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She Had Better Stop and Take a Good Look at Herself

With all the changes and challenges you face each day, there has never been a greater need to take the time to determine your priorities. The art of being wise is to know what to overlook. In 1993 Mexico signed the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with the United States of America and Canada. Within seven years, 3,500 maquiladora plants manufacturing everything from furniture to apparel to TV sets had sprung up along Mexico’s U.S. border, creating 1.4 million new, mainly assembly-line jobs for workers drawn from all parts of Mexico, and they important more than $51 billion in supplies into Mexico. However, in the late 1990s, with Guangdong and, indeed, all of China now competing in the cheap-labor derby, and estimated 250,000 to 300,000 of those Mexican jobs followed the great circle route across the Pacific. That put Alejandro Bustamante in a spot. When his employer, Plantronics, a leading manufacturer of telephone accessories, received an order, it called Mr. Bustamante. Although he ran the firm’s three factories in Tijuana, Mexico, he was told he must compete for each contract just like anyone else. However, Mr. Bustamante paid his workers an average of $2.20 an hour (including benefits) and had to bid against a Chinese manufacturer whose employees average only about 60 cents, which was nearly four times less than the Mr. Bustamante’s employees earned. There is nothing unique or new about that. Many maquiladora operators in norther Mexico face Chinese competition. However, what especially irked Mr. Bustamante was that the Chinese rival he faced was, in fact, itself also owned by Plantronics. This may be a case of serial outsourcing—sending jobs to China that had already been outsourced to Mexico. Outsourcing, while involving a small percentage of all jobs, has aroused fierce condemnation and prompted so much media coverage that there is no reason here to recap the familiar arguments, beyond recognizing that it is part of a much larger pattern of change in the spatial distribution of wealth and wealth creation. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18

Outsourcing enrages the critics of re-globalization who insist that it creates an unstoppable, brutalizing “race to the bottom.” They typically contend that companies go where labor costs are lowest and are ready to pick up and spatially relocate at a moment’s notice. If this were true, it would be easy to forecast where wealth is heading. It would be good news for African, which can offer a big pool of available labor at the lowest wages on Earth. (Africans should cheer each time workers in Asia join unions and drive wages up.) If labor cost were the sole consideration, why have not all those factories now in China wound up in Africa instead? The fact is that even for low-tech work, labor is cost, if ever, the exclusive basis for a company’s decision to relocate. Africa’s endless violence and war, inadequate infrastructure, stratospheric levels of violence, ravaging illnesses, and shameful regimes may rule out significant investment no matter what wage level. However, China has maintained its position as the largest investor in Africa over the last ten years by the number of new jobs created (18,562 on average), with a gradual substantial increase of newly created jobs on a yearly basis. China has spent 27 percent of its investments in Africa. Furthermore, since 2000, China’s foreign direct investment (FDI) flows to Africa have grown at an average annual rate of 40 percent, overtaking U.S. FDI in 2012. In 2019, FDI flows reached $2.7 billion, with the top destinations being the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Angola, two mineral-rich nations. China is also making space along a 30-mile coastline, in Africa, North of Dar Es Salaam, to make space for a $10 billion Chinese-built mega-port and a special economic zone backed by an Omani sovereign wealth fund. It seems Africa has more than just diamonds, gold, other precious minerals, people and animals that World wants to exploit. There are unspoiled beaches and bays; and lush vegetation. If the project goes ahead as planned, Bagamoyo will be transformed into the largest port in Africa. There is even talk of an international airport. #RandolphHarris 2 of 18

Many villagers have already accepted compensation for the loss of their homes. This portion in African is supposed to be as prosperous as Shenzhen, China. Shenzhen, in southeastern China, is a modern metropolis that links Hong Kong to China’s mainland. Over the past 40 years, the establishment of the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone (SEZ), has been a transformation of Shenzhen from a fishing village to a metropolis of innovation. The total investment has been $28 billion USD. Shenzhen has also nurtured some World leading technology firms including Huawei, DJI, and Tencent. The sector has emerged as the pillar industry of the city. As a matter of fact, a total of $4.27 billion USD, was invested in research and development, putting it on the top list of the country. In addition to this, the city has seen 17,500 international patents filed, accounting for one third of the national total. So this is what could be done in Africa, and it is important to keep an eye on the moves of China because they could become the World leader by investing in and colonizing foreign markets, with the large population. Another thing, with China colonizing Africa, it will also become a melting pot and the standard of beauty will change from the traditional European standard and shift to value other features. The race-to-the-bottom theory, moreover, presupposes that workers are essentially interchangeable—which may largely be true in repetitive, assembly-line operations. The higher up the skill ladder one goes in a knowledge-based economy, however, the less valid it becomes. As the knowledge components of wealth creation—marketing, finance, research, management, communication, I.T., vendor and distributor relations, regulatory compliance, legal affairs and other nontangibles—all grow in complexity and importance, workers, like the work itself, become less interchangeable and the required skill sets more temporary. If they extrapolate tomorrow’s economy from existing or projected wage levels alone, attempts to forecast which cities, regions or, for that matter, countries will become the next Guangdong will be inaccurate and the speculations are doomed to fail. #RandolphHarris 3 of 18

Any such simplistic analysis becomes even more questionable because, where economies are transitioning from smokestacks and assembly lines to knowledge-based production, we are already radically changing the very criteria by which a location, city, region or country becomes a high-value-added place. What we are about to see is less racing to the bottom and more of a race to the top. To anticipate tomorrow’s surprising geography—including the location of high-pay jobs, prime real estate, business opportunities, wealth and power—another key point needs to be understood: We are changing not merely the where of wealth but they why—the criteria by which we value places. And that further changes the where. Seeking to woo industry in 1955, the state government of Indiana placed an advertisement in Fortune listing its economic advantages. These, it claimed, included low-cost coal, limestone, white clay, aluminum, gypsum, rock asphalt, dolomite, fluorspar, water, sand, gravel, wood, corn, soybeans and easy access to the Ohio River. In addition, it promised an “enviable strike and lockout record”—that is, a weak or dormant labor movement. That was then. Today Indiana’s development council boasts of breaking away from “over-reliance on traditional industries.” No limestone here. Inc. tells American small-business leaders that the “best” place to “start or grow a company” is Phoenix, Arizona, because of its growing high-tech workforce, sunny climate, renovated art museum and “four major sports franchises.” A group called the Small Business Survival Committee concludes that the place to invest is South Dakota because it imposes the fewest costs on business in the form of taxes, minimum-wage laws, number of state employees and the like. Still another rating system bases its conclusions about the future on the age and growth rate of companies in any given location. A contributor to Microsoft’s bCentral.com then confects a hybrid index out of these last two methods and concludes that Nevada is the place to pull out your wallet. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18

Citing the 1955 Indiana ad in 2002 study called the “State New Economy Index,” Robert D. Atkinson and Rick Coduri of the Progressive Policy Institute write: “In an economy in which fewer than 20 percent of economic activity consists of creating, processing, or moving physical goods, access to raw materials, transportation and markets means less. As an increasing share of economic inputs and outputs are in the form of electronic bits, the old locational factors diminish in importance.” Take, for example, nearness—proximity. Some economists today believe that because Mexico is so close to American markets, it can beat Chinese competitors in the long run. They assume that distance still plays the same role it did before the knowledge economy arrived. However, thanks to information intensive technologies, products are becoming smaller and lighter every day. To rely on proximity means, to the degree that transportation costs matter, that Mexico’s advantage would apply to the older, bigger, bulkier, heavier physical products—precisely those now being replaced. And it means still less to high-value-added intangible services whose transportation costs have little or nothing to do with distance—finance, software, satellite TV, airline reservations, music and the like. Continuing to count on proximity will set Mexico even farther behind—and keep it there. Today, in their race to the top, competing states boast less about limestone and coal than about their great universities, low communication costs, advanced technology, frequent airline service, low crime, good climate and superior quality of life. The economy has been transformed along with workers’ values and way of life. The very categories with which we describe spatial units and relationships change as new economic networks emerge. We are seeing, for example, the rise of an entire ecology of airports linked to one another more strongly than with their local and national governments. Each airport is increasingly surrounded by its own ring of shopping malls, conference centers, 24/7 gyms, chapels, post offices, dentists and doctors, rooftop pools and luxury hotels. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18

The result has been a sprint—no longer just in the United States of America—to create what might be called higher-value-added places tht will attract the brightest, most creative workforce capable of producing knowledge-intensive, higher-value-added products and drawing businesses from around the World. The historical shift toward Asia, the digitalization of many economic functions, the emergence of cross-national regions and the change in the criteria by which we value place or location are all parts of a larger transformation in our relations with the deep fundamental of space. They merely form the background against which even bigger changes loom. One’s stumblings and one’s falling may depress one’s heart and reduce one’s aspiration. They may deter one’s will from further endeavour. For those monsters of hate and cruelty, either utterly materialistic and God-denying or fanatic and taking the name of God in vain, there is no shelter where they can hide once they are forced across the barrier of death. The qualities of determination, intelligence, and persistence—so useful in philosophy—can be used for good or evil. They can make a more successful criminal as well as a better philosopher. The upsurge of well-thought-out, daring, resourceful, and highly ambitious crime in modern times is a sign of misapplied powers, while its violence is a sign of merciless egocentricity. The end for such persons is commensurate. Then many come a crippling deformation future birth, or a sudden and radical awakening to the grave peril toward which they are heading—and a change of course to a better life. The unfortunate experiences which sometimes befall an individual’s Worldly life are, or may be, partly indued by one’s own psychic practices of the period immediately preceding them. One may have been drawn into a vortex of psychic evil which has harmed one’s spiritual life and brought suffering into one’s Worldly existence. What are the inner causes which can produce these dismal outer effects? Here are come of them: shock, worry, fear, resentment, anger, excessive, criticism, condemnation of others. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18

The English woman novelist named Ouida, who wrote during the earlier part of this century, was so successful that she became the highest-paid fiction writer of her time. Yet when she died she was alone, penniless, half-blind, and dwelling in a back alley of Viareggio, Italy. Why? She was brilliant, fluent, and vibrant in her style, but most of her written work was scathing, bitter, highly critical, filled with prejudices and even hates. To what extent did a mind and heart holding so many negatives contribute to these unpleasant results? Yet she was unquestionably a lady in manners, breeding, dress, and way of life. She wrote her letters and even her manuscripts on the finest quality paper. She was highly independent and refused an offer to write her own life story, even though a substantial amount of money was the prize. Her reply was that it would be lowering herself to feed her own egotism and vanity to do so! It is quite true and utterly obvious that bad physical conditions make their contribution also, but it I even more true that bad inner conditions are the fundamental causes which turn outward remedies to disappointments in the end. Blind selfishness brings mutilated lives and ugly minds. Pessimism is practical defeatism and psychological suicide. It is the child of despair and the parent of dissolution. If we make room in our minds for negative, bitter thoughts of complaint, outrage, or injury against those who mistreat us, we shall not be free and will remain unable to find peace. Beware of giving birth to thoughts of hate, envy, malice, or wrath and sending them to another person. For they will reach one, yes, but will then return like a boomerang to their source. Wicked humans may gain the fruits of their aggressions and desires, may win victories over others, but at the end they are destroyed at the roots. The coldly calculated torture of animals in the name of scientific progress must be paid for in different degrees by those who allow it as well as by those who perpetrate it. The practice of vivisection is a sinful one. The humans who do it will have to pay the penalty one day, quite often by being born into a maimed and hurt body. Some among them, who gradually lose every vestige of pity from their character, become heartless monsters. #RandolphHarris 7 of 18

Through violent aggression whereby impassioned men seek to destroy others, they work their own destruction—at first moral, in the end, physical. These undesirable thoughts and feelings are bad for others as well as oneself, besides wasting so much of one’s own energies. An evil human’s mistakes sometimes strike back at one later when one least expects them, and can least afford them. Is it prudent to heed all this talk of coming calamity? Is it a mistake to read material speculating on its likelihood or imagining its horrors? Each person must answer such a question for oneself, but the philosophic person approaches it in a different manner. On general principles one dislikes negative thoughts and repels them. One seeks a clear recognition of what is happening in the World around one, but one trains oneself—disciplines one’s mind and detaches one’s emotions—to do so without picking up the accompaniments of panic or depression. One practices living with complete calm in the face of provocations and irritations, keeping one’s head, when others all around are losing theirs. When these disaffected find one another and form a subculture, they tend to see their choice, fraught with crisis, as a religious movement. One of the favorite spokesmen of the Hipster Generation announces: For the crucifix I speak out, for the Star of Israel I speak out, for the divinest man who ever lived who was a person I speak out, for sweet Mohammed I speak out, for Buddha I speak out, for Lao-tse and Chuang-tse I speak out, for D.T Suzuki I speak out. This is typical speaking; like an address by Eisenhower it includes all voting creeds and betrays a similar lack of acquaintance. (The bother is that the speaker is in his late thirties and out to know better.) However, as we shall see, this formless ultimate experience is not irrelevant to the plight of being resigned, for there is no available World to give experience a form. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18

However, let me at once give a similar strain of rhetoric of a seasoned public spokesman in the organized system itself. I quote from an address to the National Recreation Congress of 1957 by Dr. Paul Douglass. He is concerned with the terrifying Problem of Leisure, namely that with a shorter work week and automation many millions of adults might simply goof off and get into mischief. “The assimilation of leisure into the folkway tomorrow makes essential the reconstruction of the goals and values of life, the evolution of a new ethics, and the definition of an esthetic suitable for the upreaching taste, the deeper comprehension and enjoyment of beauty in its many forms, and a more meaningful existence. Of course this is not serious. A “new ethics” would, presumably, be the work of an Isaiah or Ezekiel or at least Socrates. If someone’s lips were touched with fire and one got oneself rejected by us and swept our children wake, it would solve other problems than out leisure time for it would be convenient for us. –The Hipster spokesman, surprisingly, seemed to be satisfied with the ethics that we have inherited. (As an artist I find this kind of public speech vaguely insulting. Do we need an esthetic? I cannot cope with the artistic tradition that we have, especially its modern triumphs, so that my own work is both unclassical and dated according to standards right on my bookshelf. Does Dr. Douglass mean a popular esthetic? Is it news to him that the popular taste is systematically debauched by Hollywood, Broadway, Madison Avenue? that by the unanimity of publishers, producers, and broadcasters, assisted by the censorship, it is almost impossible to get an honest or vivid word to the public? and that if something slips by it is swamped by trash and singled out for neglect by ignorant critics?) Dr. Douglass cannot mean what he says, yet he does mean something. Under what conditions do public spokesmen use this kind of language, asking for new ethics and a meaning for existence, when there are concrete tasks glaring in the face? #RandolphHarris 9 of 18

The conditions are disappointment in oneself according to a lofty ethics, and resignation about doing anything. Not early resignation, but after the profound disappointment of experience. Spoken as if miracles were for the asking, the buoyant abstractions ward off pain and uneasy conscience when one is no longer going to try to do anything practical. (The crisis will occur “tomorrow.”) The tone, if not the content, fits the American style, optimistic about expedients. And the disappointment is more profound because the American promise was so bright. Achieving most of what we set out to get, we are surprised to find that it is useless, and worse. For after the century of progress, the folk who are wealth and pretty healthy are not only not happy or wise, but they are uneasy. Their own writers hold them in contempt. Foreigners keep saying that the atom bombs were dropped for no good reason. The beautiful American classlessness is freezing into statuses. People ask for a stop to immigration. In the modern World, we Americans are the old inhabitants. We first had political freedom, high industrial production, an economy of abundance. Naturally we are the first to be disappointed. Europeans, when they ape and deny envy us, are like children. Disappointed and resigned, adults do not see a future for their own children, for they do not know the Way themselves. Immigrants of the first generation wanted their children to make good and have careers; it the third generation they just “want their children to be happy.” And perhaps children being happy is exactly why America is in such a mess today. People should have wanted their children to work hard, honor their family name and practice chastity. Then maybe they would be more respectful and more industrious instead of having a sense of entitlement. We are not saying you should not help your children, by every means you should, but help them so they can focus on their education. If you can afford it, there is nothing wrong with buying a child a brand-new car when they are in high school, paying for insurance and gasoline, and giving them a monthly allowance. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18

By treating your child some luxuries, you will ensure they do not have to work and can spend more time preparing for college, and that they will have time for high school clubs and sports. Do not thrust your child off to work while they are still a child. Let them enjoy being young. When their brain power has increased and they reach college, perhaps by sophomore, when they are acclimated to college education and know how much time to spend getting back and forth to class, then talk to them about seeing if they are ready to be more mature and get a job to help pay for their education. Of course, if you can that is a great idea. Not everyone is lucky to have affluent parents have to work in high school and it makes life more difficult. So if you can help your child financially to become more successful, it is only your family name and image you are helping to become a success. Now, in tropical Africa, what anthropologists call terminal abstinence is a widespread phenomenon. What it refers to is the deliberate—and often deliberated—decision to terminate conjugal relations involving pleasures of the flesh. For example, Yoruba women—but not men—know that permanent celibacy awaits them down the road. Sometimes husbands impose celibacy on their wives because they wish to take or concentrate on a younger wife, but twice as often the woman themselves decide to adopt it. Most commonly, this happens when a woman becomes a grandmother. Throughout Africa, and in Yorba society in particular, child-rearing is predicated upon extensive grandmother participation. The transition from mother to grandmother is complex. Each has different rights and obligations, and sometimes the simplest or only way to navigate between their conflicting demands is to renounce childbearing altogether. Renouncing pleasures of the flesh relations is no hardship for these grandmothers. Usually, a woman’s greatest emotional satisfaction comes from her children and family, not from an intense love affair with her husband. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18

A woman may also declare terminal celibacy as a protest against a new wife or because she has proven her fertility and can now rest. It is not a rejection of her husband so much as a redeployment of energies. For women whose marries represent dynastic bonds and courtyards full of children rather than romantic attachments to their husbands, and for the millions of women who have operations to protect their celibacy, terminal celibacy can be a release rather than a loss. Indeed, it is often no loss at all. In North America, many aging women (who have had operations) also retire from pleasures of the flesh service without the slightest regret. Some consider pleasures of the flesh as purely for reproduction, while others say that, at their age, it is no longer necessary, proper, or dignified. Many older men and women claim they must abstain from pleasures of the flesh activities because of illness, though the medical reality is that their arthritis, heart disease, or hypertension does not require it. In fact, their newly adopted celibacy may disguise or excuse an antipathy to pleasures of the flesh. In the late 1870s, when pregnancy was an interesting condition, underwear one of many of life’s unmentionables, and death a delicate passing away, feminists cleverly softened their demands for an instrument to control when and how often they gave birth by referring to it as Voluntary Motherhood. After all, birth control had ugly connotations, namely, freedom from the consequences of, well, a coming together, as it were, a very intimate sort of carnal knowledge. From one perspective, feminists shared the common fear that contraceptives would lead directly and inevitably to wanton pleasures of the flesh. The various “washes, teas, tonics, and various sorts of appliances [were a] standing reproach upon, and a permanent indictment against, American women,” declared one feminist, articulating the disgust shared by many antifeminist men. So pronounced was their alarm that legislation actually prohibited the distribution of information about birth control. #RandolphHarris 12 of 18

Form a different optic, birth control was criticized for being unromantic and removing the spontaneity from pleasures of the flesh. Women’s greatest fear, however, was that widespread contraception would work against them. They would no longer be able to keep their husbands at arm’s length by invoking the argument that pleasures of the flesh might lead to conception. These devices also smacked of “looseness” and abandon of pleasures of the flesh and seemed unsuited to respectable people living respectable lives. Contraceptives might also send husbands galloping off to bed with “fallen women” they no longer needed to worry about producing a child with. Jealousy was only a partial factor. Horror of the illnesses that unfaithful husbands quite frequently passed on to their wives was a more urgent issue. For all these reasons, many women, including Voluntary Motherhood feminists, accepted birth control in only one form: continence in pleasures of the flesh, the World’s oldest and most widely practiced method of contraception. Voluntary Motherhood supporters were concerned above all with a woman’s right to control her body and, by extension, her fertility. They saw celibacy as the only moral way to achieve this and condemned artificial devices as instruments of immorality that permitted consequence-free indulgence of pleasures of the flesh. In an era where women had few legal and social rights, demanding control of their relations in pleasures of the flesh with their husbands was considered extremely radical. Their endorsement of celibacy softened its impact, but only slightly. Under the aegis of Voluntary Motherhood, married celibacy could take two forms: the couple’s mutual or the woman’s unilateral decision. Usually, the wife’s unilateral declaration of celibacy was at the core of Voluntary Mothers. On the difficult battleground of her home, each determinedly celibate woman defined not only her husband and her society’s norms but even the law, which required her to submit both body and will to her husband. #RandolphHarris 13 of 18

In these circumstances, she needed immense courage to dictate her availability for pleasures of the and to withhold it except when she was prepared to conceive a child. “Our religion, laws, customs, are all founded on the belief that woman was made for man,” remarked feminist Elizabeth Cady Stanton. “Womanhood is the primal fact, wifehood and motherhood its incidents…Must the heyday of her existence be wholly devoted to the one animal function of bearing children? Shall there be no limit to this but woman’s capacity to endure the fearful strain on her life?” Like a great many other nineteenth-century women, Mrs. Stanton had no romantic notions about intercourse involving pleasures of the flesh. It led to an endless series of being with child, and when desperate mothers sought advice on how to avoid conception, they were given false information. Medical “expert” Dr. Ezra Heywood, for example, told them that if they abstained from pleasures of the flesh until ten to twelve days after starting their cycle, conception could be avoided. This woefully wrong interpretation of the fertility cycle misled women, who ended up with child yet again. No wonder, then, that pleasures of the flesh soon lost is magic. Too often, it exhausted, impoverished, disabled, and ended their lives. A woman grieving for a miscarried child was a typical victim: “I am nearly wrecked and ruined by…nightly pleasures of the flesh, which is often repeated in the morning. It is almost nonconsensual because I am trying to produce a child to please my husband. This and nothing else was the cause of my miscarriage…he went to work like a man a-mowing, and instead of a pleasure as it might have been, it was most intense torture.” To end these all-too-frequent personal tragedies, the Voluntary Motherhood movement preached that woman had the right to practice celibacy. Any other form of contraception was not only morally questionable, but would deprive her of the ability to control when she had pleasures of the flesh. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18

The Voluntary Motherhood movement was both inherently radical and relatively conservative in its stance. In an era when the notion that a man could have nonconsensual pleasures of the flesh with his wife was seen as ludicrous because marriage gave him unlimited access to her temple, wives who resisted on ideological grounds were social rebels. Their commitment to Voluntary Motherhood, and to celibacy except for protection, was their means of empowering themselves vis-à-vis their husbands, and in a large sense, within the families they wished to space out and control, and even withing the society whose laws they so quietly and privately defied. In this contact, they justified their celibacy as an instrument or a weapon they needed to fight for the very noblest of causes. People with histrionic personality disorder, once called hysterical personality disorder, are extremely emotion—they are typically described as “emotionally charged”—and continually seek to be the center of attention. Their exaggerated, rapidly changing moods can complicate life considerably, as we see in the case of Suzanne: Suzanne, an attractive and vivacious woman, sought therapy in hope that she might prevent the disintegration of her third marriage. The problem she faced was a recurrent one, her tendency to become “bored” with her husband and increasingly interested in going out with other men She was on the brink of “another affair” and decided that before “giving way to her impulses again” she had “better stop and take a good look” at herself…Suzanne was quite popular during her adolescent years. Rather than going to college, Suzanne attended art school where she met and married a fellow student—a “handsome, wealthy, ne’er-do-well.” Both she and her husband began “sleeping around” by the end of the first year, and she “was not certain” that her husband was the father of the daughter. A divorce took place several months after the birth of this child. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18

Soon thereafter she met and married a man in his forties who gave both Suzanne and her daughter a “comfortable home, and scads of attention and love.” It was a “good life” for the four years that the marriage lasted. In the third year of this marriage she became attracted to a young man, a fellow dancing student. The affair was brief, but was flowed by a quick succession of several others. Her husband learned of her exploits, but accepted her regrets and assurances that they would not continue. They did continue, and the marriage was terminated after a stormy court settlement. Suzanne “knocked about” on her own for the next two years until she met her present husband, a talented writer who “knew the scoop” about her past…She had no inclination to venture afield for the next three years. She enjoyed the titillation of “playing games” with other men, but she remained loyal to her husband, even though he was away on reportorial assignments for periods of one or two months. The last trip, however, brought forth the “old urge” to start an affair. It was at this point that she sought therapy. People with historic personality disorder are always “on stage,” using theatrical gestures and mannerisms and the most grandiose language to describe ordinary everyday events. Like a chameleon, they keep changing themselves to attract and impress an audience, and in their pursuit they change not only their surface characteristics—according to the latest fads—but also their opinions and beliefs. In fact, their speech is actually scanty in detail and substance, and they seem to lack a sense of who they really are. Approval and praise are the life’s blood of these individuals; they must have others present to witness their exaggerated emotional states. Vain, self-centered, demanding, and unable to delay gratification for long, they overreact to any minor event that gets in the way of their quest for attention. Some make suicide attempts, often to manipulate others. People with this disorder may draw attention to themselves by exaggerating their physical illnesses or fatigues. They may also behave very provocatively and try to achieve their goals through seductions involving pleasures of the flesh. Most obsess over how they look and how others will perceive them, often wearing bright, eye-catching clothes. They exaggerate the depth of their relationships, considering themselves to be the intimate friends of people who see them as no more than casual acquaintance. Often, they become involved with romantic partners who may be exciting but who do not treat them well. #RandolphHarris 16 of 18

This disorder was once believed to be more common in women than in men, and clinicians long described the “hysterical wife.” Research, however, has revealed gender bias in past diagnoses. When evaluating case studies of people with a mixture of histrionic and antisocial traits, clinicians in several studies have a diagnosis of the histrionic personality disorder to women more than men. The latest statistics suggest that around 2 percent of adults have this personality disorder, with males and females equally affected. They psychodynamic perspective was originally developed to help explain cases of hysteria, so it is no surprise that these theorists continue to have a strong interest in histrionic personality disorder today. Most psychodynamic theorists believe that children, people with this disorder experienced unhealthy relationships in which cold and controlling parents left them feeling unloved and afraid of abandonment. To defend against deep-seated fears of loss, the individuals learned to behave dramatically, inventing crises that would require other people to act protectively. Some psychodynamic theories focus exclusively on female patients. They suggest that an early lack of maternal nurturance causes some daughters to develop an intense need for their father’s attention to seek it through displays of affection and dependence that go far beyond the usual behavior of young girls toward their fathers. These highly flirtations and dramatic displays of emotion established a histrionic pattern that extends to later relationships in their lives. Such individuals enter adulthood as “unhappy little girls,” looking at men as idealized fathers and always trying to manipulate them. Cognitive explanations look instead at the lack of substance and extreme suggestibility found in people with historic personality disorder. These theories see the individuals as becoming less and less interested in knowing about the World at large because they are so self-focused and emotional. With no detailed memories of what they never learned, they must rely on hunches or on other people to provide them with direction in life. Some cognitive theorist also propose that people with this disorder hold a general assumption that they are helpless to care for themselves, and so they constantly seek out others who will meet their needs. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18

Additionally, sociocultural theorists believe that histrionic personality disorder is produced in part by society’s norms and expectations. Until recently, our society encouraged girls to hold on to childhood and dependency as they grew up. The vain, dramatic, and selfish behavior of the histrionic person may actually be an exaggeration of femininity as our culture once defined it. Unlike people with most other personality disorders, those with histrionic personality disorder often seek out treatment on their own. Working with them can be very difficult, however, because of the demands, tantrums, and seductiveness they are likely to deploy. Another problem is that these individuals may pretend to have important insight or to experience change during treatment, merely to please the therapist. To head off such problems, therapists must remain objective and maintain strict professional boundaries. Cognitive therapists have tried to help people with this disorder to change their belief that they are helpless and also to develop better, more deliberate ways of thinking and solving problems. Psychodynamic therapy and group therapy have also been applied. In all these approaches, therapist ultimately aim to help the clients recognize their excessive dependency, find inner satisfaction, and become more self-reliant. Clinical case reports suggest that each of the approaches can be useful. Drug therapy is less successful, however, except as a means of relieving the depressive symptoms experienced by some patients. Now, the seed now begins its time of gestation in the rich dark Earth. It is the great cold of night: not the negative images of darkness, but the dark richness of that unknow, fertile, deep part in each of us where our intuitive creative forces abide. The Christ energy enters the Earth at this season. The yule log is lighted. The nights grow shorter, the light returns, and we experience rebirth. Again, again we come and go, changed, changing. Hands join, union in love and fear, grief and joy. The circles turn, each giving into each, into all. Prayer takes the mind out of the narrowness of self-interest, and enables us to see the World in the mirror of the holy. We do not step out of the World when we pray; we merely see the World in a different setting. Prayer is a way to master what is inferior in us, to discern between the signal and the trivial, between the vital and the futile, by taking counsel with what we know about the will of God, by seeing out fate in proportion to God. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18

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There is also an open kitchen with prep island and plenty of counter space, and the beautiful dining room that you see below, which can be repurposed, as there is also a breakfast nook in the kitchen.

Since we moved in a Cresleigh Home, we’ve taken a dip in that sparkling pool every time we get the chance.

