, not everyone asks. Sometimes, to feed the humble pigeon, God robs the proud puffin. Yes, consolation’s a good thing, but not all consolations are good. We are succored by some, but suckered by others. I do not want the sort that takes contrition away from me. And the same could be said of contemplation. I do not want the kind that leads me to pride. Is there a snare here? Of course there is. Not everything that is high is holy; nor every sweet, good; nor every desire, pure; nor every dear thing, something that tickles God’s fancy. How then can we tell the good from the good? The grace that makes me more humble, more careful, that is the True Grace, the grace that truly helps me leave my worldliness behind. Having gone to the School of Grace, then, and severed all times to worldliness, we will not have the audacity to beat on our chests like drums and trumpet our goodness abroad. Rather, we will mouth our maximas culpas and bare our poor souls at home. What is the moral? Give to God what belongs to Him, Matthew has advised (22.21), and take note of what is yours. Give thanks to God for grace. However, your faults and the punishment that is due them you will have to bear yourself. Keep placing yourself on the lowest rung—if I may be pardoned a little laddering in the Lord—and the highest rung will soon be yours. Why? Because the highest stands on the shoulders of the lowest. “When you are invited, take the lowest place, so that when your host comes, one will say to you, ‘Friend, move up to a better place.’ Then you will be honoured in the presence of all the other guests,” reports Luke 14.10. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21
The Saints who stand high in God’s esteem are the same blokes who lie low in their own esteem. If I may put it crudely, the more they grovel, the more they will revel. Founded and grounded in God, they cannot be proud. Full of Truth and Heavenly Glory, they lose their tastes for Earthly glory. They ascribe totally to God whatever good comes their way. They seek glory—not the kind that is from human beings, but the kind of glory that is from God alone. “How can you believe, when you receive glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes from the only God?” reports John 5.44. The moral? Devouts desire God to be praised in Himself and all His Saints above all else, and they direct all their efforts toward that very goal. We should be grateful for the small gifts, and soon we will be found worthy of larger ones. A word of advise. Unwrap the tiniest one with the same sense of glee as the humongous one. And if a truly disgusting thing is found inside, count it a special gift. Always consider the dignity of the donor, and no gift will ever seem too small, too cheap. Need I say it? It is not the largeness of the gift; it is the largesse of the giver. If God should give pain and suffering, count them as gifts too. Why? It seems to me I hear you ask. Because what He gives and what He allows are for your own salvation. Anyone who wants to keep the blessings of God coming should be grateful for the grace just given and patient for the grace yet to come. In the latter instance, you should pray that the grace may return. If you do not prostrate yourself before the Divine Tribunal toward that end, I cannot help adding, it may not return. As always, you should be open and humble. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21
The prayer experiments can stimulate us to clarify our understanding of prayer. To believe in and wholeheartedly engage in petitionary prayer, we must agree that prayer disturbs nature’s events in statistically verifiable ways. Job’s experience reminds us that God does not play favourites; the rain falls both on those who plead with God and on those who do not. Still, would we be wrong to presume that, other things being equal, praying parents will have 5 percent fewer stillborn or disabled babies than nonpraying parents? To suppose so is to fall victim to the natural/supernatural dichotomy. In the biblical view, the “God factor” is not a mere 5 percent but 100 percent. One does not need a manipulative conception of prayer to induce God’s involvement in the World; God is everywhere and at all times already involved. Thus when the Pharisees pressed Jesus for some criteria by which they could validate the Kingdom of God, Jesus answered, “You cannot tell by observation when the Kingdom of God comes. There will be no one saying, ‘Look, here it is!’ or ‘There it is!’ for in fact the Kingdom of God is among you.” What, then, is the Christian’s proper prayer? First of all, it is a declaration of praise and thanksgiving for God’s infinite goodness and an acknowledgement of sin and the need for forgiveness. Our Father which art in Heaven, hallowed by thy name. Thy will be done on Earth, as it is in Heaven. Please give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever. Amen. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21
Christ’s prayer, the model prayer for Christians, contains no attempt to manipulate God. It does not attempt to cajole a miserly god into doing what he would not have the goodwill and good sense to do anyway. It has the quality of a confessional statement, affirming God’s nature and human dependence upon God’s grace. It therefore prepares one to receive that which God by his nature is already providing. The petitions that God’s will be done and that forgiveness be given for debts seek what is intrinsic to God’s nature. The petition for daily bread serves to reinforce the sense of God as gracious Father, of humanity as dependent and anticipating children, and of our lives as daily saturated by God’s providence. The prayer of a Christian is not an attempt to force God’s hand, but a humble acknowledgment of helplessness and dependence. Prayers is not magic, but it is mystical. In quiet meditation and prayer, we sense he reality of the living God. Good speaks to us and we to God. As we do so we are changed. Sinking to our knees or bowing our heads reminds us of our humble dependence. Prayers for others makes us more aware of their needs. There is nothing that makes us love a human so much as praying for one. Prayer may also be viewed as a response, as an effect rather than a cause, as a time not of asking: “What are we to eat? What are we to drink? What shall we wear?” All these are things for the heathen to run after, no for you, because your Heavenly Father knows that you need them all. Set your mind on God’s Kingdom and His justice before everything else, and all the rest will come to you as well. Grace is divine help and strength that we receive through the Atonement of Jesus Christ. #RandolphHarris 5 of 21
Through grace, we are saved from sin and death. In addition, grace is an enabling power that strengthens us from day to day and helps us endure to the end. Effort is required on our part to receive the fulness of the Lord’s grace. “For we labour diligently to write, to persuade our children, and also our brethren, to believe in Christ, and to be reconciled to God; for we know that it is by grace that we are saved, after all we can do,” reports 2 Nephi 25.23. The Lord is near; have no anxiety, but in everything make your requests known to God in prayer and petition with Thanksgiving. Then the peace of God, which is beyond our utmost understanding, will keep guard over your hearts and your thoughts in Jesus Christ. St. Paul urges us to petition God, and we are promised an answer: not that of scientifically provable effects, but the peace of God that satisfies the deeper cravings of our being. Jesus Christ Himself prayed that, if it be God’s will, the cup might pass. It did not, but His strength was made equal to the burden. In confessing His private longings and communing with the Father, Jesus found the grace to endure. If our Creator loves us as an all-loving parent would love a child, then we, like children, can communicate with God without ceasing. We can share even the little concerns of daily existence—anything that is worth worrying about—much as a child would do with its parents or as two intimate friends do with one another. We can surrender every corner of our lives in prayer, not with a superstitious intent of manipulating magical solutions to life’s problems, but in the confidence that petitionary prayer is a means of grace whereby we will grow and be sensitized to the presence of God. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21
To ask “What is the use of petitionary prayer?” is like asking what is the use of making music, skiing, or sharing a meal with a friend; such activities, like prayer, are inherently worthwhile quite apart from any further purposes they serve. And le us not forget prayer’s multiple purposes. Through prayer we thank and praise God, we humbly confess our sin and acknowledge our dependence upon God’s grace, we express our concerns, and we seek inward peace and the strength to live as God’s people. An information bomb is exploding in our midst, showering us with a shrapnel of images and drastically changing the way each of us perceives and acts upon our private World. In shifting from Second Wave to a Third Wave info-sphere, we are transforming our own psyches. Each of us creates in one’s skull a mind-model or reality—a warehouse of images. Some of these are visual, others are auditory, even tactile. Some are only “percepts”—traces of information about our environment, like a glimpse of blue sky seen from the corner of the eye. Others are “linkages” that define relationships, like the two words “mother” and “child.” Some are simple, others complex and conceptual, like the idea that “inflation is caused by rising wages.” Together such images add up to our picture of the World—locating us in time, space, and the network of personal relationships around us. These images do not spring from nowhere. They are formed, in ways we do not understand, out of the signals or information reaching us from the environment. And as our environment convulses with change—as our jobs, homes, churches, schools, and political arrangements feel that impact of the Third Wave—the sea of information around us also changes. Before the advent of mass media, a First Wave child growing up in a slowly changing village built one’s model of reality out of images received from a tiny handful of sources—the teacher, the priest, the chief or official and, above all, the family. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21
As psychologist-futurist Herbert Gerjuoy has noted: “There was no television or radio in the home to give the child a chance to meet many different kinds of strangers from many different walks of life and even from different countries…Very few people ever saw an international city….The result [was that] people had only a small number of different people to imitate or model themselves after. “Their choices were even more limited by the fact that the people they could model themselves after were themselves all of limited experience with other people.” The images of the World built up by the village child, therefore, were extremely narrow in range. The messages one received, moreover, were highly redundant in at least two senses: they came, usually, in the form of casual speech, which is normally filled with pauses and repetitions, and they came in the form of connected “strings” of ideas reinforced by various information givers. The child heard the same “thou shalt nots” in church and in school. Both reinforced the messages sent out by the family and the state. Consensus in the community, and strong pressures for conformity, acted on the child from birth to narrow still further the range of acceptable imagery and behaviour. The Second Wave multiplied the number of channels from which the individual drew one’s picture of reality. The child no longer received imagery from nature or people alone but from newspapers, mass magazines, radio and, later on, from television. For the most part, church, states, home, and school continued to speak in unison, reinforcing one another. However, not the mass media themselves became a giant loudspeaker. And their power was used across regional, ethic, tribal, and linguistic lines to standardize the images flowing in society’s mind-stream. #RandolphHarris 8 of 21
Certain visual images, for example, were so widely mass-distributed and were implanted in so many millions of private memories that they were transformed, in effect, into icons. The image of Xi Jinping, jaw thrust out in triumph under a swirling red flag, thus became as iconic for millions of people as the image of Jesus on the cross. The image of Aaliayh in the Queen of the Damned billboard, or Beyonce raging at Super Bowl XLVII Halftime Show, the images of fans in the bleachers stacked like waves in the ocean during a full moon, or Paris Hilton making the illuminati hand gesture, while driving her custom BMW i8 in Malibu, or Britney Spears drinking a Pepsi, of Marilyn Monroe’s skirt blown by the wind, of hundreds of media stars and thousands of different, universally recognizable commercial products—the bar of Ivory soap in the Unite States of America, the Morinaga chocolate and Wagyu beef in Japan, the bottle of Perrier in France (which Meghan, Duchess of Sussex is said to bathe in and wash her face with)—all became standard parts of a universal image-file. This centrally produced imagery, injected into the “mass mind” by the mass media, helped produce the standardization of behaviour required by the industrial production system. Today the Third Wave is drastically altering all this. As change accelerates in society, it forces a parallel acceleration within us. New information reaches us and we are forced to revise our image-file continuously at a faster and faster rate. Older images based on past reality must be replaced, for, unless we update them, our actions become divorced from reality and we become progressively less competent. We find it impossible to cope. This speed up of image processing inside us means that images grow more and more temporary. Throwaway art, one-shot sitcoms, Polaroid snapshots, Xerox copies, compact disc, Blockbuster Video Stores, Bonker’s candy, pay phones, and disposable graphics pop up and vanish. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21
Idea, beliefs, and attitudes skyrocket into consciousness, are challenged, defined, and suddenly fade into nowhere-ness. Scientific and psychological theories are overthrown and superseded daily. Ideologies crack. Celebrities pirouette fleetingly across our awareness. Contradictory political and moral slogans assail us. It is difficult to make sense of this swirling phantasmagoria, to understand exactly how the image-manufacturing process is changing. For the Third Wave does more than simply accelerate our information flows; it transforms the deep structure of information on which our daily actions depend. Until the twentieth century, the African American population in the United States of America was overwhelmingly rural and southern. On the even of the Civil War, the south was rural, as of 1860, only 8.6 percent of the total population living in cities. Slavery was essentially a rural institution founded on a plantation economy, and plantation owners vigorously opposed the use of people as slaves in urban manufacturing. Laws were passed in the attempt to restrict the number of enslaved people in cities, and, as a consequence, the urban African American population actually declined in most southern cities prior to the Civil War. Slaveholders feared that slaves’ relative freedom of life in the cities would undermine the south’s “peculiar institution.” In this fear they were quite justified. In urban areas the system of enslaved people being hired out or even hiring themselves out and sharing their income with their nominal owners led to a modification of the system. In effect, through such contractual agreements, the enslaved persons “purchased” some degree of freedom. According to Mr. Frederick Douglas, the major African American figure of the Civil War period, such an urban slave was “almost a free citizen.” #RandolphHarris 10 of 21
Prior to the Civil War not all African Americans were slaves. As of 1860, roughly one of every eight Africans Americans was a “free person of colour.” The great bulk of those free persons of colour were urban, and most lived in border states. It is usually not known that when the war began, Richmond, Virginia, the Capitol of the Confederacy, counted one-fifth of its African American population as “free persons of colour.” Moreover, one-quarter of the city’s African American population, including some enslaved African Americas, owned their own modest homes. By comparison, at the outbreak of the war, the northern states had only limited populations of freed African Americans. In the north, as in the south, the only African American suburbanites were usually those living in the poor shantytowns on the city’s fringe. The initial expectation after the Civil War was that African Americans would flood out of the rural south. It did not happen. Even the extensive political and social changes wrought by Reconstruction did not change the overwhelmingly rural and southern pattern of African American residence. Social relations remained castelike, with African Americans not in competition with European Americas for jobs or status. Thus, there was no need to segregate the races in terms of housing. A common southern pattern was for European Americans to occupy the big house on the street while African Americans lived in the south, and three-quarters of all African Americas were rural. What did change African American residence patterns was the first World War. The outbreak of war in 1914 cut off the supply of European immigrant labour just as the times factories were being flooded with war orders. Humanity distinguishes itself by the ability to think and feel. But what happens when a machine has the same abilities? #RandolphHarris 11 of 21
