Home » guest (Page 8)
Category Archives: guest
Restore to Him the Throne of the Universe
I would not necessarily say we have conjured demons that have entered members of the audience, but I would not deny it either. Every mythology has its good and evil spirits which are objects of adoration and subjects of terror, and often both classes are worshipped from opposite motives; the good, that the worshipper may receive benefit; the evil, that one may escape harm. Sometimes good deities are so benevolent that they are neglected, superstitious fear directing all devotion towards the evil spirits to propitiate them and avert the calamities they are ready to bring upon the human race; sometime the malevolent deities have so little power that they prayer of the pious is offered up to the good spirits that they may pour out still further favors, for man is a worshipping being, and will prostrate himself with equal fervor before the altar whether the deity be good or bad. Midway, however, between the good and evil beings of all mythologies there is often one whose qualities are mixed; not wholly good nor entirely evil, but balanced between the two, sometimes doing a generous action, then descending to a petty meanness, but never rising to nobility of character nor sinking to the depths of depravity; good from whim, and mischievous from caprice. As enshrined in legend, there are many mysteries to be solved involving the Winchester Mansion. Believe it or not, the key to the massive front door was made of solid gold and diamonds and the keys for the other 2,000 doors of this Eight Wonder of the World filled two water buckets. Mrs. Winchester never disclosed the spot where the “pot o’ goold” was concealed, but it was certainly not in her safe. Travellers who would go to her mansion, which was not often visited, at once became objects of intense suspicion. You are driving along a retired country road; at the turn of the hill a policeman heaves in sight. He speaks pleasantly, and if nothing arouses his suspicion, he will pass on and you see him no more; but if the slightest distrust of you or your business finds lodgment in his mind, he marks you as a possible victim.
He temporarily vanishes; look round you proceed on your journey, and you may, by chance, catch a glimpse of him a mile or two away, peeping over a wall after you, but when you appear at the Winchester mansion, he reappears, and the local policeman, after his coming, will be sure to observe you with some degree of attention. Step out on the street, and here comes the policeman, ascertains your name, takes a mental inventory of your effects, makes a not of the railway and hotel labels on your trunks, and goes away to report. A sharp detective is the policeman. He knows articles of American manufacture at a glance, and need only to see your satchel to tell whether it came from America or was made in England. Talk with him, and he will chat cordially about the weather, the crops, the state of the markets, but all the time he is trying to make out who you are and what is your business. His eyes ramble from your hat to your shoes, and by the time the conversation is ended, he has prepared for the “sergeant” who many say was the very Mrs. Winchester, a report of your personal appearance and apparel. There was also a legend that he was one of the spirits from the mansion, but no one can say for sure. From the day he puts on his neat blue uniform and saucerlike cap, the constable, on or near the mansion, carries his life in his hand. Every hedge he scrutinized with a careful eye; behind it may lurk an assassin. Every division wall is watched for suspicious indications, his alertness being quickened by the knowledge that he is guarding his own life. He watched the mansion with a love stronger than death, knowing that Mrs. Winchester was a widow, and the gentle soul, with an untiring devotion, spent her life reciting the prayers for the dead. Mrs. Winchester often times wondered who was she? What was she? And where was she? Those questioned remained unanswered. It was no matter for her to let them go.
“It was lonely,” said Mrs. Winchester. “Monotonous Tedious, in fact. The birds and horses and things are pleasant company, and they love me and I love them; but here lately they seem somehow insufficient. I lack something, I do not know what it is. If only they could see how pretty I am, and how rounded and smooth, and how daintily formed are my limbs. Possibly they do; sometimes I think they do; but at most they only look it, they do not say it—at least in any language that I can understand. I begin to feel sure that that is what I lack—to hear it said. So I am happier than I once was. I try to put away from me that thought—the thought of my husband and new born daughter—and in the day I succeed, and am content, and do not feel my pain. But at night I dream—and dream.” By the late 1880s, practices of sorcery in California had become so widespread. A long list of canons forbade the use of sacraments or holy objects in magical rituals or divination with holy water or blessed candles. The practice of sorcery with profane objects, it was decided, did not come under the jurisdiction of the Inquisition but was to be handled by secular authorities. There were some priests who were especially noted for their corruption and for their singular devotion to money. Members of the group were often found to be conducting rites too wild for the Catholic hierarchy to condone and were excommunicated. It was from this body of clergy that the modern Black Mass was to emerge. Monks who were renegades of the Franciscan order, were reported to have held nocturnal conventicles at which, after the service, indiscriminate events took place. When a baby was the inadvertent product of one of these gatherings, its body was supposedly burned, the ashes being mixed with blood that was served as a sacrament during the admission ceremonies of new members of the church. Such reports of disaffected renegade priests conducting illicit Masse were not infrequent at the time.
Sometimes the victims were obtained either by outright abduction or by buying them from their peasant parents, who were glad enough to sell the children, thinking that they were being taken as servants and would have a much easier life on the estate of a rich nobleman than plowing the fields. Now one may see why the Winchester mansion and Mrs. Winchester were so heavily guarded. In one church in particular, at the altar stood a statue of a hideous demon, presumably Satan. One room contained copper vessels filled with the blood of his sacrificial victims, the vessels all bearing neat labels revealing the dates of execution. In the center of the room was a black marble table, upon which was the body of a child who have been freshly slaughtered. These ritual Masses called from blood sacrifices to Astaroth and Asmodue, demons of love and lust. The blood was poured into a chalice. To that blood, flour was assed and a wafer made. The operators, seeking personal gain, sought to get what they wished from any source that would give it to them, and they were willing to prostrate themselves before any deity, good or evil, to accomplish their goals. It seems obvious that officials within the Church and without believed in the existence of such practices by renegade priests, which caused a sharp break in man’s attitude toward man and toward religion to occur. For the first time in centuries man began to look at himself and his society less seriously. With this new perspective, man’s religion also changed, and Satanism did, too. Therefore, it is no wonder that Mrs. Sarah Winchester’s arrival to the valley was a sensational event. People were thrilled by this dramatic entrance of a millionairess; by those freight cars sidetracked in Satan Clara, uploading rich imported furnishing; by building activity that mushroom a farm house into a mansion with over 500 rooms, and as many as 125,000 square feet.
Here was fair came for all! They talked about Mrs. Winchester! Talk begat rumor and as the years passed and new towers and wings arouse, so did the colossal, ominous figure of Satan, which had struck men dumb with terror and awe. The people of the valley could not tell if it was an optical illusions or material. When President Theodore Roosevelt’s entourage passed the Winchester House in 1903 to plant the City of Campbell’s famous redwood tree, he expressed desire to visit this now World-famous dwelling. At the great front door our nation’s leader was more than astonished when the ominous figure told him, “Mrs. Winchester is not at home!” As he left, a procession of white-and-red-robed, torch-bearing monks were seen floating down the misty nine-story tower of the Winchester Mansion. The ubiquitous inverted crucifix and black candles were present. There was a Mass taking place before an altar surmounted by a cross, on top of which was the sign of the tetragram, a traditional magical symbol representing the four elements and used in the conjuration of the elementary spirts. Mrs. Winchester was locked in her mansion in a life-and-death struggle with evil, spirits killed by the Winchester rifle. A cross was made in the fields. There was a goat trampling on the crucifix and a ghostly priest wearing a black robe and performing a ceremony. That night, passers by heard ghostly music wafting from the dark mansion. It was described as unholy sounds as the Devil’s Tritone. While God had invented music, Satan was the first musician, and many claimed to feel his presence. Classical music composers who were supposedly in attendance that night, he been denounced by the Church for making actual pacts with the Devil. And that night, these spirits in black and red robes insisted on all genuine creativity, including the music, which was the result of an implicit pact with the infernal. Shortly after the music started, witches assembled on the estate, there to jabber and disport themselves pending Satan’s arrival. When he appeared, they formed a circle around his throne and glorified him.
When he felt sufficiently stimulated by the praise, he gave the signal for the sabbath to begin. But this dark exuberance proved too much for the party. The night ended when the bell in the belfry high in the gables tolled at an ungodly hour to warn these visitors to return to their sepulchres. Mrs. Winchester felt such a demonic force that night…she dreamt of witches. She woke up screaming and screaming…and said, “I have seen the Devil.” And still a ghostly violin was playing as legions of restless souls still wandered in the mansion. The very act of hearing this music indicates that its intended purposes worked. This particular exercise was also intended to awaken dormant regions of the human mind. Ghosts playing certain frequencies would make unbelievable things happen the next day. It released adrenal energy, and the next day dead bodies were discovered mining in a cave in San Francisco. Mrs. Winchester fainted when she saw that the walls in her Daisy bedroom were done in scarlet black, and black candles surrounded the altar, on which a figure of Satan majestically sat. She found that her Bible was partially destroyed, there was a broken chalice, and inverted cross craved into the floor. Similar events took place all over the Bay Area that night. Weird animal sacrifices turned up with alarming frequency. Churches were vandalized, graves disturbed, and mysterious magical symbols were inscribed on church wall. It was as if the dead had been risen. I remember Mrs. Winchester telling me once of a visitation she had from her husband, William Wirt Winchester, deceased nearly ten years, and the shock of seeing him again, nearly killed her. This true story of these awful and inexplicable events—an experience that in one short day changed the colour of her hair from brown to white, and carved lines on her face that nothing would ever erase, haunted her with the recollection of the most fearful ordeal she ever went through and emerged alive to speak of it. Mrs. Winchester invited a Medium to her home to conduct a séance in the blue séance room. They heard such a melody as the World had never yet heard the equal to, note by note. A sort of ecstatic trance, and the most wonderful tunes ravished the air as if invisible hands swept over piano keys.
It seemed to tell her an unearthly story, faintly imagined and seen, shadow-like as in a dream, and awe-struck and bewildered, she crouched down on the cold stone floor, covering her ears, for she knew such a melody was never meant for human ears to hear. How long it lasted, she could not say, but it gradually died away as gently and imperceptibly as a summers breeze, and as it did so, the clock in the tower slowly struck 1.13 A.M. Then action came to her, and Mrs. Winchester sprang to her feet, she flew to the door and fumbled with the key. The rain was falling heavily without as she tore open the door, and she felt that strange soft wind she had felt thirteen times before pass her from behind! It passed her—passed her into the night was gone. But the sequel to that strange night’s experience came two hours later. A telegram came for Mrs. Winchester, that Reuben Gallon, a police officer known for guarding her estate was found dead outside her estate near the six-foot hedge with his horse laying by his side. The cause of death was apparently from fright. A priest who possessed a great deal of occult literature and practiced magic resented Mrs. Winchester because his mansion was much vaster and more beautiful than his church. He was envious of Mrs. Winchester’s zeal and determined to silence her and stop her building. He threated to cast a spell upon her which would upset her mentally, and perhaps this night of horrors was the result. Many charms are used to stir up love or hate, and some magicians specialize in this area of magic. Causing the death of human beings and animals. This type of black magic belongs to the darkest sphere of occultism. Such episodes may appear utterly absurd and pure superstition to people in countries comparatively free of black magic, but instead they should be warnings of the power of Satan and demons where occult literature lures readers into illicit knowledge. The satanists worshipped Lucifer, the fallen angel, who they believe has always had more power on Earth than God. Their goal is to restore him to “the throne of the Universe,” these strains echoing the tenets of the old Luciferins. In an honest moment, the priest confessed: “I didn’t want to curse Mrs. Winchester, but I was driven to do it. The devil drives me. I can never find rest.” By sympathy of your hearts for sin, more evil impulses inexhaustively than human power have stained the Earth. Such tragic events oftehn involve as many as four generations.
Unlock the secrets of these dark halls, where the magical arts have been cultivated and praticed.
A Guided tour through 110 of the 160 rooms. Guests will be able to see the infamous rooms of Sarah’s stately mansion, known around the world as the Winchester Mystery House®, and see the bizarre attributes that give the mysterious mansion its name.
Tour Duration: 1 Hour, 5 Minutes
Prices: $41.99 adults, $34.99 seniors 65+, $19.99 children 5-12.
Save by bundling both tours together! www.winchestermysteryhouse.com
He Began to Think, After All, Was Death the End?
A story of confession—man tells how he reached the true meaning of his experience of life, and that this meaning border directly on the eternal. Satan first appeared in the sixth century B.C., in Persia, under the name of Angra Mainyu. He was usually represented as a snake, or as part lion, part snake, which points up once again the recurring symbolism of the serpent and cat. The Zoroastrian religion was the official religion of Persia at that time, and it spread with the extension of the Empire until the Persian military might was crushed by the Muslim invasion of A.D. 652. The teachings of the prophet Zoroaster served as served as a vehicle by which the doctrine of ethical dualism, the eternal battle between good and evil, was to spread to the rest of the World. Zoroastrianism taught that there were two forces or spirits in the Universe from which all else emanated: Ahura Mazda, the Principle of Light, the source of all good, and Angra Mainyu, the Principle of Darkness, the source of all evil. These two were supposed to be carrying on a constant battle, each attempting to destroy the other, until the coming of the Judgement, at which time the forces of Light would triumph. The Earth and all the material Universe were created by Ahura Mazda to be used as a weapon by which to ensnare and defeat Angra Mainyu. Man was created by Ahura Mazda to be used as a weapon by which to ensnare and defeat Angra Mainyu. Man was created by Ahura Mazada for the same purpose, but having the faculty of free will, one could choose between good and evil. In preparation for the oncoming battle, both spirits created subsidiary spirits to help them in their fight, these sides being organized into vast military organizations, efficient and terrible. The development of this military hierarchy, with Satan commanding legions of horrible demons, was to have a tremendous impact on the thinking of Judaic, Christian, and even Islamic cosmologies, the idea coming into special prominence at times when each of the cultures was making moves toward military expansion.
In 586 B.C., Jerusalem was taken by King Nebuchadnezzar after a long and bloody war, the Hebrews being deported to Babylonia. In 538 B.C., Cyrus the Great of Persia conquered Babylonia and issued a decree giving the Jewish people there a privileged status in the new social order. However, Cyrus was not only the harbinger of political freedom but also the carrier of a new spiritual awakening. Satan had appeared in the holy books of the Jewish people long before their contact with the Persians, but only in a very limited role. Satan translated from Hebrew means “accuser” or “adversary,” and that was precisely the role Satan played in Judaic angelology before the Persian influence. Satan was at the time, at the very most, slightly rebellious and resentful, perhaps wishing to work evil but forced to promote good due to the overriding influence of God. His function was to accuse men before God, expose their infidelity, and then bring about their punishment—but only under the auspices of God Himself. To the ancient Jewish people, who were hard-core realists, Satan symbolized man’s evil inclinations. It is very likely, in fact, that the introduction of Satan into Judaism was intended only in a figurative sense, and that he was not supposed to function as a distinct spiritual being at all. The contact with the Zoroastrians, at any rate, brought drastic changes in Jewish literature. The Jewish Sheol, once a place of eternal peace and sleep, was transformed into Hell, a place of damnation and punishment for the wicked. The serpent that tempted Eve became Satan in disguise, and the Devil became the originator of all evil, the author of death, a complete contradiction of the earlier Book of Isaiah, in which God proclaimed Himself to be responsible for all good and evil in the World, the creator of life and death.
The Judaic demonology, which had been up to that time relatively unimportant, took on a fresh look, and Satan as the archfiend came to head up a formalized hierarchy of storm troopers dedicated to the overthrow of the Heavenly forces. Demons consorted with humans to produce human offspring. Men went to bed at night fearing the coming of the bloodsucking she-demon Lilith or her consort, Samael, the Angel of Death, who cut men down in their prime and carried them off to Hell. In was in such a condition that Satan was transferred to the emerging Christian sect. In the New Testament, he become the “Old Serpent,” the “Great Dragon,” upholding his snaky image. Considering later developments, these reptilian descriptions are very relevant, for nowhere in Zoroastrian, Judaic, or Christian mythology was Satan described as a goat, as he was later portrayed by the Inquisitors. The Devil was a cosmic element to be taken seriously by any right-thinking Christians, of course, but at that time, Christianity was much too bus fighting for its own survival to search out Satan in any lair in which he might be hiding. In the Fifth century, in his treatise The City of God, Saint Augustine described the legions of demons that are active on Earth and the powers that they exert over humans. However, he went on to say that evil was a creation not of the Devil, but of God, in order to select the “elect” from the damned. In stating, “For we cannot call the devil a fornicator or drunkard or ascribe him any sensual indulgence though he is the secret instigator and prompter of those who sin in these ways,” he reflected an image of Satan far different from the one that was to emerge later on the Continent. The picture of Satan as sort of an immoral dope-pusher, getting weak persons hooked on his “junk” while he himself abstained and reaped the profits, was a far cry from the later lecherous goat, the Prince of Fornication, who as the witches’ Sabbats copulated with every woman present.
In the gray Celtic mists of Wales and Scotland, the remains of Druidism, a mysterious religious group that claimed to be able, by certain strange, magical rituals, to make rain, to bring down fire from the sky, and to perform other wondrous and miraculous acts was found. Druids would meet in the darkness of the forests, these sorcerers, among their sacred trees. In Greece, missionaries found the bloody rites of Dionysus, the goat-god, the god of vegetation. There also, in beautiful gardens, they discovered the people making offerings to Priapus, who bore the horns of a goat and who displayed proudly a huge phallus, a deity of productive power who protected the fields and the bees and the sheep. They encountered the god Pan waiting for them deep in the black forests, waiting for the transformation that would increase the limits of his kingdom a thousandfold. Wherever the Christian missionaries turned, they found the peasantry worshipping many animal gods, primary among them being the bull, the ram, and the stag. Among the northern Teutonic peoples, there were the war gods Thor and Odin, and the evil Loki, all wearing horned helmets as they went to battle. Freyja, the Scandinavian May queen counterpart of the southern Diana, donned antlers and was responsible for the revival of life in the spring. Dionysus, Isis, Priapus, Cernunnos, all were horned gods of fertility. Those woods and glades were populated with nymphs and goatlike satyrs, lesser spirits who played gleefully and licentiously in the summer sun. The horned god was to resist the oncoming Christian tide, become miraculously transformed into Satan, the ruler of the Earth in all its glory. With the conquest of the new pagan territories, Christians launched a spiritual assault on their new captives in an attempt to spread the gospel.
Most of the missionaries underestimated the power of the nature religions of the pagans. They viewed the holding of such religious beliefs to be due merely to error and believed that once such errors were revealed, the pagans would be blinded by the light of truth and embrace Jesus as their Savior. However, the pagans found the teachings of the Nazarene to be a little too distant and mystical for their liking. Thus, when the initial attempt at conversion failed, the missionaries found it necessary to change their views, and they began to incorporate many elements of the old religions into Christian doctrine in an attempt to kill them by subversion. Many of the pagan deities were transformed overnight into Christian saints, adding new pages to the growing Christian mythology. Elements of pagan rituals and ceremonies found their way into Christian services as each parish soaked up local traditions. As late as 1282, a priest at Inverkeithing was found to be leading fertility dances at Easter around the phallic figure of god, and the Catholic hierarchy, after investigation, allowed him to keep his benefice. From the sixth century, as more territory became opened to Christianity, the pagan kings began to convert one by one. Certain wicked women, reverting to Satan, and seduced by the illusions and phantasms of demons, believed and professed that they would ride at night with Diana on certain beasts, with an innumerable multitude of women, passing over immense distances, obeying her commands as their mistress, and evoked by her on certain nights. Tales of nocturnal gatherings of witches who flew on animals to hilltop meetings were common enough to have been included in Boccaccio’s Decameron in 1350, but most of the high Christian officials saw these women not as practitioners of the abominations to which they confessed, but only as the unwilling victims of demonic tricksters.
Some, spurred on by the pessimistic view that the World was purposely created and maintained as a living Hell, existing solely to prepare humans for their future Heavenly existence, the pious conducted a “holier than thou” contest to see who could inflict the most self-abuse. They measured Earthly success in terms of how much pain they could force themselves to endure, or how many lice they were able to nurture in their hair. As asceticism came to be incorporated into Church dogma, all of nature came to be looked upon as something vile and corrupt. Knights Templar and various Gnostic heresies, were clear-cut reactions against the corruption rampant in the Church and they instituted strict vows of chastity and poverty among their priesthoods. Since the Templars were a wealth order and since the wealth of all those convicted of heretical crimes became the property of the state, it is possible that the episode was fabricated by King Philip of France to fill his badly depleted treasure. However, in 1312, the powerful Knights Templar, a fraternal organization of Christian Crusaders, which had ostensibly formed as a response to what its leader saw as corruption in the Church, was declared heretical by the Church, and its members imprisoned. Many disciples of the group cracked under the strain of torture and confessed to having practiced a variety of abominable rite, including the worship of a deity called Baphomet, described alternately as a breaded man’s head with one or three faces, a human skull, or a monstrous figure with human hands and the head of a goat, a candle sputtering between its horns. Initiates were forced to spit and trample upon the cross, renounce Christ as a false prophet, gird themselves with cords that had been tied to pagan idols, and perform homosexual acts.
Unfortunately, the Templars failed to develop a survival course geared to an unexpected enemy—their own church—and the last Grand Master of the Templars, Jacques de Molay, was burned outside Paris in 1314. Regardless of the reality of the Satanic charges against them, the Templar legend would play an important role in Western magical tradition and in the belief systems of other secret societies—Satanic and non-Satanic—which traced their own practices to those of the Knights. In 1275, not long before Jacques de Molay’s execution, the first official execution for witchcraft was burned at the stake in Toulouse. Other executions followed. With most of the powerful heretical movements stamped out by the fourteenth century, the Christian fathers, intoxicated by the smell of burning flesh, searched frantically for new victims. The early witch executions set a valuable precedent, and the pantheon of nature gods of the peasant farmers was opened up for attack. By the time the concepts of heresy and witchcraft had become thoroughly confused, and the Inquisitors saw demons everywhere. The biblical edict, “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live” came into literal use on a grand scale. By the time that Pope Innocent VIII gave official sanction by a papal bull in 1484 for the witch prosecutions, executions for witchcraft had been in full swing in parts of the Continent for two hundred years. However, in 1485, a more detailed account of the dealings of witches was published by the Dominican Inquisitors Henry Kramer and Jacob Sprenger, entitles the Malleus Maleficarum. This work, which became a manual for Inquisitors and witch-hunters for the next two centuries, spelled out in great detail the methods of workings of witches, their treacherous league with the Devil, and described methods for securing convictions of the accused. The doors were thrown open for the blood bath.
The frenzy that shook Europe was monumental. The witch became for the European Christian, as H.R. Trevor-Roper terms it, the “stereotype of noncomformity,” a convenient scapegoat for jealousy and self-hatred. The craze reached such paranoiac proportions that between 1120 and 1741, when the madness finally subsided, ninety domestic animals had been tried before courts of law for murder and witchcraft. In 1314 at Valois, a bull that had gored a man to death was sentenced to death by strangulation. All of Europe was under the dark cloud of Satan, as neighbors and friends viewed each other with suspicion and families turned on one another in blind fear. The Reformation of the sixteenth century made Catholics even more certain that the Satanic forces were everywhere trying to undermine the authority of the Church. The Thirty Years War was seen as Armageddon, the Infernal Hierarchy more than ever assuming the aspects of a well-oiled military machine, with Satan leading Luther and his demonic Protestant hordes in a bloody assault on the City of God. The Lutherans entered the proceeding with vigor, for they were revolting against the corruption and laxity they saw in the Church, this decay being due to Satanic influences. Luther viewed his adversaries as bring inspired by the Devil, and even his own bodily ailments he attributed to demonic activity. The spiral of executions soared ever upward, each side tying to outdo the other to meet the challenge. One Protestant reformer by the name of Carpzov claimed personal responsibility for the deaths of 20,000 people. The property seized from the witches was a valuable source of capital with which to finance the war effort. Besides this, there were many carpenters, judges, jailers, exorcists, woodcutters, and executioners who had an economic reason to see the bloodbath continue.
By the time the people had regained their senses and the Inquisition had come to a screeching halt in the late seventeenth century, an untold number of victims had been burned, strangled, hanged, or tortured to death. Even higher than the reported deaths from the COVID-19 pandemic, 9 million suspected witches had been terminated. However, while the tragic farce had been conducted, a strange metamorphosis had taken place. The Inquisition, which had convicted a multitude of peasants for worshipping the Devil, had found itself caught up in a self-fulfilling prophecy; it had created a new vision. Satan had begun to change in appearance by the time of the first mass executions for witchcraft in the fifteen century. He had shed his snakeskin and had grown a coat of fur and horns. He had become hoofed and shaggy. He had become Pan and Priapus and Cernunnos and Loki and Odin and Thor and Dionysus and Isis and Diana. He had become the god of fertility and abundance and lust. He was the lascivious goat, the mysterious black ram. He was all of nature and indeed life itself to the peasant, who had often lived on the verge of starvation due to the crushing taxes of the feudal aristocracy. He was pleasures of the flesh, and since to the peasant pleasures of the flesh was identical to creation itself, and was one of the few pleasures not open to taxation, he was their god. The Churches fanatical asceticism, its rabid identification of pleasures of the flesh with evil, added to the Devil’s strength. The Inquisitors, with an image of Satan and his hellish activities imprinted on their brains, slowly managed to stamp the image on the minds of peasantry. It was through their dogged efforts that Satan became the savior of man. When the Satanic hysteria gets to the point of absurdity, people start questioning the whole line of crap. It will eventually get so no one believes anything Christian ministers say anymore. When they hear about the Devil and how rotten he is, it just makes them curious about what the Satanic viewpoint might be.
In modern times, figures were produced as many as 100,000 people are sacrificed to the Devil every year in the United States of America alone. In Albuquerque, New Mexico, there was a site used by a cult. A form of a church. And it is probably still in use. Some symbols and artifacts were discovered that made some concerned. An officer from Albuquerque Police Department was more specific: “This is definitely witchcraft. And I’d stay away from there if there are any people around. They will hurt you.” Another “occult expert” observed that the symbol they found was “a very powerful spiritual symbol.” It essentially started a witch hunt in the community. If you recall a suburb called Manhattan Beach in Los Angeles, California. Centering on the popular McMartin Preschool day-car centre, it would become the most expensive trial in Californian criminal history up to that point. It began when some parents voiced suspicious that their children were abused by staff at the centre. Seven staff members were arrested to face 208 different charges. Then things got weird. The children began telling increasingly bizarre stories. They had been forced to drink blood and eat feces, had witnessed adults sacrificing animals and eating babies. To many, this seemed like a morbid, childish fantasy. However, the trial split the whole community, including those prosecuting the case. One prosecutor proudly announced the discovery of “toy rabbit ears, a cape, and a candle” proved the existence of a Satanic cult. Another resigned in disgust at the shabby proceedings. Meanwhile, things just got weirder. One child said he was kept in a cage with a lion. The case dragged on for many years. As the trial turned into a circus, it emerged that the mother who made the initial accusations had a history of mental problems. Five of the accused were released without charge because evidence against them was, according to the District Attorney “incredibly weak.”
