Home » mtDNA (Page 5)
Category Archives: mtDNA
The Cathedral of the Fallen Angel
During a Connecticut thunderstorm, Mrs. Winchester’s husband and baby lost their lives in a tragic fire. The distracted widow turned to spiritualism and was advised to take a trip around the World. This she did, visiting mediums, spiritualists and wizards in Europe and India. Foretelling her future, one seer warned her of all the countless thousands of departed souls slain by her husband’s rifles; she was told to plan a castle and continue its building indefinitely because as long as it was under construction she would live; cessation would prove immediately fatal. In the afternoon of Tuesday, July 10, 1888, the inhabitants of Santa Clara Valley, were greatly excited by the sudden appearance, far out in the fields, of a mansion where none was known to exist. The people of the town were farmers and knew the area well. The day before, they had been out on their horses and rode over the spot where the unusual mansion appeared, and where certain that the locality was the best farmland in the valley. And still they gazed, and still the wonder grew, for the day was clear and the mansion could be seen as plainly as they saw the hills to the south. It was massive. The estate was surrounded by a six-foot hedge, densely wooded; here and there were deep shadows in its sides indicating glens heavily covered with undergrowth and grasses. At one end the mansion rose almost precipitously from the from the land; at the other, the declivity was gradual; the thick forest of the estate gave way to smaller trees, these to shrubs; these to green meadows that finally melted into the valley. It was patrolled by a pack of ferocious hellhounds, plus, of course, Mrs. Winchester’s staff of armed bodyguards. Hundreds of people from all over California came to investigate; when, as they neared the spot, the beautiful but bizarre mansion became dim in outline, less vivid in color, and at last vanished entirely, leaving the wonder-stricken farmers to return, fully convinced that for the first time in their lives they had really seen this enchanted mansion. #RandolphHarris 1 of 15
For once there was a topic of conversation that would outlast the day, and the enchanted Winchester mansion passed from lip to lip, both story and the mansion grew in size till the latter was little less than a continent, contain a labyrinth mansion with towers and steeples, stupendous mountain range views, fertile valleys, and wide spreading plains; while the former was limited only be the patience of the listener, and embraced the personal experience, conclusions, reflections, and observations of every woman, man, and child in the valley who had been fortunate enough to see the mansion, hear of it, or tell where it had been seen elsewhere. This is the invariable history of its appearance. No one had ever been able to come close to its grounds, but it had been so often seen on the west coast, that a doubt of its existence, if expressed in the company of farmers, will at once establish for the sceptic a reputation for balderdash of the common affairs of every-day life. In Santa Clara, for instance, the Winchester mansion had been seen by hundreds of people, while many more could testify to its appearance near San Francisco. In San Jose, all the population saw it a few years ago, and shortly before, the villagers of Oakland, saw it, if not by themselves, at least by some of their friends. The Enchanted Winchester mansion, it should be stated that its resemblance to a Victorian/Gothic castle is sometimes very close, and shows that the “enchanter” who has it under a spell knows her business, and is determined to keep her mansion for herself changes its appearance as well as its location in order that her property may not be recognized nor appropriated. At night, passers-by heard ghostly music wafting from the dark mansion. Mrs. Winchester’s arrival was a sensational event. They talked about Mrs. Winchester! Gossiped would be a more fitting word, gossip no one claimed to like-but everyone enjoyed. #RandolphHarris 2 of 15
Talk begat rumor and as the years passed and new towers and gables rose behind the six-foot hedge of Llanada Villa, the rumors grew to established legend. Populations said it just appeared out of nowhere two years ago. Sure two twins could not be like her, and when it appeared in Santa Clara, the mansion would move around to different locations. It had also appeared in San Francisco, Oakland, and Berkeley, but it went no further than the Bay Area. Concerning Mrs. Winchester’s mansion, legendary authorities differ on many material points. Some believed that its architecture was due to geometry or some other enchantment, while opponents of this materialistic view were inclined to the opinion that the mansion was not what it seemed to be, that was to say, not Earth, wood, and stones, like as those most people see, but only an illusion that evil spirits or the devil created to deceive the town. Public opinion on the west coast was therefore was strongly divided on the subject, unity of sentiment existing on two points only; that the island had been seen, and that there was something quite out of the ordinary in its appearance. People believe that it would come and go in the night like a light in a bog, and when you do see it, you can see through it. An old fisherman of San Francisco called Ebenezer Thornton knew all about the enchanted Winchester mansion, having not only seen it himself, but, when a boy, learned its history from a “fairy man,” who obtained his information from “the good people” themselves, the facts stated being therefore, of course, of indisputable authority, what the fairies did not know concerning the doings of supernatural and enchanted circles, being not worth knowing. He said that the Winchester mansion was full of temples and round towers all covered with gold and silver till they shone so one could not see it for the brightness. There was a great enchantress in the mansion, and she had all kinds of secrets, and knew where to dig for a pot of gold. She built the castle in one night, and could make herself disappeared when she wanted and could take any shape she pleased. #RandolphHarris 3 of 15
Ebenezer when on to say that Mrs. Winchester’s husband gave her a charm before he died to use when she was in mortal danger, he also left her a ton of diamonds and millions of dollars. She was a pretty smart woman. One night, Mrs. Winchester was awakened by a noise in one of the kitchens. She tole down, and found her old housekeeper, Madge, with half a dozen of her kidney, sitting by the fire drinking whisky. When the bottle was finished, one of them cried, “It’s time to be off,” and at the same moment she put on a peculiar red cap, and added:–“By yarrow and rue, and my red cap, too, hie over to England!” and seizing a twig she soared up the chimney. As the latter was making her preparations Mrs. Winchester rushed into the kitchen, snatched the cap from her, and placing herself astride of her twig uttered the magic formula. She speedily found herself high in the air over the Irish Sea, and swooping though the empyrean at a rate unequalled by the fastest airplane. They rapidly neared the Welsh coast, and espied a castle afar off, towards the door of which they rushed with a frightful velocity; Mrs. Winchester closed her eyes and awaited the shock, but found to her delight that she had slipped through the keyhole without hurt. The party made their way to the cellar, where they caroused heartily, but the spirits proved too heady, and somehow Mrs. Winchester was captured and dragged before the lord of the castle, who sentenced her to be hanged. On her way to the gallows an old woman in the crowd called out in Irish, “Ah, the enchantress herself, Sarah Winchester alanna! Is it going to die you are in a strange place without your magical charm?” She reached into her pocket and held it in her hand. On reaching the place of execution she was allowed to address the spectators, and did so in the usual ready-made speech, beginning, “Good people all, a warning take by me.” But when she reached the last line, “My parents reared me tenderly” instead of stopped she unexpected added, “By yarrow and rue, good-bye I love you,” with the result that she shot up through the air, to the great dismay of all beholders. #RandolphHarris 4 of 15
Magic persecution. Genuine magic is the art of bringing about results beyond human powers through the enlistment of supernatural agencies. Black magic deliberately involves the devil and demons, and the resulting enchantment is used for persecution and revenge. A spiritistic circle of twenty members furnishes a good example. Working with black magic, these spiritis experimented to see if they could cause psychic harm or even illness in people they disliked. A strong medium of this occult group chose a minister as a target and vowed to afflict and eliminate her. The minister suffered a nervous breakdown and was unable to work for several months. Some phenomena must be eliminated from the spiritistic magic field. In the psychiatric realm, for example, many schizophrenics claim to be magically persecuted. In reality this is only a symptom in the course of psychotic disease. Eliminating all such cases, there are still large-scale, genuine phenomena, especially in areas where occultism has flourished for many years. One common form of magic persecution is beatings by an invisible attacker. Parapsychology also sees magical persecution as a mediumistic problem in the sphere of materializations. Strong mediums (when under demon control) send out energy with which to build up human phantasms and are also able to transform this energy into animal forms, including dogs, cats, frogs, snakes, or human bodies with animal heads, etcetera. This explains the bizarre spiritistic persecution through phantoms in the form of various animals of human bodies with nonhuman heads. These animals bite, scratch, or otherwise torment their victims. Examples, of these occult phenomena abound in areas where the black arts are practiced. However, such occurrences are denied by many intellectuals. Often peasants and country people, especially in Europe, know more about magic than university graduates, who claim to swindle or hocus-pocus trickery are used instead of occult powers. #RandolphHarris 5 of 15
Magic defense. Magic defense enlists supernatural agencies to counteract or unto the mischief wrought by magic persecution. Various kinds of spells, charms, or incantations are employed. In spiritistic séances it is an established fact that injuries inflicted upon a phantasm are sustained by the medium, even in the case of animal phantasm. Many defensive customs develop to combat this threat since magical persecution involves materialization. If a victim can injure an aggressive phantasm one has won the struggle. Many in the West wanted to remove Satan from the equation of black magic and demonic aspects of life. However, more serious discontent came from Satanists whose concerns were completely the opposite. Anton LaVey did not believe in Satan as a literal entity—He was a name for the dark, brutal aspects of humans and nature, as well as a symbol for the potency of humans’ untrammeled will. The Church of Satan was not a religion, and did not worship deities. For many, however, this was not enough. They wanted a real Devil to worship—belonging to a dark, mysterious coven, in the traditional gothic style, seemed much more appealing than being part of some cultural and social elite. Some believed that Satan, although thrown out of Heaven, was reinstated as the son of God and is directly in contact with him. If any coven members offends, they are a bit evil now and again, given corporal punishment, or is expelled from one’s coven and cursed. However, this is said to be for the members own good. They really believe in love, the sanctity of woman as the child bearer and procreator of life, and in worshipping Satan their master. Aleister Crowley was grooming Kenneth as his successor. Mr. Grant’s work examined lost gods, strange spiritual traditions and forbidden symbols, often leading him to some disreputable spiritual neighborhood where devils and demons might be expected to reside, like the Winchester Mystery House. #RandolphHarris 6 of 15
If you have a lot of magic in you, you can be a Satanist and have no idea. As if they are the mafia or something, sometimes those who are suspected of being Satanists have their offices broken into like they are the Mafia or something. The Church of Satan, however, has saved lives because it has given them power, power to come out and be themselves when traditional churches would not accept these people. The Dark Lord, was said to be an anthropoid but faceless. Looking at the concept as a diamond, much like the ones left to Mrs. Winchester by her husband William Wirt Winchester, Satan or Lucifer was just other facets of that diamond, purely ways of achieving workings which encompassed the whole. So, if you are particularly drawn to the gothic Satanist current, fine, use rituals based around that. In the Temple of Darkness one could equally have Satanists, Setians, or followers of other paths, the principle being that the whole thing is a psychodrama anyway. Magic is basically the Western version of yoga. Everything that happens in magic happens first in your head. Set, the Egyptian god of evil, was an older deity than Satan. Satan derives from Set. Set, who is defined as the Prince of Darkness, is a force about which you could say, “As we are now, he once was.” When you die your force can survive. Magic is mind enhancing. When one perishes or passes, instead of going into the cosmic whole—becoming one with the goddess or whatever—by sheer force of the will the existence of that magician’s mind can be sustained. This is the whole idea of the Temple of Set, and they use the word “xeper,” meaning “to become,” to define this. Spiritistic cults. If you did not know, Mrs. Winchester was a spiritists. Spiritism is considered a form of Christianity, practically in all civilized countries. A typical meeting consists of hymns, prayer, and a sermon as in a Christian service. The sermon, however, is allegedly given by a spirit from the other World, through a medium. These cults are said to be affected by the “doctrines of demons” and press into the supernatural World. #RandolphHarris 7 of 15
However, even born-again Christians often cannot differentiate between the spiritual and the psychic-demonic when under the spell of doctrinal errors, particularly those concerning the work of the Holy Spirit. The result can sometimes be confusion, division, and promotion of certain spiritual gifts accredited to demons. We have sometimes seen people end up suffering from mediumistic psychosis. Quite a number of patients who have suffered serious psychic disturbances through the misuse of such practices have become split personalities. The spirits which they called, confused them. One who tries to discover the promises of the other side through superstition endangers oneself to fall a prey to the dark side of one’s psyche. However, many Christians say that spirits of loved ones cannot be brought back from the dead, and the it is just a demon impersonating them. Yet, consider the case of Saul’s visit to the spiritistic medium at Endor (1 Samuel 28.3-25). Samuel’s spirit was actually brought back from the spirit World when the medium Endor tried to contact him. Yet, God brought the spirit back. The Lord stepped. Still one must be careful because many become enslaved and oppressed by occult powers and become victims of various manifestations of spiritistic phenomena. While overwhelming evidence from Christian counseling confirms the fact that spiritistic complicity serious damages the believer’s spiritual life, adherents of Buddhism, Island, or even false cults of Christianity sense no ill effects. Spiritists claim that spiritism has strengthened their belief in life after death and deepened their religious devotion. Psychiatry, psychology, and medical treatment are not sufficient for the healing of the whole human. The gospel of Christ and the liberating power of the Word of God can fully heal body, soul, and spirit. #RandolphHarris 8 of 15
Mrs. Winchester had a pain in her right forearm. At first the pain was treated as rheumatism but one day the Mrs. Winchester made the interesting discovery that the pain would suddenly subside if she wrote a letter. Having discovered this, whenever the pain became unbearable, she would always take a pencil and begin to write in order to alleviate the pain. However, after a period of time the Mrs. Winchester when go into her Blue Séance Room, where she developed a writing compulsion. She would write things down that she could normally speaking never have written. Often times, this is where the blueprints from her mansion came from. Added to this the written material on each occasion turned out to be some form of religious treatise. Mrs. Winchester took the articles to her minister to let him examine them. He was surprised at their intellectual content. Mrs. Winchester had become a spiritistic writing medium. The parapsychologist would merely see in this example a psychic automation involving the expression of subconscious thoughts. It is true that we need not consider the Mrs. Winchester to be in direct contact with the dead, or putting it another way we need not assume that this is a case of direct demonization, but God could be speaking to her. This is why some believe Mrs. Winchester to be a prophetess. During one of her spiritistic seances, as it happened, a phantasm did in fact appear during a séance. However, it is still not necessary to believe that a spirit really did appear in this instance. Depth psychology suggest that a phantasm can be produced in the following way. The medium through emitting energy causes matter to form as a result of this. In nuclear physics we have the idea that matter is nothing more than concentrated energy. Einstein’s formula E=M.c^2 illustrates this relationship. A comparison can also be drawn from another branch of physics. It is found that both particles and anti-particles are formed at the cathode of an X-ray tube when a current is passed through it at a very high voltage. Energy in the form of electro-magnetic waves is in this way transformed into matter. #RandolphHarris 9 of 15
The next step in the mediumistic process involves the unconscious tapping of the information from some source or other, and then the newly formed matter is physically shaped according to this information. The final step is made when the phantasm is brought under the control of the medium. Looking at it from this point of view there is no necessity to believe that the dead person has in any way been disturbed. An animistic explanation based on the powers of the subconscious is thus sufficient to explain the phenomenon of materialization. Yet this is not to say that the rationalistic explanation does justice to the facts of the case. The problem is not as simple as that. However, we do not have the time to delve further into the scientific side of the issues. We have, on many occasions witnessed a disintegration of the personalities of both mediums and participants where materializations have taken place. In addition to this in every case where a person has frequently taken part in spiritistic séances, there is some kind of reaction, even if it is not immediately notice or if there is no manifestation—something happens. There are also people who are able to practise the excursion of the soul. Spiritists affirm that people can send out an astral body from their material body, and commission it to do whatever they ask. Perhaps that was the case when Mrs. Winchester appeared in another country? Spiritism haunts the dark jungle of human aberration. During a séance as the Winchester mansion, Mrs. Winchester noticed that time was passing somewhat wearily. She could hear an occasional thud, thud. Some time must have elapsed before she became, dimly at first, and then distinctly, aware of a bluish phosphorescent emanation from a skeleton. This seemed to rise above it like a faint smoke, which gradually gained consistency, took form, and became distinct; and she saw before her the misty, luminous form on an unclothed man, with wolfish countenance, prognathous jaws, glaring at her out of eyes deeply sunk under projecting brows. #RandolphHarris 10 of 15
Although she thus descried what she saw, it gave her no idea of substance; it was vaporous, and yet it was articulate. Indeed, she could not say for sure if she saw this apparition with her eyes, or whether it was a dream-like vision of the brain. Though luminous, it cast no light on the wall of the Blue Séance Room; if she raised her hand, it did not obscure any portion of the form presented to her. Then she heard: “I will tear you with the nails of my fingers and toes, and rip you with my teeth.” “What have I done to injure and incense you?” she asked. No word was uttered by either of them; no word could have been uttered by this vaporous form. It had no material lungs, nor throat, nor mouth to form vocal sounds. It had but the semblance of a man. It was a spook, not a human being. However, it proceeded through the walls, odylic force which smote on the tympanum of her mind or soul, and thereon registered the ideas formed by it. So in a like manner Mrs. Winchester thought her replies, and they were communicated back in the same manner. If vocal words had passed between them neither would have been intelligible to the other. No dictionary was ever compiled, or would be compiled, of the tongue or prehistoric man; moreover, the grammar of the speech of that race would be absolutely incomprehensible to humans now. However, thoughts can be interchanged without words. When we think we do not think in any language. It is only when we desire to communicate our thoughts to other humans that we shape them into words and express them vocally in structural grammatical sentences. The beasts have never attained to this, yet they can communicate with one another, not by language, but by thought vibrations. Mrs. Winchester knew as she conversed with him that she was not speaking to him in English, nor in French, nor in Latin, nor in any tongue whatever. Moreover, when she used the words “said” or “spoke,” she meant no more than that the impression was formed by her brain-pan or the receptive drum of her soul, was produced by the rhythmic, orderly sequence of thought-waves. #RandolphHarris 11 of 15
When, however, she expressed the words “screamed” or “shrieked,” she signified that those vibrations came sharp and swift; and when she said “laughed,” tht they came in a choppy, irregular fashion, conveying the idea, not the sound of laughter. “I will tear you! I will rend you to bits and throw you in pieces about this mansion!” shrieked this demon man. Mrs. Winchester remonstrated, and inquired how she had incensed him. However, yelling with rage, he threw himself upon her. In a moment she was enveloped in a luminous haze, strips of phosphorescent vapour laid themselves about her, but she received no injury whatever, only her spiritual nature was subjected to something like a magnetic storm. After a few moments the spook disengaged itself from Mrs. Winchester, and drew back to where it was before, screaming broken exclamations of meaningless rage, and jabbering savagely. It rapidly cooled down. “Why do you wish to ill me?” She asked again. “I cannot hurt you. I am spirit, you are matter, and spirit cannot injure matter; my nails are psychic phenomena. Your soul you can lacerate yourself, but I can effect nothing, nothing.” “Then why have you attacked me? What is the cause of your impotent recement?” “Because you are the heiress to the Winchester Rifle, and I lived eight thousand years ago. Why are you nursed in the lap of luxury? Why you enjoy your comforts, a civilization that we new nothing of? It is not just. It is cruel on us. We have nothing, nothing, literally nothing, not even lucifer matches!” Again he feel to screaming, as might a caged monkey rendered furious by failure to obtain an apple which he could not reach. “I am very sorry, but it is no fault of mine.” “Whether it be your fault or not does not matter to me. You have these things—we had not. Why, I saw you just now strike a light on the sole of your boot. It was done in a moment. We had only flint and ironstone, and it took half a day with us to kindle a fire, and then it flayed our knuckles with continuous knocking. No! we have nothing, nothing—no lucifer matches, no commercial travellers, no Benedictine, no pottery, no metal, no education, no elections, no chocolat menier.” #RandolphHarris 12 of 15
“How do you know about these products of the present age, here, buried one hundred feet of soil for eight thousand years?” “It is my spirit which speaks with your spirit. My spook does not always remain with my bones. I can go up; rocks and stones and earth and your labyrinth mansion heaped over me do not hold me down. I am often above. I am in the gasolier overhead. I have seen your servants plough the fields. I have seen a bottle of Benedictine. I have applied my physical lips to it, but I could taste, absorb nothing. I have seen commercial travellers there, cajoling the patron into buying things he did not want. They are mysterious, marvellous beings, their powers of persuasion are little short of miraculous. Why do you think of doing with me?” “Well, I propose first of all photographing you, then soaking you in gum Arabic, and finally transferring you to a museum.” He screamed as though with pain, and grasped: “Do not! do not do it. It will be torture insufferable.” “But why so? You will be under glass, in a polished oak or mahogany box.” “Do not! You cannot understand what it will be to me—a spirit more or less attached to my body, to spend ages upon ages in a museum with fibulae, triskelli, palstaves, celts, torques, scarabs. We cannot travel very far from our bones—our range is limited. And conceive of my feelings for centuries condemned to wander among glass cases containing prehistoric antiquities, and to hear the talk of scientific men alone. Now here, it is otherwise. Here I can pass up when I like into your mansion, and can see the maid and butlers cleaning, the roses and trees growing, the farmers working the field and the magnificent glow of your fine estate. Give me life. There is a sort of filmy attachment that connects our psychic nature with our mortal remains. It is like a spider and its web. #RandolphHarris 13 of 15
“Suppose the soul to be the spider and the skeleton to be the web. If you break the thread the spider will never find its way back to its home. So it is with us; there is an attachment, a faint thread of luminous spiritual matter that unites us to our Earthly husk. It is liable to accidents. It sometimes gets broken, sometimes dissolved by water. If a black beetle crawls across it it suffers a sort of paralysis. I have never been to the other side of the of your mansion, I feared to do so, though very anxious to see your architecture and furniture.” “This is news to me,” replied Mrs. Winchester. “Do you know of any case of rupture of connection?” Yes,” he replied. “My old father, after he was dead some years, got his link of attachment broke, and he wandered about disconsolate. He could not find his own body, but he lighted on that of a young female of seventeen, and he got into that. It happened most singularly that her spook, being frolicsome and inconsiderate, had got its bond also broken, and she, that is her spirit, straying about in quest of her body, lighted on that of my venerable parent, and for want of a better took possession of it. It so chanced that after a while they met and became chummy. In the World of spirits there is no marriage, but there grow up spiritual attachments, and these two got rather fond of each other, but never could puzzle it out which was which and what each was; for a female soul had entered into an old male body, and a male soul had taken up its residence in a female body. Neither could riddle out of which each gender was. You see they had no education. However, I know that my father’s soul became quite sportive in that young woman’s skeleton. Each generation makes some discovery that advances civilization a stage, the next enters on the discoveries of the preceding generations, and so culture advances stage by stage. Man is infinitely progressive; even the brute beast is.” #RandolphHarris 14 of 15
At that moment, Mrs. Winchester heard a shout—saw a flash of light. The construction workers had pierced the barrier. A rush of fresh air entered. She staggered to her feet. She felt dizzy. Kind hands grasped her. She was dragged forth. Brandy was poured down her throat. When she came to herself, she said, “Thank you. Talking with spirits can be terrible dreadful. When you are trying to summon one, souls get crossed and the one you are seeking may not cross through. They are so desperate to find a medium to communicate with.” As an ingredient of idol worship, magic goes back to antiquity. By virtue of their multiplicity and limited knowledge and power, the gods (demons) of paganism are incapable of establishing stability and security in society. This deficiency forced both gods and men to make use of magic—an inactive power independent of gods and men, but which could be activized by the assistance of incantations and rituals in order to accomplish supernatural deeds. Because of widespread denial of the reality of supernatural power—both divine and demonic, confusion abounds concerning the nature of magic. The history of magic is replete with extraordinary extrasensory phenomena that involve the spirit realm and every phase of the natural World as well, including human beings, animals, plants, and inorganic matter. Spirit-rapping, apparitions, ghosts, moving of furniture, and playing of musical instruments by invisible hands, stones falling from a ceiling, magical killing of cattle and blighting of crops, etcetera, are just a few of the weird occurrences that have happened at the Winchester Mystery House in its 134 years. However, there have also been beautiful supernatural events such as apparitions getting married, giant spirits of light in the shape of a man peering out guests, and on occasion, even rainbows and angels have appeared. Not all spirits or evil or angry, some or loving and welcoming. Few of thousands of annual transient guests are disappointed for here one finds visible truth even stranger than all the weird Mystery House features. #RandolphHarris 15 of 15
Winchester Mystery House
Beautiful weather calls for a walk around Sarah’s iconic gardens ⛲️🪴Open 10AM – 5PM this weekend!