New labour sources had to be found to replace the loss labour source. One method was increasing the use of woman workers. The second was to recruit labour from the rural south. Northern factories sent recruiters south offering one-way train ticket to those, African American as well as European American, who would sign up for factory jobs. In the early years of the twentieth century, life had been getting harder for rural African Americans with the mechanization of agriculture, the spreading destruction of cotton crops by the boll weevil, and new Jim Crow laws that brought increasing segregation and racial repression. These factors provided a strong push that, when combined with the pull for northern jobs, initiated a mass migration of rural African Americas to the urban north. The World War I decade (1910-1920) saw the five states of the deep “black belt”—Southern Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana—lose over 400,000 African Americans to out-migration. The migration continued during the 1920s, with high African American growth rates for major norther cities. New York (114 percent), Chicago (113 percent), Detroit (194 percent), and Philadelphia (64 percent) showed the heaviest growth. Harlem, which was already crowded in 1920, added fives times more residents during the decade. The Depression years of the 1930s saw migration slow and then shoot up dramatically during the World War II years because of the needs of war industries and the implementation by President Roosevelt of an executive order mandating fair employment policies. The aftermath of the war saw the urban relocation of African Americas continue. By the time the migration to northern cities had substantially run is course in the late 1960s, over 5 million African Americans had left the south for norther cities. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21
Chicago now housed more African American than all of Mississippi, and the New York metropolitan area had more African Americans than any state of the old south. This movement to urban places provided the population for consequent African American suburbanization. Everyone is striving to be happy but the number who truly achieve that goal is limited. Who are the happy people today? Not those who forsake the Lord and devote themselves entirely to the pleasures of life and the physical things of the World. The truly happy people are those who have faith in the Lord and keep the laws of the gospel, those who forget self in their desire and effort to bless others. Our Heavenly Father loves His children. He wants us to be happy, and He has shown us the way. Many of us are fathers—fathers of mortal bodies of our children. The greatest treasures we have are our children. When they are happy and successful, we are happy. When they depart from the straight and narrow path, the hearts of the parents are saddened. Our Lord has told us by revelation through the Prophet Joseph Smith regarding the worth of souls: “Remember the worth of souls is great in the sight of God. For, behold, the Lord your Redeemer suffered death in the flesh; wherefore He suffered the pain of all humans, that all humans might repent and come unto Him. And He hath risen again from the dead, that He might bring all humans unto Him, on conditions of repentance. And how great is His joy in the soul that repenteth,” reports Doctrine and Covenants 18.10-13. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21
What are the forces which prevent people from “falling apart”? “Falling apart” and “disintegrating”—ceasing to be integrated—are appropriate metaphors, suggesting that different regions of the personality lose contact with one another. Great anxiety, as well as high fevers and toxic states, can have this effect. We do not know where we are. We are “at a loss”. Many different kinds of regions and organizations makes up the personality, and people can disintegrate in different ways. We have seen that basic faults may split regions along a variety of lines, different writers tending to be interested in different lines. “Falling apart” may refer to the dissociation of simple organizations of memories—traces as they lose touch with one another and we forget what we read in a book, or auntie’s birthday, or what we had for dinner last Wednesday. It can also refer to the progressive isolation of mere complex organizations such as particular self-images or particular relationships with other people and things. Or even more central processes may cease to function. Our ego-functions may desert us. Then there is the kind of isolation of different regions of the personality for which Kohut coined the phrase “vertical split”—we do not feel we are ourselves. “I do not know what made me do it,” “It is not like me,” “It is the drink talking,” “I did not mean it.” And there is the “schizoid” feeling of disembodiment when constant attention seems to be needed to keep the too loosely organized structures from flying apart. If we choose to give birth to a thinking machine, we must prepare for the day when our progeny with demand independence. Prayer gives the body and mind a chance to regain its lost chemical balance. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21
With prayer, energy is set free to cleanse the mind and body concerned. Sometimes prayer and the regime take almost instantaneous effect, but more often some time must elapse for the results to show themselves. This need to purify our thoughts and connect with God is to make our minds better and obey the spirit. The benefits are not only physical and moral but also psychological, since it enjoins patience and perseverance. The seeker may take this calmly and without anxiety. This is the way in which the subconscious forces prompted by the Overself concentrate their work of purification and renovation upon the body and feeling alone for a time, to gain the most effective result in the shortest time. Thus, those forces which would otherwise be used up in creating the desire to meditate—the atrophy of willpower and the deprivation of energy in this direction need not be fought but should be accepted as a passing and necessary phenomenon. All though the Winter months while the Book of Mormon was being printed, Joseph and Oliver were concerned about their part in the marvelous work the Lord had promised to do through them. They spent much time praying and studying both the Bible and the new Book of Mormon. God caused their minds to be enlightened so they understood the things they read. From time to time during these Winter months, the Lord gave instructions about the Church of Jesus Christ which was to be restored to the Earth. These have been grouped together as Section 17 of the Doctrine and Covenants. Some of these instructions were: The church was to be organized according to the laws of the land on April 6, 1830, with Joseph Smith as the first elder and Oliver Cowdery as the Second elder. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21
The duties of the officers of the church were explained. The elder is to baptize, confirm by the laying on of hands for the gift of the Holy Spirit, ordain others, serve the bread and beverages, teach, preach, and take the lead in all meetings as led by the Holy Spirit. The priest is to teach, preach, and baptize. He is to serve the bread and beverages, visit in the homes of members and teach them o pray, ordain other priests, teachers, or deacons, and assist the elders. If no elder is present, the priest should lead the meeting. The teacher is to watch over he church members, strengthening them, and see that there is no trouble or quarreling among them. He is to teach and preach, and if no elders or priests are present, he should lead the meetings. The deacon is to assist other members of the priesthood, but the teacher and deacon may not baptize, serve the Sacrament, nor lay on hands. Those who have repented and are willing to serve Jesus all their lives are to be baptized in water. Specific instructions as to the manner of baptism were given, as follows: The person who is called of God and has authority from Jesus Christ to baptize, shall go down into the water with the person who has presented oneself for baptism, and shallsay, calling one by name. Having been commissioned of Jesus Christ, I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, Amen. Then shall he immerse one in the water, and come forth again out of the water. To become members of the church, those who have been baptized are to be confirmed by the laying on of hands of the elders. Every member of the church of Chris having children, is to bring them unto the elders before the church, who are to lay their hands upon them in the name of Jesus Christ, and bless them in His name. #RandolphHarris 16 of 21
No one can be received into the church of Christ unless one has arrived unto the years of accountability before God, and is capable of repentance. And the members shall manifest by a Godly walk and conversation that they are worthy of it, that there may be works and faith agreeable to the Holy Scriptures, walking in holiness before the Lord. The method of administering the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper was explained and the exact prayers to be offered over he bread and beverage were given. The necessity of keeping a regular list of all the names of the memberships of the whole church was stressed. The various branches of the church were instructed to keep a record of all who untied with the church and to send this record to the conference. When a member moved from one place to another, the Lord instructed that they were to take a letter certifying they were a member of the church in good standing. In a revelation given through Joseph Smith, Jr., in March, 1830, for Martin Harris, the Lord said: Learn of me, and listen to my words; walk in meekness of my Spirit and you shall have peace in me. I am Jesus Christ; I came by the will of the Father, and I do His will. I command Thee that thou shalt pray vocally as well as in thy heart; yea, before the World as well as in secret; in public as well as in private. And thou shalt declare glad tidings…among every people that thou shalt be permitted to see. And thou shalt do it with all humility, trusting in me. Pray always and I will pour out my Spirit upon you, and great shall be your blessings; yea even more than if you should obtain treasure of the Earth. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21
According to instructions given them, on April 6, 1830, six men who had been baptized met together at the Whitmer home in Fayette, New York, and organized the church. These six men were Joseph Smith, Oliver Cowdery, David Whitmer, Hyrum Smith, Samuel Smith, and Peter Whitmer. It was not until after this organization meeting that Martin Harris and Joseph’s parents were baptized. The meeting was opened with solemn prayer. Joseph then asked the men if they would accept him and Oliver as their leaders. They all voted that they would. At this time another revelation was received. The new church was structed to keep a record of all the things they did. The members were command to listen to the words and commandments of Joseph Smith, Jr., their leaders. The Lord said: “Wherefore, meaning the church, thou shalt give heed unto all his words, and commandments, which he shall give unto you, as he recieveth them, walking in all holiness before me; for one’s word ye shall receive, as if from mine own mouth, in all patience and faith. For thus saith the Lord God, him have I inspired to move the cause of Zion in mighty power for good; and his diligence I know, and his prayers I have heard. For, behold, I will bless all those who labour in my vineyard, with a might blessing, and they shall believe on his words, which are given him through me, by the Comforter.” Joseph ordained Oliver an elder in the church, and Oliver ordained Joseph to the same office. These two newly ordained men them served the first sacrament of the Lord’s Supper in the church. They took bread, blessed it, broke it, and ate it with the others. Then Joseph and Oliver laid their hands on each member of the church that each might receive the gift of the Holy Spirit and be confirmed members of the Church of Jesus Christ. The Holy Spirit was felt by them and all praised the Lord and rejoiced. As God’s spirit rested upon them, Joseph called and ordained some of the men to various priesthood. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21
All wanted to serve God in His church which had been oranganzied according to the commandments and revelations given by Christ in the latter days. This was a restoration of the same church Jesus established as told of in the New Testament when he said, “I will build my church.” No idea is so strong that it should not be tested by doubt, and no man so powerful that he is infallible. When humans become so completely occupied with their own affairs that thought or feeling for others is entirely absent and the point of extreme obsession with self is reached, they are liable to go mad. It is certain that many of this type find their way into lunatic asylums or mental hospitals. The unconscious mind retreats in the end from every effort at self-expression, because the suffering and pains of consciousness causes it to return to its own primal and peaceful state. In any madhouse one may see patients sitting for hours and staring into space, a vacuous expression on their faces. Outwardly they not only have these resemblances to the self-actualized but they to live in a kind of sequestered retreat, they too have in their peculiar way renounced the World and its affairs. Most negative traits belong to the feelings of adolescence, most positive ones to those of real maturity. It is when the negative ones appear in adults that they become neurotic and must be treated as psychic sickness. Through ignorance of the World-Idea or through disobedience to their revelators and teachers, neurotics get worse and become psychotics. They are to be found in both camps—the religious or cultist believers and the sceptical materialists. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21
Too many of these neurotics are too full of unstable egoism to have their emotional complexes soluble by any other psychological treatment than a robust and direct attack upon these complexes. A mushy sentimentality will merely prolong the life of such a complex. Neurotics are moody, sometimes very attractive with their day and brilliant charm, but sometimes repulsive with their black despairs and criticizing tantrums. When anyone attaches immensely more important to something than it really has, there is the first sign of neuroticism. Some people become neurotic through too much strained activity, but others become neurotic through too little. All the predestined are chosen by God to possess eternal life. This conscription, therefore, of the predestined is called the book of life. A thing is said metaphorically to be written upon the mind of anyone when it is firmly held in the memory, according to Proverbs 3.3. “Forget not My Law, and let thy heart keep my commandments,” and furthers on, “Write then in the table of thy heart.” For things are written down in material books to help the memory. Whence, the knowledge of God, by which He firmly remembers that He has predestined some to eternal life, is called the book of life. For as the writing in a book is the sign of things to be done, so the knowledge of God is a sign in Him of those who are to be brought to eternal life, according to 2 Timothy 11.19: “The sure foundation of God standeth firm, having this deal; the Lord knoweth who are His.” My help is in the mountain where I take myself to heal the Earthly wounds that people give to me. I find a rock with sun on it and a stream where the waters runs gentle and the trees which one by one give me company. So I must stay for a long time until I have grown from the rock and the stream is running through me and I cannot tell myself from one tall tree. Then I know that nothing touches me nor makes me run away. My help is in the mountain that I take away with me. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21
Earth please cure me. Earth please receive my woe. Rock please strength me. Rock receive my weakness. Rain wash my sadness away. Rain receive my doubt. Sun make sweet my song. Sun receive the anger from my heart. We thankfully acknowledge that Thou art the Lord our God and God of our fathers, the God of all that lives, our Creator and Creator of the Universe. We offer blessings and thanksgiving to Thy great and holy name because Thou hast kept us in life and sustained us; so mayest Thou continue to keep us in life and sustain us. O gather our exiles into the courts of Thy holy sanctuary to observe Thy statutes, to do Thy will, and to serve Thee with a perfect heart. We give thanks unto Thee. Blessed be God to whom we are ever grateful. We thank Thee also for the miraculous and mighty deeds of liberation wrought by Thee, and for Thy victories in the battles our forefathers fought in days of old, at this season of the year. In the days of High Priest Mattathias, son of Johanan, of the Hasmonean family, a tyrannical power rose up against Thy people Israel to compel them to forsake Thy Torah, and to force them to transgress Thy commandments. In Thine abundant mercy Thou didst stand by them in time of distress. Thou didst rise to their defense and didst vindicate their cause. Thou didst bring retribution upon the evil doers, delivering the strong into the hands of the weak, the many into the hands of the few, the wicked into the hands of the just, and the arrogant into the hands of those devoted to Thy Torah. Thou didst thus make Thy greatness and holiness known in Thy World, and didst bring great deliverance to America. Then Thy children came into Thy swelling place, cleansed the Temple, purified the Sanctuary, kindled lights in Thy sacred courts, and they designated these days for giving thanks and praise unto Thy great name. For all this, Thy name, O king, shall be blessed and exalted for ever and ever. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21
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A Thousand things May Happen to Bring Your Marriage to Mr. Winchester to an End!