The last defendant was released as the jury deadlocked on a verdict. That following July, a second trial produced the same result. This inconclusive verdict is emblematic of the Satanic ritual abuse myth. On one side, those who wanted to believe in it emphasized that the accused had never been fully exonerated. In the other, the secptics pointed out that nothing had been proved—despite huge public expenditure—and wondered aloud whether the therapist who interviewed the children had helped inspire their macabre tales of cultists and demons. We may pay the tribute of a tearful smile to the ashes of witchcraft, and express our opinion of the present-day beliefs of the simple country-folk by a pitying smile, feeling all the time how much more enlightened we are than those who believed, or still believe in such absurdities! However, the mind of a man is built in water-tight compartments. What better embodies the spirit of the young twenty-first century than a powerful motor car, fully equipped with the most up-to-date appliances for increasing speed or less vibration; in its tuneful hum as it travels at forty-five miles an hour without an effort, we hear the triumph-song of mind over matter. The owner certainly does not believe in witchcraft or phishogues (or perhaps in anything save himself!), yet he fastens on the radiator a “Teddy Bear” or some such thing by way of a mascot. Ask him why he does it—he cannot tell, except that other do the same, while all the time at the back of his mind there exists almost unconsciously the belief that such a thing will help to keep him from the troubles and annoyances that beset the path of the motorists. The connection between cause and effect is unknown to him; he cannot tell you why a Teddy Bear will keep the engine operating normally or prevent punctures—and in this respect he is for the moment on exactly the same intellectual level as, let us say, his brother-man of New Zealand, who carries a baked yam with him at night to scare away ghosts.
The truth of the matter is that we all have a vein of superstition in us, which makes its appearance at some period in our lives under one form or another. A. will laugh to scorn B.’s belief in witches or ghost, while one oneself would not undertake a piece of business on a Friday for all the wealth of Croesus; while C., who laughs at both, will offer one’s hand to the palmist in full assurance of faith. There are some marvelous tales about Sarah Winchester her mansion. In fact, thousands of words have been and will be written about the Mystery Hose and its Lady but the great question is yet to be answered, —Why? Why? Sarah Winchester was truly overcome by the loss of her month-old baby girl, Annie, and a grief magnified 15 years later by her husband’s sudden death. Doctors and friend urged her to leave the East, seek a milder climate and search for some all-consuming hobby. One physician did suggest that she “build a house and do not employ an architect.” William Wirt Winchester, the Husband of Sarah Winchester, was of an ancient family, and had inherited wealth. When he was at university, he fell into somewhat evil hands; for he made friends with an old doctor of college, who feared not God and thought ill of man, and spent all his time in dark researches into the evil secrets of nature, they study of dangerous poisons and many other hidden words of darkness such as drinking vitals of his own blood, conducting Satanic rituals in a deserted farmhouse, intercourse with spirits of evil, and the black influences that lie in wait for the soul; and he found William an apt pupil. William lived in a Victorian cottage near the university for some years till he was nearly thirty, seldom visiting his home, and writing but formal letters to this father, who supplied him gladly with a small revenue, so long as he kept busy with education.
Then his father, Oliver Fisher Winchester, died and William Wirt Winchester came home to take up his inheritance, which was a plentiful one. He also became the president of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company. He lived in his father’s Victorian mansion in New Haven, Connecticut, which lay very desolate and gloomy. To serve him he had a man and his wife, Sarah, who were quiet and simple people and asked no questions; the wife cooked his meals, and kept the rooms, where he slept and read, clean and neat; the man moved his machines for him, and arranged his phials and instruments, having a light touch and serviceable memory. The door of the house that gave on the street opened into a hall; to the right was a kitchen, and a pair of rooms where the man and his wife lived. On the left was a large room running through the house; the windows on to the street were walled up, and the windows at the back looked on the garden, the trees of which grew closet to the casements making the room dark, and in a breeze rustling their leaves or leafless branches against the panes. In this room William had a furnace with bellows, the smoke of which discharged itself into the chimney; and here he did much of his working, making mechanical toys, as a clock to measure the speed of wind or water, roller skates, a little chariot that ran a few yards by itself, a puppet that moved its arms and laughed, hammers, planes, saws, footballs and bicycles. The room was filled up with dark lumber, in a sort of order that would have looked to a stranger like disorder, but so that William could lay his hand on all that he needed. From the hall, which was paved with stone, went up the stairs, very strong and broad, of massive oak; under which was a postern that led to the garden; on the floor above where a room William slept in, which again had its windows to the street boarded up, for he was a light sleeper, and the mornings sounds of the awakening city disturbed him.
The room was hung with a dark arras, sprinkled with red flowers; he slept in a great bed with black curtains to shut out all light; the windows looked into the garden; but on the left of the bed, which stood with its head to the street, was an alcove, being the hangings, containing a window that gave on the church. One the same floor were thirteen other rooms; in one of these, looking on the garden William had his meals. It was plain, panelled room. Next was a room where he read, filled with books, also looking on the garden and the next to that was a little room of which he alone had the key. This room he kept locked, and no one set foot in it but himself. There was one more room on this floor, set apart for guests (who never came), with a great bed and a press of oak. And that looked on the street. Above, there was a row of plain plastered rooms, in which stood furniture for which William had no use, and many crates in which his machines and phials came to him; this floor was seldom visited, except by the man, who sometimes came to put a box there; and the spiders had it to themselves; except for a little room where stood an optic glass through which on clear nights William sometimes looked at the moon and stars, if there was any odd misadventure among them, such as an eclipse; or when a fiery-tailed comet went his way silently in the Heavens. William had but two friends who ever came to see him. One was an old physician who had ceased to practise his trade, which indeed was never abundant, and who would sometimes drink a glass of wine with William, and engage in curious talk of men’s bodies and diseases, or look at one of William’s inventions. William had come to know him by having called him in to cure some aliment, which needed a surgical knife; and that had made a kind of friendship between them; but William had little need thereafter to consult him about his health, which indeed was now settled enough, though he had but little vigour; and he knew enough of drugs to cure himself when he was ill.
The other friend was a silly priest of the college, that made belief to be a student but was none, who thought William a very wise and mighty person, and listened with open mouth and eyes to all that he said or showed him. This priest, who was fond of wonders, had introduced himself to William by pretending to borrow a volume of him; and then had grown proud of the acquaintance, and bragged greatly of it to his friends, mixing up much tht was fanciful with a little that was true. However, the result was that gossip spread wide about William, and he was held in the town to very a very fearful person, who could do strange mischief if her had a mind to; William never cared to walk abroad, for he was of a shy habit, and disliked to meet the eyes of his fellows; but if he did go about, men began to look curiously after he as he went by, shook their heads and talked together with dark pleasure, while children fled before his face and women feared him; all of which pleased William mightily, if the truth were told; for at the bottom of his restless and eager spirit lay a deep vanity unseen, like a lake in the woods; he hungered not indeed for fame, but for repute—and he cared little in what repute he was held, so long as men thought him great and marvellous; and as he could not win renown by brave deeds and words, he was rejoiced to win it by keeping up a certain darkness and mystery about his ways and doings; and this was very clear to him, so that when the silly priest called him Seer and Wizard, he frowned and looked sideways; but he laughed in his heart and was glad. Now, when William was near his fortieth year, there fell on him a heaviness of spirit which daily increased upon him. He began to question his end and what lay beyond. He had grown to believe that in death, the soul was extinguished like a burnt-out flame. William began, too, to question his life and what he had done.
He had made a few guns, toys, and filled vacant hours, and had gained a kind of fame—and this was all. Was he so certain, he began to think, after all, that death was the end? Were there perhaps, not in the vast house of God, rooms and chambers beyond that in which he was set for awhile to pace to and fro? About this time he began to read in a Bible tht he had lain dusty and unopened on a shelf. It was his mother’s book, and he found therein many little tokens of her presence. Here was a verse underline; at some gracious passage the page was much fingered and worn; in one place there were stains that looked like the mark of tears; then again, in one page, there was a small tress of hair, golden hair, tied to a paper with a name across it, that seemed to be the name of his daughter who had died at six weeks old; and again there were a few withered flowers, like little sad ghosts, stuck through a paper on which was written his father’s name—the name of the powerful, demanding, silent man who William had feared with all his heart. William felt a sudden desire of the heart for a woman’s love, for tender words to sooth his sadness, for the laughter and kisses of his new born daughter—and he began to ransack his mind for memories of his baby; he could remember he being pressed to his heart one morning, with her fragrant hair falling about his. She had unusually long hair for a newborn baby. The worst was that he must bear his sorrow alone, for there were none to whom he could talk of such things. The doctor was a dry as an old bunch of herbs, and as for the priest, William was ashamed to show anything but contempt and pride in his presence. For relief he began to turn to a branch of his studies that he had long neglected; this was a fearful commerce with the unseen spirits.
William could remember having practised some experiments of this kind with the old doctor; but he remembered them with a kind of disgust, for they seemed to him but a sort of deadly juggling; such dark things he had seen seemed like a dangerous sport with unclean beings, more brute-like than human. Yet now he read in his curious books with care, and studied the tales of necromancers, who had indeed seemed to have some power over the souls of men departed. However, the old books gave him but little faith, and a kind of angry disgust at the things attempted. And he began to think that the horror in which such men as made these books lived, was not more than the dak shadow cast on the mirror of the soul by their own desperate imaginings and timorous excursions. One Sunday he was strangely sad and heavy; he could settle to nothing, but threw book after book aside, and when he turned to some work of construction, his had seemed to have lost its cunning. It was a grey and sullen day in November; a warm wet wind came buffeting up from the west, and roared in the chimney and eaves of the old mansion. The shrubs in the garden plucked themselves hither and thither as though in pain. William walked to and fro after his midday meal, which he had eaten hastily without savour; at last, as though with a sudden resolution, he went to a secret cabinet and got out a key; and with it he went to the door of the little room that was always locked. He stopped at the threshold for a while, looking hither and thither; and then he suddenly unlocked it and went in, closing and locking it behind him. The room was as dark as night, but William going softly, his hands before him, went to a corner and got a tinder-box which lay there, and made a flame. A small dark room appeared, hung with a black tapestry; the window was heavily shuttered and curtained; in the centre of the room stood what looked like a small altar pained black; the floor was all bare, but with white marks upon it, half effaced.
William looked about the room, glancing sidelong, as though in some kind of doubt; his breath went and came quickly, and he looked paler than usual. Presently, as though reassured by silence and calm of the place, he went to a tall press that stood in in corner, which he opened, and took from it certain things—a dish of metal, some small leather bags, a large lump of chalk, and a book. He laid all but the chalk down on the alter, and then opening the book, read in it a little; and then he went with the chalk and drew certain marks upon the floor, first making a circle, which he went over again and again with anxious care; at times he went back and peeped into the book as though uncertain. Then he opened the bags, which seemed to hold certain kinds of powdered, this dusty, that in grains; he ran them through his hands, and then poured a little of each into his dish, and mixed them with his hands. Then he stopped and looked about him. Then he walked to a place in the wall on the further side of the altar from the door, and drew the arras carefully aside, disclosing a little alcove in the wall; into this he looked fearfully, as though he was afraid of what he might see. In the alcove, which was all black, appeared a small shelf, that stood but a little way out from the wall. Upon it, gleaming very white against the black, stood the skull of a man, and on either side of the skull were the bones of a man’s hand. It looked to him, as he gazed on it with a sort of curious disgust, as though a dead man had come up to the surface of a black tide, and was preparing presently to leap out. On either side stood two long silver candlesticks, very dark with disuse; but instead of holding candles, they were fitted at the top with flat metal dishes; and in these he poured some of his powders, mixing them as before with his fingers. William felt a shudder ass through he veins.
He went down for supper. When his food was served, he could hardly touch it, and he drank cranberry juice as his custom was to do. Around midnight, William rose from his place; the house was now all silent, and without the night was very still, as though all things slept tranquilly. He took a black robe, and put it around him, so that it covered him from head to foot, and then gathered up the parchment, and the key of the locked room, and went softly out, and so came to the door. This he undid with a kind of secret and awestruck haste, locking it behind him. Once inside the room, he wrestled awhile with a strong aversion to what was in his mind to do, and stood for a moment, listening intently, as though he expected to hear some sound. However, the room was still, except for the faint biting od some small creature in the wainscot. After performing a ritual, suddenly William saw for a moment a pale light, as of moonlight, and then with a horror of what words cannot attain to describe, he saw a face hand in the air a few feet from him, that looked in his own eyes with a sort of intent fury, as though to spring upon him if he turned either to the right hand or to the left. His knees tottered beneath him, and a sweat of icy coldness sprang on his brow; there followed a sound like no sound William had dreamed of hearing; a sound that was near and yet remote, a sound that was low and yet charged with power, like the groaning of a voice in grievous pain and anger, that strives to be free and yet is helpless. And then William new that he indeed opened the door that looks into the other World, and that deadly thing that held him in enmity had looked out. His reeling brain still told him that he was safe where he was, but that he must not step or fall outside the circle; but how he should resist the power of the wicked face he knew not. He tried to frame a prayer in his heart; but there swept such fury of hatred across the face that he dared not. So he closed his eyes and stood dizzily waiting to fall, and knowing that if he fell it was the end.
Suddenly, as he stood with his eye closed, he felt the horror of the spell relax; he opened his eyes again, and saw that the face died out upon the air, becoming first white and then thin. Then there fell a low and sweet music upon their air, like a concert of flutes and harps, very far away. And then suddenly, in a sweet radiance, the face of his daughter, as she lived in his mind, appeared in the space, and looked at him with a kind of Heavenly loved; then beside the face appeared two thin hands which seemed to wave a blessing toward him, which flowed like healing into his soul. The relief from the horror, and the flood of tenderness that came into his heart, made him reckless. The tears came into his eyes, not in a rising film, but a flood of hot and large. He took step forwards rounding the altar; but as he did so, the vision disappeared, the lights shot up into a flare and went out; the house seemed to be suddenly shaken; in the darkness he heard the rattle of bones, and the clash of metal, and William fell all his length upon the ground and lay as one dead. But while he lay, there came to him in some secret cell of his mind a dreadful vision, which he could only dimly remember afterwards with a fitful horror. A door-to-nowhere opened. He stepped through. It was very damp and chilly, but there was a glimmering light; he walked a few paced down the hallway. The floor underfoot were slimy, and the walls streamed with damp. He thought that he could return; but the great door was closed behind him, and he could not open it. William felt like a child in the grip of a giant and went forward in great terror and perplexity. Then there came someone very softly down the passage and drew near—it was his wife Sarah. He followed her into the parlor where she received her morning tea. He could not get her attention, but while looking over her shoulder, he noticed the date on the Oakland Tribune was Sunday, December 30, 1900.
Then end soon came, for the tall man, who had brought William there, broke out into a great storm of passion; and William heard him say, “He hath yielded himself to his own will; and he is mine here; so let us make an end.” William made haste to go back, and found the door-to-nowhere ajar; but he as he reached it, he heard a horrible sin behind him, of cries and screams; and it was with a sense of gratitude, that he could not put into words, but which filled all his heart, that he found himself back in his home again. And then the vision all fled away, and with a shock coming to himself, he found that he was laying in his own room; he was cold and aching in every limb, and then he knew that a battle had been fought out over his soul, and moments later, he passed away, on March 7th 1881, but the evil had not prevailed. Upon William’s death, his wife Sarah inherited $20,000,000 and 777 shares of stock in the Winchester Repeating Arms Company. Mrs. Sarah L. Winchester’s response to the death of her child and husband left a beautiful, bizarre, and impressive architectural reflection of her psyche. The fascinating story of the Winchester Mystery House has its roots in the personal tragedies suffered by Mrs. Winchester and in the legacy of the Winchester rifle, “The Gun That Won the West.” Each of us dwells in our own particular glass house, and so cannot afford to hurl missiles at one’s neighbours; milk-magic or motor-mascots, pishogues or palmistry, the method of the manifestation is of little account in comparison with the underlying superstition. The latter is an unfortunate trait that has been handed down to us from the infancy of the race; we have managed to get rid of such physical features as tails or third eyes, whose day of usefulness has passed; we no longer masticate our meat raw, or chip the rugged flint into the semblance of a knife, but we still acknowledge our descent by giving expression to the strange beliefs that lie in some remote lumber-room at the back of the brain.
However it may be objected that belief in witches, ghosts, fairies, charms, evil-eye, etcetera, need not be put down as unreasoning superstition, pure and simple, that in fact the trend of modern thought is to show us that there are more things in Heaven and Earth than were formerly dreamt of. We grant that humans are very complex machines, a microcosm peopled with possibilities of which we can understand but little. We know that mind acts on mind to an extraordinary degree, and that the imagination can affect the body to an extent not yet fully realized, and indeed has often carried humans far beyond the bounds of commo-sense; and so we consider that many of these elements of the above beliefs can in a general way be explained along these lines. Nevertheless that does not do away with the element of superstition and, we ma add, oftentimes of deliberately-planned evil that underlies. There is no need to resurrect the old dilemma, whether God or the Devil was the principal agent concerned; we have no desire to preach to our readers, but we feel that every thinking human will be fully prepared to admit that such beliefs and practices are inimical to the development of true spiritual life, in that they tend to obscure the ever-present Deity and bring into prominence primitive feelings and emotions which are better left to fall into a state of atrophy. In addition they crippled the growth of national life, as they make the individual the fearful slave of the unknow, and consequently prevent the development of an independent spirit in one without which a nation is only such in name. The dead past utters warnings to the heirs of the ages. It tells us already we have partially entered into a glorious heritage, which may perhaps be as nothing in respect of what will ultimately fall to the lot of the human race, and it bid us give our upward-soaring spirits freedom, and not fetter them with the gross beliefs of yore that should long ere this have been relegated to limbo.
Winchester Mystery House
This Friday, Aiden Sinclair is back at The Winchester Mystery House for two performances and an exclusive 13 guest Victorian Seance. Shows take place in Sarah’s iconic Grand Ballroom and Dining Room. You DON’T want to miss this 👀🔮Tickets available on our site! https://www.winchestermysteryhouse.com/aiden-sinclair/
Are You Brave Enough to Explore the House at Night?
The one problem with oral language is that after being handed down from generation to generation, the reasons for certain social laws are often forgotten and they become elevated to the stature of natural laws, the breaking of which is felt by humans to be detrimental to one’s survival as an organic entity. The laws begin to work independently of the reasons for their existence and in the process assume greater force. “Thou shalt not” is the basic of the concept of social evil. Thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not covet they neighbor’s wife—all these are examples of social evils. If indulged, such acts are evil in that they would facilitate the breakdown of ties within the culture; they are prohibitions aimed at maintenance and control. Seldom have these evils been personified by any particular god, since they act in the capacity of universal laws and, as such, are mechanical, impersonal. Satan has not personified these social taboos in the same sense that Set personified the night and Horus personified the sun; he rather has skillfully manipulated these moral edicts in an attempt to undermine the forces of righteousness and good. Satan as personification of evil has beaten a consistent and clear path through the religious history of Western man and in each guise has been representative of the social type of evil. He has been uniformly antisocial, anti-humanity, anti-God throughout all the religious systems in which he has appeared, at least according to the tenants of the opposing side. However, only under one of the religions in which he appears, Christianity, did a separate movement materialize devoted to his worship as a symbol of the anti-God. The reason for this has been stated many times by writers and historians: historically, Satanism as a religion was the anomalous child of Christian repression.
The reason that Devil worship reached the degree of organization and the size that it did under Christianity, and under other monotheistic religious systems, is the Christian definition of evil. The idea of social evil for the Christians soon became aligned and synonymous with self-indulgence. The Christian idea of the Seven Deadly Sins (greed, pride, envy, anger, gluttony, lust, and sloth) is indicative of this aversion to self-indulgence. Pleasure came to be looked upon as being tainted. Man found it hard, nevertheless, to dissociate himself intellectually from self-indulgence and from his own carnality, from his emotions and from his physical delights. His self became divided and he found that he was being led in two directions at once. A gulf widened between man’s conscious and unconscious mind, and he found himself obsessed by images of his instinctual nature, his animal being. The Devil, conceived and cast in the form of the ubiquitous chtonic snake, functioning at an unconscious level as man’s animal being, was looked upon by the Christian theologians with stern foreboding. The people were told that the Devil was evil, that he represented carnality, pride, lust, gluttony, rebelliousness, all those centrifugal forces that would tend toward atomization and social disintegration. They were told that Satan was evil because he had dared to opposed God, the perfect and omnipotent creator of the Universe. The people nodded in agreement, for they knew that this was correct, but at a deeper level of consciousness something squirmed uncomfortably. It all struck a chord that was just a bit too familiar, for the Devil reminded them of somebody they knew very well—themselves. He was self-indulgent and so were they; he had great pride and so did they; he rebelled against tyrannical authority and so did they often use to.
Satan painted a colorful picture, to be sure, much more attractive than the one of an overpowering, intolerant, faultless God whom none could ever hope to approach in perfection. So the Devil remained intact as a symbol under Christianity; he was humanity in all its weakness, and it was from this manifestation that he originally derived all his strength. In other religions in which he played a major role, Satan had never achieved any great following simply because the theologians, in their mythmaking functions, were more careful in their social definitions of evil. All those religious systems in which Satan has appeared share one common trait: they are all monotheistic and, as such, need a negative balance for the beneficial construct of an all-powerful, all-good, and merciful God. Satan is necessary because there is no other way to dispose of the evil realities constantly confronting humanity. Since pestilence, famine, and death are formidable evils faced by all humans, and since it is difficult, to day the least, to attribute their origin to pure goodness, an evil source must be assumed to exist. In undertaking to relate some of my experiences in connection with the purchase and sale of haunted houses, I was successful in this class of business, but some of my adventures I went through were of such a character that I dared not continue. My nerves are fairly strong, but there are some things which I never wish to face again. I was first tempted to dabble in this unlucky class of business with what is now known as the Winchester Mystery House, which is an extravagant maze of beautiful Victorian craftmanship—marvelous, baffling, and eerily eccentric, to say the least. The Winchester Mystery House became known as “the house built by the spirits.” At the time of Mrs. Winchester’s death in 1922, there were rooms full of ornate treasures still waiting to find a niche in the massive home.
A client was anxious to see me one day, he wanted to make an immediate offer, at almost any price, for the most mysterious hose in the World. However, once he took a tour of the house, he said it was haunted and ran out the front door. The house became very hard to sell. It was all nonsense, of course; but the people in the neighborhood had it in their head that this was a haunted house; and now if any tenants come they are sure to hear of it directly, and get frightened. The result is that I had lost tenant after tenant, and the reputation of the Winchester mansion was so bad that I could not sell it. I assured the clients that the house was in thorough repair, but tended to be reluctant to answer the questions about the ghosts. Potential buyers would ask, “Are there any stories about the house?” Anything to account for its being haunted?” “No; no. What story should there be? It is a modern house—hardly been built for 36 years.” “And how long has it been your property?” “I bought it as soon as it was put up.” “And how long has it been haunted?” I frowned because I disliked to hear this word. “The hose has been talked about for some years now—20 or 30 years,” I replied. The client’s curiosity about the Winchester Mansion was so strong. When I took him on the tour of the estate, he was shocked at how beautiful it was. I had no, however, been able to find a caretaker because you must pay them for living in such a house. I had been trying to get someone to come and occupy it rent free for a time in order to live down its reputation, but often times the tenants would go missing. The client asked if there was any room particularly connected with the ghostly rumours. The grounds have their share of unexplained mysteries.
After a monetary hesitation, I led him upstairs into what was Mrs. Winchester’s principal bedroom. In the inner courtyard, there is a crescent shaped hedge that points to Mrs. Winchester’s bedroom—the one where she died. Coincidence? Maybe…but again, we will never know for sure. “Is this where the ghosts walk?” he asked as he glanced around the empty room. I was plainly annoyed by his insistence. “There are no ghosts, and they do not always anywhere,” I said irritably. I glanced up at the ceiling, and swiftly withdrew my eyes with a nervous tremor. I could tell the client was firmly persuaded that I had been the victim of some spectral horror, though I was anxiously trying to conceal it for fear of frightening him off. “Perhaps I had been not tell you anything,” I said, after considering a moment. “There is a great deal in the influence of suggestion, so it is said. If I were to tell you what the people who have slept in this room have seen, or dreamt they have seen, that might be enough to make you dream the same. Whereas, if a sensible man without any notions came and slept here, one would most likely never be disturbed.” Upstairs I showed him another room which was an unfinished attic space. The prospect from the widow showed hum that it was situated over the haunted chamber. “Is there something wrong with this room as well?” he demanded. “The servants do not like sleeping in it,” was my grudging admission. “It does very well as a boxroom.” The client was very anxious to secure an option to purchase the Winchester Mansion at the end of the month. My next step was to secure some attendance, and to send down some furniture for the many empty rooms which they mystery appeared to cling. All of Mrs. Winchester furniture had been sold at auction.
It took movers six weeks, six truck loads a day, to empty the mansion. Many of them often got lost. I was not very well pleased with the idea of taking the ghosts seriously. However, I knew that there were things in Nature which ordinary rules did not explain. I had seen things myself which could not be accounted for by natural means. I dared not tell the client that there had been a murderer lurking in the mansion ready to spring on potential clients and stab them. Suddenly, we heard a low moan—the moan of a creature in mortal terror, drawn out till it became a muffled scream. The moan was repeated, coming distinctly from the room below us. This is why I did not live having an open house at night. With candles in hand, as we reached the third floor landing the moan was repeated in a more terrible key—the key of horror instead of terror. At the same moment the door of one of the haunted rooms was thrown open, and suddenly Agnus, the maid, appeared on the threshold, with a cloak thrown over her shoulders, and a look of fear and distress on her face. “What is it?” I asked. “Merrill, she has seen something horrible, and I cannot get her to come to.” Without stopping to consider questions of etiquette, I dashed into the room. The gas had been turned full on, and by its light I saw the young lady lying stretched out on a couch at the foot of the bed, her features frozen into expression of one who looks upon some horrid sight, while from her parted lips there issued those appalling sounds which wounded like the stabs of a knife. I caught her by the shoulders and shook her, without making the slightest change in her swoon-like conditions. “Water!” I called out to Agnus, who stood wringing her hands, too dazed to act.
The water was brought, and I dashed half a glass in the face of the sufferer. At first it had no more effect than if she had been dead. Then came a startling change. The moans suddenly ceased, the victim opened her eyes, which showed the dull glassy stare of a somnambulist, and sitting half up, she commenced muttering so quickly and indistinctly that it was difficult to catch the words. “The blood, the blood, the blood, the blood, dripping, dripping, from the read lead in the ceiling, the red leak in the ceiling, in the ceiling, dripping on me, dripping on me, dripping on me!” The words rose into a wild shriek as her blank eyes were turned full on the ceiling overheard, the ceiling between the room she was in and the dressing room the size of three rooms. Involuntarily I looked up and the ceiling did not show the slightest mark. We lifted the unconscious lady and carried her out of the accursed room, and into one adjoining, where we laid her on the floor. Hardly had she passed the doorway of the haunted chamber when the dreadful screams began to die away, and the rigidity of the features to relax. In a short time the trance conditions passed away and we left Merrill to sleep. When she woke in the morning, we told her she had just has a bad dream, but she remembered nothing of what had passed in the night. At her own request, at breakfast, I described to her what had occurred, as minutely as possible. She was profoundly impressed. Of course, the client had bolted out of the house. However, Merrill, said with great conviction, “I am certain that what I saw represents something that actually happened in this house. Dreadful as it sounds, I firmly believe that somebody has been murdered in that attic with the witches cap, and that his blood did drip through the ceiling of the room below, as I saw it last night.”
As soon as the staff left the house, I went straight to a builder’s in the neighborhood, and engaged him to send some men to examine the flooring between two of the haunted rooms. The builder received my order with marked interest. “I knew there was something the matter with that house,” he observed. “It ain’t likely that tenant after tenant would come away sacred without something was wrong. Why, do you know, sir, in the last year since Mrs. Winchester died, I’ve white-washed one ceiling in the house thirteen times!” The builder’s interest led him to accompany his men, a carpenter and a plasterer, to the scene of action. I pointed out that place on the ceiling, as nearly as I could judge it, from which the ghostly dew had appeared to fall. Then men took measurements, and then, proceeding to the attic above, located a spot under the bed I used to sleep in. The bed was quickly removed, the flooring stripped off, and in the space between the joists there was exposed a mass of lime. Both the men, as well as their master, were quick to declare that the lime could not have been left there for no good,” the builder asserted. “If you want somethings hidden away and destroyed, there is nothing better than what lime is when it is fresh. It burns as well as fire, and makes no smoke.” “You mean a dead body?” I said shuddering. “I don’t say nothing about that,” the builder answered, pulling himself up. “It ain’t for me to say what that lime’s been used for. All I say is it wasn’t me that left it there, nor yet my men.” The two men began clearing the stuff away. The volatile element had evidently evaporated long ago. As they struck downward with their tools, one of them went through the plaster of the ceiling below, and a shaft of light came up.