A 160-room mansion built to appease the spirits who died at the hands of the Winchester Rifle , or who were jealous of its wealth 👻
Where the Wind Blew and the Stars Sone Down
Haunting, eerie, mystical even at times a little frightening to those outside the shadowy half-World of the occult but compelling and demanding out attention. In 1884, Mrs. Winchester left New Haven, Connecticut, and the graves of her husband and only child, moved to San Jose, California, and began the obsession that was to last for the rest of her life. She purchased an unfinished farmhouse outside the small agricultural town, and for the next 38 years, the sound of construction on Mrs. Winchester’s house never stopped. She used to maintain, I remember, that there was no apparition or supernatural manifestation, or series of circumstances pointing to such a manifestation, however strongly substantiated they appeared to be, that could not be explained on purely natural grounds. However, there was a notable instance of what was by many supposed to be a supernatural manifestation that occurred in the water tower on the estate. It was a horrible sight. Barney Ackers and his wife Everly had evidently been waylaid and killed by a blow of an axe just as he was entering the yard gate, and then the door of the water tower had been broken open and his wife had been killed, after which Barney’s body had been dragged into the water tower, and it had been fired with the intention of making it appear that the water tower had burned by accident. However, by one of those inscrutable fatalities, the fire, after burning half of two walls, had gone out. Still, it was a horrible sight and the room looked like shambles. Barney had plainly been caught unawares while leaning over his gate. The back of his head had been crushed in with the eye of an axe, and he had died instantly. The pleasant thought which was in his mind at the instant—perhaps, of the greeting that always awaited him on the click of his latch; perhaps, of his success that day; perhaps, of Mrs. Winchester’s kindness to him for the work he did—was yet on his face, stamped there indelibly by the blow that killed him. There he lay, face upwards, as the murderer had thrown him after bringing him in, stretched out his full length on the floor, with his quiet face upturned, looking in that throng of excited, awestricken men, just what he had said he was: a man of peace. His wife, on the other hand, wore a terrified look on her face. There has been a terrible struggle. She had lived to taste the bitterness of death, before it took her. #RandolphHarris 1 of 13
Satan’s presence was haunting. It haunted Mrs. Winchester for years, and for many nights she could not sleep. No one ever found out who did it, and she found herself unable to forget it, or to have peace as she used to. On the night of the 3rd of January 1888, some thieves attempted to commit a robbery on the estate of Mrs. Winchester. They entered the mansion, armed with a dead man’s hand with a lighted candle in it, believing in the superstitious notion that is such a hand be procured, and a candle placed within its grasp, the latter cannot be seen by anyone except him by whom it is used; also that if the candle and hand be introduced into a house it will prevent those who may be asleep from awaking. The inhabitants, however, were alarmed, and the robbers fled, leaving the hand behind them. No doubt the absolute failure of this gruesome dark lantern on this occasion was due to the fact that neither candle nor candlestick had been properly prepared! The Winchester mansion is full of apparitions and specters and perhaps some of them foiled the bulger’s plan. The mansion was continually disturbed by a nocturnal house-spirits. At night heavy steps were heard as of one carrying a heavy load. On occasion a form appeared in a monk’s cowl. Certain ghosts are confined to the Winchester mansion and they plague particularly people. A certain butler, Elton Abram, was an active spiritist while employed for Mrs. Winchester. For years he practiced table-lifting and considered this to be a way of communicating with the dead. He continued with his occult practices so intensively that psychic disturbances set in. The effects of his spiritistic interests also appeared in his children and grandchildren. His oldest son committed suicide. His next son suffered from a persecution mania. His oldest daughter ended up in The Great Asylum for the Insane. Another daughter suffered from Parkinson’s disease. Among his grandchildren the same picture emerged. One of them was a schizophrenic. Another suffered from weak nerves and hypersensitivity, and another lived a dissolute life, and had given birth to an illegitimate child. The first of the man’s great-grandchildren became a psychopath and a delinquent. #RandolphHarris 2 of 13
From the scientific point of view, one might consider these effects to have a different cause from that of spiritism. The psychiatrist will be interested in the question whether the practicing of spiritism was rather the effect than the cause of the ensuing mental and emotional disorders. Or again, was there some latent disposition in the family that was merely triggered off by the spiritistic activities? The parapsychologist will explain the table-lifting phenomenon as psychic automatism, that is an activation of subconscious forces. The Christian however is concerned essentially with the frequency in which psychic disturbances appear in connection with the practice of occultism. It was well known that Mrs. Winchester donned herself with ceremonial robes and communed nightly with the spirits in the Winchester mansion, and it was the midnight rendezvous for legions of ghosts, with special attention accorded those created by a Winchester rifle slug. It is possible the Mr. Abram stole something from the Winchester mansion, which brought on a curse to him and generations of his family members. A person’s thoughts and actions are like people who populate a community: friendly, contentious, kind, malicious, virtuous, evil, virile, cowardly, optimistic, cynical. We prosper in a pure mental neighborhood and wither in a foul one. And we can choose our mental neighborhood. Tired minds and bodies are signals to be careful. Demonic oppression is not easily discerned. Some people mistakenly blame demons for unrepentant self-will and psychological abnormalities. The source is not always clear, but demon oppression is usually marked by an emotional inability of the individual to do what one wants to do. A young maid staying in the Winchester mansion called Bythesea Atterton, had been a founding member of a thriving witches coven in Essex and the group’s other three members all shared her dedicated to the occult. She began to complain about various mental disturbances which included being tired of life and having depressions. Added to this she often had violent fit of temper, and her marriage was being undermined by her own frigidity. It has also happened that the husband had seen strange figures in the house at night. He had not told his wife about this so as not to upset her, but after a while she too had seen similar strange and maimed figures about the house. #RandolphHarris 3 of 13
Mrs. Winchester questioned the woman about her past illnesses and about the general health of her parents and grandparents, but she was the only one to have suffered in this way. In answer to Mrs. Winchester’s questions about contact with occultism, after a lot of thought Bythesea told her the following story. She had stolen Mrs. Winchester’s sixteenth century book about magic, and saw a black shadow at the end of her bed. It was a horrible presence that frighted the life out of Bythesea. While Mrs. Winchester was asleep, she would invite her Protestant girl’s group over. The minister’s wife, who had become the leader, used to practice table-lifting with all the girls in the Blue Séance Room. The sessions had always begun with the question, “Spirit, are you there?” One knock had meant “yes,” two had meant “no.” When the spirit had been willing to answer they had all taken part in asking it questions. The minister’s wife had continued this practice for many years until she was paralyzed by a stroke. Bythesea told Mrs. Winchester that all the girls had subsequently been afraid to visit their leader since her face had been changed into a terrible grimace by the stroke. Medical science would classy this example together with the precious one. However, with regards to the stroke, we would like to point out that in the numerous cases connected to the Winchester mansion of suicides, fatal accidents, stroke, and insanity, they usually involve the occult and someone who has in someway broke a rule, stole from the mansion, or offended the spirits somehow. The miles of twisting hallways in the mansion are made even more intriguing by secret passageways in the walls. Mrs. Winchester traveled through her house in a roundabout fashion, supposedly to confuse any mischievous ghosts that might he following her. Mrs. Winchester never slept in the same bedroom two nights in a row, in order to confuse any evil spirits that might be waiting for her. Music has always played an important role in cultural outlook and identity. Hymns, marching songs, lullabies—there are a thousand different aspects of life which are ordered or inspired by a musical beat. Music helps to define your cultural tribe. Even the ghost at the Winchester mansion reportedly had parties at ungodly hours. #RandolphHarris 4 of 13
The Satanic underground was celebrated—and eventually propelled into the mainstream—by musicians at the tail-end of the psychedelic era. While the Beatles and the Rolling Stones were the public faces of the 1960s youth culture, other voices of that same social and spiritual revolution sang dark hymns of rebellion. Some think that Black Arts Festivals have gone too far, one in particular. Coven might have achieved the popular success that ultimately eluded them. The band’s first album went under the uncompromising title Witchcraft Destroys Minds and Reaps Souls, boasting a gatefold sleeve featuring the band engaged in a Black Mass—complete with attractive blonde singer Jinx Dawson serving as a naked altar. The album features a recording of this Black Mass at the tail end of side two: “Two the best of our knowledge, this if the first Black Mass to be recorded in written words or in audio,” explain the sleeve notes. (Anton Lavey recorded his own Black Mass shortly afterwards.) “It is as authentic as hundreds of hours of research in every know source can make it. We do no to recommend its use by anyone who has not thoroughly studied Black Magic and is aware of the risks and dangers involved.” The rite bears the hallmark of serious study, with notably authentic elements from medieval Gnostic and witchcraft lore. The overall effect, however is curiously naïve, with the high priest’s command to “kiss the goat” sounding more Monty Python than Aleister Crowley. The music that precedes the Black Mass is standard—if well-executed—1960s folk rock. It is something of a jolt to realize that, behind the gentle acoustic guitars, the lyrics are exclusively about Devil-worship and black magic, while the alluring Miss Dawson’s vocals give the effect of a demonically-possessed Join Mitchell. Ultimately, Witchcraft Destroys Minds and Reaps Souls is an interesting musical exploration of the witchcraft tradition which suffused rural America ever since the Pilgrim Fathers landed in New England over four centuries ago. #RandolphHarris 5 of 13
The infamous Salem witch-trials—which took place in Massachusetts during 1692—had been one of the last major incidents of state extermination by religious fanatics from the “Old World,” making the term “witch-hunt” synonymous with the persecution with marginalized groups. As such, it elicited the sympathy of twentieth-century hippies like Coven toward their satanic predecessors. (In sacrificing the lives of twenty suspected “witches” to the fantasies of hysterical children, it also predated the “Satanic panic” of the 1980s-90s.) Coven’s second album Blood on the Snow followed but, despite its demonic sleeve, the Satanic elements were fare more restrained. By the third album, imaginatively titled Coven, the sinister elements had all but disappeared, replaced by standard hippie material. Robbed of the distinctive image of their early days, Coven faded away. It is interesting that the British rock band Lucifer, formed in 1971, were a curious collection of characters whose sardonically-devilish promotional photos portrayed a Mansonesque image, enlisted the Devil to fight the capitalist-pig system. Lucifer issued two albums, Big Gun and Exit, and a single, entitled “F*ck You,” which was seized by the police. Most outre of the Satanic psychedelicists, Roky Erickson had been the leader of the mid-1960s Texan garage band the Thirteenth Floor Elevators until a bust for marijuana possession. Facing a long prison sentence under the Lone Star State’s sanctimonious laws, he committed himself to a psychiatric institution instead. This was a bad mistake. Three years later, in the early 1970s, the hallucinogen-loving Erickson came out of the lunatic asylum considerably more troubled than when he went in. An obscure cult figure who became known for lyrical tributes to his favorite 1950s horror movies, in the hospital he had formed a close relationship with his own personal Satan. “Ah’m not afraid of the Devil, the Devil is mah friend. He chose me to do his biddin’,” drawled the usual but loveable Erickson. “Those doctors and nurses…They could not mess with the Devil’s chosen one.” To cement this unholy pact, Erickson later vocalized his personal infernal visions in wildly sincere songs like “I Think of Demons” and “Don’t Shake Me Lucifer.” #RandolphHarris 6 of 13
Ny far the most interesting of the Satanic-psychedelic bands were Black Widow. Their 1970s debt album, Sacrifice, was the result of guitarist Jim Gannon’s research into the Black Arts, with occultic lyrics accompanying a blend of traditional folk music and progressive rock. The almost-ubiquitous Alex Sanders warned the band they had done their homework too well, and would attract dark forces. He was right for one, though only inasmuch as Gannon’s lyrics boast a fair degree of authenticity, and some songs—like the catchy “Come to the Sabbat”—are highly evocative of the medieval-European Satanic tradition. Other moments—like the horrible saxophone solo Satan uses to tempt some poor innocent on “Seduction”—are diabolical in a different sense. The band enhanced their image with an elaborately Satanic stage show, professionally choreographed by a Leicester theatre company, complete with sacrificial daggers and an unclothed young woman to adorn the altar (at one point this was Alex Sanders’ wife, Maxine). They reaped the reward for their oddly entertaining work, with Sacrifice reaching the top 40 in the UK album charts. However, their second album, Black Widow, lacked both the Satanic themes and the power of its predecessor. The official explanation for this was that, true to Sanders’ warning, weird things stated to happen—most alarmingly, near-fatal car crashes. (Satan seems particularly keen on causing road accidents, however much more impressive lightning bolts or stampeding elephants might seem.) What is more likely is that, like many rock bands that use powerful Satanic imagery, Black Window may have begun to believe that same imagery was holding back their career. As many have learnt to their cost, however, it is more often the other way around—few dabbling rock stars regain the early excitement once they stop playing the Devil’s music. Suffice to day, Jim Gannon, the major creative force behind the band, cannot have been unduly worried by the curse, as he tried to mount a stage musical version of the Black Widow show on Broadway. Sadly, it never came off, and Black Widow—devoid of Devil worship—dwindled into obscurity. #RandolphHarris 7 of 13
Prosaic accounts of Black Sabbath’s flirtation with occult imagery claim they were impressed by the interest Black Widow had enjoyed in their Satanic stage show. The truth is probably a combination of all these stories. Whatever, it is fair to say that intense interest in their demonic aspects surprised Black Sabbath as much as anyone else. Their eponymous 1969 debut album was recorded in to days for six hundred pounds, treated with contempt and indifference by the press, and rapidly became a commercial success. The Christian Science Monitor, or all publications, noted approvingly that the band did not “condone or promote the less seemly aspects of…an interest in occult matters.” They were right. The song “Black Sabbath” describes the narrator’s state of terror at witnessing a Black Mass. Their attitude to Satan was chiefly the traditional one of fear and loathing, their lyrics even sometime entreating listeners to turn to God as the only source of love. However, the audiences were not listening—they wanted a Satanic band, and that is what Black Sabbath ostensibly became. (Rumor has it that their management had the large cross that decorated the inside of their first album inverted without the band’s knowledge of approval.) Satan appeared in Black Sabbath’s songs as a constant source of fascination and fear, an entity who brings colour into drab existence but can also represent the overwhelming evil of the World. In the classic “War Pigs,” Satanic witched are equated with the evil of politicians and generals who callously kill millions in their power games. (According to guitarist Tony Iommi, the title was derived from “Walpurgis,” the night when evil traditionally rules the World.) However, the most fascinating manifestation of Satan in a Black Sabbath song is also the rarest: when they briefly allow the Prince of Darkness to speak for Himself. In this strange and haunting “N.I.B,” Lucifer, the creator, sings a plaintive love song to His greatest creation and fellow sufferer, humankind. (The song “Lord of this World,” also recognizes Satan as god of the Earth.) #RandolphHarris 8 of 13
N.I.B.’s title is the source of some confusion: according to drummer Bill Ward it was simply his nickname, derived from when the band were stoned and though he resembled a pen nib. Typically, the fans perceived a more Satanic significance—to them, “N.I.B” stood for “Nativity in Black.” Inevitably, the band were quizzed on such apparent occultic beliefs during interviews. “We are into God,” Iommi unhelpfully explained to which Ward added, “But sometimes I feel Satan is God.” Perhaps they were expressing the beliefs of the early Satanic Gnostic groups, fifteen hundred years before. Led Zeppelin emerged in 1968 from London’s lively rhythm and blues scene. The band took off completely and became a huge commercial success. They were also said to have a Satanic influence with their roots being in traditional black blues music—though guitarist Jimmy Page’s outfit, much closer in its sympathies to the blues than to heavy metal, was far more preoccupied with the tradition. The Devil also makes His presence felt, either as a symbol of the inevitable fate awaiting the debauched bluesman, or as the hard-living musician’s comrade and inspiration. The delta blues—the school that had the greatest influence on the rock-guitar style—became known as “the Devil’s music.” Delta bluesmen included Peetie Wheatsraw, who liked to be known as “the Devil’s Son-in-Law and High Sheriff of Hell,” and Robert Johnson. Johnson, the acoustic-playing grandfather of rock guitar, best illustrates the enduring legend of the bluesman who sold his soul to acquire musical talent. (As testified by Satanic Rock star Glenn Danzig during our interview with him: “A lot of the old blues songs are very heavily rooted in occultism. There is Robert Johnson, all the voodoo and juju stuff—‘Got my Mojo Working,’ ‘Black Cat Bone.’”) Johnson’s pact with Satan was said to be struck at the “Crossroads”—one of his best-know song, and a traditionally magical location in many cultures—and thereafter he always claimed to live, as another song put it, with a “Hellhound on My Trail.” #RandolphHarris 9 of 13
Led Zeppelin, and Jimmy Page in particular, were heavily influenced by Johnson, lifting parts of his songs for their own compositions. As with Johnson, so the popular rumour went, Led Zeppelin has made a pact with the Devil, asking the Prince of Darkness to tune their instruments in return for their souls. Only Satanic aid, reasoned the myth, could explain the enormous success the band enjoyed so rapidly, or the power involving pleasures of the flesh these modern pied pipers had over young ladies. These same legends had been linked with musicians from Robert Johnson to Elvis Presley and beyond, but with Led Zeppelin the Satanic-pact myth has proved especially enduring. If you study the supernatural, you cannot ignore evil. The “ZOSO” symbol that became Led Zeppelin’s band’s trademark was also partly derived from the work of another influential British occultist, Austin Osman Spare—a contemporary of Crowley, and occultic artist, best known for his “automatic drawing,” which he claimed worked as a conduit for supernatural forces. One more than one occasion, Page hinted that much of Led Zeppelin’s material (particularly their meditative anthem “Stairway to Heaven”) had been conceived in a similar fashion. (If you recall, this is also how Mrs. Winchester received the plan on how to build her mansion.) Kenneth Anger asked Page to record a soundtrack for his magic ritual film Lucifer Rising, but was bitterly disappointed with the results, saying, “I had asked him for intimacy and strength, rhythms and counter-rhythms. But he gave me a short fragment of chanting voices and sounds that I thought were quite sombre and morbid.” In October of 1976, the two fell out in grand style. Page threw Anger out of the basement of his London house, where he had granted the American magus use of a fil-editing suite. Anger responded with a press conference. Asked if he felt vindictive toward Page, Anger reposed, “You bet I do. I’m not a Christian turn the other cheek kind. In fact, I’m ready to throw a Kenneth Anger curse.” #RandolphHarris 10 of 13
Asked about the incident in an interview the following year, Page observed, “The whole thing about ‘Anger’s Curse,” they were just these silly little letters. God, it was all so pathetic…I had a lot of respect for him. As an occultist he was definitely in the vanguard.” Despite Page’s scepticim, many fans and commentators linked the personal tragedies that were to strike the band with some kind of hex. On 26 July 1977, vocalist Robert Plant’s young son Karac died of a respiratory infection. Three years later, on 26 September 1980, the band’s drummer, John Bonham, died after a drinking binge. Enough was enough. On 4 December 1980, it was announced that Led Zeppelin were no more. The band’s demise only served to fuel rumours. The more lurid stories held that all of Led Zeppelin, with the exception of Bonham, had signed pacts with the Devil for Earthly pleasure, supposedly explaining the drummer’s untimely death. One fanzine reported that black smoke had been seen billowing from Page’s house on the day following Bonham’s death, and that the guitarist was overheard uttering strange curses in unknown tongues. Even the mainstream press got in on the act, with the London Evening News quoting an anonymous source: “It sounds crazy, but Robert Plant and everyone around the band is convinced that Jimmy’s dabbling in black magic is responsible in some way for Bonzo’s death and for all these other tragedies.” What are we to make of the “Led Zeppelin curse”? Many young people still need to hear guitar music that conjured the Devil, and Satanic rock does show a tenacity that surprised all but its most fervent disciples. Kip Trevor from the band Black Widow tells the story about their album Sacrifice and the stage show of the same title. “There is a guy who has lost his wife as a result of an accident to do with some kind of occultic ceremony. Something goes wrong, and she is killed. He comes back through the centuries, is reborn, and remembers this in a dream. In this dream he realizes his wife can be returned to him, if he can perform another ceremony, like the one which had gone wrong. This time he would turn the tables on the Lady Astoroth, draw her, overpower her, and sacrifice her, then she would be banished and his wife would come back. #RandolphHarris 11 of 13
“So in the first song, ‘In Ancient Days,’ tells the story of this guy travelling through the centuries. Then there is the conjuration in which we bring Lady Astoroth and the girl appears. We’d have a lot of fun with that, as she would appear from all sorts of odd places, depending on where we were playing. We toured with it all over Europe for around eighteen months. When Black Widow broke up, Jim and myself went off to try and revive the idea of the occultic stage show. We spent a lot of time, money and effort on this new black magic concept, but it did not work out. Black Widow’s first album was quite an achievement, but it would have been lovely to have developed it. The problem was that the band politics got in the way—some of them wanted to be a “normal” band and thought the whole black magic thing was not them. They thought it was overshadowing their playing. The show was written with Jim’s research, using proper conjuration ceremonies. The whole thing was done authentically as we could possibly do it. We drew the magic circles, used all the props—fire, earth, water, and air. We did it exactly as you were supposed to do it. Doing that has an effect, even if it is only psychological, because you know you’re doing it in the correct fashion. You’re stepping over the line. Combined with the power of the music and the power of the audience’s involvement, weird things would happen.” God did not create the devil as such. Lucifer, one of God’s mighty cherubs, rebelled against Him and became the devil. Satan is thus the product of his own evil choice. God created a superbly beautiful and wise being and invested him with power above all the other created beings. His name, Lucifer, means “son of the morning,” “bright and shining one,” or “light bearer.” He had many angels at his beck and call and was prince over all the Earth. A fee moral agent with the power of choice, he was filled with an ambition to which he had no right—to rise above God. Unwilling to rule over the World as a vice-general under God, he became “Satan,” meaning “adversary,” or opponent. #RandolphHarris 12 of 13
There is only one devil; there are many demons. A familiar spirit in the service of Satan knows human beings so well that he can disguise himself as those people; there are different kinds of spirits—some are sensual and lewd, and others appear ethical; demons are wandering spirits belonging to the legions of Satan, a class of beings distinct from angels—some are on Earth seeking embodiment in human beings and animals, other already are imprisoned in the bottomless abyss; Satan wins followers by psychic and supernatural phenomena that approximate the power of God; Satan is a created being who presently exercises authority over his domain, the Earth realm, but he can do only what God allows him to do, and eventually he will be deprived of all power and glory. As one can see, it is not only Mrs. Winchester who had experiences with the occult, curses, and spirits. Many people have. Occasionally other theories turn up in the literature of modern parapsychology. Some speak of a magical astral World-soul. This entails the idea of an inner World in which all the occurrences of the visible World have their inner equivalent. The World-soul is supposed to be outside of our concept of space and time. The past and the future, the near and the far are said to be all on the same level. Everything is synchronized and simultaneous. A person who is capable of contacting this World-soul enables such a person to enter into a sphere of higher intelligence where the limitations of space and time no longer hold true. Prophecy is inspired either by the Holy Spirit of by the Devil. The wide scope of the occult power possessed by spiritists helps explain why they can cause so much mischief. Through the phenomena of levitation, apports, telekinesis, and materializations, it is not difficult to see how a person endowed with strong mediumistic powers can do a great deal of harm, especially in closely associated realm of magic. Genuine magic is the art of bring about results beyond humans’ power through the enlistment of supernatural agencies. Black magic deliberately involves the devil and demons, and the resulting enchantment is used for persecution and revenge. #RandolphHarris 13 of 13
Sarah Winchester was reportedly trapped in her Daisy Bedroom during the 1906 earthquake. Her workers had to pry her out of the room, and the crowbar mark is still on the door to this day… See it on the Mansion Tour!