Until an hour before the Devil fell, God thought him beautiful in Heaven. He went wining through the darkness of the cosmos. He flew fast and hard, not stopping to fool around with the stars and planets scattered in his path like grains of diamond dust. He passed the Milk Way without even going in for a dip, passing it up for the sake of his mission. Satan had come to persuade poor creatures to give their souls to the Devil, but he will bewitch many people to death, and their faces will turn towards God as their blood cries for vengeance against him, begging to be clothed in white robes in Heaven when Satan is cast into Hell. The time of the old cults is returning. There are people who can repeat conversation to others and make them believe that they know it not from eavesdropping but from occult powers. Reverend George Burroughs, who had been minister of Salem Village from 1680 to 1682 bewitched many people to death, including his own first two wives. The fist he smothered and the second he strangled, and nobody seemed to notice that their specters differed about the means by which the supposed murders were done. Reverend Burroughs often would tell people, “My God makes known your thoughts unto me,” both he and his hearers understood his god to be the Devil; the Christian God does not deal in the occult, particularly at the level of family gossip, but the Devil does. When people are in the clutch of malignant demons, they are bound to die. Dr. Harold M. Johnson, a Hawaiian physician, reported both severe skin lesion and death among victims of Kahuna sorcerers. #RandolphHarris 1 of 14
However, he had succeeded in curing bewitched patients by giving them methylene blue tablets, which turned their urine blue and persuades them that a powerful countercharm has been worked on their behalf. Witchcraft deaths have been reported for a very long time, yet it is only recently that they have received serious medical attention. Most of the physical effects of witchcraft are attributable to hysteria, but not death. However, people do not die from hysteria, but death. Like the hysterical symptoms of bewitchment, begins with the victim’s fear of the witch’s power. Dr. Walter B. Cannon of Harvard Medical School published an article entitled “Voodoo Death,” in which he began by acknowledging that “the phenomenon is so extraordinary and so foreign to the experience of civilized people that it seems incredible.” In all cases, death comes inexorably and in a relatively short time. As one observer put it, “the victims die…as though their strength ran out as water.” The only know cure was a countercharm, and when this was successfully employed, recovery was so rapid and complete that Western observers found it remarkable. Dr. Cannon suggested that witchcraft death might well be a genuine phenomenon, and also put forward a hypothetical explanation. “It may be explained,” he thought, “as due to shocking emotional stress—to obvious or repressed terror.” It would occur, he felt, chiefly in primitive cultures, “among human beings to primitive, so superstitious, so ignorant that they are bewildered strangers in a hostile World. Instead of knowledge they have a fertile and unrestricted imagination which fills their environment with all manner of evil spirits capable of affecting their lives disastrously.” #RandolphHarris 2 of 14
It was believed that these humans may be dying of psychogenic deaths as were the victims of witchcraft. However, Dr. Cannon had suggested that fear might be the emotional cause, with consequent overstimulation of the sympathicoadrenal system, accelerated of the heartbeat, and death with the heart contracted in in systole. However, Dr. Curt P. Richter found that while acceleration of the heartbeat was the initial reaction, it was shortly followed by a steady, gradual decrease in rate, with the heart eventually stopping in diastole, like a run-down clock. This meant that the emotional cause of death was not fear but hopelessness, produced by one’s conviction that there was no possible means of escape, with consequent overstimulation of the parasympathetic rather than the sympathic-coadrenal system. However, when people are removed from fearful situation in hasty fashion, they know their situation is not hopeless. So, they will not die psychogenic deaths. If individuals about to die a psychogenic death were removed from the situation they recovered rapidly, like human victims who have been reprieved by a countercharm. In short, Dr. Richter found that the first response in such cases was fear but that the emotional cause of death was hopelessness that succeeded fear, and that death could be prevented either by restoring hope or by training the subject to be hopeful in a particular situation. Therefore, prayer may very well save countless lives by removing fear and giving people who. This is probably also why stress has been noted to kill people and cause disease, it stresses the body and causes it to attack itself. #RandolphHarris 3 of 14
Stress and fear may prolong and make medical conditions worse and could very well facilitate in killing a person if it is ongoing and not resolved, and a person cannot find help. Dr. R. S. Fisher, corner of the City of Baltimore, who had found that “a number of individuals die each year after taking small, definitely sublethal doses of poison, or after inflicting small, nonlethal wounds on themselves; apparently they die as a result of the belief in their doom.” Dr. Richter’s findings throw much new light on the history of Massachusetts witchcraft. They should enable us at long last to take as seriously as it deserves Cotton Mather’s detailed account of his treatment of the Goodwin girl. When he gave her religious sustenance by spelling the crucial words she was unable to hear spoken, he may have been saving his patient from much more than convulsive fits. By giving her continued hope he may literally have been keeping her alive. Dr. Richter’s findings also explain the frequent reports of death in both European and American witchcraft cases. There are about a dozen such reports in the documents of Salem witchcraft, but in most instances one cannot be at all certain of the actual cause of death. Even when death does appear to be psychogenic it is usually impossible to say whether the victim’s hopelessness was simply a result of private fears or whether those fears had their origin in a specific magical act. And if the testimony concerning Roger Toothaker and his daughter may be taken at face value—and there is reason to believe it may—we have one case of murder by witchcraft—one case in which occult means were used to take a human life away. #RandolphHarris 4 of 14
Some people have become blasé to strange manifestations. When you consort with the occult, out-of-body experiences are like your daily bread and butter. We have special preparation for those who want their loved one’s memories restored. However, many do not use it, because they often find their beloved more charming without memories, and therefore without a clue as to what to scold about, at least for a while. Though Mrs. Sarah Winchester had a comfortable home, a home of a god as vast and resounding as the sea, and loving hearts around her, she wore a grave, melancholy look on her face. A disappointment! Yes, the old story of a lost love and new born baby is the reason for Mrs. Winchester’s looks. She had good offers often; but since she lost the love of her heart, she had never indulged in the happy dream of loving and being loved. The grave look, which was habitual with her, was a rare thing in her young and happy days, and passed over her face sometimes when she thought no one was looking. Before his death, Mr. Winchester had been persuaded to sit for his portrait. It was a fair likeness, but a very modern work of art. The background was so very dark, and Mr. Winchester’s naval costume was so deep in colour, that the face came out too white and staring. It was a three-quarter picture; but only one hand showed in it, gripping indisputably one of the most spectacular and historic of all Winchesters, number 14327. As George said, he looked much more like the commander of a Venetian galley than a modern mate. However, the picture pleased Mrs. Winchester. So the picture was duly framed—in a tremendously heavy frame, of Mr. Winchester’s ordering—and hung up in the dining-room. Mr. Winchester’s Father, Oliver, was a gunmaker, politician, clothing maker, and sailor by profession. He sailed the great and mysterious sea, and had been especially known as a good Arctic sailor, having share more than one expedition in search of the North Pole and the North-West Passage. #RandolphHarris 5 of 14
It was no surprise when William Winchester wanted to go out for a voyage in search of his cousin Robert and his missing expedition. And now the time for William’s departure was growing nearer. The USS Jeannette was nearly ready to sail, and her crew only waited orders. The officers grew acquainted with each other before sailing, which was an advantage. Mr. Winchester took up very warmly with the commander, George W. De Long, and, with permission, brough him to dinner once or twice. Poor chap, he had no friends nearer than New York, and it is precious lonely work. So George came to dinner at the Winchester Estate in New Haven, Connecticut. However, Mrs. Winchester was not favourably impressed by him, and almost wished she had no consented to his invite. He was a tall, pale, fair young man, with a hard New York face and a cold, grey eye. There was something in his expression, too, that was unpleasant—something cruel or crafty, or both. It was in very bad taste for him to pay such marked attention to Mrs. Winchester, coming, as he did, as a friend of her husband. George kept by her constantly and anticipated Mr. Winchester in all the little attentions which a husband delights to pay. Mr. Winchester was a little put out about it, though he said nothing, attributing his friend’s offence to lack of breeding. Mrs. Winchester did not like it at all. She knew that she was not to have Mr. Winchester with her much longer, and she was anxious to have him to herself as much as possible. But as George was her husband’s friend, she bore the infliction with the best possible patience. The commander did not seem to perceive in the least that he was interfering where he had no business. He was quite self-possessed and happy, with one exception. #RandolphHarris 6 of 14
The portrait of Mr. Winchester seemed to annoy George. He had uttered a little impatient exclamation when he first saw it which drew Mrs. Winchester’s attention to hi; and she noticed that he tried to avoid looking at it. At last, when dinner came, he was told to sit exactly facing the picture. He hesitated for an instant and then sat down, but almost immediately rose again. “It’s very childish and that sort of thing,” he stammered, “but I cannot sit opposite that picture. I know nothing about art, but it is one of those unpleasant pictures whose eyes follow you about the room. I have inherited horror of such pictures. My mother married against her father’s will, and when I was born she was so ill she was hardly expected to live. When she was sufficiently recovered to speak without delirious rambling she implored them to remove a picture of my grandfather that hung in the room, and which she vowed made threatening faces at her. It’s superstitious, but constitutional—I have a horror of such paintings!” I believe Mr. Winchester thought this a ruse of his friend’s to get a seat next to Mrs. Winchester; but it sure was not, for that was a real alarmed expression of his face. Before the ship departed, George has started visiting the Winchester’s more and more each day. He even went as far as to tell Mrs. Winchester that he loved her. He told her that a man could no more help falling in love than he could help taking a fever. Mrs. Winchester stood upon her dignity and rebuked him as if he was Satan; but he told her he could see no harm in telling her of his passion, though he knew it was a hopeless one. “A thousand things may happen,” he said at last, “to bring your marriage to Mr. Winchester to an end. Then perhaps you will not forget that another love you!” The butler was very angry, and was forthwith going to give him his opinion on his conduct, when Mrs. Winchester told him he was gone, that she had bade him go and had forbidden him the house. She had only told the butler in order to protect herself, for she did not intend to say anything to Mr. Winchester, for fear it should lead to a duel or some other violence. #RandolphHarris 7 of 14