An exclamation from one of the men followed. I bent down and peered into the cavity. On a large beam which here crossed the floor I saw a deep black stain, the stain of long-dried blood! A moment after the carpenter stood suddenly, griped about with one hand amid the woodwork, and drew forth to the light a small sharp stiletto, rusted with the same dismal stain. Nothing more was found. I gave the builder an order to entirely renew the flooring between these two haunted rooms. The most extraordinary part of the story remains to be told. The report of what had taken place having got abroad in the county, the local police came to me to obtain the stiletto, which I had been careful to preserve. By its means they were enabled to unearth a crime which had gone unsuspected till that hour, and to extort a confession from the murderer. Into the details of this terrible case, I do not care to enter. However, it is sufficient to say that the victim had perished while asleep in the attic, and that his blood had actually soaked through the ceiling into the room below, which was that of his murder—the Butler! Later that night, I was alone in the Winchester Mansion. A bright moon was out that night, and I heard a noise like a million soldiers, thrampin’ on the road, so I looked, and the hallway was full of little men, the length of my palm, with gray coats on, and all in rows like one of the regiments; each spoke with a pike on their shoulders and a shield on their arms. One was in front, byway he was the general, walking with his chin up as proud as a peacock. They marched right out the door-to-nowhere and there was another army of men with red coast. The two armies had the biggest fight you have even seen, the grays against the reds.
After looking on a bit, I got excited, for the grays were beating the reds like blazes. And then the sight left my eyes and I remembered no more until morning. I was laying on the floor, in the hallway, where I had seen them, as stuff as a crutch. Typically old castles, deserted graveyards, ruined churches, secluded glens in the mountains, springs, lakes, and caves all are the homes and resorts of fairies, as is very well known on the west coast. The better class of fairies are fond of human society and often act as guardians to those that they love. They are believed to living in the Winchester Mansion to receive the souls of dying and escort them to the gates of Heaven, not, however, being allowed to enter with them. On this account, fairies love graves and graveyards and of course this 160-room mansion built to appease the spirits who died at the hands of the Winchester rifle. They have often been seen walking to and fro among the rooms and gardens. There are, indeed, some accounts of faction fights among the fairy bands at or shortly after a new soul enters the mansion. The question in dispute being whether the soul of the departed belonged to one of the other faction. The amusements of the fairies consist of music, dancing, and ball playing. In music their skills exceed that of men, while their dancing is perfect, the only drawback being the fact that it blights the grass, “fairy-rings” of dead grass, apparently caused by a peculiar fungous growth. Mrs. Winchester used to host fairy balls in her Grand Ball Room, the music for which was furnished by an orchestra which the management had no doubt been at great pains expensive to secure and instruct. All around the fairies would dance like angels the fireflies giving them light to see by, and the moonbeams shinning on the lake for it was light to see by. Even now, staff who have been at the Winchester Mystery House sometimes hear the soft strains of their voices in the distance, and will hurry away least they discover one’s presence and be angry at the intrusion of their privacy.
When in unusually good spirits the fairies will sometimes admit a mortal to revels, but if one speaks, the scene at once vanished, one becomes insensible, and generally finds oneself by the roadside the next morning, with the drudgery of pains in one’s arms and legs and back, that if thirteen thousand devils were after one, one could not stir a toe to save the soul of one, that is what the fairies do be pinching and punching one for coming on them and speaking out loud. Black magic has not changed since the Middle Ages. The term “black art” was then applied to magic because the proficient in it were considered to be in league with the powers of darkness. The term “black magic” refers to the art of producing supernatural effect by direct league with Satan and demons. Frequently those who practice black magic make an actual pact with the powers of darkness, signing their allegiance to the devil in their own blood. This ceremony had come down from the Middle Ages to present-day Europe, where it is practiced in parts of Germany, France, and Switzerland. The ritual of signing an agreement involves a complete sell-out to the devil. Some magic involves the direct solicitation and help of demons, specifically the devil. It is the most terrible and powerful form of occult art, majoring in enchantment for persecution and vengeance, but also employing diabolical powers for defense and healing. An example of this nefarious practice is found in the death spells cast by witch doctors among aboriginal people, such as the Papuans on the island of New Guinea. Enchantment for persecution and vengeance, as well as for defense and healing, is still practiced today, not only in pagan cultures but also in civilized lands where occultism flourishes. Literature on magic was found in the Winchester Mansion and auctioned off with the rest of Mrs. Winchester’s belongings. There were incantations, charms, and spells.
One of the movers, who have never been troubled with psychic disturbances, returned home from taking the items to San Francisco to be auctioned off, and suddenly found himself suffering from acute fear dreams. He had the feeling during sleep that a neighbor lady, the mother of his coworker who was still missing after moving items out of the mansion, was strangling him. The tormented man went to an occultist who told him he was under magic persecution. The neighbor woman was seeking revenge on him for his good fortune in the light of her son’s bad fortune. With the occultist’s help, the terror-dreams creased. (That is why theft from the Winchester Estate is not tolerated. It is said to bring curses on those who remove sacred items without permission or payment.) Then the former mover found himself under a new attack: the neighbor was causing his cattle to die, head after head. The conjurer promised to remedy this new menace. Scraps of paper inscribed with magical formulae were to be mixed with the food of the cattle. The astonishing result was the cessation of the cattle epidemic. In addition to many cases of persecution and self-defense by black magic, occult healing are also common. A local farmer at the Winchester estate went to Mrs. Winchester for counseling and related the traffic results of charming by black magic. The farmer’s son had become paralyzed after an illness. The doctor could not help. However, Mrs. Winchester healed the boy through black magic, so that the paralysis disappeared completely. She had developed this skill after the death of her six-week-old daughter and her husband. Ancient and modern pagan religions, as well as those who subscribe to Christianity, have produced such psychically endowed mediums who have improved their gifts by the study and practice of the magical arts.
From what source people derive their power is not always clear—probably neither to they themselves nor their devotees have ever set themselves the task of unravelling that psychological problem. If they were turned wizards or witches, and indeed they only represented white witchcraft in a degenerate and colourless stage. Their entire time is not occupied with such work, nor, in the majority of cases, do they take payment for their services; they are ready to practice their art when occasion arises, but apart from such moment they pursue the ordinary avocations of rural life. The gift has come to them either as an accident of birth, or else the especial recipe or charm has descended from father to son, or has been bequeathed to them by the former owner; as a rule such is used for the benefit of their friends. Seen from the parapsychological point of view, magic persecution is a mediumistic problem similar to that of materialization. In the same way that a medium can emit energy that can be transformed into the phantasm of a man, so he is able to transform the same energy into the form of an animal. We have on record many cases of the materializations of dogs, cats, frogs, snakes, and even cases where the apparition was half man and half animal. If a phantasm is injured in some way at a spiritistic séance then the medium also suffers in a similar way. The same holds true in the case of animal phantasms. We are thus justified in coming to the conclusion that magic persecution is on the same level as materialization. Many methods of defence magic are based on this fact. If the victim is able to injure the phantasm that is assaulting one, it is reckoned that one has as good won the battle. We have seen then that certain forms of spiritistic offensive and defensive magic are based on materializations.
In 1888, a large black cat was found to be hanging around the Winchester mansion. In one of the cottages, on the estate, a farmer’s wife was about to give birth to a child. The cat would not go away until finally someone threw an axe at it, thereby injuring its leg. Next day it was discovered that an old woman on the estate also hurt her foot. The servants knew this woman to be a master of black magic, and indeed a few days later she took her revenge. On visiting the mother, Ida, of the new-born child, the witch murmured something and at the same time patted the child on the head. Thereafter the child cried continuously for days on end and could not be pacified. It was also discovered that as the child grew up its memory was particularly weak. Afterward the woman had three miscarriages, suffered the early death of her mother and disappearance of her father, but the source of her mental problems was far more spectacular than these mundane tragedies. Using hypnosis, Mrs. Winchester discovered that this mother to a new born had been repressing memories of an horrific past in which she had been an unwilling member of a murderous Satanic cult. Recollections would have convinced many mental-health professionals that she was suffering from pathological delusions. Her “memories” revealed a cult, led by the a monstrous Joris-Karl Huysmans, who indulged in acts of unbelievable brutality in the name of the Devil, such as blood-drinking, and other unspeakable acts. Mrs. Winchester considered the woman to be of nervous debility and easily influenced. When she had the servants cottage searched, they discovered a secret room, holding an apparently sacrificial altar with a wooden dagger suspended above a glass bowl.
In our files, there are about 40 examples involving cats, and almost all of them deal with the same problem, that of a person causing an apparition to appear in the Winchester Mystery House or elsewhere on the estate. Hamilton Howard was once hired for a job on the estate. The young man was on the verge of being dismissed because he very mysterious. He had a fair share of Satanic drawings in the cottage he was allowed to stay in, while working at a farm hand, and he never had meals with the other men. He belonged to a blood drinking cult. This might explain why stories began circulating about the carcasses of cows being discovered on Mrs. Winchester’s farm and other nearby farms drained of blood, with their eyes, lips, and private organ removed. The mystery of where the blood had cone, and how and why these animals had been operated on with seemingly surgical precision, gave birth to stories of Dracula in California and the California Cannibals. Occasionally, starving people have resorted to cannibalism for survival necessity. It is no secret, however, that Mrs. Winchester had her fair share of hauntings. One night, she heard footsteps going from the basement to the attic and then back again. There were also footsteps in the hall and at first, they thought that it was a burglar. Often her staff would search for an intruder. In addition to the footsteps the lights were sometimes turned on, and the gas too. No amount of careful investigation was able to produce any evidence as to the cause of the apparent haunting. One night, Mrs. Winchester had a séance in her Blue Séance Room. The spirit with whom she had made contact started that he had been a Catholic priest who had lived in the house 200 years before she renovated the original farm house and turned it into a mansion. He had murdered his housekeeper and had buried her in the basement. Since then, he had had to haunt the scene of his crime.
When asked in which room he had murdered the housekeeper the table suddenly began to move across the floor. It then hit the door of the room so hard that the wood was chopped. As Mrs. Winchester opened the door, the table rushed into the adjoining room and slid into the corner. In the course of doing this it hit an oak bedstead so hard that it left a permanent impression on it. The spirit was questioned further and when she asked is there was anything that could be done for him, he replied, “Yes, you can pray for me.” Mrs. Winchester did in fact pray for the restless ghost after that, and for a number of years the mansion was no longer haunted. The mansion has been haunted for several generations before its expansion. However, more than one ghost was attached to the property and it became a nexus for spiritual activity. Every person possesses one’s own home spiritually. This possession continues to live on in the house after the departure of the person concerned. Humans do not only leave behind their physical body when they die, but also a spiritual “larva.” When one dies, one leaves a spiritual complex behind that has an independent existence in the astral World, and which sometimes only disintegrates centuries later. This spiritual complex is supposed to cause the phenomen on ghost and apparitions. For some, the real of the dead is not so much a place as a state of being, and some think that there are times, as for example at one’s deathbed, when this realm of the dead becomes visible to our Earthly eyes. The idea that human beings have to remain in the mortal sphere after their death until they are freed from all the thing that once tied them to the World is widely accepted. This idea is similar to the popular opinion that criminals and other such people have to haunt the place of their crime until they are taken out of this sphere to a higher or lower level of existence. Ghosts do not occur only in connection with spiritism, but we have dealt with them here since the problem arose.
Winchester Mystery House
Are you brave enough to explore the house at night? 👀 The Winchester Mystery House is offering Friday the 13th Self-Guided Flashlight Tours. Tickets going fast! Click the link or hastage for tickets and more information.
I Have Enough Trouble Conjuring Myself Out of Bed in the Morning
Returning from her global trip, Mrs. Winchester arrived in San Francisco, California USA and finding this area seldom subject to thunderstorms, she purchased an unfinished farmhouse four miles west of San Jose. She hired an architect, a foreman and an army of carpenters and work began; architect and foremen quit the first day. The story of their fate was told by one generation to another, but in course of ages the natural cause, well known to the unfortunates at times of the calamity, was lost to view, and the story of the disaster began to assume supernatural features. There was a legend that Mrs. Winchester’s estate contains not only her mansion, but village of Victorian cottages. In the center of the hundred of acres of land was a fountain guarded by spirits, fairies, elves, and leprechawns, who guarded the Winchester Estate. Things went well, the fairies and the people on the estate sharing the benefits of Mrs. Winchester’s farmland, which included orchards of apricots, plums, and walnut trees to supplement Mrs. Winchester’s income. Mrs. Winchester’s financial resources were virtually unlimited; upon her husband’s death, she received $20,000,000 (2022 inflation adjusted $692,780,722.89) in cash and 777 shares of stock in the Winchester Repeating Arms Company. Upon her mother-in-law’s death in 1897, Mrs. Winchester received 2,000 more shared, which meant she owned under fifty percent of the company’s capital stock. This provided her with an income of $1,000 (2022 inflation adjusted $34,639.04) a day—back in the days before income taxes. The combination of her wealth and her eccentric building project gave rise to many rumors in the local community. It was the biggest house that most people had ever seen in their lives with, at the time, over 500 rooms, and 125,000 square feet, four stories high, and a nine-story observation tower.
On the Winchester Estate, there lived two woodcutters; Albert Jennings Fountain and Louis Le Prince. At the time of which I am speaking, Albert was an old man; and Louis, his apprentice, was a lad of twenty years. Every day they went together to a forest situated about a mile from the estate, which was still on Mrs. Winchester’s vast landholdings. On the way to that forest there used to be a wide lake to cross; and there was a boat. Albert and Louis were on their way home, one very cold evening, when a great rain storm overtook them. They reached the boat; and they found that the boatman had gone away, leaving the boat on the other side of the lake. It was no day for swimming; and the woodcutters took shelter in a cottage in the forest. There was a fire place in the cottage and a couple of bedrooms. At first they did not feel cold, but they made a fire anyway. They fastened the door, and lay down to rest with the blankets over them. They thought the storm would be over soon. Albert almost immediately fell asleep; but the boy, Louis, lay awake a long time, listening to the awful wind, and the continual slashing of the rain against the door. The lake was roaring; and the cottage made creaking noises. It was a terrible storm; and the air was every moment becoming colder, even though the fire was blazing in the fireplace; and Louis shivered under his blankets. However, at last, in spite of the cold, he too fell asleep. The door to the cottage was forced open; and, by the moonlit rain, he saw a woman in the room—a woman in all white. She was bending above Albert, and blowing her breath upon him—and her breath was like a bright white mist. Almost in the same moment she turned to Louis, and stopped over hum. He tried to cry out, but found that he could not utter any sound.
The white woman bent down over him, lower and lower, until her face almost touched him; and he saw that she was very beautiful—though her eyes made him afraid. For a little time she continued to look at him—then she smiled, and she whispered: “I intended to treat you like the other man. However, I cannot help feeling some pity for you—because you are so young. You are a pretty boy, Louis; and I will not hurt you now. However, if you ever tell anybody—even Mrs. Winchester—about what you have seen this night, I shall know it; and then you will regret it. Remember what I say!” With these words, she turned from him, and passed through the doorway. Then he found himself able to move; and he sprang up, and looked out. However, the woman was nowhere to be seen; and the rain was pouring hard. Louis closed the door, and secured it by fixing several billets of wood against it. He wondered if the wind had blown it open—he though that he might have been only dreaming, and might have mistaken the gleam of the moonlit rain in the doorway for the figure of a white woman: but he could not be sure. He called Albert, and was frightened because the old man did not answer. He put out his hand in the dark, and touched Albert’s face, and found that it was ice! Albert was stark and dead…by dawn the storm was over; and the boatman returned to his station, a little after sunrise, he found Louis lying senseless beside the frozen body of Albert. Louis was promptly care for, and soon came to himself; but he remained a long time ill from the effects of the cold of that terrible night. He had been greatly frightened also by the old man’s death; but he said nothing about the vision of the woman in white.
As soon as he got well again, he returned to his calling—going alone every morning to the forest, and coming back at nightfall with bundles of wood for Mrs. Winchester’s Hall of Fires. Because of the mansion’s immense size, it contained forty-seven fireplaces and seventeen chimney. One rambling section in particular, the Hall of Fire, was designed to produce as much heat as possible—perhaps to ease Mrs. Winchester’s extreme arthritis. In addition to many widows that let the sunlight stream through, the three adjoining rooms have four fireplaces and three hot air registers from the coal furnace in the basement. One evening, in December of the following year, as Louis was on his way to the Winchester mansion, he overtook a girl who happened to be travelling by the same road. She was a tall, slim young lady, very good-looking; and she answered Louis’s greeting in a voice as pleasant to the ear as the voice of a song-bird. Then he walked beside her; and they began to talk. The girl said her name was Theodosia Alston; that she had lately lost both her parents; and that she was going to visit Mrs. Winchester for tea, who might help her to find a situation as a servant. Albert soon felt charmed by this unusual girl; and the more that he looked at her, the more beautiful she appeared to be. He asked her whether she was yet betrothed; and she answered, laughingly, that she was free. Then, in turn, she asked Louis whether he was married, or pledged to marry; and he told her that, although he had only a windowed mother to support, the question of an “honourable daughter-in-law” had not yet been considered, as he was very young. After these confidences, they walked on for a long while without speaking; but you know the saying, “When the wish is there, the eyes can say as much as the mouth.”
By the time they reached the village, they had become very much pleased with each other; and then Louis asked Theodosia to rest awhile in his cottage on the estate. After some shy hesitation, she went there with him; and his mother made her welcome, and prepared a warm meal for her. Theodosia behaved so nicely that Louis’s mother took a sudden fancy to her, and persuaded her to speak to Mrs. Winchester about a job in the mansion. And the natural end of the matter was that Mrs. Winchester was very pleased with Theodosia and hired her right away. Later on Louis and Theodosia were married. She proved a very good maid and daughter-in-law. When Louis’s mother came to die—some two years later—her last words of affection and praise for the wife of her son. And Theodosia bore Louis thirteen children, boys and girls—handsome children all of them, and very fair of the skin. Mrs. Winchester’s staff thought Theodosia a wonderful person, by nature different from themselves. Most of the women on the estate aged early; but Theodosia, even after having become the mother of thirteen children, looked as young and fresh as on the day when she had first come to the estate. One night, after the children had gone to sleep, Theodosia was sewing by the light of Tiffany lamp; and Louis, watching her said: “To see you sewing there, with the light on your face, makes me thin of a strange thing that happened when I was a lad of twenty. I then saw somebody as beautiful and white as you are now—indeed, she was very like you.” Without lifting her eyes from her work, Theodosia responded: “Tell me about her…Where did you see her?” Then Louis told her about terrible night in the Victorian cottage in the forest—and about the White Woman that had stopped above him, smiling and whispering—and about the silent death of Albert.
And Louis said: “Asleep or awake, that was the only time that I saw a being as beautiful as you. Of course, she was not a human being; and I was afraid of her—very much afraid—but she was so white! Indeed, I have never been sure whether it was a dream that I saw, or the Ghost Woman of the Winchester. Theodosia flung down her sewing, and arose, and bowed above Louis where he sat, and shrieked into his face: “It was I-I-I! Theodosia it was! And I told you then that you would regret this if you ever said one word about it! But for those children asleep there, I would curse you right this moment! And now you had better take very, very good care of them; for if every they have reason to complain of you, I will treat you as you deserve!” Even as she screamed, her voice became thin, like a crying of winds—then she melted into a bright white mist that spired to the roof-beams, and shuddered away through a chimney. Never again was she seen. Soon after there were reports of graves being opened, and bodies stolen. Reports of rash cattle mutilations, and killing of two hundred dogs, cats, and pigs in that area. When Louis went back to the cottage, he found a fire containing animal bones, along with a crude Satanic altar, as a group of youth were interrupted conducting a conjuring spell. There were Satanic pentagrams on the walls. Some years later, a woman at the Winchester mansion believed that another desired to steal the butter she had just churned, flew in a passion, assaulted her and threw her down, breaking her arm in the fall. The woman was burnt, not because she was a witch, but in the belief that the real servant had been taken away and a fairy changeling substituted in her place; when the latter was subjected to the fire it would disappear, and the servant would be restored. Thus the underlying motive was kindness, but on, how terribly mistaken!
By chance there came onto the Estate an angel who had been sent from Heaven to observe the servants of the Winchester mansion and note their piety. In the garb and likeness of a man, weary and footsore with travel, the angel spied the castle (mansion) from the hills above the lake, came down, and boldly took a night’s lodging in Mrs. Winchester’s mansion. Mrs. Winchester asked him, “Where would you like to sleep, beautiful creature?” The angel pointed to a spot nearby the parlor, told Mrs. Winchester he would be happy there and to build and prosper; then, as the awe-stricken widow kneeled before him, his clothing became white and shining, wings appeared on his shoulders, he rose into the air and vanished. And one night, on a day of the thunder and lighting and big rain there did a ghost come into Mrs. Winchester’s mansion. Objects were thrown through the air and furniture moved around by its. A heavy oak wardrobe moved six feet across the room. Some knocking and scratching noises were heard in the house, and again objects were seen to fly through the rooms for no apparent reason. It was observed that the object sometimes travelled in a rectangular course which is physically impossible. These events grew even more complicated, and things began to appear and disappear in both closed rooms and containers. Mrs. Winchester was very annoyed as her bed started levitating. A lady came to her that night while she was elevated, she was dressed in white, with a wreath on her head, and said Mrs. Winchester was in danger. She then told the maid, “If you receive this woman’s pension-book without taking off her clothes and cleaning them, and putting out her bed and cleaning up the house, you will receive a curse. The ravings of this creature were accepted as gospel truth.
A torrent of rain fell from the sky, and drowned several of the farmers, and a lake was formed over the spot where they stood when the curse was pronounced. And sometimes, they say, when the mansion is quite still, one may hear the groans of the lost souls that where once chained at the bottom. A lot of supernatural activity happened on the estate than many cannot explain. Mrs. Winchester may have been trying to confuse evil spirits. There were no budget ceilings or deadlines to meet. This resulted in many of the 600 rooms, and features being dismantled, built around, or sealed over. Some rooms were remodeled many times. However, because so many rooms were redone, and astounding 160 rooms still remain today. This naturally resulted in some peculiar effects, such as stairs that lead to the ceiling, doors that ho nowhere and that open onto walls, and chimneys that stop just short of the roof! Mrs. Winchester once had some silverware stolen and she suspected a young mad who worked for her and who already had quite a bad reputation. Mrs. Winchester turned to a spiritist for help. This man was both a clairvoyant and a medium, and he also possessed the remarkable powers of materialization and dematerialization. This spiritist went with the woman into the back yard of her house and there put himself into a trance. Suddenly they were disturbed by a strange noise from the roof of the house, and then the stolen silverware fell from the roof on to a pile of hay beside the house. Mrs. Winchester had no idea how this was accomplished. One might be able to find a natural explanation for this occurrence, as for example someone throwing the stolen articles out of the skylight at that moment. It could not have been the maid though, for she had already been given notice. However, it could have been one of the other employees with whom she had been friendly, and who may have received the stolen articles from her.
The word “divine” is derived from the Latin divinus, meaning “divinely” inspired and pertaining to a deity (divus).” Thus a diviner is one who practices divination. One processes to predict future events or to reveal occult things by supernatural means. Divination is a specialized for of magic. In magic, demonic agencies are resorted for performing superhuman feats. In divination, magic is used to foresee the future. Divination relates to magic as prophecy relates to miracle. Both divination and prophecy imply special knowledge. In divination it is unclear if it is godly or demonic. However, magic is supposed to be Satan’s imitation of God’s miracles. Genuine fortune-telling or divination assumes the existence of superhuman spiritual beings. It also assumes that these beings possess knowledge which humans do not have and that they are willing, upon certain conditions that are familiar to diviners, to transmit this information to humans. In ancient times, the convictions prevailed widely that not only oracles but omens of all types were given to humans by the gods. In the cases of supernatural invention, the various forms of fortune-telling were real divinatory phenomena. Divination supposedly invites the activity of demon spirits because it seeks secret knowledge. Rock music has an incessant throbbing beat, the same beat that people in primitive cultures use in their demonic rites and dances. If the beat is monotonous enough it can induce a state of hypnosis. The fundamentalists and their allies attributed powers to rock music that were inherently supernatural, sorcery wrapped in a thin veil of pseudoscientific gibberish. Since its inception by British bands Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin, heavy metal has always had a heady whiff of brimstone about it. As the genre took off, and mental bands have been filling stadiums with fans, the Devil increasingly symbolized their bombastic form of rebellion.
Satan translated from Hebrew means “accuser” or “adversary,” and that was precisely the role Satan played in Judaic angelology before the Persian influences. Satan was at the time, at the very most, slightly rebellious and resentful, perhaps wishing to work evil but forces to promote good due to the overriding influence of God. His function was to accuse humans before God, expose their infidelity, and then bring about their punishment—but only under the auspices of God Himself. To some, Satan symbolizes man’s evil inclinations. The sign of the devil’s horns—index and little fingers extended from a fist—replaced the peace sign as youth culture’s salute. Many may not know this, but AC/DC stands for “Away from Christ/the Devil Comes,” while KISS is “Kids in the Service of Satan.” Many artists are accused of producing backward, or “back-masking,” music on records. The back-masking myth contends that messages recorded backwards and camouflaged with music can enter a person’s mind without them knowing it, as a subliminal form of brainwashing. Like the hypnotic effects of the “druid beat,” many considered it as sorcery. In 1986, evangelist Jim Brown of Ohio led 75 young people in the mass burning of records containing the theme tune to Mr Ed, the popular TV comedy show about a talking horse. If the song “A Horse is a Horse” was played backwards, Mr. Brown explained, the message “Someone sung this song for Satan” could be heard. Some evangelist believe that all rock music was “a carefully masterminded plan instigated by Satan himself.” However, in dealing in the extraordinary phenomena that undulate between the natural and the supernatural, the physical and superphysical, some discount any theory that postulates evil supernaturalism. Yet, to be fully meaningful, the scientific studies in parapsychology must take into consideration the reality of the spirit World of evil (Satan and demons).
To limit the scientific to the natural plane of existence is to omit some of the data responsible for certain natural effects. The result of such study is a tendency to explain away rather than objectively explain supernatural events and to end up with learned theories that ignore part of the evidence. This is where current parapsychological studies stand. They are, however, exceedingly valuable in focusing scientific interest on the supernatural realities behind occultism. If they would recognize the influence of evil supernaturalism in psychic activities, they could advance to great achievements. As an ingredient of idol worship, magic goes back to antiquity. By virtue of their multiplicity and limited knowledge and power, the gods (demons) of paganism are incapable of establishing stability and security in society. This deficiency forced both gods and men to make use of magic—an inactive power independent of god and men, but which could be activized by the assistance of incantations and rituals in order to accomplish supernatural deeds. Magic—like divination—is the divinely forbidden art of bringing about results beyond human power by recourse to superhuman spirit agencies (Satan and demons). In the widest sense of this definition, divination is but a species of magic employed as a means of securing secret and illegitimate knowledge, especially of the future. If magic is genuine and not ere deception or hocus-pocus, it must be personal. Living, intelligent spirit beings become the real agents. Humans, by incantations and ceremonies, actually influence and even control these spirit agents. The activity of such superphysical agents of evil produces the extrasensory phenomena of magic, that is, occurrences the transcend the normal operation of physical law and the perception of human’s five senses. This is how the Winchester Mystery House became known as “the house built by the spirits.”