From the conveniences your heart desires and the finest features and finishes, a Cresleigh Home is what you are looking for. https://cresleigh.com/havenwood/

The Spirits Connected to Her Haunted Mansion

One of the many signs of someone being possessed is when one starts speaking in different voices, languages, and explaining things like you just met them that are out of context for the situation. However, scientific research has been unable to find an explanation for some well-documented speech occurrences. The so-called charismatic movement in our own country with its emphasis upon speaking in tongues has focused a great deal of attention upon this subject. Many people in Christian churches believe they are reproducing the gift of tongues reported in the book of Acts and discussed by the apostle Paul in the first letter to the believers in Corinth. The Biblical soundness of their belief lies outside the scope of this study, but we can report that scientifically conducted investigations have shown all instances of tongues-speaking to have the same characteristics wherever they are encountered. The variation between the tongues spoken in a state of hysterical frenzy among primitives is only superficially different from that practiced in a quiet, composed Christian setting. He considers that all tongues experiences are a means by which uneasy and unsatisfied people identify with the supernatural, securing psychological compensation for the spiritual vacuum in which they live. Some Christian scholars believe that added to the psychological element is the possibility that demons are involved in tongues-speaking, but results of investigations in this field are not yet conclusive. Tongues-speaking can be a language of ecstasy; that is, articulated sounds which do not constitute an actual language. Reports keep coming of an even more astonishing phenomenon—speaking a real dialect that was never learned. Hundreds of missionaries, especially those working among people in Asia, report that they often have encountered the mysterious ability of natives to speak in real languages that they never knew. These accounts come from Christian workers who represent widely divergent opinions regarding the charismatic movement. #RandolphHarris 1 of 13

One of Mrs. Winchester’s staff members that worked in the greenhouses on her property, who was born and reared on the Tibetan border used to report hearing the Tibetan monks in their ritual dances speak in English with quotations from Shakespeare, with profanity like drunken soldiers, or in German and French, or in languages unknown. A maid also reported the same experiences in the mansion. Reports of this nature are so numerous and come from such reputable people that one cannot set them aside lightly. Perhaps this is the reason Mrs. Winchester installed the mysterious windows in the Grand Ballroom? Christians must not jump to hasty conclusions on such delicate and complicated subjects, but they certainly must recognize the possibility of demonic activity and exercise extreme caution in an attitude of prayerful dependence upon God. We will be able to analyze these reports far more adequately after they have been thoroughly researched by competent investigators. Research teams have found that many of the physical and psychical phenomena declared impossible by the rationalistic scientists of the early 1900’s actually do take place. Most researchers do not even pretend to have a full explanation of how or why these occurrences transpire, but Christians are aware that some of them may be the result of evil spirits who work under the control of Satan. Regarding the occultic, the believer should walk the pathway of extreme caution. One should avoid any so-called magic that claims to bestow unusual knowledge or power through a psychic gift or ritualistic performances. It goes without saying that one must keep a safe distance from any form of black magic, and that one must examine carefully the doctrinal teaching of anyone who purports to provide healing or other temporal benefits in the name of the Lord. Biblical faith is built upon trust in God and expresses itself in submission to His will. Every follower of Christ should be wary of magical cures and all outward demonstrations of allegedly supernatural power. #RandolphHarris 2 of 13

As children of God, we must remember that we “walk by faith, not by sight,” reports 2 Corinthians 5.7, and that the faith through the senses. When we received Christ, we were brought into a vital union with Him, and the apostle Peter was writing to us when he said, “Who, having not seen, ye love; in whom, though now ye see him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and fill of glory,” reports 1 Peter 1.8. When a believer discovers the emptiness of this World’s enchantments, Satan tries to lure one into accepting his help through some form of occultism. Through these devices, the devil and his organization of evil spirits may attempt to bring defeat and misery into the lives of God’s children. Satan is unable to harm a believer, however, if that person accepts the instruction of the Bible, maintains a life of prayer, and submits oneself to God, and resists the devil. If one is hypocritical and dishonest, one will successfully resist and overcome the evil influence of Satan and his armies. The child of God must not merely say that one desires victory over sin, but must truly long for it. One’s spiritual vows and public statements must always be sincerely spoken, for the devil has no difficulty in defeating the hypocritical and half-hearted. The devil cannot effectively tempt a Christian who is actively living a joyful Christian life. Some believe that the door-to-nowhere in The Winchester Mystery House is just a wing of the mansion that was never finished, but perhaps it was a biblical metaphor. “I am the door; by me if any one enter in, one shall be saved,” reports John 10.9. It is elevated to a high level on the estate with no entrance reminds use to raise or consciousness, but by going the wrong way through the door, it may be a plunge into the pit of hades. There was once a woman who worked at Mrs. Winchester’s estate whose hand was terribly mangled by a gun explosion. Little did Mrs. Winchester know, that some men on the estate, amiable farmers, when not performing their specific functions, they were wizards, necromancers, exorcists, but above all priests, representatives of the people in offering sacrifices and making contact with the spirits. #RandolphHarris 3 of 13

Over one hundred years ago, human sacrifices had been made in some places, members of the community offered up by the noblest lords, but now animal sacrifices are made. They exhort their listeners about Heaven and hell in which they firmly believe, the one a place of joy and the other of torment…They keep the register of all males born and are intimate contact with sorcerer-priests, who can read ancient manuscripts and incantations for use on all religious occasions. While working on the estate, a man of Asian decent went to the farmers and asked for medical assistance for his wife. It was a moment of weakness—but he needed help. After the wizards, sorcerer-priests, necromancers, and exorcists evaluated the grounds keeper’s wife several times, they found she was suffering a higher fever also. While making preparations to treat her, they noticed the husband cutting three little bamboo sticks about eight inches long and a quarter of an inch in diameter. Oblivious to all that was taking place around him, he silently moved across the room with these three sticks and a rice bowl. After placing a little water in the bottom of the bowl and ordering his wife to dip the fingers of her right hand in it, he waved the bowl over her prostrate body. His next act was to place the bowl on the floor and try to balance the three sticks in the center of it. While this balancing process was going on, he kept calling out the names of demons. The men of supernatural powers soon awakened to the fact that this man was preparing to call a demon out of his wife. The men of supernatural powers suggested that the man’s wife’s fever was probably due to an attack of malaria, but the man insisted that she was demon-possessed. The naming of demons continued until the name of “Lin,” and then the sticks stood on end. Upon learning this was the demon’s name, the man placed some rice in the blow and mixed it with the three sticks—a little salt was added to give it flavor. He then waved the bowl in circles over his wife and politely called out, “Please, Mr. Lin Demon, come out—come out—look at this, tasty bowl of rice—it’s for you if you’ll only come out—please, oh, please come out, Mr. Lin Demon.” #RandolphHarris 4 of 13

Then he moved slowly toward the door and outside, sprinkling a little of the rice along the way and begging the demon to follow him. When he reached the end of the estate, he flung the remaining portion of rice as far out as he could and then returned to the house. This was too much for some of the men of supernatural magic. They were determined to find out the shenanigans behind this thing, even if it meant calling down the wrath of the gods and demons combined. They asked the fellow if her would let them try to stand those sticks on end. He smilingly gave them the go-ahead signal; but he tried and those things just would not stand. Still not satisfied, they asked the man with the injured wife if he would show them how to do it. The whole process was reverently repeated, even to the standing of the sticks when the name “Lin” was called out. However, the men of supernatural magic finally despaired of ever making those sticks stand. They asked the man where did he learn this art. He answered through a séance with Mrs. Winchester. Six scrolls of some ancient script containing incantations appeared in the Blue Séance Room, along with other radical writings. The men of supernatural magic then realized this was the employment of evil angels they were dealing with. They were dealing with the rulers of darkness of this World, and spiritual wickedness in high places. In another case at the Winchester Mansion, these men who doubled as farmers met a fifteen-year-old girl who had a disease of the eyes. She spent quite a time in an eye clinic, but in spite of the treatment she was not cured. Since medical help had failed, she turned to the men of supernatural magic. These men, using white magic, case some spells over her. Within 24 hours of the charming, the girl’s eye trouble disappeared, but thereafter she felt a terrible inner unrest. She prayed but found no peace. Later, when she visited her former eye specialist, he could only shake his head in astonishment and ask her how she had been healed. #RandolphHarris 5 of 13

Although white magic has been able to heal people, some still believe it is inspired by the powers of darkness. Through white magic some may even obtain what they actually desired, and so it is often only in the effects that its true nature is revealed. The boundary between prayer and magic can be very fluid. If one is able to differentiate between the genuine and the imitation articles, it is essential to have the gift of discerning of spirits. However, whether it sails under a black, white or neutral flag, many people believe they have evidence to prove that the effect of magic in any form is the work of the devil. Yet, that is not what I believe. I have met some very nice people who claim to be witches and warlocks, and they are some of the most kindest people you will every meet. They define those that Christians, who pontificate about the bible, harass and attract and really listen and get to all sides of the story, some it makes some wonder, who is really evil? I am not saying that all Christians are bad, but the witch hunts were started by Christians, as well as lynching in the Southern states. I am not telling anyone what to believe, I am just presenting information that is fascinating. Part of being educated is to remain unbiased and be able to have a discussion, until you draw your own reasonable conclusion based on the evidence presented. If one does not have a case, or does not want to be contradicted by evidence that would prove their argument false, of course they turn to slander, harassment, and terrorism. That is what ignorant people do. They gang up and try to lie so loud to make sure no one can hear the truth they are suppressing. But as the Bible says, all things will come to the light. Everyone has things they need to deal with inside of themselves and sometimes it is more comfortable to try to find fault with others and blame others instead of taking responsibility. For instance, the dynamic of idolatry is demonism since idolatry is in reality the worship of other gods who are demons (1 Corinthians 10.20), headed by Satan the “god of this World,” (2 Corinthians 4.4). #RandolphHarris 6 of 13

Occultism involves dealing with demonic forces through fortune-telling, magic, spiritism, or religious cults, which are supposedly closely allied to idolatry. Persons who deal in the occult often discover that they have spiritistic sensitivity, extrasensory perception, or abnormal intellectual powers enabling them to engage in clairvoyance, precognition, divination, psychometry, magic, and spiritism. Dealing in the occult often results in the subjection to the powers of darkness to such a degree that the mind becomes blinded to truth, immersed in deception and error. This frequently results in acute depression with thoughts of self-destruction. However, not all emotional problems or suicidal tendencies should be attributed to occultism. However, demons can also oppress that human mind. Enslavement to demons sometimes reaches a point in which the demonic spirits harass and torment their victims. In the preceding stage of subjection, the evil spirits sporadically dominate their victims, but they do not necessarily harass them, at least not as they do in this deeper and more tragic state of oppression. Oppression in some form will be the final outcome of all who become psychically enslaved, even though some are not psychically gifted with spiritistic or magical powers. One well-attested and widely occurring form of demonic oppression is poltergeist phenomena. “Poltergeist” is German for “noisy ghost.” In such a case, the oppressed person is hounded by strange noises and sounds, such as shouts and obscene threats, rattling of chains, moaning, weeping, or piercing laughter. Dishes clatter, furniture is moved by invisible hands, and myriads of other strange happenings occur, invisibly produced by spirits connected with a haunted house where spirit activity has been practiced. Some who are oppressed continue to be tormented even though they may move to another residence. Also, common in the victims of demonism are the appearances of ghosts, specters, and monstrous phantasms. These phenomena are often explained away as hallucinations, but are well attested in occultism as spirits appearing as dwarfs, animals, dismembered parts of a human body, etcetera. At times these hideous spirits will strangle, bite, strike, or attack their victims in some way. #RandolphHarris 7 of 13

Perhaps the most terrible and revolting form of demonic oppression is what is known in the history of religion as incubi and sccubae experiences. This is the assault by an unclean spirit upon its enslaved victim for the purpose of lust involving pleasures of the flesh. Both men and women have been attacked and molested by “seducing male and female demons.” Such fully established phenomena show that angelic-human union, a major cause of the flood (Genesis 6.1-4; 2 Peter 2.4; Jude 1.6-7), has its parallel in occultism today. The account of the following portent is given us in Aubrey’s Miscellanies. “When King James II first entered Dublin after his Arrival from France, 1689, one of the Gentlemen that bore the Mace before him, stumbled without any rub in his way, or other visible occasion. The Mace fell out of is hands, and the little Cross upon the Crown thereof stuck fast between to Stones in the Street. This is well known all over Ireland, and did much trouble King James himself with many of his chief Attendants”; but not doubt greatly raised the hopes of his enemies. A few years later a witch-story comes from the north of Ireland. “At Antrim in Ireland a little girl of nineteen (nine?) years of age, inferior to none in the place for beauty, education, and birth, innocently put a leaf of sorrel which she had got from a witch into her mouth, after she had given the begging witch bread and beer at the door; it was scarce swallowed by her but she began to be tortured in the bowels, to tremble all over, and even was convulsive, and in fine to swoon away as dead. The doctor used remedies on the 9th of May 1698, at which time it happened, but to no purpose, the child continued in a most terrible paroxysm; whereupon they sent for the minister, who scarce had laid his hand upon her when she was turned by the demon in the most dreadful shapes. #RandolphHarris 8 of 13

She began first to rowl herself about, then to vomit needles, pins, hairs, feathers, bottoms of thread, pieces of glass, window-nails, nails drawn out of a cart or coach-wheel, an iron knife about a span long, eggs, and fish-shells; and when the witch came near the place, or looked to the house, though at the distance of two hundred paces from where the child was, she was in worse torment, insomuch that no life was expected from the child till the witch was removed to some greater distance. The witch was apprehended, condemned, strangled, and burnt, and was desired to unto the incantation immediately before strangling; but said she could not, by reasons others had done against her likewise. But the wretch confessed the same, with many more. The child was about the middle of September thereafter carried to a gentleman’s house, where there were many other things scarce credible, but that several ministers and the gentleman have attested the same. The relation is to be seen in a pamphlet printed 1699, and entitled The Bewitching of a Child in Ireland.” People in ancient times used to rely more on the spiritual, witchcraft, magic, séances, curses, potions, and meditation. Perhaps that is why there were so many more instances of supernatural things happening today. Some of these claims sound so outrageous and many of them report the same types of instances. Then today, we have all these technologies and medications and machines that we rely on and people who tell us what is actually possible and how many of these stories from the past happen to be something else explained by medication or a camera that so many people start to disbelieve in the supernatural. However, just because it can be explained by science, does not mean it is not supernatural. The Christian Bible even speaks about miracles, which are things that are supernatural. Supernatural phenomenon is real. #RandolphHarris 9 of 13

However, supernatural phenomena may be less common today because land is so densely packed, so many people turn into TV and Music and digital entertainment, so they spend less time praying and tuning into nature. In the 1800s, one could life in a house and not see another person for years because there was so much space to spread out on. People had time to read books and gaze at the moon and the sky and think up inventions. By now, everyone has probably heard of the legendary Sarah L. Winchester. She is the one who built the most mysterious mansion in the World. One thing that surprises me is that no one has, as of yet, tried to duplicate or create something just as wonderful. Nonetheless, it has been said that Mrs. Winchester slept in a different bedroom every night, supposedly in order to confuse evil spirits. And it totally makes sense. Because even now, people say when bad things are happening to you, you need to figure out what you are doing to cause it and draw closer to God. Back in Mrs. Winchester’s day, the 1800s, people were into spiritualism and also believed that spirits were the source causing bad things to happen to people. So they would try to appease them to protect themselves from curses and demons and so forth. Every generation has their methods and religions and that is just how it is. Some say Mrs. Winchester also held special dinner parties for her spirit friends. Legend has it that she would serve her phantom friends on solid gold plates, offering them delicious cuisine like caviar, truffles, and pheasant stuffed with pate. The mansion’s staff was also well-fed. On a stormy night, the front of the house was dark and silent, for it was long past bedtime. It was thirteen past one, and raining like blazes. It was thirteen years ago this day that Louis Le Prince had been seen alive, for Black Knight, one of Mrs. Winchester’s mares kicked the life out of him in the house stable one morning. One could feel the present and all its dangers towering around. Staff who walked by the horse stable this day reported feeling lost, a ghost dislodged from time. Indeed, it struck many people as unusual that the lad was left for the to care for the horses by himself. It might have been a fancy stable, but there was a queer feel about the place. #RandolphHarris 10 of 13

The sun was just beginning to set as they headed back to the estate. By the time they got inside, the night was as black as your hat: not a vestige of a moon, not a single star to break the uniform of darkness of the sky. With sunset a noisy blustering wind had sprung up, rattling about one of the chimneys, clashing the wet branches, and deadening the sound of cautious footfalls creeping across the paddock in the direction of the stables. The wind dropped suddenly, making the silence all the more intense by contrast with the previous roar; and through the stillness, Mrs. Winchester heard the clink of a bucket, and the sound of someone moving about in the stables. She sprang to her feet and snatched up her lantern. She thought that someone was trying to get at one of her horses, and her hand was on her father-in-law’s ivory-gripped Winchester pistol when she opened the door. So strong was the impression that she was absolutely surprised to find no sign of an intruder. The horses were perfectly quiet. Mrs. Winchester looked all around. There was certainly nothing to see, but it struck her that the air felt very cold, and she shut the door. The instant it closed behind her, a dark shadow fell across the square of light issuing from the entrance to the saddle-room. She figured it must have been the wind she heard and locked the door and went back inside. However, the butler Henry Boynton Clitz, was also suspicious. He turned the key in the lock and looked into the horse stable; then he gave a slight start, and drew quickly back. There was light inside, but where is came from would have been difficult to say. Beyond the shadow lay black and impenetrable, a wall of darkness. As he crossed the threshold Henry felt a blast of cold air sweep towards him, striking a strange chill into his very bones. Straight opposite stood a horse, and before him was an old man who appeared to be asleep. However, even in that intense stillness the tout could catch no sound of his breathing. His own heart was thumping against his ribs with the force of a sledge-hammer. #RandolphHarris 11 of 13

Henry felt his flesh creeping with a sensation of fear that was almost sickening. Fear? Yes, that was the word; he was horribly afraid. And of what? Of a weak old man, for whom he would have been more than a match single-handed, and they were two to one. What a fool he was, to be sure! With desperate effort he pulled himself together and went forward, his eye warily fixed on the silent figure. Neither man nor horses moved. As Henry moved forward, he heard a low chuckling laugh. The man was looking at him. The gleaming eyes fixed on him with a sort of mesmeric power. His face fastened on the figure, taking in every item of the quaint dress, the high gill collar and ample bird’s eye stock, the drab coat and antiquated breeches and gaiters. His mouth was open, but for the life of him he could not speak. He was waiting in the helpless fascination of horror to see the face of a man who had been dead and buried for thirteen years. Slowly, like an automaton, that strange watcher turned his head. The square, resolute mouth was open as if to speak; the shrunken skin was a greenish yellow color, like the skin of a corpse; along the temple ran a dull black mark in the shape of a horse’s hoof; but the eyes burned like two living coals, as they fixed themselves on the face of the terrified publican. Next, Henry heard the crash of a lantern on stones and the sound of Louis’s flying feet, and an awful terror came upon him, a great fear, which made his teeth chatter in his head and curdled the blood in his veins. The place seemed full of an unnatural light—black flames. The air was foul with the horrible odors of decay. Above all, Henry felt the fearful presence of that which was neither living nor dead—the semblance of a man whose human body had for thirteen long years been rotting in the grave. It was not living, but it moved. Its cold, shining eyes were looking into his, were coming near. There was no mistaking the look of that helpless body, the limp flaccidity of those outstretched arms. “He’s dead,” said Henry, as he turned up the white face. Its coat was wet with—something. #RandolphHarris 12 of 13

It was blood. But it was strange there should be no marks of violence about him, and yet he looks as if he had died hard. And truly, the dead man’s face was terrible in its fixed expression of mortal fear. The eyes were staring and wide open, the teeth clenched, a little forth hung about the blue lips. It was a horrid sight. Henry locked the door on the corpse until the police could arrive, and spent the remainder of the night in the butler’s pantry. However, when the Henry awoke, he could throw very little light on the matter. There was no one in the horse stables. No body, no foul odor, no broken lanterns. Just the horses and an old noose in one of the empty stalls. Whatever happened remain a mystery. The old living soul who knew the truth held her tongue. Mrs. Winchester simply told him, “Leave it to other staff members and never set foot in that cursed place. The poor boy is dead, and there is no reason for me to get myself mixed up in the business.” Demons can cause physical ailments such as dumbness (Matthew 9.32-33), blindness (Matthew 12.22), and various other defects and deformities (Luke 13.11-17). In all such cases medical and psychiatric treatment are of no avail, because the cause is demonic. Only be dealing with the spiritual causes of the malady can it be cured. Besides actual sickness, demons can cause speech and behavior abnormalities. In demon possession, which is an extreme form of enslavement and oppression, the speech and behavior abnormalities appear in greatly accentuated form with such violent physical manifestations as retching, screaming, blaspheming, cursing, foaming at the mouth, convulsions and display of tremendous physical strength. So completely does the demonic spirit gain mastery that one takes over the body of the victim and speaks through it with one’s own voice and language, which may be completely foreign to the language of the demonized. Sometimes evil spirits endanger humans’ temporal safety by exercising a certain control over natural forces. “I’ve covered my brother completely (That bump on the right is his knee) I will dig him out when I am ready to find how he liked it, you see.” #RandolphHarris 13 of 13

Winchester Mystery House

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Who Would Keep a Cow of their Own that Can Have a Quart of Milk for a Penny?

No one has yet fully realized the wealth of sympathy, kindness, and generosity hidden in the soul by God. The human mind is fascinating. A young officer working on a ship wrote that he would awaken during the night and discover himself under an undesirable physical and mental condition. He seemed to be clearly in a mesmerized condition, caused by someone or something giving the powerful posthypnotic suggestion to wake up and obey. The remedy is to use the same technique in reverse. That is, practise auto-hypnosis, give the self-suggestion that on waking up there will be full conscious and full rejection of the negative idea. If one must hate something, let one hate hatred itself. The storms of violent passion are to be resisted as the smoothness of inner peace is to be invited. To keep one’s temper in a single provocative situation may be easy, but to keep it consistently equable is a real feat. Life is a conflict. One must not let these negative feelings take up lodgement within in one longer than a single moment. All humankind must awake from its materialistic apathy and cast out something of its selfishness. It is called upon to renounce its violence and meannesses, its intolerance, unkindnesses, and injustices. It must either emerge from its animal brutality or else suffer itself to be extinguished by it. It must come out from the shadows of ignorance, selfishness, and materialism. Only then will it find the sunshine of a larger life that awaits it. It is not always one oneself who acts in a particular way at a particular time. Impulses from lower sources or outside contacts may be strong intuitions from higher levels or outside sources may influence one to wise choices which bless one’s future. We must not hate those who are born of the same divine essence as ourselves but we may hate the sins they perpetrate and the evil they radiate. The seeker has to contend not only with limiting environments but also with internal enemies. Apathy delays one, depression obstructs one, and loneliness frustrates one. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18

The more one becomes sensitive, intuitive, responsive to the spirit, the more one is unfolding exceptional passivity. However, this puts one in peril, for one feels the negative presence too. Hence the more one must restrict one’s contacts until one’s strength is above them. It is prudent to escape from a situation where there is much pressure to commit a foolish action or to make a foolish decision leading to calamitous results—and not continue to stay in it until the danger materializes. One whose presence is felt to be odious, whose personality is regarded as distasteful, is better left alone. One should never allow the actions or words of ignorant human to arouse in one reactions of anger, envy, or resentment. The years are too few and there is too much to be done—both on oneself and for oneself—to waste them in negative, resentful thought and decaying, neurotic emotion. When one comes to understand its importance, one will begin to exercise some vigilance over one’s thoughts. Resist beginnings—that is the most practical way to deal with negatives. The destructive thoughts of fear and self-doubt which whine at your door, whine at the door of every human. However, you can make them powerless to hurt you. For—there is n chance, no destiny, no fate can circumvent, can hinder or control the firm resolve of a determined soul! If the negative thought persists then one has to wrench oneself away from it with the assent and use of all one’s being—feeling, reason, intuition. One’s own attitude towards events holds the power to make them good or bad, whatever their nature of itself may be. Those who are unable to think correctly about this tragic World situation must be pardoned, but those who refuse to think correctly about it do not deserve pardon. The counsel of Jesus to “resist not evil” does not apply to other men’s acts but to our own thoughts. We are to turn aside from a negative thought-habit by the simple method of substituting the opposite and the beneficial one. We need not to spend our strength resisting the thought of misery, for example. We are to substitute hope for misery, whenever the latter appears. #RandolphHarris 2 of 18

Wrong-doing will be avoided not because it is punished by the law of recompose even when it is not punished by the law of society, but because of the strong inner conviction that right-doing is its own reward, its own satisfaction. The beautiful is allied to the good. If we cultivate beautiful feelings, evil ones begin to get dissolved. One will not risk rebuffs by expressing one’s views and describing one’s experienced to the uncomprehending of the unsympathetic. It I cowardice to refuse to face the fact that one has made a mistake and to continue following the same course because it is to stop it and return to the right road. The easier way is too often the worse way, leading to trouble for one’s self and others. There is a limit to the extent of concessions to prejudice; we must not beyond it. Beware of those whose mind is vindictive and whose speech is venomous. If they are born of emotional prejudice or passionate bias, it is of little use to meet irrational arguments with rational statements. The ancient saying that where goodwill exists agreement will not be hard to find, still remains true. The crowds which delighted in the gladiator shows of ancient Rome and, to a lesser extent, those which delighted in the bullfights of modern Spain, do not see to understand how bestial they allow themselves to become at such times. If one is to be distinguished from a member of the savage species, the true human being, the fully evolved human, must have the quality of pity in oneself. Do not attempt to fight evil with evil. Overcome it by calling on a higher power to bring out the good in you wherewith to meet it. In this way you obey Jesus’ counsel, “Resist not evil.” Synesis (fourth century): “This would be the most extreme of ills—not to be conscious of the presence of evil. For this is the condition of those who no longer try to rise…for this reason repentance is elevating means…[but] both deeds and words [must] lend a helping hand.” A philosopher may not ignore the negative side of one’s or another’s life: one has to deal with it because circumstances force one, like everyone else to do so. #RandolphHarris 3 of 18

However, one’s way will be different, because one will use all one’s faculties and capacities: intellectual, practical, and intuitive. One will keep calm and not let passion or negative emotion carry one away. However, all that done, one hands over the results to the higher power (which includes destiny). One’s mind must stay in That which transcends negativity, sin, evil, even if one must grapple with them. Philosophy will not disregard the bad in others, and the sin in ourselves, but having seen them clearly it does not react negatively in useless condemnation. Instead, it reacts constructively in trying to realize the meaning of evil, the consequence of sin, and then proceeds to cultivate the opposite quality, the good of that particular evil—as honesty where there is dishonesty and so on. If practical dealings are involved, we may regret the existence of these faults in others, but we may not refuse to recognize them. Amid all the pessimistic reflections which the state of the World so easily induces in the thinking human, one may yet be buoyed up by the hope which the eternal verities must again and again give one, that is, the hope that the end of it will be immeasurably better. The existentialist view—so popular with so many young people today—that we begin with oblivion and end with annihilation, that what comes between is either meaningless or mysterious, with no solutions to problems, no answers to questions, is a view which the tragedy and evil and catastrophe of our times tempt us to accept. However, religion and philosophy release us from this despair. In such critical times as these even some faith in the existence of a higher power, and some aspiration towards serving it, has protective value. Trust, not tension: trust in the higher power producing serenity rather than tension; because of the pressures of life this is a great need today. However dark or desperate World history may seem at times, we must always remember no one can disrupt the divine World-Idea, or spoil its manifestation, or prevent its glorious outcome. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18

Fear of the power and cunning of these evil opponents causes them to rely on obvious but ordinary human forces and weapons for protection. They forget the divine forces they could, and should in this crisis, call on—and neglect the superhuman and extraordinary. To express a half-amused contempt for the intelligence of our time is not at all the same thing as to make a jaundiced indictment of it. To witness the magnificent parade of a civilization of almost unredeemed triviality is less likely to arouse bitterness in the soul and more likely to give it a good half-hour’s amusement. On the one hand, carried away by the idealistic enthusiasm and millennial promises of merely emotionalist cults, some believe that a spiritual teaching has only to be propagated and it will spread triumphantly everywhere. On the other hand, confronted by the formidable spectacle of a whole World plunged in ignorance, conscious that the ordinary individual can do so little to uplift it, others drift into bewildered defeatism and actually do nothing at all. However, this second attitude, although much more sensible and much more justifiable than its opposite one, is not quite philosophical. According to the old classical fable, we had to look for truth in the bottom of a well; today we have to look for it in the bottom of a bitter disillusionment. In the dismal World conditions of today it is a paramount necessity to obtain some glimpse, however meagre, of the divine plan which is working out for all our lives. Only in this way can we co-operate with it understandingly and adequately. Instead of relying on flight into the unknow and uncertain, it is better to rely on God. In the first case one may be making a false escape and duping oneself, but in the second case one opens the way for true guidance in the matter. With peace in the mind and harmony in the feelings, both completed by knowledge of the universal presence of divinity—who could harbour evil thoughts, hatreds, or destructive plans? #RandolphHarris 5 of 18

Every evil person who crosses our path provides an opportunity, in the injury one attempts to do us, to keep ourselves from being provoked into retaliation, anger, or resentment. If we succeed in overcoming our own feelings, we mount upward a step. In a negative situation, where negative criticism and negative emotions are rampant, other persons may try to involve one in it, or at least get one to support their attitude and endorse their criticism. However, a feeling may come over one preventing one from doing so. If so, one should obey and remain silent. With time the rightness of this course will be confirmed. One the injunction to return good for evil, the question arises, with what then will you return go? Return good for good, but justice for evil. Is this not wiser counsel? Does not the other punish goodness to an extremist position, rendering it almost ridiculous by condoning bad conduct? Inner and outer difficulties are often related. What appears to be an ugly state of affairs may well be a definite attack of certain evil forces using interested human instruments. In such a situation, the individual should never practise nonresistence in any way, but, on the contrary, should fight them off as hard a one can. At the same time, one must remember that weakness in self-control can give these evil forces an opening which they might not have had otherwise. If one wishes to emerge victorious in the struggle, one must be on one’s guard. If one does not throw off this condition, one, oneself, unwittingly erects a barrier though which the divine help sent one finds it difficult to penetrate. Although the temptation to seek release as such a time through, for example, the easy way of drink is understandable, one must nevertheless remember the duty one owes to one’s spiritual life, to one’s personal interest on the relative plane, and to others. Although the student must forgive those who mistreat one, one need not think tht forgiveness implies one has to associate with such people thereafter. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18

Whenever the thought of them, or their abuse, comes into one’s mind one must exert one’s willpower to drive it out, and immediately direct one’s thoughts toward God, or toward any inspired individual in whom one had faith. Only the actualized Christian is entitled to dismiss evil and to deny its existence: all others must look it in the face, understand it, and overcome it by slow gradations. It is better to keep out of the way of evil humans, especially when they are in power, until or unless we are driven by the necessity of circumstance of the inward voice of duty to oppose ourselves to them. It is always a certainty that the practice of active goodwill directed toward those who regard one harshly will benefit one’s own development, while it is always a possibility that this practice may dissolve the harsh feeling against one. It is all gain and no loss. This is one part of the case for Jesus’ advice to return good for evil. It is a technique of this evil power to paralyse its intended victims by frightening them. If we give way to fear, we give assistance to its effort. It cannot be beaten without open defiance and ready valour. One must remember that one will meet with those individuals who are themselves the bearers of antagonistic forces, instruments of darkness—sometimes consciously, most unconsciously, people used by evil forces. So far as possible one must avoid such people. Certainly never enter into intimate associations with them, whether the relation be business or personal. If one does one will find that sooner or later some of their unfortunate behaviour will be returned by Universal Law and tumble on one and one with have to suffer with the afflicted individual. These people make talk as believers in spiritual things—indeed, they often belong to some cult or other. However, they do not understand truth or live it. They cannot help one and one is not strong enough to carry them. So leave them alone. And that is not always easy, because often they are people of a kind that force themselves into one’s life. #RandolphHarris 7 of 18