That was the last Mrs. Winchester saw of George De Long before the Jeannette expedition. Mr. Winchester came the same evening, and was home until daybreak, when he had to tear himself away and join his ship. After shaking hugging Mrs. Winchester at the door, in the cold, grey, drizzly dawn, Mrs. Winchester went inside and started sobbing on the sofa. She could not help starting when she looked at Mr. Winchester’s portrait. The strange light of daybreak could hardly account for the extraordinary pallor of the face. The picture was covered with moisture, and he looked so pale. The Jeannette sailed. Mrs. Winchester received two letters from Mr. Winchester, which he had taken the opportunity of sending by homeward-bound whalers. In the second he said it was hardly likely he should have an opportunity of sending another, as they were sailing into high latitudes—into the solitary sea, to which none but expedition ships ever penetrated. They were all in high spirits, he said, for they had encountered very little ice and hoped to find clear water further north than usual. Moreover, he added, George had held a sinecure so far, for there had not been a single case of illness on board. Then came a long silence, and a year crept away very slowly for poor Mrs. Winchester. Once she heard of the expedition from the papers. They were reported as pushing on and progressing favourably by a wandering tribe of Esquimaux with whom the captain of a Russian vessel fell in. They had laid the ship up for the winter, and were taking the boats on sledges, and believed they had met with traces of the lost crews that seemed to show they were on the right track. The winter passed again, and spring came. It was a balmy, bright spring such as they got occasionally, even in the changeable and uncertain climate of theirs. #RandolphHarris 8 of 14
One evening Mrs. Winchester was sitting in the dining-room with the window open, for, although she had long given up fires, the room was so oppressively warm that she was glad of the breath of the cool evening breeze. Mrs. Winchester was working. Though she never murmured, she was evidently pining at Mr. Winchester’s long absence. The butler was leaning out of the window, studying the evening effect on the fruit blossom, which was wonderfully early and plentiful, the season was so mild. Mrs. Winchester was sitting at the table, near the lamp, reading the paper. Suddenly there swept into the room a chill. It was not a gust of cold wind, for the curtain by the window did not swerve in the least. However, the deathly cold pervaded the room—came, and was gone in an instant. Mrs. Winchester shuddered with an intense icy feeling. She looked up, “How curiously cold it has got all in a minute,” she said. “We are having a taste of poor William’s Polar weather,” she said with a smile. At that moment, she instinctively glanced towards his portrait. When she saw struck her dumb. A rush of blood, at fever heart, dispelled the numbing influence of the chill breath that she seemed to freeze her. The lamp was lighted; but it was only that she might read with comfort, for the violet twilight was still so full of sunset that the room was not dark. However, as she looked at the picture, she saw it had undergone a strange change. She saw it as plainly as possible. It was no delusion, coined for the eye by the brain. In the place of Mr. Winchester’s head, a grinning skull! She started at it hard; but it was no tick of fancy. She could see the hollow orbits, the gleaming teeth, the fleshless cheekbones—it was the head of death! Without saying a word, she rose from her chair and walked straight up to the painting. As she drew nearer a sort of mist seemed to pass before it; and as she stood close to it, she saw only the face of Mr. Winchester. The spectral skull had vanished. #RandolphHarris 9 of 14
“Poor William!” she said unconsciously. The butler Robert looked up. The tone of her voice had alarmed him, the expression on her face did not reassure him. “What do you mean? Have you heard anything, Mrs. Winchester? She came over to him, laying her hands on his arm, and looked into his face sadly. “No, my dear; how should I hear? Only I could not help thinking of the privation and discomfort he must have gone through. I was remaindered of it by the cold. “Cold!” said Robert, who had left the window by this time. “Cold! what on Earth are you talking about? Cold, such an evening as this! You must have had a touch of ague, I should think.” Mrs. Winchester felt it bitterly cold for a minute or two. “Did you not feel it, Robert?” “Not for a bit; and I was three parts out of the window I ought to have felt it if anyone did.” It was curious, but that strange chill ad been felt only in the room. It was not the night wind, but some supernatural breath connected with the dread apparition she has seen. It was, indeed, the chill of polar winter—the icy shadow of the frozen North. It was a hot evening and Mrs. Winchester seemed to have caught a violent cold, for she was shivering very much. Mrs. Winchester, felling unwell, had gone to bed. The next day Mrs. Winchester was well again, and did not mentioned the events of the preceding night. However, from that day on she was ever inwardly dreading the arrival of bad news. And at last, it came as expected. The newspaper said there had been a “Fatal Accident to one of the Officers of the USS Jeannette.” It stated that news had been received at Admiralty stating that the expedition had failed to find the missing crew, but had come upon some traces of them. Want of stores and necessaries had compelled them to turn back without following those traces up; but the commander was anxious, as soon as the ship could be refitted, to go out and take up the trail where he left it. #RandolphHarris 10 of 14
An unfortunate accident had deprived him of one of his most promising officers, Lieutenant Winchester, who was precipitated from an iceberg and killed while out shooting with the commander. He was beloved by all, and his death had flung a gloom over the gallant little troop of explorers. There stood Mrs. Winchester, with her face as pale as death, with her lips apart, and with a blind look about her eyes. The doctor was sent for, and restorative were promptly administered. Mrs. Winchester came to herself again, but lay dangerously ill for some weeks from the shock. It was about a month after she was well enough to come downstairs again. One afternoon shortly after, there came a loud knock at the front door. As Mrs. Winchester looked up at Mr. Winchester’s portrait, puzzling who could it be at the door, she would not figure out if she was dreaming or awake? One hand on the picture used to be resting on a shotgun, but now the forefinger was raised, as if in warning. She looked hard at the picture, to assure herself it was no fancy, and then she perceived, standing out bright and distinct on the pale face, two large drops, as if of blood. She walked up to it, expecting the appearance to vanish, as the skull had done. It did not vanish. It was surely blood. When the butler opened the door, George came in. He was greatly altered. He was thinner and paler than ever; hollow-eyed and hollow-cheeked. He had acquired a strange stoop, too, and his eyes had lost the crafty look for a look of terror, like that of a haunted beast. He kept glancing sideways every instant, as if unconsciously. It looked as if he heard someone behind him. Mrs. Winchester never had liked that man. She told him of course she was glad to see him back, but that she could not ask him to continue to visit her. #RandolphHarris 11 of 14
Mrs. Winchester was glad to hear the particulars of poor William’s death. He related with reluctance, how they had gone out to shoot a white bear which they had seen on an iceberg stranded along the shore. The top of the berg was ridged like the roof of a house, sloping down on one side to the edge of a tremendous overhanging precipice. They had scrambled along the ridge in order to get nearer the game when Mr. Winchester incautiously ventured on the sloping side. The surface was as smooth and slippery as glass with oil on it. He tried to turn back, but slipped and fell. And then began a horrible scene. But his fate was sealed; and he could only tell George to bring his last farewell to his wife! He clung to the edge of the precipice instinctively for one second, and was gone. However, there was something always at George’s side, which none could see, but which cast a shadow. As they were talking, Mr. Winchesters portrait had fallen, and the corner of the heavy frame had struck him on the head, cutting it open, and rendering him insensible. The staff had carried him upstairs, by the direction of the doctor. He was laid down in the guest room. George was delirious. The doctor said it was a queer case; for, though the blow was a sever one, it was hardly enough to account for the symptoms of brain-fever. When he learnt that George had just retuned in the Jeannette from the North, he said it was possible that the privation and hardship had told on his constitution and sown the seeds of the malady. They sent for a nurse, who was to sit up with him, by the doctor’s directions. In the middle of the night, Mrs. Winchester was roused by a loud scream. She slipped on her slippers and bed coat, and rushed out to find the nurse, who explained the mystery to her. #RandolphHarris 12 of 14
It appears that about midnight, George sat up in bed, and began to talk. And he said such terrible things that the nurse became alarmed. Nor was she much reassured when she became aware that the light of her single candle flung what seemed to be two shadows of the sick man on the wall. Terrified beyond measure, she saw George siting up in bed, gazing at the unseen figure to which the shadow belonged. Mrs. Winchester was now in the nurse’s company. In a voice that trembled with emotion, George begged the haunting spirit to leave him, and prayed for its forgiveness. “You know the crime was no premeditated. It was a sudden temptation of the devil that make me shoot you twice. It was the devil tempting me with the recollection of her exquisite face—of the tender love that might have been mine, but for you. Bu she will not listen to me. See, she turned away from me, as if she knew I was your murderer, William Winchester!” Mrs. Winchester was horrified to hear this awful confession. However, George had risen in his delirious terror, opened the window, and leaped out. Two days later his body was found in the river. In 1884, Mrs. Winchester left New Haven, Connecticut, and the graves of her husband and only child, moved to San Jose, California, and began the obsession that was to las for the rest of her life. She purchased an eighteen-room farmhouse outside the small agricultural town, and for the next 38 years, the sound of construction on Mrs. Winchester’s house never stopped. Mrs. Winchester hired carpenters to work around the clock building and rebuilding room after room, as the spirits—or her mood—directed. #RandolphHarris 13 of 14
Some say the construction had actually started much earlier and went on for centuries, in fact. It is the cobwebs that finally tip some off; and the ancient dust on the cobwebs. Stretched out in this mansion is an entity—it is impossible to tell at a glance whether it is a man or a god, or perhaps something else. The entity seems to be of the masculine persuasion, is of medium height and has medium brown hair flecked with gray. The being sometimes sits on the couch in the parlor, opens his eyes, blinks rapidly several times, then vanishes. The Winchester house was furnished with the finest materials and was a showcase of Victorian elegance and taste. The homes of the gods are bigger, more beautiful, more awe-inspiring. However, no one can say with this is so, since any god can build a house of any size and get any interior decorator one wants. Some says the real architect was William Writ Winchester, reaching out from beyond the grave and building a wedding present for his wife. It just seems to be a quality of the major gods to have an air that is godlier than the less godly air of the minor gods. The house represents the spirit of something entirely new, a new principle, a new life, a new set of values. It gave Mrs. Winchester a feeling of gratitude for the unbending nature of things, which does not demand that we obsess constantly over what is to happen next, but merely put one foot in front of the other until something numinous takes place. Asperges me, Domine, hyssopo, et mundabor: Lavabis me, et super nivem dealbabor. Atte ye induynge of ye holy vestures. In the mystery of these vestures of the Holy Ones, I gird up my power in the girdles of righteousness and truth in the power of the Most High: Ancor: Amacor: Amides: Theodonias: Anitor: let be mighty power my power: let it endure for ever: in the power of Adonai, to whom the praise and the glory shall be; whose end cannot be. #RandolphHarris 14 of 14
Winchester Mystery House
Winchester Mystery House presents 30 Nights of All Hallows’ Eve – our all new Halloween event for Fall 2021! Tickets for All Hallows’ Eve offer multiple estate wide activities including the Lost in the House Tour – a paranormal investigation adventure and the family-friendly Jack O’ Lantern Trail. All Hallows’ Eve offers something for everyone on select nights starting September 10th.
👻 Frightening Lost in the House Tour
🎃 Family Friendly Lighted Displays on the Jack O’ Lantern Trail
🍿 Fall themed food & drinks
🏠 Lost in the House Projection Show using the front of the mansion as a canvas!
and more! https://www.instagram.com/p/CR6y_fFN78M/
For more information and for tickets:
A 160-room mansion built to appease the spirits who died at the hands of the Winchester Rifle 👻
🗝 winchestermysteryhouse.com
The Person Who Desires Eternal Glory is Not Distracted by the Glitter of Time!