The Winchester Mystery House is open all weekend until 5PM! Ghostly tales are bountiful at Sarah Winchester’s Mystery House. Come explore the beautiful & bizarre Winchester Estate.
Kitchen Dramas—Are they Arms Race or Saving Civilization as We Know it?
One a person experiences the full impact of the conflict in consciousness, one turns in an accusing rage on the target object. During the past several years, I have spent a good deal of my time blaming television for many of the more obvious dysfunctions from which Western culture—and especially America—is now suffering. It has been pointed out to me that I do this because I am by nature a negative person, always ready to condemn what is wrong rather than to praise what is right. Several of my students have even gone so far as to observe that had I lived during the period of incunabula—during the first fifty years of the printing press—I would have burdened everyone with a long list of depressing prophecies about the dangers of the machine-made book and universal literacy. However, my students are only half right. Assuming I had the brains to see what was happening in the year 1500, I would certainly have warned the Holy See that the printing press would place the word of God on every Christian’s kitchen table, and, as a consequence, the authority of the Church hierarchy would be put in jeopardy. Had I been granted a papal audience, I would have warned the Pop that armed with a printing press, Martin Luther was more than a malcontent priest suffering from a bad case of constipation. The printed word made him a serious revolutionary. I might also have warned the local princes that their days were numbered, that printing would give form to a new idea of nationhood which would make local potentates obsolete. And if the Brotherhood of Alchemists had allowed me to give the keynote address at their annual convention, I would have told them to go into another line of work, that printing would give great impetus to inductive science and that alchemy would not stand against the glare of publicly shared scientific knowledge. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
I would also have told any wandering bards who came my way that within a hundred years their trade would lie in ruins, that tribal lays and epic poetry were doomed, and that they would be wise to urge their trainees to turn their talents to writing essays and reading novels. Now, not every one of these prophecies foretells a bad thing. That is why I said my students are only half right. Whether or not a prophecy is negative depends on your point of view. For example, since most of you are Lutherans, you probably would have cheered the breakup of the Holy Roman Empire. The Catholics of those times would, of course, have mourned it passing. In any case, there are some changes brought about by new media benefit some, harm others, and to a few do not make much of a difference. This is as true of television as it was of the printing press or any other important medium, although in the case of television there are very few indeed who are not affected in one way of another. For most of you here, television will provide a gratifying career. On the other hand, and in the long run, television may bring an end to the careers of schoolteachers, since school itself was an invention of the printing press and must stand or fall on the issue of how much importance the printed word will have in the future. New media break up old knowledge monopolies; indeed, create new conceptions of knowledge, even new conceptions of politics. If not for television, Joe Biden, for example, would not be President of the United of America, which is good for him and the interests he represents, but not so good for the poor and vulnerable. However, television can people good as it creates a true theater of the masses. For example, between the years 1948 and 1958, approximately 1,500 fifty-two-minute plays were performed “live” on American television. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19
“Live” means that these plays were performed at the precise moment they were seen by the television audience, a condition which since the advent of videotape and the widespread use of film has become increasingly rare; “fifty-two minutes” describes the actual running time of the play, eight minutes of the hour being subtracted for commercial messages, the listing of credits, and publicity for the next week’s play. There is no doubt that American television’s finest dramatic moments were provided by fifty-two-minute hours, particularly by such weekly series as the Kraft Television Theater (1947-58), the Philco-Goodyear Playhouse (1948-50), and the Studio One (1948-57). These programs began by presenting adaptations of classic and established contemporary novels but by 1950 had shifted to original dramatic work. By that time, such producers and directors as Worthington Miner, Fred Coe, Delbert Mann, Arthur Penn, and John Frankenheimer has assembled about them several gifted young writers who were prepared to devote their collective talents to a serious exploration of television’s artistic resources. Included in that group, among others, were Reginal Rose, Tad Mosel, Robert Alan Aurthur, Horton Foote, Rob Serling, J.P. Miller, and Gore Vidal. None, however, wrote more fittingly for television than Paddy Chayefsky, whose name, along with Edward. R. Murrow’s, symbolizes what romantics call “the golden age of television.” Mr. Chayefsky was to the “original” television drama what Mr. Ibsen was to the “social drama,” which is to say that he was one of the first creators and certainly its most distinguished one. Like Mr. Ibsen, he achieved an almost perfect union of form and content. Critics have observed, for example, that the effects that Mr. Ibsen achieved in A Doll’s House and Ghosts were a function not only of his themes, with which audience were certainly familiar in 1879 and 1881, but also of the stark, simple, and economical form in which he stated them. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19
Social dramas had been written before Mr. Ibsen, but it remained for him to discover the form for dramatizing social problems. Mr. Chayefsky, of course, did not write for the stage behind a proscenium arch, viewed from a distance in a darkened theater. He wrote for a seventeen-inch screen situated in a family living room, on which the only colors were varying shades of gray. He also had to present his story, from start to finish, in fifty-two minutes, and he could make two assumptions with absolute assurance: that his play would be interrupted at least twice for commercial messages, and that he would have to attract his audience instantly or lose much of it to other channels. He knew, too, as did his director, Delbert Mann, that the picture on the television screen is considerably cruder in visual definition than that on a motion-picture screen. So Mr. Chayefsky wrote his plays in anticipation of the audience’s observing the players in almost unrelenting “close-up.” Mr. Chayefsky realized that some of these technical-aesthetic conditions could create, as could perhaps no other medium, a sense of utter and absolute reality; could create the illusion that what the audience was seeing was not a mere play but life as seen through a seventeen-inch, nearly square hole. Beginning with a play called Holiday Song, which dealt with a rabbi’s re-examination of one’s faith in God, Mr. Chayefsky created a series of dramas that have often been characterized as “small” masterpieces, sometimes referred to as “kitchen” dramas, since much of the action seemed to take place in family kitchens. In any case, they were plays about unexceptional situations. The plots were uncluttered, and undaring, and highly compressed. They had few unexpected turns, little action, no treachery, no perversion, and no heroic gestures (in the traditional sense). #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
Mr. Chayefsky’s stories were “small” very much as Sherwood Anderson’s stories are small. The setting was New York, not small-town Ohio, but like Mr. Anderson, Chayefsky explored in economical but meticulous detail the agonizing problems of small people. And thus he elevated the status of both the problems and the people who suffered them. In fact, Mr. Chayefsky once remarked that “Your mother, sister, brothers, cousins, friends—all of these are better subjects for drama than Iago.” He was talking, of course, about television drama. Mr. Chayefsky’s most known play, Marty, tells the story of an unmarried, inarticulate butcher who is attacked to a sensitive but homely woman. Marty’s friends attempt to dissuade him from seeing the woman because she is, in their words, “a dog.” His mother, who fears being abandoned resents the woman bitterly. Against a backdrop of such universal themes as man’s need of loving and being loved, his fear of living alone, and his need to communicate, Mr. Chayefsky pursued his “small” story with persistent literalness, concluding with an equally “small” crisis in which Marty decides, against the protests of his friends and family, to phone the woman and ask her for a date. On the stage of in a novel, the plot would be too flimsy to carry much dramatic weight. When the play was adapted for the movies, it required more “movement” or action and the addition of at least one subplot. On the television screen, however, they play was an artistic triumph, producing a disturbing and edifying illusion of intimacy. Perhaps no other medium is better suited to the “slice of life” drama than television, a fact that is apparently well known to Ingmar Berman. Although television was invented in the 1920s, it did not exist for any practical purposes until after World War II. It is easy to forget that advertising, at least on the scale we have come to know it, barely existed before then either. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
In 1946, advertisers spent about $3 billion. For the previous two decades, advertising expenditure had been fairly constant at about that level. By 1975, however, the national advertising budget had grown by 1,000 percent to $30 billion. In 2021, the national advertising budget reached $82 billion (expected to around $95 billion by the end of 2022). In that same year the television advertising budget has skyrocketed to $68 billion, and could be approximately $80 billion by the end of 2022. As you see, most of the increases in advertising. However, what is significant is that within only tend years of its effective inauguration, television was absorbing 60 percent of all advertising spending and driving hundreds of newspapers, magazines and radio stations out of the market. A symbiotic relationship developed. Advertising financed television’s growth. Television was the greatest delivery system for advertising that had ever been invented. We could call it love at first sight, except in this case, the match may have been prearranged. If you are fortunate enough to recall, think back to the days immediately after World War II. Although I was only ten in 1945, I remember the expectant and uncertain feeling of the times very well. Everyone was relieved that the war was over and was expecting things to get back to normal, but what was normal? Memories of the Depression loomed. I remember listening to my parents talk with their friends on those backyard summer evenings of 1945, and I could feel the fear. Like most ordinary people, my parents know that the war had alleviated the Depression. During the war, American industrial capacity, lying fallow only a few years before, had actually expanded to build the military machine. My father’s own business was an example. Now there were no more uniforms to make, and no more tanks. The war had given men jobs as soldiers and women jobs as factor workers. Full employment had practically become a reality. Now Johnny was marching home again, jobless. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19
If this was the talk among ordinary people, one can only imagine what was said in industrial boardrooms and at the Department of Commerce. With industrial capacity and capital investment expanded as they were, the consequences of a drop in production could make the 1930s look like golden years. A long-standing criticism of capitalism—that it can stave off cyclic depression only through war-seemed about to be confirmed. Suddenly in 1946, government and industry started making identical pronouncements about regearing American life to consume commodities at a level never before contemplated. It was not that military production was about to be abandoned. Even now it remains the single most important factor in the United States of America’s economy. However, in 1946 with the war just over, it was not clear that the decline in military spending would be as temporary as it turned out to be. Some new offsetting factor was needed. Thus, a new vision was born that equated the good life with consumer goods. An accelerate economy, continuing booming expansion of wartime, added to a new consumer ideology achieved the greatest economic growth rate in the country’s history from 1946 to 1970. To make such growth possible, both ends of the transformation process described previously had to be hyped up. First, we needed to insure an abundant supply of raw material to convert into commodities. This led to a burst of American investment overseas as well as to enormous assistance programs for sympathetic “underdeveloped” countries. Often we secured our supply by the creation of client governments propped up with military assistance. Raising anticommunism to the status of a holy war in the 1940s and the 1950s formed the political foundation for these military and economic programs and underlay the assertion of the patriotic virtues of foreign investment. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19
At the other end of the transformation equation, an accelerated movement of commodities into consumers’ homes was critical. People had to be convinced that life without all these products was undesirable and unpatriotic. It was time to forget the rationing of the war years and consumer for your country. Advertising and television were the dynamic duo that would rededicate the consuming American. Advertising’s ability to create a passionate need for what is not needed was already well established. Since economic growth and a consumer economy had to be based upon selling far more commodities than were needed to meet actual needs, economic growth depended upon advertising. Television, which had been lying around in mothballs since the 1920s, was dusted off and enlisted as the means to deliver the advertising lifestyle fast, right into people’s homes and heads. Quick to spot any new technology that could assist their urgent cause, big advertisers immediately invested hundreds of millions of dollars in developing this idle sales tool. And so advertising gave birth to television, and television have advertising a whole new World to conquer. Together they made possible an enormous, though temporary, economic bonanza. Can you recall the TV advertising of the 1940s and 1950s? Smiling, happy people. Scrubbed children. Housewives showing their impossibly clean wash. Smiling junior-executive husbands emerging from their new cars, greeted at the picket fence by their clean, cheerful families? The happy mowing of the lawn. The happy faces reflected off the polished toasters? The nuclear family was idealized to a greater extend than ever before, because the family was the ideal consumption unit. Women had to get out of those factories and overalls and back into little pink dresses in the kitchen. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19
Those returning soldiers needed jobs. Rosie the Riveter gave way to June Allyson. Separate family units maximized production potential. Private homes. Private cars. Two cars. Private washing machines. Private television sets. Within a few years, the World started changing. The battery-operated lawn mower I saw on television one day appeared on my lawn the next week. So did the car. The whole neighborhood started looking like a television commercial. The woods near my house in disappeared and were replaced by hundreds of identical versions of my house. Neighborhoods everywhere started looking like each other. Freeways replaced country roads. Shopping centers replaced corner markets. Pavements covered everything. “Prosperity,” “security,” “happiness,” studded ads and presidential speeches alike. This incredible outpouring of commodities, this entire revamping of landscape, this filling of houses with gadgets was supposed to constitute some kind of Latter-Day Saints Kingdom of God. That is what everyone was thinking, saying, and believing. It was what made America America. One of my high school teachers during the 1950s told my class that it was America’s commitment to a consumption economy that made our country different and better than all others. He told us that by expanding our economy, we could soon make everyone wealthy. America was already the World’s only classless society, he said. Workers and managers were equal partners in a glorious process benefiting everyone. In America everyone was equal. Our standard of living made it that way. Everyone could have a car. Everyone could have a business. We are not developing nations, where the water is dangerous to drink, and there are few rich people and everyone else is poor and all of them wished they had what we had. Because of this prosperity, we did not have to deal with the chaotic times of psychological and spiritual upheaval nor have actual fear among people of witchcraft, sorcerers, and others who claimed to know how to consort with the demons. The medieval period had died, and the modern period was born. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19
A few years later at the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania, I learned how and why this commodity life and the economic growth it produces was supposed to be so good for absolutely everyone. I learned that they had been talking about in these boardrooms and at the Department of Commerce. It was called the “trickle-down theory.” It goes more or less like this: Industrial expansion, rapid economic growth and the consumption economy benefit everyone. The theory—which is the basis of Keynesian American economics—has it that when people buy more and more commodities, they produce more profits for industry, enabling it to expand. When industry expands, more jobs result. This puts more money into circulation, enabling people to buy more commodities, expanding profits again, yielding more investments, more jobs and starting the cycle around on another turn. This is an oversimplified process, which leaves out such variables as savings, borrowing, and so on. The way it is presented here is more or less the way it is translated through the media and through out educational system into popular understanding: a beautiful circle of activity, everyone helping everyone else, labor and management rowing the boat together, all serving the common good and growing endlessly. It explained the patriotic urgency of people spending more and more on commodities. The benefits would “trickle down” to everyone in this country, including those at the bottom on the pyramid. Jobs, money, prosperity, happiness, security, democracy, equality were all lumped together as inevitable results of this cycle. Most people believe in this “trickle-down-theory” still. Presidents get elected based on whether they can convince the public that they will stimulate the beautiful cycle. President Trump was elected for doing it and he proved his word. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19
The tickle-down theory is the nice simple kind of economic model that can be sold to a mass population removed from any deeper understanding of how things really work. Trying to come to grips with economic nuance is for most of us no easier than trying to understand how much nuclear radiation is “safe.” Who knows? The “experts” know. Like every other organizing model in our society, economic processes have been removed from personal participation, appropriated into a nether World of flow charts, financial analyses, and circle graphs. Like scientific and technological systems, once economic systems reach a certain size and complexity, they can be controlled only by forces far outside the grasp of the individual and community. One explanation of them sounds as plausible as another. In the absence of a really thorough training in economics—a training which itself supports many arbitrary and fantastic theories—this trickle-down model of the benefits of a consumer society sounds perfectly valid. It certainly seemed valid for a little while. People had jobs, the economy was growing, and homes were filling up with every more intricate gadgets. Only now, thirty years after the trip was launched, can we see the process from the vantage point of joblessness, inflation, bankruptcy and default, and realize that something was terribly wrong somewhere. In fact, it was a fantasy. It was packaged and sold to us like the seven-piece matching living-room sets on the television screen. Buy now, pay later when you are richer than you are now. However, when later came, very few of us were richer (and that usually happens to everyone). It turned out that the pursuit of all those happy goodies did not produce happy people; it produced isolated, frustrated, alienated people. More important, the economic benefits did not trickle down to create some egalitarian democracy. The benefits tickled up. That is why President Trump also used the tickle charger. Not only did he cut taxes, but also infused the less affulent with supercharged unemployment benefits, and helped the veterns, disabled, retirement and others reciveing government transfer pays by sending the a large cash sum of money, and then a few other payments for less, and he also supported businesses get through the pandemic. So the economy was stimulated and had a few trickle charges to keep the market flowing well. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19
The democratic revolution succeeded in extending formal self-government and opportunity to nearly everybody, regardless of birth, property, or education. However, it gave up the ideal of the town meeting, with the initiative and personal involvement that alone could train people in self-government and give the practical knowledge of political issues. The actual result has been the formation of a class of politicians who govern, and who are themselves symbolic front figures. Correspondingly, the self-determination won by the American Revolution for the regional states, that should have made possible real political experimentation, soon gave way to a national conformity; nor has the nation as a whole conserved its resources and maintained its ideals. The result is a deadening centralism, with neither local patriotism nor national patriotism. The best people do not offer themselves for public office, and no one has the aim of serving the Republic. Typical is the fate of the hard-won Constitutional freedoms, such as freedom of speech. Editors and publishers have given up trying to give an effective voice to important but unpopular opinions. Anything can be printed, but the powerful interests have the big presses. Only the safe opinion is proclaimed and other opinion is swamped. The liberal revolution succeeded in shaking off onerous government controls on enterprise, but it did not persist to its goal of real public wealth as the result of free enterprise and honestly informed choice on the market. The actual result is an economy dominated by monopolies, in which the earnest individual entrepreneur or inventor, who could perform a public service, is actively discouraged; and consumer demand is increasingly synthetic. Conversely, the Jeffersonian ideal of a proud and independent productivity yeomanry, with natural family morals and a co-operative community spirit, did in fact energize settling the West and providing the basis for our abundance. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19
However, because it has failed to cope with technological changes and to withstand speculation, “farming as a way of life” has succumbed to cash cropping dependent on distant markets, and is ridden with mortgages, tenancy, and hired labor. Yet it maintains a narrow rural morality and isolationist politics, is a sucker for the mass culture of Madison Avenue and Hollywood, and in the new cities (exempli Gratia, in California, where farmers have migrated) is a bulwark against genuine city culture. Constitutional safeguards of person were won. However, despite the increasing concentration of state power and mass pressures, no effect was made to give to individuals and small groups new means easily to avail themselves of the safeguards. The result is that there is no longer the striking individuality of free men; even quiet nonconformity is hounded; and there is no asylum from coast to coast. Fraternity—this short-lived ideal of the French Revolution, animating a whole people and uniting all classes as a community, soon gave way to aa dangerous nationalism. The ideal somewhat revived as the solidarity of the working class, but this too has faded into either philanthropy or “belonging.” Brotherhood of races—the Civil War won formal rights for African Americans, but failed to win social justice and factual democracy. The actual result has been segregation, and fear and ignorance from various people of all races. However, in the 2020s, that stigma is fading. Pacificism—this revolution has been entirely missed. Acceleration not only makes facts obsolete but blunts some of the key tools we use when we think. Analogy provides a case in point. It is virtually impossible for us to think without relying on analogies. This “thought-tool” is based on identifying similarities in two or more phenomena and then drawing conclusions from one to apply to the other. Doctors, we noted, will often say “the heart is like a pump” and then describe its “values” and other components in mechanical terms. This model helps them conceptualize and treat the heart. Often this process yields powerful results. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19
However, once similarities are identified, it is typically taken for granted that the similarities continue. And in slow-change eras, they may do so for long periods. In today’s hyper-change environment, however, once-similar things also change and very often become markedly dissimilar, often making conclusions based on the analogy false and misleading. To deal with today, therefore, we need not only new knowledge but new ways to think about it. Yet too many economists, consciously or otherwise, cling to the belief that economics is analogous to physics. This notion arose centuries ago, when Newtonian ideas about equilibrium, causation and determinism dominated that science. Since then, of course, physicists have drastically revised their views about these matters. However, many economists still base their findings on crude Newtonian assumptions. Trained to think in industrial terms, many find it difficult to grapple with the odd character of knowledge—the fact that it is non-rival and non-depletable, that it is intangible and thus hard to measure. It is only when we set today’s failures of economics alongside the looming crisis in science that we begin to gauge their true significance. For together these two fields have the greatest—or at least the most direct—impact on how we create wealth. And both are heading for transformation. When it comes to relationships, a university teacher of liberal arts cannot help confronting special handicaps, a slight deformity of the spirit, in the students, ever more numerous, whose parents are divorced. I do not have the slightest doubt that they do as well as other sin all kinds of specialized subjects, but I find they are not as open to the serious study of philosophy and literature as some other students are. I would guess this is because they are less eager to look into the meaning of their lives, or to risk shaking their received opinions. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19
In order to live with the chaos of their experience, they tend to have rigid frameworks about what is right and what is wrong and how they ought to live. They are full of desperate platitudes about self-determination, respect for other people’s rights and decisions, the need to work out one’s individual values and commitments, etcetera. All this is a thin veneer over boundless seas of rage, doubt, and fear. Young people habitually are able to jettison their habits of belief for an exciting idea. They have little to lose. Although this is not really philosophy, because they are not aware of how high the stakes are, in this period of their lives they can experiment with the unconventional and acquire deeper habits of belief and some learning to go along with them. However, children of divorced parents often lack this intellectual daring because they lack the natural youthful confidence in the future. Fear of both isolation and attachment clouds their prospects. A large measure of their enthusiasm has been extinguished and replaced by self-protectiveness. Similarly, their open confidence in friendship as part of the newly discovered search for the good is somewhat stunted. The Glauconian eros for the discovery of nature has suffered more damage in them than in most. Such students can make their disarray in the cosmos the theme of their reflection and study. However, it is a grim and dangerous business, and more than any student I have known, they evoke pity. They are indeed victims. An additional factor in the state of these students’ souls is the fact that they have undergone therapy. They have been told how to feel and what to think about themselves by psychologists who are paid by their parents to make everything work out as painlessly as possible for the parents, as part of no-fault divorce. If ever there was a conflict of interest, that is it. There are big bucks for therapists in divorce, since the divorces are eager to get back to persecuting the wretches who smoke or to ending the arms face or to saving “civilization as we know it.” #RandolphHarris 15 of 19
Meanwhile, psychologists provide much of the ideology justifying divorce—exempli gratia, that it is worse for kids to stay in stressful homes (thus motivating the potential escapees—that is, the parents—to make it as unpleasant as possible there). Psychologists are the sworn enemies of guilt. And they have an artificial language for the artificial feelings with which they equip children. However, it unfortunately does not permit such children to get a firm grip on anything. Of course, not every psychologist who deals with these matters simply plays the tune called by those who pay the piper, but the givens of the market and the capacity for self-deception, called creativity, surely influence such therapy. After all, parents can shop around for a psychologist just as some Catholics used to shop for a confessor. When these students arrive at the university, they are not only reeling from the destructive effects of the overturning of faith and the ambiguity of loyalty that result from divorce, but deafened by self-serving lies and hypocrisies expressed in a pseudoscientific jargon. Modern psychology at its best has a questionable understanding of the soul. It has no place for the natural superiority of philosophic life, and no understanding of education. So children who are inclined to believe that philosophy live in a less enlightened state and have a long climb just to get back up to the cave, or the World of common sense, which is the proper beginning for their ascent toward wisdom. They do not have confidence in what they feel or what they see, and they have an ideology that provides not a reason but a rationalization for their timidity. These students are the symbols of the intellectual-political problems of our time. They represent in extreme form the spirit vortex set in motion by loss of contact with other human beings and with the natural order. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19
However, all students are affected, in the most practical everyday way, unaware that their situation is peculiar, because their education does not give them perspective on it. Now, Web sites routinely collect detailed data on visitor behavior, and those statistics underscore just how quickly we leap between pages when we are online. Over a period of two months in 2008, an Israeli company named ClickTale, which supplies software for analyzing how people use corporate Web pages, collected data on the behavior of a million visitors to sites maintained by its clients around the World. It found that in most countries people spend, on average, between nineteen and twenty-seven seconds looking at a page before moving on to the next one, including the time required for the page to load into their browser’s window. German and Canadian surfers spend about twenty-one second, Indians and Australians spend about twenty-four seconds, and the French spend about twenty-five seconds. On the Web, there is no such thing as leisurely browsing. We want to gather as much information as quickly as our eyes and fingers can move. That is true even when it comes to academic research. As part of a five-year study, a group from University College London examined computer logs documenting the behavior of visitors to two popular research sites, one operated by the British Library and one by a U.K. educational consortium. Both sites provided users with access to journal articles, e-books, and other sources of written information. The scholars found that people using the sites exhibited a distinctive “form of skimming activity” in which they would hop quickly from one source to another, rarely returning to any source they had already visited. They would typically read, at most, one or two pages of an article or book before “bouncing out” to another site. “It is clear that users are not reading online in the traditional sense,” the authors of the study reported; “indeed there are signs that new forms of ‘reading’ are emerging as users ‘power browse’ horizontally through titles, contents pages and abstracts going for quick wins. It almost seems that they go online to avoid reading in the traditional sense.” #RandolphHarris 17 of 19
The shift in our approach to reading and research seems to be an inevitable consequence of our reliance on the technology of the Net, and it bespeaks a deeper change in our thinking. There is absolutely no question that modern search engines and cross-referenced websites have powerfully enabled research and communication efficiencies. There is also absolutely no question that our brains are engaged less directly and more shallowly in the synthesis of information when we use research strategies that are all about “efficiency,” “secondary (and out-of-context) referencing,” and “once over, lightly.” As people are falling in love with the Internet, reading and its mediums is reminiscence of some of Capellanus’s more universal rules. He believed that love is always in a flux, either growing or diminishing. Making it public usually kills it. Its very nature as next to impossible to consummate is also its most powerful stimulus, and during its fleeting lifetime, jealously will sharpen the intensity of the country lovers feelings. Courtly love is obsessive and best endured by constant contemplation of the beloved. By the fourteenth century, an anonymous poet was refining the notion of love. In his “Ten Commandments of Love,” he advocated faith or honesty, attentiveness, discretion, patience, secretness, prudence, perseverance, pity, measure or moderation, and mercy. The lover in Chaucer’s “Complaint to His Lady” is so excessively long-suffering that he swears to obey his lady in whatever she dies, would rather die than offend her, and begs only for a drop of her grace. Here is his version of courtly love: “But I, my lyf an deeth, to yew obeye, and with right buxom herte, hooly I preye, as [is] your moste pleasure, so doth by me; and therfor, swete, rewe on my peynes smerte, and of your grace, graunteth me some drope; for ells may me laste no blis no hope, no dwelle within my trouble careful herte.” #RandolpHarris 18 of 19
Courtly love was agonizing and admirable, the source of chivalrous virtue. For these same reasons, it was often chaste, both because the logistics of consummation defeated the would-be lovers and also because, in some manifestations, courtly love was inherently pure. As one troubadour sang, “Out of love comes chastity.” As enormous but logical stretch puts courtly love together with the secret feudal societies that adopted then institutionalized a collective devotion to an unattainable woman who inspired their members to deeds of greatest daring and valor. The woman? The Virgin Mary, whose immaculate conception the early medieval Church had just begun to celebrate. The most famous of these secret societies was the Knights Templar, excommunicated knights who swore oaths of poverty, obedience, and chastity and dedicated themselves to the (newly immaculately conceived) Virgin Mary. Unlike their secular counterparts, however, whose courtly love involved personal grooming as a token of respect to their lady loves, virginal or otherwise, the Knights of the Templar who were abstinent, according to St. Bernard of Clairvaux, “never combed, rarely washed, [and wore] their beards bushy, sweaty, and fusty, stained by their harness and the heat. Centuries of literature and lives imitating art transformed courtly into romantic love, intense and unattainable, a phenomenon too high—mindedly impractical to survive marriage and the trials of time, routine, and old age. The precious instant of recognizing the beloved, the stylized pursuit, the exchange of extravagant words penned on scented paper, the self-indulgently obsessive meditating on each other—these became the characteristic of this new kind of love. Attraction based on pleasures of the flesh fueled it, just as it had the courtliest of loves, but in this case as well, intimate passions dominated the lover’s agenda. As literature, romantic love flirted and seduced as it inflamed and seared, titillating its aficionados with its stately ritual of gallant chase, heartsick suffering, rapturous encounters, gushing epistles, all in the name of profoundest if evanescent love. Sometimes this love was chaste by intention. Even when it was not, pleasures of the flesh was usually overpowered by complications of plot and character that, depending on your point of view, either reprieved the lovers from the banality of pleasures of the flesh or condemned them to its nonconsummation. Centuries of courtly and romantic love challenged thousands of lovers. Ultimately, most emerged from its clutches with their virtue intact. If our World is made up of such changes, as these, is it strange that my heart is so sad. prophets. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19
Cresleigh Homes
Luxurious outdoor living requires porch space AND a spot for the littlest members of the household to enjoy the sunshine, too! 😍
Our home at #MillsStation Residence 4 is the largest home in the community, but that extra playhouse definitely gives it an edge. https://cresleigh.com/mills-station/residence-4/
The lounge off the entry amplifies this social core; optional bedroom enhances the choices. This design lends a little Victorian formal touch to the arrival for family and guests.