Sometimes one can know them by this hallmark, by this aggressive way which they try to entangle another individual. It may even be necessary at times to deal with such people with a firm hand, even mercilessly and relentlessly. If so, do not hesitate, but do it without any personal feeling of any kind. The American landscape has been badly corrupted. European writers no longer even notice the natural wonder of it, they are so put off by the ugliness and conformity of the towns. However, worse than the ugliness and conformity is the neglect that baffles pride of place. Our poets try to move themselves by nostalgically repeating the names of towns: “Biloxi and Natchez, Pascagoula and Opelousas”—but beware of paying a visit. The Americans disesteem public goods, and improving the landscape is a big expense. Historically, the neglect of appearance and plan of our scores of thousands of villages and small towns, especially in the Middle West and South—the diner, the Woolworth’s, and two filling stations—can be analogized to the neglect of the present-day less affluent. In the tide of expansion, appearance was disregarded as not essential; later, the matter would be mopped up. However, the neglect rigidifies, it is a hard core not easy to change. Instead, the present tendency is to impose on the countryside a new corporation style altogether, in the form of shopping centers (=national chain supermarkets) on the highway. This works out disastrously for the communities, for these “centers” are not centers of villages, and there cease to be villages at all, simply scattered family houses. This is the end of a long process of disruption, for in any case the industry is gone, then men work in plants thirty miles away. It is possible to travel many miles even in New England and not see a single activity a man could make a living at, except automobile agencies and filling stations; not even a food store. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18

The schools too are large and centralized. The families tend to move away frequently, but even while they are put, they are driving around. This does not make much community to grow up in. In more primitive societies, a chief community activity is working together, thatching a roof, net fishing. However, with us, precisely this co-operative labour, for instance the work in a factory, is removed from its community setting ad emptied, by the relations of production, of any community spirit. Places that have no shape have no face-to-face functioning, for the shape is the functioning community. The loveliness of so many hamlets in Europe is that they have shape and are built of local materials by local craft. Perhaps the people had to cluster to attend early masses. In Ireland, where they farm out the back door, the rows of thatched houses line both sides of a little street. In France, where men go off to their farms, there may be a square. In our own early New England villages, where congregational and political spirit was strong, there was a common green with public buildings, though the families lived scattered on the farms they worked. There was the shape of a community, with its economy, its crafts, and its ideas. The advantage of growing up in such a community in one’s early years is evident. It is not family supervision, on which the physicians of juvenile delinquency are now laying such stress; quite the contrary! it is that the family does not have to bear the burden of teaching the culture. In a community, everybody knows the child face to face. There is an easy grading of overlapping ages, right up to the adults who are going about their business in a going concern, and not paying too much attention to children. A good city neighbourhood works in the same way. From this point of view, the swarm of kids in a city housing project form a better community than present-day country boys or the kids on Park Avenue. Therefore they have more local patriotism. #RandolphHarris 9 of 18

The bother with this community chain, however, is that it terminates abruptly before it reaches the adults, who belong to a different World; so the kids are a gang and the local community spirit turns into loyalty to a Code; it does not eventuate in anything socially cohesive and culturally worthwhile. And such a gang in prone to be delinquent because, as we shall see, in such conditions it is the forbidden tht best cements loyalty. Politically, a delinquent gang is not lawless and not in the state of nature. Balked in its growth, the local loyalty turns on itself and simple reinvents the feud-code of Alfred the Great, marking out safe territories and making provision for special classes of revenge. On this view, if one teenage gang, pursuing its vendetta, falls on another and murders a kid, it would not be our business to interfere in the law of that differently constituted society. Also, like Danes or Vikings of Alfred’s time, they regard our larger society merely as a field of sports and plunder; they have not yet reinvented International Law. However, we, of course, cannot view it so, for we live in an advanced state of politics and law: they are members of our community. We are not children but more experienced and somewhat wiser, and therefore responsible, so we cannot simply annihilate them like pirates (they are small in size, few in numbers, and armed with primitive weapons); and we cannot let them hurt themselves. (I think it is wise sometimes to regard disaffected groups as if there were plausibly these two viewpoints, rival patriotisms. It is better humanity and it might make better law. The advantage is that it takes the disaffected seriously as disaffected, rather than merely pathological; it keeps in the foreground the question of allegiance. We must deserve allegiance.) However, they are children. Let us consider rather the peculiar patriotic problem of an older disaffected group, the Hipster young men, for then we can see that it is a patriotic problem. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18

Here too, I think, there has often been a strong community influence of growing up together. For instance, fellows who went to Black Mountain College, which was oriented to community and creative arts—a powerful, and powerfully disaffecting, combination—are pillars of Hipster society. Other fellows were buddies in the armed services. However, it was, as Hispters their community spirit is strong. They barge in to sleep, they share property, they share a culture. Now think of this community, disaffected from America, as engaged in a pathetic quest for some other big patriotism, an adult peer group. We saw how, appointing themselves outcast, they affirm the accidental symbol of other marginalized groups: African American, Puerto Rican, the less affluent, and others. However, this is pretty thin gruel for intellectual young men, many of whom have been to college. On the other hand, they are unable to make the jump to the great international humanists community because, simply, they do not know anything, neither literature nor politics. (I once taught at Black Mountain College, and to my astonishment I found that the students had never read the Christian Bible, Milton, Dryden, Gibbon, etcetera, etcetera, nor did they feel—as a lack—that such things existed. However, they knew odd facts about Mayan hieroglyphics which their teacher had been interested in.) What then? Since it is necessary for grown fellow to have some major allegiance or other, they have latched on to the late Japanese masters of Zen Buddhism. (This is a late effect of the early-century discovery of Japan by Fenollosa, Frank Lloyd Wright, the Misses Lowell and Ayscough, and Ezra Pound, suddenly reinforced by the postwar occupation under General MacArthur.) Now, as we shall see, Zen is not irrelevant to those young men’s needs, for it is a theology and style of immediate experience. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18

However, the pathos is that Zen was the flower of an intensely loyal feudal system that fed, protected, and honoured its masters, and to which the Zen masters in turn had fealty. For example, it is said that the haiku was invented by a poet as a public service when one was suicidally despondent because one’s Emperor had died. However, Zen without farmers and servants is an airy business; and the young men, as we have seen, are betrayed into dubious devices to keep body and soul together, nor do they have a flag to salute. Community approaches have worked to resolve many problems. In looking at mental health, the broadest approach for the treatment of schizophrenia is the community approach. In 1963, partly in response to the terrible conditions in public mental institutions, the U.S. government ordered that patients be released and treated in the community. Congress passed the Community Mental Health Act, which stipulated that patients with psychological disorders were to receive a range of mental health services—outpatient therapy, inpatient treatment, emergency care, preventative care, and aftercare—in their communities rather than being transported to institutions far from home. The act was aimed at a variety of psychological disorders, but patients with schizophrenia, especially those who had been institutionalized for years, were affected most. Other countries around the World put similar sociocultural treatment programs into action shortly thereafter. Thus began four decades of deinstitutionalization, an exodus of hundred of thousands of patients with schizophrenia and other long-term mental disorders from state institutions into the community. On a given day in 1955 close to 600,000 patients were living in state institutions; today only around 60,000 patients reside in those setting. The unfortunate result is that mental health lost most of its funding and a lot of people with mental illnesses have to where to go, but jail or to live on the street. #RandolphHarris 12 of 18

Clinicians have learned that patients recovering from schizophrenia can profit greatly from community programs. However, the actual quality of community care for many of these people has been inadequate through the United States of America. The result is a “revolving door” syndrome: the few patients, who are lucky enough to be treated, have been released to the community, readmitted to an institution within mothers, released a second time, admitted yet again, and so on, over and over. A lot of people who want mental health care are not able to access this precious resource. In fact, 10.3 percent (over 4.7 million) of adults with a mental illness remain uninsured. And, 56 percent of patients want access to a mental health care facility. As COVID-19 continues to rage, Americans are experiencing anxiety and depression. More than 42 percent of U.S. adults reported symptoms, up 11 percent in the previous years. Nearly 1 in 5 Americans has some type of mental health condition. Spending on mental health treatment and social services has reached over $250 billion, which is up approximately 60 percent since 2009. This cost includes spending on things like therapy and prescription medications as well as stays in psychiatric or substance abuse rehabilitation facilities. However, it does not take into account indirect costs, such as lower workforce participation rates and decreased productivity. In fact, depression alone is estimated to account for $44 billion in loses to workplace productivity. And access to care can be prohibitively expensive—even more so than physical health costs. An hour-long traditional therapy session can range from $65 to $250 for those without insurance. A patient with major depression can spend an average of $10,836 a year on health costs. Meanwhile, a person with diabetes taking insulin can spend $48,000 to manage their condition. On a national level, research shows that the United States of America is likely to continue to experience a shortage of mental health professional through 2025. If you are looking for excellent health and wellness coverage, consider becoming a Kaiser Permanente member. You do not need a referral for mental health and addiction care services. #RandolphHarris 13 of 18

Other ways to help keep health and wellness in check is celibacy. However, there is the double standard that is a Worldwide phenomenon that has many layers of meaning. The first is that one and one is not always two, because the woman or man of the evening is a criminal but their client is a “john,” an also because women are expected to be virginal at marriage and chaste afterward, and some men are expected to be chaste before a relationship and after, and during the marriage and relationship, but one’s husband is not bound by the same constraints. The double standard implies, in other words, that chastity is primarily and woman’s and small percent of men’s domain. Nonetheless, only women are typically judged more harshly than all men whose conduct is identical. Even today, the discrimination is thunderously obvious, preached from pulpits and parliaments and specifically mandated in the law. The double standard is nefarious not only because it embodies egregious gender inequality but because it condoned solicitation as an acceptable outlet for unchaste men. Though it condemns people of “the evening” as social scum and consigns them to lives of degradation and danger and disease, it sanctions their profession. The reason is obvious: without solicitation, lascivious people might seduce rather than marry the virgins of their own social class. It is particularly chilling that the members of many churches and other organizations in positions of authority support the double standard and, albeit reluctantly, swallows the equation that no men or women of the evening equals no chastity. Laws essentially force women to abide by a higher standard of regard in the matters of chastity than men. They also denounce solicitation but at the same time partially exonerate it as the safety valve that kept virgins pure. It is unsurprising, then, that the double standard matured as a code of conduct in pleasures of the flesh that demand female chastity and at the same time approve, or at least tolerate, the dominant group of mostly men, and their carnality expressed in the use of other humans as toys, though this meant sacrificing certain women and sometimes other to unchaste, unrestrained men and a small fraction of women. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18

Furthermore, not all men honour their obligations to marry their child’s mother. And when men who came from a higher social echelon seduced a working-class girl, they almost never honoured that class’s code. Domestics and shop girls in particular were the pray of privileged men, but being with child destitute these women rather than pushing them into marriage with the baby’s father. However, often times, after these men who have money start to become older and nearing retirement, they will then leave their wives for young women of other ethnic backgrounds and of lower social standings because these women tend to be considered more exotic and attractive. The women will marry for older man for security and to escape labour. However, in a few cases, it is real love. In society, another problem is many people seem to scarcely be able to comprehend what chastity means, or to regard it as a virtue. Among the middle and upper classes, chastity’s double standard wreaked havoc on social decency. Some of these moral puritanical, which even frown on premarital male activities involving pleasures of the flesh, young women are coached to trap husbands without surrendering beforehand even a taste of the delights to come. Men are, in some cases, are frustrated at this implacable wall of chastity and take it as a challenge. They play games. In large numbers, they form unholy crusades to seduce young virgins. This upper-class deviance was depicted on shows like the original on Gossip Girl. “Resist, resist!” the virgins’ elders urge them. “Just say a resounding ‘No’ to your pleading, inveigling, deceiving young suitors.” After all, as the old adage went, “Who would keep a cow of their own that can have a quart of milk for a penny?” However, at the same time, ladies, and a small percentage of men, forgive them for trying to ruin you. This double standard of conduct involving pleasures of the flesh is necessary, because unlike you, the dominant class of men and a small percentage of dominant women, by nature have an urgent, irrepressible need. Brothels used to be officially licensed. Unchaste people play a crucial role in upholding their societies’ notions about chastity. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18

Now, nowhere is a failure to achieve perfect synchronization more lamented than in the bedroom—unless it is when the U.S. Federal Reserve or the Bank of Japan rises or lowers interest rates and get the timing wrong. Timing, as any comedian can tell us, is everything. However, we are, for the most part unwittingly, changing our links to time, and that is no joke. As interested as investors and economists may be about exact timing in finance, they re remarkably uniformed about the role of synchronization—and, even more so de-synchronization—in the creation of wealth and poverty. Yet understanding these can give us a wholly new way of thinking about wealth creation. Some degree of synchronization has been needed ever since hunters and gatherers began working in groups. Historian William McNeill argues that mass rhythmic activities have been used throughout history to promote synchrony, which in turn improved economic productivity. Tribal dancing, he suggests, strengthened teamwork and made hunting more efficient. For thousands of years fishermen have chanted in unison as they hauled in their nets, the musical beats indicating when to pull and when to breathe. Agrarian economies also reflected seasonal change. According to anthropologist John Omohundro, writing about the Philippine island of Panay, “Through the dry season…and into the rainy season…businessmen are in their slowest season. All aspects of the distribution system slow down. By September or October the rice crop begins to arrive in town…Because the wealth of the province is regulated by agrarian cycles, city business activity rises and falls the these cycles.” Economic anthropologist Willem Wolters adds: “Purely local banks have never been viable in the semi-arid tropics because of the seasonality and synchronic timing.” Early industrial economics operated under completely different temporal conditions. Assembly-line work required a different rhythm. Thus, the factory whistle and the time clock were invented to coordinate work schedules. #RandolphHarris 16 of 18

By contrast, today, as we will see, business activities are speeding toward real time. In addition, the uses of time are becoming increasingly personalized and irregular, if not erratic. More different tasks need to be integrated, and the acceleration effect truncates the time available for each task. All this makes synchronization harder to achieve. And that is only the beginning. If we look deeper, we find that every economy throbs and vibrates with unnoticed rhythms. We may buy a newspaper daily, pick up soap or milk at the supermarket weekly, gas up the car every ten days or so, cash a paycheck every two weeks and pay credit card bills monthly. We might call a broker sporadically according to what is happening in the stock market, buy a movie ticket or a book on a whim a few times a year, pay taxes quarterly or annually, go to the dentist when a toothache strikes and purchase a gift for a relative who is getting married in June. These and countless other transactions create rhythms that flow through banks, markets and lives. With the very first slap on our infant behind, every one of us becomes part of this ongoing economic music. Even our biorhythms are affected (and in turn influence) the marvelously complex, orchestrated process that pulse around us as people work—making things, providing services, managing others, caring for one another, financing companies or processing data and information into knowledge. At every moment, some tempos speed up, others slow down. New melodies and harmonies are introduced, then fade out. There are choruses, counterpoints and crescendos. Beyond these, throughout the entire society and economy, there is a generalized pulse of life that is itself the average, as it were, of all its subordinate tempos. The “economic music” never stops. The result is not patternless chaos because, within every wealth system, various components or subsystems are continually adapting their speeds, phases and periodicities to one another. In biology this process is called “entertainment.” #RandolphHarris 17 of 18

Neurons, it turns out, do not work alone. They form temporary teams—much as businesses increasingly do today. In the words of Science magazine, “Neurons frequently fall into step with one another, forming ensembles that play the same tune, as it were, firing in relative synchrony for brief periods, before some neurons drop out of synch, perhaps to join another ensemble.” Firing in sync, moreover, apparently predisposes the neurons to “joint processing” at high levels of the system. Today’s breakup of monolithic corporations into congeries of short-lived project team, alliances, partnerships and joint ventures parallels these ephemeral “ensembles” in the neural system. One way the World could survive in joy is if the whole World worships God. We hear you, fellow-creatures. We know we are wrecking the World and we are afraid. What we have unleased has such momentum now, we do not know how to turn it around. Do not leave us alone, we need your help. You need us too for your own survival. Are there power there you can share with us? In the Service of the Heart, nothing is further from the truth than the widespread notion that to pray is synonymous with to beg, to request, or to supplicate. To be sure, to pray means to call upon God to help us. However, we need Him not only when we are physically in danger. We need Him also when we are spiritually in danger. To pray means to seek God’s help, “to keep our tongue from evil,” “to purify our hearts,” “to put into our hearts to understand, to learn and to fulfill in love, the words of the Christian Bible,” and thus to keep us unswervingly loyal to truth, goodness, and beauty. To pray is to feel and to give expression to a deep sense of gratitude. No intelligent, healthy, normal human being should take for granted, or accept without conscious, grateful acknowledgement the innumerable blessings which God in His infinite love bestows upon one daily—blessings of parents and loved one, of friends and country, of health and understanding. To pray is to express renewed allegiance to the moral and ethical principles which we accept as the guides of our personal lives, and which we recognize as the indispensable foundation stones for a decent human society. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18


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In the Cup of Omens there is a Baptism into Black Magic!

In popular thinking, the term “magic” refers to the tricks of a sleight-of-hand artist, the optical illusions created by a clever trickster, or the cunning exhibition of seemingly supernatural powers by money-hungry charlatans. Undoubtedly many of the amazing demonstrations performed by such people have a completely naturalistic explanation, but honest scholars who have investigated occultic phenomena in many parts of the World agree that science at present is unable to account for some of the apparently supernatural events they have witnessed. The Bible also sets forth the view that not all magic is merely hocus-pocus. In the Biblical portrayal of magic, the Scriptures acknowledge that real superhuman power can be accomplished through sorcery, but clearly teach that the source of such manifestations is evil. The Egyptian magicians actually were able to change their rods into serpents by throwing them on the ground. Some say these rods were really snakes which had been hypnotized into becoming as rigid as a cane, but even so we must admit that no scientist today can explain how these men were able to perform this feat. They also were successful in changing water into blood, and in producing a miraculous multiplication of frogs, thus apparently duplicating what Moses and Aaron had done by God’s supernatural power. The Egyptian sorcerers undoubtedly believed their gods gave them the ability to perform these amazing exploits, and they viewed their encounter with Moses and Aaron as a contest to determine whether or not their gods were more powerful than God. The Bible implies that supernatural beings take advantage of the practices of heathenism to further enslave their adherents, but declares that these invisible agents are neither holy angels nor gods. It states that they are demons—spirit beings who rebelled against God and now are dedicated to Him. For this reason, Moses and Aaron convincingly demonstrated the superiority of God over these demonic forces. #RandolphHarris 1 of 22

When Aaron’s rod became a serpent, it swallowed up those the Egyptians had cast to the ground. The greater power of God also was manifested when the pagan sorcerers were unable to remove the plague of frogs, but Moses simply prayed to the Lord, and “the frogs died out of the houses, out of the villages, and out of the fields,” reports Exodus 8.13. God’s servants then brought about the third plague, a changing of dust into lice, a judgment which made life almost unbearable for human and beast. This time the magicians of Egypt were unable to duplicate the miracle, not could they bring about the sudden death of the pests. They therefore humbly acknowledged, “This is the finger of God,” reports Exodus 8.19. In this manner, the Lord demonstrated His absolute superiority over the powers of evil which the Egyptians worshiped as gods. It does important for us to note again that the Bible does not indicate that the magicians were frauds. A careful study of this history of Egypt, Babylon, and other nations of antiquity reveals that heathen priests accomplished many unusual feats, and kept the people under subjection through what appeared to be supernatural abilities. In seeking to understand some of the mysterious phenomena of heathenism, we must bear in mind the declaration of the apostle Paul, “But I say that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons,” reports 1 Corinthians 10.20. The apostle was definitely saying that the worship of idols involved more than merely bowing down to lifeless images. Furthermore, the fact that the Bible repeatedly forbids sorcery, divination, and every other form of occultism is evidence that God links these practices with actual demonic power. We repeat, the death penalty would not have been the prescribed punishment for all mediums, fortunetellers, and sorcerers if they were only quacks guilty of deception for gain. #RandolphHarris 2 of 22

Critics of the Bible insist that its attitude toward some forms of witchcraft is inconsistent, and even sincere believers have been puzzled by several passages which appear to condone these practices. A careful examination of these instances, however, reveals that such critical assertions are unwarranted. Genesis 30: 14-18 records the story of Leah and Rachel bargaining for mandrakes, showing that they believed these so-called “love apples” increased a woman’s fertility. However, the fact that Jacob’s wives held to this ancient concept does not necessarily indicate that the Bible expresses approval. Then, too, modern investigation has shown that some primitive medicines, scorned by medics a generation or two ago, actually do possess qualities which make them valuable. At any rate, this passage of Scripture does not indicate that the Bible encouraged the use of magic. In another instance of apparent superstition, Jacob peeled the bark from saplings to give them a spotted appearance become he believed that they offspring of the cattle bred before them would then be speckled and spotted. This story is declared to be an indication that the writer of Genesis held to the notion that the colour of the unborn young would be affected by what the female animal saw at the time of impregnation. (See Genesis 30.37-43.) A careful study of the entire account reveals, however, the truth that God actually was controlling the breeding process through the laws of heredity, not by means of Jacob’s efforts. The angel of the Lord later told the patriarch that the male animals possessed genetic characteristics which brought about the birth of so many striped, speckled, and spotted animals. (See Genesis 31.11-12.) Therefore, we can assert with confidence that this passage of Scripture in no way encourages the use of magic. The statement of Joseph to his brothers about his silver cup also poses a problem for Bible students, because his words seem to indicate that he used it for purposes of divination. #RandolphHarris 3 of 22

After the steward had hidden the cup in Benjamin’s sack of grain, Joseph told him what he was to do and say. The King James Version records Joseph’s instructions as follows, “Up, follow after them men; and when thou dost overtake them, say unto them, Wherefore have ye rewarded evil for good? Is not this it in which my Lord drinketh, and whereby indeed he divineth? Ye have done evil in so doing” (Genesis 44.4-5). Scholars today know that the heathen sorcerers of Joseph’s day often sprinkled small particles of gold or sliver into a cup of water, or poured a small amount of oil in it, and then “read” the resulting design in the cup of omens. While it is possible that Joseph fell into this sinful and heathenish practice, we doubt very much that he did, for he had one of the finest characters of all the men portrayed in the entire Old Testament. In addition, we can present good reason for our conviction that Joseph never really used the coup to find out about the unknown. In the first place, Joseph did not need such sources of information. God had spoken to him through dreams and other forms of revelation, and therefore Joseph did possess knowledge ordinarily hidden to humans. In that sense he was able to “divine.” His instruction to his steward may be translated, “Is it not from this cup that my Lord drinks, and concerning which he will assuredly divine?” In other words, Joseph made it clear that he possessed a power which would enable him to find out what happened to the cup. (We must remember that Joseph was play-acting in order to test his brothers. He wanted them to be puzzled by the knowledge he possessed, and did not want to disclose his real identity at this time. For this reason, he did not speak of obtaining information directly from God.) This interpretation of verse 5 fits well with the statement of Joseph recorded in verse 15, “What deed is this that ye have done? Know ye not that such a man as I can certainly divine?” #RandolphHarris 4 of 22

He let his brothers know that he was a special person with unusual powers of perception, but did not reveal the source of his ability. Later he told them about his faith in God. Therefore, the story of Joseph and the silver cup is certainly not an indication of Biblical approval of magic, and the likelihood exists that Joseph never practiced the heathen customs of his day. Certain elements of the Mosaic law sometimes are thought to be a form of magic. In Numbers 5, for example, we are told that if a man suspected his wife of unfaithfulness, he was to take her to the priest for trial. The woman would then drink a liquid potion to determine her guilt or innocence. If certain physical results became apparent immediately, she was deemed guilty. If not, she was innocent. On the surface this appears to be a superstitious practice, but when we remember that Israel lived under a theocracy and that God has ordained this test, we can believe He would in this manner declare infallibly the guilt or innocence of the person being tried. The Urim and Thummim as a means of revelation and the long hair of Samson as the secret of his strength are further examples of divinely ordered and controlled phenomena which cannot be compared to the magic of the heathen. Therefore, we can say assuredly that nothing in the Old Testament or the New can be properly interpreted as divine sanction of sorcery or magic. Shortly before the Exile, the prophet Ezekiel delivered a scorching denunciation of women who were using amulets and veils in a magic ritual to bring joy or sadness, blessing or cursing, even life or death to certain individuals. “Likewise, thou son of man, set thy face against the daughters of thy people, who prophesy out of their own heart, and prophesy thou against them, and say, Thus saith the Lord God: Woe to the women that sew amulets upon all wrists, and make kerchiefs for the head of every person of stature to hunt souls! Will ye hunt the souls of my people, and will ye save the souls alive that come unto you? And will ye pollute me among my people for handfuls of barley and for pieces of bread, to slay the souls that should not die, and to save the souls alive that should not live, by your lying to my people that hear you lies? #RandolphHarris 5 of 22

“Wherefore, thus saith the LORD GOD: Behold, I am against your amulets, with which ye there hunt the souls to make them fly; and I will tear them from your arms, and will let the souls go, even the souls that ye hunt to make them fly. Your kerchiefs also will I tear, and deliver my people out of your hand, and they shall be no more in your hand, and they shall be no more in your hand to be hunted; and ye shall know that I am the LORD. Because with lies ye have made the heart of the righteous sad, who I have not made sad; and strengthened the hands of the wicked, that he should not return from his wicked way, by promising him life; therefore, ye shall see no more vanity, nor divine divinations; for I will deliver my people out of your hand; and ye shall know that I am the LORD,” reports Ezekiel 13.17-23. Exactly what these women did is not easy to ascertain. Some Bible students have conjectured that they performed a rite in which they symbolically bound up the soul of a person so that the individual would gradually waste away and die. Then, for a fee they would bring about his release. Other scholars think that Ezekiel describes features of “sympathetic magic,” whereby the sorceress fastened something around her own wrists or enshrouded her own head to place a curse upon a specific individual. In either case, the practice of these women appeared to have consequences so serious as to warrant divine condemnation and a prophetic declaration that God would deliver His people from their grasp. The Old Testament acknowledges the existence of real magic, and consistently condemns it in every form. Furthermore, the rites and ceremonies prescribed for Israel were not equivalent to the practices of the heathen, but were instructions that came directly from God and over which He would exercise control. At the very threshold of human history stands God’s command, “Fill the Earth and subdue it,” reports Genesis 1.28. #RandolphHarris 6 of 22

The task and right of man was the peaceful conquest of the Earth’s powers in accordance with the will of God. In opposition to this command Satan, the great master of confusion came and put forward his arch-temptation, “You will be like God knowing good and evil,” reports Genesis 3.5. Magic is the very antithesis of the commandment of God as it reveals a hunger for knowledge and a desire for power in opposition to the will of God. When faced with this temptation humankind was at the crossroads. The decision has to be made. Either voluntary subordination to the will of God or rebellion against His statues and His ordinances caused by a greed for power and a desire for knowledge. The decision still faces us today. We either conform to God’s revealed way of salvation or we carry on the rebellion, trying to rule the created World in unforgivable opposition to God. Magic is thus at its roots a rebellion, and it has been so from the beginning. It is the climax of man’s revolt against God. Any talk of harmless forces of nature and neutral applications is criminal in the light of this scriptural fact. On the surface, parapsychology (the science of extrasensory experience) still recognizes something of the double nature of magic. The differentiation is made between Psi-Gamma phenomena and Psi-Kappa phenomena. (Gamma representing gignoskein, to perceive; kappa representing kinein, to move). Here we have again the two basic elements of magic: knowledge and power through supernatural means. Through a great deal of pastoral work, I have noticed four ways in which magical powers can originate. These are through heredity, subscription of oneself to the devil, occult experiments and occult transference. The evidence drawn from many actual case histories goes to prove that magical abilities can be passed on by means of heredity. Often mediumistic powers can be traced back over three or four generations in one family. There are two possibilities here, one being that it is a matter of the genes and the other that it is a matter of succession. #RandolphHarris 7 of 22

By this we mean the custom of a person on one’s deathbed actually bestowing the magical abilities upon the eldest son or daughter in order to die peacefully. Often tragic scenes occur when the children do not want to have these abilities passed on to them. A person may cry out for weeks on his deathbed for someone to relieve him of his magical powers. Sometimes a distant relative or an outsider is willing to accept the succession. The reason for this may differ from case to case, be it pity, curiosity or maybe lust for power. The death of some magicians can drag on over a period of weeks till the office of “succession” has been settled. This is not an apostolic but a diabolic succession. Magical powers on the other hand may originate through subscription to the devil. One can see in this the counterpart to baptism. To every event recorded in the Bible, there seems to be a demonic parallel to it in the field of magic. Subscription to the devil accounts for some of the most terrible and formidable cases met with by Christian workers. For example, in Paris there is an occult church with the name or title, “We Worship the Prince of this World.” This church has sister congregations in Basle and berne, and a few decades ago one was opened in Rome. In order to become a member of this church, one has to subscribe oneself to the devil. This is a baptism into black magic! For years a man in Toggenburg, Switzerland, had a flourishing practice as a nature healer and charmer. He could even sure come people who the doctors had given up as hopeless. He had healed the blind, the lame, cases of advanced cancer, tuberculosis, leukemia, multiple sclerosis, scleroderma and other serious diseases. On one occasion however, the man’s own personal need came to the surface. He said, “I can help others, but for myself there is no help, no not in all eternity!” In his youth the man had subscribed himself to the devil. It was since that time that he had obtained his unearthly healing ability. #RandolphHarris 8 of 22