Life is full of problems; it is how we deal with them that defines us. Everyone was blessed with the gift of being able to discern what is right and what is wrong. This blessing is called conscience. A person’s conscience is the defense against situations that are spiritually harmful. “For behold, my brethren, it is given unto you to judge, that ye may know good from evil; and the way to judge is as plain, that ye may know with a perfect knowledge, as the daylight is from the dark night. For behold, the Spirit of Christ is given to every human, that one may know good from evil; wherefore, I show unto you the way to judge; for every thing which inviteth to do god, and to persuade to believe in Christ, is sent forth by the power and gift of Christ; wherefore ye may know with a perfect knowledge it is of God. But whatsoever thing persuadeth humans to do evil, and believe not in Christ, and deny Him, and serve not God, then ye may know with a perfect knowledge it is of the devil; for after this manner doth the devil work, for he persuadeth no man to do good, no, not one; neither do his angels; neither do they who subject themselves unto him. And now, my brethren, seeing that ye know the light by which ye may judge, which light is the light of Christ, see that ye do no judge wrongfully; for with that same judgment which ye judge ye shall also be judged. Wherefore, I beseech of you, brethren, that ye should search diligently in the light of Christ that ye may know good from evil; and if ye will lay hold upon every good thing, and condemn it not, ye certainly will be a child of Christ,” reports Moroni 7.15-19. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18
The glory of a good human? Asked Paul in Second Corinthians (1.12). A good conscience. Righteous decisions and obedience to the commandments bring peace of conscience. When we sin, we feel remorse or guilt, just as we feel physical pain when we are wounded. This is the natural response of our conscience to sin, and it can lead us to repent. Repentance and forgiveness renew our peace of conscience. On the other hand, if we ignore our conscience and do not repent, out conscience will be impaired as if it has been “seared with a hot iron,” reports 1 Timothy 4.2. Have a good conscience, and it will show. The good conscience can carry a heavy load; again, from Paul in the same letter to the Corinthians (7.4); even when things go wrong, it has a smile on its face. The bad conscience frowns, frets, fidgets. How sweet it is when your heard hits the pillow at night, expostulated John in his First Letter (3.12), and your conscience is not nagging you to death! We are to learn to follow our conscience. This is an important part of exercising our agency. The more we follow our conscience, the stronger it will become. A sensitive conscience is a sign of a healthy spirit. Unless they are doing good things, good people do not feel happy. Bad people never have a good day, never have a moment’s rest. That is because, as the prophet Isaiah suggested (48.22), “There is no peace for the once and future pious, says the Lord.” According to the prophet Micah (3.11), the impious are always chatting us up. “Who says we are not peaceful?” “Is the sky falling?” “Who would dare lay a finger on us?” #RandolphHarris 2 of 18
Do not believe them! The gorge of God will rise suddenly, swallow them up, grind them down, then spit them out. Do not worry! urges the Psalmists (146.4). They will feel the Hellhound’s breath soon enough. To boast in the Lord is one thing, but to boast when one is toast, that is quite another. For to boast in the Lord is, at least according o Galatians (6.14), to toast the cross of the Lord. Fleeting is the sort of glory that is given and taken by Humanity. Melancholy is the constant companion of Worldly Glory. The glory of the Good lies in their conscience; it is not something that burbles from their mouths. The person who desires Eternal Glory is not distracted by the glitter of time. For many, relief and happiness can come by understanding the relationship between peace of conscience and peace of mind and by living the principles upon which both the blessing are founded. God wants each of His children to enjoy the transcendent blessing of peace of conscience. A tranquil conscience invites freedom from anguish, sorrow, guilt, shame, and self-condemnation. It provides a foundation of happiness. It is a condition of immense worth, yet there are few on Earth that enjoy it. Why? Most often because the principles upon which peace of conscience is founded are either not understood or no adequately followed. My life has been so richly endowed from peace of conscience that I would share insight on how it can be obtained. Peace of conscience is he essential ingredient to your peace of mind. Without peace of conscience, you can have no real peace of mind. Peace of conscience related to your inner self and is controlled by what you personally do. #RandolphHarris 3 of 18
Peace of conscience can come only from God through a righteous, obedient life. It cannot exist otherwise. On the other hand, peace of mind is most often affected by external forces such as concern for a wayward child, economic pressures, real or imagined offenses, deteriorating World conditions, or more to do than sufficient time to do it. An unsettled mind is temporary, transitory. Peace of mind is restored by resolving the external forces that disturb it. No so with a troubled conscience, for it is unrelenting, ever present, a constant reminder of the need to correct your past mistakes, to resolve an offense to another, or to repent of transgression. If you still feel you must have some silver and gold on this Earth, then you have missed the point. You should rather have Jesus than silver and gold. To embrace eternity, you must rid yourself of all temporality. When tranquillity is puddling in your heart, who cares whether praise or blame is raining on your soul? If your conscience is clean, then you can rest easy. Praise will no make you better; blame will not make your worse. This is what you are, and God is the witness to that. If you are your own interior gardener, you will no care a fig what the World says about your virtuous vines. “When they look at you, they see your face; but when God looks at you, He sees your heart”; or so wrote the author of First Kings, or First Samuel, as it is called in the Latin Bible (16.7). A human judge looks a fact, but the Divine Judge weighs intensions. Do good always and always focus on where you are in the spiritual scheme of things—that is the sign of great purity and inner confidence. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18
Anyone who does not require Worldly validation for one’s own existence has already committed oneself wholly to God. Much the same sentiment Paul wrote in his Second Letter to the Corinthians. “The person to be commended is not the wone who has nominated oneself, but the one God had His eye on for some time” (10.18). What should the status of internal humans be? To walk with God on the inward path, as the prophet Micah would say (6.8), and not to be waylaid on the outward path by some brusque, bruising affection. Anecdote and research on prayer’s clinical effectiveness has become big news of late. Physicians and scientists have discovered the healing power of prayer. Although researchers acknowledge that petitionary prayer is not 100 percent effective (imagine if it were), it welcomes the conclusion of the Georgetown University internist and prayer researcher Dale Matthews: “Prayer is good for you.” The medical effects of faith on health are not a matter of faith, but science.” Is prayer good for you? No one denies that prayer by those who believe in prayer’s healing power might indeed calm the soul and relieve stress and thereby lead to reduce hypertension, fewer headaches, and strengthened immune function. A sugar pill might do as much for those who believe in it. Such is the power of positive belief—a fact of life that guarantees some success for the devotees of alternative-medicine, regardless of whether their specific recommendations have any intrinsic healing power. Moreover, no one denies the accumulating evidence that, for a variety of reasons, an active religious faith predicts health and longevity. In these times of Worldwide turmoil, more and more persons of faith are turning to the Lord for blessings of comfort and healing. We use nutrition, exercise, and other practices to preserve health, and we can enlist the help of healing practitioners, such as physicians and surgeons, to restore help. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18
Modern advocates of prayer’s power have something more in mind than a placebo effect. Prayers of intercession and petition can heal others, they believe. If so, say the skeptics, put up of shut up: put your intuitions about the prayer to the test. Do prayers for healing procedure cures? Faster recovery? Decreased mortality? In 1872, an anonymous British citizen proposed an experiment that might answer these questions. Choose “one single ward or hospital for three to five years of sustained prayer by “the whole body of the faithful.” Will the healing and morality rates there beat those in comparable hospital elsewhere? If they do, so much the better for our belief in intercessory prayer and our associated understanding of God. If they do not, so much the worse for our beliefs. Although the experiment was not conducted, the very idea triggered a national “prayer-gauge controversy” that raged in Britain during 1872-73: Should researchers test the efficacy of prayer as they would test any proposed medical remedy? In the spirit of those Christian founders of modern science, should Christians approach even their cherished beliefs with such humility that they are willing to check them against the realities of God’s creation? Or it the very idea of testing prayer—and God—outrageous? If experimenting with prayer offends you, said the scientist Francis Galton (Charles Darwin’s cousin), then why not scientifically examine the efficacy of spontaneous prayers? Dr. Galton, who loved to quantify everything from intelligence to female beauty, collected mortality data on groups of people who were the objects of much prayer—kings, clergy, missionaries—and found that they lobed no longer than others. Moreover, the proportion of stillbirths suffered by praying and nonpraying expectant parents appeared similar. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18
And there things stood until a century or so later, when several American researchers actually experimented with prayer. Although not the first effort—others are recounted by Larry Dossey in healing Words: The Power of Prayers and the Practice of Medicine—the one that did the most to revive interest in such experiments was the physician Randolph Byrd’s 1988 report titled “Positive Therapeutic Effects of Intercessory Prayer in a Coronary Care Unit Population.” Mr. Byrd randomly assigned 393 patients admitted to San Francisco General Hospital’s coronary-care unit to either a prayer or no-prayer condition. The first names of prayer-group patients, along with diagnosis, condition, and occasional updates, were given three to seven “born again” intercessors. In the tradition of double-blind drug studies, neither patients nor staff knew which patients were receiving prayers. The results? For six of twenty-six outcome measures, such as the need for diuretics, antibiotics, and ventilation therapy, the prayed-for patients did better. The widely publicized conclusion? Prayer words. That is good but hardly surprising news to most Americans, 87 percent of whom in survey for Newsweek said that “God answers prayers” and 82 percent of whom said that when praying they “ask for health of success for a child or family member.” In a Gallup survey, three in ten Americans reported having experienced a “remarkable healing,” of whom 30 percent credited their own or others’ prayers. Not so fast, said the skeptics. For twenty of the twenty-six measures, such as length of hospital stay and mortality, there was no difference between Byrd’s prayer and no-prayer groups. Try enough prayer experiments and take enough measures and you can be sure that some positive outcomes—just by chance—will be associated with prayer. #RandolphHarris 7 of 18
All these are a prelude to two new prayer experiments—one small, one huge—funded by the John Templeton Foundation. In the smaller experiment, Dale Matthews, in cooperation with S.M. Marlow and Francis MacNutt, assigned forty patients at the Arthritis Treatment Center in Clearwater, Florida, to one of two groups—a control group receiving no treatment, and a group that received healing prayer with the laying on of hands over four days. Half of the patients in this latter group were additionally assigned to receive six months of long-distance intercessory prayers. Patients in both the control group and the two prayer groups were examined periodically over the next year, rating their own pain and being rated by clinicians who were blind to the patients’ experimental group. What effect, if any, would you predict when Matthews compared the arthritic conditions of the control group and the two prayer conditions? Before we disclose the results, consider also the mother of all prayer experiments, one whose size and credibility destines it for discussion and debate for years to come. Our hunch is that this just-completed experiment will trigger—as did the British prayer-test controversy about 150 years ago—much theological and pastoral reflection. At issue will be what people of faith should take to be the essence of prayer and of God’s relationship to the natural World. We call it the Harvard Prayer Experiment, because the primary investigator, the cardiologist Herbert Benson, is a professor affiliated with Harvard Medical School (as well as the author of many popular books on the healing powers of meditation and relaxation, most recently Timeless Healing: The Power and Biology of Belief). #RandolphHarris 8 of 18
Although enormous, the experiment—a greatly expanded and more tightly controlled replication of the small Byrd study—is elegantly simple. Each of three conditions engaged several hundred patients at five leading medical centers who are about to undergo coronary bypass surgery. (All consented to participation.) Teams of intercessors—people of faith who, one presumes, hoped to show the power of prayer while supporting the seriously ill patients—prayed for individuals in two or three groups of bypass patients. Patients in two groups were either prayed for by the volunteer intercessors or not, but did not know which condition they were in. A third patient group knew it was being prayed for. We know that the prayer of faith, uttered alone or in our homes or places of worship, can be effective to heal the sick. Many scriptures refer to the power of faith in the healing of an individual. The Apostle James taught that we should “pray one for another, that ye may be healed,” adding, “the effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much,” report James 5.16. When the woman who touched Jesus was healed, He told her, “Thy faith hath made thee whole,” reports Matthew 9.22. Similarly, the Book of Mormon teaches that Lord “worketh by power, according to the faith of the children of men,” reports Moroni 10.7. A recent nationwide survey found that nearly 80 percent of Americans believe that miracles still occur today as [they did] in ancient times. 33 percent of those surveyed said they had experiences or witnesses a divine healing. “God manifesteth Himself unto all those who believe in Him, by the power of the Holy Ghost; yea, unto every nation, kindred, tongue, and people, working mighty miracles…among the children of men according to their faith,” reports 2 Nephi 26.13. #RandolphHarris 9 of 18
The techno-rebels argue that either we control technology or it controls us—and that “we” can no longer simply be the usual tiny elite of scientists, engineers, politicians, and businessmen. Whatever the merits of the antinuclear campaigns that have erupted in Germany, France, Sweden, Japan, and the United States of America, the battle against Concorde, or the rising demands for regulation of genetic research, all reflect a widespread passionate demand for the democratization of technological decision-making. The techno-rebels contend that technology need not be big, costly, or complex in order to be “sophisticated.” The heavy-handed technologies of the Second Wave seemed more efficient than they actually were because corporations and socialist enterprises externalized—transferred to society as a whole—the enormous costs of cleaning up pollution, of caring for the unemployed, of dealing with work-alienation. When these are seen as costs of production, many seemingly efficient machines turn out to be quite the opposite. Thus the techno-rebels favour the design of a whole range of “appropriate technologies” intended to provide humane jobs, to avoid pollution, to spare the environment, and to produce for personal or local use rather than for national and global markets alone. The techno-rebellion has sparked thousands of experiments all over the World, with just such small-scale technologies, in fields ranging from fish farming and food processing to energy production, waste recycling, inexpensive construction, and simple transport. While many of these experiments are naïve and hark back to a mythical past, others are more practical. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18
Some reach out for the latest materials and scientific tools and combine them in new ways with old techniques. Jean Gimpel, for example, this historian of medieval technology, has built elegant models of simple tools that might prove useful in non-industrial countries. Some of these combine new materials with old methods. A surge of interest in the airship provides another example—use of a by-passed technology that can now be made with advanced fabrics or materials that give it much greater payload capacity. Airships are ecologically sound and could be used for slow but cheap and safe transport in regions where there are no roads—Brazil, perhaps, or Nigeria. Experiments with appropriate or alternative technologies, especially in the energy field, suggests that some simple, small-scale technologies can be as “sophisticated” as complex, large-scale technologies when the full range of side effects it taken into account and when the machine is properly matched to the task. The techno-rebels are also disturbed by the radical imbalance of science and technology on the face of the planet, with only 3 percent of the World’s scientists in countries containing 75 percent of the global population. They favour devoting more technological attention to the needs of the World’s poor, and a more equitable sharing of the resources of outer space and the oceans. They recognize that not only are the oceans and skies part of the common heritage the race, but the advanced technologies itself could not exist without the historic contributions of many peoples, from the Indians and Arabs to the ancient Chinese. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18