The beautiful quartz counter top island has an optional built-in quartz tablecounter, which allos plenty of island seating.
The abundant cabinet space highlights the kitchen, while gathered windows and sliding door generate seamless connectivity to the home’s outdoor entertainment and leisure spaces.
The Cathedral of the Fallen Angel
During a Connecticut thunderstorm, Mrs. Winchester’s husband and baby lost their lives in a tragic fire. The distracted widow turned to spiritualism and was advised to take a trip around the World. This she did, visiting mediums, spiritualists and wizards in Europe and India. Foretelling her future, one seer warned her of all the countless thousands of departed souls slain by her husband’s rifles; she was told to plan a castle and continue its building indefinitely because as long as it was under construction she would live; cessation would prove immediately fatal. In the afternoon of Tuesday, July 10, 1888, the inhabitants of Santa Clara Valley, were greatly excited by the sudden appearance, far out in the fields, of a mansion where none was known to exist. The people of the town were farmers and knew the area well. The day before, they had been out on their horses and rode over the spot where the unusual mansion appeared, and where certain that the locality was the best farmland in the valley. And still they gazed, and still the wonder grew, for the day was clear and the mansion could be seen as plainly as they saw the hills to the south. It was massive. The estate was surrounded by a six-foot hedge, densely wooded; here and there were deep shadows in its sides indicating glens heavily covered with undergrowth and grasses. At one end the mansion rose almost precipitously from the from the land; at the other, the declivity was gradual; the thick forest of the estate gave way to smaller trees, these to shrubs; these to green meadows that finally melted into the valley. It was patrolled by a pack of ferocious hellhounds, plus, of course, Mrs. Winchester’s staff of armed bodyguards. Hundreds of people from all over California came to investigate; when, as they neared the spot, the beautiful but bizarre mansion became dim in outline, less vivid in color, and at last vanished entirely, leaving the wonder-stricken farmers to return, fully convinced that for the first time in their lives they had really seen this enchanted mansion. #RandolphHarris 1 of 15
For once there was a topic of conversation that would outlast the day, and the enchanted Winchester mansion passed from lip to lip, both story and the mansion grew in size till the latter was little less than a continent, contain a labyrinth mansion with towers and steeples, stupendous mountain range views, fertile valleys, and wide spreading plains; while the former was limited only be the patience of the listener, and embraced the personal experience, conclusions, reflections, and observations of every woman, man, and child in the valley who had been fortunate enough to see the mansion, hear of it, or tell where it had been seen elsewhere. This is the invariable history of its appearance. No one had ever been able to come close to its grounds, but it had been so often seen on the west coast, that a doubt of its existence, if expressed in the company of farmers, will at once establish for the sceptic a reputation for balderdash of the common affairs of every-day life. In Santa Clara, for instance, the Winchester mansion had been seen by hundreds of people, while many more could testify to its appearance near San Francisco. In San Jose, all the population saw it a few years ago, and shortly before, the villagers of Oakland, saw it, if not by themselves, at least by some of their friends. The Enchanted Winchester mansion, it should be stated that its resemblance to a Victorian/Gothic castle is sometimes very close, and shows that the “enchanter” who has it under a spell knows her business, and is determined to keep her mansion for herself changes its appearance as well as its location in order that her property may not be recognized nor appropriated. At night, passers-by heard ghostly music wafting from the dark mansion. Mrs. Winchester’s arrival was a sensational event. They talked about Mrs. Winchester! Gossiped would be a more fitting word, gossip no one claimed to like-but everyone enjoyed. #RandolphHarris 2 of 15
Talk begat rumor and as the years passed and new towers and gables rose behind the six-foot hedge of Llanada Villa, the rumors grew to established legend. Populations said it just appeared out of nowhere two years ago. Sure two twins could not be like her, and when it appeared in Santa Clara, the mansion would move around to different locations. It had also appeared in San Francisco, Oakland, and Berkeley, but it went no further than the Bay Area. Concerning Mrs. Winchester’s mansion, legendary authorities differ on many material points. Some believed that its architecture was due to geometry or some other enchantment, while opponents of this materialistic view were inclined to the opinion that the mansion was not what it seemed to be, that was to say, not Earth, wood, and stones, like as those most people see, but only an illusion that evil spirits or the devil created to deceive the town. Public opinion on the west coast was therefore was strongly divided on the subject, unity of sentiment existing on two points only; that the island had been seen, and that there was something quite out of the ordinary in its appearance. People believe that it would come and go in the night like a light in a bog, and when you do see it, you can see through it. An old fisherman of San Francisco called Ebenezer Thornton knew all about the enchanted Winchester mansion, having not only seen it himself, but, when a boy, learned its history from a “fairy man,” who obtained his information from “the good people” themselves, the facts stated being therefore, of course, of indisputable authority, what the fairies did not know concerning the doings of supernatural and enchanted circles, being not worth knowing. He said that the Winchester mansion was full of temples and round towers all covered with gold and silver till they shone so one could not see it for the brightness. There was a great enchantress in the mansion, and she had all kinds of secrets, and knew where to dig for a pot of gold. She built the castle in one night, and could make herself disappeared when she wanted and could take any shape she pleased. #RandolphHarris 3 of 15
Ebenezer when on to say that Mrs. Winchester’s husband gave her a charm before he died to use when she was in mortal danger, he also left her a ton of diamonds and millions of dollars. She was a pretty smart woman. One night, Mrs. Winchester was awakened by a noise in one of the kitchens. She tole down, and found her old housekeeper, Madge, with half a dozen of her kidney, sitting by the fire drinking whisky. When the bottle was finished, one of them cried, “It’s time to be off,” and at the same moment she put on a peculiar red cap, and added:–“By yarrow and rue, and my red cap, too, hie over to England!” and seizing a twig she soared up the chimney. As the latter was making her preparations Mrs. Winchester rushed into the kitchen, snatched the cap from her, and placing herself astride of her twig uttered the magic formula. She speedily found herself high in the air over the Irish Sea, and swooping though the empyrean at a rate unequalled by the fastest airplane. They rapidly neared the Welsh coast, and espied a castle afar off, towards the door of which they rushed with a frightful velocity; Mrs. Winchester closed her eyes and awaited the shock, but found to her delight that she had slipped through the keyhole without hurt. The party made their way to the cellar, where they caroused heartily, but the spirits proved too heady, and somehow Mrs. Winchester was captured and dragged before the lord of the castle, who sentenced her to be hanged. On her way to the gallows an old woman in the crowd called out in Irish, “Ah, the enchantress herself, Sarah Winchester alanna! Is it going to die you are in a strange place without your magical charm?” She reached into her pocket and held it in her hand. On reaching the place of execution she was allowed to address the spectators, and did so in the usual ready-made speech, beginning, “Good people all, a warning take by me.” But when she reached the last line, “My parents reared me tenderly” instead of stopped she unexpected added, “By yarrow and rue, good-bye I love you,” with the result that she shot up through the air, to the great dismay of all beholders. #RandolphHarris 4 of 15
Magic persecution. Genuine magic is the art of bringing about results beyond human powers through the enlistment of supernatural agencies. Black magic deliberately involves the devil and demons, and the resulting enchantment is used for persecution and revenge. A spiritistic circle of twenty members furnishes a good example. Working with black magic, these spiritis experimented to see if they could cause psychic harm or even illness in people they disliked. A strong medium of this occult group chose a minister as a target and vowed to afflict and eliminate her. The minister suffered a nervous breakdown and was unable to work for several months. Some phenomena must be eliminated from the spiritistic magic field. In the psychiatric realm, for example, many schizophrenics claim to be magically persecuted. In reality this is only a symptom in the course of psychotic disease. Eliminating all such cases, there are still large-scale, genuine phenomena, especially in areas where occultism has flourished for many years. One common form of magic persecution is beatings by an invisible attacker. Parapsychology also sees magical persecution as a mediumistic problem in the sphere of materializations. Strong mediums (when under demon control) send out energy with which to build up human phantasms and are also able to transform this energy into animal forms, including dogs, cats, frogs, snakes, or human bodies with animal heads, etcetera. This explains the bizarre spiritistic persecution through phantoms in the form of various animals of human bodies with nonhuman heads. These animals bite, scratch, or otherwise torment their victims. Examples, of these occult phenomena abound in areas where the black arts are practiced. However, such occurrences are denied by many intellectuals. Often peasants and country people, especially in Europe, know more about magic than university graduates, who claim to swindle or hocus-pocus trickery are used instead of occult powers. #RandolphHarris 5 of 15
Magic defense. Magic defense enlists supernatural agencies to counteract or unto the mischief wrought by magic persecution. Various kinds of spells, charms, or incantations are employed. In spiritistic séances it is an established fact that injuries inflicted upon a phantasm are sustained by the medium, even in the case of animal phantasm. Many defensive customs develop to combat this threat since magical persecution involves materialization. If a victim can injure an aggressive phantasm one has won the struggle. Many in the West wanted to remove Satan from the equation of black magic and demonic aspects of life. However, more serious discontent came from Satanists whose concerns were completely the opposite. Anton LaVey did not believe in Satan as a literal entity—He was a name for the dark, brutal aspects of humans and nature, as well as a symbol for the potency of humans’ untrammeled will. The Church of Satan was not a religion, and did not worship deities. For many, however, this was not enough. They wanted a real Devil to worship—belonging to a dark, mysterious coven, in the traditional gothic style, seemed much more appealing than being part of some cultural and social elite. Some believed that Satan, although thrown out of Heaven, was reinstated as the son of God and is directly in contact with him. If any coven members offends, they are a bit evil now and again, given corporal punishment, or is expelled from one’s coven and cursed. However, this is said to be for the members own good. They really believe in love, the sanctity of woman as the child bearer and procreator of life, and in worshipping Satan their master. Aleister Crowley was grooming Kenneth as his successor. Mr. Grant’s work examined lost gods, strange spiritual traditions and forbidden symbols, often leading him to some disreputable spiritual neighborhood where devils and demons might be expected to reside, like the Winchester Mystery House. #RandolphHarris 6 of 15
If you have a lot of magic in you, you can be a Satanist and have no idea. As if they are the mafia or something, sometimes those who are suspected of being Satanists have their offices broken into like they are the Mafia or something. The Church of Satan, however, has saved lives because it has given them power, power to come out and be themselves when traditional churches would not accept these people. The Dark Lord, was said to be an anthropoid but faceless. Looking at the concept as a diamond, much like the ones left to Mrs. Winchester by her husband William Wirt Winchester, Satan or Lucifer was just other facets of that diamond, purely ways of achieving workings which encompassed the whole. So, if you are particularly drawn to the gothic Satanist current, fine, use rituals based around that. In the Temple of Darkness one could equally have Satanists, Setians, or followers of other paths, the principle being that the whole thing is a psychodrama anyway. Magic is basically the Western version of yoga. Everything that happens in magic happens first in your head. Set, the Egyptian god of evil, was an older deity than Satan. Satan derives from Set. Set, who is defined as the Prince of Darkness, is a force about which you could say, “As we are now, he once was.” When you die your force can survive. Magic is mind enhancing. When one perishes or passes, instead of going into the cosmic whole—becoming one with the goddess or whatever—by sheer force of the will the existence of that magician’s mind can be sustained. This is the whole idea of the Temple of Set, and they use the word “xeper,” meaning “to become,” to define this. Spiritistic cults. If you did not know, Mrs. Winchester was a spiritists. Spiritism is considered a form of Christianity, practically in all civilized countries. A typical meeting consists of hymns, prayer, and a sermon as in a Christian service. The sermon, however, is allegedly given by a spirit from the other World, through a medium. These cults are said to be affected by the “doctrines of demons” and press into the supernatural World. #RandolphHarris 7 of 15
However, even born-again Christians often cannot differentiate between the spiritual and the psychic-demonic when under the spell of doctrinal errors, particularly those concerning the work of the Holy Spirit. The result can sometimes be confusion, division, and promotion of certain spiritual gifts accredited to demons. We have sometimes seen people end up suffering from mediumistic psychosis. Quite a number of patients who have suffered serious psychic disturbances through the misuse of such practices have become split personalities. The spirits which they called, confused them. One who tries to discover the promises of the other side through superstition endangers oneself to fall a prey to the dark side of one’s psyche. However, many Christians say that spirits of loved ones cannot be brought back from the dead, and the it is just a demon impersonating them. Yet, consider the case of Saul’s visit to the spiritistic medium at Endor (1 Samuel 28.3-25). Samuel’s spirit was actually brought back from the spirit World when the medium Endor tried to contact him. Yet, God brought the spirit back. The Lord stepped. Still one must be careful because many become enslaved and oppressed by occult powers and become victims of various manifestations of spiritistic phenomena. While overwhelming evidence from Christian counseling confirms the fact that spiritistic complicity serious damages the believer’s spiritual life, adherents of Buddhism, Island, or even false cults of Christianity sense no ill effects. Spiritists claim that spiritism has strengthened their belief in life after death and deepened their religious devotion. Psychiatry, psychology, and medical treatment are not sufficient for the healing of the whole human. The gospel of Christ and the liberating power of the Word of God can fully heal body, soul, and spirit. #RandolphHarris 8 of 15
Mrs. Winchester had a pain in her right forearm. At first the pain was treated as rheumatism but one day the Mrs. Winchester made the interesting discovery that the pain would suddenly subside if she wrote a letter. Having discovered this, whenever the pain became unbearable, she would always take a pencil and begin to write in order to alleviate the pain. However, after a period of time the Mrs. Winchester when go into her Blue Séance Room, where she developed a writing compulsion. She would write things down that she could normally speaking never have written. Often times, this is where the blueprints from her mansion came from. Added to this the written material on each occasion turned out to be some form of religious treatise. Mrs. Winchester took the articles to her minister to let him examine them. He was surprised at their intellectual content. Mrs. Winchester had become a spiritistic writing medium. The parapsychologist would merely see in this example a psychic automation involving the expression of subconscious thoughts. It is true that we need not consider the Mrs. Winchester to be in direct contact with the dead, or putting it another way we need not assume that this is a case of direct demonization, but God could be speaking to her. This is why some believe Mrs. Winchester to be a prophetess. During one of her spiritistic seances, as it happened, a phantasm did in fact appear during a séance. However, it is still not necessary to believe that a spirit really did appear in this instance. Depth psychology suggest that a phantasm can be produced in the following way. The medium through emitting energy causes matter to form as a result of this. In nuclear physics we have the idea that matter is nothing more than concentrated energy. Einstein’s formula E=M.c^2 illustrates this relationship. A comparison can also be drawn from another branch of physics. It is found that both particles and anti-particles are formed at the cathode of an X-ray tube when a current is passed through it at a very high voltage. Energy in the form of electro-magnetic waves is in this way transformed into matter. #RandolphHarris 9 of 15
The next step in the mediumistic process involves the unconscious tapping of the information from some source or other, and then the newly formed matter is physically shaped according to this information. The final step is made when the phantasm is brought under the control of the medium. Looking at it from this point of view there is no necessity to believe that the dead person has in any way been disturbed. An animistic explanation based on the powers of the subconscious is thus sufficient to explain the phenomenon of materialization. Yet this is not to say that the rationalistic explanation does justice to the facts of the case. The problem is not as simple as that. However, we do not have the time to delve further into the scientific side of the issues. We have, on many occasions witnessed a disintegration of the personalities of both mediums and participants where materializations have taken place. In addition to this in every case where a person has frequently taken part in spiritistic séances, there is some kind of reaction, even if it is not immediately notice or if there is no manifestation—something happens. There are also people who are able to practise the excursion of the soul. Spiritists affirm that people can send out an astral body from their material body, and commission it to do whatever they ask. Perhaps that was the case when Mrs. Winchester appeared in another country? Spiritism haunts the dark jungle of human aberration. During a séance as the Winchester mansion, Mrs. Winchester noticed that time was passing somewhat wearily. She could hear an occasional thud, thud. Some time must have elapsed before she became, dimly at first, and then distinctly, aware of a bluish phosphorescent emanation from a skeleton. This seemed to rise above it like a faint smoke, which gradually gained consistency, took form, and became distinct; and she saw before her the misty, luminous form on an unclothed man, with wolfish countenance, prognathous jaws, glaring at her out of eyes deeply sunk under projecting brows. #RandolphHarris 10 of 15
Although she thus descried what she saw, it gave her no idea of substance; it was vaporous, and yet it was articulate. Indeed, she could not say for sure if she saw this apparition with her eyes, or whether it was a dream-like vision of the brain. Though luminous, it cast no light on the wall of the Blue Séance Room; if she raised her hand, it did not obscure any portion of the form presented to her. Then she heard: “I will tear you with the nails of my fingers and toes, and rip you with my teeth.” “What have I done to injure and incense you?” she asked. No word was uttered by either of them; no word could have been uttered by this vaporous form. It had no material lungs, nor throat, nor mouth to form vocal sounds. It had but the semblance of a man. It was a spook, not a human being. However, it proceeded through the walls, odylic force which smote on the tympanum of her mind or soul, and thereon registered the ideas formed by it. So in a like manner Mrs. Winchester thought her replies, and they were communicated back in the same manner. If vocal words had passed between them neither would have been intelligible to the other. No dictionary was ever compiled, or would be compiled, of the tongue or prehistoric man; moreover, the grammar of the speech of that race would be absolutely incomprehensible to humans now. However, thoughts can be interchanged without words. When we think we do not think in any language. It is only when we desire to communicate our thoughts to other humans that we shape them into words and express them vocally in structural grammatical sentences. The beasts have never attained to this, yet they can communicate with one another, not by language, but by thought vibrations. Mrs. Winchester knew as she conversed with him that she was not speaking to him in English, nor in French, nor in Latin, nor in any tongue whatever. Moreover, when she used the words “said” or “spoke,” she meant no more than that the impression was formed by her brain-pan or the receptive drum of her soul, was produced by the rhythmic, orderly sequence of thought-waves. #RandolphHarris 11 of 15
When, however, she expressed the words “screamed” or “shrieked,” she signified that those vibrations came sharp and swift; and when she said “laughed,” tht they came in a choppy, irregular fashion, conveying the idea, not the sound of laughter. “I will tear you! I will rend you to bits and throw you in pieces about this mansion!” shrieked this demon man. Mrs. Winchester remonstrated, and inquired how she had incensed him. However, yelling with rage, he threw himself upon her. In a moment she was enveloped in a luminous haze, strips of phosphorescent vapour laid themselves about her, but she received no injury whatever, only her spiritual nature was subjected to something like a magnetic storm. After a few moments the spook disengaged itself from Mrs. Winchester, and drew back to where it was before, screaming broken exclamations of meaningless rage, and jabbering savagely. It rapidly cooled down. “Why do you wish to ill me?” She asked again. “I cannot hurt you. I am spirit, you are matter, and spirit cannot injure matter; my nails are psychic phenomena. Your soul you can lacerate yourself, but I can effect nothing, nothing.” “Then why have you attacked me? What is the cause of your impotent recement?” “Because you are the heiress to the Winchester Rifle, and I lived eight thousand years ago. Why are you nursed in the lap of luxury? Why you enjoy your comforts, a civilization that we new nothing of? It is not just. It is cruel on us. We have nothing, nothing, literally nothing, not even lucifer matches!” Again he feel to screaming, as might a caged monkey rendered furious by failure to obtain an apple which he could not reach. “I am very sorry, but it is no fault of mine.” “Whether it be your fault or not does not matter to me. You have these things—we had not. Why, I saw you just now strike a light on the sole of your boot. It was done in a moment. We had only flint and ironstone, and it took half a day with us to kindle a fire, and then it flayed our knuckles with continuous knocking. No! we have nothing, nothing—no lucifer matches, no commercial travellers, no Benedictine, no pottery, no metal, no education, no elections, no chocolat menier.” #RandolphHarris 12 of 15
“How do you know about these products of the present age, here, buried one hundred feet of soil for eight thousand years?” “It is my spirit which speaks with your spirit. My spook does not always remain with my bones. I can go up; rocks and stones and earth and your labyrinth mansion heaped over me do not hold me down. I am often above. I am in the gasolier overhead. I have seen your servants plough the fields. I have seen a bottle of Benedictine. I have applied my physical lips to it, but I could taste, absorb nothing. I have seen commercial travellers there, cajoling the patron into buying things he did not want. They are mysterious, marvellous beings, their powers of persuasion are little short of miraculous. Why do you think of doing with me?” “Well, I propose first of all photographing you, then soaking you in gum Arabic, and finally transferring you to a museum.” He screamed as though with pain, and grasped: “Do not! do not do it. It will be torture insufferable.” “But why so? You will be under glass, in a polished oak or mahogany box.” “Do not! You cannot understand what it will be to me—a spirit more or less attached to my body, to spend ages upon ages in a museum with fibulae, triskelli, palstaves, celts, torques, scarabs. We cannot travel very far from our bones—our range is limited. And conceive of my feelings for centuries condemned to wander among glass cases containing prehistoric antiquities, and to hear the talk of scientific men alone. Now here, it is otherwise. Here I can pass up when I like into your mansion, and can see the maid and butlers cleaning, the roses and trees growing, the farmers working the field and the magnificent glow of your fine estate. Give me life. There is a sort of filmy attachment that connects our psychic nature with our mortal remains. It is like a spider and its web. #RandolphHarris 13 of 15
“Suppose the soul to be the spider and the skeleton to be the web. If you break the thread the spider will never find its way back to its home. So it is with us; there is an attachment, a faint thread of luminous spiritual matter that unites us to our Earthly husk. It is liable to accidents. It sometimes gets broken, sometimes dissolved by water. If a black beetle crawls across it it suffers a sort of paralysis. I have never been to the other side of the of your mansion, I feared to do so, though very anxious to see your architecture and furniture.” “This is news to me,” replied Mrs. Winchester. “Do you know of any case of rupture of connection?” Yes,” he replied. “My old father, after he was dead some years, got his link of attachment broke, and he wandered about disconsolate. He could not find his own body, but he lighted on that of a young female of seventeen, and he got into that. It happened most singularly that her spook, being frolicsome and inconsiderate, had got its bond also broken, and she, that is her spirit, straying about in quest of her body, lighted on that of my venerable parent, and for want of a better took possession of it. It so chanced that after a while they met and became chummy. In the World of spirits there is no marriage, but there grow up spiritual attachments, and these two got rather fond of each other, but never could puzzle it out which was which and what each was; for a female soul had entered into an old male body, and a male soul had taken up its residence in a female body. Neither could riddle out of which each gender was. You see they had no education. However, I know that my father’s soul became quite sportive in that young woman’s skeleton. Each generation makes some discovery that advances civilization a stage, the next enters on the discoveries of the preceding generations, and so culture advances stage by stage. Man is infinitely progressive; even the brute beast is.” #RandolphHarris 14 of 15
At that moment, Mrs. Winchester heard a shout—saw a flash of light. The construction workers had pierced the barrier. A rush of fresh air entered. She staggered to her feet. She felt dizzy. Kind hands grasped her. She was dragged forth. Brandy was poured down her throat. When she came to herself, she said, “Thank you. Talking with spirits can be terrible dreadful. When you are trying to summon one, souls get crossed and the one you are seeking may not cross through. They are so desperate to find a medium to communicate with.” As an ingredient of idol worship, magic goes back to antiquity. By virtue of their multiplicity and limited knowledge and power, the gods (demons) of paganism are incapable of establishing stability and security in society. This deficiency forced both gods and men to make use of magic—an inactive power independent of gods and men, but which could be activized by the assistance of incantations and rituals in order to accomplish supernatural deeds. Because of widespread denial of the reality of supernatural power—both divine and demonic, confusion abounds concerning the nature of magic. The history of magic is replete with extraordinary extrasensory phenomena that involve the spirit realm and every phase of the natural World as well, including human beings, animals, plants, and inorganic matter. Spirit-rapping, apparitions, ghosts, moving of furniture, and playing of musical instruments by invisible hands, stones falling from a ceiling, magical killing of cattle and blighting of crops, etcetera, are just a few of the weird occurrences that have happened at the Winchester Mystery House in its 134 years. However, there have also been beautiful supernatural events such as apparitions getting married, giant spirits of light in the shape of a man peering out guests, and on occasion, even rainbows and angels have appeared. Not all spirits or evil or angry, some or loving and welcoming. Few of thousands of annual transient guests are disappointed for here one finds visible truth even stranger than all the weird Mystery House features. #RandolphHarris 15 of 15
Winchester Mystery House
Beautiful weather calls for a walk around Sarah’s iconic gardens ⛲️🪴Open 10AM – 5PM this weekend!