A 160-room mansion built to appease the spirits who died at the hands of the Winchester Rifle 👻
Summoning Devils on Film and in Real Life
Much like the Winchester mansion and Mrs. Winchester, the Hellfire Clubs and medieval Sabbat believed that devils and demons should not be stern masters or slaves, but welcome house-guest, which is why Mrs. Winchester built what is now known as the Winchester Mystery House. It is easy to imagine how the combined grief of losing both a child and a spouse could be very crippling. However, if you had $20,000,000.00 (2022 inflation adjusted $556,305,882.35) and all the time in the World to help you cope, can you imagine what you would do? Mrs. Sarah L. Winchester’s response to the deaths of her child and husband left a bizarre and impressive architectural reflection of her psyche. The fascinating story of the Winchester Mystery House has its roots in the personal tragedies suffered by Mrs. Winchester and in the legacy of the Winchester rifle, “The Gun that Won the West.” The Winchester Mansion raised its castellated walls and towers in every direction commanding magnificent prospects; like emeralds in a setting of deeper green, gemmed the surface of the surface of the rural landscape and contributed to increase the beauty of scenery not surpassed in the World. Ages ago the voice of prayer and the song of praise used to ascend from this sacred estate. Presented on the estate was a happy country, none better calculated to inspire love and harmony. However, there was a lack of happiness in the circumstances of life for Mrs. Winchester. At first glance, there seems to be no degree of truth in this statement because of all the riches she inherited and her beautiful mansion. Many people assumes that for the rich, enjoying their riches, are likely to be contented and to look no further than this World. There were also a group of seven Victorian houses on the estate, not connected to the main house, of goodly size, and a Holy Cross. The seven Victorian Houses which, according to tradition, were built there under Mrs. Winchester’s direction, along with a graveyard on her 760 acres of land. #RandolphHarris 1 of 15
In the garden of the mansion was a curious stone cross, of considerable size, evidently monumental, though the inscription has been so defaced as to be illegible. On the front of the cross there is a deep indentation much resembling that made by the hoof of a cow in soft Earth, the bottom of the indentation being deepest at the sides and somewhat ridged in the middle. Concerning this cross and the depression in its face, the following legend was related by one of the farmers on the estate. “Mrs. Winchester built this mansion, houses, and the church, you see. When she lived, she owned all the land round about. But there was a devil here. If you had meet him on the grounds, you would know in a minute that it was himself and no other that was in it, and so make ready, either for to run away from him, or to fight him with praying as fast as you can, because, you see, it is no use for to strive with the devil any other way, seeing that no weapon can make the last dint on his carriage. In them days, and before the mansion was built, I am telling you, the devil was all as one as a man, a tall felly like a soldier, with a high hat coming to a pint and feathers on it, and fine boots and spurs and a short red jacket with a cloak over his shoulder and a sword by his side, as fine as any gentleman of the good old times. So he used to go about the country, desiring men and women, the latter being his choice as being easier to deceive, and taking them down with him to his own place, and it was a fine time he was having entirely, and everything his own way. As soon as Mrs. Winchester started construction on her mansion, the devil took up his quarters there, to make it as sure as he could. But when he heard what Mrs. Winchester was doing, a four-story mansion, of 500 or 600 rooms, and a nine-story observation tower, he came out to see the castle was rising before his eyes. He heard the construction singing and started cursing to himself, and at 5.13am on Wednesday April 18th, 1906, Satan stomped his cloven hoof into the ground causing a 7.9 Earthquake and brought down that tower. #RandolphHarris 2 of 15
After the Earthquake, while the devil was laying about in the bushes a-watching the work, and the tower of the big mansion was lifting itself above the trees, this time just not as high as it used to be. Everyone knows that Satan is slicker than a weasel, and has a memory like a miser’s box that takes in everything and lets nothing go out. When you do anything, sore a bit that it scrapes the devil, and he hugs it close till a time comes when he can make a club have it to bate you with, and so he does. You may think it is queer, but it is no wonder to one that understands it, for the devil can take any shape he pleases and look like any one he wants to, and so he does for the purpose of tempting us poor sinners to destruction, but there is one thing by which he always knows; when you have given up to him or when you have beaten him on the face, no matter which, he has got to throw off the disguise that is on him and show you who he is, and when he does it, it is not the elegant, dressed-up devil that you see and that I was just telling you about, but the rale, old, black anger with a rancorous, without a haporth of rages to the back of him, and his horns and tail a sticking out, and his eyes as big as an oxen’s and shinning like fire, and great bat’s wings on him, and, saving your presence, the most nefarious smell of sulfur you have smelled. However, before, he looks all right, no matter what face he has, and it is only the goodness of God that the devil is bound for to show himself to you, because, Glory be to God, it is his will that humans shall know who they are dealing with, and if they give up to the devil, and after finding out who is in it, go on with the bargain they have made, sure the fault is their own, and they go to hell with their eyes open, and if they bate him, he has got to show himself for to let them see what they have escaped. #RandolphHarris 3 of 15
Satan was flying around the Winchester mansion, there were the farmers all along the day job, and the construction workers were building as fast as they could and a bottle of holy water were at their side to throw at the devil when he would come. So he went from the and would fly back and forth watching then working, and they restored the Winchester mansion. Old beliefs die hard, especially when their speedy demise is a consummation devoutly to be wished. Magic is only a physical or psychological effect that has yet to be explained, which means for many it is uncomfortable to entertain now. All good occultists must be skeptical—believe nothing in preference to believing everything. All proto-sciences could be defined as magic. You can see the ritual chamber as a kind of intellectual decompression of chamber to prepare your mind for other atmospheres. People who limit themselves to the occult curricula and profess to be wizards are laughable—magic is an interdisciplinary pursuit. You must consider all the options—investigating like a police officer. To perform a summoning, for example, would involve finding the right environment, appropriate retrieval cues, the right atmospheric conditions. The effects of magic are demonstrable. A lot of simple magic is just to do with self-confidence, how much your antennae are up, how open you are to the World around you. Rituals and magical words are not necessary, merely tools or exercises to help train your mind. Scientists are now coming to the conclusion that there is a lot more interconnectedness between man and his environment than they originally supposed, which is a basic occultic concept. The only really dangerous characters are the ones who think they are generational Satanists and their grandfather told them with his dying breath what to do, or whatever. There are a lot of armies of one out there, a lot of coffee-bar revolutionaries. New information technology has bred a lot of desktop Satanists and bulletin boards mean that cyberspace seems to be just full of Satanists. The Christian heretics rarely get much further than designing letterheads. #RandolphHarris 4 of 15
Many Satanists are fans of people like Paris Hilton and Britney Spears and applaud their outrageous sexuality. They are also huge fans of Aaliyah for making that film Queen of the Damned. Many Satanists are quietly applying Church of Satan philosophy to their lives in their own fashion in a very real way. The best thing they could ask for is that people pass them a nod of respect. In the modern World, the spirit of the age often looms down upon us in strange, distorted forms from the cinema screen. Major production companies spend millions of dollars trying to trap the latest cultural trends on celluloid, while audiences make surprise blockbusters from movies which—accidentally or otherwise—tap into the anxieties and enthusiasms of the day. In the late 1960s and 1970s, 2000s the films which came to be regarded as four “Satanic blockbusters”—Rosemary’s Baby (1968), The Exorcist (1973), The Omen (1976), and Queen of the Damned (2002)—all took the box-office by storm, transforming themselves into cultural phenomena which attracted public interest far beyond that of most “mere” films. Cinema has been the most potent legend factory of the centuries. Despite constant predictions that TV would devour the silver screen, the spectable and ceremony of the cinema helped retain its status as the most sacred of modern temples. Film presents a super real version of the World—louder, larger, essentially more mythic. More people take cues on how to live, love, fight—even on how to die—from the silver screen than from the pulpit or the gospels. Pagan worship is alive and well and being practised at your local multiplex, with Hollywood stars as the gods of our age. And, just as cinema has given us new gods, so it has supplied us with a new hierarchy of devils. The relationship between Satan and the silver screen is a notable one. The father of fantastic cinema was a Frenchman named Georges Melies, who made delightful short films crawling with demons and devils. Melies was himself a Faustian figure, a stage conjurer and photographic illusionist who appeared out of the rump of the French Decadent era. Summoning devils on film, he defended this new sorcery in time-honoured fashion as “white magic.” #RandolphHarris 5 of 15
In The Laboratory of Mephistopheles (1897), Melies made Satan’s head detach itself and float around the room—to the enchantment and horror of audiences in darkened “picture palaces, resembling nothing so much as séance chambers. Hollywood’s dream factory was not even at the planning stage by the turning of the century, but the pioneer of US cinema, Edwin Porter (partner of the man who virtually invented the movies, Thomas Edison), produced his own version of Faust and Marguerite in 1900. The most striking cinematic fantasies came from Germany at this point—stark, angular exercises in shadow and nightmare. The Student of Prague was an updated version of the well-worn Faust tale, based on an Edgar Allan Poe story, which transformed the lead from an ambitious academic to a devil-may-care student and Mephistopheles into a rakish devil called Scapinelli. The story was retold onscreen in 1913, 1926, and 1936. The 1926 version was by the master of German Expressionist cinema, F.W. Murnua—the last film he made before leaving his artistic roots for Hollywood, where he met with a tragically early death. As a minor masterpiece, it was a suitably grandiose climax to a career which produced Nosferatu (1922), the first gothic vampire film. Now, it is always important to be safe on the road and sometimes to listen to the heartfelt advice of others. Jayne Mansfield, a buxom B-move actress died in a tragic car crash with her lawyer in and lover Sam Brody. Brody had disliked his beloved’s new guru from the start, and the friction led to LaVey placing a ritual curse on his rival. The Black Pope (Anton LaVey) warned the pugnacious lawyer—known to be a dangerous driver—that he would suffer a series of automobile accidents. It was no great surprise when a car crash ensued—but it made World headlines for taking the life of Jayne Mansfield, as well as the top of her cranium. LaVey grimly stated that on the night preceding the crash, as he cut out a newspaper clipping of Jayne, he accidently snipped off the top of the blonde beauty’s head. (By the way, I had no idea The Black Pope was dead, until today. I feel he is very much still alive. I have always felt like he is here, in San Francisco in his black church.) #RandolphHarris 6 of 15
The physical phenomena of spiritism are often closely connected with psychical manifestations, such as spiritistic visions, automatic writing, speaking in a trance, materializations, table lifting, tumbler moving and excursions of the psyche. There is no doubt that today, as in the time of Isaiah (Isaiah 6.1-5), Ezekiel (Ezekiel 1.4-28), Paul (Acts 9.1-8), Peter (Acts 10.9-16), and John (Revelation 1.10-18), God may give His people a genuine vision, particularly in great times of great stress. However, genuine experiences of this nature are always accompanied by true spiritual grace and modesty. Sensationalism betrays a lack of authenticity. Unfortunately, genuine experiences are rare, and counterfeit ones about. Christian counselors find that the “ratio is about nine to one over the genuine experiences.” Mrs. Winchester used to have visions. She reported that she saw visions of Christ at night, and it left her feeling a sense of uneasiness and fear. The so-called visions of Christ were mediumistic. They came as a warning. Weeks after the visions started, Mrs. Winchester saw her husband William Wirt Winchester’s spirit departing from his body as he expired in 1881. The visions of Mrs. Winchester bear evidence of the occult, as do the visions of Joseph Smith (1805-1844), who fathered Mormonism. Many of the founders and promulgators of modern cults have had alleged visions from God. However, some say these visions promote “doctrines of demons” (1 Timothy 4.1) among the credulous and those unable to discern spirits (1 Corinthians 12.10; 1 John 4.1-2). When humans depart from God’s Word, they supposedly expose themselves to demon imposture and deception. Automatic writing—some persons endowed with mediumistic powers are able—either in a waking state or trance to write letters, words, or sentences which spiritists consider to be message from the spirit World. This is how Mrs. Winchester came up with the architecture of her mansion, the blueprints were often dictated to her in her Blue Séance room as she took down the notes on napkin. Also, the persistent pain in her legs and back vanished whenever she sat down and dictated these blueprints. #RandolphHarris 7 of 15
One day as Mrs. Winchester was taking dictation, a spirit named Apollonius Tyannaeus appeared and said, “In the name of the Lord Jesus, our blessed and exalted Savior.” The spirit then told the woman that she had been chosen by God for special revelations. She would become a prophetess and bless humankind with these revelations. The case is patently that of a simple farm woman turned indeed into a spiritistic writing medium. Rudolf Tischner, a parapsychologist, points out the danger of automatic writing when practiced in immoderation. Although he regards these writing phenomena only as “motoric break up the integrated psychic structure with ensuing peril to mental and physical health. This simply means that occult enslavement can result from mediumistic writing, or from dependence upon the Ouija board or other spiritistic devices to obtain alleged messages from the spirit World. Speaking in a trance—a trance is a condition in which a spiritistic medium loses consciousness and passes under the control of demonic power to effect alleged communication with the dead. The demon (or demons) takes over and actually speaks through the spiritistic medium, deceptively imitating the deceased. As a result this ruse innumerable spiritistic clairvoyants claim communication with the dead, often with famous deceased people allegedly appearing to speak to the living. One evening, Mrs. Winchester went into a trace and soon the “Apostle Paul” approached and preached to the audience. The apostle was not visible but only spoke through the medium who lay in trance. Some critic said it was only another constant instance of deception by demons who ape the deceased but cannot produce them. Other believe it was real. Perhaps the most remarkable phenomena of spiritism are materializations. These are supernatural appearances and disappearances of material images in connection with the activities of a spiritistic medium. #RandolphHarris 8 of 15
Materializations have been exhaustively studied and photographed and have been found to be manifestations of various degrees of teleplastic morphogenesis. The first stage is the evolution of a gauzelike substance of rubbery consistency from the body cavities of the medium. The second stage is the forming of the various parts of the body in outline—arms, head, etcetera. Frequently in the case of teleplastic forms of this kind, a threadlike connection is maintained with the medium. The third stage consists of the composition into completely outlined forms, which are visible as phantoms near the medium. These three stages of materialization manifest purely visual phenomena. The fourth stage displays telekinetic phenomena. There is an energy output from the teleplasm (telekinesis), such as the ringing of a bell, at night, passers-by heard ghostly music wafting from the dark mansion. The bell in the belfry high in the gables tolled regularly at midnight to summon incoming flights of spirits. Later it tolled again to warn these visitors to return to their sepulchers. However, once a week, these departed ones relaxed and danced in the Great Ball Room. In other stages of materializations come automatic writing of a typewriter, and the automatic playing of a musical instrument. In addition to the active energy output of the materialization, there is frequently a passive pain experience of the teleplasm. The fifth stage of the materialization is the penetration of material substance. To his phase belong “apports,” that is, the appearing and disappearing of objects in closed rooms or chests and containers. From locked and cemented containers, for example, enclosed coins are brought out, or stones and other objects fall inexplicably from the ceiling. This often happens in the Winchester mansion, as documented by Mrs. Winchester. In this stage many mediums allegedly have the ability to penetrate solid material substance while they are in a trance. While Mrs. Winchester sat in a small cabinet, a phantom built itself up on the floor outside the cabinet and formed itself into a male person, who moved in and out among the participants of the séance. While the materialization extended his hand to one of those present and she held it, dematerialization began to occur before the eyes of all the participants. Soon there was only a lump on the floor and this rolled up into the cabinet. #RandolphHarris 9 of 15
Another example is during a séance, Mrs. Winchester was able to call and help the materializing of the spirit of the deceased German romantic poet, Johann Ludwig Uhland (1787-1862). At the memorable séance a white phantasm was seen, from which the audience demanded a poem. Instead of reciting a poem, the phantasm tore a page from a book in the library. With a pencil from a briefcase in the room, secured through the leather without opening the briefcase, the hand jotted down a few verses and vanished. The page was left and still exists. The examination of the mysterious writing by a graphologist proved to be sensational. He confirmed the ghost writing to be actually the handwriting of the deceased poet. Afterward there was a trial in Berlin over the ownership of the page. The court awarded it to the medium, who afterward kept it among her prized possessions. The phenomena of materialization and dematerialization in case of strong mediums illustrated the conversion of psychic energy into matter and matter changed back again into psychic energy. The problem is illustrated by nuclear physics. Einstein’s formula (E==MC^2), energy is equal to mass times the speed of light squared, simply declares that it is theoretically possible to convert energy to mass and back again to energy. We have historical evidence of materializations. Missionaries claim that Mrs. Winchester’s mansion was never actually built, but that it materialized itself on the grounds, and (re)construction only began after the Earthquake caused by Satan. Some say this mansion is to be regarded as a miracle of Satan (2 Thessalonians 2.8-10; Revelation 13.15). Many people used to wonder how Mrs. Winchester used to travel so fast back and forth from San Jose to San Francisco to pick up items she ordered from overseas. Researchers believed that she would be spiritually transported miles away, and this may have been an example of this phenomenon or simply a miracle of transportation of unaltered physical body. It is debatable rather if these are miracles of God or that of Satan. God says He is the Alpha and the Omega. I wonder what that means? #RandolphHarris 10 of 15
Mrs. Winchester was said to possess tremendous occult gift and was reported to be able to make tables fly through the air for a space of one hundred feet. Above all, she was extremely adept in telekinesis, materialization, levitation, and black magic. Where Satan’s power remains virtually unchecked, miracles of evil supernaturalism abound. In Victorian days, the supernatural predated the mass hysteria about Satanism. As you may know, long before Mrs. Winchester arrived in California, there was a Devil worshipping conspiracy at large. However, her mansion seamlessly blends the ordinary and nightmarishly surreal. It is a rare treat for fans of demonic conspiracy and occult synchronicity. Some people have believed themselves to be demonically possessed after visiting the Winchester Mystery House, others claimed to have spoken to Mrs. Winchester directly. Directors of the Queen of the Damned claimed that the film was a makeshift occultic ritual, and Aaliyah unleashed the demon within herself. They also said the film poses some kind of supernatural power and they had to edit and voiceover a lot of the footage because not only did the characters act their own version of the script, but there were also some subliminal sounds and images on print. When many of these errors were re-examined, they also saw footage of the original Winchester mansion on the negatives, but rumors began that the original print had been withdrawn, replaced by an expurgated cut to protect the filmgoers from the movie’s insidious effects. The powers behind these manifestations were no doubt demonic. The director faced a terrible psychic assault on 25th August 2001, before they finished filming the movie. However, when the reel was played, the directors found they had all the footage they needed, even some they did not remembering filming. It was so intensified that the demonic oppression became that he was compelled to give up making other Anne Rice books into movies, especially after Aaliyah’s plane crashed later that evening. Although the film was unfished, with the blessing of her family, it was released to the public in February of 2002. #RandolphHarris 11 of 15
Certain psychic clairvoyants claim that their souls can travel great distances at their command. They always said she makes a room come alive. Much like Mrs. Winchester, Aaliyah had a lot of psychic phenomena around her death. When directors took photos of Aaliyah and Queen Akasha to a clairvoyant, while concentrating on the photographs, the medium declared that one of the women was apparently dead, while the other one, reportedly killed in 2001, was still alive. After more concentration, the clairvoyant said: “I can get in touch with this woman (pointing to Queen Akasha). I see her in a great stone building southeast of Ireland.” By psychic excursion and by psychometry (selecting an object belonging to the missing person and beginning to search from there) the clairvoyant was able to establish contact by occult assistance. The cinema is the Devil’s lantern. In March of 1922, Mrs. Winchester said, “Though it should be borne in the mind that in the persecution of witches many women were put to death on the latter charge, albeit they were really benefactors of the human race; the more so as their skill in simples and knowledge of the medicinal virtue of herbs must have added in no small degree to the resources of our present pharmacopoeia.” In August of 1807 an extraordinary affair took place in the house of Mrs. Winchester. She had a cow which continued to give milk as usual, but of late no butter could be produced from it. An opinion was unfortunately instilled into the mind of Mrs. Winchester, that whenever such a thing occurred, it was occasioned by the cow having been bewitched. Her belief in this was strengthened by the fact that every woman on this estate was able to relate some story illustrative of what she had seen or heard of in times gone by with respect to the same. At length the Mrs. Winchester was informed of a woman named Mary Butters, who resided in Oakland at the Cohen Bray House. Mrs. Winchester went to her, and brought her to mansion for the purpose of curing the cow. About ten o’ clock that night war was declared against the unknown magicians. #RandolphHarris 12 of 15
Mary Butters ordered old Klaus and a young man named Konrad to go out to the cow-house, turn their waistcoats inside out, and in that dress to stand by the head of the cow until she sent for them, while the butler, the made, and an old woman named Klara Lee remained in the house with her. Klaus and his ally kept their lonely vigil until daybreak, when, becoming alarmed at receiving no summons, they left their post and knocked at the door, but obtained no response. They then looked through the kitchen window, and to their horror saw the four inmates stretched on the floor as dead. They immediately burst in the door, and found that the butler and the maid were actually dead, and the sorceress and Mrs. Winchester nearly so. The latter soon afterwards expired; Mary Butters was thrown out on a dung-heap, and a restorative administered to her in the shape of a few hearty kicks, when had the desired effect. The house had a sulphureous smell, and on the fire was a large pot in which were milk, needles, pins, and crooked nails. At the inquest held at the Winchester mansion on the 19th of August, Jurors stated that the three victims had come by their deaths from suffocation, owning to Mary Butters having made use of some noxious ingredients, after the manner of a charm, to recover the sick cow. She was up to The Great Asylum for the Insane, but was discharged by proclamation. Her various of the story was that a black man (usually indicates a demon or the devil, not one of African descent) was summoned through the floor with a huge club, with which he killed the three person and stunned herself. This paranoid horror fantasies terrified the congregations, as well as the gross superstition displayed by the participants as for its tragical ending, yet it seems to have aroused no feelings in the greater community than those of risibility and derision. However, there is also another version of events. #RandolphHarris 13 of 15
A farm-hand had brought an action against Mrs. Winchester for wages alleged to be due to him. It transpired in the course of the evidence that on one occasion he had been set to banish witches that were troubling the cows. His method of working illustrates the Winchester case. All left the house except Mrs. Winchester, and the farm-hand, who locked himself in, closed the windows, stopped al keyholes and apertures, and put sods on top of the chimneys. He then placed a large pot of sweet milk on the fire, into which he threw rows of pins that had never been used, and three packages of needles; all were allowed to boil together for half an hour, and, as there was no outlet for the smoke, the farm-hand narrowly escaped being suffocated. If the forces of darkness triumph, it is a warning not a celebration. Many religious people come close to depicting what evangelists are preaching from their pulpits, or TV shows. Does it not seem strange for fundamentalist Christians to attack them as sinful and dangerous? Sin sells, in a way that the bland platitudes of Christian morality never will. Many of these popular and historical figures will be remember long after the credits have rolled. You could say that it is an “inside job.” Satanism sells, it captures the metaphysics of fear. People like to be haunted and scared, but only when they consent to it. No one wants their house broken into, their children kidnapped, their cars constantly vandalized, or to be attack by a hate group who haunts them like demons of the night. People simply want to tune into a scarry movie or visited a haunted house and leave the fear behind when they walk out the door or turn the TV off. They do not want to fear for the lives like Sharon Tate did for years without anyone to protect them. Humans are often more harmful than any ghost, devil or demon you can ever imagine meeting. Satan, speaking through a beautiful serpent—perhaps as a parakeet “talks” to us—promises know that would make Eve “like God” if she would eat the fruit of the tree forbidden by God. #RandolphHarris 14 of 15
Meanwhile, if the view of the power and knowledge of the people is that “Satan” is evil and not themselves, what can human beings do? Persist being evil, or resist the “devil,” and allow him to feel from them? Or is it they cling to evil because the darkness comes from their insidious mind and depleted soul? Note that it is useless to try to resist the devil unless you have first submitted yourself to God! Maybe YOU are the evil, not Satan. Sitting there, manufacturing all these evil days, so you can laugh at the pain and suffering you have inflicted on others to make yourself feel better. Is that of Satan, or is that YOUR nature on display. It is estimated that there are about 100 million adherents to spiritism in the World. The word “spiritism” comes from the Latin “spiritus,” spirit. The movement of spiritism represents the endeavour to communicate with the dead in the spirit World. Historically, spiritism can also be traced back over thousands of years. We have testimonies concerning it in the Old Testament in 1 Samuel 28, and Deuteronomy 18. It is also evidenced in the history of the Christian Church. Spiritism seems to be strongly connected with religion and religions. In so-called Christian countries such a variety of spiritistic forms, and such a range of associated psychic troubles exist, that the need for clarification is a pressing issue. What God do you really worship for “Satan disguises himself as an angel of the light. So it is not strange if his servants also disguise themselves as servants of righteousness,” reports 2 Corinthians 11.14-15. In other words, many of you Christians who claim to serve “God” do evil things and then blame the devil when you are disguising yourselves as children of the light. And you do not repent because you do not fear punishment nor hell, so you must be children of your “devil” and not of God. We live in a World which has turned its back on God. The reason some people fear Jesus is because they feel unworthy, it is not because they are evil. This conviction of inner unworthiness is not to be confused with a feeling of fear. However, people who suffer from schizophrenia and like to go around lying, the psychiatrist will be interested in the question whether the practicing of spiritism was rather the effect than the cause of the ensuing mental and emotional disorders. #RandolphHarris 15 of 15
Winchester Mystery House
The front gardens of the Winchester Mystery House looked different in the 1970’s! The gardens were restored to what they are today about ten years later.