Another way in which magical powers may develop is through experimenting with occultism. A Swiss factory worker grew tired of his job. Since he had often heard that occult healers and mesmerizers made a lot of money, he bought some magic charms, underwent various devil ceremonies and then began healing experiments. His magic healing ability developed rapidly and ultimately his income surpassed his previous earnings many times over. The next example will illustrate all three factors together, that is, the factors of heredity, subscription and experimenting in occultism. A young woman told me this story. Here great-grandmother had subscribed herself to the devil with her own blood. She had practiced black magic and had healed both animals and people. On her deathbed she had suffered terribly as is often the cause with magic conjurers. The daughter, that is the grandmother of my storyteller, took over the magic powers of her mother. The magic literature of her mother also passed into her hands. Later the apparition of the great-grandmother was seen by the relatives. The grandmother however, continued to practice magic. During nights of the full moon, she would charm diseases. She was also in the habit of using a key suspended over a Bible as a pendulum, and she could also successfully stop people from bleeding. If she ever attempted to read the Bible, she found it quite a trial. As she grew older, she began to see black figures in her home, and finally when she died it was again an unpleasant time. Her ghost was also seen after her departure. The story went on that the young woman’s mother had then taken over the magical literature and practices. She too had become a well-known healer, but her fate had been the same as her predecessors’. The fourth member in this terrible line of succession was not the young woman. As a small child, her mother had cast spells over her. Shortly after this, she had become clairvoyant and had also begun to see black figures in the house. Her brother and sister had suffered from depression and she herself had has serious psychic and nervous disturbances which had led her to seek the help of a minister. #RandolphHarris 9 of 22

Occult transference is the fourth source of magical powers. A young man told me that he had once had three black magicians lay their hands on his head and murmur some magic charms over him. He had afterwards possessed magic abilities which astonished even the family doctor. The doctor had investigated his powers and had to acknowledge that they were genuine. The laying on of the hands of the magicians would again be a counterpart to the scriptural laying on of hands. Another example, a young man saw someone searching for water with a pendulum. He was asked if he would like to have a go, but the pendulum did not react in his hand. When the dowser took hold of his hands, though, the pendulum had at once reacted. Later when he had tried to repent the experiment by himself, he was again successful, and he discovered that he now had the ability to search for water with both a rod or a pendulum. Yet the young man felt a change in his Christian life. Previously he had been regular in his reading of the Bible and in prayer. After this transference of pendulum ability, however, his love for the Word of God and for prayer declined. Spirits are not normally subject to human visibility or other sensory perception. God’s universe operates undeviatingly in accordance with the purpose for which He created it. The all-wise and all-powerful Creator is not permitting Satan and demons to throw his ordered Universe into confusion by violating the laws he has established. Nor is He permitting His own people to do so through haphazard miracles. Though not ignoring the laws of nature, God’s Word also recognizes the possible transcendence of natural law in divine miracle both in good supernaturalism (Exodus 14.19-31; 17: 5-7; Joshua 3.16-17; 6.20; John 2.9; 11:44) and in evil supernaturalism (Exodus 7.10-11, 22; 8.7; 2 Thessalonians 2.8-10; Revelation 13.15). #RandolphHarris 10 of 22

When natural law is transcended by divine miracle, the natural eye may see the spiritual reality. An illustration is provided in 2 Kings 6.17. In answer to Elisha’s prayer, the Lord “opened the eyes” of the prophet’s servant who saw “the mountain full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha.” In like manner Elisha saw the “chariot of fire, and horses of fire” when Elijah went up by a whirlwind into Heaven (2 Kings 2.11). Similarly John saw the demons coming up from the abyss in their last-day eruption as locusts (Revelation 9.1-12). He also saw the three hideous demons issuing from the months of the dragon, the beast, and the false prophet as froglike spirits (Revelation 16.13-14). The apocalyptic seer glimpsed these fouls spirits prophetically and by supernatural vision. However, when they are sent against human, they will be invisible to the natural eye. Their presence will be known by the excruciating pain they inflict and the gross deception they cause. The harm they inflict will be inescapable, because their victims will be unable to shield themselves from an invisible enemy. However, spirits can become discernible to humans through transcendence of natural law. Evil spirits may be seen and communicated through an intermediary or medium. Just as Peter and Paull saw and talked with an angel (Acts 5.19; 27: 23-24), so human beings today can communicate with evil spirits through magic rites and incantations. Communication with the demon World results in supernatural manifestations, but these, strictly speaking, are not miraculous. Occult enslavement and extrasensory phenomena await people who enter the realm from which God would protect his own people (Deuteronomy 18.10-11) and against which He solemnly warns (Leviticus 19.31; 20.27; 1 Samuel 28.9; 1 Timothy 4.1, 2;1 John 4.1-3). When humans ignore God’s warnings and enter a forbidden realm, they may witness materializations, levitations, and luminous apparitions, as well as experience spirit rappings, trances, automatic writing, magic phenomena, clairvoyance, oral and written communications and other forms of spiritistic phenomena. #RandolphHarris 11 of 22

Such manifestations are not miracles. They represent the operation of the occult within a certain well-defined sphere tolerated by God. Occult subjection and oppression are the inevitable penalties to all who traffic in the realm of evil supernaturalism. The Scriptures are markedly reticent on the matter of spirits being seen by humans. Here again, the Bible stands in contrast to ethnic and rabbinic systems. Multitudes of demons in bizarre forms are described in ancient semitic demonology. Rabbinic demonology, for example, divides demons into two classes: one composed of purely spiritual beings, the other of half-spirits. The latter were though to have a psycho-sarcous constitution that involved them in physical needs and functions. Although the Bible is silent concerning such “halbgeister,” they would seem to be what the offspring of the angels and mortal women (Genesis 6:1-4) might have been, half-angelic and half-human monsters. Many spiritualists say they accept the Christian Bible as the Word of God. To understand it, however, spiritualists go to the control spirit in the séances, and the spirits reputedly give the proper interpretation. Spiritualists frequently ask, “Why go to the Bible, when you can go directly to the spirit and receive personal instruction from such people as Moses, Abraham, Joshua, Isaiah, David, Peter, James, John, and Paul—even the Master himself?” With that kind of opportunity, few spiritualists prefer to read the Bible—and hence they know little of what it teaches. For the Christian, 2 Timothy 3.16-17, is a key teaching regarding the inspiration and purpose of Scripture: “All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: that the man of God may be perfectly, thoroughly furnished unto all good works.” Spiritualists do not accept the plain meaning of that verse, and they distort another key verse, 2 Peter 1.21, which speaks of “holy men of God” producing prophecy “by the Holy Ghosts.” Spiritualists say this means that the prophets were inspired by the spirits. #RandolphHarris 12 of 22

Dr. Moses Hull, an accepted authority among spiritualists, wrote in Biblical Spiritualism, a book he published in 1895: “The Bible is, I think, one of the best of the sacred books of the ages. It is supposedly the sacred fountain from which two, if not three, of the great religions of the World have flowed…While the Bible is not the infallible or immaculate book that many have supposed it to be, no one can deny that it is a great book…Yet it must be confessed that the age of critical analysis of all its sayings and its environments has hardly dawned…John R. Shannon said to his Denver audience, ‘We do not believe in the verbal inspiration of the Bible. The dogma that every word of the Bible is supernaturally dictated is false. It ought to be shelved away…Verbal inspiration is a superstitious theory; it has turned multitudes in disgust from the Bible; it has led thousands into infidelity; it has led to savage theological warfare’…All these facts would show, if brought out, that the Bible, like all other books, is exceedingly human in its origin. While the Bible is, none of it infallible, none of it unerring—when rightly interpreted it is all of it useful; all of it good. Even the parts which the people called infidels have ridiculed the most, become beautiful when examined in the light of modern spiritualism. In the following chapters the sacred light of spiritualism is applied to the Bible and it becomes indeed a ‘lamp unto our feet and a light to our path.’” To show something of how spiritualists interpret Scripture, I have chosen five examples from Hull’s book. Isaiah 21.4-5. “My heart panted, fearful affrighted me: the night of my pleasure hath he turned into fear unto me. Prepare the table, watch in the watchtower, eat, drink; arise, ye prices, and anointed the shield.” The spiritualists interprets the phrase “prepare the table” as meaning a table to be used for spirit manifestation at a séance. Ezekiel 9.4-6. “And the Lord said unto him, Go through the midst of the city, through the midst of Jerusalem, and set a mark upon the foreheads of the men that sigh and that cry for all the abominations that be done in the midst thereof. #RandolphHarris 13 of 22

“And to the other he said in mine hearing, Go ye after him through the city, and smite; let not your eye spare, neither have ye pity; slay utterly old and young, both maids, and little children, and women; but come not near any man upon whom is the mark and begin at my sanctuary. Then they began at the ancient men which were before the house.” Dr. Hull comments: “Ezekiel was considered an excellent medium, but like many of the nineteenth century he makes wrong predictions. It is thought that very few, if any, of his predictions ever met their accomplishments.” Amos 7.7. “Thus he shewed me: and, behold, the Lord stood upon a wall made by a plumbline, with a plumbline in his hand.” Hull writes: “Mediums see such manifestations in connection with departed human spirits nearly every day.” Acts 8.26-30. “And the angel of the Lord spake unto Philip, saying, Arise, and go toward the south…and, behold, a man of Ethiopia, an eunuch…had come to Jerusalem for to worship, was returning, and sitting in his chariot read Esaias the prophet. Then the Spirit said unto Philip, Go near, and join thyself to this chariot. And Philip ran thither to him.” Dr. Hull asserts that Philip was carried by a control spirit to speak to the Ethiopian. Galatians 1.11-12. “But I certify you, brethren, that the gospel which was preached of me is not after man. For I neither received it of man, neither was I taught it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ.” In his handbook for spiritualist, Hull concludes from this text that the Apostle Paul received the gospel by spirit revelation through the mediumship of Jesus. It is noteworthy that to both the spiritualist and the Christian, Satan is God’s archenemy. I was at a séance one time when Satan supposedly entered. It ended abruptly, and we were told it was because of the presence of an evil spirit. It is tragic that many spiritualists never realize they are being deceived by this very devil who can ingeniously adapt his tactics to lure any type of prey. Satan is openly honoured, of course, by some practitioners of the so-called “black arts” or “black magic.” #RandolphHarris 14 of 22

Generally, some of these people are obsessed with hexes and spells, sexual indulgence, weird rituals, and hints of violence. Spiritualists, who consider themselves followers of God and the “good spirits,” regard such people as self-centered “spiritists” who follow the “bad spirits.” However, these “good” and “bad” spirits serve the same master, Satan, and serve him well, because they each give their followers what Satan dispenses: a sense of goodness and of guidance without dependence on Christ; and a sense of power and self-fulfillment in defiance of God’s commands. However, many spirits do believe in God, and the Christian Bible says there is a Holy Spirit and Angels that guide us, and in many cases, these spirits do prevent people from facing hardships, and these people still depend on Christ. So, it is really hard to generalize and give Satan so much power. Nonetheless, all people are baffled by occult mysteries! Revelations 13.14 says, “Satan’s representative deceiveth them that dwell on the Earth by means of those miracles which he had power to do.” Generally, people think of miracles and blessings as good omens. So, everyone has to make their own decisions as to what they believe, but many people on Earth are always looking for evidence of the supernatural because the very fact that we live on a globe that floats in the sky and provides of with nature and fruit and meat, and sun and a nightlight at night is evidence of a supernatural power. Once upon a time, at the instigation of a ghost, a lawsuit took place at Downpartick in 1685. The account of this was given to Baxter by Thomas Emlin, “a worthy preacher in Dublin,” as well as by Claudius Gilbert, one of the principal parties therein concerned: the latter’s son and namesake proved a liberal benefactor to the Library of Trinity College—some of his books have been consulted for the present work. It appears that for some time past there had been dispute about the tithes of Drumbeg, a little parish about four miles outside Belfast, between Mr. Gilbert, who was vicar of that town, and the Archdeacon of Down, Lemuel Matthews, whom Cotton in his Fasti describes as “a man of considerable talents and legal knowledge, but of a violent overbearing temper, and a litigious disposition.” #RandolphHarris 15 of 22

The parishioners of Drumbeg favoured Gilbert, and generally paid the tithes to him as being the incumbent in possession; but the Archdeacon claimed to be the lawful recipient, in support of which claim he produced a warrant. In the execution of this by his servants at the house of Charles Lostin, one of the parishioners, they offered some violence to his wife Margaret, who refused them entrance, and who died about a month later (1 November 1685) of the injuries she had received at their hands. Being a woman in a bad state of health littler notice was taken of her death, until about a month after she appeared to one Thomas Donelson, who had been a spectator of the violence done her, and “affrighted him into a Prosecution of Robert Eccleson, the Criminal. She appeared divers times, but chiefly upon one Lord’s Day-Evening, when she fetch’d him with a strange force out of his House into the Yard and Fields adjacent. Before her last coming (for she did so three times that Day) several Neighbours were called in, to whom he gave notice that she was again coming; and beckon’s him to come out; upon which they went to shut the Door, but he forbad it, saying that she looked with a terrible Aspect upon him, when they offered it. However, his Friends laid hold on him and embraced him, that he might not go out again; notwithstanding which (a plain evidence of some invisible Power), he was drawn out of their Hands in a surprising manner, and carried about into the Field and Yard, as before, she charging him to prosecute Justice: which Voice, as also Donelson’s reply, the people heard, though they saw no shape. There are many Witnesses of this yet alive, particularly Sarah (Losnam), the Wife of Charles Lostin, Son to the deceased Woman, and one William Holyday and his Wife.” This last appearance took place in Holyday’s house; there were also present several young persons, as well as Charles and Helen Lostin, children of the deceased, most of whom appeared as witnesses at the trial. #RandolphHarris 16 of 22

Upon this Donelson deposed all he knew of the matter to Mr. Randal Brice, a neighbouring Justice of the Peace; the latter brought the affair before the notice of Sir William Franklin in Belfast Castle. The depositions were subsequently carried to Dublin, and the case was tried at Downpatrick Assizes by Judge John Lindon in 1685. On behalf of the plaintiff, Charles Lostin, Counseller James Macartney acted—if he be the Judge who subsequently makes his appearance in a most important witch-trial at Carrickfergus, he certainly was as excellent an advocate as any plaintiff in a case of witchcraft could possibly desire, as he was strongly prejudiced in favour of the truth of all such matters. “The several Witnesses were heard and sworn, and their Examinations were entered in the Record of that Assizes, to the Amazement and Satisfaction of all that Country and of the Judges, whom I have heard speak of it at the time with much Wonder; insomuch that the said Eccleson hardly escaped with his life, but was Burnt in the Hand.” Whether or not one believes in Mrs. Winchester’s superstitions about spirits, it is hard to dismiss occurrences of the number 13 throughout her gorgeous mansion. Many windows have 13 panes and there are 13 bathrooms, with 13 windows in the 13th Bathroom, 13 steps leading to that bathroom. The Carriage Entrance Hall floor is divided into 12 cement sections. There are even 13 hooks in the Blue Séance Room, which supposedly held the different coloured robes Mrs. Winchester wore while communing with spirits. Here are even more thirteens: 13 rails by the floor-level skylight in the South Conservatory, 13 steps on many of the stairways, 13 squares on each side of the Otis electric elevator, 13 glass cupolas on the Greenhouse, 13 holes in the sink drain covers, 13 ceiling panels in some of the rooms, and 13 gas jets on the Ballroom chandelier (Mrs. Winchester had the thirteenth one added!) It is interest to note that Mrs. Winchester’s will had 13 parts and was signed by her 13 times! #RandolphHarris 17 of 22

Mrs. Winchester sat by herself on the fourth-floor balcony of her mansion. It was an October evening, and the sun was setting. The west was all aglow with mysterious red light, very strange and lurid—a light that reflected itself in glowing purple of the sky. Mrs. Winchester had a poet’s soul. She sat there long, watching the livid hues that incarnadined the sky—redder and fiercer than anything she ever remembered to have seen growing up as a child. She knew it was getting late and was expecting guests for dinner. Mrs. Winchester was always such a stickler for punctuality and dispatch. However, there was something about that sunset and the lights on the bracken—something beautiful but bizarre—that absolute fascinated her. She took it as a sign from the spirits that something was about to happen. The Universe was always teeming with mysterious secrets to unfold. Many of the guests in her mansion felt something desired to possess their soul, and it made them want to stop and give way to this overpowering sese of the mysterious and the marvellous in the dark depths of the estate. She was expecting Claude Duncan for dinner. Mrs. Winchester dined at 6.00 p.m. punctually. However, Claude seemed to be having some issues that evening. He was an art dealer, and was being haunted by many strange shaped. However, he saw and heard absolutely nothing; yet he realized that unseen figures were watching him close with bated breath, and anxiously observing his every movement, as if intent to know whether he would rise and move on, or remain to investigate this causeless sensation. He could feel their outstretched necks; he could picture their strained attention. At last he broke away. “This is nonsense,” he said aloud to himself, and turned slowly homeward. Ad he did so, a deep sigh, as of suspense relieved, but relived in the wrong direction, seemed to rise—unheard, impalpable, spiritual—from the invisible crowd that father around him immaterial. Clutched hands seemed to stretch after him and try to pull him back. #RandolphHarris 18 of 22

An unreal throng of angry and disappointed creatures seemed to follow him over the moor, uttering speechless imprecations on his head, in some unknown tongue—ineffable, inaudible. This horrid sense of being followed by unearthly foes took absolute possession of Claude’s mind. It might have been merely the lurid redness of the afterglow, or the loneliness of the moor, or the necessity of being at the Winchester Mansion, no one minute late for Mrs. Winchester’s dinner-hour; but, at any rate, he lost all self-control for the moment, and ran-ran widely at the very top of his speed, all the way from the barrow to the door of the Winchester Mansion garden. There he stopped and looked round with a painful sense of his own stupid cowardice. This was absolutely childish: he had seen nothing, heard nothing, had nothing definite to frighten him; yet he had run from his own mental shadow, like the verist schoolgirl, and was trembling still from the profundity of his sense that somebody unseen was pursing and following him. “What a precious fool I am,” he said to himself, half angrily, “to be so terrified at nothing! I will go to Mrs. Winchester’s dinner just to recover my self-respect, and to prove to myself, at least, I am not really frightened.” There is nothing like a light for dispelling superstitious terrors. The Winchester Mansion was fortunately updated with electric light; For Mrs. Winchester was nothing if not intensely modern. He went to dinner, however, in very good spirits. He told Mrs. Winchester and her niece Merriam “Daisy” Marriot that, “I felt a most peculiar sensation. Just after sunset, I was dimly conscious of something stirring inside, not visible or audible, but—” “Oh, I know, I know! Said Merriam. “A sort of feeling there was somebody somewhere, very faint and dim, though you could not see or her them; they tried to pull you down, clutching at you like this: and when you ran away frightened, they seemed to follow you and jeer at you. Great gibbering creatures! Oh, I know what all this is. I have been here, and felt it.” #RandolphHarris 19 of 22

“Daisy!” Mrs. Winchester shouted, “what nonsense you talk! You are really too ridiculous. How can you suppose Mr. Duncan feels haunted?!” Mrs. Winchester darted at him a look of intense displeasure. She said, in a chilly voice, “at a table like this and with such thinkers around, we might surely find something rather better to discuss than such worn out superstitions.” Claude replied, “Mrs. Winchester, it has been shown conclusively that the Winchester mansion, was built on the grave of Aryan invaders, and that they are the real originals of all the San Jose hills and surrounding lands. You have heard the story of how your dark observation tower came, of course. People say the spirits built it because they were deeply religious people, who believed in human sacrifice. They felt they it would have a high spiritual benefit. That it lit up your palace, so that the spirits could find you.” “It is a very odd fact, Mr. Duncan, that only ghosts people ever see are the ghost of a generation very close to them. One hears lots of ghosts in nineteenth-century costumes, because everybody has a clear idea of wigs and small-clothes from pictures and fancy dresses. One hears of far fewer in Elizabethan dress, because the class most given to beholding ghost are seldom acquainted with ruffs and farthingales; and one meets with none at all in Angelo-Saxon or Ancient British or Roman costumes, because those are only known to a comparatively small class of learned people. Millions of ghosts of remote antiquity must swarm about the World, though, after a hundred years or thereabouts they retired into obscurity and cease to annoy people with their nasty cold shivers. However, the queer thing about these long-barrow ghost is that they must be the spirits of humans who died thousands and thousands of years ago, which is exceptional longevity for a spiritual being; do you not think so, Mr. Duncan?” “You mansion must be chock-full of them,” replied Mr. Duncan. “Daisy, my child, go to bed, said Mrs. Winchester. “This is not talk for you. And do not go chilling yourself by standing at the window in your nightdress, looking out on the common to search for the ghosts. You nearly fell to your death last year with that nonsense. #RandolphHarris 20 of 22

As Claude Duncan went for a tour of the mansion by himself, he saw a child’s white face gaze appealingly across at him. Slowly the ghost boy raised one pale forefinger and pointed. His lips opened to an inaudible word; but he read it by sight. “Look!” he said simply. Claude looked where he pointed. A faint blue light hung lambent over the door-to-nowhere. It was ghostly and vague. It seemed to rouse and call him. Claude was now in a strange semi-mesmeric state of self-induced hypnotism when a command of whatever sort or by whomsoever given, seems to compel obedience. Trembling he rose, and taking his candle descended the stair noiselessly. Then, walking on tiptoe across the tile-paved hall, he opened the door-to-nowhere, and fell out into the garden below. Claude felt a creep sense of mystery and the supernatural. And he saw the pale face still pressed close against the window, and a white hand still motioning him mutely onward. He looked once more in the direction of where the ghost boy pointed, the spectral light now burnt clearer and bluer, and more unearthly than ever, and the observational tower of the mansion seemed haunted from end to end by innumerable invisible and uncanny creatures. As Claude groped on his way, speechless voices seemed to whisper unknow tongues encouragingly in his ear; ghosts appeared to crowd around him and tempt him with beckoning figures to follow them. As it seemed, by invisible hands, he staggered slowly forward, till at last, with aching head and trembling feet, he stood beside the front door of the mansion. Something clogged and impeded him from moving. His feet would not obey his will; they seemed to move of themselves back into the mansion. Steadying himself, and opening his eyes, Claude walked through the closed front doors. Then at once his feet moved easily, and the invisible attendant chuckled to themselves so loud that he could almost hear them. His terror was infinite, there was a ghostly through of people. They were spirits. #RandolphHarris 21 of 22

Claude Duncan was powerless in their intangible hands; for they seized him roughly with incorporeal fingers. Their wrist compelled him as the magnet compels the iron bar. A dim phosphorescent light, like the light of a churchyard or decaying paganism, seemed to illuminate the mansion faintly. Things loomed dark before him; but his eyes almost instantly adapted themselves to the gloom, as the eyes of the dead on the first night in the grave adapt themselves by inner force to the strangeness of their surroundings. The Grand Ballroom had a silver chandelier from Germany, and the walls and parquet floors were made of six hardwoods—mahogany, teak, maple, rosewood, oak, and white ash. And there were two mysterious stained-glass windows. The room was full of sumptuous music, the San Francisco orchestra was performing and ghosts dressed for a ball were dancing. Claude’s attention was too much concentrated on devouring fear and the horror of the situation to enjoy the mysterious beauty of it. There was also a grinning skeleton turning its head to reveal to Claude its eyeless orbs with vacant glance of hungry satisfaction. Claude, held fast by the immaterial hands of his ghastly captors, looked and trembled for his fate, too terrified to cry out or even to move and struggle, he beheld the hideous thing rise and assume a shadowy shape, all pallid blue light, like the shape of his jailers. Bit by bit, as he gazed, the skeleton seemed to disappear, or rather to fade into some unsubstantial form, which was nevertheless more human, more corporal, more horrible than the dry bones it had come from. Then it busted into a loud and fiendish laugh. It was a hideous laugh, halfway between a wild beast’s and a murderous maniac’s: it echoed through the long hall like the laughter of devils. It said, “You are mine. You soul now belongs to the Winchester mansion!” The men and women spirits, with a loud whoop, raised hands aloft in unison. Next instant with a howl of vengeance even louder than before, they crowded around Claude and jostled and hustled him. And the moon burned bright and bluer as Claude Duncan now became the Winchester Rifle’s victim. You see it is not a bullet, but an all-powerful spirit, which chooses victims even if they did not die at the hands of the Winchester Rifle. Curious about the Winchester Mystery House? #RandolphHarris 22 of 22

Winchester Mystery House

TONIGHT! Roam the halls of the iconic Winchester Mystery House with nothing but a flashlight 👀🔦 You don’t want to miss this. https://www.winchestermysteryhouse.com/
Don’t Go Out Like Whitney Huston–Can I Leave A Million at Your House and You Won’t Touch it?

Great changes require administrative support and necessary and necessary resources. A ship in port is safe, but that is not what ships are built for. The World changes faster than the people in it. We must now try to imagine what the nucleic acid molecules, in the late coacervate/early cellular era, could have done besides reproduce their own kind. For definiteness, let us consider a coacervate or cell containing large numbers of nucleic acid molecules of different compositions and lengths. Let us assume, moreover, that much of the nucleic acid is in its single-stranded form at the time we commence our observations. This could be because not enough time has yet elapsed for the growth of the Siamese-twin configurations since the cyclically changing chemistry of the cell last produced the conditions that split the double molecules into single ones. In any event, let us follow the adventures of a single nucleic acid molecule as it floats around in the cellular fluid. We know, of course, that the floating around of such a molecule would not be a completely passive performance. We have already dealt with the tendency, arising from the electric fields associated with atoms and molecules, for some of the small organic and inorganic molecular fragments that inhabit the cellular fluid to attach themselves to local regions of the nucleic acid molecules. In the past, we concentrated on one type of such attachment process—that which cases a single molecule of nucleic acid to grow into a double one by conjugation of its bases. At that time, we did not concern ourselves greatly with competition from other kinds of attaching molecular fragments, although we knew that such other attachments were bound to occur from time to time. Our lack of concern for such competition was based on our awareness that most of these other attachments would be tenuous and quickly broken, since the randomly encountered molecular fragments would usually not “mate” very well with the nearby parts of the nucleic acid. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20

Our discussion implied that, upon the approach of a free nucleotide to a suitable region of a molecule of nucleic acid, the strong binging forces that would come into play would result in the displacement of any lightly held “impurity” in favour of the attachment of the arriving nucleotide. Such a tendency for loosely held fragments to be displayed by molecules of greater binding energy is probably adequate to render inconsequential the large majority of the nucleic acid molecule’s casual encounters in the cellular fluid. Nevertheless, there would appear to be possibilities for attachments of kinds that would not necessarily yield to such displacement forces. For example, two different nucleic acid molecules would occasionally bump together. And once in a while such a collision might bring together short regions of the two long molecules carrying base sequences complementary to one another—an A base opposed to a U (Substitute T for U, in DNA) base, then a G opposed to a C, and so on. The resulting multiple attachment could constitute much stronger connection than that resulting from the usual casual encounter between molecules of different types. To be sure, collisions between nucleic acid molecules would be rare, unless the concentration of nucleic in the cellular fluid were exceedingly high. There is a related kind of encounter, however, that would occur much more frequently—the collision of one part of a long nucleic acid molecule with another part of the same molecule. For the nucleic acid backbone is supple; it can turn back upon itself like a rope. Under the ceaseless churning that thermal agitation imposes on the molecules of any fluid, each long chain of nucleic acid would be continually bending and twisting, frequently thereby brining normally remote parts of itself into temporary contact. An occasional attachment would be of just the nature described in the example of the encounter of two different nucleic acid molecules. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20

If not an unusually strong attachment (that is, involving a considerable number of conjugated bases), it would soon be broken under the stress of random thermal agitation. However, if a special way of folding the long molecule back upon itself could result in a binding together of the two halves strong enough to survive, it would eventually be “found”; the random processes would ultimately make nearly the right kind of fold, the resulting attractive forces would do the rest, and the long molecule would lock together in a characteristic folded configuration. Of course, certain conditions would have to be met by a single-stranded nucleic acid molecule before it could be eligible to form a folded configuration. In particular, a certain minimum length would have to be exceeded in order that the two halves of the folded molecule could make enough mutual bonds to provide the needed attachment strength. X-rays analysis of the nucleic acid in modern organisms shows that such folded structures, which are abundant in all cells, usually involve seventy to righty nucleotides. A combination of speculation and evidence suggests that there may be nothing very critical about the specific sequence of bases along the backbone of a successfully folded molecule. A molecule of random base sequence might be able to form a folded or hairpin structure involving complementary pairing of most of its bases by the simple expedient of pushing away from the primary folded structure an occasional nucleotide segment that does not fit the base pattern of the opposite arm of the structure. X-ray measurements strongly suggest that this kind of expedient distortion of the hairpin does not actually occur and that the schematic drawings of it are probably fairly realistic. Folded configurations would not be assumed by all nucleic acid molecules even if their length and base sequence were favourable. For the reproduction process would sometimes prevent the formation of folded molecules; to the extent to which the projecting bases had already been mated with conjugate nucleotides from the surrounding fluid, there would be a decrease in the probability that the different parts of the flailing molecule would stick together. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20

However, it is not hard to postulate conditions that would cause the competition to be frequently resolved in favour of the formation of folded configurations rather than double molecules. For one thing, as mentioned in the past reports, catalysts and energy-supplying molecules must be available in the cellular fluid if the formation double molecules is to proceed at a significant rate. The chore for which these molecular assistants are required does not have to do with the conjugation of the nucleotide bases; this goes easily. Rather, the additional energy and catalytic assist are needed to connect the sugar phosphate ends of the nucleotides. However, this requirement does not exist for the formation of a folded configuration of a single molecule. Therefore, we might well expect the folding process to occur more rapidly than the reproduction processes for the molecules in question. This would be particularly true if, as we can easily postulate, the supply of catalysts and energy-contributing molecules were low in the vicinity of some of the single-stranded nucleic acid. Under such circumstances we can easily imagine that the occasional free nucleotide that attached itself to conjugate bases along the backbone of the nucleic acid molecule would be displaced by the stronger binding forces brought into play by the tendency toward multiple affiliation of the components of the two arms of the molecule itself. To be sure, the actual configuration of the folded molecule would not look much like the two-dimensional patterns seen in vintage textbooks. The same electric forces that cause double-stranded nucleic acid molecules to form a double helix would operate to impose a twist on the folded molecule. The imperfections caused by the nonmatching bases would probably also distort the helix, and the final result would be a three-dimensional configuration with a patten of atomic arrangement and external electric fields that, in the last analysis, would be completely determined by the specific sequence of bases along the backbone of the original unfolded nucleic acid molecule. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20