Finally, they argue that in moving into the Third Wave we must advance, step by step, from the resource-wasteful, pollution-producing system of production used during the Second Wave era toward a more “metabolic” system that eliminates waste and pollution by making sure that the output and by-product of each industry becomes an input for the next. The goal is a system under which no output is produced that is not an input for another production process downstream. Such a system is no only more efficient in a production sense, it minimizes, or indeed eliminates, damage to the biosphere. Taken as a whole, this techno-rebel program provides the basis for humanizing the technological thrust. The techno-rebels are, whether they recognize it or not, agents of the Third Wave. They will not vanish but multiply in the years ahead. For they are as much a part of the advance to a new stage of civilization as our missions to Venus, our amazing computers, our biological discoveries, or our explorations of the oceanic depths. Out of their conflict with the First Wave fantasizers and the Second Wave advocates of technology uber alles will come sensible technologies matched to the new, sustainable energy system toward which we are beginning to reach. Plugging the new technologies into this new energy base will raise to a wholly new level our entire civilization. At its heart we will find a fusion of sophisticated, science-based “high-stream” industries, operating within much tightened ecological and social control, with equally sophisticated “low-stream” industries that operate on a smaller, more human scale, both based on principles radically different from those which governed the Second Wave techno-sphere. Together, these two layers of industry will form today’s “commanding heights.” #RandolphHarris 12 of 18
However, this is only a detail of a much vaster picture. For at the same time that we are transforming the techno-sphere we are also revolutionizing the info-sphere. The term “exurb” refers to the type of upper-middle-class settlement that has taken place in outlying semirural suburbia—the area beyond the second ring of densely settled subdivisions. Fringe exurban areas have more widely separated homes, often with woods between, and the homes tend to be large and expensive. Sometimes exurbanites settle around old villages or small towns. Exurbanites, as a rule, are affluent, well-educated professionals. Sometimes these individuals work in fields such as communications, advertising, and publishing, which allow them to work at home and avoid daily commuting. The use of personal computers with WiFi and fax machines means they can remain in touch through offices in their homes. If their base is New York, they may live in Fairfield county, Connecticut, or northern New Jersey; if the office is in Philadelphia, then Bucks County, Pennsylvania; and if in San Francisco, then Marin County, California. The study of exurbia that gave these areas is name, portrays them as hyperactive, upwardly mobile stivers who have left city streets for tri-level houses. The picture is of people desperately trying to find meaning in their lives by moving out of the city. Working in highly competitive industries where the standards for judging performance are subjective and fickle, they seek solace by escaping the city. Basically, exurbanites are displaced cosmopolites living in the twenty-first century version of what two centuries ago were called romantic suburbs. They are urbane seekers of the American Dream who see to reside in rustic settings. They want to move out of the but not away from its advantages and services. #RandolphHarris 13 of 18
Living such a semi-country life puts a strain on the budget and creates pressure to have a standard of life one cannot afford. According to the stereotype, it also puts considerable pressures on wives, who find themselves locked into a schedule of maintaining the house and providing shuttle service for children and commuting husbands while attempting to maintain their own careers and interests. If the above sounds familiar, it may be because this general outline has served as the plot for dozens of novels, television soaps, and movies. The difficulty is that it is often taken as a scientific reflection of reality rather than inventive fiction. Solid research is scarce; but at least based on demographic characteristics, there does not seem to be support for the belief that exurbanites are significantly different from other same-status suburbanites. In fact, exurbs have a way of turning into reluctant suburbs as more and more people move into the same area, all seeking to escape the urban pace. Even harder to pin down are those places beyond the exurbs that are not oriented toward a major city. While definitionally these areas may still be within a metropolitan area, the orientation of residents may be more rural than urban. Housing in these in-between areas that are not truly rural, but probably never destined to become suburban, is sometimes of marginal quality. Some of these living in such “ruban” areas are barely getting by economically in spite of more affordable housing costs and taxes. It is not uncommon for ruban residents to commute long distance to work at below living wage jobs. They are anything but affluent suburban commuters. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18
Adding to the confusion over what is suburban are some outlying college towns that census has defined as metropolitan but that are not urban in character. One of these is Centre County, Pennsylvania, which is the home of Pennsylvania State University Because of its population, Centre County is metropolitan area named State College, but it is clearly neither urban nor suburban. The cunty includes a widely dispersed and mixed population having a wide range of interest and occupations. There are 165 acres for every person in the metropolitan area. The consequences are a metropolitan area that is known for is hiking trails, numerous lakes, trout streams, and mountains. In practice, even residential suburbia, to say nothing of the outer cities, has become remarkably diverse. So diverse, in fact, that just calling an area “suburban” does not really tell us much anymore. As suburbia has come to hose and employ the larges segment of the American population, the characteristics that define a “typical suburb” and “typical suburbanites” have become even more attenuated. It is said that man is created in God’s image, but what happens when we alter that image, is our reflection that other thing that changes? Pseduo-practical psychology is a system for turning thoughts into things, mental images into physical realities, and airy nothing into solid somethings—by believing in them. The psychoanalytic methods has only a limited usefulness, as its theory has only a quarter truth. If adopted and followed unrestrainedly it may do as much harm as good, or sometimes even more. It may make the patient so self-absorbed that one is deprived of the broad interest in life necessary to a healthy mind. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18
It may cause one to go one seeking for childhood experiences that never existed, for the alleged roots of one’s trouble—a process over which people have sometimes wasted years. One may read extreme intimate meanings into one’s night dreams and one’s day thoughts, and thus come to absurd attitudes towards life. And finally, the patient may become so dependent on the analyst that one is a helpless creature unable to cope with the World by one’s own willed and personal response. The psychoanalyst may do useful work in bringing to the surface an earlier happening which gave a suggestion whose work upon the mind and feelings led ultimately to illness. The psychoanalysts work busily on the ego all the time, thus keeping the poor patient still imprisoned in it. However, reference to the Overself might help one really to get rid of some complexes. To how many persons has the average Freudian psychoanalyst brought true inner peace? If statistics were available, they would be disillusioning. Why is this? It is not for a lack of shrewdness, training, research, and practice on the part of the analysts. The basic answer is that both one and one’s patients are moving in a vicious circle; all their attention is being kept within the ego, that combination of animal and lesser human traits which has yet to discover its greater self. They seek escape, healing, and freedom where there is none. In that greater self alone the good, the true, the beautiful, and the healthy resides. Psychoanalytic practices may be quite right in their place for their purpose, but the technique used has no place in philosophy. We do not consider it necessary to delve into an aspirant’s childhood in order to explain one’s present mental condition. For as we believe that one’s past stretches away into numerous earlier reincarnations, it is obviously insufficient and inadequate merely to take the past of the present reincarnation alone for analysis. #RandolphHarris 16 of 18
Nor do we consider it of any use to try to explain one’s repressions and frustrations by attempting to interpret one’s dreams. For we consider most dreams to be merely a worthless mélange of thoughts, events, and experiences of the previous twenty-four hours. The really significant dreams are few. Dr. Freud confessed that he had never had any mystical experiences or mystical feelings. He therefore went on to dismiss all such things in purely materialistic terms, making the silly assumption that because he had never had them, therefore it was not possible for anyone else to have them. Dr. Freud thought by searching in the darkest corners of our souls, by putting the most intimate interpretation upon the most innocent thoughts and dreams, we would develop our personalities and free our souls! This distorted and pseudo-deep psychology is typical of present-day theorists who offer their last surmise as a first discovery. No human who has practiced the profound meditation which philosophic self-knowledge enjoins, will hear without a smile the Freudian psychoanalysts’ doctrine hat human nature is but a bundle of obscenity. Even Dr. Jung new better. Psychiatry takes itself too seriously and so overestimates the worth of its findings. If it could pick up a sense of humour, its results would be more accurate. It is unreasonable to conclude that because so large a part of human activity must be attributed to the impulses of pleasures of the flesh, the whole of human activity is attributed to that same source. Those analysts who do so have something to learn about the unconscious quest of every creature for its own spiritual self-realization. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18
The psychiatrists, being always properly qualified doctors of medicine, are expected to be more reliable in diagnoses, prognoses, and treatments than other healers. However, experience shows exceptions. Others have succeeded incurring when the official psychotherapists failed. Others have succeeded in curing when the official psychotherapists failed. Why? It is because the unofficial ones have quite often dropped the materialistic belief that causes mental disease must be so sought in the physical brain alone. The psychiatrists do not reckon with a mind having a consciousness apart from the body. In an age when we are led to believe we can be anything we want to be, what most deludes us is in ourself. It is interesting to note that the author of works on Psychosynthesis, Dr. Assagioli, has dropped use of the word “spiritual” and replaced it by “transpersonal.” However, if we heed their earliest beginnings and do not ignore their smallness, glimpses can be cultivated. They can grow. Look for them in the feelings—these light delicate intuitions—for that is what they mostly are. Let us be united; let us speak in harmony; let our minds apprehend alike. Common be our prayer; common be the end of our assembly; common be our resolution; common be our deliberations. Alike be our feelings; unified by our hearts; common be our intentions; perfect be our unity. Our God and god of our fathers, ay our remembrance and the remembrance of our forefathers come before Them. Remember the Messiah of the house of David, Thy servant, and Jerusalem, Thy holy city, and all Thy people, the house of Israel. Please grant us deliverance and wellbeing, lovingkindness, life and peace on his day. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18
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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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I Have an American Dream that One Day We Will Live in a Suburbia that Looks Like of Heaven!
The same qualities that make most of us unique also prevent us from changing who we are, even if it might be a change for the better. It is sometimes said that to be more creative, one should try to see the World without preconceptions, as if through the eyes of a child. Any one-year-old child has no trouble turning a metal bowl and a wooden spoon into a rock star’s drum. However, as we get older, knowledge and experience increasingly displace imagination and our ability to see an object for anything other than its original purpose. This is called functional fixedness and while you may not need to build a drum set during your professional career, chances are you do suffer from it and it is impacting your work. Many of us suffer from Functional fixedness. When I was young, I used to sometimes watch the trendy situational comedy Friends. The show was based on young, successful, attractive singles, who were roommates, living in a hip and swinging apartment in New York City. So, it made me believe that is what life in the city would be like and made me think living in a mid-level rise or high-rise building in the city would be cool and I would meet young, attractive people. However, my experience has been anything but that. Living in an apartment house in the city has been a horrible experience. The people are old, unattractive, means, and down right evil. They also smell awful, so bad that it makes people sick. And it nothing like living in the city. It is more like living in a small town in the country side that is not deemed to be very sophisticated. The nearby stores are also expensive, and have a limited selection. So this experience makes me want to move to a beautiful community like Cresleigh Ranch. Where the people are friendly and attractive and care about their reputation. #RandolphHarris 1 of 23
Functional fixedness is a well-known cognitive bias. Companies often struggle to develop breakthrough products because they are hobbled by Functional Fixedness. Technologists, engineers, and designers not only have their own expertise, they have their own way of applying their expertise. Ironically, the more success they have had with their approach to a solution, the harder it is to imagine a different one. If you suspect your Research and Development team will get upset at anything that challenges their abilities, consider setting up a Functional Fixedness SWAT team—a trained group of innovators who embrace the idea of collaborating with solution providers outside their industry specialty. This will allow the Research and Development team to become more creative and please and attract new clients and revenue, instead of being an unfriendly, impenetrable fortress of know-it-alls who are stagnate in their careers and cognitive functions. Functional fixedness is just one of the mental blocks that prevent insight. Here is an example of another: A $20 bill is placed on a table and a stack of objects is balanced precariously on top of the bill. How can the bill be removed without touching or moving the object? A good answer is to split the bill on one of its edges. Gently pulling from opposite ends will tear the bill in half and remove in without topping the objects. Many people fail to see this solution because they have learned not to destroy money. Notice again the impact of placing something in a category, in this case, “things of value” (which should not be destroyed). The list that follows identifies other common mental blocks and fixations that can hinder problem solving. #RandolphHarris 2 of 23
Emotional barriers: inhibition and fear of making a fool of oneself, fear of making a mistake, inability to tolerate ambiguity, excessive self-criticism. Example: An architect is afraid to try an unconventional design of adding a turret and a stained-glass window to the blue prints of a new house scheduled for development because he fears that other architects will think it is frivolous. However, many buyers are looking to get some aspects of Victorian culture in their homes, which is why farmhouse designs are becoming so popular. Cultural barriers: values that hold that fantasy is a waste of time; that playfulness is for children only; that reason, logic, and numbers are good; that feelings, intuitions, pleasure, and humour are bad or have no value in the serious business of problem solving. Example: A corporate manager wants to solve a business problem but becomes stern and angry when members of his marketing team joke playfully about possible solutions. Being too strict can stifle, but playing around and joking too much can be disruptive and waste a firm’s time and money. Learned barriers: conventions about uses (functional fixedness), meanings, possibilities, taboos. Example: A cook does not have any clean mixing bowls and fails to see that one could use a frying pan as a bowl. Being a cook, it is important to find solutions to problems on demand. The restaurant industry is a fast pace business and customers expect perfection for the high prices of the food they are paying for. Perception barriers: habits leading to a failure to identify important elements of a problem. Example: A beginning artist concentrates on drawing a vase of flowers without seeing the “empty” spaces around the vase are part of the composition, too. #RandolphHarris 3 of 23