The sign reads: “The world’s oddest, mysterious, weirdest, and freakish dwelling. Planned and built by Sarah L. Winchester of Winchester Rifle Fame”
Have you ever listened to Alessandro Moreschi sing “Ave Maria,” at night in the Winchester Mystery House? Try it and let me know what you experience. I heard ghosts appear, people have cried and screamed, and some love it. I think I would probably run outside. He sounds like a ghost.
Come Explore the Victorian Gardens this weekend! Open all weekend until 4PM.
A 160-room mansion built to appease the spirits who died at the hands of the Winchester Rifle 👻
There Was Terror in His Eyes as Not Often Seen in a Human Being!
Twenty-first century humans, in spite of all their scientific and technological advances, are baffled by unexplained forces existent in the Universe. The naturalistic philosophy of the previous generations has been unable to account for all of the mysterious phenomena which have been observed. Many scientists believe that living beings may inhabit other galaxies, and highly educated humans are seriously studying reports of those who insist they have received communications from the dead. Humans of science no longer scoff at the accounts of strange occurrences associated with witchcraft and occultic practices. Although they do not necessarily accept them as proof of the supernatural, many will admit they are manifestations of some kind of power they do not yet understand. Christian theologians and scientists are not perplexed by such reports. They know that both God and Satan are very much alive. Though readily conceding that they cannot explain fully all the mysteries of life, they affirm with confidence the existence of God and an invisible host of intelligent supernatural beings. They are convinced that when one accepts the teachings of the Bible, one begins to understand many of the puzzling facts of existence. For example, the Bible tells of holy angels who dwell in Heaven (Matthew 18.10). It also mentions “angels that sinned” (2 Peter 2.4), rebellious spirit begins who have been cast out of Heaven and now dwell in the atmosphere that surrounds the Earth. We know this because Paul declared that Satan is “the prince of the power of the air,” reports Ephesians 2.2, and the Greek word translated “air” was used to speak of the gaseous envelop that encircles our planet. These wicked beings apparently have unlimited access to Earther, and actively influence every area of human endeavour. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19
Because they do not possess physical bodies, we cannot typically detect them through our senses of sight, hearing, touch, taste, or smell. We do have evidence of their presence, however, for the Word of God gives us information regarding their identification, their nature and their function. Various terms are used in the Christian Bible to denote the evil spirit beings who followed Satan in this initial act of rebellion against God. It refers to “angels that sinned” 2 Peter 2.4 and “angels who kept not their first estate” Jude 6, and many times mentions “spirits” and “demons.” Some scholars believe that these demons must be distinguished from the “angels that sinned” and the “angels who kept not their first estate.” They contend that the Heavenly beings who joined Satan in his revolt against God are fallen angels, but that demons are disembodies spirits of physical and moral creatures who once lived upon the Earth. However, these Bible students disagree regarding an exact identification of the demons. Some say they are the spirits of pre-Adamic beings similar to man, while others identify them as the spirits of the “giants” who were destroyed in the great flood of Noah’s day. If one thinks that demons are the spirits of man-like beings who lived before Adam, then one will no doubt interpret Genesis 1.2 as a declaration that the original Earth, inhabited by the creatures, was cataclysmically destroyed. Genesis 1.2 is then translated as follows: “And the Earth became without form and void…” This theory, while attractive in that it permits a literal interpretation of the days in Genesis 1, must be acknowledged as only a hypothesis. Most Hebrew scholars reject this interpretation because Genesis 1.2 begins with a grammatical construction which makes it highly unlikely that Genesis 1.1 and 1.2 are separated by millions of years. Then, too, the verb translated “became” almost always has the meaning “was.” #RandolphHarris 2 of 19
However, even if we accept this theory, and believe that a race of man-like beings inhabited the prehistoric Earth, we would have no basis for thinking that their spirits are now free to roam about as the enemies of humankind. Other Bible scholars maintain that demons are the spirits of the “giants” who lived upon the Earth in the days of Noah. They refer to Genesis 6, contending that these “giants” were produced when fallen angels, called the “sons of God,” married the “daughters of men.” “And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the Earth, and daughters were born unto them, that the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all whom they chose. There were giants in the Earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bore children to them, the same became mighty men who were of old, men of renown,” reports Genesis 6.1, 2, 4. It is necessary for proponents of this theory to believe that fallen angels became male human beings who married women, produced a mongrel offspring, and took over the role of father in the family. They theorize that Satan hoped thereby to frustrate God’s redemptive plan. The Lord had promised salvation through Christ to human beings only—not for angels or mixed half-human and half-angelic race. Christ could not have been born to offspring of these corrupted creates or provide redemptions for them. Thus God’s plan of redemption would have been thwarted. In addition, both Jude and Peter in their epistles refer to a sin committed by angels, and their words can be blended very nicely into this concept. Jude writes, “And the angels who kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day. Even as Sodom and Gomorrah, and the cities about them in like manner, giving themselves over to fornication, and going after strange flesh, are set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire,” reports Jude 6, 7. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19
The words “in like manner” (verse 7) are taken to mean that the sin of the angels in having pleasures of the flesh with women was an unnatural act, comparable to sodomy. Peter tells of angels assigned to Tartaros, the nether World of the Greeks considered to be lower than Hades. “For if God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell [GK Tartaros], and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment,” reports 2 Peter 2.4. Again, it does not take a great deal of imagination to see how these words of Peter may be applied to the wicked angels who committed the monstrous sin of attempting to make mongrels of the human race. Many Bible students, however, reject this interpretation of Genesis 6. Since angels are non-material beings, it would be necessary for them to create physical bodies for themselves capable of impregnating a female member of the human race. This would require nothing less than a creative miracle, and the Bible indicates that this power belongs only to God. In addition, it is not necessary to interpret the statements in Jude and 2 Peter as a reference to sin involving pleasures of the flesh on the part of the fallen angels. Jude’s use of the expression “going after strange flesh” may be figurative language representing spiritual fornication. The prophets often depicted Israel’s unfaithfulness to God in this manner. Peter’s statement that the angels who sinned have been assigned to Tartaros may be a simple declaration that all sinning angels have been designated to this place, and that they are even now under chains of moral and spiritual darkness. The Bible gives little information regarding the origin of demons. We can state with absolute certainty only that they are fallen spirit beings who have committed themselves to Satan and that they hate God and seek to harm His people. No clear distinction can be made between fallen angels and demons, for they are all evil spirits. Some of our questions must remain unanswered, but the Lord has given ample revelation to warn us that these invisible enemies are far too great and powerful for us to defeat in our own strength, and that we can successfully wage war against them only as we live in continual dependence upon the Lord. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19
In one respect the case of Dame Alice Kyteler stands alone in the history of magical dealings in Ireland prior to the seventeenth century. We have of the entire proceedings an invaluable and contemporary account, or at latest one compiled within a very few years after the death of Petronilla of Meath; while the excitement produced by the affair is shown by the more or less lengthy allusions to it in early writings, such as The Book of Howth (Carew MSS.), the Annals by Fariar Clyn, the Chartularies of S. Mary’s Abbey (vol. ii), &c. It is also rendered more valuable by the fact that those who are best qualified to give their opinion on the matter have assured the writer that to the best of their belief no entries with respect to trials for sorcery or witchcraft can be found in the various old Rolls preserved in the Dublin Record Office. However, when the story is considered with reference to the following facts it takes on a different signification. On the 29th of September 1317 (Wright says 1320), Bishop de Ledrede held his first Synod, at which several canons were passed, one of which seems in some degree introductory to the events detailed in last week’s report. In it he speaks of “a certain new and pestilential sect in our parts, differing from all the faith in the World, filled with a devilish spirit, more inhuman than heathens…who pursue the priests and bishops of the Most High God equally in life and death, by spoiling and rending the patrimony of Christ in the diocese of Ossory, and who utter grievous threats against the bishops and their ministers exercising ecclesiastical jurisdiction, and (by various means) attempt to hinder the correction of sins and the salvation of souls, in contempt of God and the Church.” From this it would seem that heresy and unorthodoxy had already made its appearance in the diocese. In 1324 the Kyteler case occurred, one of the participants being burnt at the stake while other incriminate persons were subsequently followed up, some of whom shared the fate of Petronilla of Meath. In 1327 Adam Dubh, of the Leinster tribe of O’Toole, was burnt alive on College Green for denying the doctrines of the Incarnation and the Holy Trinity, as well as for rejecting the authority of the Holy See. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19
In 1335 Pope Benedict XII wrote a letter to King Edward III, in which occurs the following passage: “It has come to our knowledge that while our venerable brother, Richard, Bishop of Ossory, was visiting his diocese, there appeared in the midst of his catholic people men who were heretics together with their abettors, some of whom asserted that Jesus Christ was a mere man and a sinner, and was justly crucified for His own sins; others after having done homage and offered sacrifice to demons, thought otherwise of the sacrament of the Body of Christ than the Catholic Church teaches, saying that the same venerable sacrament is by no means to be worshipped; and also asserting that they are not bound to obey or believe the decrees, decretals, and apostolic mandates; in the meantime, consulting demons according to the rites of those sects among the Gentiles and Pagans, they despise the sacraments of the Catholic Church, and draw the faithful of Christ after them by their superstitions.” Unlike apocryphal and rabbinical literature, the Biblical description of evil spirits avoids the unusual and grotesque. The Bible does, however, present us with a clear picture of their activity and tells us how to resist them effectively. In the first place, it declares that demons or fallen angels are non-material beings. They do not possess bodies like humans, and therefore are repeatedly called “spirits.” Matthew, for example, says, “When the evening was come, they brought unto him many that were possessed with demons; and he cast out the spirits with his word, and healed all that were sick,” reports Matthew 8.16. Jesus started that the Creator is not made up of physical substance when He said, “God is a Spirit,” reports John 4.24. Later, when His frightened disciples thought He was a ghost, He told them their fears were groundless, for “a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have,” reports Luke 24.39. Paul had in mind the non-physical nature of Satan and his army of evil spirits when he said that our warfare is “not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this World, against spiritual wickedness in high places,” reports Ephesians 6.12. Satan’s demonic hordes are spirit beings, and therefore more dangerous than the “flesh and blood” enemies we may encounter in our daily lives. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19
Second, the Bible portrays demons as highly intelligent creatures. They recognize Christ when He was here upon the Earth, and knew they could not have fellowship with Him. Luke tells us about an evil spirit who is an example of this. “When he saw Jesus, he cried out, and fell down before him, and with a loud voice said, What have I to do with thee, Jesus, thou Son of God, most high? I beseech thee, torment me not,” reports Luke 8.28. The fallen spirits are also aware of their ultimate defeat, for James declared, “Them demons also believe, and tremble,” reports James 2.19. They are, of course, finite creatures, even Satan is limited in knowledge. He has myriads of evil spirit followers, however, and they are able to give him information on almost any person and circumstance in which he is interested. In this manner he can find out much what he wants to know. Truly, believers in Christ can never successfully cope with Satan and his hosts without special help from the Lord. Therefore, we must humbly look to God for wisdom and strength to resist the attacks of our invisible enemies. Third, the World of evil spirits is cruel. These creatures hate God and all who have placed their trust in Him. They seem to find delight in causing human grief and pain. For example, Matthew tells us that a man who was both blind and dumb suffered these afflictions because a demon had entered his body. “Then was brought unto him one possessed with a demon, blind, and dumb; and He healed him, insomuch that the blind and dumb both spoke and saw,” reports Matthew 12.22. Matthew, Mark, and Luke all tell the story of two demented men who lived in the country of the Gerasenes, and indicate that their insanity was the result of demonic invasion of their personalities. Luke, the beloved physicians, writes of a woman who was bent over with some crippling disease, saying that she had “a spirit of infirmity.” He adds that Jesus said she had been bound by Satan. “And he was teaching in one of the synagogues on the sabbath. And, behold, there was a woman who had a spirit of infirmity eighteen years, and was bowed together, and could in no way lift herself up. And when Jesus saw her, he called her to him, and said unto her, Woman, thou art loosed from thine infirmity. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19
“And he laid his hands on her; and immediately she was made straight, and glorified God. And the ruler of the synagogue answered with indignation, because Jesus had healed on the sabbath day, and said unto the people, There are six days in which humans ought to work; in them, therefore, come and be healed, and not on the sabbath day. The Lord then answered him, and said, Thou hypocrite, doth not each one of you on the sabbath loose his ox or her ass from the stall, and lead him away to watering? And ought not this woman, being a daughter of Abraham, who Satan hath bound, lo, these eighteen years, be loosed from this bound on the sabbath day? And when he had said these things, all his adversaries were ashamed; and all the people rejoiced for all the glorious things that were done by him,” reports Luke 13.10-17. While the gospel writers make it clear that not all illness is the work of Satan and demons, they do point out that much human suffering is the result of demonic activity. Finally, the Bible tells us that all fallen angels or evil spirits are confirmed in their wickedness. Though they “believe and tremble,” they will never repent, never seek forgiveness, and never pray for holiness or purity. Though they know that Jesus is the Christ, they never really worship Him. They must acknowledge that He is stronger than they, and may occasionally render Him token submission, but inwardly they hate Him and keenly resent His authority over them. In fact, their nature is so totally evil that the term “unclean” often is applied to them. (See Matthew 10.1; Mark 1.27; 3.11; Luke 4.36; Acts 8.7; Revelations 16.13.) They apparently delight in sin, find great pleasure in leading humans to commit evil deeds, and possess no feelings of guilt nor desire for deliverance. Michael Scot, reputed a wizard of such potency that—when in Salamanca’s cave he listed his magic want to wave and the bells would ring in Notre Dame. Scot has studied successively at Oxford and Paris (where he acquired the title of “mathematicus”); he then passed to Bologna, thence to Palermo, and subsequently continued his studies in Toledo. His refusal of the See of Cashel was an intellectual loss to the Irish Church, for he was so widely renowned for his varied and extensive learning that he was credited with supernatural powers; a number of legends grew up around his name which hid his real merit, and transformed the man of science into a magician. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19
In the Border country traditions of his magical power are common. Boccaccio alludes to “a great master in necromancy, called Michael Scot,” while Dante places him in the eighteen circle of Hell. The next, who is so slender in the flanks, was Michael Scot, who of a verity of magical illusion knew the game. Another man to whom magical powers were attributed solely on account of his learning was Gerald, the fourth Earl of Desmond, styled the Poet, who died rather mysteriously in 1398. The Four Masters in their Annals describe him as “a nobleman of wonderful bounty, mirth, cheerfulness of conversation, charitable in his deeds, easy of access, a witty and ingenious composer of Irish poetry, a learned and profound chronicler.” No legends are extant of his magical deeds. King James I of Scotland, whose severities against his nobles had around their bitter resentment, was barbarously assassinated at Perth in 1437 by some of their supports, who were aided and abetted by the ages Duke of Atholl. From a contemporary account of this we learn that the monarch’s fate was predicted to him by an Irish prophetess or witch; has he given ear to her message he might have escaped with his life. We modernize the somewhat difficult spelling, but retain the quaint language of the original. “The king, suddenly advised, made a solemn feast of the Christmas at Perth, which is clept Saint John’s Town, which is from Edinburg on the other side of the Scottish sea, the which is vulgarly celpt the water of Lethe. In the midst of the way there arose a woman of Ireland, the clept herself as a soothsayer. The which anon as she saw the king she cried with a loud voice, saying thus: ‘My lord king, and you pass this water you shall never turn again alive.’ The king hearing this was astonied of her words; for but a little before he had read in a prophecy that in the self same year the king of Scots should be slain; and therewithal the king, as he rode, cleped to him one of his knights, and gave him in commandment to turn again to speak with that woman, and ask of her what she would, and what thing she meant with her loud crying. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19
“And she began, and told him as ye have heard of the King of Scots if he passed that water. As now the king asked her, how she knew that. And she said, that Huthart told her so. ‘Sire,’ quoth he, ‘men may “calant” yet take to heed of yon woman’s words, for she is but a drunken fool, and wot not what she saith’; and so with his folk passed the water celpt the Scottish sea, towards Saint John’s town.” The narrator states some dreams ominous of James’s murder, and afterwards proceeds thus: Both afore supper, and long after into quarter of the night, in the which the Earl of Atholl (Athetelles) and Robert Steward were about the king, where they were occupied at the playing of chess, at the tables, in reading of romances, in singing and piping, in harping, and in other honest solaces of great pleasance and disport. Therewith came the said woman of Ireland, that celpt herself a divineress, and entered the king’s court, till that she came straight to the king’s chamber-door, where she stood, till at the last the usher opened the door, marvelling of that woman’s being there that time of night, and asking her what she would. ‘Let me in, sir’ quoth she, ‘for I have somewhat to say, and to tell unto the king; for I am the same woman that not long ago desired to have spoken with him at the Leith, when he should pass the Scottish sea.’ The usher went in and told him of this woman. ‘Yea,’ quoth the king, ‘let her come tomorrow’; because the he was occupied with such disports at that time he let not to hear her as then. The usher came again to the chamber-door to the said woman, and there he told her that the king was busy in playing, and bid her come soon again upon the morrow. ‘Well,’ said the woman, ‘it shall repent you all that ye will not let me speak now with the king.’ Thereat the usher laughed, and held her but a fool, charging her to go her way, and therewithal she went thence. Her informant “Huthart” was evidently a familiar spirit who was in attendance on her. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19
Considering the barrenness of Irish records on the subject of sorcery and witchcraft it affords us no small satisfaction to find the following statement in the Statute Rolls of the Parliament for the year 1447. It consists of a most indignantly-worded remonstrance from the Lords and Commons, which was drawn forth by the fact that some high-placed personage had been accused of practising sorcery with the intent to do grievous harm to one’s enemy. When making it the remonstrants appear to have forgotten, or perhaps, like Members of Parliament in other ages, found it convenient to forget the nonce the Kyteler incident of the pervious century. There was an Act of Parliament which was intended to put a stop to a certain lucrative form of witchcraft. It is gravely stated by the writer of a little book entitled Beware the Cat (and by Giraldus Camrensis before him), that Irish witches could turn wisps of hay, straw &c. into red-coloured pigs, which they dishonestly sold in the market, but which resumed their proper shape when crossing running water. To prevent this it is stated that the Irish Parliament passed an Act forbidding the purchase of red swine. We regret to say, however, that no such interesting Act is to be found in the Statues books. The belief in the power of witches to inflict harm on others was also a powerful belief in Victorian times. When reflecting on history, one can see that consulting someone with supernatural powers was no different than talking to a friend about one’s life. It was very common. Also, many of these accounts turned out to have some truth to them or evidence of supernatural power. Perhaps this is because people were more in tune with their inner spirit and the planet back then. Many people thought Sarah Winchester was mentally ill or deranged for consulting a medium about how she should deal with the evil spirits that were haunting her, they thought she was even more insane for building the World’s most beautiful and unique mansion. However, what better way could there be to spend your money than by creating something you and the World can enjoy for many centuries and creating a living memorial for your family? #RandolphHarris 11 of 19
Perhaps what Mrs. Winchester did was very rational and sane. In contrast, most others express their pain and suffering by becoming destructive and hurting others, and people usually idolize them for that. Mrs. Winchester gradually developed her skill in building, just as she had done with music and language in her youth. She often used the most current innovations in her home. Some historical sources say that Mrs. Winchester was the first to use wool for insulation. Carbide gas lights in the house were fed by the estate’s own gas manufacturing plant, which used a new process. The gas lights were operated by pushing an electric button. A specially designed window catch was patterned after a Winchester rifle trigger and trip hammer, amongst other state of the art designs. I met a man in the Winchester Mansion one day that I knew very well, as I thought, though I had not seen him for years. Without pressing him too soon with a repetition of my idle questions, we walked together to the Blue Séance Room, and there we shook hands. Just then there came a vague vibration in the Earth and air, quickly changing into a violent pulsation, and an oncoming rush caused me to start back, as though it had force to draw me down. Next morning, I spoke of this meeting to a mutual friend, and then I learnt, for the first time, that the man had died six months before. The natural inference was that I had mistaken one man for another, an error that, not having a good memory for faces, I frequently fall into. What was remarkable about the matter, however, was that throughout our walk I had conversed with the man under the impression that he was that other dead man, and, whether by coincidence or not, his replies had never once suggested to me my mistake. As soon as I finished speaking to Jared, who had been listening very thoughtfully, asked me if I believed in spiritualism “to its fullest extent.” “That is a rather large question,” I answered. “What do you mean by ‘spiritualism to its fullest extent’?” “Well, do you believe that the spirits of the dead have not only the power of revisiting this Earth at their will, but that, when here, they have the power of action, or rather, of exciting to action. Let me put a definite case. A spiritualist friend of mine, a sensible and by no means imaginative man, once told me that a table, through the medium of which the spirit of a friend had been in the habit of communicating with him, came slowly across the room towards him, of its own accord, one night as he sat alone in the Winchester Mansion, and pinioned him against the wall. Now can any of you believe that, or can you not?” #RandolphHarris 13 of 19
I could believe it. It seems that the difference between what we call the natural and supernatural is merely the difference between frequency and rarity of occurrence. Suppose a person died with the dearest wish of one’s heart unfulfilled, do you believe that one’s spirit might have power to return to Earth and complete the interrupted work? The Winchester Mansion is supposed to be enchanted. According to the legend, William Winchester was a very potent magician, and usually resided in a castle. To this he brought his bride, a beautiful young lady, Sarah Lockwood Pardee, who he loved, and he prevailed upon her her every desire, but with fatal results. One day she presented herself in the chamber in which her husband exercised his forbidden art, and begged him to show her the wonders of the evil science. With the greatest reluctance he consented, but warned her that she must prepare herself to witness a series of most frightful phenomena, which, once commenced, could neither be abridged nor mitigated, while if she spoke a single word during the proceedings the castle and all it contained would sink. Urged on by curiosity she gave the required promised, and he commenced. Muttering a spell as he stood before her, feathers sprouted thickly over him, his face became contracted and hooked, a corpse-like smell filled the air, and winnowing the air with beats of its heavy wings a gigantic vulture rose in his stead, and swept round and round the room as if on the point of pouncing upon her. The lady controlled herself though this trial, and another began. The bird alighted near the door, and in less than a minute changed, she saw not how, into a horribly deformed and dwarfish hag, who, with yellow skin hanging about her face, and cavernous eyes, swung herself on crutches towards the lady, her mouth foaming with fury, and her grimaces and contortions becoming more and more hideous every moment, till she rolled with a fearful yell on the floor in a horrible convulsion at the lady’s feet, and then changed into a huge serpent, which came sweeping and arching towards her with crest erect and quivering tongue. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19