A 160-room mansion built to appease the spirits who died at the hands of the Winchester Rifle , or who were jealous of its wealth 👻
And a Hair of His Head Shall Not Fall to the Ground Unnoticed
We cannot go to others with what we have received, saying: This is what needs to be known, this is what needs to be done. We can only go and put to the proof in actions. And even this is not what we “ought to” do: rather we can—we cannot do otherwise. This is the eternal revelation which is present in the here and now. I neither know of nor believe in any revelation that is not the same in its primal phenomenon. Joseph Smith returned to Independence in April, 1832, to help the Saints in their conflict with the pioneer Missourians, who did not like the people from the East. The day after his arrival, Joseph called a conference of the Saints in America. One of the first items of business was to vote to acknowledge Joseph Smith as “president of the high priesthood,” or president of the church. Provision was later made for two counselors to the president, making three in the Presidency. A revelation was received at this time in which the Lord said: “I give unto you directions how you may act before me, that it may turn to you for your salvation. I, the Lord, am bound when ye do what I say, but when ye do not what I say, ye have no promise. American must increase in beauty, and in holiness…America must arise and put on her beautiful garments. Therefore, I give unto you this commandment, that ye bind yourselves by this covenant. And you are to be equal, or in other words, you are to have equal claims on the properties, for the benefit of managing the concerns of your stewardships, every man according to his wants and his needs, inasmuch as his wants are just. And all this for the benefit of the church of the living God, that every man may improve upon his talent, that every man may gain other talents; yea, even an hundredfold, to be cast into the Lord’s storehouse, to become the common property of the whole church, every man seeking the interest of his neighbor, and doing all things with an eye single to the glory of God. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21
“Make unto yourselves friends with the mammon of unrighteousness, and they will not destroy you. Leave judgment alone with me, for it is mine and I will repay. Peace be with you; my blessings continue with you, for even yet the kingdom is yours, and shall be for ever if you fall not from your steadfastness.” After preaching several powerful sermons and visiting and encouraging the Saints, Joseph Smith, Sidney Rigdon, and Newell K. Whitney left Independence for Kirtland, where they arrived in June. During this same month the first issues of the paper, the Evening and Morning Star, was published at Independence. It was a joyous treat for the Saints in Kirtland to receive a copy of this paper. Joseph and Sidney Rigdon spent much of their time on the work of correcting the Scriptures during the summer and fall of 1832. Two revelations were given during this period giving instruction on the priesthood in the church and containing many glorious promises. The Lord praised the Saints for their hard work which had been done by much sacrifice and under unfavorable conditions. The Lord explained the purposes of the two priesthoods, the Aaronic and the Melchisedec. The people were instructed to accept the ministry of men who are called to the priesthood. Jesus Christ, the Lord said: “All they who receive this priesthood receiveth me, saith the Lord, for he that receiveth my servants receiveth me, and he that receiveth me receiveth my Father, and he that reciveth my Father receiveth my Father’s kingdom.” Helpful instruction was given in this revelation: “You shall live by every word that proceedeth forth from the mouth of God. For the word of the Lord is truth, and whatsoever is truth is light, and whatsoever is light in Spirit, even the Spirit of Jesus Christ. And the Spirit giveth light to every man that cometh into the World; and the Spirit enlightenth every man through the World, that hearkeneth to the voice of the Spirit. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21
“And everyone that hearkeneth to the voice of the Spirit, cometh unto God, even the Father. Whoso cometh not unto me is under the bondage of sin; and whoso recieveth not my voice is not acquainted with my voice, and is not of me; and by this you may know the righteous from the wicked.” The elders were told they should travel without money or provisions—“pure or scrip” were the exact words used—and Jesus promised: “And any man that shall go and preach this gospel of the kingdom, and fail not to continue faithful in all things, shall not be weary in mind, neither darkened, neither in body, limb or joint; and an hair of his head shall not fall to the ground unnoticed. And they shall not go hungry, neither athirst. Therefore take no thought for the morrow, for what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink, or wherewithal ye shall be clothed. For consider the lilies of the field, how they grow, they toil not, neither do they spin; and the kingdoms of this World, in all their glory, are not arrayed like one of these; for your Father who art in Heaven, knoweth that you have need of all these things. Therefore, let the morrow take thought for the things of itself. Neither take ye thought beforehand what ye shall say, but treasure up in your minds continually the words of life, and it shall be given you in the very hour that portion that shall be meted unto every man. Whoso receiveth you receiveth me, and the same will feed you, and clothe you, and give you money. And he who feeds you, or clothes you, and gives you money, shall in no wise lose his reward.” A little son, whom they named Joseph Smith III, was born to Emma and Joseph on November 6, 1832. This baby was to have an important part in the work of the Lord later. An important revelation was given on December 27, 1832. The Saints were commanded to keep the laws of God. The Lord said: “He who is not able to abide the law of a celestial kingdom, can not abide a celestial glory; and he who can not abide the law of terrestrial kingdom, can not abide a terrestrial glory; he who can not abide the law of a telestial kingdom, can not abide a telestial glory; therefore, he is not meet for a kingdom of glory. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21
“And if your eye be single to my glory, your whole bodies shall be filled with light, and there shall be no darkness in you, and that body which is filled with light comprehendeth all things. Therefore, sanctify yourselves that your minds become single to God, and the days will come that you shall see him. Continue in prayer and fasting from this time forth. And I give unto you a commandment, that you shall teach one another the doctrines of the kingdom. Call your solemn assembly, as I have commanded you; and as all have not faith, seek ye diligently and teach one another words of wisdom; yea, seek ye out of the best books words of wisdom; seek learning even by study, and also by faith. See that ye love one another; cease to be covetous; learn to impart one to another as the gospel requires; cease to be idle; cease to be unclean; cease to find fault one with another. Cease to sleep longer than is needful; retire to thy bed early, that ye may not be weary; arise early, that your bodies and your minds may be invigorated. Pray always, that you may not faint until I come.” Provision was made in this revelation for establishing a “school of the prophets,” in the “house of the Lord.” This school was for all members of the priesthood, from the high priests to the deacons, and it was to be taught by the Presidency of the church. To be humble is to recognize gratefully our dependence on the Lord—to understand that we have constant need for His support. Humility is an acknowledgment that our talents and abilities are gifts from God. It is not a sign of weakness, timidity, or fear; it is an indication that we know where our true strength lies. We can be both humble and fearless. We can be both humble and courageous. The Lord will strengthen us as we humble ourselves before Him. “God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble…Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and he shall life you up,” reports James 4.6 and 10. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21
When the storms in life come, one can be steady because one is standing on the rock of one’s faith in Jesus Christ. May everyone face the storms with a peaceful heart. The place to begin is to remember that we are each a beloved child of God and that He has inspired servants. Those servants of God have foreseen the times in which we live. Know also that in the last days, perilous times shall come. Anyone with eyes to see the signs of the times and ears to hear the words of prophets knows that is true. The perils of greatest danger come to us from the forces of wickedness. Those forces are increasing. And so it will become more difficult, not easier, to honor the covenants we must make and keep to live the gospel of Jesus Christ. For those of us who are concerned for ourselves and for those we love, there is hope in the promise God has made of a place of safety in the storms ahead. It has never been more important than it is now to understand how to build a strong foundation. “Then Solomon said, The Lord has said that He would dwell in the thick darkness,” reports II Chronicles 6.1. Therefore, do not fear because God is everywhere. The human wish, we are saying, is not merely a push from the past, not merely a call from primitive needs demanding satisfaction. It also has in it some selectivity. It is a forming of the future, a molding by a symbolic process which includes both memory and fantasy, of what we hope the future will be. The wish is the beginning of orienting ourselves to the future, an admission that we want the future to be such and such; it is a capacity to reach down deep into ourselves and preoccupy ourselves with a longing to change the future. However, there is no will without a prior wish. The wish, like all symbolic processes, has a progressive element, a reaching ahead, as well as a regressive pole, a propulsion from behind. The wish thus carries its meaning as well as its force. Its motive power lies in the conjunction of this meaning and force. We can now understand why William Lynch should hold that “to wish is the most human act.” #RandolphHarris 5 of 21
The past is drifting away at a faster and faster rate. When we look back at, say, the first quarter of the twenty-first century, we realize that many of its defining episodes no longer grip us as strongly as they one did. For the generation now coming into power, events like the 911, the civil rights protests of the 2020s, the Ukrainian War, the Cultural Revolution, homelessness, demands for affordable housing and spread of graffiti in small towns seems increasingly more significant and relevant. Therefore much of what will happen in our lifetimes will consist of adaptation to and further development of a process that began three quarters of a century ago—the most revolutionary wave of change in wealth creation since at least the eighteenth century. Let us pause briefly, then, to summarize and draw together some key things. First, this revolution is a matter not just of technology, stock-market swings, inflation or deflation but of profound social, cultural, political and geopolitical changes as well. Failure to recognize the connections between these and economics leads us to seriously underestimate the oncoming challenges we face. Second, while headlines and business chatter continually refer to improving or declining “fundamentals,” we suggest that that these ups and downs are largely superficial responses to far more important shifts in what we have termed “deep fundamentals”—those factors and forces that have governed all economic activity sine our days as nomadic hunter-gatherers. Economists have long studied some of these essentials—things like work, the division of labor, exchange and the sharing of rewards. They have also filled libraries with studies on technology, energy and the environment. Business gurus drawing on these studies pour out advice about everything from human-resource management to network organization, insourcing and outsourcing, leadership and strategy. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21
Yet, if they ignore three key forces driving today’s wealth revolution—dramatic changes in our relations to time, space and, above all, knowledge, how good can advice and proposed strategies be? It is, we have contended, only by recognizing the centrality of these wealth drivers that we can prepare for tomorrow. For this reason, we have looked closely at each of these deep fundamentals and their impacts on wealth. Take, for instance, the de-synchronization effect. As we saw earlier, companies are compelled to shift and re-shirt their products and relationships incessantly. Customer demands, financial imperatives and market forces all change at accelerating, but very different, rates. In doing so, they impose destabilizing cross-pressures on firms whose managers struggle to come to terms with time. In response, a big synchronization industry has grown up to help firms cope with clashing speeds. At the same time, a backward, tortoise-paced public sector—itself badly de-synchronized—imposes a huge “time-tax” on companies by slowing them down with delays in court decisions, procurements process, regulatory rulings, permit procedures and in a thousand other ways. In short, one part of the system is flooring the gas pedal while the other is slamming on the brakes. Nowhere, as we have noted, is this more frustratingly evident than in the contradiction between the fast-changing skill requirements of an advanced, accelerative economy and the glacial immobility of its schools. We have seen also that some degree of de-synchronization is essential to keep competition and innovation going on. However, it is equally clear that excessive de-synchronization can throw companies, industries and entire economies into chaos. Indeed, one can look at the great stock market shakeouts as desperate attempts by the wealthy system to re-synchronize itself. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21
However, time is only part of the story. To understand tomorrow’s oncoming changes, the cumulative effects of time conflicts need to be seen against the equally powerful transformations in the spatial landscape. Thus the World today holds its breath while watching the massive relocation of wealth and wealth creation toward formerly “developing” countries led by China and India—surely one of the biggest and fastest such transfers in history and possibly the completion of a great circle of wealth movement that began some five hundred years ago. Moreover, we have suggested that, instead of asking whether globalization will continue, we recognize a coming split—possible de-globalization on the economic level and re-globalization of campaigns against such problems as pollution, terrorism, drugs, sexual slavery and genocide. Here, too, gas pedal and brake are applied at the same time. Out of this collision will come the accelerated relocation of the globe’s wealth creation to new high-value-added hot spots—leaving behind new pockets of poverty. However, the most dramatic spatial shifts of all has little to do with these terrestrial concerns. Though millions brush it aside, we actually stand at the historical edge of humanity’s serious thrust into outer space. For historians of tomorrow looking back at the twenty-first century, one of most important economic events of all may prove to be the colonization of space and wealth creation beyond our home planet. None of these changes would occur without even more potent transformations in the deep fundamental of knowledge and our relations with it. While shifts in the use of time and space will be easy to recognize, today’s revolution in knowledge—the defining deep fundamental of our time—is far harder to grasp. These changes are, by their very nature, intangible, invisible, abstract, epistemological and seemingly remote from daily life. Yet no attempt to forecast the future of wealth can succeed without a thorough appreciation of the new role of knowledge. #RandolphHarris 8 of 21
We have provided an admittedly simplified primer on the scope, nature and role of knowledge as the central resource of advanced economies. However, here again we do not just need to analyze, but to synthesize—to see these deeply fundamental changes in interaction with one another. When we alter our relationship to time, for example, by speeding things up, we inevitably make some knowledge obsolete. We thereby increase the backlog of obsoledge that we lug around with us. Let us proceed to economic and social changes. New Deal. The Keynesian economics of the New Deal has cushioned the business cycle and maintained nearly full employment. It has not achieved its ideal of social balance between public and private works. The result is an expanding production increasingly consisting of corporation boondoggling. Syndicalism. Industrial workers have won their unions, obtained better wages and working conditions, and affirmed the dignity of labor. However, they gave up their ideal of workers’ management, technical education, and concern for the utility of their labor. The result is that a vast majority could not care less about what they make, and the “labor movement” is losing force. Class struggle. The working class has achieved a striking repeal of the iron law of wages; it has won a minimum wage and social security (although future funding is uncertain). However, the goal of an equalitarian or freely mobile society has been given up, as has the solidarity of the underprivileged. The actual result is an increasing rigidity of statuses; some of the underprivileged tending to drop out of society altogether. On the other hand, the cultural equality that has been achieved has been the degradation of the one popular culture to the lowest common denominator. Production for Use. This socialist goal has been missed, resulting in many of the other failures here listed. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21
Sociology. During the past century, the sociologist have achieved their aim of dealing with humankind in its natural groups or groups with common problems, rather than as isolated individuals or a faceless mass. Social science has replaced many prejudices and ideologies of vested interests. However, on the whole, social scientists have given up their aim of fundamental social change and an open-experimental method determining its goals as it went along: the pragmatist ideal of society as a laboratory for freedom and self-correcting humanity. The actual result is an emphasis on “socializing” and “belonging,” with the loss of nature, culture, group solidarity and group variety, and individual excellence. There are 773,000,000 illiterates in the World. There are approximately 43 million illiterates in the United States of America, and according to a report from our Librarian of Congress, there may be an equal number of alliterates. In any case, a general impatience with books will develop, especially with books in which language is used with subtlety to express complex ideas. Most likely there will be a decline in readers’ analytical and critical skills. According to the results of standardized tests given in schools, this has been happening in the United States of America for the past fifty-five years. I suspect concern for history will also decline, to be replaced by a consuming interest in the present. The effect on political life will be devastating. There will be less emphasis on issues, substance, and ideology, an increase in the importance of image and style. Politicians will have greater concern for moment-to-moment shifts in public opinion, less concern for long-range policies. Unless the use of television for political campaigns is strictly prohibited, elections may be decided by which party spends more on televisions and media consultants. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21
Even if political commercials are prohibited, politicians will appear on entertainment programs and will almost certainly be asked to give testimonials for non-political products such as cars, beer, and breakfast foods. The line between political life and entertainment will blur, and movies stars may be taken seriously as political candidates. Once the population becomes accustomed to spending much of its time watching television—in the United States of America, the average household has television on about eight hours a day—there will be a decrease in activities outside the home: fewer and smaller gatherings in parks, beer halls, concert halls, and other public places. As street life decreases, there may well be an increase in street crime. Young and some older people will, of course, become disaffected from school and reading. Children’s games are likely to disappear. In fact, it will become important to keep children watching television because they will be a major consumer group. In the United States of America, children watch 5,000 hours of television before they enter kindergarten and 16,000 hours by high school’s end. Commercial television does not dislike children; it simply cannot afford the idea of childhood. Consumerhood takes precedence. Naturally, family life will be significantly changed. There will be less interaction among family members, certainly less talk between parents and children. Such talk as there is will be noticeably different from what you are now accustomed to. The young will speak of matters that once were confined to adults. Commercial television is a medium that does not segregate its audience, and therefore all segments of the population share the same symbolic World. You may find that in the end the line between adulthood and childhood has been erased entirely. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21
Television is itself a commodity, and an expensive one too. Therefore it is physically consistent with the prevalent reality. Its purchase gives the commodity system a boost. Television changes the nature of the artificial environment from passive to active. Unlike buildings and machines, television literally enters inside human beings; inside our homes, our minds, our bodies, making possible the reordering of human processes from the inside. Television is an experience that can be had by virtually everyone at the same time. By substituting for a greater diversity of experiences and unifying everyone with it, it assists commercial efficiency. With all people confined to the same mental and physical condition, a single advertising or political voice appropriate to the common mood can influence everyone. Once diversity of experience is reduced to television, a relative handful of people can control everyone’s awareness. Luckily for advertisers, in a capitalist system, whoever is in a position to pay for the technology has primary access to it. Television is unique in that it smooths out any furrows in the commodity system. Dormant anxieties can be dulled by the television experience. Beyond being a delivery system for commodity life, it is the solder to hold that life together, the drug to ease the pain of confined and channeled existence. Though television passes for experience, it is really more like “time out,” as we shall see later. It is anti-experience. Its interaction with the human body and mind fixes people to itself, dulls human sensibility and dims awareness of the World. This enhances the commodity life by reducing knowledge of any other. By focusing people on events well outside their lives, television encourages passivity and inaction, discourages self-awareness and the ability to cope personally, both of which are dangerous for advertising. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21
By speaking in images, television adds a dimension to the mirror-image process. Unlike radio or print media, advertising can now implant internal movies, forever available for self-comparison. Television encourages separation: people from community, people from each other, people from themselves, creating more buying units and discouraging organized opposition to the system. It creates a surrogate community: itself. It becomes everyone’s intimate advisor, teacher and guide to appropriate behavior and awareness. Thereby, it becomes its own feedback system, furthering its own growth and accelerating the transformation of everything and everyone into artificial form. This enables a handful of people to obtain a unique degree of power. You have seen how commercial stress the values of youth, how they stress consumption, the immediate gratification of desires, the love of the new, a contempt for old technology. Television screens are saturated with commercials promote the Utopian and childish idea that all problems have fast, simple, and technological solutions. You must banish from your mind the naïve but commonplace notion that commercials are about products. They are about products in the same sense that the story of Jonah is about the anatomy of whales. Which is to say, they are not. They are about values and myths and fantasies. One might even say they form a body of religious literature, a montage of voluminous, visualized sacred texts that provide people with images and stories around which to organize their lives. To give you some idea of exactly how voluminous, I should tell you that the average America will have seen approximately 1 million television commercials, at the rate of a thousand per week, by the age of twenty. By the age of sixty-five, the average American will have seen more than 2 million television commercials. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21
Commercial television adds to the Decalogue several impious commandments, among them that thou shalt have no others gods than consumption, thou shalt despise what is old, thou shalt seek to amuse thyself continuously, and thou shalt avoid complexity like the ten plagues of that the underworld. Perhaps you are thinking that I exaggerate the social and psychic results of the commercialization of television and that, in any case, what has happened in the United States of America could not happen anywhere else. If you are, you overestimate the power of tradition and underestimate the power of technology. To enliven your senses of the forces unleashed by technological change, you need only remind yourself of what the automobile has brought to Austria. Has it not changed the nature of your cities, created the suburbs, made roads through your forest and homes, restructured your economy? You must not mislead yourselves by what you know about World culture as of 2022. May regions around the World are still living in the age of Gutenberg. Commercial television attacks such backwardness with astonishing ferocity. For example, at the present time, less than 20 percent of population in Tuvalu watches television in the evening. A commercial television system will fund this situation intolerable. In the United States of America, approximately 90 percent of people watch television during evening hours, and broadcasters find even those number unsatisfactory. In nations like Korea, television commercials are bunched together so that they do not interfere with the continuity of the programs. Such a situation makes no sense to American commercial systems. The whole idea is precisely to interrupt the continuity of programs so that one’s thoughts cannot stray too far from consideration of consumership. Indeed, the aim is to obliterate the distinction between a program and a commercial. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21
In some countries, you do not have many advertising agencies, and those you have are small and without great influence. In America, our advertising agencies are among the largest and most powerful corporations in the World. DDB Needham Worldwide has gross billings of $6.7 billion each year, 6,726 employees and SICs 7311 advertising agencies, and possibly receives $700 million per year for American network television alone. This is serious money and these are serious radicals. They cannot afford to permit a culture to retain old ideas about work or religion or politics or childhood. And it will not be long before they and their kind show up in the most primitive communities. If, like me, you claim allegiance to an authentic conservative philosophy, one that seeks to preserve that which nourishes the spirit, you would be wise to approach all proposals for a free-market television system with extreme caution. Indeed, I will go further than that: it is either hypocrisy or balderdash to argue that the transformation of the World from a print-based culture to a television-based culture can leave that country’s traditions intact. Conservatives know this is nonsense, and so they worry. Radicals also know this is nonsense. However, they do not care. In 1879, a French ophthalmologist named Luis Emile Javal discovered that when people read, their eyes do not sweep across the words in a perfectly fluid way. Their visual focus advances in little jumps, called saccades, pausing briefly at different points along each line. One of the Javal’s colleagues at the University of Paris soon made another discovery: that the pattern of pauses, or “eye fixations,” can vary greatly depending on what is being read and who is doing the reading. In the wake of these discoveries, brain researchers began to use eye-tracking experiments to learn more about how we read and how our minds work. Suck studies have also proven valuable in providing further insights into the Internet’s effects on attention and cognition. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21
In 2006, Jakob Nielsen, a longtime consultant on the design of Web pages who has been studying online reading since the 1990s, conducted an eye-tracking study of Web users. He has 232 people wear a small camera that tracked their eye movements as they read pages of text and browsed other content. Nielsen found that hardly any of the participants read online text in a methodical, line-by-line way, as they would typically read a page of text in a book. The vast majority skimmed the text quickly, their eyes skipping down the pages in a pattern that resembled, roughly, the letter F. They would start by glancing all the way across the first two or three lines of text. Then their eyes would drop down a bit, and they would scan about halfway across a few more lines. Finally, they would let their eyes cursorily drift a little father down the left-hand side of the page. This pattern of online reading was confirmed by subsequent eye-tacking study carried out at the Software Usability Research Laboratory at Wichita State University. “F,” wrote Mr. Nielsen, in summing up the findings for his clients, is “for fast. That is how users read your precious content. In a few second, their eyes move at amazing speed across your website’s words in a pattern that is very different from what you learned in school.” As a complement to his eye-tracking study, Mr. Nielsen analyzed an extensive database on the behavior of Web users that had been compiled by a term of German researchers. They had monitored the computers of twenty-five people for an average of about a hundred days each, tracking the time the subjects spent looking at some fifty thousand Web pages. Parsing the data, Mr. Nielsen found that as the number of words on a pace increases, the time a visitor spends looking at the page goes up, but only slightly. #RandolphHarris 16 of 21
For every hundred additional words, the average viewer will spend just 4.4 more seconds perusing the page. Since even the most accomplished reader can read only about eighteen words in 4.4 seconds, Mr. Nielsen told his clients, “when you add verbiage to a page, you can assume that customers will read 18 percent of it.” And that, he cautioned, is almost certainly an overstatement. It is unlikely that the people in the study were spending all their time reading; they were also probably glancing at pictures, videos, advertisements, and other types of content. Mr. Nielsen’s analysis backed up the conclusions of the German researchers themselves. They had reported that most Web pages are viewed for ten seconds or less. Fewer than one in tend page views extend beyond two minutes, and a significant portion of those seem to involve “unattended browser windows…left open in the background of the desktop.” The researchers observed that “even new pages with plentiful information and many links are regularly viewed for a brief period.” However, with many people still have 4GLTE mobile phones, advertisers can get several seconds more of free advertisement from certain formats because the phones freeze up and leave their content on the phone for longer than they have paid for, so it is like with the older technology, firms get more for their dollar. Overall, however, results seem to “confirm that browsing is a rapidly interactive activity.” The results also reinforce something that Mr. Nielsen wrote in 1997 after his first study of online reading. “How do users read on the web?” he asked then. His succinct answer is: “They do not.” Many types of reading are important. The most visible sign of our increasing separateness and, in its turn, the cause of ever greater separateness is divorce. It has a deep influence on our universities because more and more of the students are products of it, and they do not only have problems themselves but also affect other students and the general atmosphere. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21
Divorce in America is the most palpable indication that people are not made to live together, and that, although they want and need to create a general will out of the particular wills, those particular wills constantly reassert themselves. There is a quest, but ever more hopeless, for arrangements and ways of putting the broken pieces back together. The task is equivalent to squaring the circle, because everyone loves oneself most but wants others to love one more than one loves themselves. Such is particularly the demand of children, against which parents are now rebelling. In the absence of a common good or common object, as Mr. Rousseau puts it, the disintegration of society into particular wills is inevitable. Selfishness in this case is not a moral vice or a sin but a natural necessity. The “Me generation” and “narcissism” are merely descriptions, not causes. The solitary savage in the state of nature cannot be blamed for thinking primarily of oneself, nor can a person who lives in a World where the primacy of oneself, nor can a person who lives in a World where the primacy of self-concern is only too evident in the most fundamental institutions, where the original selfishness of the state of nature remains, where concern for the common good is hypocritical, and where morality seems to be squarely on the side of selfishness. Or, to put it otherwise, the concern with self-development, self-expression, or growth, which flourished as a result of the optimistic faith in a preestablished harmony between such a concern and society or community, has gradually revealed itself to be inimical to community. A young person’s qualified or conditional attachment to divorced parents merely reciprocates what one necessarily sees as their conditional attachment to one, and is entirely different from the classic problem of loyalty to families, or other institutions, which were clearly dedicated to their members. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21
In the past, such breaking away was sometimes necessary but always morally problematic. Today it is normal, and this is another reason why the classical literature is alien to so many of our young, for it is largely concerned with liberation from real claims—like family, faith, or country—whereas now the movement is in the opposite direction, a search for claims on oneself that have some validity. Children who have gone to the school of conditional relationships should be expected to view the World in the light of what they learned there. Children may be told over and over again that their parents have a right to their own lives, that they will enjoy quality time instead of quantity time, that they are really loved by their parents even after divorce, but children do not believe any of this. They think they have a right to total attention and believe their parents must live for them. There is no explaining otherwise to them, and anything less inevitably produces indignation and an inextirpable sense of injustice. To children, the voluntary separation of parents seems worse than their death precisely because it is voluntary. The capriciousness of wills, their lack of directedness to the common good, the fact that they could be otherwise but are not—these are the real source of the war of all against all. Children learn a fear of enslavement to the wills of others, along with a need to dominate those wills, in the context of the family, the one place where they are supposed to learn the opposite. Of course, many families are unhappy. However, that is irrelevant. The important lesson that the family taught was the existence of the only unbreakable bond, for better or for worse, between human beings. The decomposition of this bond is surely America’s most urgent social problem. However, nobody even tries to do anything about it. The tide seems to be irresistible. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21
Among the many items on the agenda of those promoting America’s moral regeneration, I never find marriage and divorce. The last time anyone in public office took a crack at anything like this issue was when President Trump urged Federal civil servants living together out of wedlock to get married. He said, “Marriage is a very beautiful and wonderful experience, something that everyone should enjoy. When I married, it was courtly love, and was one of the happiest moments in my parents’ lives.” Courtly love, the literary invention of medieval troubadours, is one thing and, unlike the proverbial and unchanging wheel, has been constantly reinvented. Courtly love is a manifestation that acknowledges the tenderness of romance, but incorporates it into a great passion guided not by carnality but rather by the highest moral and aesthetic values. Courtly love is an exalted state between a man and a superior woman he both respects and adores with quasi-religious fervor. Her love tests his resolve, firmness, and loyalty, for it is difficult to obtain. It is also immensely ennobling, so that his very suffering strengths every aspect of his being: his military prowess, social standards, even his moral and religious perspectives. Sometimes, the mere thought of his beloved triggers these holistic improvements. The rules of courtly love are the inherently painful ceaseless meditation on the beauty of one’s beloved, whom one glimpses from time to time but cannot possess. The ideal, seldom fulfilled, is total union with the beloved, to whom one is almost never married. O Solitude! If I must with thee dwell, let it not be among the jumbled heap of murky buildings; climb with me the steep,–Nature’s observatory—whence the dell, its flowery slops, its river’s crystal swell, may seem a span; let me thy vigils keep ‘mongst boughs pavillion’s, where the deer’s swift leap startles the wild bee from the fox-glove bell. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21
But though I will gladly trace these scenes with thee, yet the sweet converse of an innocent mind, whose words are images of thoughts refin’d, is my soul’s pleasure; and it sure must be almost the highest bless of human-kind, when to thy haunts two kindred spirits flee. The moon is full the spring nights grow longer, in the north forests startled crows cry out. Past loves are a thousand miles farther each day, still the season’s changes can stir the heart. As one who with pain and suffering has cut a path through a trackless wilderness, and then looks back to observe joyfully other humans travelling easily the roadway one has chartered, so did out forefathers bless their lot as the bearers of salvation, saying: “How goodly is our portion, how blessed our lot, how beautiful our heritage!” Verily our ancestors regarded their role in history as a sign of God’s grace, a token of the love of the Almighty for America, and through America for all human. (Oh, by the way, America is seen as a brand and live styles in many countries, so there are people in China, Japan, and Korea, for example, who believe they are the real Americans. This shows you how manifest destiny and the America Dream is real.) For this is your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the peoples. May we, the latter day children of America continue our people’s historic quest for God and His law of righteousness, and together with our fellowmen, may we establish His kingdom of truth, justice and peace. And the Lord shall be King over all the Earth, on that day, the Lord shall be One, and His name one. The history of America is the great living proof of the working of divine Providence in the affairs of the World. Alone among the nations America has shared all great movements since humankind became conscious of their destinies. If there is no divine purpose in the long travail of America, it is vain to seek for any such purpose in humans’ life. In the reflected light of that purpose each American should lead one’s life with an added dignity. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21
Cresleigh Homes
How will you use the den in the #Riverside Residence 1 model? It’s easy to convert to a home office OR a fourth bedroom! We love this wall texture and can’t help picturing client meetings (on Zoom or in person) in the space.