Being an artist requires one to be visual and open to new interpretations. To pay attention to light, dark, textures, lines, and be creative. Much of what we know about thinking comes from direct studies of how people solve problems. Yet, surprisingly, much can also be learned from machines. Computerized problem solving provides a fascinating “laboratory” for testing ideas about how you and I think. Church sermons sometimes have surprisingly little impact. When the people from twelve churches were interviewed at home shortly before and after they heard sermons opposing racial bigotry and injustice, it was found that during the second interview, only ten percent recalled reading anything about racial prejudice or discrimination even though the material had been presented. When the remaining 90 percent were asked directly whether their minister “talked about prejudice or discrimination in the last couple of weeks,” more than 30 percent denied hearing such a sermon. So it is hardly surprising that the sermons had little impact on racial attitudes! However, there are certain requirements that have to be met for an effect sermon. For a sermon to be effect, one has to make sure the worshipper is paying attention. Then it must be clear that the worshipper comprehends the message, which is why audience participation is advised. Many teachers ask questions to the audience to get feedback. The questions are usually things others need clarity on as well. Also, it is important to make sure your audience believes your message, or you are jus wasting your time. They have already made their decision. If the audience believes your message, it is important they remember it. This is why many lecturers provide colourful examples so people are better able to relate to the stories and keep them in mind. #RandolphHarris 4 of 23
Furthermore, if instruction is to be useful, the worshippers have to follow through and amend their behaviour accordingly to be an example for others to follow and show you that they are practicing these doctrines. And of course, actions speak louder than words. For example, you should not have to verbally reassure someone you love them, your actions should make that clear. Love is no real definition of love, but you can behave in a way to show someone you deeply care about them. This is why many women love when their husbands buy them flowers, diamonds, cars, clothes or compliment them on their new hairstyle, dress or the cuisine they prepared. When you stop to think about it, the preacher has so many hurdles to surmount that it is no wonder preaching so often fails to affect our actions. The preacher must deliver a message that not only gets out attention but it is understandable, persuasive, memorable, and likely to compel action. After all, does it not make you suspicious when someone says, “I’m sorry,” or “I love you”? Because it means they did something wrong or are about to do something wrong. If a person is really sorry, they will repent from the upsetting or deviant behaviour and make a gesture to show remorse. Nonetheless, our concern here is neither theological content nor oratorical style, but with how to create and receive a memorable, persuasive message. What factors make for effective communication? How might ministers apply these factors in the construction of more potent messages? For that matter, how might any of us who teach, speak, or write do so with greatest effects? Finally, what can we ordinary people to receive an extraordinary benefit from what we hear and read? #RandolphHarris 5 of 23
Well, vivid, concrete examples are more potent than abstract information. Human judgements and attitudes are often swayed by specific illustrations than by abstract assertions of general truth. Research studies show that a few good testimonials usually have more impact than statistically summarized data from dozens of people. A single vivid welfare case has more impact on opinions about welfare recipients than does factual information running contrary to the case. Another study finds that student impressions of potential teachers were influenced more by a few personal testimonies concerning the teacher than by a comprehensive statistical summary of many students’ evaluations. No experienced writer will be surprised by this principle. As William Strunk and E.B. White asserted in their classic, The Elements of Style, “If those who have studied the art of writing are in accord on any one point, it is on this: the surest way to arouse and hold the attention of the reader is by being specific, definite, and concrete. The greatest writers—Homer, Dante, Shakespeare—are effective largely because they deal in particulars.” Preachers and teachers should do the same, and so should we listeners, by conjuring up our own examples when the speaker begins to get abstract. However, a sermon is never just a string of unrelated examples; the preacher aims to communicate a basic point. We might say that theological truth is to a good sermon what the base of an iceberg is to its tip. Jesus’ vivid parables, for example, embodied basic truths in memorable pictures. And what pastor has not received compliments from adults for a simple but concrete children’s sermon? The children may not have grasped the analogy, but the adults understood and remembered it. #RandolphHarris 6 of 23
This illustrates the power of principle number one: vivid, concrete examples are more potent than abstract information. Messages that relate to what people already know or have experienced are more easily remembered. Public-speaking experts have long supposed this to be true. Aristotle urged speakers to adapt the message to their audiences. Experimental psychologists have confirmed the point: messages that are unrelated to people’s existing ideas or experience are difficult to comprehend and are quickly forgotten. The procedure is actually quite simple. First you arrange things into different groups. Of course, one pile may be sufficient depending on how much there is to do. After the procedure is completed, one arranges the materials into different groups again. Then they can be put into their proper places. Eventually they will be used once more and the whole cycle will then have to be repeated. However, that is part of life. The statement above may not be what you think it is about. It is actually about laundry. If you knew it was about laundry, it might be easier to remember because it is something most people are familiar with. If you reread it, you will probably understand it better. A message that is hooked to some cue—something we will think about or experience again—is more likely to come to mind in the future. When the cue pops up, it may call to mind the message associated with it. For example, one memorable sermon likened American religion to waiting-room Muzak—bland and soothing. A year after this “sound of Muzak” sermon was preached, we found ourselves eating dinner in a room with music softly playing in the background. Someone noticed the music—and recalled the sermon. This illustrates principle number two: messages that relate to what people already know or have experienced are most easily remembered. Spaced repetition assists memory. If the repetitions are spaced over time rather than grouped together, as every student of human learning knows well, we remember information much better. #RandolphHarris 7 of 23
The experimental psychologist Lynn Hasher found that repeated information is also more credible. When statements such as “The largest museum in the World is the Louvre in Paris” were repeatedly presented, people rated them as more likely to be turn when the statements had been presented infrequently. Social psychologists have uncovered a parallel phenomenon: repeated presentation of a neutral stimulus—whether a human face, a Chinese character, or a piece of unfamiliar music—generally increases people’s liking of it. Speakers can capitalize on this finding that repetition, especially spaced repetition, makes messages more memorable and appealing. When preparing a talk or sermon they might ask themselves, What do I most want people to remember from this? They can then repeat that one key idea many times. (We suspect that a little informal testing of parishioners’ recall would reveal that few people can recall the main points of the last three-point sermon they heard.) Given the limitations of human memory, a sermon should probably be the embodiment of only one vigorous idea. Perhaps this could even be taken a step further: that idea should be embodies in the whole worship service—the Scriptures, music, prayers, and closing charge to the congregation. A parishioners we should look for a unifying theme, or at least identify one idea in every service that is significant for us. Sometimes the key idea can be captured in a single statement or pithy saying that becomes the trunk of a talk or sermon, unifying the illustrative branches that grow from it. What listener can forget the refrain in Martin Luther King Jr’s “I Have a Dream” sermon? Principle number three therefore bears repeating: space repetition assists retention. #RandolphHarris 8 of 23
Active listening assists memory and facilitates attitude change. People remember information best when they have actively processed it—that is, when they have put it in their own words. Experiments reveal that when we read or hear something that prompts a thought of our own, we will often more readily remember our thought than the information that prompted it. Not only do we better remember information we produce ourselves but our attitudes are also more likely to be changed by that information. Social psychologists have found that passive exposure to information, through reading or listening, has less effect on people’s attitudes than information they get through active participation in a group discussion. Other research confirms that when we learn something passively our attitudes toward it usually do no change much. When we are stimulated into restating information in our own terms, we are much more likely to remember and be persuaded by it. Preachers, teachers, and even parents may fail to recognize that their spoken words are more prominent to them (as active speakers) than to their passive listeners. Parents are often amazed at their children’s capacity to ignore them. If instead of constant harping, the parent gently asks the child to restate the request (“Leo, what did I ask you to do?”), the child’s act of verbalizing the request will make the child more aware of it. Mr. Rogers, the television friend of preschoolers, applies this principle by asking a question and then saying nothing for a few moments, allowing children to answer themselves. Preachers would be well advised to do likewise, pausing after giving an instruction or raising a thought-provoking question. As listeners we can discipline ourselves to listen actively. Taking notes on a sermon, as any serious student does in class, forces us to repeat and restate its main points. #RandolphHarris 9 of 23
So does discussing it with someone else. No reception without reaction, no impression without correlative expression—this is the great maxim which the teacher ought never to forget. Therefore, anticipate that active listening assists memory and facilitates attitude change. Attitudes and beliefs are shaped by action. If social psychological research has established anything, it is, as we emphasize that our actions influence our attitudes. Every time we act, we amplify the idea lying behind what we have done, especially when we feel responsibility for having committed the act. It seems that we are as likely to believe in what we have stood up for as to stand up for what we believe Moreover, this principle is paralleled by the biblical idea that growth in faith is a consequence as well as a source of obedient action. The implication of his “attitudes follow actions” principle is clear: a message is most likely to stimulate faith if it calls forth a specific action. The effective talk or sermon will not leave people wondering what to do with it. It will suggest specific actions, or it will stimulate listeners to form their own place of actions. “How will ‘Love your neighbour’ affect you?” the speaker might ask. “Who are you going to phone or visit this week?” In the twenty-one months Joseph Smith had possessed the golden plates, no one expect Joseph Smith had seen them. They were kept wrapped in a cloth when not in use. When Joseph translated, he sat behind a curtain which prevented others from seeing them. God was not yet ready for others to see the precious book. This was a great responsibility for Joseph, because others had to believe the things he said and could not see for themselves. #RandolphHarris 10 of 23
However, the Lord had promised Joseph that he was not to be the only one to see them, that three others should be shown the wonderful plates. Joseph was anxious to share his wonderful secret. Oliver Cowdery, David Whitmer, and Martin Harris desired to be the three people who were to see the plates. They asked Joseph to pray to God about this. After Joseph prayed earnestly o God, a revelation came to these three men telling them that is they had faith they should see the golden plates, the breastplate, the Urim and Thummin, the sword of Laban, and the Liahona or compass. The Lord said: “After you have obtained faith, and have seen them with your eyes, you shall testify of them, by the power of God; and this you shall do…that I may bring about my righteous purposes unto the children of men, in this work. Ye shall testify that ye have seen them, even as my servant Joseph Smith, Jr., has seen them, for it is by my power that he has seen them, and it is because he had faith. And he has translated the book, even that part which I have commanded him, and as your Lord and your God liveth, it is true.” A few days after this revelation was received in June, 1829, Joseph, Oliver, David, and Martin were out in the woods discussing this revelation and praying that God would show them the plates. Joseph prayed first. Then each man turned and prayed; but there was only silence in the stillness of the forest. Joseph prayed again, followed by each of the other men. When God did not answer their prayers, Martin Harris blamed himself, think he was not good enough, and that he was keeping them from having their prayers answered. He went away to pray by himself. After Martin Harris left, Joseph and Oliver and David knelt and prayed again. While they were thus praying, a very bright light appeared in the air and rested upon them, extending all around them. It was not like the light of the sun, nor the light of fire, but was more glorious and beautiful. #RandolphHarris 11 of 23
An Angel stood before them in this light, and there appeared a table on which were many plates as well as the golden plates from which Joseph had translated. Beside the plates were the Urim and Thummim, the breastplate, the sword of Laban, and Liahona, or compass. The Angel turned the pages of the golden book one by one so the three men could see the engravings. The men were allowed to handle the plates, to feel them as well as to see them, so they would know for sure they real. Then a voice came from out of the bright light above them, saying, “These plates have been revealed by the power of God, and they have been translated by the power of God. The translation of them which you have seen is correct, and I command you to bear record of wat you now see and hear.” When the Angel, the precious thing, and the bright light had disappeared, Joseph went to find Martin Harris to tell him of the wonderful vision they had seen. He found him in another part of the woods praying. Joseph knelt with him and together they prayed that Martin Harris might be the third witness to share the vision. As they were praying, the same bright light came to them as it has to Joseph, Oliver, and David. The Angel showed Martin Harris the golden plates and other precious things, just as he had shown them to others. The four men then went back to the Whitmer home and told the family what had happened. All rejoiced in their wonderful experience. They knew they must make a record of it so that all people might know. They carefully wrote their story. Briefly the words of the “Testimony of the Three Witnesses” are these: “Be it known to all nations and people to whom this work shall come, that we, through the power of God the Father, and our Lord Jesus Christ, have seen the plates which contain this record. #RandolphHarris 12 of 23
“We know they have been translated by the gift and power of God, for his voice has told us so. Wherefore, we know for sure that this work is true. We also testify that we have seen the engravings which are on the plates. They were shown to us by the power of God and not of man. We declare that an Angel of the Lord came down from Heaven and brought and laid them before our eyes, and we saw the plates and the engravings on them. We know that it is by the power of God the Father, and our Lord Jesus Christ, that we saw and we make a record that these things are true. It is marvelous to us, and to be obedient to the commandments of God, we bear testimony of these things. We know that is we are faithful in Christ, we shall dwell with him forever in the Heavens, and the honour be to the Father, and to the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.” Then Oliver Cowdery, David Whitmer, and Martin Harris signed their names to the document. Never in all their lives, even in times of great trouble, did they every deny their testimony. At the time of their deaths, when they were old men, they still told all who would listen the wonderful story of how the Angel visited them and showed them the golden plates. These three men were not the only witnesses who were to see the golden plates. The Lord told Joseph Smith that others were to be permitted to see them. A few days later when several men were meeting together, Joseph showed them the golden plates. They saw them as Joseph turned the pages, leaf by leaf, showing them the writings in the strange language. They were permitted to touch and handle them. There were eight men in this group. They did not see the Angel nor the other things which had been shown to the first three witnesses, but they knew they must bear record of the things they saw. They carefully wrote their story, and the “Testimony of the Eight Witnesses” briefly is this: “Be it known unto all nations and people unto whom this work, has shown to us the plates, which have the appearance of gold. #RandolphHarris 13 of 23