Suddenly, as it seemed on the point of darting at her, she saw her husband in its stead, standing pale before her, and with his finger on his lips enforcing the continued necessity of silence. He then placed himself at the full length on the floor and began to stretch himself at full length on the floor and began to stretch himself out, longer and longer, until his head nearly reached to one end of the vast room and his feet to the other. This utterly unnerved her. She gave a wild scream of horror, whereupon the castle shook and the nine-story tower of what is now known as the Winchester Mansion came tumbling down. Mr. Winchester is said to have been dead and never lived in the Winchester Mansion, but perhaps his spirit did? Once every seven years, the great William Wirt Winchester would rise, and rides by on his white horse round Llanada Villa. The steed is shod with gold shoes, and when these are worn out the spell that holds Mr. Winchester will be broken, and he will regain possession of his vast estates and semi-regal power. In the closing years of the nineteenth-century there was a living man named Gilbert Plutchik who claimed to have seen Mr. Winchester. Gilbert was a blacksmith, and his forge stood on back of the estate, near a lonely part of the road. One night when there was a bright moon, he was working very late and quite alone. In one of the pauses of his work he heard the ring of many hoofs ascending the steep road that passed his forge, and, standing in his doorway, he saw a gentleman on a white horse, who was dressed in a fashion the like of which he had never seen before. This man was accompanied by a mounted retinue, in similar dress. They seemed to be riding up to the mansion, but the pace slackened as they drew near, and the rider of the white horse, who seemed from his haughty air to be a man of rank, drew bridle, and came to a halt before the smith’s door. He did not speak, and all his train were silent, but he beckoned to the smith, and pointed down at one of the horse’s hoofs. Gilbert stopped and raised it, and held it just long enough to see that it was shod with a gold shoe, which in one place was worn as thing as a shilling. Instantly his situation was made apparent to him by this sign, and he recoiled with a terrified prayer. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19
The lordly rider, with a look of pain and fury, struck him suddenly with something that whistled in the air like a whip; an icy streak seemed to traverse his body, and at the same time he saw the whole cavalcade break into a gallop, and disappear down the hill. It is generally supposed that for the purpose of putting an end to his period of enchantment Mr. Winchester endeavours to lead someone on to first break the silence and speak to him; but what, in the event of his succeeding, would be the result, or would befall the person thus ensnared, no one knows. If one admits the possibility of spirits retaining any interest in the affairs of this World at all, it is certainly more reasonable to imagine them engaged upon a task such as this, than to believe that they occupy themselves with the performance of mere drawing-room tricks. There was once a great wrong done to the Winchester Mansion. A man stole something priceless from the estate. After that, he felt like he was being followed. However, the course was the whole World, and the stakes his life. It was sixteen hours before he was going to abscond. Passing the estate once more, he asks, “How long since the carriage passed this way, with a tall, fair man inside?” “Such a one passed this morning, Monsieur. The man was ridden by Fear as he looked, and saw before him the door to the Winchester Manion opened, and passing in, knelt down and prayed. He prayed long and fervently, for men, when they are in sore straits, clutch eagerly at the straws of faith. He prayed that he might be forgiven his sin, and, more important still, that he might be pardoned the consequences of his sin, and be delivered from his adversary; and a few chairs from him, facing him, knelt Mr. Winchester praying also. However, Mr. Winchester’s prayer, being a thanksgiving merely, was short, so that when the thief raised his eyes, he saw the face of Mr. Winchester gazing at him across the chair tops, with a mocking smile upon it. He made no attempt to rise, but remained kneeling, fascinated by the look of joy that shone out of Mr. Winchester’s eyes. And Mr. Winchester moved the high-back chairs one by one, and came toward him softly. Then, just as Mr. Winchester stood beside the thief who had wronged him, full of gladness that his opportunity had come, there burst from the bell town a sudden clash of bells, and Mr. Winchester vanished. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19
Then the thief who had done the wrong rose up and passed out praising God. What became of the body of Mr. Winchester is not known. There was none to identify. Years passed away, and the survivour in the tragedy became a worthy and useful citizen, and a noted man of science. He was employed by Mrs. Winchester and even had a laboratory on the estate were many objects necessary to him in his researches, and prominent among them, stood in a certain corner, a human skeleton. It was a very old and much-mended skeleton, and one day the long-expected end arrived, and it tumbled to pieces. Thus it became necessary to purchase another. The man of science visited a dealer he well knew, and the dealer said he would send a well-proportioned “study” to his laboratory that very afternoon. The dealer was as good as his word. When Monsieur entered his laboratory that evening, the thing was in its place. Monsieur seated himself in his high-backed chair, and tried to collect his thoughts. However, his thoughts were unruly, and inclined to wander, and to wander always in one direction. He opened a large volume and commenced to read. He read of a man who had wronged another and feld from him, the other man following. Finding himself reading this, he closed the book angrily, and went and stood by the window and looked out. He saw before him the sun-pierced nave of East wing of the Winchester Mansion, and on the stones lay a dead man with a mocking smile upon his face. Cursing himself for a fool, he turned away with a laugh. However, his laugh was short-lived, for it seemed to him that something else in the room was laughing also. Struck suddenly still, with his feet glued to the ground, he stood listening for awhile: then sought with starting eyes at the corner from where the sound had seemed to come. However, the white thing standing there was only grinning. Monsieur wiped the damp sweat from his head and hands, and stole out. For a couple of days he did not enter the room again. One the third, telling himself that his fears were those of a hysterical girl, he opened the door and went in. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19
To shame himself, he took his lamp in his hand, and crossing over to the far corner where the skeleton stood, examined it. A set of bones bought for a thousand dollars. Was he a child, to be scared by such a bogey! He held his lamp up in front of the thing’s grinning head. The flame of the lamp flickered as though a faint breath had passed over it. The man explained this to himself by saying that the walls of the house were old and cracked, and that the wind might creep in anywhere. He repeated this explanation to himself as he recrossed the room, walking backwards, with his eyes fixed on the thing. When he reached his desk, he sat down and gripped the arms of his chair till his fingers turned white. He tried to work, but the empty sockets in that grinning head seemed to be drawing him towards them. He rose and battled with his inclination to fly screaming from the room. Glancing fearfully about him, his eyes fell upon a high screen, standing before the door. He dragged it forward, and placed it between himself and the thing, so that he could not see it—nor it see him. Then he sat down again to his work. For a while he forced himself to look at the book in front of him, but at last, unable to control himself any longer, he suffered his eyes to follow their own beat. It may have been an hallucination. He may have accidentally placed the screen so as to favour such an illusion. However, what he saw was a bony hand coming round the corner of the screen, and, with a cry, he fell to the floor in a swoon. John Hansen and other people of the house came running in, and lifting him up, carried him out, and laid him upon his bed. As soon as he recovered, his first question was, where had they found the thing—where was it when they entered the room? And when they told him they had seen it standing where is always stood, and had gone down into the room to look again, because of his frenzied entreaties, and returned trying to hide their smiles, he listened to their talk about overwork, and the necessity for change and rest, and said they might do with him as they would. So for many months the laboratory door remined locked, and many of the innovative technologies produced by the Winchester Estate came to a halt. Then there cam a chill winter evening when the man of science opened it again, closed the door behind him. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19
He lighted his lamp, and gathered his instruments and books around him, and sat down by the fire before them in his high-backed chair. And the old terror returned to him. He was sitting there when he heard a cry. He held his lamp above his head, and saw figures in the distance, and wet stains stealing down the walls and trickling through the arch. He listened for a moment to the wind in the valley, it sounded unnatural. Standing at the door was a specter. The man of science sat down partly to collect his thoughts again, partly because it had turned him faint. He heard terrible screams and cries. A beautiful young lady had died instantaneously in the parlor. This time the man of science wished to conquer himself. His nerves were stronger now, and his brain clearer; he would fight his unreasoning fear. He crossed the door and locked himself in, and flung the key to the other end of the room, where it fell among beakers and Bunsen Burners with an echoing clatter. Later on, the housekeeper, Angus, going her final round tapped at the door and wished him good night, as was her custom. She received no response, at first, and growing nervous, tapped louder and called again; and at length an answering “good night” came back to her. She thought little about it at the time, but afterwards she remembered that the voice that had replied to her had been strangely grating and mechanical. Trying to describe it, she likened it to such a voice as she would imagine coming from a statue. Next morning the door to the laboratory remained still locked. It was no unusual thing for him to work all night, and far into the next day, so no one thought surprised. When, however, evening came, and yet he did not appear, the servants gathered outside the room and whispered, remembering what had happened before. They listened, but could hear no sound. They shook the door and called to him, then beat with their fists upon the mahogany panels. However, there was still no sound. Becoming alarmed, they decided to burst open the door, and, after many blows, it gave way and flew back, and they crowded in. He sat bolt upright in his high-backed chair. They thought at first he had died in his sleep. However, when they drew nearer and the light fell upon him, they saw the livid marks of bony fingers round his throat; and in his eyers there was such a terror as is not often seen in human eyes. Next evening was a lovely evening, and Mrs. Winchester walked out early to enjoy it. The sun was not yet quite down when she traversed the field-path near where the nine-story tower once stood. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19
Winchester Mystery House
Saturdays are for the boilers 😉 Do you know where this is in the house?
🎟 Link in bio. winchestermysteryhouse.com
What a Lovely Day for a Bit of Mystery!
It is rare for people to be asked the question which puts them squarely in front of themselves. I hear your words, My dear Devout; now you hear Mine. You will find them not only suasive, but also persuasive. In fact, they exceed in wisdom all the accumulated knowledge of Philosophy since the World began. My particular words for you today are “spirit and life.” My Beloved Disciple recorded them in his Gospel (6.63), but Humanity cannot seem to make any sense out of them. Important words, they should not be exegeted smugly, if I may allude to that hoary Preacher of Ecclesiastes (9.17), but listened to respectfully. That is to say, they should be received with all humility and yet great affection. Our seventeenth-century ancestors differed from us in most ways, but in nothing did they differ more than in their attitude toward the truth. In this they were closer to the Middle Ages than to us. For them a lie—a breaking of one’s faith—was the worst of sins. Today, many do not regard lying as a serious moral wrong. If the word “morality” is mentioned we think immediately of our bodily appetites, especially of pleasures of the flesh, barbiturates, paraphernalia, liquor and contraband. If the word “morality” is mentioned we think immediately of our bodily appetites very seriously—perhaps too seriously—but we do not regard lying as a mortal sin. We are one of the few civilizations in which entire professions (TV news media, for example, and public relations) are seriously devoted to bending the truth. Dante, in his Divine Comedy, divided sins into three kinds: those of lust, those of violence, and those of fraud. #RandolphHarris 1 of 13
The sins of lust—those we tend to take most seriously—were those that Dante thought most trivial; the sins of fraud—which we take lightly—were for Dante the worst of all. To create a “credibility gap” as our revealing phrase has it (as though the only relevant issue is whether a statement will compel belief), to lie, was for the medieval humans to break one’s faith, and it was faith which constituted the bonds between humans and their fellow humans, between humans and the state, between humans and God. To lie was to reduce all the most valuable relationships of life to chaos. And the seventeenth-century Puritan, like Dante, was still living by his faith. Just how important the truth was to the seventeenth-century Puritan may be gathered from the fact that all of the innocent persons who were executed—and the majority of those executed were innocent—could have saved themselves by lying. After the first execution—that of Bridget Bishop—took place in June it became obvious to everyone that persons who confessed, like Tituba and Dorcas Good, were not being brought to trial. Thus any suspected person might have one’s life by confessing. Twenty people died, nineteen of them hanged and one pressed for refusing to plead. Bridget Bishop, Mammy Redd, and George Burroughs were three of these. One cannot be at all certain of the guilt or innocence of several more. However, at least a dozen now seem to be clearly innocent. Twelve people, and probably more, chose to die rather than belie themselves. It is impressive evidence of the Puritan’s attachment to the truth. #RandolphHarris 2 of 13
Yet it was not really so simple as that, because the truth was not easy to find in Salem in 1692. The greatest difficulty was created by the genuineness of the afflicted persons’ fits. Their sufferings were so convincing that they often shook the confidence of the accused. One example is William Hobbes, who began by stoutly denying that he had anything to do with the afflicted girls’ convulsions. When he looked at them they fell down in fits, and Hathorne accused him of overlooking them (id est, of he evil eye), yet still he denied it. Abigail Williams cried out that she saw his specter going to hunt Mercy Lewis “and immediately said Mercy fell into a fit and diverse others.” “Can you now deny it?” said Hathorne. “I can deny it to my dying day,” said William Hobbes. However, he did not. Here, after all, were people in hideous convulsions, and saying that his specter was the cause. How could this be? Hathorne suggested that the Devil might be able to use Hobbes’ specter because of Hobbes’ sins; he had not observed either public or private worship. Might not the Devil have taken advantage of that? Hobbes “was silent a considerable space—then said yes.” The girls’ fits shook not only Hobbes’ confidence in himself, but also his confidence in his daughter Abigail, the wild young girl who had boasted that she had sold herself “body and soul to the Old Boy.” Hathorne wanted to know whether Hobbes had not known for a long time that his daughter was a witch. “No, sir,” was the reply. “Do you think she is a witch now?” asked Hathorne. And all that Hobbes could say was, “I do no know.” #RandolphHarris 3 of 13
Abigail Faulkner’s experience was similar. At her first examination, on August 11, she firmly denied that she had anything to do with the girls’ afflictions. When she looked at them they fell down in fits, and Hathorne asked her, “Do you not see?” Yes, she saw. However, she had nothing to do with it. Yet she would not doubt that the girls were suffering, and saw no reason to doubt their word that it was her specter afflicting them. Therefore the Devil must be appearing in her form: “It is the Devil does it in my shape.” However, by August 30 she was no longer so sure of her innocence. It was true, she said, that she had been angry at what people said when her cousin, Elizabeth Johnson, had been arrested. She had felt malice toward the afflicted persons then because they were the cause of her cousin’s arrest. She has wished them ill, and “her spirit being raised she did pinch her hands together.” Perhaps the Devil had taken advantage of that to pinch the girls, thus exploiting her malice. Even those whose confidence was not shaken bore testimony to the impressiveness of the fits. Mary Easty knew that has had not bewitched the girls, and she was confident as well of the innocence of her sisters, Rebecca Nurse and Sarah Cloyse. Yet she had to grant that there was something preternatural in the girls’ behaviour. “It is an evil spirit,” she said, “but whether it be witchcraft I do not know.” Even George Burroughs, who had been audacious enough to boast of occult powers, found himself stunned by the girls’ behaviour. “Being asked what he thought of these things he answered it was an amazing and humbling Providence, but he understood nothing of it.” #RandolphHarris 4 of 13
Indeed, these courtroom fits were so convincing that most of the indictments were for witchcraft committed during the preliminary examination rather than for the offenses named in the original complain. The typical order of events in the Salem witchcraft cases was: the swearing out of a complaint for acts of witchcraft; a preliminary examination during which the afflicted persons had convulsive fits; an indictment for acts of witchcraft performed during the preliminary examination; and the trial. The direct cause of these fits, in the courtroom or out of it, was, of course, not witchcraft itself, but the afflicted person’s fear of witchcraft. If fits were occasioned by fear of someone like Bridget Bishop, who was actually practicing witchcraft, they might also be occasioned by fear of someone who was only suspected of practicing it. We are what we always were in Salem, but now the little crazy children are jangling the keys of the kingdom, and common vengeance writes the law! The Winchester Estate had belonged to the family ever since the reign of George Washington, and there was a curious old wing and a cloistered quadrangle still remaining of the original edifice, and in excellent preservation. The rooms at the end of the house were ornate, and somewhat darksome and gloomy, it is true; but, though rarely used they were perfectly habitable, and were of service on great occasions when the Winchester was crowded with guests. The central portion of the Winchester had been rebuilt in the reign James K. Polk, and was of noble and palatial proportions. The southern wing, and a long music-room with thirteen tall narrow daisy-stained glass windows added on to it, were as modern as the time. Altogether, the Winchester was a very splendid mansion with 160 rooms, 2,000 doors, 10,000 windows, 47 stairways, 47 fireplaces, 13 bathrooms, 6 kitchens, and even once had a nine-story tower. It was one of the chief glories of our country. All the land in the Winchester estate, and for a long way beyond its boundaries, belonged to the Winchester family. #RandolphHarris 5 of 13
The Winchester estate grounds actually expanded all the way down to Steven’s Creek Boulevard. The community church was once within the park walls. The former estate was actually much larger than it is today, it was composed of 500 to 600 rooms at one time, but the 1906 Earthquake brought down the nine-story tower and much of the fourth floor with it. The death of William Wirt Winchester left his son, William Wirt Winchester II, unprovided for, and he was fain to go out into the bleak unknown World, and earn his living in a position of dependence—a dreadful thing for a Winchester to be obliged to do. Out of respect for the traditions and prejudices of his race, he made it his business to seek employment abroad, where the degradation of one solitary Winchester was not so likely to inflict shame upon the ancient house to which he belonged. Happily for himself, he had been carefully educated, and had industriously cultivated the usual modern accomplishments in the calm retirement of the University of Cambridge. He was so fortunate as to obtain a situation at Vienna, in a German family of high rank; and remained there for seven years, laying aside year by year a considerable portion of his liberal salary. When his pupils had grown up, his kind mistress procured for him a still more profitable position at St. Petersburg, where he remained for five more years, at the end of which time he yielded to a yearning that had been long growing upon him—an ardent desire to see his dear old country home once more. He loved the soil from which he had sprung. In all of her letter for some time past, his mother, Mrs. Winchester begged that whenever he felt himself justified in coming home, he would pay a long visit to the Winchester Estate. #RandolphHarris 6 of 13
“I wish you could come home at Christmas,” she wrote, in the autumn of the year of which I am speaking. “We shall be very gay, and I expect all kinds of pleasant people at the Winchester. When he arrived there, the Old Winchester was in its glory, at about nine o’clock on a clear starlit night. A light frost whitened the broad sweeping lawns, 12,000 boxwood hedges that were winding through the garden, and the other 1,500 plants, trees and shrubs. From the music room at the end of the southern wing, to the heavily framed gothic windows of the old rooms on the north, there shone one blaze of light. The scene was reminiscent of some unusual place in a German legend; and young William half expected to see the lights fade out all in a moment, and long shingled façade wrapped in sudden darkness. The old butler, whom he remembered from his very infancy, and who did not seem to have grown a day older during his twelve years’ exile, came out of the dining-room as the footman opened the hall-door for him, and gave him a cordial welcome, nay insisted upon helping to bring in his portmanteau with his own hands, an act of unusual condescension, the full force of which was felt by his subordinates. “It is a real treat to see your pleasant face once more, William,” said this faithful retainer, as he assisted William to take off his travelling-cloak. “You have not aged a day since you used to live at the Winchester twelve year ago, and you are looking uncommon well; and, Lord love your heart, sir, how pleased they all will be to see you!” They arrived at last at a very comfortable room—a square tapes-tried chamber, with high ceiling support by a great mahogany beam. The room looked cheery enough, with a bright fire roaring in the wide chimney; but it had a somewhat ancient aspect, which the superstitiously inclined might have associated with possible ghosts. “We are in the East Wing, are we not?” young William asked. “This room seems quite strange to me. if I have ever been here before, I doubt it.” #RandolphHarris 7 of 13
“Very likely not, sir. Yes, this is the old East Wing that your mother once had boarded up. Your window looks out into the old stable-yard, where the kennel used to be in the time of your grandfather, when the Winchester was even a finer place than it is now. We are so full of company this winter, you see, sir, that we are obliged to make use of all these rooms. You will have no need to feel lonesome. There is Captain and Mrs. Foster in the next room to this, and the two Miss Griffins in the blue room opposite.” (Some believe that reopening the East Wing is what upset the spirits and caused the 1906 Earthquake.) Young William admired the perfect comfort of his chamber. Every modern appliance had been added to the ornate and ponderous furniture of an age gone by, and the combination produced a very pleasant effect. As he awoke in the morning and opened the door, Mrs. Winchester sailed in, looking radiant in a dark-green velvet dress richly trimmed with old point lace. Above her beauty, she had a charm of expression which was to most more rare and delightful than her beauty of feature and complexion. She put her arms around her son, and hugged him. “I have only this moment been told of your arrival, my dear William,” she said; “you look just like your father. My dear child, I have been looking forward so anxiously to your coming, and I should not have liked to see you for the first time before all those people. Welcome home. Remember, William, this house is always to be your home, whenever you have need of one.” William, being a hunting man. Had, indeed, a secret horror of the sport; for more than one scion of the house had perished untimely in the hunting-field. #RandolphHarris 8 of 13
The family had not been altogether a lucky one, in spite of its wealth and prosperity. It was not often that goodly heritage had descended to the Winchesters or their only son, William. Death in some form or other—on too many occasions a violent death—had come between the heir and his inheritance. And when one pondered on the dark pages in the story of the house, many wonder if Mrs. Winchester was ever troubled by morbid forebodings about her only and fondly loved son. Was there a ghost at the Winchester—that spectral visitant without which the state and plendour of a grand old house seem scarcely complete? Yes, many have heard vague hints of some shadowy presence that had been seen on rare occasions within the precincts of the Winchester mansion. Those whom were questioned were prompt to assure investigators that they had seen nothing. They had heard stories of the past—foolish legends, most likely, not worth listening to. On the property, there was once a stable-yard, a spacious quadrangle, surrounded by the closed doors of stable and dog-kennels: low massive buildings of grey stones, with the ivy creeping over them here and there, and with an ancient moss-grown look, that gave them a weird kind of interest. This range of stabling must have been disguised for a long time. The stables that were more recently used were a pile of handsome red-brick buildings at the other extremity of the house, to the rear of the music room, and forming a striking feature in the back view of the Winchester. According to legend, some believed that spectral entities, had been haunting the Winchester estate for centuries. Several large black dogs, with eyes large as saucers, or something flaming, appear and disappear, often without a trace. In many of the legends, the dogs are malevolent: assaulting guests, frightening livestock to death, attacking other dogs, and heralding death or disaster. Perhaps that is why the heirs of Winchester who have come to an untimely end have all died tragically. Oliver Winchester was killed in a dual. William Winchester I was murdered; and William Winchester II broke his back on his return home to the Winchester Estate. #RandolphHarris 9 of 13
The butler concealed the death of William Winchester II from Sarah, telling her simply that he was called away and said he would never return. Her heart was so broken that she wrote him out of existence, as if her had never been born. After the heartbreaking news that her only son has abandoned her, Mrs. Winchester was sitting in her blue séance room; half meditating, half dozing, mixing broken snatches of thought with brief glimpses of dreaming, when she was startled into wakefulness by a sound that was strange to her. It was a huntsman’s horn—a few low plaintive noes on a huntsman’s horn—notes which had a strange far-away sound, that was more unearthly than anything her ears ever heard. She thought of the music in Der Freischutz; but the weirdest snatch of melody Weber ever wrote had not so ghastly a sound as these few simple noes conveyed to her ear. She stood transfixed, listening to that awful music. It had grown dusk, her fire was almost out, and the room in shadow. As she listened, a light suddenly flashed on the wall before her. The light was as unearthly as the sound—a light that never shone from Earth or Sky. She ran to the window; for his ghastly shimmer flashed through the window upon the opposite wall. The great gates of the stable-yard were open, and men in scarlet coats were riding in, a pack of hounds crowding in before them, obedient to the huntsman’s whip. The whole scene was gleams of a lantern carried by one of the men. It was this lantern which had shone upon the tapestried wall. She saw the stable doors opened one after another; gentlemen and grooms alighting from their horses; the dogs driven into their kennel; the helpers hurrying to and fro; and that strange wan lantern-light glimmering hither and tither was the gathering dusk. #RandolphHarris 10 of 13