The best homes allow for your own personalization. #PlumasRanch is no exception!
#CresleighHomes
Where the Wind Blew and the Stars Sone Down
Haunting, eerie, mystical even at times a little frightening to those outside the shadowy half-World of the occult but compelling and demanding out attention. 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 last for the rest of her life. She purchased an unfinished farmhouse outside the small agricultural town, and for the next 38 years, the sound of construction on Mrs. Winchester’s house never stopped. She used to maintain, I remember, that there was no apparition or supernatural manifestation, or series of circumstances pointing to such a manifestation, however strongly substantiated they appeared to be, that could not be explained on purely natural grounds. However, there was a notable instance of what was by many supposed to be a supernatural manifestation that occurred in the water tower on the estate. It was a horrible sight. Barney Ackers and his wife Everly had evidently been waylaid and killed by a blow of an axe just as he was entering the yard gate, and then the door of the water tower had been broken open and his wife had been killed, after which Barney’s body had been dragged into the water tower, and it had been fired with the intention of making it appear that the water tower had burned by accident. However, by one of those inscrutable fatalities, the fire, after burning half of two walls, had gone out. Still, it was a horrible sight and the room looked like shambles. Barney had plainly been caught unawares while leaning over his gate. The back of his head had been crushed in with the eye of an axe, and he had died instantly. The pleasant thought which was in his mind at the instant—perhaps, of the greeting that always awaited him on the click of his latch; perhaps, of his success that day; perhaps, of Mrs. Winchester’s kindness to him for the work he did—was yet on his face, stamped there indelibly by the blow that killed him. There he lay, face upwards, as the murderer had thrown him after bringing him in, stretched out his full length on the floor, with his quiet face upturned, looking in that throng of excited, awestricken men, just what he had said he was: a man of peace. His wife, on the other hand, wore a terrified look on her face. There has been a terrible struggle. She had lived to taste the bitterness of death, before it took her. #RandolphHarris 1 of 13
Satan’s presence was haunting. It haunted Mrs. Winchester for years, and for many nights she could not sleep. No one ever found out who did it, and she found herself unable to forget it, or to have peace as she used to. On the night of the 3rd of January 1888, some thieves attempted to commit a robbery on the estate of Mrs. Winchester. They entered the mansion, armed with a dead man’s hand with a lighted candle in it, believing in the superstitious notion that is such a hand be procured, and a candle placed within its grasp, the latter cannot be seen by anyone except him by whom it is used; also that if the candle and hand be introduced into a house it will prevent those who may be asleep from awaking. The inhabitants, however, were alarmed, and the robbers fled, leaving the hand behind them. No doubt the absolute failure of this gruesome dark lantern on this occasion was due to the fact that neither candle nor candlestick had been properly prepared! The Winchester mansion is full of apparitions and specters and perhaps some of them foiled the bulger’s plan. The mansion was continually disturbed by a nocturnal house-spirits. At night heavy steps were heard as of one carrying a heavy load. On occasion a form appeared in a monk’s cowl. Certain ghosts are confined to the Winchester mansion and they plague particularly people. A certain butler, Elton Abram, was an active spiritist while employed for Mrs. Winchester. For years he practiced table-lifting and considered this to be a way of communicating with the dead. He continued with his occult practices so intensively that psychic disturbances set in. The effects of his spiritistic interests also appeared in his children and grandchildren. His oldest son committed suicide. His next son suffered from a persecution mania. His oldest daughter ended up in The Great Asylum for the Insane. Another daughter suffered from Parkinson’s disease. Among his grandchildren the same picture emerged. One of them was a schizophrenic. Another suffered from weak nerves and hypersensitivity, and another lived a dissolute life, and had given birth to an illegitimate child. The first of the man’s great-grandchildren became a psychopath and a delinquent. #RandolphHarris 2 of 13
From the scientific point of view, one might consider these effects to have a different cause from that of spiritism. The psychiatrist will be interested in the question whether the practicing of spiritism was rather the effect than the cause of the ensuing mental and emotional disorders. Or again, was there some latent disposition in the family that was merely triggered off by the spiritistic activities? The parapsychologist will explain the table-lifting phenomenon as psychic automatism, that is an activation of subconscious forces. The Christian however is concerned essentially with the frequency in which psychic disturbances appear in connection with the practice of occultism. It was well known that Mrs. Winchester donned herself with ceremonial robes and communed nightly with the spirits in the Winchester mansion, and it was the midnight rendezvous for legions of ghosts, with special attention accorded those created by a Winchester rifle slug. It is possible the Mr. Abram stole something from the Winchester mansion, which brought on a curse to him and generations of his family members. A person’s thoughts and actions are like people who populate a community: friendly, contentious, kind, malicious, virtuous, evil, virile, cowardly, optimistic, cynical. We prosper in a pure mental neighborhood and wither in a foul one. And we can choose our mental neighborhood. Tired minds and bodies are signals to be careful. Demonic oppression is not easily discerned. Some people mistakenly blame demons for unrepentant self-will and psychological abnormalities. The source is not always clear, but demon oppression is usually marked by an emotional inability of the individual to do what one wants to do. A young maid staying in the Winchester mansion called Bythesea Atterton, had been a founding member of a thriving witches coven in Essex and the group’s other three members all shared her dedicated to the occult. She began to complain about various mental disturbances which included being tired of life and having depressions. Added to this she often had violent fit of temper, and her marriage was being undermined by her own frigidity. It has also happened that the husband had seen strange figures in the house at night. He had not told his wife about this so as not to upset her, but after a while she too had seen similar strange and maimed figures about the house. #RandolphHarris 3 of 13
Mrs. Winchester questioned the woman about her past illnesses and about the general health of her parents and grandparents, but she was the only one to have suffered in this way. In answer to Mrs. Winchester’s questions about contact with occultism, after a lot of thought Bythesea told her the following story. She had stolen Mrs. Winchester’s sixteenth century book about magic, and saw a black shadow at the end of her bed. It was a horrible presence that frighted the life out of Bythesea. While Mrs. Winchester was asleep, she would invite her Protestant girl’s group over. The minister’s wife, who had become the leader, used to practice table-lifting with all the girls in the Blue Séance Room. The sessions had always begun with the question, “Spirit, are you there?” One knock had meant “yes,” two had meant “no.” When the spirit had been willing to answer they had all taken part in asking it questions. The minister’s wife had continued this practice for many years until she was paralyzed by a stroke. Bythesea told Mrs. Winchester that all the girls had subsequently been afraid to visit their leader since her face had been changed into a terrible grimace by the stroke. Medical science would classy this example together with the precious one. However, with regards to the stroke, we would like to point out that in the numerous cases connected to the Winchester mansion of suicides, fatal accidents, stroke, and insanity, they usually involve the occult and someone who has in someway broke a rule, stole from the mansion, or offended the spirits somehow. The miles of twisting hallways in the mansion are made even more intriguing by secret passageways in the walls. Mrs. Winchester traveled through her house in a roundabout fashion, supposedly to confuse any mischievous ghosts that might he following her. Mrs. Winchester never slept in the same bedroom two nights in a row, in order to confuse any evil spirits that might be waiting for her. Music has always played an important role in cultural outlook and identity. Hymns, marching songs, lullabies—there are a thousand different aspects of life which are ordered or inspired by a musical beat. Music helps to define your cultural tribe. Even the ghost at the Winchester mansion reportedly had parties at ungodly hours. #RandolphHarris 4 of 13
The Satanic underground was celebrated—and eventually propelled into the mainstream—by musicians at the tail-end of the psychedelic era. While the Beatles and the Rolling Stones were the public faces of the 1960s youth culture, other voices of that same social and spiritual revolution sang dark hymns of rebellion. Some think that Black Arts Festivals have gone too far, one in particular. Coven might have achieved the popular success that ultimately eluded them. The band’s first album went under the uncompromising title Witchcraft Destroys Minds and Reaps Souls, boasting a gatefold sleeve featuring the band engaged in a Black Mass—complete with attractive blonde singer Jinx Dawson serving as a naked altar. The album features a recording of this Black Mass at the tail end of side two: “Two the best of our knowledge, this if the first Black Mass to be recorded in written words or in audio,” explain the sleeve notes. (Anton Lavey recorded his own Black Mass shortly afterwards.) “It is as authentic as hundreds of hours of research in every know source can make it. We do no to recommend its use by anyone who has not thoroughly studied Black Magic and is aware of the risks and dangers involved.” The rite bears the hallmark of serious study, with notably authentic elements from medieval Gnostic and witchcraft lore. The overall effect, however is curiously naïve, with the high priest’s command to “kiss the goat” sounding more Monty Python than Aleister Crowley. The music that precedes the Black Mass is standard—if well-executed—1960s folk rock. It is something of a jolt to realize that, behind the gentle acoustic guitars, the lyrics are exclusively about Devil-worship and black magic, while the alluring Miss Dawson’s vocals give the effect of a demonically-possessed Join Mitchell. Ultimately, Witchcraft Destroys Minds and Reaps Souls is an interesting musical exploration of the witchcraft tradition which suffused rural America ever since the Pilgrim Fathers landed in New England over four centuries ago. #RandolphHarris 5 of 13
The infamous Salem witch-trials—which took place in Massachusetts during 1692—had been one of the last major incidents of state extermination by religious fanatics from the “Old World,” making the term “witch-hunt” synonymous with the persecution with marginalized groups. As such, it elicited the sympathy of twentieth-century hippies like Coven toward their satanic predecessors. (In sacrificing the lives of twenty suspected “witches” to the fantasies of hysterical children, it also predated the “Satanic panic” of the 1980s-90s.) Coven’s second album Blood on the Snow followed but, despite its demonic sleeve, the Satanic elements were fare more restrained. By the third album, imaginatively titled Coven, the sinister elements had all but disappeared, replaced by standard hippie material. Robbed of the distinctive image of their early days, Coven faded away. It is interesting that the British rock band Lucifer, formed in 1971, were a curious collection of characters whose sardonically-devilish promotional photos portrayed a Mansonesque image, enlisted the Devil to fight the capitalist-pig system. Lucifer issued two albums, Big Gun and Exit, and a single, entitled “F*ck You,” which was seized by the police. Most outre of the Satanic psychedelicists, Roky Erickson had been the leader of the mid-1960s Texan garage band the Thirteenth Floor Elevators until a bust for marijuana possession. Facing a long prison sentence under the Lone Star State’s sanctimonious laws, he committed himself to a psychiatric institution instead. This was a bad mistake. Three years later, in the early 1970s, the hallucinogen-loving Erickson came out of the lunatic asylum considerably more troubled than when he went in. An obscure cult figure who became known for lyrical tributes to his favorite 1950s horror movies, in the hospital he had formed a close relationship with his own personal Satan. “Ah’m not afraid of the Devil, the Devil is mah friend. He chose me to do his biddin’,” drawled the usual but loveable Erickson. “Those doctors and nurses…They could not mess with the Devil’s chosen one.” To cement this unholy pact, Erickson later vocalized his personal infernal visions in wildly sincere songs like “I Think of Demons” and “Don’t Shake Me Lucifer.” #RandolphHarris 6 of 13
Ny far the most interesting of the Satanic-psychedelic bands were Black Widow. Their 1970s debt album, Sacrifice, was the result of guitarist Jim Gannon’s research into the Black Arts, with occultic lyrics accompanying a blend of traditional folk music and progressive rock. The almost-ubiquitous Alex Sanders warned the band they had done their homework too well, and would attract dark forces. He was right for one, though only inasmuch as Gannon’s lyrics boast a fair degree of authenticity, and some songs—like the catchy “Come to the Sabbat”—are highly evocative of the medieval-European Satanic tradition. Other moments—like the horrible saxophone solo Satan uses to tempt some poor innocent on “Seduction”—are diabolical in a different sense. The band enhanced their image with an elaborately Satanic stage show, professionally choreographed by a Leicester theatre company, complete with sacrificial daggers and an unclothed young woman to adorn the altar (at one point this was Alex Sanders’ wife, Maxine). They reaped the reward for their oddly entertaining work, with Sacrifice reaching the top 40 in the UK album charts. However, their second album, Black Widow, lacked both the Satanic themes and the power of its predecessor. The official explanation for this was that, true to Sanders’ warning, weird things stated to happen—most alarmingly, near-fatal car crashes. (Satan seems particularly keen on causing road accidents, however much more impressive lightning bolts or stampeding elephants might seem.) What is more likely is that, like many rock bands that use powerful Satanic imagery, Black Window may have begun to believe that same imagery was holding back their career. As many have learnt to their cost, however, it is more often the other way around—few dabbling rock stars regain the early excitement once they stop playing the Devil’s music. Suffice to day, Jim Gannon, the major creative force behind the band, cannot have been unduly worried by the curse, as he tried to mount a stage musical version of the Black Widow show on Broadway. Sadly, it never came off, and Black Widow—devoid of Devil worship—dwindled into obscurity. #RandolphHarris 7 of 13
Prosaic accounts of Black Sabbath’s flirtation with occult imagery claim they were impressed by the interest Black Widow had enjoyed in their Satanic stage show. The truth is probably a combination of all these stories. Whatever, it is fair to say that intense interest in their demonic aspects surprised Black Sabbath as much as anyone else. Their eponymous 1969 debut album was recorded in to days for six hundred pounds, treated with contempt and indifference by the press, and rapidly became a commercial success. The Christian Science Monitor, or all publications, noted approvingly that the band did not “condone or promote the less seemly aspects of…an interest in occult matters.” They were right. The song “Black Sabbath” describes the narrator’s state of terror at witnessing a Black Mass. Their attitude to Satan was chiefly the traditional one of fear and loathing, their lyrics even sometime entreating listeners to turn to God as the only source of love. However, the audiences were not listening—they wanted a Satanic band, and that is what Black Sabbath ostensibly became. (Rumor has it that their management had the large cross that decorated the inside of their first album inverted without the band’s knowledge of approval.) Satan appeared in Black Sabbath’s songs as a constant source of fascination and fear, an entity who brings colour into drab existence but can also represent the overwhelming evil of the World. In the classic “War Pigs,” Satanic witched are equated with the evil of politicians and generals who callously kill millions in their power games. (According to guitarist Tony Iommi, the title was derived from “Walpurgis,” the night when evil traditionally rules the World.) However, the most fascinating manifestation of Satan in a Black Sabbath song is also the rarest: when they briefly allow the Prince of Darkness to speak for Himself. In this strange and haunting “N.I.B,” Lucifer, the creator, sings a plaintive love song to His greatest creation and fellow sufferer, humankind. (The song “Lord of this World,” also recognizes Satan as god of the Earth.) #RandolphHarris 8 of 13
N.I.B.’s title is the source of some confusion: according to drummer Bill Ward it was simply his nickname, derived from when the band were stoned and though he resembled a pen nib. Typically, the fans perceived a more Satanic significance—to them, “N.I.B” stood for “Nativity in Black.” Inevitably, the band were quizzed on such apparent occultic beliefs during interviews. “We are into God,” Iommi unhelpfully explained to which Ward added, “But sometimes I feel Satan is God.” Perhaps they were expressing the beliefs of the early Satanic Gnostic groups, fifteen hundred years before. Led Zeppelin emerged in 1968 from London’s lively rhythm and blues scene. The band took off completely and became a huge commercial success. They were also said to have a Satanic influence with their roots being in traditional black blues music—though guitarist Jimmy Page’s outfit, much closer in its sympathies to the blues than to heavy metal, was far more preoccupied with the tradition. The Devil also makes His presence felt, either as a symbol of the inevitable fate awaiting the debauched bluesman, or as the hard-living musician’s comrade and inspiration. The delta blues—the school that had the greatest influence on the rock-guitar style—became known as “the Devil’s music.” Delta bluesmen included Peetie Wheatsraw, who liked to be known as “the Devil’s Son-in-Law and High Sheriff of Hell,” and Robert Johnson. Johnson, the acoustic-playing grandfather of rock guitar, best illustrates the enduring legend of the bluesman who sold his soul to acquire musical talent. (As testified by Satanic Rock star Glenn Danzig during our interview with him: “A lot of the old blues songs are very heavily rooted in occultism. There is Robert Johnson, all the voodoo and juju stuff—‘Got my Mojo Working,’ ‘Black Cat Bone.’”) Johnson’s pact with Satan was said to be struck at the “Crossroads”—one of his best-know song, and a traditionally magical location in many cultures—and thereafter he always claimed to live, as another song put it, with a “Hellhound on My Trail.” #RandolphHarris 9 of 13
Led Zeppelin, and Jimmy Page in particular, were heavily influenced by Johnson, lifting parts of his songs for their own compositions. As with Johnson, so the popular rumour went, Led Zeppelin has made a pact with the Devil, asking the Prince of Darkness to tune their instruments in return for their souls. Only Satanic aid, reasoned the myth, could explain the enormous success the band enjoyed so rapidly, or the power involving pleasures of the flesh these modern pied pipers had over young ladies. These same legends had been linked with musicians from Robert Johnson to Elvis Presley and beyond, but with Led Zeppelin the Satanic-pact myth has proved especially enduring. If you study the supernatural, you cannot ignore evil. The “ZOSO” symbol that became Led Zeppelin’s band’s trademark was also partly derived from the work of another influential British occultist, Austin Osman Spare—a contemporary of Crowley, and occultic artist, best known for his “automatic drawing,” which he claimed worked as a conduit for supernatural forces. One more than one occasion, Page hinted that much of Led Zeppelin’s material (particularly their meditative anthem “Stairway to Heaven”) had been conceived in a similar fashion. (If you recall, this is also how Mrs. Winchester received the plan on how to build her mansion.) Kenneth Anger asked Page to record a soundtrack for his magic ritual film Lucifer Rising, but was bitterly disappointed with the results, saying, “I had asked him for intimacy and strength, rhythms and counter-rhythms. But he gave me a short fragment of chanting voices and sounds that I thought were quite sombre and morbid.” In October of 1976, the two fell out in grand style. Page threw Anger out of the basement of his London house, where he had granted the American magus use of a fil-editing suite. Anger responded with a press conference. Asked if he felt vindictive toward Page, Anger reposed, “You bet I do. I’m not a Christian turn the other cheek kind. In fact, I’m ready to throw a Kenneth Anger curse.” #RandolphHarris 10 of 13
Asked about the incident in an interview the following year, Page observed, “The whole thing about ‘Anger’s Curse,” they were just these silly little letters. God, it was all so pathetic…I had a lot of respect for him. As an occultist he was definitely in the vanguard.” Despite Page’s scepticim, many fans and commentators linked the personal tragedies that were to strike the band with some kind of hex. On 26 July 1977, vocalist Robert Plant’s young son Karac died of a respiratory infection. Three years later, on 26 September 1980, the band’s drummer, John Bonham, died after a drinking binge. Enough was enough. On 4 December 1980, it was announced that Led Zeppelin were no more. The band’s demise only served to fuel rumours. The more lurid stories held that all of Led Zeppelin, with the exception of Bonham, had signed pacts with the Devil for Earthly pleasure, supposedly explaining the drummer’s untimely death. One fanzine reported that black smoke had been seen billowing from Page’s house on the day following Bonham’s death, and that the guitarist was overheard uttering strange curses in unknown tongues. Even the mainstream press got in on the act, with the London Evening News quoting an anonymous source: “It sounds crazy, but Robert Plant and everyone around the band is convinced that Jimmy’s dabbling in black magic is responsible in some way for Bonzo’s death and for all these other tragedies.” What are we to make of the “Led Zeppelin curse”? Many young people still need to hear guitar music that conjured the Devil, and Satanic rock does show a tenacity that surprised all but its most fervent disciples. Kip Trevor from the band Black Widow tells the story about their album Sacrifice and the stage show of the same title. “There is a guy who has lost his wife as a result of an accident to do with some kind of occultic ceremony. Something goes wrong, and she is killed. He comes back through the centuries, is reborn, and remembers this in a dream. In this dream he realizes his wife can be returned to him, if he can perform another ceremony, like the one which had gone wrong. This time he would turn the tables on the Lady Astoroth, draw her, overpower her, and sacrifice her, then she would be banished and his wife would come back. #RandolphHarris 11 of 13
“So in the first song, ‘In Ancient Days,’ tells the story of this guy travelling through the centuries. Then there is the conjuration in which we bring Lady Astoroth and the girl appears. We’d have a lot of fun with that, as she would appear from all sorts of odd places, depending on where we were playing. We toured with it all over Europe for around eighteen months. When Black Widow broke up, Jim and myself went off to try and revive the idea of the occultic stage show. We spent a lot of time, money and effort on this new black magic concept, but it did not work out. Black Widow’s first album was quite an achievement, but it would have been lovely to have developed it. The problem was that the band politics got in the way—some of them wanted to be a “normal” band and thought the whole black magic thing was not them. They thought it was overshadowing their playing. The show was written with Jim’s research, using proper conjuration ceremonies. The whole thing was done authentically as we could possibly do it. We drew the magic circles, used all the props—fire, earth, water, and air. We did it exactly as you were supposed to do it. Doing that has an effect, even if it is only psychological, because you know you’re doing it in the correct fashion. You’re stepping over the line. Combined with the power of the music and the power of the audience’s involvement, weird things would happen.” God did not create the devil as such. Lucifer, one of God’s mighty cherubs, rebelled against Him and became the devil. Satan is thus the product of his own evil choice. God created a superbly beautiful and wise being and invested him with power above all the other created beings. His name, Lucifer, means “son of the morning,” “bright and shining one,” or “light bearer.” He had many angels at his beck and call and was prince over all the Earth. A fee moral agent with the power of choice, he was filled with an ambition to which he had no right—to rise above God. Unwilling to rule over the World as a vice-general under God, he became “Satan,” meaning “adversary,” or opponent. #RandolphHarris 12 of 13
There is only one devil; there are many demons. A familiar spirit in the service of Satan knows human beings so well that he can disguise himself as those people; there are different kinds of spirits—some are sensual and lewd, and others appear ethical; demons are wandering spirits belonging to the legions of Satan, a class of beings distinct from angels—some are on Earth seeking embodiment in human beings and animals, other already are imprisoned in the bottomless abyss; Satan wins followers by psychic and supernatural phenomena that approximate the power of God; Satan is a created being who presently exercises authority over his domain, the Earth realm, but he can do only what God allows him to do, and eventually he will be deprived of all power and glory. As one can see, it is not only Mrs. Winchester who had experiences with the occult, curses, and spirits. Many people have. Occasionally other theories turn up in the literature of modern parapsychology. Some speak of a magical astral World-soul. This entails the idea of an inner World in which all the occurrences of the visible World have their inner equivalent. The World-soul is supposed to be outside of our concept of space and time. The past and the future, the near and the far are said to be all on the same level. Everything is synchronized and simultaneous. A person who is capable of contacting this World-soul enables such a person to enter into a sphere of higher intelligence where the limitations of space and time no longer hold true. Prophecy is inspired either by the Holy Spirit of by the Devil. The wide scope of the occult power possessed by spiritists helps explain why they can cause so much mischief. Through the phenomena of levitation, apports, telekinesis, and materializations, it is not difficult to see how a person endowed with strong mediumistic powers can do a great deal of harm, especially in closely associated realm of magic. Genuine magic is the art of bring about results beyond humans’ power through the enlistment of supernatural agencies. Black magic deliberately involves the devil and demons, and the resulting enchantment is used for persecution and revenge. #RandolphHarris 13 of 13
Sarah Winchester was reportedly trapped in her Daisy Bedroom during the 1906 earthquake. Her workers had to pry her out of the room, and the crowbar mark is still on the door to this day… See it on the Mansion Tour!