Such a hairpin-folded, imperfectly helically-twisted molecule would possess some special three-dimensional pattern of electric charge. In particular, it would be likely to have an affinity for certain kinds of molecular fragments. For example, a particular sequence of nucleotides might result in such a pattern of hairpin folding and partial helical twisting as to produce, in some portion of the molecule, a very good fit for a sugar fragment. Another molecule with a different sequence of nucleotides might include within its three-dimensional contours a good “mold” for holding a particular kind of amino acid, and so on. Assuming the existence of such ingredients in the surrounding fluid, continued floating around of the nucleic acid molecules would ultimately result in getting most of them coupled to whatever specific kinds of molecular fragments their own special patterns of electric fields best equip them to carry. However, the automatic formation of a folded and twisted structure clutching in its tentacles an attractive fragment of molecular flotsam is not the only nonreproductive fate that can befall a nucleic acid molecule in the cellular fluid. Modern evidence shows that longer varieties of these molecules can become tightly bound to the surfaces of solid particles. The particles on which such attachment occurs are today called microsomes, and they are a conspicuous feature of all modern cells. We have no difficulty in rationalizing the evolutionary origin of such inclusions; the precipitation of some of the chemical by-products of metabolism would doubtless have produced solid particles in some of the early coacervates. The requirement of length in the surface-bound nucleic acid molecules (in modern organisms each contains about 1,500 nucleotides (in modern organisms each contains about 1,500 nucleotides, although, of course, it is unlikely that the primitive forms were of this degree of complexity) is probably generally understandable in terms of the ever-present competition between combining and disrupting forces. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20

Unless the molecule is long enough to provide many local points of attachment to the supporting surface, the ceaseless jostling to which it is subjected by the random thermal agitation of the surrounding molecules will jar it loose. Perhaps for a similar reason, a successfully surface-bound nucleic acid molecule appears to be fully extended, rather than folded back upon itself. Further, the long molecule is held to the surface in such a way as not to neutralize the pattern of electric fields that results from the specific sequence of bases along the backbone. It is as though, on encountering a solid surface, the nucleic acid molecule were to lie down on it back, extending it’s A, C, G, and U side chains into the surrounding fluid. For the bound molecules are chemically reactive. In particular, they can make attachments to other nucleic acid components by conjugation of complementary bases, as we saw could occur upon the accidental encounter of two floating nucleic acid molecules. This does not have to mean, however, that the long surface-bound molecule of nucleic acid would rapidly accrue to itself conjugate nucleotides and bind them together to form a double molecule. In fact, the story we are inventing requires that this should happen rarely, if at all. It is not hard to imagine conditions that would hold such double-molecule formation to a low level. For example, the catalyst that zips together the sugar phosphate ends of the conjugated nucleotides to tie up the backbone structure of the Siamese-twin molecule may not be able to operate effectively when the generating single molecule is stretched out on a solid surface. Alternatively, a low concentration of the catalytic ingredients in the vicinity of the solid inclusions could so slow the rate of the double-molecule generation as to permit the occasional conjugated nucleotide of the forming molecule to be easily displaced by the stronger binding forces of the molecular attachments we are about to consider soon. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20

To get others to do what you want them to do, you must see things through their eyes. It is notorious that the physical plant and social environment have grown out of human scale. To achieve simple goods, it is often necessary to set in motion immense masses. In scarcity, where the means are unavailable, we wistfully renounce the ends. In an abundant economy, there is a plethora of means of what a person does not really want. Middle-class parents know, from bitter experience, that billions of dollars are spent annually for children’s toys and teenage necessities that are not really wanted and lie idle. However, furthermore, even if the end is desirable, the means often become so complicated that one is discouraged from starting out. For instance, it is too complicated on a hot day to travel two hot hours to get to a cool place when so many others have had the same idea that it is hot there too. To adults, such complicated means are irritating and take the joy out of life. To children growing up, they are disastrous because they make it impossible to learn by doing. The sense of causality is lost. Initiative is lost. And one ends with the idea that nothing can be changed. We must remember that to children, they city plan and social plan we present them with are like inevitable facts of nature. Unless they have architects or builders in the family, they cannot realize that the buildings were drawn by somebody on a piece of paper and could have been different. Unless their parents teach them otherwise, they believe that compulsory school attendance is a divine creation and it is a sin to be absent. It is, of course, very difficult to judge the environment concretely from the child’s point of view. Thus, living in a big city does not as such make a child inept, though any city has very complicated means. The city is short on farm work, swimming holes, and animals to trap; but it has docks, freight-car yards, labyrinthine basements, pavements to chalk up, and subway trains to play tag on. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20

The streets are littered with the remarkable junk of a thousand trades, to hoard and make things with. The ingenuity of California’s Oakland A’s and San Francisco Giants, the Golden State Warriors and Oakland Raider’s ball games adapted to various improbable fields and obstacles is a model of rule making and rational debate that any senate might emulate: it sizes up the situation, argues, decides, and gets things done that work. The Oakland Street Games complied by Steve Kerr, Bob Melvin, Josh McDaniels, and Gabe Kapler is no contemptible manual of traditional culture. History teaches that cities have made people smart because of their mixed peoples, mixed manners, and mixed learning. On the whole, cities have probably trained more intelligent children than the country. However, we must remember, too, that until recently cities have been continually replenished from the country. City people had country cousins, and drew on both influences. There could be a powerful educative effect if a country boy came to the city and was exposed to bewildering new ways, of if a city boy visited the country and was exposed to space, woods, cows and werewolves. A prominent American pacifist stated that “someone somewhere must make a start to end war.” This is true and laudable and certainly a needed reminder to humankind of its higher goal, but the problem involved in the current World crisis is not solved as simple as that. Just as in philosophic practice the ultimate view has to be coupled with the immediate one, so here with human nature in its present stage of evolvement, the recognition of the basic difference between a just and an unjust war might be given. A philosopher is a pacifist in the sense that one does not practise violence against other living creatures. However, one is not an uncompromising pacifist. One does not consider the use of arms wrong in all circumstances. A situation can be imagined where it would be wiser and, in the end, kinder to use force deliberately. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20

Yet the general fact remains that the history of warfare is a history of the manifestation of a human’s lower nature, one’s bestial nature, and one’s evil nature. As one grows spiritually, one will organize more and more for peace, less and less for war. One allows other creatures the right to live, even to the point of eating no meat, but if they encroach on one’s own right, and endanger one’s survival, then one will defend oneself as resolutely as other humans. Nor is the situation changed if these creatures are not animal but human. Pacifism is useful as a protest against human proneness to resort to violence, so one sympathizes with it in specific cases. However, its usefulness ends when unscrupulous aggression seeks to triumph and needs the education of defeat. The pacifist movements naturally attract intellectuals and artists, ministers of religion and humanitarians. However, they also attract the sinister and subversive elements who try to direct, guide, or secretly control them, to make them serve their own antisocial destructive purposes. The presence and prominence of genuine idealists along with these pretended ones create confusion in the public mind. How can a movement be bad which is supported by such good humans? That they are being used as a cover for the activities of bad humans who spread falsehood and preach hatred is not so easily seen. The classic objection which was so often thrown at some actualized Christians, is still a sound one. “Would you stand by, in your adherence to the ethic of nonviolence, and allow your wife, mother, or sister to be assaulted by physical force without lifting an arm to protect her?” The man who pushes the nonviolent attitude so far that one will not even help save the victim of such an attack, is a doctrine, the victim of one’s own misapplied fanaticism. Nature (God) can be very violent at times: it is not always peaceful. One the mystical level, all war is evil and all pacifism is good. On the philosophical level, the universality of this rule vanishes. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20

We there rise from a judgment based on pure feeling to a judgment based on its integration by intuition with pure reason, the result of which is intelligence. If pacifism is to mean the acceptance of evil, then it cannot be enough. Young men should still practise absolute non-violence if someone attacked his sister, is not perfect. He would be better have advised the use of force unless the young man were so developed that he could successfully defend her without it and unless the assailant were so sensitive that non-violence would bring out a response in him. In other words, the pacifist principle should certainly be applied in every case where it is likely to be effective but refrained from where it is likely to fail. It is not a principle of universal applicability. Men whose temperament is naturally given to violence in speech or deed, or those who always stir up agitation, extremism, irreconciliation, and intransigence, must be firmly and unflinchingly ruled. Weakness would be folly. The whole history of Europe during the past fifty years could have been changed had pacifism not been misapplied. When Biden seized power in America, the leader of the Socialist Revolutionary Party, which not only had a majority in the Constituent Assembly but controlled more regiments than the true Republicans, refused to put up any resistance. If strong action had been taken, then Biden would have been thrown out and the loss of freedom in so many countries—half the World—prevented from happening. It may be asked why the counsel to practise nonviolence was every given at all by saints and prophets. Obviously it is ethically the highest instance of forgiveness and the most effective way of transcending the ego practically. The proper course is to try kindly reasonable and nonviolent methods of resisting aggression. If they fail, then forceful ones become the only alternative. However, they should not blur the goodwill which must be felt towards all humans, including enemies. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20

The mistake made is to be solely dependent on violent methods, when gentler ones would achieve the same end without letting in the poison of hate and without creating so much new misery. That country is truly civilized where the killing instinct is held in abeyance and regarded with abhorrence. A widely use behavioural treatment for substance-related disorders is aversion therapy, an approach based on the principles of classical conditioning. Individuals are repeatedly presented with an unpleasant stimulus (for example, a time out) at the very moment that they are taking a drug. After repeated pairings, they are expected to react negatively to the substance itself and to lose their craving for it. Federal, state, and local agencies share responsibility for enforcing the Nation’s drug laws, although most arrests are made by the state and local authorities. In 2020 the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) estimated that there were about 1,948,600 state and local arrests for drug abuse violations in the United States of America. According to the UCR, drug abuse violations are defined as state and/or local offenses relating to the unlawful possession, sale, use, growing, manufacturing, and making of narcotic drugs including opium or cocaine and their derivatives, marijuana, synthetic narcotics and dangerous nonnarcotic drugs such as barbiturates. More than four-fifths of drug law violation arrests are for possession. Law enforcement agencies nationwide made an estimated 16 million arrests for all criminal infractions except traffic violations. Among the specific categories, the highest arrest counts were—1.9 million for drug abuse violations; approximately 1.6 million for driving under the influence; 1.5 million for simple assaults; 1.4 million for larceny-thefts. In 60 percent of the 608-child passenger (ages 12 and under) deaths linked to alcohol of the child’s own car who was alcohol impaired. And more than 91,000 children were injured. Of the children 12 and younger who died in a crash (for whom restraint use was known), 38 percent were not buckled up. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20

Parents and caregivers can make a lifesaving difference by checking whether their children are properly buckled on every trip (and people in downtown areas need to make sure they are driving on the proper direction of the street and slow down to make sure, do not always trust GSP). Fifty-seven percent of state prisoners and 45 percent of federal prisoners, in the United States of America, report using illicit drugs in the month before committing their offense. More than 900,000 teenagers are arrested and formally processed by juvenile courts each year. Around half of them test positive for marijuana. Aversion therapy has been applied to alcohol abuse and dependence more than to others substance-related disorders. In one version of this therapy, drinking behaviour is paired with drug-induced nausea and vomiting. Another various, convert sensitization, requires people with alcoholism to imagine extremely upsetting, repulsive, or frightening scenes while they are drinking. The pairing of the imagined scenes with liquor is expected to produce negative responses to liquor itself. Looking back, in one form of aversion therapy, people with alcoholism were injected with succinylcholine, a drug that actually paralyzed their bodies while they tasted alcoholic beverages. Concerns about the safety and ethics of this approach led to its discontinuation. Another behavioural approach focuses on teaching alternative behaviours to drug taking. This approach, too, has been applied to alcohol abuse and dependence more than to other substance-related disorders. Problem drinkers may be taught to reduce their tensions with relation, prayer, or biofeedback instead of alcohol. Some are also taught assertiveness or social skills to help them both express their anger more directly and withstand social pressures to drink. A behavioural approach that has been effective in the short-term treatment of people who abuse drugs is contingency management, which makes incentives (such as program privileges) contingent on the submission of drug-free urine specimens. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20

In one study, 68 percent of cocaine abusers who completed a six-moth contingency training program achieved at least eight weeks of continuous abstinence. Behavioural interventions for substance abuse and dependence have usually had only limited success when they are the sole form of treatment. A major problem is that the approaches can be effective only when individuals are motivated to continue with them despite their unpleasantness or demands. Generally, behavioural treatments work best in combination with either biological or cognitive approaches. What is good for one is by n means food for all. Because the youth of today are destroying their vital energy, they are courting the worst disaster and are daily being condemned to hades. Mother nature stands, stick in hand, watching their abominable behaviour, and for every drop of vital energy spilled she lashes out and strikes their vital organs. Now tell me, what future do such people have? The Christian Bible is not to gather dust. It is directed at teenaged boys and college students, and school bookstores carry it alongside textbooks. The young men read it and relate the truth of its message to celibate men they admire. Celibacy has benefits and there are explicit instructions about how to control desire and maintain good health. Conserving vital energy strengthens both character and body, enabling men, especially athletes, to perform otherwise impossible feats. The vital energy is the most essential fluid of life. To tell the truth, it is an elixir. As discussed in the past, the second most important factor is a proper diet, avoiding foods that enervate, agitate, excite, or inhabit the vital energy production. Generally, spicy, friend, and oily items should be avoided. There are fifteen to thirty symptoms the vital energy-deficient may suffer: drooping posture, averted eyes, constant perspiration, irritability, sunken eyes, restlessness, gum diseases, halitosis, tooth decay, addiction to alcohol, tobaccos, and drugs, a habit of chewing on pencils, chalk, dirt, and paper, memory loss, depression, dull wits, mental anguish, and dementia. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20

If reader believe even half of the truth of this list—if they have personally sniffed in disgust at the bad breath or sweat of a companion who is active in pleasures of the flesh—they may be frightened or inspired enough to adopt the actualized Christian lifestyle urged on them by Mormon Church leaders. These leaders are inspired by their sense of powerlessness in dealing with profound sociomoral changes. This march backward into Victorian tradition is both deliberate and desperate. Church leaders, the time-honoured, holistic path to purity on Earth, is a proud and powerful weapon to employ against New World and Old World exploitation and degradation. Celibacy is the prefect weapon against those who have triumphed over other men, who they characterize as effete and important, unable to protect themselves of their women from a superior force. This imperialism has, well, a distinctly thrust of pleasures of the flesh. Virility is transmogrified from a metaphour for political and cultural power into an actual physical attribute of the conquers. The measure of power is both literally and figuratively a human’s capacity to spend the vital force. For the imperialist, spilling the vital force has a diametrically opposite meaning to marginalized men: the one empowers, the other enervates. Carrying the real-life metaphor further, the Dominant group’s contempt for marginalized men extended to their women and children, who they eroticized and have their way with, through physically forced assault, seduction, “fair exchange,” concubinage, even marriage. Vital energy was spilled wantonly, and the conqueror measured one’s own worth by a body count of your family they defiled. (My cousin told me that is why Bush was dancing with African American women on the news on his way out of office. It was not a show of unity, but imperialism. “Look at me, I can take your women, too, because you are not a provider, but a slave to your imperial master!) #RandolphHarris 14 of 20

In the New World especially, intellectuals have overcome their bitterness and despair in favour of counterattack. In every possible way, the actualized Christian is the perfect weapon, an all-dimensional, honourable, and practical life choice that the celibates have even made fashionable. It is another, uniquely actualized Christian way of measuring virtue. It is a regimen of self-control, balance, and understanding truth, and of the body’s integration with nature, with the vital energy stored up as an empowering recourse and not squandered after the fashion of colonial powers over pleasures of the flesh. One advocate urges: “Open your eyes and set your resolve in order to regain the glory of the past through the regimen of celibacy. One who is able to control a single drop is able to control the seven seas. There is nothing in the World—no object or condition—which a celibate man cannot overcome. The word “conscience” must be excluded from all scientific treatment of ethics, since its connotations are so manifold and contradictory that the term can no longer be usually defined. If we look not only at the term can no longer be usefully defined. If we look not only at the popular use of the word, with its complete lack of clarity, but also at its confused history, this desperate advice is understandable. Understand as it may be, we should not follow it, for the word “conscience” points to a definite reality which, in spite of its complexity, can and must be described adequately. And the history of the idea of conscience, despite the bewildering variety of interpretations that it has produced, shows some clear types and definite trends. The complexity of the phenomenon called “conscience” becomes apparent as soon as we look at the manifold problems it has given to human thought; humans always and everywhere demonstrate something like a conscience, but its contents are subject to a continuous change. What is the relation between the form and the content of conscience? #RandolphHarris 15 of 20

Conscience points to an objective structure of demands that make themselves perceivable through it, and represents, at the same time, the most subjective self-interpretation of personal life. What is the relation between the objective and the subjective sides of conscience? Conscience is an ethical concept, but it has a basic significance for religion. What is the relation between the ethical and the religious meaning of conscience? Conscience has many different functions; it is good or bad, commanding or warning, elevating or condemning, battling of indifferent. Which of these functions are basic, which derived? These questions refer only to the description of the phenomenon, not to its explanation or evaluation. They show its complex character and the reason for its confused history. The concept of conscience is a creation of Greek and Roman spirit. Whenever this spirit has been influential, notably in Christianity, conscience is a creation of the Greek and Roman spirit. Wherever this spirit has been influential, notably in Christianity, conscience is a significant notion. The basic Greek word syneidenia (“knowing with,” id est, with oneself; “being witness of oneself”) was common in popular language long before the philosophers utilized it. It describes the act of observing oneself, often as judging oneself. In philosophical terminology it received the meaning of “self-consciousness” (for instance, in Stoicism, the derived substantives syneidesis, synesis). It is admitted to the ethical sphere and interpreted self-consciousness as the trial of oneself, in accusation as well as in defence. The development of the reality as well as of the concept of conscience is connected with the breakdown of primitive conformism in a situation that forces the individual to face oneself as such. In the sphere of an unbroken we-consciousness, no individual conscience can appear. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20

The second building-block of tomorrow’s political systems must be the principle of “semi-direct democracy”—a shift from depending on representatives to representing ourselves. The mixture of the two is semi-direct democracy. The collapse of consensus, as we have already seen, subverts the very concept of representation. Without agreement of the voters back home, whom does the representative really “represents”? At the same time, legislators have come to rely increasingly on staff support and on outside experts for advice in shaping the laws. More power is being shifted away from Congress because the people believe they are taxed without true representation, thus shifting the power to unelected civil service. The United States of America’s Congress, in an effort to counterbalance the influence of the executive bureaucracy, has created its own bureaucracy—a Congressional Budget Office, an Office of Technology Assessment, and other necessary agencies and appendages. Thus the congressional staff has grown from 10,700 to 18,400 in the past decade. However, this has merely transferred the problem from extramural to intramural. Our elected representatives know less and less about the myriad measures on which they must decide, and are compelled to rely more and more on the judgment of others. The representative no longer even represents him- or herself. More basically, parliaments, congresses, or assemblies were places in which, theoretically, the claims of rival minorities could be reconciled. Their “representatives” could make trade-offs for them. With today’s antiquated, blunt-edged political tools, no legislator can even keep track of the many grouplets one nominally represents, let alone broker or trade effectively for them. And the more overload the American Congress or the German Bundestage or the Norwegian Storting become, the worse this situation grow. This helps explain why single-issue political pressure groups become intransigent. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20

Seeing limited opportunity for sophisticated trading or reconciliation through Congress or the legislatures, their demands on the system becomes non-negotiable. The theory of representative government as the ultimate broker collapses too. The breakdown of bargaining, the decision crunch, the worsening paralysis of representative institutions mean, over the long term, that many of the decisions now made by small numbers of pseudo-representatives may have to be shifted back gradually to the electorate itself. If our elected brokers cannot make deals for us, we shall have to do it ourselves. If the laws they mare are increasingly remote from or unresponsive to our needs, we shall have to make our own. For this, however, we shall need new institutions and new technologies as well. “Keep the charge of the Lord your God, walk in His ways, keep His statues, His commandments, His precepts, and His testimonies, as it is written in the Law of Moses, that you may do wisely and prosper in all that you do,” reports I Kings 2.2. Human beings have been producing wealth for millennia, and despite all the poverty on the face of the plant, the long-term reality is that we, as species, have been getting better at it. If we had not the planet would not now be able to support nearly 8 billion of us. We would not live as long as we do. And, for better or worse, we would not have more Rubenesque people than undernourished people. Face it, food is a legal and lovely treat people love. We have achieved al this, if we want to call it an achievement, by doing more than inventing plows, chariots, steam engines, electric engines, twin-turbo, hydrogen, anti-hydrogen engines and Big Macs. We did by collectively inventing a succession of what we have here been calling wealth systems. In fact, these are among the most important inventions in history. President Trump may have been America’s best friend. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20

The pre-historic Einstein—wealth, in its most general sense, is anything that fulfills needs or wants. And a wealth system is the way wealth is created, whether as money or not. Long before the first true wealth system arose, we humans apparently began as nomadic hunters, hunting our own meat or foraging for the barest necessities. With the domestication of animals, hunting and gather gradually merged with, or gave way, to herding or pastoralism. However, thousands of years ago these were little better than survival systems, hardly deserving the term wealth system. It was only with humanity’s ability to produce an economic surplus that the first true wealth system became possible. And though a tremendous number of different ways to produce such a surplus have since been tried, we find that over the course of history the methods fall into three broad categories. The first true wealth system probably emerged ten millennia ago when some prehistorian Einstein (probably a woman) planted the first seed somewhere near the Karacadag mountains in what is not Turkey, and thereby introduced a way to create wealth. Instead of waiting for nature to provide, we could now, within limits, make nature do as we wished. (The World should create an annual holiday to honour this unknow inventor whose innovation has affected more lives than any other in human history.) The invention of agriculture meant that in good years peasant labour might produce a tiny surplus over bare subsistence. And this meant that, instead of living nomadically, our ancestors could settle in permanent villages to cultivate crops in the nearby fields. Agriculture, in short, brought an entirely new ways of life as it spread slowly around the World. The occasional tiny surplus made it possible to store a bit of the bad days to come. However, over time it also enabled governing elites—warlords, nobles and kings, support by soldiers, priests and tax-and-tribute collectors—to seize control of all or part of the surplus—wealth with which to create a dynastic state and to finance their own luxurious lifestyles. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20

They could build grand palaces and cathedrals. They could hunt for sport. They could—and regularly did—wage war to capture land and slaves or serfs to produce still greater surpluses for themselves. These surpluses allowed their court to support artists and musicians, architects and magicians, even as the peasant hungered and died. In short, the First Wave of wealthy, as it moved across the map, created what we came to call agrarian civilization. Plants and Animals in the Garden, we welcome you—we invite you in—we ask your forgiveness and your understanding. Listen as we speak to you. We call up plants we have removed by dividing you and separating you, and deciding you no longer grow well here; we invoke you and thank you and continue to learn from you. We dedicate this ceremony to you. We will continue to practice with you and for you. O Lord, Thou hast searched me, and knowest me. Thou knowest my every step; Thou understandest my thought from afar. Thou measurest my going about and my lying down, and art acquainted with all my ways. For if there be a word on my tongue, Thou, O Lord, knowest it altogether. Whiter shall I go from Thy spirit? Or wither shall I flee from Thy presence? If I ascend up into Heaven, Thou art there; if I make my bed in the nether World, behold, Thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the seas, even there would Thy hand lead me, and Thy right hand would hold me, and Thy right hand would hold me. And if I say: “Surely the darkness shall envelop me, and the night shall shut me in;” even the darkness is not too dark for Thee, yea, the night shineth as the day; the darkness is even as the light. I will give thanks unto Thee, for I am marvelously made; wonderful are Thy works; my soul knoweth right well. Before my days were fashioned, in Thy book were they all written down. How mysterious are Thy purposes, O Lord, how vast is their number! Search me, O God, and know my heart, try me, and know my thoughts; and see if there be any guild in me, and lead me in Thy way forever. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20

Cresleigh Homes

With a bathroom like this, you might never want to leave. Which could be a good thing when the whole family’s home!

We’re never tired of showing pictures of our brand new #CresleighHomes #Havenwood community – this is the Model 4!

Maybe I didn’t treat you quite as good as I should have. Maybe I didn’t love you as I could have. Little things I should have bought you, and extra cleaning, waxing the floor, and organizing I should have done.

I just never took the time. My Cresleigh Home was always on my mind. (You were always on my mind).

Maybe I did not clean your windows all those lonely, lonely times. And I guess I never told you I’m so happy that your mine. And, with the moon up above, it’s wonderful, it’s wonderful, so they tell me.

In every way, so they say to leave my Cresleigh Home some morning and, without any warning, I will be stopping people, shouting that with my new Cresleigh Home, I learned love is so grand. https://cresleigh.com/havenwood/residence-four/

The Houses for the Gods–Even the Ancient Bible Lands Swarmed with Demons!

The history of various religions from the earliest times shows belief in Satan and demons to be universal. According to the Christian Bible, degeneration from monotheism resulted in the blinding of humans by Satan and the most degrading forms of idolatry (Romans 1.21-32; 2 Corinthians 4.4). By the time of Abraham (c. 2000 B.C.), humans had sunk into a crass polytheism that swarmed with evil spirits. Spells, incantations, magical texts, exorcisms, and various forms of demonological phenomena abound in archaeological discoveries from Sumeria and Babylon. Egyptian, Assyrian, Chaldean, Greek, and Roman antiquity are rich in demonic phenomena. The deities worshipped were invisible demons represented by material idols and images. The great ethnic faiths of India, China, and Japan major in demonism, as well as the animistic religions of Africa, South America, and some islands. Even the ancient Bible lands swarmed with demons. As George W. Gilmore declares: “The entire religious provenience out of which Hebrew religion sprang is full of demonism.” Early Christianity rescued its converts from the chackles of Satan and Demons (Ephesians 2.2; Colossians 1.13). To an amazing degree, the history of religion is an account of demon-controlled religion, particularly in its clash with the Hebrew faith and later with Christianity. The crimes, atrocities, and immoralities of ancient and modern society point to the existence of vile spirits that take possession of human’s minds and bodies and drive them to wickedness and depravity (Romans 1.24-32; Ephesians 2.2-4; Revelation 9.20, 21). Because of human nature itself, “The belief in evil spirits is universal,” as Davies observes. Because humans sense the power of Satan and demons in their lives, their belief in evil supernaturalism has been as persistent and widespread as belief in God, in good angels, or in the soul’s immortality. #RandolphHarris 1 of 16

Some mortals believe in Satan and demons because they know the power of Satan and demons in their lives, just as those who believe in Christ know God and the power of the Holy Spirit. Such belief is not only the result of experience but also of instinct. God as Creator of the human mind with its instinctive propensities, has given us a primitive revelation of both good and evil supernaturalism. The basic truths of this revelation have been perpetuated by a God-given instinct attested in human experience and verifiable by observation of psychic phenomena in the realm of the occult. The actions of the drunkard, the criminal, the libertine, the physically and disturbed, the dope addict, the gambler, and the suicidal person (John 8.44; Luke 22.3) are often caused by influence beyond mental of physical injury or disease. The strongest evidence outside the Bible that wicked and unclean spiritual agencies can enslave their victims and drive them to self-destruction is provided by people who deliberately plunge into evil, fully aware of the disastrous consequences. People who dabble in the occult and in magical arts may be recklessly flirting with demonism. Ancient pagan practices find their counterpart in today’s spiritistic activities and psychical research. Moses warned Israel of the dangers of occultism as the nation prepared to enter Canaan, where demon-energized practices flourished. “When you reach the land which the Lord your God is giving you, do not learn to imitate the obnoxious ways of those nations. There must not be found among you anyone who makes one’s son or daughter pass through the fire, anyone practicing divination or soothsaying, observing omens, applying sorcery a charmer, a medium, a wizard, or necromancer. Human sacrifice to appease an angry deity (demon) was particularly loathsome practice of Israel’s neighbours, the Ammonites. They presented their children as a fire offering to the god Molech, a cruel form of worship that display all the marks of Satan (John 8.44; Kings 11.7; 2 King 21.6; 23.10). This murderous practice was rigidly banned from Israel (Leviticus 18.21; 20.1-5). #RandolphHarris 2 of 16

Divination or soothsaying is the art of obtaining unlawful knowledge of the future. The methods violate God’s holiness. In inspirational divination, the medium is under the direct influence or control of evil spirits or demons. The same is true of the modern spirit séance. The spiritstic agent claims to obtain occult information from the deceased and is called a “medium” (id est, in Hebrew, “one making inquiry of a divining demon”) or “necromancer” (in Hebrew, “one seeking among the dead”). Angury, in contrast to divination, is based on the agent’s or augur’s interpretation of certain signs or omens in the sky, in the livers of animals, etcetera. This type of primitive occultism has its modern analogies in fortune-telling astrology, palmistry, cartomancy, the diving rod, or pendulum, a mirror or crystal ball 9mirror-matnic), and in forms of clairvoyance (called psychometry) in which objects are examined to give information about the owner. Sorcery is a more general term to designate the practice of magic through occult formulas, incantations, and mystic mutterings. It goes beyond augury and includes the whole field of divinatory occultism. A charmer is a sorcerer who performs supernatural feats. A wizard (in Hebrew, “one who knows”) is a male medium who receives superhuman knowledge through one’s contact with demons. The female medium who possesses such knowledge is called a witch in the Authorized Version, better translated sorceress by the Revisers of 1884. To the question, “Do demons actually exist?” the answer is an empathic “yes.” Evidence from Scripture, nature, history of comparative religions, and human experience all testify to the existence of evil supernaturalism. In this realm, the invisible, hierarchical, spiritual personalities operate who are called, “principalities…powers…World rulers of this darkness…spirits of wickedness in the Heavenly realms” Ephesians 6.12, Greek). These spiritual agencies are servants of Satan, “the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience,” reports (Ephesians 2.2). #RandolphHarris 3 of 16