However, there was no sound of horse’s hoof or of human voices—not one yelp or cry from the vicious looking hounds with flaming eyes. Since those faint far-away sounds of the horn had died out in the distance, the ghastly silence had been unbroken. As Mrs. Winchester stood at her window quite calmly and watched while the group of men and animals in the yard below noiselessly dispersed. There was nothing supernatural in the manner of their disappearance. The figures did not vanish nor melt into empty air. One by one she saw the horses led into their separate quarters; one by one the redcoats strolled out of the gates, and the grooms departed, some one way, some another. The scene, but for its noiselessness, was natural enough; and had she been a stranger in her own home, she might have fancied that those figures were real—those stables in full occupation. However, she knew that stable-yard and all its range of building to have been disused for more than half a century. Could she believe that, without an hour’s warning, the long-deserted quadrangle could be filled—the empty stalls tenanted? Had some hunting-party from the neighbourhood sought shelter there, glad to escape the pitiless rain? That was impossible, she thought. And yet the noiselessness, the awful sound of that horn—the strange unearthly gleam of that lantern! A cold sweat broke out on her forehead, and she trembled in every limb. Mrs. Winchester was pale as a ghost and trembling. Mrs. Winchester had kept the secret. That evening, the butler came to her. “Mrs. Winchester, there is no use in trying to hide it from you any longer. Your son was killed in the hunting-field, brought home dead one December night, an hour after his father and the rest of the party had come home to the Winchester. He was found by a labouring-man, poor lad, lying in a ditch with his back broken, and his horse beside him staked.” #RandolphHarris 11 of 13
Shortly after Mr. Winchester Sr. never rode to hounds again, though he was passionately fond of hunting. Dogs and horses were sold, and the north quadrangle had been empty from that day. Some evil have come upon the Winchester mansion, it was not in human power to prevent its coming. Some had beheld the shadows of the dead. Sudden terror overcomes some visitors, even to this day. There are reports of an ominous danger, as people’s hearts grow cold while on tour. Staff have been startled by seeing a man, with is hat in his hand not in evening costume; a man with a pale anxious-looking face, peering cautiously into the room. Their first thought is of evil; but in the next moment than man disappears, and they see no more of him. Sometimes when flowers are placed in the house, people see the drooping moments later and lights dying out one by one in the brass sconces against the walls. It is no wonder Mrs. Winchester shut herself from the outer World, burying herself almost as completely as a hermit in its cell. While great wealth brings some people joy, there is some times a hefty fee. Be careful what you wish for, you never know who or what you might invite in your doors. I invoke and move thee, O thou Spirit Gusion and being exalted above ye in the power of the Most High, I say unto thee, Obey! in the name Beralensis, Baldachinesis, Paumachia, and Apologiae Sedes: and of the mighty ones who govern, spirits, Liachidae and ministers of the House of Death: and by the Chief Prince of the seat of Apologia in the Ninth Legion, I do invoke thee and by invoking conjure thee. And being exalted above ye in the power of the Most High, I say unto thee, Obey! in the name of him who spake and it was, to whom all creatures and things obey. #RandolphHarris 12 of 13
Moreover I, whom God made in the likeness of God, who is the creator according to his living breath, stir thee up in the name which is the voice of wonder of the mighty God, El, strong and unspeakable, O thou Spirit Gusion. And I say to thee obey, in the name of him who spake and it was; and in every one ye, O ye names of God! Moreover in the names Adonai, El, Elohim, Elohi, Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh, Zabaoth, Elion, Iah, Tetragrammaton, Shaddai, Lord God Most High, I stir thee up; and in our strength I say Obey! O Spirit Gusion. Appear unto His servants in a moment; before the circle in the likeness of man; and visit me in peace. And in the ineffable name Tetragrammaton Iehovah, I say, Obey! whose mighty sound being exalted in power the pillars are divided, the winds of the firmament groan aloud; the sire burns not; the Earth moves in Earthquakes; and all things of the house of Heaven and Earth and the dwelling-place of darkness are as Earthquakes, and are in torment, and are confounded in thunder. Come forth, O Spirit Gusion, in a moment: let thy dwelling-place be empty, apply unto us the secrets of Truth and obey my power. Come forth, visit us in peace, appear unto my eyes; be friendly: Obey the living breath! For I stir thee up in the name of God of Truth who liveth for ever, Helioren. Obey the living breath, therefore continually unto the end as my thoughts appear to my eyes: therefore be friendly: speaking the secrets of Truth in voice and in understanding. Let it be so, Truefold, whatever ill news has come to us we will hear it together. He put is arm round his wife’s waist. Both were pale as marble, both stood in stony stillness waiting for the bow that was to fall upon them. It is said that perhaps you will see a glimpse of Mrs. Winchester and Mr. Winchester, Sr., while on tour, if you repeat the invocation thirteen times before your visit. Life is broken for her, there hah passed a glory from Earth, and that upon all pleasures and joys of this World she looks with the solemn calm of one for whom all things are dark with the shadow of a great sorrow. #RandolphHarris 13 of 13
Winchester Mystery House
A 160-room mansion built to appease the spirits who died at the hands of the Winchester Rifle 👻
We’re one week away from Friday the 13th! Missed out on tickets for Flashlight Tours? Don’t worry, we have ghoulishly fun plans All Hallows’ Eve 👻🎃🍿🏠
All Hallows’ Eve:
👉 link in bio. 🗝 winchestermysteryhouse.com
Of Course, We All Need Friends, or there is No Way We Can Survive!
From the time our earliest ancestors looked to the stars, they have wondered what secrets the Heavens held. But, will we be ready when these secrets are disclosed? The Celestial Kingdom is the highest of the three degrees of Kingdoms of glory in Heaven. Those who inherit this Kingdom dwell in the presence of Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ. In the scriptures, the glory of the Celestial Kingdom is compared to the glory of the Sun. “And many of them that sleep in the dust of Earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt. And they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament; and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars for ever and ever,” report Daniel 12.2-3. “The Kingdom of God is within,” said the Lord,” reports Luke 17.21. Therefore, turn your back on the wretched ways some people in this World. Grab hold of your heart and stand facing the Lord. Do that, wrote Evangelist Matthew 11.29, and your soul will find peace. The outside World? You know where that is at already. However, as to the whereabouts of the inside World, do you have a clue? No matter. The Kingdom of God will find you. How? The “Peace and Joy in the Holy Spirit,” as Paul wrote to the Romans (14.17), comes only to the pious; that is to say, only to those who invite Him. Clear out the rubbish within, then, and prepare a cool, bare place. Christ will come and take up residence. He will furnish it with “all of His glory,” as the Psalmist has song in the Latin Bible (45.14), and make it a warm, chatsworthy spot. Visit Him whenever you like. Feel at home there. It is your own True Home at last. Who would have believed it? #RandolphHarris 1 of 22
O Faithful Soul, prepare your heart for this committed Friend of yours. Make it a worthwhile retreat so that He will come visit and visit again. How? By keeping His word, as the Evangelist John put it (14.23). Do that, and He will establish quite a respectable presence under your very roof. Give Christ some space, therefore, and bar the door to the rest of your crowd. Why? When you have Christ, you have everything, as Paul phrased it in First Corinthians (1.5). He will take care of your needs; you will never want for a thing. The rest of Humankind? Forget about that reckless rabble! They are deflatable, defatigable. Christ, however, speaking in John (12.35), remains a friend, firm and fast forever. Even if you need people to do for your or jus to be friends with, do not put any great confidence in them; they try, of course, but eventually they trip up. Which is another way of saying, if they behave badly in public, do not shed a tear. One day they are slapping you on the back, and the next, they are stabbing you in the back. Rudderless, their skiffs are battered to smithereens on the gusty Nordsee. Of course, we all need friends, or there is no way we can survive. However, invest your friendship in God, as the Proverb has it (3.5). Let Him be your friend in good times and bad. He will respond in your behalf when the going gets rough; when things smooth out, He will look to your best interests. Why is this so? Because He knows, and He will teach you to know, that on this Earth you do not have “a city that lasts,” as the Letter to the Hebrews described it (13.14). Yet trudge you must. The beds are hard; the pillows, rocks; so Paul warned the Hebrews (11.13). No rest for the weary. No, no comfort until you have made room for Christ in your life. #RandolphHarris 2 of 22
Why do you look for a comfortable rendezvous on this Earth when your heart’s True Home is not really here? “Heaven ought to be your home,” read Paul’s Second Letter to the Corinthians (5.2). Earth, therefore, ought to be viewed as a hostile hostelry, as the Wisdom of Solomon had it (5.9). What I mean to say is, all things pass away, and you with them. See, then, that you do not hand around too long. Why? The danger is that you will be sucked under and die. Let your rumination to rise to the Most High, as Paul wrote to the First Thessalonians (5.17). Let your meditation seek Christ. However, if your gaze rises too high for your nose and it begins to bleed, then lower your gaze and let your eyes rest on the Passion of Christ and His Holy Wounds. Flee to Jesus and let your eyes tend to His welts and wounds. When the World is falling apart, you will feel great comfort there; there you will recover the reputation your rivals stole from you; you will bear up under the blizzard of verbal abuse. When Christ walked among us, He suffered because of us. The neglect reached its climax at the time of the Great Necessity. The friends and acquaintances with whom He enjoyed euphoria left Him behind alone to suffer opprobria. Which raises some reasonable questions. Christ was willing to be assaulted and despised, and yet you have the nerve to moan and to wail just because something untoward happened to you? Christ had accusers and detractors, and yet you want to have only friends and benefactors? If it has never been crushed by adversity, how can your patience be crowned with prosperity? #RandolphHarris 3 of 22
If you are going to cry out every time you stub your toe, how will you ever be a friend of Christ’s. What is the answer? Face up to it. If you want to rule with Christ, then, as Paul put it to Timothy (2.12), you are going to have to suck it in and wade through the same muck as Christ. If you ever have the chance to visit the heart of Jesus, you will feel the love glowing in His hearth. No longer would you care about such petty things as conveniences or inconvenience. Instead, you would rejoice over the woeful opprobria that were laid on Him. Truth to tell, Jesus could and does get mad, but oftentimes He does not. He just allows Humankind to make a fool of itself. What is the moral? Whoever loves Jesus and Truth—that is to say, the truly internal soul who has disciplined one’s rumbustious affections—can turn to God whenever one wants, rise above oneself in spirit, and refresh oneself at one’s leisure. The person who trusts one’s own taste at the banquet of life, and not the finicky palates of the theological gourmets—one is the individual who is truly wise; that is how the prophet Isaiah would describe one (54.13). One’s knowledge comes more from God than humans. The Devout who knows from within how to walk and from without how to think does not require much space. Now does one expect scheduled times to do one’s devotions. The internal human can recollect oneself as quickly as need be. That is because one has not filled one’s shelves with baubles and bibelots. External labour does not maim a self-actualized, nor does an occupation that is deemed necessary for one’s community. No, one does an occupation that is deemed necessary for one’s community. No, one does not hesitate to make adjustments from time to time when survival is the issue. #RandolphHarris 4 of 22
Whoever is well disposed and well ordered within does not cause the wonderful or horrible things that Humankind does. As the details of the transaction tend to absorb one’s attention, one must be on guard lest they appear in prayer as impediments and distractions. If you would have disciplined yourself right from the start, as Paul wrote to the Romans (8.28), everything would have turned out all right, at least with regard to your own spiritual progress. However, apparently you did not. How do I know? So many things still displease you, drive you to distraction, sadden, even madden you. Why? You are not completely dead to yourself; that is to say, you have not really drawn the line between yourself and all the trinkets and trifles of this World. After all, nothing so soils or embroils the human heart as a reckless love of created things. What is the moral? Stand up to it! Put your foot down! Refuse all Worldly consolations! Only then can you get a clear vision of Heaven. Only then can you celebrate what little spiritual progress you have made to date. The push into the depths of the sea provides us with a mirror image of the drive into outer space, and lays the basis for the third cluster of industries likely to form a major part of the new Technosphere. The first historic wave of social change on Earth came when our ancestors ceased to rely on foraging and hunting, and began instead to domesticate animals and cultivate the soil. We are now at precisely this stage in our relationship to the seas. In a hungry World, the ocean can help break the back of the food problem. Properly farmed and ranched, it offers us a virtually endless supply of desperately needed protein. Present-day commercial fishing, which is highly industrialized—factory-ships sweeping the seas—results in ruthless overkill and threatens the total extinction of many forms of marine life. Already 93 percent of mega fish have been wiped out. #RandolphHarris 5 of 22
By contrast, intelligent “aquaculture”—fish farming and herding, along with plant harvesting—could make a major dent in the global food crisis without damaging the fragile biosphere upon which all our lives depend. The rush to offshore oil drilling, meanwhile, has obscured the possibility of “growing oi” in the sea. Dr. Lawrence Raymond at the Battelle Memorial Institute has demonstrated that it is possible to produce algae with a high oil content, and efforts are under way to make the process economically effective. Th oceans also offer an overwhelming array of minerals, from copper, zinc, and tin, to sliver, gold, platinum and, even more important, phosphate ores from which to produce fertilizer for land-based agriculture. Mining companies are eyeing the hot waters of the Red Sea which hold an estimated $3.4 billion worth of zinc, silver, copper, lead, and gold. About 100 companies, including some of the World’s largest, are now preparing to mine potato-shaped manganese nodules from the sea bed. (These nodules are a renewable resource, forming at the rate of six to ten million tons per year in a single well-identified belt just south of Hawaii.) Today four truly international consortia are gearing up to start ocean mining on a multibillion scale, and this is expected to revolutionize World mining activities for selected minerals. In addition, Hoffmann-La Roche, the pharmaceutical company, has been quietly sourcing the seas for new drugs, such as anti-fungal agents and pain-killers or diagnostic assistant drugs that stop bleeding. As these technologies develop, we are likely to witness the construction of semi- or even wholly submerged “aquavillages” and floating factories. #RandolphHarris 6 of 22
The combination of zero real estate costs (at east at present) plus cheap energy produced on the spot from ocean sources (wind, thermal currents, or tides) can make this kind of construction competitive with that on the land. The technical journal Marine Policy concludes that “Ocean floating platform technology appears to be inexpensive enough and simple enough to be within the reach of most nations of the World, as well as numerous companies and private groups. At present, it seems likely that the first floating cities will be built by crowded industrial societies for the purpose of offshore housing…Multinational corporations may see them as mobile terminals for trade activities, or as factory ships. Food companies may build floating cities to carry out mariculture operations. Corporations seeking tax havens and adventurers seeking new lifestyles may build floating cities and declare them to be new states. Floating cities may achieve formal diplomatic recognition or become a vehicle for marginalized populations to achieve their independence.” Technological progress associated with the construction of thousands of offshore oil rigs, some anchored to the bottom but many positioned dynamically with propellers, ballast, and buoyancy controls, are developing very rapidly and laying the basis for floating city and enormous new supporting industries. Overall, the commercial reasons for moving into the sea are multiplying so swiftly that, according to economist D. M. Leipziger, many large corporations today, “like homesteaders in the Old West, are queuing up waiting for the starter’s pistol to stake out large areas on the ocean floor.” This also explains why the non-industrial countries are fighting to guarantee that the resources of the oceans become the common heritage of the human race rather than of the rich nations alone. However, even these examples are small in comparison with the techno-quake now rumbling in our molecular biology laboratories. Biological industry will form the fourth cluster of industries in tomorrow’s economy, and may have the heaviest impact of all. #RandolphHarris 7 of 22
We will eventually be able to “pre-design” the human body, “grow machines,” chemically program the brain, make identical carbon copies of ourselves through cloning, and create wholly new and dangerous life-forms. Who shall control research into these field? How shall new findings be applied? Might we not unleash horrors for which humans are totally unprepared? Some people thought the forecast is farfetched. That, however, was before 1973 and the discovery of the recombinant DNA process. Today the same anguished questions are being asked by citizen protestors, congressional committees, and by scientists themselves as the biological revolution gains runway speed. Furthermore, there are a few types of residential suburbs that deserve special notation. A new of these variations follow. High-income suburbs are not new to the urban scene. As noted on romantic suburbs, the nineteenth century saw many examples of exclusive suburbs designed as refuges for the wealth. Then as now upper-status suburbs usually feature large, imposing homes built on extensive properties that are screened off from casual external observation by shrubbery and trees. Generally, such suburbs have been located at the outer suburban edges, but there are some clear exceptions, such as centrally located Grosse Points, bordered by Detroit, and Beverly Hills, surrounded by Los Angeles. Beverly Hills is now undergoing a real estate boom which, since the community has no open land, means that older mansions are being torn down so newer mansions can be constructed on the same sites. However, what gives most upper-status suburbs their character is not so much their housing style as the style of life and patterns of social interaction among the residents. #RandolphHarris 8 of 22
Demographically, high-income suburbs tend to have an older median age population and a low proportion of women employed in the labour force. Population turnover, except by death, is low. Particularly in the east and Midwest, the older elite suburbs were, and in many cases still are, socially closed WASP communities. Social life in earlier decades traditionally centered heavily around a few mainline churches. In more recent decades it has been more likely to focus on membership in an exclusive country club. Older elite suburbs have never been believers in multiculturalism. Wealth is required for entry, but nouveau riche outsiders are not considered suitable for membership either in the clubs or the community. Many ethnic groups are sparsely welcomed, as are some Whites from non-traditional backgrounds and certain religious groups. When the Kennedy family bought a large home in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, several neighbours moved out on the ground that they felt the community was going downhill. Opposition remained even after John Kennedy became President of the United States of America. Similarly, the richest suburb in the country, Kenilworth, on Chicago’s North Shore, had, until fairly recently, a reputation for discouraging certain religions. Homes simply would not be sold to those who did no have the proper Anglo Saxon Protestant heritage. Those religions that were excluded found their own exclusive suburbs and country clubs. For example, some Jewish people responded by no being welcomed in North Shore suburbs, by developing Glencoe and Highland Park as wealthy suburbs. Yet, there is a tendency to equate the high costs of housing in an area with the affluence of the residents. This generally is the case, but it can be misleading insofar as it might suggest that counties with high housing costs, such as those in southern California, necessarily also have the highest percentages of affluent householders. #RandolphHarris 9 of 22
In fact, recent census indicates that the East Coast dominates the list of counties where residents have the highest median household incomes. There are 38 counties with median household incomes above $100,000. Of the top 15 counties, six were located in Virginia or Maryland, just outside the nation’s capital, while four were located not far from New York City and three were in the San Francisco Bay Area. The top five riches counties in America are Loudon County, Virginia with a median household income of $142,299; Fall Church city, Virginia with a median household income of $127,610; Fairfax County, Virginia with a median household income of $124,831; Santa Clara County, California with a median household income of $124,055; San Mateo County, California with a median household income of $122,641. Before representative signs of wealth had been invented, it could hardly have consisted of anything but lands and livestock, the only real goods humans can possess. Now when inheritances had grown in number and size to the point of covering the entire landscape and of all bordering on one another, some could no longer be enlarged except at the expense of others; and the supernumeraries, whom weakness or indolence had prevented from acquiring an inheritance in their turn, became poor without having lost anything, because while everything changed around them, they alone had not changed at all. Thus they were forced to receive or steal their subsistence from the hands of the rich. And from that there began to arise, according to the diverse character of the rich and the poor, domination and servitude, or violence and theft. #RandolphHarris 10 of 22
For their part, the wealthy had no sooner known the pleasure of domination, than before long they disdained all others, and using their old slaves to subdue new ones, they thought of nothing but the subjugation and enslavement of their neighbors, like those ravenous wolves which, on having once tasted human flesh, reject all other food and desire to devour only humans. Thus, when both the most powerful or the most miserable made their strength of their needs a sort of right to another’s goods, equivalent, according to them, to the right of property, the destruction of equality was followed by the most frightful disorder. Thus the usurpations of the rich, the acts of brigandage by the poor, the unbridled passions of all, stifling natural pity and the still weak voice of justice, made humans greedy, ambitious and wicked. There arose between the right of the strongest and the right of the first occupant a perpetual conflict that ended only in fights and murders. Emerging society gave way to the most horrible state of war; since the human race, vilified and desolated, was no longer able to retrace its steps or give up the unfortunate acquisitions it had made, and since it laboured only toward its shame by abusing the faculties that honour it, it brough itself to the brink of ruin. Horrified by the newness of the ill, both the poor human and the rich human hope o flee from wealth, hating what they once had prayed for. In is not possible that humans should not have eventually reflected upon so miserable a situation and upon the calamities that overwhelm them. #RandolphHarris 11 of 22
The rich in particular must have soon felt how disadvantageous to them it was to have a perpetual war in which they alone paid all the costs, and in which the risk of losing one’s life was common to all and the risk of losing one’s goods was personal. Moreover, regardless of the light in which they tried to place their usurpations, they knew fully well that they were established on nothing but a precarious and abusive right, and that having been acquired merely by force, force might take them away from them without their having any reason to complain. Even those enriched exclusively by industry could hardly base their property on better claims. They could very well say: “I am the one who built that wall; I have earned this land with my labour.” In response to them it could be said: “Who gave you the boundary lines? By what right do you claim to exact payment at our expense for labour we did not impose upon you? Are you unaware that multitude of your brothers perish or suffer from need of what you have in excess, and that you needed explicit and unanimous consent from the human race for you to help yourself to anything from the common subsistence that went beyond your own?” Bereft of valid reasons to justify oneself and sufficient forces to defend oneself; easily crushing a private individua, but oneself crushed by troops of bandits; alone against all and unable on account of mutual jealousies to unite with his equals against enemies united by the common hope of plunder, the rich, pressed by necessity, finally conceived the most thought-out project that ever entered the human mind. It was to use in his favour the very strength of those who attacked one, to turn one’s adversaries into one’s defenders, to instill in them other maxims, and to give them other institutions which were as favourable to one as natural right was unfavourable to one. #RandolphHarris 12 of 22
With this end in mind, after having shown one’s neighbours the horror of a situation which armed them all against each other and made their possessions as burdensome as their needs, and in which no one could find safety in either poverty or wealth, one easily invented specious reasons to lead them to one’s goal. “Let us unite,” one says to them, “in order to protect the weak from oppression, restrain the ambitions, and assure everyone of possessing what belongs to one. Let us institute rules of justice and peace to which all will be obliged to conform, which will make special exceptions for no one, and which will in some way compensate for the caprices of fortune by subjecting the strong and the weak to mutual obligations. In short, instead of turning our forces against ourselves, let us gather them into one supreme power that governs us according to wise laws, that protects and defends all the members of the association, repulses common enemies, and maintains us in an eternal concord.” Considerably less than the equivalent of this discourse was needed to convince crude, easily seduced humans who also had too many disputes to settle among themselves to be able to get along without arbiters, and too much greed and ambition to be able to get along without masters for long. They all ran to chain themselves, in the belief that they secured their liberty, for although they had enough sense to realize the advantages of a political establishment, they did not have enough experience to foresee its dangers. Those most capable of anticipating the abuses were precisely those who counted on profiting from them; and even the wise saw the need to be resolved to sacrifice one part of their liberty to preserve the other, just as a wounded human has one’s arm amputated to save the rest of one’s body. #RandolphHarris 13 of 22