A 160-room mansion built to appease the spirits who died at the hands of the Winchester Rifle 👻
Summoning Devils on Film and in Real Life
Much like the Winchester mansion and Mrs. Winchester, the Hellfire Clubs and medieval Sabbat believed that devils and demons should not be stern masters or slaves, but welcome house-guest, which is why Mrs. Winchester built what is now known as the Winchester Mystery House. It is easy to imagine how the combined grief of losing both a child and a spouse could be very crippling. However, if you had $20,000,000.00 (2022 inflation adjusted $556,305,882.35) and all the time in the World to help you cope, can you imagine what you would do? Mrs. Sarah L. Winchester’s response to the deaths of her child and husband left a bizarre and impressive architectural reflection of her psyche. The fascinating story of the Winchester Mystery House has its roots in the personal tragedies suffered by Mrs. Winchester and in the legacy of the Winchester rifle, “The Gun that Won the West.” The Winchester Mansion raised its castellated walls and towers in every direction commanding magnificent prospects; like emeralds in a setting of deeper green, gemmed the surface of the surface of the rural landscape and contributed to increase the beauty of scenery not surpassed in the World. Ages ago the voice of prayer and the song of praise used to ascend from this sacred estate. Presented on the estate was a happy country, none better calculated to inspire love and harmony. However, there was a lack of happiness in the circumstances of life for Mrs. Winchester. At first glance, there seems to be no degree of truth in this statement because of all the riches she inherited and her beautiful mansion. Many people assumes that for the rich, enjoying their riches, are likely to be contented and to look no further than this World. There were also a group of seven Victorian houses on the estate, not connected to the main house, of goodly size, and a Holy Cross. The seven Victorian Houses which, according to tradition, were built there under Mrs. Winchester’s direction, along with a graveyard on her 760 acres of land. #RandolphHarris 1 of 15
In the garden of the mansion was a curious stone cross, of considerable size, evidently monumental, though the inscription has been so defaced as to be illegible. On the front of the cross there is a deep indentation much resembling that made by the hoof of a cow in soft Earth, the bottom of the indentation being deepest at the sides and somewhat ridged in the middle. Concerning this cross and the depression in its face, the following legend was related by one of the farmers on the estate. “Mrs. Winchester built this mansion, houses, and the church, you see. When she lived, she owned all the land round about. But there was a devil here. If you had meet him on the grounds, you would know in a minute that it was himself and no other that was in it, and so make ready, either for to run away from him, or to fight him with praying as fast as you can, because, you see, it is no use for to strive with the devil any other way, seeing that no weapon can make the last dint on his carriage. In them days, and before the mansion was built, I am telling you, the devil was all as one as a man, a tall felly like a soldier, with a high hat coming to a pint and feathers on it, and fine boots and spurs and a short red jacket with a cloak over his shoulder and a sword by his side, as fine as any gentleman of the good old times. So he used to go about the country, desiring men and women, the latter being his choice as being easier to deceive, and taking them down with him to his own place, and it was a fine time he was having entirely, and everything his own way. As soon as Mrs. Winchester started construction on her mansion, the devil took up his quarters there, to make it as sure as he could. But when he heard what Mrs. Winchester was doing, a four-story mansion, of 500 or 600 rooms, and a nine-story observation tower, he came out to see the castle was rising before his eyes. He heard the construction singing and started cursing to himself, and at 5.13am on Wednesday April 18th, 1906, Satan stomped his cloven hoof into the ground causing a 7.9 Earthquake and brought down that tower. #RandolphHarris 2 of 15
After the Earthquake, while the devil was laying about in the bushes a-watching the work, and the tower of the big mansion was lifting itself above the trees, this time just not as high as it used to be. Everyone knows that Satan is slicker than a weasel, and has a memory like a miser’s box that takes in everything and lets nothing go out. When you do anything, sore a bit that it scrapes the devil, and he hugs it close till a time comes when he can make a club have it to bate you with, and so he does. You may think it is queer, but it is no wonder to one that understands it, for the devil can take any shape he pleases and look like any one he wants to, and so he does for the purpose of tempting us poor sinners to destruction, but there is one thing by which he always knows; when you have given up to him or when you have beaten him on the face, no matter which, he has got to throw off the disguise that is on him and show you who he is, and when he does it, it is not the elegant, dressed-up devil that you see and that I was just telling you about, but the rale, old, black anger with a rancorous, without a haporth of rages to the back of him, and his horns and tail a sticking out, and his eyes as big as an oxen’s and shinning like fire, and great bat’s wings on him, and, saving your presence, the most nefarious smell of sulfur you have smelled. However, before, he looks all right, no matter what face he has, and it is only the goodness of God that the devil is bound for to show himself to you, because, Glory be to God, it is his will that humans shall know who they are dealing with, and if they give up to the devil, and after finding out who is in it, go on with the bargain they have made, sure the fault is their own, and they go to hell with their eyes open, and if they bate him, he has got to show himself for to let them see what they have escaped. #RandolphHarris 3 of 15
Satan was flying around the Winchester mansion, there were the farmers all along the day job, and the construction workers were building as fast as they could and a bottle of holy water were at their side to throw at the devil when he would come. So he went from the and would fly back and forth watching then working, and they restored the Winchester mansion. Old beliefs die hard, especially when their speedy demise is a consummation devoutly to be wished. Magic is only a physical or psychological effect that has yet to be explained, which means for many it is uncomfortable to entertain now. All good occultists must be skeptical—believe nothing in preference to believing everything. All proto-sciences could be defined as magic. You can see the ritual chamber as a kind of intellectual decompression of chamber to prepare your mind for other atmospheres. People who limit themselves to the occult curricula and profess to be wizards are laughable—magic is an interdisciplinary pursuit. You must consider all the options—investigating like a police officer. To perform a summoning, for example, would involve finding the right environment, appropriate retrieval cues, the right atmospheric conditions. The effects of magic are demonstrable. A lot of simple magic is just to do with self-confidence, how much your antennae are up, how open you are to the World around you. Rituals and magical words are not necessary, merely tools or exercises to help train your mind. Scientists are now coming to the conclusion that there is a lot more interconnectedness between man and his environment than they originally supposed, which is a basic occultic concept. The only really dangerous characters are the ones who think they are generational Satanists and their grandfather told them with his dying breath what to do, or whatever. There are a lot of armies of one out there, a lot of coffee-bar revolutionaries. New information technology has bred a lot of desktop Satanists and bulletin boards mean that cyberspace seems to be just full of Satanists. The Christian heretics rarely get much further than designing letterheads. #RandolphHarris 4 of 15
Many Satanists are fans of people like Paris Hilton and Britney Spears and applaud their outrageous sexuality. They are also huge fans of Aaliyah for making that film Queen of the Damned. Many Satanists are quietly applying Church of Satan philosophy to their lives in their own fashion in a very real way. The best thing they could ask for is that people pass them a nod of respect. In the modern World, the spirit of the age often looms down upon us in strange, distorted forms from the cinema screen. Major production companies spend millions of dollars trying to trap the latest cultural trends on celluloid, while audiences make surprise blockbusters from movies which—accidentally or otherwise—tap into the anxieties and enthusiasms of the day. In the late 1960s and 1970s, 2000s the films which came to be regarded as four “Satanic blockbusters”—Rosemary’s Baby (1968), The Exorcist (1973), The Omen (1976), and Queen of the Damned (2002)—all took the box-office by storm, transforming themselves into cultural phenomena which attracted public interest far beyond that of most “mere” films. Cinema has been the most potent legend factory of the centuries. Despite constant predictions that TV would devour the silver screen, the spectable and ceremony of the cinema helped retain its status as the most sacred of modern temples. Film presents a super real version of the World—louder, larger, essentially more mythic. More people take cues on how to live, love, fight—even on how to die—from the silver screen than from the pulpit or the gospels. Pagan worship is alive and well and being practised at your local multiplex, with Hollywood stars as the gods of our age. And, just as cinema has given us new gods, so it has supplied us with a new hierarchy of devils. The relationship between Satan and the silver screen is a notable one. The father of fantastic cinema was a Frenchman named Georges Melies, who made delightful short films crawling with demons and devils. Melies was himself a Faustian figure, a stage conjurer and photographic illusionist who appeared out of the rump of the French Decadent era. Summoning devils on film, he defended this new sorcery in time-honoured fashion as “white magic.” #RandolphHarris 5 of 15
In The Laboratory of Mephistopheles (1897), Melies made Satan’s head detach itself and float around the room—to the enchantment and horror of audiences in darkened “picture palaces, resembling nothing so much as séance chambers. Hollywood’s dream factory was not even at the planning stage by the turning of the century, but the pioneer of US cinema, Edwin Porter (partner of the man who virtually invented the movies, Thomas Edison), produced his own version of Faust and Marguerite in 1900. The most striking cinematic fantasies came from Germany at this point—stark, angular exercises in shadow and nightmare. The Student of Prague was an updated version of the well-worn Faust tale, based on an Edgar Allan Poe story, which transformed the lead from an ambitious academic to a devil-may-care student and Mephistopheles into a rakish devil called Scapinelli. The story was retold onscreen in 1913, 1926, and 1936. The 1926 version was by the master of German Expressionist cinema, F.W. Murnua—the last film he made before leaving his artistic roots for Hollywood, where he met with a tragically early death. As a minor masterpiece, it was a suitably grandiose climax to a career which produced Nosferatu (1922), the first gothic vampire film. Now, it is always important to be safe on the road and sometimes to listen to the heartfelt advice of others. Jayne Mansfield, a buxom B-move actress died in a tragic car crash with her lawyer in and lover Sam Brody. Brody had disliked his beloved’s new guru from the start, and the friction led to LaVey placing a ritual curse on his rival. The Black Pope (Anton LaVey) warned the pugnacious lawyer—known to be a dangerous driver—that he would suffer a series of automobile accidents. It was no great surprise when a car crash ensued—but it made World headlines for taking the life of Jayne Mansfield, as well as the top of her cranium. LaVey grimly stated that on the night preceding the crash, as he cut out a newspaper clipping of Jayne, he accidently snipped off the top of the blonde beauty’s head. (By the way, I had no idea The Black Pope was dead, until today. I feel he is very much still alive. I have always felt like he is here, in San Francisco in his black church.) #RandolphHarris 6 of 15
The physical phenomena of spiritism are often closely connected with psychical manifestations, such as spiritistic visions, automatic writing, speaking in a trance, materializations, table lifting, tumbler moving and excursions of the psyche. There is no doubt that today, as in the time of Isaiah (Isaiah 6.1-5), Ezekiel (Ezekiel 1.4-28), Paul (Acts 9.1-8), Peter (Acts 10.9-16), and John (Revelation 1.10-18), God may give His people a genuine vision, particularly in great times of great stress. However, genuine experiences of this nature are always accompanied by true spiritual grace and modesty. Sensationalism betrays a lack of authenticity. Unfortunately, genuine experiences are rare, and counterfeit ones about. Christian counselors find that the “ratio is about nine to one over the genuine experiences.” Mrs. Winchester used to have visions. She reported that she saw visions of Christ at night, and it left her feeling a sense of uneasiness and fear. The so-called visions of Christ were mediumistic. They came as a warning. Weeks after the visions started, Mrs. Winchester saw her husband William Wirt Winchester’s spirit departing from his body as he expired in 1881. The visions of Mrs. Winchester bear evidence of the occult, as do the visions of Joseph Smith (1805-1844), who fathered Mormonism. Many of the founders and promulgators of modern cults have had alleged visions from God. However, some say these visions promote “doctrines of demons” (1 Timothy 4.1) among the credulous and those unable to discern spirits (1 Corinthians 12.10; 1 John 4.1-2). When humans depart from God’s Word, they supposedly expose themselves to demon imposture and deception. Automatic writing—some persons endowed with mediumistic powers are able—either in a waking state or trance to write letters, words, or sentences which spiritists consider to be message from the spirit World. This is how Mrs. Winchester came up with the architecture of her mansion, the blueprints were often dictated to her in her Blue Séance room as she took down the notes on napkin. Also, the persistent pain in her legs and back vanished whenever she sat down and dictated these blueprints. #RandolphHarris 7 of 15
One day as Mrs. Winchester was taking dictation, a spirit named Apollonius Tyannaeus appeared and said, “In the name of the Lord Jesus, our blessed and exalted Savior.” The spirit then told the woman that she had been chosen by God for special revelations. She would become a prophetess and bless humankind with these revelations. The case is patently that of a simple farm woman turned indeed into a spiritistic writing medium. Rudolf Tischner, a parapsychologist, points out the danger of automatic writing when practiced in immoderation. Although he regards these writing phenomena only as “motoric break up the integrated psychic structure with ensuing peril to mental and physical health. This simply means that occult enslavement can result from mediumistic writing, or from dependence upon the Ouija board or other spiritistic devices to obtain alleged messages from the spirit World. Speaking in a trance—a trance is a condition in which a spiritistic medium loses consciousness and passes under the control of demonic power to effect alleged communication with the dead. The demon (or demons) takes over and actually speaks through the spiritistic medium, deceptively imitating the deceased. As a result this ruse innumerable spiritistic clairvoyants claim communication with the dead, often with famous deceased people allegedly appearing to speak to the living. One evening, Mrs. Winchester went into a trace and soon the “Apostle Paul” approached and preached to the audience. The apostle was not visible but only spoke through the medium who lay in trance. Some critic said it was only another constant instance of deception by demons who ape the deceased but cannot produce them. Other believe it was real. Perhaps the most remarkable phenomena of spiritism are materializations. These are supernatural appearances and disappearances of material images in connection with the activities of a spiritistic medium. #RandolphHarris 8 of 15
Materializations have been exhaustively studied and photographed and have been found to be manifestations of various degrees of teleplastic morphogenesis. The first stage is the evolution of a gauzelike substance of rubbery consistency from the body cavities of the medium. The second stage is the forming of the various parts of the body in outline—arms, head, etcetera. Frequently in the case of teleplastic forms of this kind, a threadlike connection is maintained with the medium. The third stage consists of the composition into completely outlined forms, which are visible as phantoms near the medium. These three stages of materialization manifest purely visual phenomena. The fourth stage displays telekinetic phenomena. There is an energy output from the teleplasm (telekinesis), such as the ringing of a bell, at night, passers-by heard ghostly music wafting from the dark mansion. The bell in the belfry high in the gables tolled regularly at midnight to summon incoming flights of spirits. Later it tolled again to warn these visitors to return to their sepulchers. However, once a week, these departed ones relaxed and danced in the Great Ball Room. In other stages of materializations come automatic writing of a typewriter, and the automatic playing of a musical instrument. In addition to the active energy output of the materialization, there is frequently a passive pain experience of the teleplasm. The fifth stage of the materialization is the penetration of material substance. To his phase belong “apports,” that is, the appearing and disappearing of objects in closed rooms or chests and containers. From locked and cemented containers, for example, enclosed coins are brought out, or stones and other objects fall inexplicably from the ceiling. This often happens in the Winchester mansion, as documented by Mrs. Winchester. In this stage many mediums allegedly have the ability to penetrate solid material substance while they are in a trance. While Mrs. Winchester sat in a small cabinet, a phantom built itself up on the floor outside the cabinet and formed itself into a male person, who moved in and out among the participants of the séance. While the materialization extended his hand to one of those present and she held it, dematerialization began to occur before the eyes of all the participants. Soon there was only a lump on the floor and this rolled up into the cabinet. #RandolphHarris 9 of 15
Another example is during a séance, Mrs. Winchester was able to call and help the materializing of the spirit of the deceased German romantic poet, Johann Ludwig Uhland (1787-1862). At the memorable séance a white phantasm was seen, from which the audience demanded a poem. Instead of reciting a poem, the phantasm tore a page from a book in the library. With a pencil from a briefcase in the room, secured through the leather without opening the briefcase, the hand jotted down a few verses and vanished. The page was left and still exists. The examination of the mysterious writing by a graphologist proved to be sensational. He confirmed the ghost writing to be actually the handwriting of the deceased poet. Afterward there was a trial in Berlin over the ownership of the page. The court awarded it to the medium, who afterward kept it among her prized possessions. The phenomena of materialization and dematerialization in case of strong mediums illustrated the conversion of psychic energy into matter and matter changed back again into psychic energy. The problem is illustrated by nuclear physics. Einstein’s formula (E==MC^2), energy is equal to mass times the speed of light squared, simply declares that it is theoretically possible to convert energy to mass and back again to energy. We have historical evidence of materializations. Missionaries claim that Mrs. Winchester’s mansion was never actually built, but that it materialized itself on the grounds, and (re)construction only began after the Earthquake caused by Satan. Some say this mansion is to be regarded as a miracle of Satan (2 Thessalonians 2.8-10; Revelation 13.15). Many people used to wonder how Mrs. Winchester used to travel so fast back and forth from San Jose to San Francisco to pick up items she ordered from overseas. Researchers believed that she would be spiritually transported miles away, and this may have been an example of this phenomenon or simply a miracle of transportation of unaltered physical body. It is debatable rather if these are miracles of God or that of Satan. God says He is the Alpha and the Omega. I wonder what that means? #RandolphHarris 10 of 15
Mrs. Winchester was said to possess tremendous occult gift and was reported to be able to make tables fly through the air for a space of one hundred feet. Above all, she was extremely adept in telekinesis, materialization, levitation, and black magic. Where Satan’s power remains virtually unchecked, miracles of evil supernaturalism abound. In Victorian days, the supernatural predated the mass hysteria about Satanism. As you may know, long before Mrs. Winchester arrived in California, there was a Devil worshipping conspiracy at large. However, her mansion seamlessly blends the ordinary and nightmarishly surreal. It is a rare treat for fans of demonic conspiracy and occult synchronicity. Some people have believed themselves to be demonically possessed after visiting the Winchester Mystery House, others claimed to have spoken to Mrs. Winchester directly. Directors of the Queen of the Damned claimed that the film was a makeshift occultic ritual, and Aaliyah unleashed the demon within herself. They also said the film poses some kind of supernatural power and they had to edit and voiceover a lot of the footage because not only did the characters act their own version of the script, but there were also some subliminal sounds and images on print. When many of these errors were re-examined, they also saw footage of the original Winchester mansion on the negatives, but rumors began that the original print had been withdrawn, replaced by an expurgated cut to protect the filmgoers from the movie’s insidious effects. The powers behind these manifestations were no doubt demonic. The director faced a terrible psychic assault on 25th August 2001, before they finished filming the movie. However, when the reel was played, the directors found they had all the footage they needed, even some they did not remembering filming. It was so intensified that the demonic oppression became that he was compelled to give up making other Anne Rice books into movies, especially after Aaliyah’s plane crashed later that evening. Although the film was unfished, with the blessing of her family, it was released to the public in February of 2002. #RandolphHarris 11 of 15
Certain psychic clairvoyants claim that their souls can travel great distances at their command. They always said she makes a room come alive. Much like Mrs. Winchester, Aaliyah had a lot of psychic phenomena around her death. When directors took photos of Aaliyah and Queen Akasha to a clairvoyant, while concentrating on the photographs, the medium declared that one of the women was apparently dead, while the other one, reportedly killed in 2001, was still alive. After more concentration, the clairvoyant said: “I can get in touch with this woman (pointing to Queen Akasha). I see her in a great stone building southeast of Ireland.” By psychic excursion and by psychometry (selecting an object belonging to the missing person and beginning to search from there) the clairvoyant was able to establish contact by occult assistance. The cinema is the Devil’s lantern. In March of 1922, Mrs. Winchester said, “Though it should be borne in the mind that in the persecution of witches many women were put to death on the latter charge, albeit they were really benefactors of the human race; the more so as their skill in simples and knowledge of the medicinal virtue of herbs must have added in no small degree to the resources of our present pharmacopoeia.” In August of 1807 an extraordinary affair took place in the house of Mrs. Winchester. She had a cow which continued to give milk as usual, but of late no butter could be produced from it. An opinion was unfortunately instilled into the mind of Mrs. Winchester, that whenever such a thing occurred, it was occasioned by the cow having been bewitched. Her belief in this was strengthened by the fact that every woman on this estate was able to relate some story illustrative of what she had seen or heard of in times gone by with respect to the same. At length the Mrs. Winchester was informed of a woman named Mary Butters, who resided in Oakland at the Cohen Bray House. Mrs. Winchester went to her, and brought her to mansion for the purpose of curing the cow. About ten o’ clock that night war was declared against the unknown magicians. #RandolphHarris 12 of 15
Mary Butters ordered old Klaus and a young man named Konrad to go out to the cow-house, turn their waistcoats inside out, and in that dress to stand by the head of the cow until she sent for them, while the butler, the made, and an old woman named Klara Lee remained in the house with her. Klaus and his ally kept their lonely vigil until daybreak, when, becoming alarmed at receiving no summons, they left their post and knocked at the door, but obtained no response. They then looked through the kitchen window, and to their horror saw the four inmates stretched on the floor as dead. They immediately burst in the door, and found that the butler and the maid were actually dead, and the sorceress and Mrs. Winchester nearly so. The latter soon afterwards expired; Mary Butters was thrown out on a dung-heap, and a restorative administered to her in the shape of a few hearty kicks, when had the desired effect. The house had a sulphureous smell, and on the fire was a large pot in which were milk, needles, pins, and crooked nails. At the inquest held at the Winchester mansion on the 19th of August, Jurors stated that the three victims had come by their deaths from suffocation, owning to Mary Butters having made use of some noxious ingredients, after the manner of a charm, to recover the sick cow. She was up to The Great Asylum for the Insane, but was discharged by proclamation. Her various of the story was that a black man (usually indicates a demon or the devil, not one of African descent) was summoned through the floor with a huge club, with which he killed the three person and stunned herself. This paranoid horror fantasies terrified the congregations, as well as the gross superstition displayed by the participants as for its tragical ending, yet it seems to have aroused no feelings in the greater community than those of risibility and derision. However, there is also another version of events. #RandolphHarris 13 of 15
A farm-hand had brought an action against Mrs. Winchester for wages alleged to be due to him. It transpired in the course of the evidence that on one occasion he had been set to banish witches that were troubling the cows. His method of working illustrates the Winchester case. All left the house except Mrs. Winchester, and the farm-hand, who locked himself in, closed the windows, stopped al keyholes and apertures, and put sods on top of the chimneys. He then placed a large pot of sweet milk on the fire, into which he threw rows of pins that had never been used, and three packages of needles; all were allowed to boil together for half an hour, and, as there was no outlet for the smoke, the farm-hand narrowly escaped being suffocated. If the forces of darkness triumph, it is a warning not a celebration. Many religious people come close to depicting what evangelists are preaching from their pulpits, or TV shows. Does it not seem strange for fundamentalist Christians to attack them as sinful and dangerous? Sin sells, in a way that the bland platitudes of Christian morality never will. Many of these popular and historical figures will be remember long after the credits have rolled. You could say that it is an “inside job.” Satanism sells, it captures the metaphysics of fear. People like to be haunted and scared, but only when they consent to it. No one wants their house broken into, their children kidnapped, their cars constantly vandalized, or to be attack by a hate group who haunts them like demons of the night. People simply want to tune into a scarry movie or visited a haunted house and leave the fear behind when they walk out the door or turn the TV off. They do not want to fear for the lives like Sharon Tate did for years without anyone to protect them. Humans are often more harmful than any ghost, devil or demon you can ever imagine meeting. Satan, speaking through a beautiful serpent—perhaps as a parakeet “talks” to us—promises know that would make Eve “like God” if she would eat the fruit of the tree forbidden by God. #RandolphHarris 14 of 15
Meanwhile, if the view of the power and knowledge of the people is that “Satan” is evil and not themselves, what can human beings do? Persist being evil, or resist the “devil,” and allow him to feel from them? Or is it they cling to evil because the darkness comes from their insidious mind and depleted soul? Note that it is useless to try to resist the devil unless you have first submitted yourself to God! Maybe YOU are the evil, not Satan. Sitting there, manufacturing all these evil days, so you can laugh at the pain and suffering you have inflicted on others to make yourself feel better. Is that of Satan, or is that YOUR nature on display. It is estimated that there are about 100 million adherents to spiritism in the World. The word “spiritism” comes from the Latin “spiritus,” spirit. The movement of spiritism represents the endeavour to communicate with the dead in the spirit World. Historically, spiritism can also be traced back over thousands of years. We have testimonies concerning it in the Old Testament in 1 Samuel 28, and Deuteronomy 18. It is also evidenced in the history of the Christian Church. Spiritism seems to be strongly connected with religion and religions. In so-called Christian countries such a variety of spiritistic forms, and such a range of associated psychic troubles exist, that the need for clarification is a pressing issue. What God do you really worship for “Satan disguises himself as an angel of the light. So it is not strange if his servants also disguise themselves as servants of righteousness,” reports 2 Corinthians 11.14-15. In other words, many of you Christians who claim to serve “God” do evil things and then blame the devil when you are disguising yourselves as children of the light. And you do not repent because you do not fear punishment nor hell, so you must be children of your “devil” and not of God. We live in a World which has turned its back on God. The reason some people fear Jesus is because they feel unworthy, it is not because they are evil. This conviction of inner unworthiness is not to be confused with a feeling of fear. However, people who suffer from schizophrenia and like to go around lying, the psychiatrist will be interested in the question whether the practicing of spiritism was rather the effect than the cause of the ensuing mental and emotional disorders. #RandolphHarris 15 of 15
Winchester Mystery House
The front gardens of the Winchester Mystery House looked different in the 1970’s! The gardens were restored to what they are today about ten years later.
The sign reads: “The world’s oddest, mysterious, weirdest, and freakish dwelling. Planned and built by Sarah L. Winchester of Winchester Rifle Fame”
Have you ever listened to Alessandro Moreschi sing “Ave Maria,” at night in the Winchester Mystery House? Try it and let me know what you experience. I heard ghosts appear, people have cried and screamed, and some love it. I think I would probably run outside. He sounds like a ghost.
Come Explore the Victorian Gardens this weekend! Open all weekend until 4PM.
A 160-room mansion built to appease the spirits who died at the hands of the Winchester Rifle 👻
When Did the Vortex of Fear First Catch Hold of Mrs. Winchester?
Long before Mrs. Sarah Winchester’s arrival, there were rumors of occult activity on the California cost. One told of a cult near Santa Cruz. They supposedly sacrificed animals and drank their blood in beach-side barbecues, where ritual fire-dancing tuned the attendees into “slaves of Satan.” More elaborate variation suggested that the slaves of Satan performed human sacrifices on an ornate altar decorated with dragons. The bizarre ritual dagger used for these purposes had six blades like a Satanic Swiss army knife: most were used to puncture the stomach before the last skewered the heart, which the cultist then ate. The victim was then disposed of in a portable crematorium—an improbable device that was a Standard prop in Satanic ritual-slaying myths. Yet, even with things like this going on, Mrs. Winchester’s arrival to California was a sensational event. Our valley was thrilled by this dramatic entrance of a millionairess; by those freight cars sidetracked in Santa Clara, unloading rich imported furnishings; by building activities that mushroomed a farm house into an expansive mansion in the first six months. As the years passed and new towers, gables rose, gardens bloomed, and trees sprouted. The terraces were generally about twenty feet high. Town’s people would see fairies dancing on the grass every night by the light of the moon, and stealing away children. Many of the ones they took never came back. At night passers-by heard ghostly music wafting from the dark mansion. Diablo Mountain Range was full of dead, and after nightfall they would come from their graves and walk in a long line one after another to the old mansion in the valley where they would go in and stay until they bell in the belfry high in the gables tolled. Then bats, owls, and horses with wings would return to the top of the mountain range. #RandolphHarris 1 of 3
There was certainly an evil spirit that was always in mischief. Mrs. Winchester built a door-to-nowhere in her labyrinth, and with one step out that door, one would go down a thousand feet into the field. Sometimes Satan Himself would be there at the entertainment, coming and a monstrous dragon, with green scales and eyes like lightening in the Heavens, roaring his fiery mouth. It was a great thing, for they do say all the witches brough their reports with them to show him what they had done. Some would report how they stopped the weather in the spring, an inconvenienced the neighbors, more would show how they dried the cow’s milk, and made her kick the pail, and they laughed and split. Some had blighted the corn, more had brought rain on the harvest. Some witches told hoe their enchantments made the children fall ill, or how they stole the eggs, or spoiled the cream in the churn, or bewitch the butler. It was impossible to say exactly when the vortex of fear first caught hold of the Mrs Winchester. One night in the hellishly-hot hall of fires, a young man by the name of John Wise was a ranch hand for Mrs. Winchester. However, he had eyes for one of her servant Clara Haralson. She was socially higher than himself. Normally he would have had little success. But to arrive at his goal, summon the devil by reciting this very spell, “Come Thou Forth, and follow Me: and make all Spirits subject unto Me so that every Spirit of the Winchester and of the Ether: upon the Earth and under the Earth: on dry Land, or in the Water: of whirling Air or of rushing Fire: and every Spell and Scourge of God, may be obedient unto Me! John then cut his finger and wrote a contract in his own blood on a piece of paper. In this way he tried to obtain the help of some love magic. #RandolphHarris 2 of 3
John fell asleep on the sofa in the hall of fire, to find a demon with long finger nails tapping on his head. “What do you want?” he beathed at the intruder. “I am the Devil and I have come to do the Devil’s work,” responded the demon, as he kissed him on the forehead, and vanished. After a while he became scared. Nevertheless, John proposed to Clara and they were married. She was a very pretty young woman. The mother began to suffer from a state of anxiety and she started seeing ghost at night and feeling an unseen power which seemed to try to strangle her. A black figure often appeared in her room. She had a feeling that it wanted to kill her. One night in particular the door to her chambers opened and the demon entered her room, her whole body shook and she was terribly frightened, without a greeting he demanded to know what was going. Clara had been praying for a healthy delivered. The demon struck her with evil gaze and departed. When she gave birth to twins, they were both horribly disfigured. Clara was so distressed that she cut her wrists and died. John continued to suffer as he had done so ever since his subscription to the devil. One night while he was putting the horses in the stables, witches tore him limb from limb, and the fiends drunk his blood in red-hot iron noggins with shrieks of laughter to smother his screams, and the horses jumped on his body and trampled it into the ground. A committee Mrs. Winchester assembled consisting of a professor, an engineer, and a philologist who was conversant with parapsychological phenomena, was delegated to examine the strange events in the haunted mansion. Their research disclosed that the eighteen-year-old boy was a strong spiritistic medium. Although occult literature is full of examples of table lifting, dark shadows, and demons appearing, these forms of spiritistic practice have found many critics and who do not take into account the reality of demon spirits. #RandolphHarris 3 of 3
Winchester Mystery House
A 160-room mansion built to appease the spirits who died at the hands of the Winchester Rifle 👻What do you think motivated Sarah Winchester to keep building?
▪️ 24,000 square feet
▪️ 10,000 windows
▪️ 2,000 doors
▪️ 160 rooms
▪️ 52 skylights
▪️ 47 stairways and fireplaces
▪️ 17 chimneys
▪️ 13 bathrooms
▪️ 6 kitchens
Will we be seeing you on the estate this week?
Randolph Harris II International Institute 