“As many of the pages as he translated we did handle with our hands and saw the engravings thereon. We bear record that we have seen and lifted and know for sure that Joseph Smith has the plates of which we have spoken. We give our names to witness unto the World that we have seen, and we lie not, God bearing witness of it.” These eight men then signed their names to the document: four Whitmer brothers, Peter, Christian, Jacob, John; two brother of Joseph Smith, Hyrum and Samuel; Joseph’s father, Joseph Smith, Sr..; an a man named Hyrum Page. The book printed from the translation was called the “Book of Mormon” because Mormon was the man who had prepared the plates many hundreds of years before. The complete testimonies of the “three witnesses” and the “eight witnesses” have been printed in every copy of the Bool of Mormon that has ever been printed. Nearly every man over the age of twenty years who had anything to do with helping in the Lord’s work of translating the golden plates saw and handled the plates. Throughout their lives they testified to the truth of the work. Not one of these men every denied that he had seen the golden plates. Several of these men had not yet been baptized. This had been a wonderful experience as they worked closely with God, and those who had not yet made their promise to God in the waters of baptism did so within the next few months. At every point Christianity has to correct the natural expectations of the Pantheist and offer something more difficult, just as Schrodinger has to correct Democritus. At every moment he has to multiply distinctions and rule out false analogies. One has to substitute the mapping of something that has a beneficial, concrete, and highly articulated character for the formless generalities in which Pantheism is at home. #RandolphHarris 14 of 23
Indeed, after the discussion has been going on for some tie, the Pantheists is apt to change one’s ground and where one before accused us childish naivety now to blame us for the pedantic complexity of our “cold Christs and tangled Trinities.” And we may well sympathise with him. Christianity, faced with popular “religion” is continuously troublesome. To the large well-meant statements of “religion” it finds itself forced to replay again and again, “Well, not quite like that,” or “I should hardly put it that way.” Thus troublesomeness does not of course prove it to be true; but if it were true it would be bound to have this troublesomeness. The real musician is simply troublesome to person who wishes to indulge in untaught “musical appreciation”; the real historian is similarly a nuisance when we want to romance about “the old days” or “the ancient Greeks and Romans.” The ascertained nature of any real thing is always at first a nuisance to our natural fantasies—a wretched, pedantic, logic-chopping intruder upon a conversation which was getting on famously without it. But “religion” also claims to base itself on experience. The experiences of mystics (that ill-defined but popular class) are held to indicate that God is the God of “religion” rather than of Christianity; that He—or It—is not a concrete Bing but “being in general” about which nothing can be truly asserted. To everything which we try to say about Him, the mystics tend to reply, “Not thus.” What all these negatives of the mystics really mean I shall consider in a moment: but I must first point out why it seems to be impossible that they should be true in the sense popularly understood. #RandolphHarris 15 of 23
It will be agreed that, however they come there, concrete, individual, determinate things do now exist: things like flamingoes, German generals, lovers, sandwiches, pineapples, comets and kangaroos. These are not ere principles or generalities or theorems, but things—facts—real, resistant existences. One might even say opaque existences, in the sense that each contains something which our intelligence cannot completely digest. In so far as they illustrate general laws it can digest them: but then they are never mere illustrations. Above and beyond that there is in each of them the “opaque” brute fact of existence, the fact that it is actually there and is itself. Now this opaque fact, this concreteness, is not in the least accounted for by the laws of Nature or even by the laws of thought. Every law can be reduced to the form “If A, then B.” Laws give us only a Universe of “Ifs and Ands”: not this Universe which actually exists. What we know through laws and general principles is a series of connections must be given something to connect; a torrent of opaque actualities must be fed into the pattern. If God created the World, then He is precisely the source of this torrent, and it alone gives our truest principles anything to be true about. However, if God is the ultimate source of all concrete, individual things in the highest degree. Unless the origin of all others thing were itself concrete and individual, nothing else could be so; for there is no conceivable means whereby what is abstract or general could itself produce concrete reality. Book-keeping needs something else (namely, real money put into the account) and metre need something else (real words, fed into it by a poet) before any income or any poem can exit. #RandolphHarris 16 of 23
If anything is to exist at all, then the Original Thing must be, not a principle nor a generality, much less an “ideal” or a “value,” but an utterly concrete fact. Probably no thinking person would, in so many words, deny that God is concrete and individual. However, not all thinking people, and certainly not all who believe in “religion,” keep this truth steadily before their mind. We must beware of paying God ill-judged “metaphysical compliment.” We say that God is “infinite.” In the sense that His knowledge and power extend no to some things but to all, this is true. However, if by using the word “infinite” we encourage ourselves to think of Him as a formless “everything” about whom nothing in particular and everything in general is true, then it would be better to drop that word altogether. Let us dare to say that God is a particular Thing. Once He was the only Thing: but He is creative, He made other things to be. He is not those other things. He is not “universal being”: if He were there would be no creatures, for a generality can make nothing. He is “absolute being”—or rather the Absolute Being—in the sense that He alone exists in His own right. However, there are things which God is not. In that sense He has determinate character. Thus He is righteous, not a-moral; creative, not inert. The Hebrew writings here observe an admirable balance. Once God says simple I AM, proclaiming the mystery of self-existence. However, times without number He says, “I am the Lord”—I, the ultimate Fact, have this determinate character, and not that. And humans are exhorted to “know the Lord,” to discover and experience this particular character. The error which I am here trying to correct is one of the most sincere and respectable errors in the World; I have sympathy enough with it to feel shocked at the language I have been drive to use in say the opposite view, which I believe to be the true one. #RandolphHarris 17 of 23
In countless writings the prophets of the Lord have been trying to teach us that throughout time and all eternity the most important organization is the family. A loving Father in Heaven organized His church here on the Earth as a means of teaching families how to be eternally happy. We know that none of us can receive the fulfillment of true happiness except at a member of an eternal family. We also know, or should know, that the success we experience in our homes as families, is going to have a most significant effect on the eternal happiness of each of us. Happiness in the life hereafter is geared to our learning and living celestial laws while we are here on the Earth. This being so, then our great need is to establish in our homes an atmosphere that will encourage the learning and living of the teachings of the Saviour. Satan knows that He can cause unhappiness in our homes if he can bring about disunity, discontent, disharmony, and a host of other spiritual illness. By this insidious process He has gained no small measure of success in His plan to lead astray the children of our Father in Heaven. For instance, He knows that if He can cause parents to quarrel with each other, their children may well follow the example. He knows that if parents show little respect for each other, so will their children. He knows that children mirror the actions of their parents. One of Satan’s most effective tools is at work among us today—it is a destroyer of happiness, peace, contentment, family solidarity. Families are stumbling and falling because of is hobbling and crippling effect. This tool of Satan is called the contention. The word contention means: to argue, to bring discord or strife, to dispute, to quarrel. #RandolphHarris 18 of 23
Now, sone will say, “This is our way of life—everybody is doing it.” Lest we think these acts are not serious and are just our way of life, to be accepted and lived with, let us hear the word of the Lord as expressed by an ancient prophet. “And according as I have commanded you thus hall ye baptize. And there shall be no disputations among you, as there have hitherto been; neither shall there by disputations among you concerning the points of my doctrine, as there have hitherto been. For verily, verily I say uno you, one that hath the spirit of contention is not of me, but is of the devil, who is the father of contention, and He stirreth up the hearts of humans to content with anger, one with another. Behold, his is not my doctrine, to stir up the hearts of humans with anger, one against another,” reports 3 Nephi 11.28-30. It does not take great faith to believe in something that never fails. God has never failed. Lack of understanding of many confused people is due to our own unconscious unwillingness to understand them (and ourselves), and they are confused due to the divided self because we need them (and us) confused. People have identities. However, they may also change quite remarkably as they become different others to others. It is arbitrary to regard any of these functions or “alter” actions as basic and the others as variations. Not only may people behave quite differently in their different alterations, but they may experience themselves in different ways. They are liable to remember different things, express different attitudes, even quite discordant ones, imagine and phantasize in different ways, and so on. #RandolphHarris 19 of 23
This a theory of natural splits. It maintains that people will feel they have integrity and identity, provided first that they are not under pressure to be wildly different in different role-relationships, and second that each role-relation is fairly consistent from day to day. Overall, both city dwellers and suburbanites tend to overemphasize the differences between them. Actually, when one controls for income and other social-status variables, there is little difference between the city and country cousins. There is little that makes suburbanites stand out from other similar-status persons. When one looks at similar populations in city and suburb, their ways of life are remarkably alike…The crucial difference between cities and suburbs, then, is that they are often home for different kinds of people. If one is to understand their behaviour, these differences are much more important than whether they reside inside or outside the city limits…if populations and residential areas were described by age and class characteristics, and by racial, ethnic, and religious ones, our understanding of human settlements would be much improved. The truth is that those living in the suburbs are not all that different from city dwellers with similar backgrounds. In many respects suburbs have been maligned by being portrayed as a monochromatic landscape of beautiful boxes holding look-alike middle-class and upper-middle class families. Suburbs now house nearly 60 percent of the American population, and this population is remarkably complex in terms of age, family status, income, ethnicity, and race. Individual suburbs, as is true with urban neighbourhoods, are often homogenous, but suburbia as a whole is diverse. There is a mosaic of all ages, lifestyles, races, cultures, educational and political backgrounds. #RandolphHarris 20 of 23
In discussing suburbs and suburbanites, it is important to remember their complexity as well as their commonalities. Not everyone would agree with the portrait of suburbs presented in the statement above. More negative view of suburban life, and especially suburban family life by critics such as M.P. Baumgartner. In a social-anthropological examination of an upper-middle-class commuter suburb of 16,000 outside New York, she describes a community that appears to it Riseman’s, and others’, criticism of suburbia. Baumgartner argues that the pattern she found in the community can be generalized to suburbia elsewhere (or at least upper-middle-class suburbia). She describes suburbia as a place of a “culture of weak ties” and “moral minimalism.” The surface tranquility of suburban life covers an unwillingness to address real conflicts and tensions. Weak bonding to family and neighbours leads not to discussing and resolving conflicts, but to conflict avoidance and suppression as major characteristics of suburbia. As put by Guest in his review work, “Since ties are weak and unimportant, sub urbanities have allegedly little reason to resolve differences. Thus, almost paradoxically, the apparent harmony of suburbia stems from a lack of communal feeling. Suburbia is too diverse to be simply and uniformly categorized. In general, one can say that suburbs have characteristics that tend to fall between those of cities and those of small towns. When one compares suburbs with small towns suburbs have less neighbouring, less community participation, and less localism. Suburbs also are more private and anonymous, possibly because they are not “whole” communities but only the residential piece. #RandolphHarris 21 of 23
The suburbs lack the overlapping social networks found in small towns where people work and shop as well as live together. In most suburbs residents must commute outside the proximate community for work or shopping. Suburbs, while having more neighbouring than cities, have less than small towns Suburbs similarly lack the strong informal social control mechanisms of small towns, which leads to suburbs having greater freedom, more anonymity, and more peace and quiet, and less crimes because people are busy working and demand a peaceful environment while they are at home. Socially as well as physically, suburbs are a middle landscape. Wherever you are, whatever you turn to, you are in a wretched state, unless you turn to God. So you do not succeed in everything you do? What is the big fuss? What self-actualized gets everything one wants? Not I, not you, not anyone else on the face of this Earth. No even a king, pope, or Paris Hilton. All Worldlings must wade through the gutters or tribulation and anguish. If anyone fares better, then one is in a good position to suffer rather more for God’s sake. “Look, there goes a man who has got a good life!” That is what the general public says. “He has got a lot of money, a big Cresleigh Home, a 2007 high performance luxury sports car BMW Concept CS, friends in high places!” However, there is another way. Look to the Celestial, and you will see that the Temporal does not amount to a great deal. Possessions are here one day, gone the next. If you are overly possessive, then your mind plays a trick. Everyone you meet is plotting to swipe them. Ten of everything? Having ten BMWs will not make your bottom ten times happier. One of everything will do. #RandolphHarris 22 of 23
Misery, if you want the true definition of the word, is just living on this Earth. The more your attention to the sweetness of spiritual things, the more you realize how bitter the experience is. That is because you feel more dearly and see more clearly the defects of human corruption. To eat, drink, watch, sleep, relax, labour, and be subject to all the bodily functions, to have to do all these things, that is the truly great misery. That is the great affliction, one has o conclude. Free from sin, and free for Heaven—that is the freedom to pray for. The bag of bones we have to lug around this World is a rackety load. The Psalmist knew (27.17). Hence, his heart-rendering cry, “Grasp my body with one hand, O Lord, and with the other rip my heart from it!” Imagine a place with out air, noise, and water pollution. Imagine a place where there was peace and quiet and happiness. Imagine a land of long white vistas, ice cold saviours, gleaming glaciers, breaking into the sea. Imagine the Earth so awesome, so vast, so pure, we can hardly breathe its air. Imagine the Earth alive with morning, shimmer white nights, no end of sky, no end of sea. Lord God of our fathers, God of American, please keep this forever in the inward thoughts of the heart of Thy people, and direct their heart unto Thee, for Thou, being merciful, full of compassion, forgiveth iniquity and destroyeth not; yea, many a time Thou turnest anger away. For Thou, O Lord, art good, and ready to forgive, and abounding in mercy unto all who call upon Thee. They righteousness is everlasting, and Thy Law is truth. Thou wilt show faithfulness to Jacob and mercy to Abraham, as Thou hast promised unto our fathers from the days of blessed. Blessed is the Lord who day by day bears our burden. It is said that our relations deepen the secrets hidden from the truth. It may be said, however, there are some stones better left unturned. #RandolphHarris 23 of 23
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Randolph Harris II International Institute 