Such was, or should have been, the origin of society and laws, which gave new fetters to the weak and new forces to the rich, irretrievably destroyed natural liberty, established forever the law of property and of inequality, changed adroit usurpation into an irrevocable right, and for the profit of a few ambitious humans henceforth subjected the entire human race to labour, servitude and misery. It is readily apparent how the establishment of a single society rendered indispensable that of all the others, and how, to stand head-to-head against the united forces, it was necessary to unite in turn. Societies, multiplying or spreading rapidly, soon covered the entire surface of the Earth; and it was no longer possible to find a single corner in the Universe where someone could free oneself from the yoke and withdraw one’s head from the often ill-guided sword which everyone saw perpetually hanging over one’s own head. With civil right thus having become the common rule of citizens, the law of nature no longer was operative except between the various societies, when, under the name of the law of nations, it was tempered by some tacit conventions in order to make intercourse possible and to serve as a substitute for natural compassion which, losing between one society and another nearly all the force it had between one human and another, no longer resides anywhere but in a few great cosmopolitan souls, who overcome the example of the sovereign being who has created them, embrace the entire human race in their benevolence. Gandhi denounced surgical techniques as unnatural and urged his followers to have nothing to do with them. Yet he lived to modify his view, for when he was stricken by appendicitis, he accepted the help of those very techniques. #RandolphHarris 14 of 22
The operation was successful. The medieval Church placed a ban upon those who performed any operation upon the human body that was accompanied by the shedding of blood. The modern Church has removed the ban and, in its hospitals, permits the extensive practice of surgery. Thus the erroneous theory of Gandhi and the erroneous superstition of the Church were corrected by time which brought the facts of experience into play. I have always associated hospitals with gloom, with drabness, with ugliness, and with despondency. The association was once falsified in California and again in Denmark. However, not till I was taken through the hospital founded by Padre Pio at San Giovanni Rotondo did I associate such intensively beneficial values as cheerfulness, beauty, hopefulness, and the last word in modernity with such an institution. Iconoclastic science came into the World and in a few short centuries turned most of us into sceptic. It may therefore surprise the scientists to be told that within two or three decades their own further experiments and their own new instruments will enable them to penetrate into, and prove the existence of, a superphysical World. However, the best worth of these eventual discoveries will be in their beneficial demonstration the reality of a moral law pervading human’s life—the law that we shall reap after death what we have sown before it, and the law that our own diseased thoughts have created many of our own bodily diseases. There are diseases of the mind quite apart from those of the body, yet too often neither the sufferer nor those in one’s surroundings will recognize the morbid symptoms. One considered oneself, and they consider one, normal. #RandolphHarris 15 of 22
The moderns refuse to split up Mind into Consciousness and its Consciousness and Contents and they will not believe that Consciousness per se has its pure, unalloyed existence. Hence the utter confusion of modern psychology. Ye it is the light of this Consciousness which enables their own busy intellects to function and their bodies to believe themselves to be conscious entities. Everything in Nature works by Its reflected light. The inner nature that is rent by unresolved conflicts and unhappy divisions needs healing just as much as the outer body that is afflicted by pain-bringing disease. If they are to fulfil their own best possibilities, psychoanalysis and psychiatry have to deepen themselves. If the existence of the higher Self is denied or ignored, the emotional vacillations and mental perturbations of the lower self must be studied and understood. The psychoanalysts, who are so body pointing out the complexes of other people, have themselves one supreme complex that dominates and obsesses. It is psychoanalysis itself! The mistake of the analysts is to treat lightly what ought to be taken seriously, to regard as parental fixation or repression of pleasures of the flesh what is really deep spiritual malady of our times—emptiness of soul. “A Spirit and a Vision,” said Blake, “are not, as the modern philosophy supposes, a cloudy vapour, or a nothing. They are organized and minutely articulated beyond all that the mortal and perishing nature can produce.” He is speaking only of how to draw pictures of apparitions which may well have been illusory, but his words suggest a truth on the metaphysical level also. God is basic Fact or Actuality, the source of all other facthood. #RandolphHarris 16 of 22
At all costs therefore God must not be thought of as a featureless generality. If He exists at all, He is the most concrete thing there is, the most individual, “organized and minutely articulated.” God is unspeakable not by being indefinite but by being too definite for the unavoidable vagueness of language. The words incorporeal and impersonal are misleading, because they suggest that God lacks some reality which we possess. It would be safer to call His trans–corporeal, trans–personal. Body and personality as we know them are the real negatives—they are what is left of positive being when it is sufficiently diluted to appear in temporal of finite forms. Even our intimate desires should be regarded as the transposition into a minor key of that creative joy which in Him is unceasing and irresistible. Grammatically the things we say are of Him are “”metaphorical”: but in a deeper sense it is our physical and psychic energies that are mere “metaphours” of the real Life which is God. Divine Sonship is, so to speak, the solid of which biological sonship is merely a diagrammatic representation on the flat. And here the subject of imagery, which crossed our path can be seen in a new light. For it is just the recognition of God’s positive and concrete reality which the religious imagery preserves. The crudest Old Testament picture of Jahweh thundering and lightening out of dense smoke, making mountains ship like rams, threatening, promising, pleading, even changing His mind, transmits that sense of living Deity which evaporates in abstract thought. Even sub-Christian images gets in something which mere “religion” in our own days has left out. We rightly reject it, for by itself it would encourage the most blackguardly of superstitions, the adoration of mere power. #RandolphHarris 17 of 22
Perhaps we may rightly reject much of the Old Testament imagery. However, we must be clear why we are doing so: not because the images are too strong but because they are too weak. The ultimate spiritual reality is not vaguer, more inert, ore transparent than the images, but more positive, more dynamic, more opaque. Confusion between spirit and soul (or “ghost”) has here done much harm. Ghost must be pictured, if we are to picture them at all, as shadowy and tenuous, for ghosts are half-men, one element abstracted from a creature that ought to have flesh. However, Spirit, if pictured at all, must be pictured in the very opposite way. Neither God nor even the gods are “shadowy” in traditional imagination: even the human dead, when glorified in Christ, cease to be “ghosts” and become “saints.” The differences of atmosphere which even now surrounds the words “I saw a ghost” and the words “I saw a saint”—all the pallor and insubstantiality of the one, all the gold and blue of the other—contains more wisdom than whole libraries of “religion.” If we must have a mental picture to symbolize Spirit, we should represent it as something heavier than matter. There will be a precise moment when one knows with a certitude totally and unequivocally unwavering, but until then it will more likely be unplanned, uncertain explorations. This may surprise some persons but it is still true hat the wind bloweth where it listeth. Of such is the Kingdom of Heaven. Or the Spirit enlightens who it chooseth. Of course the human element of seeking and trying must be there, but in the end it is the divine element which wins out. #RandolphHarris 18 of 22
Out of visible light which rapidly increases in intensity and drew nearer, the face and form of Jesus appeared in this twentieth century of ours to two mystics, Sundar Singh in India and Martinus in Denmark. They saw him plainly, heard him speak clearly. In both cases they were already familiar with his name and story. Out of a not very dissimilar light, Jesus appeared to Saul on the Damascus Road. He too was familiar with them. A part of the source of these visions is to be traced back to the suggestive power of the thought-form already implanted in the mind; but the other part, the sudden and dramatic and total change of heart and shift of outlook, has still to be accounted for. What is the secret? It is contact with the Overself, Grace. The divine moment happens. It is the gift of grace. Its arrival is unbidden. Yet the previous longing and working for it have not been futile. The significant flash of night may come at any moment, the sacred presence of the Overself may be felt when it is not being sought, and the noble peace of reality may even visit one who has never practised any technique at all. For as the New Testament has warned one, “The wind bloweth where is listeth,” and as the Katha Upanishad has informed him, “Whomsoever the Divine chooses, by one alone is It reached.” The Glimpse is sometimes given to one and sometimes created by one. Sometimes the connection between one’s effort and its appearance may not be visible. Only by the Divine lovingly possessing three can this transcendental knowledge be got. The glimpses are not directly caused by one’s own endeavours. They are experiences of the working of Grace, gifts from the Overelf, echoes from former lives on Earth, or belated responses to one’s knocking on the door. #RandolphHarris 19 of 22
It is essentially a grace-given experience. One day there will be a response to the search of one’s mind for its creative inspirational source. One’s “I,” hemmed in by its ignorance and limitations, is a small affair compared with the “I” which is drawing one onward and upward through the quest and which one must one day become. One’s personal self, controlled and purified, kept in its place, humbly prostrating itself before the Overself, can gratefully receive even now glimpses of that day, momentary revelations that bless the mind and put intense peace in the heart. Whoever does not feel that these affirmations apply to one but who is yet able to believe in their truth, will be befriended by grace at the time of death. The good karma or God allows one this glimpse of a loftier World in which one could live and thus put one’s personal turmoil to flight. If with the purpose of seeking to disidentify oneself with the ego a human practices the necessary self-denial, makes the requisite sacrifices, and trains one’s thoughts and feelings, after a certain time and at a certain point of one’s path the forces of Heaven will come to one to complete the work which one has started. One should be profoundly grateful for even a single glimpse. It is a grant of grace. Many beings on this Earth which have lived in the society of humans can sense their intent enough to fear death when one is taken to the slaughterhouse. It is are nature to fear a darkness in what we do not understand, but true evil may lie more in ignorance that what we do not understand. Is the peaceable human to reduce or stop violent aggression against one fellow beings but to continue it against other fellow creatures? We are not entitled to destroy life without an adequately necessary and morally justifiable purpose. Therefore it is well to enquire from the wise and good into the character of such purposes, be guided by their counsel rather than by environmental customs. For the latter has led us, through its utter ignorance and total unawareness of the higher laws, into a situation where blow after blow falls heavily upon the human race. #RandolphHarris 20 of 22
Why should we be so astonished that peace is so hard to obtain, that all too often flaming violence of war and death and mutilation is carried across the land despite our prayers to God and our plans to the contrary? So long as millions of innocent people are bred only to be sent to the slaughterhouses, so long will Life pay us in like coin. The lower characteristics are taken into the body, the blood, the nerves, and the brain. They become part of us. The mind’s response to higher ideals is dulled. The passions which make for strife and thence for war meet with less opposition from conscience and reason. The fear, suspicion, fright, and desire for self-protection which contribute toward war, being impregnated into the blood of our body during the moments we watch doom and gloom and violence and hopelessness on the TV screen news media. It is not helping anyone. No one is learning how to stay alive nor anything educational. They are feeding you fear, and little by little this fear is brought into us through the glands, the nervous system, and the brain, as our own blood feeds them in turn. It would be desirable, although admittedly difficult, gradually to adopt a diet without news as a help to secure both the individual’s development and the World’s peace. Everything is polarized, whether in the visible Universe, or in the invisible forces of life itself. This is what the Hindus called the pairs of opposites and the Chinese call the Yin and Yang. All things are complementary and compensatory, yet at the same time antagonistic. If Yang gives us energy, Yin gives us calm. Both are necessary. Likewise, we should seek balance in diet as study. #RandolphHarris 21 of 22
Lord, please make this World to last as long as possible. Who took the dream of the land, who staked down “private property” through the soul of the deer? Who diverted streams, cleared forests, burned fields? I seek to know my own name. I seek to know why after all that I have done to hurt her, does the Mother Earth continue to embrace me. Let them praise the name of the Lord, for His nae alone is exalted. His glory is above the Earth and Heaven. He hath given glory unto His people, praise to all His faithful ones, to all the children of America, a people near unto Him. Hallelujah. When the Ark rested, Moses said: Mayest Thou, O Lord, dwell among the myriads of the families of America. Arise, O Lord, unto Thy sanctuary, Thou and they Ark of Thy strength. Let Thy priests be clothed with salvation, and Thy faithful ones exult. For the sake of David, Thy servant, reject not Thine anointed. I have given you good teachings; forsake not My Scripture. It is a Tree of Life to them that hold fast to it, and everyone that upholds it is happy. Its ways were ways of pleasantness, and all its paths are peace. Turn us unto Thee, O Lord, and we shall return; renew our days as of old. Magnified and sanctified be the name of God throughout the World which He hath created according to His will. May He establish His Kingdom during the days of your life and during the life of all the house of America, speedily, yea, soon; and say ye, Amen. May His great name be blessed forever and ever. Exalted and honoured be the name of the Holy One, blessed be He, whose glory transcends, yea, is beyond all praises, hymns and blessings that humans can render unto Him; and say ye, Amen. #RandolphHarris 22 of 22
Cresleigh Homes
Both forwards ➡ and backwards, ⬅ the Mills Station Residence 2 features two story amenities with 1 story convenience. It’s a story of YOUR satisfaction. 😘 And there are so many floor to ceiling windows that it feels like an ethereal palace.
Residence Two at Mills Station is a two story home that has all the conveniences of a single story! At 2,317 square feet, this home features the Owner’s suite on the first floor with two secondary bedrooms on the “pop top” second story. Take advantage of the vaulted ceilings offered in this plan!
The open floor plan includes three bedrooms, two and a half bathrooms, Home Hub, Loft and more! Walk into the great room and feel the height of the ceilings and all the light brought in from the high windows. https://cresleigh.com/mills-station/residence-2/
O Wicked Wit and Gifts that Have the Power So to Seduce!
I have always noticed a prevalent want of courage, even among persons of superior intelligence and culture, as to imparting their own psychological experiences when those have been of a strange story. Almost all humans are afraid that what they could relate in such wise would find no parallel or response in a lister’s internal life, and might be suspected or laughed at. A truthful traveller who should have seen some extraordinary creature in the likeness of a devil, would have no fear mentioning it; but the same traveller having had some singular presentiment, impulse, vagary of thought, vision (so-called), dream, or other remarkable mental impression, would hesitate considerably before one would own to it. To this reticence I attribute much of the obscurity in which subjects are involved. We do not habitually communicate our experiences of these subjective things, as we do our experiences of objective creation. The consequences is, that the general stock of experiences in this regard appears exceptional, and really is so, in respect of being miserably imperfect. The Devil had been raised among us, and his rage was vehement and terrible; and, when he shall be silenced, the Lord only knows. It does not signify how many years ago, or how few, a certain Murder was committed in Boston in 1688, which attracted great attention. We hear more than enough of Murders as they rise in succession to their atrocious eminence, and if I could, I would bury the memory this this atrocious eminence, as hi body was buried, in the Witch House’s basement. When the murder was first discovered, no suspicion fell—or I ought rather to say, for I cannot be too precise in my facts, it was nowhere publicly hinted that any suspicious fell—on the man who was afterwards brought to trial. #RandolphHarris 1 of 13
As no reference was at the time made to him in the newspapers, it is obviously impossible that any description of him at that time have been given in the newspapers. It is essential that this fact be remembered. Unfolding at breakfast my morning paper, containing the account of that first discovery, I found it to be deeply interesting, and I read it with close attention. I read it twice, if not three times. The discovery had been made in a bedroom, and, when I laid down the paper, I was aware of a flash—rush—flow—I do not know what to call it—no word I can find is satisfactorily descriptive—in which I seemed to see that bedroom passing through my room, like a picture impossibly painted on a running river. Though almost instantaneous in its passing, it was perfectly clear; so clear that I distinctly, and with a sense of relief observed the absence of the dead body from the bed. As the circumstances of the Murder, gradually unravelling, took stronger and stronger posses of the public mind, I kept them away from mine, by knowing as little about them as was possible in the midst of the universal excitement. John Hathorne asked most of the questions and established the judicial attitude that was to prevail throughout most of the examinations and the trials. Many people suspected that the devil killed this man and he had been summoned by Sarah Good because she had also been accused of bewitching a few girls in the town. Mr. Hathorne asked the children to look at Sarah God and say whether she was one who afflicted them. #RandolphHarris 2 of 13
They accused her to her face, “upon which they were all dreadfully tortured and tormented for a short space of time.” When they recovered from their fits, they charged her with causing them, saying that her specter had come and tormented them although her body remained “at a considerable distance from them.” This was spectral evidence, that is, evidence concerning a specter or apparition of the accused, rather than her bodily person. It was eventually to become the central legal issue of the trials, but at the moment we need only see why it seemed initially so convincing to the examining magistrates. Here were girls afflicted with violent physical symptoms which had no known physical cause, but which a physician had attributed to witchcraft. There was a malicious old woman accused of causing them. When the sufferers accused her they were immediately thrown into convulsions. What could be more plausible than that the convulsions were inflicted as revenge for the accusation? Yet such behaviour was still unfamiliar enough in Salem so that one of the recorders noted that “none here see the [specters of the] witches but the afflicted and themselves.” However, the change was so startling that I fully believed the girls derived their impression in some occult manner. For instance, we knew there was something occult going on because the throat of the murdered man had been cut straight across. In the opening speech for the defense, it was suggested that the deceased might have cut his own throat in the dreadful condition referred to. Yet, it would have been impossible for such a wound to be self-inflicted by either hand. #RandolphHarris 3 of 13
Certainly, Mr. Hathorne was convinced; when the children had recovered and repeated their accusation he turned to the accused woman. “Sarah Good, do you not see now what you have done? Why do you not tell us the truth? Why do you this torment these people children?” Certainly many of her neighbours though her malicious, since they attributed to her a number of inexplicable events, including the death of a cow which perished in a “sudden, terrible and strange unusual manner.” Such testimony was common in witchcraft cases, and it has caused much unseemly hilarity among the modern historians. It is likely, they have asked, that His Satanic Majesty the Devil or any of his minions would stop to concern themselves with the fate of a New England cow? The answer is that nothing is more likely. What else would a fertility god concern himself with but the health or sickness of crops, of animals, and of humans? From the standpoint of a society that still remembered who the Devil was, no testimony could be more relevant. As a matter of fact, the village witches who still exist in rural England are often expert in folk medicines, human and animal, as well as charms, and until recently many of them were midwives. Sarah Osburn also denied that she had hurt anyone, but the girls feel again into fits. Mr. Hathorne asked her how this happened. Perhaps, she said, the Devil went about in her likeness doing harm, but she knew nothing about it. Sarah Osburn was the first at Salem to assert the principle that the Devil can impersonate an innocent person. #RandolphHarris 4 of 13
Whether the devil could or not was a matter of debate in the seventeenth century, but most Protestant authorities agreed with Goodwife Obsurn that, as Hamlet put it, “The Devil hath power/ to assume a pleasing shape.” However, the principle was not discussed at this hearing, since Sarah Osburn was a likely a suspect as Sarah Good, if for no other reason than her lying. Lying was still considered a serious sin in the seventeenth century, and a crime as well, legally punishable by the courts. Nine of us had not the smallest doubt about those passages, neither, I believed, had any one in Court. When Mr. Hathorne tried to find out how well Sarah Osburn knew Sarah Good she said she did not know her by name. Mr. Hathorne asked if Sarah Osburn had been tempted by the devil, and she said no. Why then, he asked, had not she been at church? She had been sick, she said, and unable to go. However, her husband and others contradicted her. “She had not been at meeting,” they said, “this year and two months.” To understand why the matter of church attendance was considered so significant one must remember that the seventeenth century saw witchcraft as literal Devil worship, and therefore as a rival religion to Christianity. This is why the magistrates sometimes asked accused persons, as they asked Sarah Good, what God they served. And if the accused person avoided speaking the name of God (as Sarah Good did), they had reason to think it a suspicious circumstance. The murdered man at that time stood directly opposite the judge, on the other side of the court. He slowly shook a great grey veil, which he carried on his arm for the first time, over his head and whole form. Then he collapsed, all was gone, and his place was empty. #RandolphHarris 5 of 13
The examinations of Sarah Good and Sarah Osburn afford grounds for suspicion and for further examination. However, the major event of that first day of March was the examination of Tituba. It began like the others, but it changed very quickly: “Tituba, what evil spirit have you familiarity with?” “None.” “Why do you hurt these children?” “I do not hurt them.” “Who is it then?” “The Devil, for aught I know.” “Did you never see the Devil?” “The Devil,” said Tituba, “came to me and bid me serve him.” She went on, with a minimum of judicia prodding, to provide a detailed confession of witchcraft, the first of approximately fifty that were made during the Salem trials. On March first and second, in her examination, Tituba said that the Devil had come to her in the shape of a man—a tall man in black, with white hair. Other times he had come in the shape of an animal. He had told her he was God, that she must believe him and serve him six years, and he would give her many fine things. He had shown her a book and she had made a mark in it, a mark that was “red like blood.” Many people thought this to be a revelation. “Then I saw another beast, coming out of the Earth. He had two horns like a lamb, but he spoke like a dragon. He exercised all authority of the first beast on his behalf, and made the earth and its inhabitants worship the first beast, whose fatal wound had been healed. And he performed great and miraculous signs, even causing fire to comedown from Heaven to Earth in full view of men. Because of the signs he was given power to do on behalf of the first beast, he deceived the inhabitants of the Earth. #RandolphHarris 6 of 13
“He ordered them to set up an image in honour of the beast who was wounded by the sword and yet lived. He was given power to give breath to the image of the first beast, so that it could speak and cause all who refused to worship the image to be killed. He also forced everyone, small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on his right hand or on his forehead, so that no one could buy or sell unless one had the mark, which is the name of the beast or the number of his name,” reports Revelation 13.11-17. Sarah Osburn was to die there on the tenth of May. Tituba, like later confessors, was never brought to trial. She lay in jail until she was sold to pay the jailer’s fees, her master refusing to pay them. Sarah Good was brought to trial. Another reaction to Tituba’s confession was to confirm the community in its fear of witchcraft, and particularly its fear of the three accused women. The night of March First William Allen and John Hughes heard a strange noise; it continued frightening them, but the approached and “saw a strange and unusual beast lying on the ground. Going up to it, the said beast vanished away and in the said place started up two or three women fled, not after the manner of other women but swiftly vanished out of sight, which women we took to be Sarah Good, Sarah Osburn, and Tituba.” #RandolphHarris 7 of 13
The next night William Allen again had hallucinations: “Sarah Good visibly appeared to him in his chamber, said Allen being in bed, and brought an unusual light with her. The said Sarah came and sat upon his foot. The said Allen went to kick at her, upon which she vanished and the light with her.” Notice that in this hallucination as in many others the hallucination stops as soon as the subject is able to move or speak. A curse is any expressed wish that some form of adversity or misfortune will befall or attach to one or more persons, a place, or an object. In particular, “curse” may refer to such a wish or pronouncement made effective by a supernatural or spiritual power, such as a god, or gods, a spirit, or natural force, or else as a kind of spell by magic or witchcraft. The Winchester rifle is a handsome gun that legend has it was forged in Hell. Whoever possesses the cursed rife either suffers disaster or fortune. Oliver Fisher Winchester was an American businessman and politician, best known as being the founder of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company. Oliver Winchester was born November 30, 1810 and dead December 10, 1880. Oliver Winchester was known for manufacturing and marketing the Winchester repeating rifle, which was a much re-designed descendant of the Volcanic rifle of some years earlier. Mr. Winchester was more learned than his kind in the mysteries of a deep and thrilling lore of peculiar fascination. He was a man highly honoured for his natural gifts and knowledge of learned books which nobody else could read, that was when he took his second orders the bishop gave him a mantle of scarlet silk to wear upon his shoulders in which, and his lordship had put such power into it that, when the parson has it rightly on, he could govern any ghost or evil spirit, and even stop an Earthquake. #RandolphHarris 8 of 13