According to Scripture, Satan and demons not only exist, but they work among humanity, particularly in those who, like Satan, disdain God and openly rebel against his laws. Demonism certainly impinges on humans experience and human conduct (Ephesians 2.2). Pastoral counseling, psychiatric and psychological therapy, and even medical treatment should take these demonic factors into consideration. Who are the demons? The precise identity of demons cannot be determined, because the Bible is silent on the issues. Because Scripture does not reveal exactly who the demons are or how they came into being, numerous theories have been advanced to account for their origin. A popular outgrowth of astrology is the horoscope, a chart of the zodiacal signs and the position of the planets by which astrologers attempt to predict future events. The vast majority of the newspapers in the United States of America carry them daily, and the preparation of these horoscopes occupies about 10,000 full-time and 175,000 part-time workers in our country alone. These columns make predictions and give advice on the basis of the sign of the zodiac under which a person was born, and how it relates to the position of the planet on the date the horoscope appears in the newspaper. Astrologers have given names to the twelve constellations which were originally termed “the houses for the gods.” They belied these constellations have definite characteristics which distinguished them from one another, and which largely predetermine the personality of each individual. For example, if one came into the World between December 22 and January 19, one was born under the sign named Capricorn, which is the Goat. One’s personality would therefore bear some of the characteristics the goat is supped to symbolize. Birth between January 20 and February 18 places one under the sign of Aquarius, which is the Water Bearer; between February 19 and March 20, Pisces, which is the Fish. #RandolphHarris 4 of 16

Between March 21 and April 19, Aries, which is the Ram; Between April 20 and May 20, Taurus, which is the Bull; between May 21 and June 21, Gemini, which is The Twins; between June 22 and July 22, Cancer, which is the Crab; Between July 23 and August 22, Leo, which is the Lion; between August 23 and September 22, Virgo, which is the Virgin; between September 23 and October 23, Libra, which is the Scales; between October 24 and November 21, Scorpio, which is the Scorpion; and between November 22 and December 21, Sagittarius, which is the Archer. One can see that this is a highly subjective field, and that it gives free rein to the imagination. How tragic that thousands of people faithfully read the horoscopes printed in newspapers and magazines, sincerely believing the prediction they make and the advice they give are valid. The blindness of people who reject God is almost beyond comprehension. In addition, individuals willing to pay the fee may also purchase a personal horoscope. In fact, computers are able to turn out a 10,000-word personal horoscope reading in two minutes. The precise moment of a person’s birth is recorded, and then the exact position of the Heavenly bodies at that time is ascertained. This becomes the starting point for the computer to begin its program. The practitioners who sell horoscopes provide a great deal of incentive for the purchase of their services by saying that some of the information given is not an absolute, unchangeable decree. Some of the prognostications are in the form of conditional declarations which will depend to a great extent upon their circumstances. For example, a person is encouraged to read horoscopes to be forewarned about personality difficulties and impending disasters so one can take steps to avoid the problems and dangers. This makes the purchase of personal horoscopes extremely inviting. Though astrology is popular today, it must be condemned as unscriptural, unreliable, devious, and dangerous. Christians should not only avoid it, but also be informed so they can warn others. #RandolphHarris 5 of 16

As previously noted, the Bible strong forbids all forms of occultism, including astrology. “There shall not be found among you anyone who maketh one’s son or daughter pass through the fire, or who useth divination, or an observer of times. or an enchanter, or a witch, or a charmer, or a charmer, or a consultor of mediums, or a wizard, or a necromancer. For all that do these things are an abomination unto the LORD; and because of these abominations the LORD thy God doth drive them out from before thee,” reports Deuteronomy 18.10-12. Moses gave as one of the reasons the danger that it would lead the people into heathenism. Astrology originated with pagans who considered the stars to be gods, and anyone who began to dabble in this pseudoscientific practice would inevitably be drawn into the superstition and false beliefs inhere to the system. Therefore God pronounced death by stoning for any Israelite who participated in star worship. “If there be found among you, within any of thy gates which the LORD thy God giveth thee, man or woman who hath wrought wickedness in the sight of the LORD thy God, in transgressing his covenant, and hath gone and served other gods, and worshipped them, either the sun, or moon, or any the hosts of Heaven, which I have not commanded, and it be told thee, and thou hast heard of it and inquired diligently, and behold, it is true, and the thing certain, that such abomination is wrought in Israel; then shalt thou bring forth that man or that woman, who hath committed that wicked thing unto thy gates, even that man or that woman, and shalt stone them with stones, till they die,” reports Deuteronomy 17.2-5. Later in Israel’s history, the prophet Isaiah proclaimed judgment upon the nation, and in biting sarcasm dared the people to seek deliverance through the sorcerers and the Babylonian astrologers in who they had placed their confidence. His words stand as a sharp denunciation of astrology, and indicate that God considered it a false religion. “Stand now with thine enchantments, and with the multitude of thy sorceries, in which thou hast laboured from thy youth, if so be thou shalt be able to profit, if so thou mayest prevail. Thou art wearied in the multitude of thy counsels. Let now the astrologers, the stargazers, the monthly prognosticators, stand up, and save thee from these things that shall come upon thee,” reports Isaiah 47.12-13. #RandolphHarris 6 of 16

The prophet Jeremiah also warned the people of God that they were not to believe that omens for evil could be read in the Heavens. He declared, “Thus saith the LORD, Learn not the way of the nations, and be not dismayed at the signs of Heaven; for the nations are dismayed at them,” reports Jeremiah 10.2. The day-to-day experience shows the suggestive powers and effects that horoscopes have. 63 percent of German people have occupied themselves with astrology at one time or another. The astrology section in the newspaper is so population Worldwide that the chief editor of large daily papers will not cancel them. Even though some of them are convinced that the horoscope is nonsense, it is a question of finance. The paper that includes no weekly horoscope in its Sunday edition must count on many cancellations. No newspaper can afford this. There was a humorous experience in this effort to keep scribers happy. One Friday the astrologer’s horoscope did not arrive on time. In the chief editor’s dilemma, he went to a storage room and picked out an old horoscope. Since he did not know the order of the Zodiac, it was an incorrect one. In spite of this, none of the readers noticed the mistake. Since all went well, he saved himself the astrologer’s fee, and on 22 occasions he used incorrect horoscopes from previous years. None of the hundreds of thousands of readers noticed this, till finally someone wrote in saying that it was impossible for the sign of Scorpion to rule in July. Now his trick was uncovered. He had to turn again to the “experts” for help. Having told his story, the editor then added with a smile, “During the time of the incorrect horoscopes everything went well. It does not depend on the horoscope, but on what the people believe.” What reasons do we have as Christians for not recognizing astrology as being providential to our lives and destinies? First of all, we should be repelled by its heathen background. With ancient people astrology has a religious accent. The stars were equivalent to gods. The heathen felt themselves to be led, influenced and threatened by the planet gods, and though, in the course of time, the religious character of astrology receded, the old rules were retained. Here we have another reason for rejecting it. The retention of these old rules involves an insoluble contradiction. #RandolphHarris 7 of 16

Every 26,000 years the axis of the Earth prescribes the lateral area of a cone (precession). Today’s astrologer does not see the planets in the same position as one’s colleague for 4,000 to 5,000 years ago. Besides, several other planets have been discovered; Uranus in 1787, Neptune in 1839, and Pluto in 1932 (which some are still questioning if it is a planet of not). Since these changes failed to sake the astrological system in any way, present astronomers reject astrology as one of the greatest frauds of all time. However, many people still appeal to astrology for answers, they believe it is real, they want to know their future, they are looking for salvation. And in many cases, the answers they find are true and relevant. Perhaps rerunning the astrology gave many the answers they were seeking and needed, until someone caught one error. Since the occult is real, it has to be right sometimes and it gives people the answers they are looking for. Normally people wake up happy and soft, but if you are exposed to an evil movie before class, it kind of toughens you up a little bit. I am not perfect, like many others, and just trying to get through this World with all the crazy people in it. When you have no real guidance, no one you can trust, no one coming from a totally good place, you have to find something you can depend on to connect you to the World. People who dabble in the occult do not all reject God. Some still believe God, but they also need answers right here and right now, and they do what they do to get them and that helps them remain stable. So, I am not passing judgement, just sharing information to show you this stuff is real. Spiritualism makes headlines and feature stories in the guise of horoscopes, ominous predictions, and bizarre cults, but its basic activity is the séance where many people can be influenced. And the key that opens the séance is the trance. The New Century Dictionary defines a trance as “a temporary state in which a medium, with suspension of personal consciousness, is controlled by an intelligence from without and used as a means of communication, as from the dead to the living.” #RandolphHarris 8 of 16

It defines a medium as “a person serving, or conceived as serving, as an instrument for the manifestation of another personality, or of some alleged supernatural agency (as a spiritualistic medium.” In the séance, the “alleged supernatural agency” is the control spirit who takes possession of the medium. This spirit is not the same as the familiar spirit. In spiritualist teaching, the familiar spirit is a spirit from God who is with us from birth and on into eternity. We may have many familiar spirits during a lifetime as we progress in moral goodness. They are assigned to individuals and come to know them better than they know themselves. Spiritualists believe in an evolutionary process of spiritual development. Individuals departing from this life are said to migrate to the spirit World and develop there with the help of other spirits. Theoretically, a person could advance in the spirit World to the level of God Himself. However, spiritualists believe that God also is evolving to higher and higher planes. Therefore, the best the spirit of the departed can do is reach a plane where God once was. What you do in life, the spiritualists say, determines the plane of spiritual development you enter after death. I learned in a séance that a person who lives a good life would immediately go after one’s death to the third or fourth plane. “I was told by my control spirit, who was in the eighth plane, that at death I would go directly to the sixth plane. That I did not drink alcoholic beverages or smoke tobacco or drugs and am celibate placed me on a higher plane that those who did. The fact that I was seeking to develop myself spiritually also advanced me. My control spirits, lectured me often on what was wrong in my thoughts, morals, and manners. They even stressed physical health and cleanliness, reminding me that my body was the temple of the spirit (not the Holy Spirit of God). People who lived very sinful lives would be Earthbound spirits when they die, we were told. Other spirits would come to their assistance, show them the error of their ways and try to get them to live better lives in the spirit World so they could begin evolving to the second and third planes. This is known as the school for Earthbound spirits,” said Mrs. Winchester in her journal. #RandolphHarris 9 of 16

Spiritualists believe that the teachers in this school are the spirits of departed educators and scholars in educational, religious, and scientific fields. The foal of the spiritualist is to evolve as high as possible by becoming less self-centered. As one seeks to develop oneself and help one’s fellow humans, one is graduated from one spirit plane to the next. Spiritualists in the United States of America generally believe in eighteen planes of development. A spiritualist from England said on a Today telecast that they have discovered as many as thirty-three planes. Prophecy plays a large part in a spiritualist séance. This one séance Mrs. Winchester participated in, World War II was prophesied and the nations that would be engulfed in this gigantic conflict were named. She also wrote in her journal that the control spirit said, “At the end of World War II there would be no end of war upon the face of the Earth until the Kingdom of peace is come.” She later passed away in her sleep. Spiritualists believe that Jesus is the master medium of all mediums. God to them is a universal force, not a person. Spiritualists maintain that Heaven is nothing more than the series of planes where the spirit evolves. They teach there is no such place as hell—unless that would describe the existence of an Earthbound spirit. Yet, significantly—and ominously for all people who choose to live in sin rather than in God’s will—spiritualists recognize the existence of the devil, the source of all evil! Some of the spiritualists’ teachings are similar to the beliefs of Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, Theosophy, and other religions. And spiritualism’s rosy prospect of becoming gods over individual realms is matched by the similar teaching of the Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Mormons (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints). It is awesome to realize the penetration and power of these evil spirits wherever Jesus is denied as the complete and only Saviour from personal son. How does one know that they are evil, not from God? There is only one way, the way by which God set me free. Many people wonder about the origin of the belief in that mysterious island O’Brasil, lying far out in the western ocean. About the year 1665, a Quaker pretended that he had a revelation from Heaven that he was the man ordained to discover it, and accordingly fitted out a ship for the purpose. In 1674, Captain John Nisbet, formerly of Co. Fermanagh, actually landed there! At this period, it was located off Ulster. #RandolphHarris 10 of 16

Between the clergy and the witches a continuous state of warfare existed; the former, both Protestant and Roman Catholic, ever assumed the offensive, and were most diligent in their attempts to eradicate such a damnable heresy from the World—indeed with regret it must be confessed that their activity in this respect was frequently the means of stirring up the quiescent Secular Arm, thereby setting on foot bloody persecutions, in the course of which many innocent creatures were tortured and put to a cruel death. Consequently, human nature being what it is, it is not a matter of surprise to learn that witches occasionally appear as the aggressors, and cause the clergy as much uneasiness of mind and body as they possibly could. In or about the year 1670 and Irish clergyman, the Rev. James Shaw, Presbyterian minister of Carnmoney, “was much troubled with witches, one of them appearing in his chamber and showing her face behind his cloke hanging on the clock-pin, and then stepping to the door, disappeared. He was troubled with cats coming into his chamber and bed; he sickens ad dyes; his wyfe being dead before him, and, as was supposed, witched.” Some equally unpleasant experience befell his servant. “Before his death his man going out to the stable one night, sees as if it had been a great heap of hay rolling towards him, and then appeared in the shape and likeness of a bair [bear]. He charges it to appear it to appear in human shape, which it did. Then he asked, for what cause it troubled him? It bid him come to such a place and it should tell him, which he ingaged to do yet ere he did it, acquainted his master with it; his master forbids him to keep sic a tryst; he obeyed his master, and went not. That night he should have kept, there is a stone cast at him from the roof of the house, and only touches him, but does not hurt him; whereupon he conceives that had been done to him by the devil, because he kept not tryst; wherefore he resolutely goes forth that night to the place appointed, being a rash bold fellow, and the divill appears in human shape, with his heid running down with blood. #RandolphHarris 11 of 16

He asks him again, why he troubles him? The devil replyes, that he was the spirit of a murdered man who lay under his bed, and buried in the ground, and who was murdered by such a man living in sic a place, but finds nothing of bones or anything lyke a grace, and causes send to such a place to search for such a man, but no such a one could be found, and shortly after this man dyes.” To which story Mr. Robert Law sagely adds the warning: “It’s not good to come in communing terms with Satan, there is a snare in the end of it, but resyst him by prayer and faith and to turn a deaf eat to his temptations.” Whatever explanation we may choose to give of the matter, there is no doubt but at the time the influence of witchcraft was firmly believed in, and the deaths of Mr. Shaw and his wife attributed to supernatural and diabolical sources. The Rev. Patrick Adair, a distinguished contemporary and co-religionist of Mr. Shaw, alludes to the incident as follows in his True Narrative: “There had been great ground of jealousy that she [Mrs. Shaw] in her child-bed had been wronged by sorcery of some witches in the parish. After her death, a considerable time, some spirit or spirits troubled the house by casting stones down at the chimney, appearing to the servants, and especially having got one of them, a young man, to keep appointed times and places, wherein it appeared in divers shapes, and spake audibly to him. The people of the perish watched the house while Mr. Shaw at this time lay sick in his bed, and indeed he did not wholly recover, but within a while died, it was thought not without the art of sorcery.” Classon Porter in his pamphlet gives an interesting account of the affair, especially of the trend of events between the deaths of the husband and wife respectively; according to this source the servant-boy was an accomplice of the Evil One, not a foolish victim. Mrs. Shaw was dead, and Mr. Shaw lay ill, and so was unable to go to the next monthly meeting of his brethren in the ministry to consult them about these strange occurrences. However, he sent this servant, who was supposed to be implicated in these transactions, with a request that his brethren would examine him about the matter, and deal with him as they thought best. #RandolphHarris 12 of 16

The boy was accordingly questioned on the subject, and having confessed that he had conversed and conferred with the evil spirit, and even assisted it in its diabolical operations, he was commanded for the future to have no dealings of any kind with that spirit. The boy promised obedience, and was dismissed. However, the affair made a great commotion in the parish, so great that the brethren not only ordered the Communion (which was then approaching) to be delyed in Carnmoney “until the confusion shall fall a little,” but appointed to of their number to hold a special fast in the congregation of Carnmony, “in consideration of the troubled which had come upon the minister’s house by a spirit that appeared to some of the family, and the distemper of the minister’s own body, with other confusions that had followed this movement in the parish.” The ministers appointed this duty were, Kennedy of Templepatrick, and Patton of Ballyclare, who reported to the next meeting that they had kept the fast at Carnmoney, but with what resulted is not stated. Mr. Shaw died about two months later.” Now, on to, “A House Built for Spirits?” Mrs. Winchester has become immortal because of the tales about her and her beautiful castle. However, we may never know for sure if Mrs. Winchester built her house to accommodate the spirits, but over the years the story has come down that she believed her life was unavoidably affected by departed souls. Presumably she wanted to be friendly with the “good” spirits, it seemed, was to building them a nice place to visit. According to this theory, Mrs. Winchester accommodated the friendly spirits by giving them special attention. The Winchester mansion is a well-built Queen Anne Victorian one of the loveliest ever dreamed of out of fairyland. However, the estate was surrounded by a six-foot hedge, backed by a barbed wired wrought-iron gate, and patrolled by a pack of ferocious dogs, plus of course, her staff of armed bodyguards. People who passed by said it was a perfect pandemonium of barks and howls from the dogs, who seemed to be only held by force from flying at their throats. #RandolphHarris 13 of 16

Back in the late 1880s, I was debating, however, whether I would not brave his gun, and make a rush for the grand mansion at all costs, nature or vindictiveness got the better of his perversity; a dark figure staggered through the thick fog. Five minutes later we discovered it was nothing but the carcass of a dead dog, whose charred and blackened condition would explain the wailing sounds. Then I was startled by a cry and a sharp ringing of the bell. The bell in the belfry high in the gables tolled regularly at midnight to summon incoming flights of spirits. In her Blue Séance Room is where she donned ceremonial robes and communed nightly with spirits. The Winchester Mansion was the midnight rendezvous for legions of ghost. Suddenly the windows opened, and I knew this was my chance to sneak in. I darted around the veranda to the back of the house. The drawing-room was empty, trembling with terror, I flung the study window open. Then I heard Mrs. Winchester shouting that there was someone hidden in the veranda or close by. Owning to the state of agitation she was in, it was not until the man-servant had searched the veranda, garden, and outbuildings, and found nothing, that I was able to understand what had frightened her. It appeared then that she had suddenly been awakened from sleep by the pressure of a heavy hand on her shoulder, and a hot breath—so close, it seemed as if someone were about to whisper in her ear—upon her cheek. She started up, crying out, “Who’s that? What is it?” but was only answered by a hasty withdrawal of the pressure, and the pit-pat of heavy but shoeless feet retreating through the dusk to the further end of the veranda. In a sudden access of ungovernable terror, she screamed out, sprang to her feet, ringing the bell to warn the spirits to return to their sepulchers. The servants searched high and low, and not a trace of any intruder could they find; nay, not me, not even a stray cat or dog. Although they garden was large, the gate leading into the road was fastened inside, and the wall was too high for easy climbing. #RandolphHarris 14 of 16

Once she awoke with a scream in the middle of the night, declaring, “Something was wrong with the baby. Nurse had gone away and left it’ she was sure of it!” To pacify her, the nurse threw on her dressing-gown and ran up to the nursey to see; and, true enough, though the baby girl was gone.” The Nurse was absent, having gone up to the cook’s room to get something for her back ache. The next morning, they found the dog and managed to scoop out a grave for it, and buried him. Mrs. Winchester was alternately tearing her hair and weeping over the murder of the baby while she packed her box for departure. She stopped for a moment and went to the kitchen for lunch. That is when Mrs. Winchester cried out, “Oh, Heaven! Look! what’s that—that great dog, all black and burnt looking, come out of my house? Oh, my baby! My baby!” The maid saw no dog, and stopped for an instant to look round for it, letting her mistress run on. Then she heard one wild shriek from within—such a shriek as she had never heard in all her life before—and followed. She found the nurse lying senseless on the floor, and in the cradle the child—stone dead! Its throat had been torn open by some strange savage animal, and on the bedclothes and the fresh white matting covering the floor were the blood-stained imprints of dog’s paws! Mrs. Winchester’s shrieks pierced the summer twilight—those shrieks which, from the moment of her being roused the merciful insensibility which held her for the first hours of her loss, she had never ceased to utter. She never regained consciousness. The doctors feared she never would. And she never did! Never once in all this time have I been tempted to share the horrible delusion which, beginning in a weak state of healthy, and confirmed by the awful coincidence of her baby’s death, upset the beautiful darlings brain. At nights she was alone, snuffing and scratching at the door outside, as though something were there. Once, the butler strode to it and threw it open, but there was nothing—nothing but a dark, fleeting shadow seen for one moment, and the sound of soft, unshod feet going pit, pat, pit, pat, upon the stairs as they retreated downwards. #RandolphHarris 15 of 16

The butler rushed violently upstairs to the death chamber above. He shouted, “I have seen it. It was there! On her.” His face was livid with horror, and the exquisite cased, engraved, and gold-plated Model 1866 musket in his hand he said, “Better this than a madhouse! There is no escape from the Winchester Mansion,” and fired. He was dead ere even the servant could catch him. The white covering on the bed had been had been dragged off and torn, and on it were big, black dog’s paws. Demon possession is not merely a superstitious explanation of certain diseases. Such rationalizing does not define the phenomenon of evil spirits but merely explains them away. To say that demon possession in the time of Christ or in nineteenth-century China was nothing more than the effect of “certain diseases superstitiously regarded as due to demonical influence clashed with all the evidence of Scripture, history, and human experiences. Demons are the not spirits of deceased humans. Demons are the spirits of the wicked that enter into human’s that are alive. However, the Bible says that demons are not the disembodied spirits of a pre-Adamite race of humanity on the Earth. The whole idea of a pre-Adamite “human” race of “humans in the flesh” is pure conjecture. The only created beings revealed to have existed before the creation of humans are angels. Moreover, the rigid distinction between “angel” and “spirit,” which this theory demands, is questionable since Scriptures refers to angels as spirits (Psalm 104.4; Hebrew 1.14) and sometimes uses the term for “angel” for the spirit of humans (Matthew 18.10; Acts 12.15). The classical Greek meaning of the term “demons,” denoting “the good spirits of departed humans of the golden age” as in Hesiod, is at complete variance with the uniform New Testament usage of the word. The Word “demon,” like other distinctive biblical words in Greek, was divinely moulded through the pre-Christian centuries for its unique New Testament usage. To use its originally pagan concepts as the basis of a theory is totally unwarranted. #RandolphHarris 16 of 16

Winchester MysteryHouse

Have you taken a stroll down palm drive? If you look closely, there may be a special number of palm trees 🌴👀 winchestermysteryhouse.com

Anti-Bacterial, Bottled Water–Does it Really Matter, for Life is a Germ and a Germ is Life?

Be brave enough to live creatively. Excellence resides in quality, not in quantity. To know how to do something well is to enjoy it. In a curious way, all that we have learned to this point about the structure and properties of the complex molecules of life has not yet invalidated the original vitalistic dogma that organic matter can be created only by living organisms. To be sure, chemists can now manufacture organic material, but are not chemists alive? There is a serious point here: the susceptibility to a purely physical interpretation of structure and properties of an existing complex organic molecule is by no means proof that the many thousands of atoms it contains could ever have been arranged in just that form through the unaided operation of natural law in an inanimate World. If the first American astronauts to set foot on the moon were to find there a message in Russian scratched on its surface, their ability to hypothesize a series of meteoritic impacts capable of producing just the observed configuration of scratched would hardly be likely to convince them that it really happened that way. And in our case, are we really to believe that the blind workings of the ordinary laws of physics, without the intervention of some nonphysical, vitalistic guiding principle, can account for the architecture of the precisely specified, fantastically complicated protein and nucleic acid molecules? What we are about to do is to reopen one of the most impassion controversies in the history of science—the question of spontaneous generation. To be sure, we do not quite stir up this major philosophic issue just by suggesting that natural processes may have been capable of building organic molecules out of inorganic material. For no one contents that a molecule of protein, for example, is of itself alive. However, obviously we are not going to stop there. If we can establish a reasonable and purely physical hypothesis for the origin of the complex molecules of living matter, we are going to try to push our arguments along to account for the ultimate and completely automatic organization of these molecules into living forms. #RandolphHarris 1 of 22

At that point, if we reach it, we shall clearly be coming into conflict with the position held by practically all scientists for a hundred years, a position that was eloquently stated by Louis Pasteur during a public-demonstration lecture at the Sorbonne on April 7, 1864: “And, therefore, gentlemen, I could point to that liquid and say to you, I have taken my drop of water from the immensity of creation, and I have taken it full of the elements appropriated to the development of inferior beings. And I wait, I watch, I question it!—begging it to recommence for me the beautiful spectacle of the first creation. However, it is dumb, dumb…for Life is a germ and a germ is Life. Never will the doctrine of spontaneous generation recover from the moral blow of this simple experiment. We are about to take the first steps along a path of scientific exploration, that after approximately century and sixty years later, is proving Dr. Pasteur to have been wrong. The question we must treat is: “Before life existed on Earth, how could protein molecules have been formed?” Since the rules of the game we are playing require that we have recourse only to the ordinary laws of physical science for our hypotheses, we must obviously start by inquiring into the physical conditions of the primordial Earth at the time of interest. Considerable progress has been made in astrophysics and paleogeology in recent years. Certain speculations are now believed to be pretty safe with respect to the conditions existing on Earth several billion years ago, before the development of plants and animals. For example, we can be sure there was little if any free oxygen in the atmosphere of the preanimate Earth. This is because oxygen reacts so readily with the minerals that compose the major bulk of the Earth, and is so scarce with respect to those minerals, that it would all be taken up by chemical combination in a few thousand years if there were no continuing supply of free oxygen. #RandolphHarris 2 of 22

Today the source of supply is plant life, which releases oxygen into the atmosphere at such a rate as to maintain a 20 percent relative concentration of this element in the air, despite its tendency to combine with materials of the Earth’s crust. Before the existence of vegetation, however, there was no way that free oxygen could be maintained in the Earth’s atmosphere. Hydrogen, on the other hand, must have been relatively abundant in the primordial atmosphere. This element is known to comprise more than 90 percent of the mass of the Universe. To be sure, the light weight of the hydrogen molecule renders this gas unusually susceptible to escape from the Earth’s gravitational field, so it is likely that there was a gradual depletion of this element after the original formation of the Earth some five billion years ago. Nevertheless, calculations suggest that appreciable quantities of hydrogen still remained in the atmosphere, three or four billion years ago, when the events we are about to consider took place. Other important constituents of the primeval atmosphere must have been gaseous compounds of hydrogen and other relatively abundant elements, such as nitrogen and carbon. These gasses would include methane, CH4, and ammonia, NH3. Water vapor must also have been present, the result of evaporation of water from the Earth’s surface. The arguments for this kind of atmospheric composition are not entirely speculative. These gases are known to be prominent in the atmospheres of the other planets of our solar system. Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, as well as some of their satellites, contain methane in their atmospheres. Ammonia is present on Jupiter and Saturn. Hydrogen is found on all. In the preanimate era, as now, a major part of the Earth’s surface was covered by oceans. The average temperature was higher than it is now, thereby facilitating chemical reactions, but not high enough in this period of interest to boil and vaporize the ocean waters. (This limitation would still have permitted ocean temperatures much higher than what we now consider to be the boiling point of water if, as seems likely, the atmospheric pressure was many times greater than it is today.) #RandolphHarris 3 of 22

There was more volcanic action than we have today, and this produced local hot spots with their attendant enhanced chemical activity. Turbulence in the air produced by the volcanic eruptions resulted in extensive electric discharges that disrupted the atmospheric gases and aided the recombination of the resulting molecular fragments into new and sometimes more complex forms. The radioactivity in the Earth’s crust was also many times greater than it is now. The consequent bombardment of chemical compounds by high-energy nuclear particles resulted in a higher rate of decomposition and recombination of atomic and molecular fragments than we would observe today. Ultraviolet radiation from the sun beat upon the surface of the Earth with an intensity that today would destroy most modern forms of life because of the extensive chemical activity that it was capable of introducing. This was not because the sun emitted more ultraviolet radiation in those days: rather it was because of the absence of the shielding ozone layer, about twenty miles up, that today absorbs the most energetic of the rays before they can produce their lethal effects on the living things that inhabit the surface of the Earth. This shielding layer of ozone—a special molecular form of free oxygen—was absent in primeval times because it, like the more customary form of free oxygen, can be maintained in the atmosphere only by the action of countless billions of living plants. These, then, were the essential conditions: and Earth largely covered by warm water; and atmosphere largely composed of water vapor, methane, ammonia, and hydrogen; and a substantial rate of chemical activity in the Earth’s surface and atmosphere resulting from intensive bombardment by radioactive particles, extensive lightning discharge, brilliant ultraviolet illumination, and local regions of high temperature. Was there anything in this set of conditions that was conducive to the formation or organic molecules? #RandolphHarris 4 of 22

At first glance, the situation does not look promising. While the conditions were favorable for the breaking dozen of the simple inorganic molecules in the seas and atmosphere into smaller fragments, it is hard to see how this would result in recombination of the fragments into the complex structures of characteristic of the kinds of matter we have called organic. On the other hand, our understanding of the chemical effects of the laws of physics in situations of this nature is not detailed enough to permit us to predict, with confidence, just what would be the results of exposing the specified ingredients to the postulated environment. An experiment might seem indicated. Why not prepare a mixture of the gases believed to have constituted the primeval atmosphere, subject it to one or more of the kinds of energy believed to have been important at the time in question, and see what happens? An obvious experiment? Yes, but if, as seems likely, the result of such an attempt should be negative in the sense of not producing detectable quantities of organiclike molecules, what would it mean? After all, nature had several billion years to perform its experiment; what would be the significance of a failure to obtain positive results in a laboratory experiment lasting only the few weeks or months that would be practicable for this kind of exercise. Discouraging though the prospects appeared, the attempt had to be made. Interestingly enough, it was not made until 1952. In that year S.L. Miller, a graduate student at the University of Chicago, circulated a mixture of water vapor, ammonia, methane, and hydrogen past an electric discharge (to simulate the ultraviolet radiation of the sun). He continued this process for only one week. Nevertheless, when he analyzed his mixture at the end of the experiment, he found unmistakable traced of “organic” compounds, including several of the amino acids! The unexpected success of Miller’s relatively simple experiment naturally inspired others to undertake similar investigations. It was soon learned that Miller’s results could be duplicated and extended. #RandolphHarris 5 of 22

Therefore, teachers are the important link to the future of the World of knowledge and self-esteem for humanity. Let us continue to strengthen the chain that brings us together in a worthwhile and noble cause. Many religious leaders believe in celibacy or abstinence. They want people to remain chaste until they are married to prevent exposing them to dangerous elements, and these Christian leaders urge all men capable of marriage to marry. Therefore, unrestrained licentiousness is not countenanced. God really loves those who turn unto Him and loveth those who have a care for cleanness. Attraction between the genders is seen to some as divinely given and natural, an absolutely universal divine wish, and love is a mimicry of the creative act of God. The Catholic church is very strict and disallows unnatural and “natural” birth control methods other than abstinence because they are unmitigated sins. The Church even refuses the marriage sacrament to men who cannot ejaculate. Included in category are also Eunuchs, they may not marry. For the same reason, nonconsummation because of impotence constitutes grounds to annul a marriage. The nature of semen has long been of obsessive interest to philosophers, medical humans, social reformers, religious thinkers, and athletic trainers throughout the World. It is a key concept in two of the World’s largest religions, Christianity and Hinduism. As we have seen, Hinduism emphasizes the crucial importance of conserving the seed and the mouth also is not a proper receptacle for the seed. It is linked to the spiritual and moral development and with physical health. The properties and essence of semen have also underscored medical thought, from Hippocrates in fourth century B.C. on through William Acton in the nineteenth. For more than two millennia, athletes, too, have fretted as they struggled to honor their coaches’ strictures against preperformance pleasures of the flesh activity, for few able-bodied young men have dared rick defeat by rashly expending their vital energy. #RandolphHarris 6 of 22

There is so much importance for men to conserve their vital energy—a uniquely male form of celibacy—for several perspectives: medicine from ancient to recent times; the nineteenth-century Moral Purity movements in the United States of America and Canada; Indian wrestlers caught up in anticolonialist, nationalist fervor; and the famous brahmacharya experiments of the great Mahatma Gandhi, who tested the state of his indifference involving pleasures of the flesh through intimate and intensely emotional relationships with a series of devoted women. Protestant biblicism attempted to derive ethical demands directly from the Christian Bible, Calvinism particularly from the Old Testament. Another cause was the general Protestant distrust of reason, an implication of the doctrine of living souls’ depravity in all parts of one’s nature, in mind as well as in body, in reason as well as in instincts. (The leading term “total depravity” does not mean complete depravity, but estrangement from one’s true being in all parts of one’s actual being.) Finally, the Protestant principle denies that there can be any human institution, including a church with its doctrines and ethical demands, above the dynamics of history. A system of unchangeable laws of concrete morality contradicts the creative powers in life and spirit, and it contradicts the transforming work of the divine Spirit within and outside the church. Protestantism can accept the element of relativity in ethics and can develop with its help a dynamic doctrine of the natural moral law. This, however, cannot be done without an answer to the question: is there a religious source of the moral demands? If so, how is it related to the formal answer given before, that the moral imperative demands that mortals become actually what one is essentially, a person within a community of persons? What does this mean concretely? What norms of moral action are implied in this demand? It will be necessary to answer these questions in sequence, and to build, step by step, a structure of moral action that embodies both the absolute and the relative, the static and the dynamic, the religious and the secular elements of ethical thought and more experience. #RandolphHarris 7 of 22

First, let us examine the phrase “within a community of persons.” Contemporary ethical theory has strongly emphasized the person-to-person encounter as the experiential root of morality. The decisive reason for this is the basic difference between the encounter of a person with another person and one’s encounter with nonpersonal realities. In the second case, human’s encounter with nature outside of one, for example, there is no limit in dealing with it. Humans can make it into an object, dissect it, analyze it, or construct something new, a technical product, out of its parts or elements. Humans can subject nature, progressively and almost limitlessly in all directions, to one’s knowledge and one’s action. The only limit is the individual’s own finitude. However, no one can actually establish this limit. Before it is reached nothing can resist the living soul’s cognitive and technical attack on nonpersonal reality. Nothing can resist mortal’s will to transform it into an object and to use it for one’s purpose. There is, however, a limit here and now in the ego-thou encounter. The limit is the other person. This seems a simple and obvious statement. However, when we ask: where do we encounter a person? It is not so simple. In every living soul we encounter a person. If we define living beings as human, if they are, according to their psychophysical structure, potential persons, then the answer is helpful. This definition would include all degrees of the actualization of human potentiality, from the newborn child to the mature, wise individual. However, it does not determine which groups withing the psychophysical species, human race, have the personal potential. Throughout human history this has been (and still is in some respects) undecided. Slaves, women, enemies, and special races were considered as objects with limited or unacknowledged humanity. And often children, the sick, and the seniors, the mentally abnormal and criminals were treated as mere objects, even thought they belong to a group whose personal potential was acknowledged, because they had not yet actualized or no longer were able to actualize their personal potential. #RandolphHarris 8 of 22

This uncertainty with respect to beings who can be encountered as persons show that the attempted to escape the relativities of history in the moral realm by formalizing the first principle cannot be successful. In the very moment the principle must be applied, traditions, conventions, and authorities, on the one hand, and criticism, decisions, and personal risk, on the other, determined the ethical demands. Nevertheless, there are indications that living beings’ essential nature makes itself heard in the midst of these uncertainties. Christianity, although it did not liberate slaves, gave them the status of potential persons by conceiving them as equal in their relation to God. And the Stoics, who achieved more than Christianity for political emancipation, did so in the name of the universal logos in which every human being participates. Both movements, and even earlier legislators who limited the arbitrary mistreatment of slaves, must have been aware of the fact that one who turns a human being (in the psychophysical sense) into a mere object suffers distortion of one’s own personal center. The same, of course, is true of the human who treats a woman as a mere object, or of a parent who deals with one’s child as though it were a thing, or of a tyrant who attempts to transform one’s subjects into tools for one’s purposes. They all become depersonalized themselves. Popular enlightenment in regard to these relationships had enlarged the circle of those considered potential persons. The circle in principle includes all human beings, although in reality it never does, even where the all-inclusive principle has been accepted, as, for example, in the racial conflict. This discussion has led us to the deepest roots of what is usually called justice. All the implications of the idea of justice, especially the various forms of equality and liberty, are applications of the imperative to acknowledge every potential person as a person. Here, too, is the point at which every legal system of justice depends on some interpretation, consciously or unconsciously, of the moral idea of justice. #RandolphHarris 9 of 22

The art of being wise is to know what to overlook. I am full of desire. Never straight up balanced, but always learning, I fall in love easily, a small push will do it. And when it happens I always feel I am possess by—am in possession of—something unique and precious, something tht alone can lift me up our of the flat World of dailiness into the higher realm for which life must be destined. Then I want desperately for it to last forever. And when it crumbles, as always it does, I find tht I had been in possession only of something ordinary. And I never learn. I am, I think, unwilling to learn—because I cannot help but believe that what leads me on, however disastrously, is nevertheless what is best in me, most worth hanging on to. The alternative, it seems, is a cynicism so trenchant and bitter as to make life impossible. I understand my ailment but cannot seem to change it. Maybe I do not really want to recover. Maybe that is the secret and sinister nature of this disease, that one does not want to get well. Many people seem to believe that participating in pleasures of the flesh is their primary experience. Everything else give way. It is primary because only thereby can the species extend itself in time. Not that the species, qua species, wants to live forever. The species does not want anything. Other people, with the planet becoming overpopulated, with resources growing scarce, and the culture in American changes so much that abstinence and celibacy are way to extend their life into the future. They have a more capitalistic view, instead of the more tribal mentality. They want to work, stay single, gain wealth, and honor their family name, or build a castle, design a cool car or computer, as a way to stay relevant. Chris Bangle has gone down in history for his changes he made to the 7 Series BMW. They were so futuristic that this body is still being used 20 years later, with a few changes about every 7 years. Doing great things with products and machines or with words is another way to make sure your genetic line is never forgotten. It is like the CEO who retires at the right time, before the ship sinks. This also allows others to reproduce without their heirs being pushed off of the face of the planet. #RandolphHarris 10 of 22

Thus a winnowing of genes over vast reaches of time has sculptured us, like wind shaping sandstone, into creatures of machines of desire. We desire intensely. In a crunch, family, friends, career, honour, even life itself may be swept away. My plight, my curse, my demon, a savage yearning for something I am never going to get. Something to redeem me. From what? From vanity, insignificance, transience. From dung and death. And establishing a family and having children does that for many people. Most of the time I can arrange not to know, but it is always there, lurking, my own beast in the jungle; and sometimes it springs, lays waste my spirit, leaving only shards and rubble of meaning. When life has meaning, desire is held to its proper place—“proper” being the shape and scope and authority allowed to it by the interlocking structure of values that constitutes the meaning of life. When life is without meaning, desire is a supernova out of control. To express desire is to empower the other and disadvantaged one’s self. Catastrophic if unilateral, exalting when married people do it together. However, why would they, even together, choose surrender? Choose weakness over strength? They seem to want to get weaker and weaker, want their legs to give way with love, want to swoon together, fall into each other, totally disappear in each other. They want to die as individuals in the fusion, to be reborn on the other side, a love death followed by magical rebirth. Over and over. And if it is never actually achieved, desire ensures that we keep on trying. However, no matter the pain, one must never seek to be without desire. To desire nothing is to be dead. The glory of life—and there is no other—lies in the desiring of something so much that one will do one’s utmost to achieve it, spending the self, going all the way, holding nothing back. Our society has evolved a social plan, a city plan, an economy and a physical plant, of which this delinquent youth is an organic part. The problem is not to get them to belong to society, for they belong a priori by being the next generation. #RandolphHarris 11 of 22

The burden of proof and performance is quite the other way: for the system of society to accommodate itself to all its constituent members. However, can it be denied that by and large the official practice is to write these boys off as useless and unwanted and to try to cajole or baffle them into harmlessness? Suppose we look at it the other way. Like any other constitutional group, they exert an annoying pressure, but they are inarticulate. In some dumb way they are surely right, but what the devil do they want? Has much effort been made to ask them and help them find words? We can guess that they want two broad classes of things: changes in the insulting and depriving circumstances that have made them ornery, spiteful, vengeful, conceited, ignorant, and callous—unable to grow; and objective opportunities in which to grow. Let us go back to President Trump. On the same occasion mentioned above, he issued to the press the following formal statement: “The problem of juvenile delinquency has no easy remedy. There is no quick or overnight solution. It is compounded of neglect by parents, broken homes, poor living condition, unhealthy background, lack of medical care, no role models, economic deprivation, mental disturbance, and lack of religious training. It is imperative that we care for these beautiful, beautiful people. We have to get them off the streets and into safe, secure, cleaning housing. Make sure they have food to eat, clothes to wear, and adequate educational opportunities so they become God loving, gainfully employed, tax paying, patriotic Americans. We want them to proud of this beautiful country.” This is not a bad list of background conditions; it satisfied every popular and scientific theory of etiology. It seems President Trump has some plan to improve the institution of modern marriage, especially among folk for whom it is hardly an institution. The less affluent are excluded from many organizations, communities and unions. They often earn less than the minimum wage, they are unschooled; naturally there is economical deprivation, inhumane living conditions. #RandolphHarris 12 of 22

If it is irrelevant to the basic community functions of vocation and war, and wrong on gender, how is their religion relevant? There is no community and not even a community plane; naturally there is unhealthy background. What great concerted effort was being led by former President Trump to remedy these conditions, not overnight, but in the next five, ten, or twenty years? Indeed, his official policy started with tax cuts to stimulate development and increase spending. For instance, when corporations get tax cuts, and tax incentives, they build nice apartments in upscale community with 20 percent of the units designated for those with low-income. This prevent an area from being segregated and down trodden. It also exposes the affluent to people they may want to help obtain education and higher paying jobs, so they can escape the blackhole of poverty. If everyone in the community is disenfranchised, it does no one any good. President Trump also worked to decrease delinquency. Under his leadership, 90 percent of students graduated from high school, and there was an increase and African American and Latino graduated rate, they were staring to become parallel to European American students. He planned to tear down the slums, defund public housing because they disrupted community life. Instead, people would receive a credit card type payment that could only be used to subsidize their rent or mortgage, and all homeowners and property owners would receive government assistance that allowed them to accept federal housing voucher credit cards. President Trump, so heartbroken about the letter he received from residents in Malibu, California about development devastating the community and wildlife life and pushing millionaires out of their homes, which now only billionaires could afford, he planned to disallow building on certain vacant land to protect wildlife, reduce the number of multi-housing units, making decent family life possible. (Suppose you were fifteen years old and returned home at 11 P.M., to a room with Mom and Pop in one bed and two little brothers in your bed and a baby yowling, and people outside loitering and threatening you; you might well stay out till four in the morning.) #RandolphHarris 13 of 22

Also, when their incomes increase, families are ousted from public housing, thus eliminating and penalizing the better models; and on the other hand, other families are not expelled for gang activity, threats, drinking in public areas, noise, harassing other tenants, vandalism, and pungent foul odors as well as fecal matter in front of their units. And the original income and racially segregation cell blocks are themselves bound to increase tension, like any segregation. The Federal Housing Credit Card Voucher system, would allow for the projects to be torn down, and the less affluent to be dispersed throughout the city and country, would gentrify High Risk Neighbourhoods (HRN), and reduce crime, noise, pollution, while decreasing traffic accidents. All of this would have been official policy, but it takes more than four years to Make American Great Again! His plan would also, temporary stabilize families in federally owned buildings either undergoing demolition or construction, by not making families have to pay rent in limbo. They would be treated like human beings in the private sector, not like patients in a mental institution. President Trump toured one of the governments project-based housing cell blocks, and said “It is worst than a prison. Only the cells are larger, and they are chaotic. No law, no order. Just a concrete jungle.” For years biological researchers relied largely on family pedigree studies to support their position that biological researchers relied largely on family pedigree studies to support their position that biological factors contribute to suicidal behaviour. They have repeatedly found higher rates of suicide among the parents and close relatives of suicidal people than among those of nonsuicidal people. Indeed, one study found that over 33 percent of teenage subjects who committed suicide had a relative who attempted suicide. Such findings may suggest that genetic, and so biological factors are at work. Studies of twins also have supported this view of suicide. Researchers who studied twins born in Denmark between 1870 and 1920, for example, located 19 identical pairs and 58 fraternal pairs in which at least one twin had committed suicide. #RandolphHarris 14 of 22

In four of the identical pairs the other twin also committed suicide (21 percent), while none of the other twins among the fraternal pairs had done so. As with all family pedigree and twin research, there are non-biological interpretations for these findings as well. Psychodynamic clinicians might argue that children whose close relatives commit suicide are prone to depression and suicide because they have lost a loved one at a critical stage of development. Behavioural theorists might emphasize the modeling role played by parents or close relatives who attempt suicide. In the past two decades, laboratory research has offered more direct support for a biological view of suicide. The activity level of the neurotransmitter serotonin has often been found to be low in people who commit suicide. An early hint of this relationship came from a study by the psychiatric researcher Marie Asberg and her colleagues. They studied 68 depressed patients and found that 20 of the patients had particularly low levels of serotonin activity. It turned out that 40 percent of the low-serotonin people attempted suicide, compared with 15 percent of the higher-serotonin subjects. The researchers interpreted this to mean that low serotonin activity may be “a predictor of suicidal acts.” Therefore, at annual medical examines, it may also be good for health care providers to use a blood test to measure the level of serotonin in the blood. Because later studies found that suicide attempters with low serotonin activity are 10 times more likely to make a repeat attempt and succeed than are suicide attempters with higher serotonin activity. Studies that examine the autopsied brains of suicide victims point in the same direction. Some of these studies measure serotonin activity by determining the number of imipramine receptor sites in the brain. Recall that imipramine is an antidepressant drug that binds to certain neuron receptors throughout the brain. It is believed the degree of imipramine binding reflects the usual activity level of serotonin; the less imipramine binding, the less serotonin activity. #RandolphHarris 15 of 22

Fewer imipramine binding sites have been found in the brains of persons who died by suicide than in the autopsied brains of nonsuicides—in fact, approximately half as many binding sites has been the usual finding. At first glance, these and related studies may appear to tell us only that depressed people often attempt suicide. After all, depression is itself related to low serotonin activity. On the other hand, there is evidence of low serotonin activity even among suicidal subjects who have no history of depression. That is, low serotonin activity seems also to have a role in suicide separate from depression. How, then, might low serotonin activity increase the likelihood of suicidal behaviour? One possibility is that it contributes to aggressive behaviour. It has been found, for example, that serotonin activity is lower in aggressive men than in nonaggressive men and that serotonin activity is often low in those who commit such aggressive acts s arson and murder. Moreover, other studies have found that depressed patients with lower serotonin activity try to commit suicide more often, use more lethal methos, and score high in hostility on various personality inventories than do depressed patients with relatively higher serotonin activity. Such findings suggest that low serotonin activity helps produce aggressive feelings and perhaps impulsive behaviour. In people who are clinically depressed, low serotonin activity may produce aggressive tendencies that cause them to be particularly vulnerable to suicidal thinking and action. Even in the absence of a depressive disorder, however, people with low serotonin activity may develop such aggressive feelings that they, too, are dangerous to themselves or to others. Too often we enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought. The real art of communication is not only to say the right thing in the right place, but to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting movement. The dangers implicit in this power vacuum can be gauged by glancing briefly backward at the mid-1970’s. Then, as energy and raw material flows faltered in the wake of the OPEC embargo, as inflation and unemployment spurted, as the dollar plunged and Africa, Asia, and South America began to demand a new economic deal, signs of political pathology flared in one after another of the Second Wave nations. #RandolphHarris 16 of 22

In Britain, celebrated as the home of tolerance and civility, retired generals began to recruit private armies to impose order, and a resurgent fascist movement, the National Front, fielded candidates in some 90 parliamentary constituencies. Fascists and left-winger came close to fighting a mased battle in the London streets. In Italy the fascists of the left, the Red Brigades, escalated their reign of kneecapping, kidnapping, and assassination. In Poland, the government’s attempt to hike food prices to keep up with inflation brought the country to the edge of revolt. In West Germany, wracked by terrorist murders, a jittery establishment rushed through a series of McCarthyite laws to suppress dissent. It is true that these signs of political instability receded as the industrial economies partially (and temporarily) recovered in the late 1970’s. Britain’s private armies never came into play. The Red Brigades, after killing Also Moro, appeared for a time to pull back for regrouping. A new regime took over smoothly in Japan. The Polish government made an uneasy peace with its rebels. In the United States of America, Jimmy Carter, who won office by running against “the system” (and then embraced it), managed to hang on by his fingernails despite a disastrous decline in popularity. Nevertheless, these evidences of instability must make us wonder whether existing Second Wave political systems in each of the industrial nations can survive the next round of crises. For the crises on the 1980’s and 1990’s are likely to be even more severe, disruptive, and dangerous than those just past. Few informed observers believe the worst is over, and ominous scenarios abound. If turning off the oil spigots for a few weeks in Iran could cause violence and chaos on gas lines in the United States of America, what is likely to happen, not only in the U.S.A., when the present rulers of Saudi Arabia are kicked off the throne? It is likely that this tiny clique of ruling families, who control 25 percent of the World’s oil reserves, can cling to power indefinitely, while intermittent warfare rages between North and South Yemen nearby, and their own country is destabilized by floods of petrodollars, immigrant workers, and radical Palestinians? #RandolphHarris 17 of 22

Just how wisely will the shell-shocked (and future-shocked) politicians in Washington, London, Paris, Moscow, Tokyo, or Tel Aviv respond to a coup d’état, a religious upheaval, or a revolutionary uprising in America—let alone to the sabotage of the oil pipelines, poisoned water, and voter fraud? Apparently, they do not care. Only Tomi Lahren and FOX News are talking about the tyranny. If, a former Governor of California, Jerry Brown, predicted when leave office that “the future is fully of darkness, massive debt, and crisis,” after he had just let an entire town burn down, mismanaged the forest, allowed a homless crisis to happen in the “World’s 5th largest economy,” and let a dam break, thereby killing a lot of people, wild life, and causing devastating property damage, how would these same overworked, nervously twitching Fourth Wave political leaders, East and West respond? Again, they did not seem to care. They elected his protégé Gavin Newsom. It is scarcely reassuring to look at a map and note that California, barely able to maintain domestic law and order, pontificates about setting trends for the rest of the World and being richer than a lot of other states and even countries. What happens, asks another chilling scenario, when Mexico begins in earnest to exploit its oil—and faces a sudden, overpowering influx of petro-pesos? Will its ruling oligarchy have the desire, much less the technical skills to use the bulk of that new wealth to “take back California,” and use the combined resources to feed its long neglected, malnourished, and long-suffering peasantry? Perhaps Gavin Newsom should spend less time putting all that grease and his hair, and Joe Biden should step down, or stop acting like he is deranged and lost his mind? My friend’s father who actually has Alzheimer’s seems much more coherent and aware than Joe Biden does. If a war were to break out, how would Washington respond? And how would the huge populations of Chicanos in the highly coveted suburbs and less affluent areas of America react? Can we expect even semi-intelligent decisions about crises of such magnitude, given today’s disarray in California’s leadership, Congress and the White House? #RandolphHarris 18 of 22

Economically, will governments already incapable of managing marco-economic forced be able to cope with even wilder swings in the international money system, or with its complete breakdown? With currencies hardly under control, the Voodoo economics still unexorcised, the Eurocurrency bubble still expanding unchecked, and consumer, corporate, and government credit ballooning, without help to get through this pandemic, can anyone look forward to economic stability in the years ahead? Will Americans be priced out of America and have to start moving to developing countries? Given skyrocketing inflation, full employment, a credit crash, or some other economic and natural catastrophe looming, we may yet see private police and armies in action. As we seem to be advancing, we also seem to be reverting to the Wild, Wild, West. There will be militias patrolling our streets, and a high demand for individuals who know how to build houses and are willing to bargain, an increased demand for auto science engineers, and also cars without the big engines, all the computers, and power windows. Some consumers will want to have new cars, but ones that are simply so the less affluent can afford them. Many people want to move away from buying used cars because they hear about how expensive they are to maintain and how frequently they have to go in the shop. With everything being so expensive these days, a used car could cause some to lose their homes or rental units. Not everyone is rich, but that is the way California is ran, but when you look at the streets, there are homeless tent cities popping up in community that never had a homeless crisis. Finally, what happens when, among the myriad religious cults now flowering, some spring up to organize for political purpose? As the major organized religions splinter under the de-massifying impact of the Fourth Wave, armies of self-ordained priests, ministers, preachers, nuns, and teacher are likely to appear—some with disciplined, perhaps even paramilitary, political followings. With the President and Governors and Mayors lose their status, control and power the way award’s shows have? #RandolphHarris 19 of 22

In the United States of America, it is not hard to imagine some new political party running Father Jimmy Swagger or Joel Osteen or Joseph Smith or Russell M. Nelson on crude “law-and-order,” “anti-porn,” “abstinence,” “celibacy,” “liquor and drug prohibition,” program with a strong authoritarian streak. Or some as yet unknown Anti Jane Byrant or Milton Allimadi or Jozsef Szajer demanding imprisonment for gays or “gay-symps.” Such examples provide only a faint, glimmering intimation of the religio-politics that may well lie ahead, even in the most secular of societies. One can imagine all sorts of cult-based political movements headed Lucien Greaves, Alex Jones, David Duke, Creflo Dollar, Gregory Dollar or Jesse Duplantis. I am not saying these scenarios will necessarily materialize. They could all turn out to be farfetched. However, if these do not, we must assume that other dramatic crises will erupt, even more dangerous than the riots of the 2020s. And we must face that our present crop of Fourth Waver leaders is grotesquely unprepared to cope with them. In fact, because our Fourth Wave political structures are even more deteriorated today than they were in the 1990’s, we must assume that governments may be less competent, less imaginative, and less farsighted in dealing with the crises of the 2000’s and 2020’s than they were in the decade just past. And this tells us that we must re-examine, from the roots up, one of our most deeply held and dangerous political illusions. Stop ignoring politics and religion. If you must, find groups on social media to communicate with, even under an unofficial name to keep your privacy. Stay aware. Organize. The human situation which has emerged from the cataclysm and anguish of war and crisis, still shows insufficient spiritual awakening. And yet this awakening—and this alone—is the only instrument of our salvation that is worth looking for because it is the only one which is not doomed to be destroyed. All other instruments may be effective in ordinary times, but we are living in exceptional times. Today they can offer only the illusion of success or happiness with the actuality of failure of misery. #RandolphHarris 20 of 22

However, so few people are fortunate enough to have the time, leisure, energy, and opportunity for spiritual culture, that the awakening from social lethargy is often the first sign of any awakening at all. The social awakening may nowadays be a troubled upheaval rather than a smooth progress. However, human egoism and passion being what they are at the present evolutionary stage, this is inevitable. However, the awakening must be understood as the first part of a deeper awakening from spiritual slumber which is yet to come. We must see in all this social renovation a necessary preliminary and unavoidable preparation for the subsequent spiritual one. When the political, scientific, and economic reorganization of the World which is going on before our eyes culminates, when more settled conditions begin to prevail again, humans will realize that materialism has brought them its best and worst. And realizing, they will tun to discovery of their inner needs. Therefore we may expect no general spiritual awakening in our own lifetime whilist this external new era is being established, but after that such awakening will surely come because it is evolutionarily due. Thus there is room for both an optimistic and a pessimistic outlook; neither along is quite true. If we look only at the next few years, there is gloom all around; but if we look through them to some decades father ahead, there is light. Those who believe in a sudden religo-mystical revival to change humankind almost overnight, are far from philosophy. However, still they are only being foolish. Those however who not only believe this, but also believe that it is they or their particular religious organization that will help to bring bout the revival, are also being self-conceited. Just as the Germans were presented with the choice between revolution and democratic evolution as well as the chance of escaping a misery so much worse than anyone can imagine, so humanity today has both choice and chance. The real decision is between obedience to a spiritual leading or denial of it. With all too many people, both among the vanquished and the victors everything within themselves remains as before the war. If anything, they are even spiritually emptier than before, because the negative feelings of bitterness, resentment, selfishness, suspicion, or violence have now taken hold of their hearts. #RandolphHarris 21 of 22

If we look the situation of contemporary humanity fully in the face, putting aside suggestion and propaganda, we shall have to confess that its salvation will never be brought about by the little mystical groups and large religious sects. The “Kingdom of God on Earth, is not a political concept but a personal one. Its realization will never be found outside but only inside the individual mind and heart. It is neither spring nor summer: it is Always with towhees, finches, chickadees, California quail, wood doves, with wrens, sparrows, cockatiels, juncos, cedar waxing, flickers, with Oakland A’s, San Francisco Giants, Dallas Cowboys, all in my yard, of a perpetual Sunday, all morning! All morning. Happy is every one that reveres the Lord, that walks in His ways. When you eat of the labour of your hands, you shall be happy, and it shall be well with you. Your wife within your house shall be as a faithful vine, your children like olive plants, around your table. Behold, surely thus shall the human be blessed that revers the Lord. The Lord bless you out of America: and may you see the good of America all the days of your life; and see your children’s children. People upon America. The Sabbath is welcomed with light and departs with the glowing light of the Havdalah candle. When the shadows deepen and the stars appear in the Heavens, we take reluctant leave of our cherished guest. We kindle the Havdalah candle, chant the Hamavdil prayer, and inhale fragrant species, thus sending the Sabbath forth with a burst of light on wings of song, praying that her blessed influence linger on until we greet her again on the next Sabbath eve. Behold, God is my salvation; I will trust, and will not be afraid, for God, the Lord, is my strength and song, and He is become my salvation. Therefore with joy shall you draw water out of the wells of salvation. Salvation belongeth unto the Lord; Thy blessing be upon Thy people. The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge. The Lord’s people had light and joy, gladness and honor. So be it with us. I will lift the cup of salvation, and call upon the name of the Lord. Blessed art Thou, O Lord our God, King of the Universe, who creates the fruit of the vine. #RandolphHarris 22 of 22

Cresleigh Homes

Cooking is more fun with a gourmet kitchen! Residents of Cresleigh Homes get to feel like contestants of Top Chef with a spacious state-of-the-art kitchen like this one.

When you just give love, and never get love, you’d better let love depart. I know it’s so, and yet I know I can’t get you out of my heart.

You made me leave my happy home. You took my love, and I am glad you have not gone, since I fell for you.

As far as I can see, My Cresleigh Home is Heaven. And speaking just for me, it is ours to share. The glow of love has grown.

Now I see the light, and I never get the blues since I fell for my Cresleigh Home. I fell the glow of your unspoken love, I’m aware of the treasure that I own, and I say to myself it’s wonderful, wonderful, oh, so wonderful, my love.

That’s the dream, right?! Come join us.
Why Do You Close Your Eyes to Pray?

Demonic activity is not uniform in the World over nor in historical experience. It appears that there was a great increase in demonic activity preceding and during the life of the Lord Jesus Christ here on Earth. There does appear to be a present increase of an awareness of the part of the powers of darkness that their time is short and that the second coming of Christ is at hand. It is therefore particularly imperative for Christians to be informed in spiritual warfare. There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them. My file of occult cases has already grown to other 20,000 in number in regards to the Winchester Mansion. A woman, one of Mrs. Winchester’s servants, appeared at the police station and stated that she had just shot and killed her son. A demon had told her that her son would never regain his full mental health. Wanting to save the boy from his terrible future, she shot and killed him. The woman was arrested and finally sentenced after a long trial. This day-to-day experience show the suggestive powers and effects that demons and spirits have. This is an age of phenomenal progress in human’s conquest of the Universe. Awestruck observers are flocking to the altars erected by science to revere human achievements in the realm of the natural laws. Meanwhile, the alters of God are forsaken as naturalism in theology threatens to eliminate the supernatural from every day life. The situation is particularly ironical to the Christian who sees God permitting man to achieve feats bordering on the miraculous. Why should humans become skeptical and apathetic toward religious supernaturalism at a time when science is demonstrating how “close” the natural and supernatural can be? The fact that supernaturalism embraces not only the morally good—God and his elect angels—but the morally evil—Satan and the fallen angels or demons—aggravates modern human’s unbelief. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18

For while some people have always denied the existence of God and the holy angels, skepticism has especially attended the sphere of evil supernaturalism. Many who profess faith in God question the existence of personal devil and casually relegate evil spirits or demons to the realm of folklore and superstition. If Satan and demons are merely the creation of superstition and imagination, the whole filed of demonism belongs to the World of fairytale and folklore, and not to the sphere of Christian theology. If there are n demons, evil cannot be traced to their activity and depraved aspects of human behaviour must be attributed to other cases. The Word of God attests the reality of evil supernaturalism through the career of both Satan and his myriads of helpers called demons or evil spirits (Luke 10.17, 20). Satan is presented as Lucifer, the first and most glorious creature of God, who subsequently sinned (Isaiah 14.12, 13; Ezekiel 28.11-19; Revelation 12.7-10). In his rebellion, Lucifer drew a multitude of angels with him and became “Satan,” a Hebrew word meaning “opposer” or “adversary.” Satan reigns over a kingdom of darkness organized in opposition to God (Matthew 12.26). This opposition crystallized in connection with humans and God’s purpose for him upon the Earth (Genesis 3.1-15). The angels who followed Satan became the demons or evil spirits, Satan’s minion. Apparently Lucifer, the first of the angels, was created to have dominion over the Earth (Job 38.1-7; Ezekiel 28.11-19). Satan was exalted and sinless before he rebelled and brough judgment and chaos upon the Earth. The Creator was now faced with the problem of evil and sin in a hitherto sinless Universe. God chose the Earth as the theater in which to present the great drama of human redemption. This great redemptive demonstration not only shows how God, in his infinite love and holiness, deals with evil, it will culminate in the conquest of sin, its banishment from a sin-scarred Universe, and its rigid isolation for all eternity, together with its perpetrations, in a place of confinement called “the lake of fire,” Gehenna or eternal hell (Revelation 20.11-15). #RandolphHarris 2 of 18

The Old Testament is replete with demonological phenomena because since the Fall of man in the Garden of Eden, God’s saints have been the object of satanic attack (Genesis 4.1-6; 6.1-10). Israel was surrounded by pagan nations which manifested the whole gamut of demonological practices and beliefs and clashed with Israel’s monotheistic faith. The New Testament presents overwhelming evidence for the existence of demons. Jesus’ powerful spiritual ministry precipitated a violent outburst of evil supernaturalism. Satan and demons opposed his mighty mission among humans, know well it could lead to their own undoing (Matthew 4.1-10; Mark 5.1-10). Our Lord gave his disciples authority to expel demons (Matthew 10.1) and expelled them himself (Matthew 15.22, 28), viewing his conquest over the demons as over Satan (Luke 10,17, 18). The New Testament speaks of demons (James 2.19; Revelation 9.20), described their nature (Luke 4.33; 6.18), their activity (1 Timothy 4.1; Revelation 16.14), their opposition to the believer (Ephesians 6.10-20), their abode (Luke 8.31; Revelation 9.11) and their eternal doom (Matthew 25.41). The tormentors and troublemakers of nature offer an interesting analogy to the evil agencies of the spiritual realm. In the planet kingdom, pest, insects, and blight continually harass the famer. In the animal kingdom, all creatures have their deadly enemy. And the human body is relentlessly attacked by a multitude of bacteria which cause disease and death. Those who hesitate to accept the testimony of Scripture about the reality of demons may thus find both scientific and philosophical corroboration in the nature which has been called God’s “oldest testament.” The natural World vividly illustrates the activity of demonic beings in the spiritual World. Of all the current methods of foretelling the future, the most popular is astrology. Astrologers claim that by observing the position of the sun, moon, fixed stars, and planets they can predict significant events that will take place on Earth. Palm reading is another method of fortunetelling, but it is close related to astrology that it does not require special consideration. The person who engages in this practice divides the hand into seven mounds which are named after Heavenly bodies—Venus, Mercury, Apollo (the Sun), Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, and the Moon. #RandolphHarris 3 of 18

In addition, the palm has four lines, which are “read” by the palmist. He calls them the heart, head, life, and fate lines and sees each of them as having special significance. Everything we will say about the evils, dangers, and deceitfulness of astrology applies to palmistry as well. One must, however, recognize that astrology is classified as a pseudoscience, and it should not be confused with astronomy, a legitimate field of study Astrology originated about 5,000 years ago in Mesopotamia and flourished in Assyria, Babylonia, Egypt, Persia, and Greece. It began with people who worshipped the sun, moon, and the five known planets of that time as gods They thought each of these seven deities owned a certain section of the Heavens as his “house.” They there established the zodiac the wild belt of fixed starts that appear in the course of a year, and divided it into twelve “houses.” As a result, there were twelve dwelling places for seven deities. The early astrologers decided that the sun and moon needed only one “house” each, and therefore assigned two dwelling places to Jupiter, Venus, Saturn, Mars, and Mercury. These planets had one “house” for the day and another for the night. This heathen concept of the planets as gods with dwelling places in the Heavens gradually developed into a detailed system of religion. Men carefully studied the Heavenly bodies, and noted how they positions of the planets changed. They theorized that whenever two or more of these planets (which they considered gods) were positioned in a direct radial line or within a ten-degree angle, some extremely significant events World occurs upon the Earth. They called this a “conjunction” of the planets. Since the movements of the Heavenly bodies is perfectly predictable, they had given to each of the “houses” through which the planet moved. For many years educated people mingled their astrological superstitions with their studies of nature, mathematics, physics, and astronomy. Some have assumed that the Magi, who came to Jerusalem looking for the King of the Jews when Jesus was born, came because of an astrological sign. This is a mistaken assumption, and the idea should never be used as evidence that the New Testament condones the practice of astrology. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18

Although the wise men as learned sages of the East undoubtedly shared in some superstitions of their day, the light that led them to make their journey to Jerusalem was a miraculously placed sign of God, not a mere configuration of the stars. It has been theorized that the conjunction of the planets Jupiter and Saturn, which took place in 747 A.U.C (7 B.C.), or with Mars added in 748 A.U.C. (6 B.C.), led the to look for Jesus Christ. This supposition is without validity, however. In the first place, the Christian Bible nowhere declares that Heavenly bodies in their normal movements furnish this kind of information. Second, a similar conjunction of planes had taken place about fifty-nine years earlier, but this had not led an investigating body to Jerusalem. Third, when the planets move near to one another to form a conjunction, they are never so close tht they appear as one star. Fourth, the light miraculously appeared over the house where Jesus was living when the Magi arrived. These factors prove conclusively that the light in the Heavens was a miracle. We repeat, the wise men who presented their gifts to Jesus Christ did not receive information of His birth through astrology. However, I am not really convinced that astrology, all demons, and all spirits lie. I think perhaps messages are distorted or maybe they are seeing the future and warning people about what their actions will cause. Maybe some things are destined to happen and messages are incomplete. To further illustrate this example, Mrs. Winchester servant, who shot and killed her own son, after the message from a demon, perhaps what was to happen was fate and the demon was seeing the future and warning her not to shot her son. Of course, no one who is dead can regain their mental health because they cease to exist. I think that is why it is dangerous to peer into the future and listen to spirits sometimes. Maybe one may distort the message and actually cause the situation to happen. So it is not necessarily that demons and spirits are lying, but most people do not have the psychic ability to see what they see and cannot understand the context of the message. The story is told of how an astrologer Stoeffler made a complete fool of himself. He predicted a diluvian flood for February 1524. The population was terrified. Nobody wanted to work. The fields were not tilled. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18

The rich either had ships built for themselves or they retreated for safety into the mountains. Even the Elector of Brandenburg made preparations to escae the flood. The great astronomer Kepler was also not free from the contamination of astrology. A well-know example of this is his prediction tht Wallenstein would die a peaceful death in his prediction that Wallenstein would die a peaceful death in his 70th year. However, he was killed in his 50th year. Yet Kepler only engaged in astrology out of economic necessity. He wrote, “Astrology is to me an unbearable but necessary slavery. To keep my yearly income, my title, and my living quarters, I have to comply with ignorant curiosity. Astronomy is the wise mother, and astrology the foolish daughter who gives herself to anyone who pays her, so that she can support her wise mother.” Maybe consulting demons reduced the life of Wallenstein by 20 years. Perhaps he unknowingly made a deal and soul his soul to a crossroads demon, and would have lived to 70 had it not made a deal with the devil. Perhaps that is why people say make the best out of your life and enjoy what is here and now, and try not to look into the future. When consulting spirits and demons, you may be unknowingly entering into a contract. And it is possible that by listening to the supernatural will sometimes avert tragedy. The demons and Satan do have dominion of this Earth, and they could be testing your faith. So when Stoeffler consulted as Astrologer, and took action, perhaps this leap of faith diverted the flood, and if they had set idol, it would have happened. It is truly hard to understand how the supernatural works, which is why so many place their faith in God and choose not to work with demons and the devil. An important witch-case occurred in Scotland in 1678, the account of which is the interest to u as it incidentally makes mentions of the fact that one of the guilty persons had been previously tried and condemned in Ireland for the crime of witchcraft. Four women and one man were strangled and burnt at Paisley for having attempted to kill by magic Sir George Maxwell of Pollock. They had formed a wax image of him, into which the Devil himself had struck the necessary pins; it was then turned on a spit before the fire, the entire band repeating in unison the name of one whose death they desired to compass. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18

Amongst the women was “one Bessie Weir, who was hanged up the last of the four (one that had been taken fore in Ireland and was condemned to the fyre for malefice before; and when the hangman there was about to cast her over the gallows, the devil takes her away from them out of their sight; her dittay [indictment] was sent over here to Scotland), who at this tyme, when she was cast off the gallows, there appears a raven, and approaches the hangman within an ell of him, and flyes away again. All the people observed it, and cried out at the sight of it.” A clergyman, the Rev. Daniel Williams (evidently the man who was pastor of Wood Street, Dublin, and subsequently founded Dr. William’s Library in London), relates the manner in which he freed a girl from strange and unpleasant noises which disturbed her; the incident might have developed into something analogous to the Drummer of Tedworth in England, but on the whole works out rather tamely. He tells us that about the year 1678 the niece of Alderman Arundel of Dublin was troubled by noises in her uncle’s house, “as by violent Sthroaks on the Wainsocts and Chests, in what Chambers she frequented.” In the hope that they would cease she removed to a house near Smithfield, but the disturbances pursued her thither, and were no longer heard in her former dwelling. She thereupon betook herself to a little house in Patrick Street, near the gate, but to no purpose. The noises lasted in all for about three months, and were generally at their worst about two o’clock in the morning. Certain ministers spent several nights in prayer with her, heard the strange sounds, but did not succeed in causing their cessation. Finally the natator, Williams, was called in, and came upon a night agreed to the house, where several persons had assembled. He says: “I preached from Hebrews ii. 18, and contrived to be at Prayer at that Time when the Noise used to be greatest. When I was at Prayer the Woman, kneeling by me, catched violently at my Arm, and afterwards told us that she saw a terrible Sight—but it pleased God there was no noise at all. And from that Time God graciously freed her from all that Disturbance.” #RandolphHarris 7 of 18

Many strange stories of apparitions seen in the air come from all parts of the World, and are recorded by writers both ancient and modern, but there are certainly few of them that can equal the account of that weird series of incidents that was seen in the sky by a goodly crowd of ladies and gentlemen in Co. Tipperary on 2nd March 1678. “At Pointstown in the country of Tepperary were seen drivers strange and prodigious apparitions. On Sunday in the evening several gentlemen and others, after named, walked forth in the fields, and the Sun going down, and appearing somewhat bigger than usual, they discoursed about it, directing their eyes toward the place where the Sun set; when one of the company observed in the air, near the place where the Sun went down, an Arm of a blackish blue colour, with a ruddy complection’d Hand at one end, and at the other end a cross piece with a ring fasten’d to the middle of it, like one end of an anchor, which stood still for a while, and then made northwards, and so disappeared. Next, there appeared at a great distance in the air, from the same part of the sky, something like a Ship coming towards them; and it came so near that they could distinctly perceived the masts, sails, tacklings, and men; she then seem’d to tack about, and sail’d with the stern foremost, northwards, upon a dark smooth sea, which stretched itself from south-west to north-west. Having seem’s thus to sail some few minutes she sunk they perceived her men plainly running up tacklings in the forepart of the Ship, as it were to save themselves from drowning. Then appeared a Fort, with somewhat like a Castle on the top of it; out of the sides of which, by reason of some clouds of smoak and a flash of fire suddenly issuing out, they concluded some shot to be made. The Fort then was immediately divided in two parts, which were in an instant transformed into two exact Ships, like the other they had seen, with their head towards each other. That towards the south seem’d to chase the other with its stem [stern?] foremost, northwards, till it sunk with its stem first, as the first Ship had done; the other Ship sail’s some time after, and then sunk with its head first. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18

It was observ’d that men were running upon the decks of these two Ships, but they did not see them climb up, as in the last Ship, excepting one man, whom they saw distinctly to get up with much haste upon the very top of the Bowsprit of the second Ship as they were sinking. They supposed the two last Ships were engaged, and fighting, for they saw the likeness of bullets rouling upon the sea, while they were both visible. Then there appear’d a Chariot, dawn with two horses, which turn’d as the Ships had done, northward, and immediately after it came a strange frightful creature, which they concluded to be come kind of serpent, having a head like a snake, and a knotted bunch or bulk at the other end, something resembling a snail’s house. This monster came swiftly behind the chariot and gave it a sudden violent blow, then out of the chariot leaped a Bull and a Dog, which follow’d him [the bull], and seem’d to bait him. These also went northwards, ad the former had done, the Bull first, holding his head downwards, then the Dog, and then the Chariot, till all sunk down one after another about the same place, and just in the same manner as the former. These meteors being vanished, there were several appearances like ships and other things. The whole time of the vision lasted near an hour, and it was a very clear and calm evening, no cloud seen, no mist, nor any wind stirring. All the phenomena came out of the West or Southwest, and all moved Northwards; they all sunk out of sight much about the same place. Of the whole company there was not any one but saw all these things, as above-written, whose names follow: “Mr. Allye, a minister, living near the place. Lieutenant Dunsterville, and his son. Mr. Grace, his son-in-law. Lieutenant Dwine. Mr. Dwine, his bother Mr. Christopher Hewelson. Mr. Richard Foster. Mr. Adam Hewelson. Mr. Bates, a schoolmaster. Mr. Larkin. Mrs. Dunsterville. Her daughter-in-law. Her maiden daughter. Mr. Dwine’s daughter. Mrs. Grace, and her daughter.” The first of the sixteen persons who subscribed to the truth of above was the Rev. Peter Alley, who had been appointed curate Killenaule Union (Dio. Cashel) in 1672, but was promoted to livings in the same diocese in the autumn of the year the apparitions appeared. #RandolphHarris 9 of 18

There is a townland named Poyntstown in the parish of Buolick and barony of Sliveardagh, and another of the same name in the adjoining parish of Fennor. It must have been at one or other of these places that the sights were witnessed, as both parishes are only a few miles distant from Killenaule. Another supernatural event was Mrs. Winchester’s arrival to the Santa Clara Valley in the late 1800’s was a sensation event. Our valley was thrilled by this dramatic entrance of a millionairess; by those freight cars sidetracked in Sant Clara, unloading rich imported furnishings; by building a two-story farm house into a 26-room mansion, in the first six months, and she did not stop going, she kept building for 38-years. Mrs. Winchester had nine cooks, and supervised 113 employees. She also devoted much energy to managing her estate, trading in gold and diamonds, renting out fields, orchards, houses, employees and horses. Here was fair gamed for all! The town talked about Mrs. Winchester! Gossiped would be a more fitting word, gossip no one claimed to like—but everyone enjoyed Talk begat rumors and as the years passed and new towers gables rose behind the six-foot hedge of Llanda Villa, the rumors grew to established legend. We shall recall a few, some containing a faith faint hint of truth, others, the inevitable product of unbridled conjecture. I want to share some of the astounding things that took place in the famous Blue Séance Room of Mrs. Winchesters mansion. Her family gathered there frequently before going to bed to find out what the spirit World might reveal to them. Here they experienced the thirteen séances of spiritualism: passivity, vocal reality, golden key revelation, lights, transfiguration, and levitation. Séances are noted for quietness. As the participants enter and meditate, they block out their tensions, worries, anxieties, and problems. Through mental discipline they try to be as passive as possible, with eagerness and expectation for what the spirit has for them. Lights are turned down at every séance. Shades are drawn in the daytime and at night. At some places rheostats dramatically control the lighting. Once when Mrs. Winchester asked a spirit why the lights were turned down, the reply was, “My daughter, why do you close your eyes to pray?” “For better concentration,” she said. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18

“Just so it is,” said the spirit, “that you turn down the lights. It is for better concentration.” Séances always start on time. The exact hour is eagerly anticipated. To arrive late would grieve the spirits. Séances have top priority in the plans of those who attend regularly. Young people give the séance priority in their schedules over athletic events and other school activities. Sometimes the spirit messages came to them in other languages. Mrs. Winchester heard Spanish, German, French, and the language of the Chippewa Indians being spoken. When they did not recognize a language the control spirit would tell then what is was and would interpret the central message. It often went something like this: “Jesus Christ is coming soon. He is even now at the threshold of the parapet of the Heaveniles awaiting the word of the great spirits of lights. Wherefore, comfort ye one another with these words, and be ye ready; for ye know not what hour he will come.” When Mrs. Winchester asked the spirit how they could be ready, the answer was always,” “Live a good life, my child. Follow in the steps of the master the greatest medium of all.” This was a vague reference to Jesus Christ, without instructing them in what those steps were. When a medium went into a trance for any length of time, his or her body became very tired, causing the medium to spend a day or two in bed after the séance. Because of this, they could not have a séance as often as they wanted in Mrs. Winchester’s Castle and they went to séances in the homes of other mediums. However, the most striking phenomenon was a séance of vocal reality some witnessed in Mrs. Winchester’s estate in connected with her deceased cousin, Richard Pardee, who had been in the Spanish American War; he was a drummer. During the séance they wars feet marching in perfect cadence, the music of a fife, and the beat of drums. Each time, the music was a popular tune of the times, “The Jingo’s Soliloquy.” No one knew how all these sound vibrations could be distinctly produced through the vocal apparatus of the medium. The spirit constantly reminded them that public manifestations were for a later time, and so they must keep those revelations to themselves. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18

The séances of lights were always preceded by a half hour or so of passive meditation during which each person prepared oneself by discipline of mind and emotions for the coming of the spirit. In this séance, the darkened room was filled with drifting lights until it became a mass of colours, each light indicating the spirit of someone who had passed on Each colour had significance. Little blue lights meant that the spirit of a departed baby was present. There were large orange lights and many yellow and green lights. Green represented spirits that were growing or progressing to a higher plane of spiritual development. A white light indicated a spirit that had progressed to the level of the master oneself. Spiritual advancement at this level was signified by the size of the white light. A read light was considered an “evil” spirit. It was greeted in the circle with a gasp of disappointment and sometimes fear. If a read light appeared, all the other lights would disappear, usually ending the séance. In the séance of transfiguration, the transfigured form of a loved one who has died appears. Mrs. Winchester was really plagued by a lot of deaths in a short time. It started with a new born daughter, her parents, mother and father-in-law, then her husband. You can be she was grieving to have almost her entire family wiped out like, many all within the same year. During a séance her deceased mother seemed to appear, cloth with light. Sarah W. Burns Pardee drifted across the room to her daughter, Sarah Winchester, stopped and gave her a gentle smile. Them medium said she was trying to tell Mrs. Winchester she was proud she was building a house for earth bound spirits. Mrs. Winchester shouted “Mother!” she leaped up to embrace her, only to have her disappear. Little is known about the séance of levitation. Levitation is sometimes called “soul travel,” the phenomenon of spirit development whereby a medium or advances convert to spiritualism can leave one’s body by complete yieldedness to control spirit. One is not completely disunited from one’s body, but is able to take conscious flight from it to distant places. Mrs. Winchester said she experienced this: she was taken into the spirit dimension and witnessed indescribable beauties. It was something she did not want to talk about, but tried to reproduce in her mansion and the Victorian gardens. #RandolphHarris 12 of 18

Two people in Mrs. Winchester’s spiritualist group enter the stated of levitation from time to time. During these periods they could read the headlines of the Oakland Tribune as it came off the press before it hit the city streets. Because Mrs. Winchester took architectural precautions to enlist the assistance of her friendly spirits, they were able to protect her from the Great San Francisco Bay Area Earthquake of 1906. The quake registered 8.3 on the Richter scale and stretched all the way from Oregon to Los Angeles It severely damaged Mrs. Winchester’s home, toppling the nine-story Observation Tower and some cupolas. She herself was badly shaken in her favorite Daisy Bedroom near the front of the mansion. It took several servants hours to locate her and then pry open the bedroom door and recue her, but Mrs. Winchester and everyone in the estate survived. Mrs. Winchester, however, felt the Earthquake was a warning from the spirits that they did not want her estate visible from the freeway that would be built in the future and also that such a large estate of 500 rooms, a nine-story tower, and 65,000 square feet would be too expensive to maintain after her passing, so she removed the tower, and much of the fourth floor. However, scientists, to this day, have said the mansion is one of the saftest places in the state to be during an Earthquake. Later, after having the structural damage repaired, the spirits ordered Mrs. Winchester to immediately bored up the front thirty rooms—including the Daisy Bedroom, Grand Ballroom, and the beautiful front doors—sealed up. The heavy, ornate front doors, which had just been installed just prior to the Earthquake had only been used by three people—Mrs. Winchester and the two carpenters who installed them. Apparently, the spirits used the reflections of spiritual light in the Daisy-stained glass windows to power beams of light energy to protect her and not allowed the nine-story tower to crash on the house and rip the mansion in pieces. Matter is composed of energy and energy is never destroyed. When the voltage of an electric current to atom-smashing velocity, certain elements, when they are bombarded with this electrical force, can be transformed into other elements. #RandolphHarris 13 of 18

Perhaps, similarly, the energy in humans can be attuned to a vital spiritual force to make matter visible. The number 13 occurs often on the grounds as well as in the house; for example, there are 13 cupolas in the greenhouse, and 13 fan palms lining the front gate. A craftsman in Italy, called Pietro Bossi, was told by a spirit to create an ornate sink made of Italian porcelain with 13 drain holes. There is a striking account that in which the a medium’s control spirit much wanted this sink and it appeared in the table in the Blue Séance Room from 6,212 miles away and there was a receipt explaining it had been paid for in gold and was addressed to Mrs. Winchester. There was a convincing story of the events. Mr. Bossi was renowned for his Neoclassical fire surround with exquisitely detailed inlaid marble work and specialist craftsmanship. Very little is known about Pietro Bossi. He was a man of mystery, and it is not known when or where he died. His legacy, however, has had long lasting implications for this history of art and design. Spiriting writing is accomplished by a medium who possessed the gift of writing while under the power of a spirit. The medium takes pen or pencil in hand and relaxes one’s arm on a table. One goes into a trance, yielding completely to the spirit force. The following is an actual sample of spirit writing. While Mrs. Winchester was alive, a tree in front of the Winchester mansion turned blood-red and it was blood. (The tree actually did exist and was cut down approximately in the first decade of the 2000s.) Huge slate-coloured clouds gathered around the tree. They whirled as they feel, and became darker It was symbolic of the waste of blood. The deadly clouds portend the battle of the near future when they very tree of life, every branch leaf, shall suffer unto death, for as this tree is, so is the World scene and its many branches, its may countries, for every branch shall be affected. Prepare the way for the Lord and He shall do battle He shall make war with the elements, and you shall stand. Yes, in the midst of chaos, ye shall stand and messengers of peace, love and unity. The battle will rage and rage, but by the law of polarity it will be met by its own destruction. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18

The light of the higher forces, God-sent, shall redeem the World. Yes, even as the twinkling of an eye can this be made to pass. Again, the servant of the Light are countless—their name is Legion. Have no fear, ye of Christ, for ye shall see what ye shall see—miracles. Yet shall ye know them as the working of the Word of Light, for surely one in the power of Light may rule this World unto its God-purpose. So from the realms of light I come—I am that I am. Amen. Mrs. Winchester said Emoah and Amoah were two of the control spirits she had when she was in spiritualism. In the séance wither one could be a control spirit, or they might speak occasionally when another control spirit was presiding. Hundreds of spirit messages came through the seances. They referred to God as Light and always contain a smattering of Scripture. Because these messages used scared terminology and came from a spirit, many people accepted them as God’s messages. When the construction workers were working on the Winchester Mansion, an occasional black spot, dotted against the grey distance, marked a hay-rick or labourer’s cottage on the estate. Mrs. Winchester provided a tenth of her income to provide for the poor farmers in California. One night on the Winchester estate, it was beginning to rain steadily. A worker, Jesse Evans, could see that he was in for dirty weather, and became a little anxious about how he was to get back to his cottage, especially as it was now rapidly growing dark. So thick was it that one could not see the low land anywhere, and could only judge of its position by remembering where the mansion was. He had not seen sign of a human being the whole day. It was not likely anymore would be about at night. However, he shouted as loud as he could, and then waited to hear if there were any response. There was not a sound, only the wind moaned slightly through the trees, and something creaked loudly. The prospect was not inviting. The light was dim; Jesse could scarcely make out objects near him, all else was obscurity. What little light there was came through the mansion’s windows. A small round speck of light looked at him out of the darkness ahead. Jesse took this as a sight to take shelter in the mansion. Groping his way with increasing caution, he stepped across the field and made his way to an opened window. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18

In the window was blackness itself. He felt it would be useless to attempt to go further. As Jesse stood looking into the darkness, a cold chilly shudder passed over him, and with a shiver he turned round to look. Deeper patches of darkness on his right suggested it was best seek refuge inside the mansion. Here at least he could find rest, if he found it impossible to get to his cottage on the estate. Having some wax vestas in his pocket, he struck a light and examined the room. It was better than he had expected, It was quite clear that Jesse must pass the night here. Before going to look around, he shouted at the top of his voice, more to keep up his own spirits than with any hope of being heard and then paused to listen. Not a sound of any sort replied. Jesse now prepared to make himself as comfortable as he could. However, the silence only seemed the more oppressive, and the blackness all the darker. “It is no good; I will turn in,” Jesse though dejectedly. By contriving a succession of matches, Jesse was enabled to have enough light to see to eat his frugal supper; for he had kept a little sherry and a few sandwiches to meet emergencies, and it was a fortunate thing he had. The light and the food made him feel more cheery, and by the time the last match had gone out, he felt worse might have happened to him by a long way. As Jesse lay still, waiting for sleep to come, the absurdity of the situation forced itself upon him. As if he were cast away upon a desert island, here was Jesse, to all intents and purposes as much cut off from all communication with the rest of the World. The silence of the place was perfect; and if silence can woo sleep, sleep ought very soon to have come However, when one is hungry and we, and in a beautiful and uncanny place, besides being in one’s clothes, it is a very difficult thing to go to sleep. After sighing and groaning for sometime, Jesse sat up for change of position, and nearly fractured his skull in so doing. There was nothing for it but to it still, or lie down and wait for daylight. He had no means of telling time. Fixed upon the arduous business of counting an imaginary and interminable flock of sheep pass one by one through an ideal gate, he went to sleep. #RandolphHarris 16 of 18

He was awakened by the sound of the two most horrible yells ringing through the darkness. Jesse sat bolting upright; and as a proof that he senses were “all there,” he did not bring his head up this time. There was another sound. The silence was as absolute as the darkness. He though his must have been dreaming, but the sounds ringing in his ears, and his heart was beating with excitement. It would have been madness to attempt to move in that blackness. And so he lay still and tried to sleep. However, now there was a sound, indistinct, but no mere fancy; a muffled sound, as of some movement in the forepart of the mansion. What was the sound? It did not seem like Mrs. Winchester’s dog Zip. It was a full, shuffling kind of noise, very indistinct, and conveying no clue whatever as to its cause. It lasted for only a short time. However, now the cold dam air seemed to have become more piercingly chilly. The raw iciness seemed to strike into the very marrow of his bones, and his teeth chattered. Rising to put this resolve in execution, he was arrested by the noise beginning again. Jesse listened. This time he distinctly distinguished two separate sounds: one, like a heavy soft weight being dragged along with difficulty; the other like the hard sound of boots on boards. Could there be others in the mansion after all? If son, why had they made no sound when he made his present noticed by shouting and firing his gun? Clearly, if there were people, they wished to remain concealed, and his presence was inconvenient to them. However, how absolutely still and quiet they had kept! It appeared incredible that there should be anyone. Jesse listened intently. The sound had ceased again, and once more the most absolute stillness reigned around. A gentle swishing, wobbling, lapping noise seemed to form itself in the darkness. It increased until Jesse recognized the chattering and bubbling of water. And he could not get rid of the chilly horrified feeling those two screams had produced. He derided the fear of the supernatural when comfortably seated in a drawing-room well lighted, and with company. Jesse felt her could face any number of spiritual manifestation. But the icy coldness of the air was eating into his bones, and he shivered until his teeth chattered. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18

Suddenly he became all attention again. An entirely different sound now arrested him. It was distinctly a low groan, and followed almost immediately by heavy blows—blows which fell on a soft substance, and then more groans, and again those sickening blows. He was frightened. He heard shrieks, the blows, the groans, the dull thumping sounds, and it compelled him to suspect the worse—to feel convinced that he was actually within some few feet of a horrible murders then being committed. Jesse could form no idea of who the victim was, or who was the assassin. He actually heard the sounds and they were growing louder and more distinct. He was painfully aware The horror of the situation was intense. Bump, thump, the thing was dragged up the steps with many pauses, and at last it seemed to have reached the landing. A long pause now followed. The silence grew dense around. Jesse dreaded the stillness—the silence that made itself be heard almost more than the sounds. What now horror would that awful quiet bring forth? He felt something drop on to his head and slowly trickly over his forehead. It was blood. The bewildering realization that he was not in bed, that he did not know where he was, which way to go, or what to do to get back again; everything he touched seem strange, and one piece of furniture much the same as any other. The reality of his struggles had almost made him forget the mysterious phenomena he had been listening to. No one knows what became of Jesse. The fact is, we cannot, in this prosaic age, cannot dismiss the supernatural. Mental illness, drugs, money, and the supernatural can be a dangerous combination. People let their id (the id operates based on the pleasure principle, which demands immediate gratification of needs. Many people confuse the id with ego. However, the ego eventually emerges to moderate between the urges of the id and demands of reality. The id tends to be infantile, instinctive and primal; it is not in touch with reality, or logic, or social norms.) If the ego cannot balance the id, people began to think they are a god, always right, better than others because of their economic standing, and they turn into everything the Bible calls a demon. God tells people to be humble, love thy neighbour, share, and forgive. I would say, be careful when consulting the supernatural and with judgment. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18

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