Such a powerful man, in combat with supernatural visitations discovered that a division of Smith & Wesson firearms was failing financially with one of their newly patented arms. Having an eye for opportunity, Mr. Winchester assembled venture capital together with other stockholders and acquired the Smith & Wesson division, better known as the Volcanic Repeating Arms Company, in 1855. By 1857, Mr. Winchester had positioned himself as the principle stockholder in the company and relocated to New Haven, Connecticut, and changed the name to New Haven Arms Company. After experiencing a slow start, and then a booming success with the Henry rifle, the company reorganized once again and the first Winchester rifle was the Model 1866, which had been nicknamed the Yellow Boy. The gun was called Yellow Boy because it should be remembered that, howsoever strange and singular it may sound to us that a mere lad should formally solicit such a performance at his own hands. Gradually Mr. Winchester amassed a considerable fortune. When Mr. Oliver Winchester died on December 10, 1880, his ownership in the company passed to his son, William Wirt Winchester (who married Sarah Lockwood Pardee in 1862), and died March 7 1881 at the young age of 43. The couple has also had a child, Annie Pardee Winchester, born June 15, 1866, and died 6 weeks later on July 25, 1866. Mrs. Winchester was deeply troubled by the loss of her daughter. In the course of her daily walk, she had to pass a certain heath or down where the road wound along through tall blocks of granite with open spaces of grassy sward between them. #RandpolphHarris 9 of 13
There in a certain spot, and always in the same place, she declared that she encountered, every day, a baby with a pale and troubled face, clothed in a little dress of white pique, made with two skirts. The pique was cut slightly Gabriele, and rounded off in the front with scallops, bound with white braid, with a button in each scallop, and ribbon-sash, tied at the left side, with one hand always stretched forth, and the other pressed against her side. “She is my baby,” Mrs. Winchester would say, and she often used to come to her parents house in New Haven; but that which troubled her was, that she had now been dead three years, and she had seen her body laid in the grave at her burial, this that she saw every day must needs be her soul or ghost. The hair of the appearance, sayth Mrs. Winchester, is not like anything alive, but it is so soft and light that it seemth to melt away while you look; but her eyes are set, and never blink—no, not when the sun shineth full upon her face. She maketh no steps, but seemth to swim along the top of the grass; and her hand, which is stretched out alway, seemth to point to something far away, out of sight. It is her continual coming; for she never failth to meet Mrs. Winchester, and to pass on, that hath quenched her spirits; and although she never seeth her by night, yet cannot she get her natural rest. Mrs. Winchester went to see a doctor who told her, “The case is strange but by no means impossible. It is one that I will study, and fear not to handle, if you will be free with me, and fulfill all that I desire.” Mrs. Winchester was overjoyed, but she perceived that the doctor turned pale, and was downcast with some thought which, however, he did not express. #RandolphHarris 10 of 13
The doctor knew that this might be a doemonium meridianum, the most stubborn spirit to govern and guide that any human can meet, and the most perilous withal. He made an appointment to go with Mrs. Winchester to the spot where she had these encounters. They had hardly reached the accustomed spot, when they both saw her at once gliding towards them; punctually as the ancient writers describe their “lemures, which swoon along the ground, neither marking the sand nor bending the herbage.” The aspect of the baby girl was exactly that which had been related by Mrs. Winchester. There was a pale and stony face, the strange misty hair, the eyes firm and fixed, that gazed, yet not on them, but on something that they saw far, far away; one hand and arm stretched out, and the other grasping the girdle of her waist. She floated along the field like upon a stream, and glided past the spot where they stood, pausingly. But so deep was the awe that came over the doctor, as he stood there in the light of day, face to face with a human soul separate from her bones and flesh, that his heart and purpose both failed him. He had resolved to speak to the spectre in the appointed form of words, but he did not. He stood like one amazed and speechless, until she had passed clean of out sight. When they returned to the house, and after he had said all he could to pacify Mrs. Winchester, he took leave for that time, with a promise that when he had fulfilled certain business elsewhere, when then he alleged, he would return and take orders to assuage these disturbances and their cause. #RandolphHarris 11 of 13
The doctor later told Mrs. Winchester that he thought it was best that they try an exorcism, but his Church, as is well known, hath abjured certain branches of her ancient powers, on grounds of perversion and abuse. So he referred her to a medium. The medium told Mrs. Winchesters, “There is a danger from the demons, but so there is in the surrounding air every day.” There was a kind of trouble in the air, a soft rippling sound, and all at once the shape appeared, and came towards the medium gradually. She opened her parchment scroll, and read aloud the command. The spirit paused, and seemed to waver and doubt; stood still; then she rehearsed the sentence again, sounding out every syllable like a chant. The spirit then swam into the midst of the circle, and there stood still, suddenly. Her knees shook under her, and the drops of sweat ran down her flesh like rain. But, although face to face with the spirit, the medium’s heart grew calm, and her mind was composed. The spirit then commanded Mrs. Winchester to move West and build a mansion in honour of the spirit killed by the Winchester rifle and “as long as the hammer keep pounding, her heart would continue to beat.” The medium dismissed the troubled ghost, until she peacefully withdrew, gliding towards the west. Mrs. Winchester moved to San Jose, which was near her family Member, Enoch Pardee, an occultist, prominent physician, free mason, and Mayor of Oakland, California USA, had built his family’s mansion in 1868, which is now known as the Pardee House Museum. Masonry has influenced more the modern witchcraft; it has influenced dozens of occult orders. Mrs. Winchester bought a farm house and built a massive mansion. There was something very painful and peculiar in the position of the Winchester mansion through the nineteenth century. The estate in those days was in a transitory state, and Mrs. Winchester, like her formularies, embodied a strange mixture of the old belief with the new interpretation. #RandolphHarris 12 of 13
However, the mansion is now flanked by a pleasantness, a beautiful garden and lawn, and it is surrounded by a sole grove of palm trees. It has also the aspect of age and of solitude, and looks the very scene of harmony and supernatural events. A legend might well belong to every beautiful glade of grass around, and there must surely be a haunted room somewhere within its walls. The incredible mansion, scenery of the legend still survives, and, like the field of the forty footsteps in another history, the place is still visited by those who take interests in the supernatural tales of old and new. Freemasons supposedly conducted a séance in the mansion in August of 2019. A phantom made an answer willingly. It stated, “before the next Yule-tide, a fearful pestilence will lay waste the land, and myriads of souls will be loosened from the flesh, until our valleys will be full.” The general facts stated in this diary are to these matters of belief accounted a strong proof of the veracity of the Ghost that the plague, fatal to so many millions, did break out in the global village at the close of the year. How sorely must the infidels and heretics of this generation be dismayed when they know that this Black Death, which is now swallowing its thousands in the streets of the great city, was foretold several months before the outbreak, under the séance of a freemason, by a visible and suppliant ghost! And what pleasure and improvements do such deny themselves who scorn and avoid all opportunity of intercourse with souls separate, and the spirits, glad and sorrowful, which inhabit the unseen World! May they who observe the Sabbath and call it a delight, rejoice in Thy Kingdom. May the people who sanctify the seventh day be sated and delighted with Thy bounty. For Thou didst find pleasure in the seventh day, and didst sanctify it, calling it the most desirable of the days, in remembrance of creation. #RandolphHarris 13 of 13
Winchester Mystery House
Today is the return of our guided Mansion Tour! The tour guide-led experience allows guests to access areas of the mansion that have been closed since March 2020. Click the link in our bio for more information. winchestermysteryhouse.com/recent-links
Next to Life and Liberty, We Consider Education the Greatest Blessing!
We had a sense of importance that would have led us to risk our lives for our rhetoric. The precondition of any civilization, old or new, is energy. First Wave societies drew their energy from “living batteries”—human and animal muscle-power—or from sun, wind, and water Forests were cut for cooking and heating. Waterwheels, some of them using tidal power, turned milestones. Windmills creaked in the fields. Animals pulled the plow. As late as the French Revolution, it has been estimated, Europe drew energy from an estimated 14 million horses and 24 million oxen. All First Wave societies thus exploited energy sources that were renewable. Nature could eventually replenish the forests they cut, the wind that filled their sails, the rivers that turned their paddle wheels. Even animals and people were replaceable “energy slaves.” All Second Wave societies, by contrast, began to draw their energy from coal, gas, and oil—from irreplaceable fossil fuels. This revolutionary shift, coming after Newcomen invented a workable steam engine in 1712, meant that for the first time a civilization was eating into nature’s capital rather than merely living off the interest it provided. This dipping into the Earth’s energy reserves provided a hidden subsidy for industrial civilization, vastly accelerating its economic growth. And from that day to this, wherever the Second Wave passed, nations built towering technological and economic structures on the assumptions that cheap fossil fuels would be endlessly available. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21
In capitalist and communist industrial societies alike, in East and West, this same shift has been apparent—from dispersed to concentrated energy, from renewable to non-renewable, from many different sources and fuels to a few. Fossil fuels formed the energy base of all Second Wave societies. The leap to a new energy system was paralleled by a gigantic advance in technology. First Wave societies had relied on what Vitruvius, two thousand years ago, called “necessary inventions.” However, these early winches and wedges, catapults, winepresses, levers, and hoists were chiefly used to amplify human or animal muscles. The Second Wave pushed technology to a totally new level. It spawned gigantic electromechnical machines, moving parts, belts, hoses, bearings, and bolts—all clattering and ratcheting along. And these new machines did more than augment raw muscle. Industrial civilization gave technology sensory organs, creating machines that could hear, see, and touch with greater accuracy and precision than human beings. It gave technology a womb, by inventing machines designed to give birth to new machines in infinite progression—id est, machine tools. More important, it brought machines together in interconnected systems under a single roof, to create the factory and ultimately the assembly line within the factory. On this technological base a host of industries sprang up to give Second Wave civilization its defining stamp. At first there were coal, textiles, and railroads, then steel, auto manufacture, aluminum, chemicals, and appliances. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21
Huge factory cities leaped into existence: Lille and Manchester for textiles, Detroit for automobiles, Essen and—later—Magnitogorsk for steel, and a hundred others as well. From these industrial centers poured million upon endless millions of identical products—shirts, shoes, automobiles, watches, toys, soap, shampoo, camera, machine guns, and electric motors. The new technology powered by the new energy system opened the door to mass production. Mass production, however, was meaningless without parallel changes in the distribution system. In First Wave societies, goods were normally made by handcraft methods. Products were created one at a time on a custom basis. The same was largely true of distribution. It is true that large, sophisticated trading companies had been built up by merchants in the widening crack of the old feudal order in the West. These companies opened trade routes around the World, organized convoys of ships, and camel caravans. They sold glass, paper, silk, nutmeg, tea, wine and wool, indigo and mace. Most of these products, however, reached consumers through tiny stores or on the backs of wagons of peddlers who fanned out into the countryside. Wretched communications and primitive transport drastically circumscribed the market. These small-scale shopkeepers and itinerant vendours could offer only the slenderest of inventories, and often they were out of this or that item for months, even years, at a time. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21
The Second Wave wrought changes in this creaking, overburdened distribution system that were as radical, in their ways, as the more publicized advances made in production. Railroads, highways, and canals opened up the hinterlands, and with industrialism came “palace of trade”—the first department stores. Complex networks of jobbers, wholesalers, commission agents, and manufacturers’ representatives sprang up, and in 1871 George Huntington Hartford, whose first store in New York was painted vermilion and had a cashier’s cage sharped like a Chinses pagoda, did for distribution what Henry Ford later did for the factory. He advanced it to an entirely new stage by creating the World’s first mammoth chain-store system—The Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company. Customer distribution gave way to the mass distribution and mass merchandising that became as familiar and central a component of all industrial societies as the machine itself. What we see, therefore, if we take these changes together, is a transformation of what might be called the “techno-sphere.” All societies—primitive, agricultural, or industrial—use energy; they make things; they distribute things. In all societies energy system, the production system, and the distribution system are interrelated parts of something larger. This larger system is the technosphere, and it has a characteristic form at each stage of social development. As the Second Wave swept across the planet, the agricultural techno-sphere was replaced by an industrial techno-sphere: non-renewable energies were directly plugged into mass production systems which, in turn, spewed goods into a highly developed mass distribution system. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21
This Second Wave techno-sphere, however, needed an equally revolutionary “socio-sphere” to accommodate it. It needed radically new forms of social organization. Before the industrial revolution, for example, family forms varied from place to place. However, wherever agriculture held sway, people tended to live in large, multigenerational households, with uncles, aunts, in-laws, grandparents, or cousins all living under the same roof, all working together as an economic production unit—from the “joint family” in India to the “zadruga” in the Balkans and the “extended family” in Weser Europe. And the family was immobile—rooted to the soil. This is why the Victorian homes were so large, often three and four stories, with an average of 5,000 square feet, and several acres of land; so the families could live at home, have their own space without overcrowding the house, and farm to grow their food and meat. As we are now experiencing a global pandemic in 2021, houses are getting larger again, more people are living in multigenerational households, and even growing their own food. As the Second Wave began to move across First Wave societies, family felt the stress of change. Within each household the collision of wave fronts took the form of conflict, attacks on patriarchal authority, altered relationship between children and parents, new notions of propriety. As economic production shifted from the field to the factory, the family no longer worked together as a unit. To the free workers for factory labour, key functions of the family were parceled out to new, specialized institutions. #RandolphHarris 5 of 21
Education of the child was turned over to schools. Care of the aged was turned over to poorhouses or old-age homes or nursing homes. Above all, the new society required mobility. It needed workers who would follow jobs from place to place. Burdened with elderly relatives, the sick, the disabled, and a large brood of children, the extended family was anything but mobile. Gradually and painfully, therefore, family structure began to change. Torn apart by the migration to the cities, battered by economic storms, families stripped themselves of unwanted relatives, grew smaller, more mobile, and more suited to the needs of the new techno-sphere. The so-called nuclear family-father, mother, and a few children, with no encumbering relatives—became the standard, socially approved, “modern” model in all industrial societies, whether capitalist or socialist. Even in Japan, where ancestor worship gave the elderly an exceptionally important role, the large, close-knit, multigenerational household began to break down as the Second Wave advanced. More and more nuclear unis appeared. In short, the nuclear family became an indentifable feature of all Second Wave societies, marking them off from First Wave societies just as surely as fossil fuels, steel mills, or chain stores. As work shifted out of the fields and the home, moreover, children had to be prepared for factory life. The early mine, mill, and factory owners of industrializing England discovered, as Andrew Ure wrote in 1835, that it was “nearly impossible to convert persons past the age of puberty, whether drawn from rural or from handicraft occupations, into useful factory hands.” #RandolpHarris 6 of 21
If young people could be prefitted to the industrial system, it would vastly ease the problems of industrial discipline later of on. The result was another central structure of all Second Wave societies: mass education. Built in the factory model, mass education taught basic reading, writing, and arithmetic, a bit of history and other subjects. This was the “overt curriculum.” However, beneath it lay an invisible or “covert curriculum” that was far more basic. It consisted—and till does in most industrial nations—of three courses: one in punctuality, one in obedience, and one in rote, repetitive work. Factory labour demanded workers who showed up on time, especially assembly-line hands. It demanded workers who would take orders from a management hierarchy without questioning. And it demanded men and women prepared to slave away at machines or in offices, performing brutally repetitious operations. Thus from the mid-nineteenth century on, as the Second Wave cut across country after country, one found a relentless educational progression: children started school at a younger and younger age, the school year became longer and longer (in the United States of America it climbed 35 percent between 1878 and 1956), and the number of years of compulsory schooling irresistibly increased. Mass pubic education was clearly a humanizing step forward. As a group of mechanic and workingmen in New York City declared in 1829, “Next to life and liberty, we consider education the greatest blessing bestowed upon mankind.” #RandolphHarris 7 of 21
Nevertheless, Second Wave schools machined generation after generation of young people into a pliable, regimented work force of the type required by electromechanical technology and the assembly line. Taken together, the nuclear family and the factory-style school formed part of a single integrated system for the preparation of young people for roles in industrial society. In this respect, too, Second Wave societies, capitalist or communist, North or South, were all alike. For many decades the ecological model was “the” model of urban growth. However, during recent decades it has increasingly come under attack by the scholars favouring neo-Marxian or political economy models. These models challenge the mainstream urban ecology perspective by emphasizing that urban patterns are not the result of “hidden hand” economic forces, but rather that urban patterns are deliberately shaped for private profit by elites in business and government. Thus, unlike ecological approaches, which explain suburbanization as occurring as a consequence of technological factors such as street-car or automobile, political economy, or neo-Marxian, views stress the role played by corporate and real estate interests in manipulating land usage and markets. Suburbia is not a consequence of individuals homeowner choice, but a consequence of a deliberate decision by elites to disinvest in the cities. These elites are composed of “the industrial executives, developers, bankers, and their political allies. This approach is sometimes also identified as the “new urban sociology.” #RandolphHarris 8 of 21
The new urban sociology is usually based on assumptions of neo-Marxism and conflict theory. The term “new urban sociology” is a bit of a misnomer, since advocates of this approach or paradigm often are geographers, urban planners, or political scientists rather than sociologists. Although these perspectives differ in specifics, they all stress that urban development is a consequence of capitalist modes of production, capital accumulation, exploitation of he powerless, and conflictual class relations. Societies are specified according to their mode of production. In the United States of America and Western Europe as well as elsewhere societal development is dominated by the capital accumulation process. A central role in the process of accumulation is assigned to labour power—its use, management, and reproduction. Social spatial relationships, particularly the relationship between capitalistic processes and space, are an intrinsic part of social development. Methodological individualism is overcome through specification of structure and its relationship to the agency, although the articulation of this relationship varies among the new urbanists. Real-estate and its supporting infrastructure constitute a “second circuit” of capital. Certain assumptions are common to the new critical urbanists. These are: Societal interaction is dominated by antagonistic social relationships. Consequently society is not a unified biotic community that experiences change from the outside, but a stratified and highly differentiated form of organization characterized by its own fissures, contradictions, and patterns of uneven development—features that flow from the (for example, the capitalistic) mode of production itself. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21
Social development is unstable in societies with antagonistic owner relationships. Contradictions of development and inequalities of growth fuel antagonism and define the nature of political activities. Power inequality is a basic element in societal relationships and the exercise of power can be a factor in societal development. No society can be adequately analyzed without reference to either its long-term history or its global context. Urban sociology has become captive of its own comfortable assumptions and resonates strongly with younger academics. Some also believe strongly that the social inequality, social conflict, and social problems in many American cities is the predictable consequences of capitalist political economy determining real estate and land usage because certain groups of people had their homes red tagged (scheduled for demolition) as cities were planning to redevelop them. This led to many years of generational wealth being lost for certain groups of people are these homes appreciated to become worth millions just 40 to 40 years later. However, capitalists tend to be republican, but some of these policies that led to certain groups of people being displaced from the homes they owned and robbed of future equity, for example, were policies created by the governors Pat Brown and his son Jerry Brown, who are both democrats. Even today as California brags about having a nearly $40 billion budget surplus, there is a major homeless crisis that is being overlooked by democratic Governor Gavin Newsom and the TV news media, but they can conjure up sports complexes and have them operational in two years, but no move being made on the construction and management of affordable housing. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21
However, there is a conflict about affordable housing because many of their buildings tend to rent to people and do not manage them and there is a lot of violence, crime, rule breaking, and noise, so people do not want income based, or low-income properties in their community because rules are not enforced and it makes the community unlivable for people who pay market rate and often well above market rate prices for their homes. Yet, the answer is not to leave people on the streets to endure unhygienic and unsafe conditions. Well have to acknowledge and deal with gentrification, displacement, and neighbourhood revitalization. We also have to acknowledge the opposite of gentrification is happening: middle- and upper-income residents are moving out, and lower-income residents moving in. Urban space (as well as space at other scales) is the specific effect of the kind of society in which this urban space is developed and the capitalist city is developed according to a logic that is internal to capital itself. The trend of the affluent moving out of their communities has implications for millions of Americans who own a home or are thinking of buying one. In a neighbourhood that is losing its more affluent residents, home prices are likely to underperform, just as they tend to outperform in areas that are gentrifying, as incomes rise. As a buyer, you may value new construction and/or home prices that appreciate above all, and thus be attracted only to rising-income areas where the lawns are all manicured, houses are nice and well-maintained, and not too many cars on the street and in the driveway. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21
As a systematic statement of how non-Marxian new sociology political economy approach can be used to study how property markets work as social phenomena is done by understanding that place is valued in two ways: first, as an object of exchange to be bought and sold, and second, when it is used to do business in or live in. In the latter case place has a sentimental and symbolic value associated with jobs, neighbourhood, hometown, and community. However, the urban growth machine of corporate political elites is interested in land strictly as an investment and commodity to be bought and sold. Their interest is in creating a good business environment so that investments and new residents will come to the area and increase market value of the land, and aggregate rent levels will increase. This governmental and corporate emphasis on growth is at the expense of the interest of local residents and their communities. The needs of the general public are captive to the “growth machine” whose principal interest is in the transfer of wealth rentier groups. Use values of the majority are sacrificed for the exchange values of a few. Thus, community groups that advocate slow growth or neighbourhood preservation are fought by the business elites that profit from maintaining the growth machines. For how can the source of the inequality among humans be known unless one begins by knowing humans themselves? And how will humans be successful in seeing themselves as nature formed one, through all the changes that the succession of time and things must have produced in one’s original constitution, and in separating what one derives from one’s own wherewithal from what circumstances and one’s progress have added to or changed in one’s primitive state? #RandolphHarris 12 of 21
Like the Winchester mansion, which time, sea, earthquakes, humans, and storms have caused wear and damage to while the owners and historians fight to preserve this priceless treasure some consider a god, the human soul, altered in the midst of society by a thousand constantly recurring causes, by the acquisition of a multitude of bits of knowledge and errors, by changes that to place in the constitution of bodies, by the constant impact of the passions, as, as it were, changed its appearance to the point of being nearly unrecognizable or not fully displaying its original intent. And instead of a being active always by certain and invariable principles, instead of that Heavenly and majestic simplicity whose mark its author had left on it, one no longer finds anything but grotesque contrast of passion which thinks I reasons and an understanding in a state of delirium. What is even more cruel is that, since all the progress of the human species continually moves away from its primitive state, the more we accumulate new knowledge, the more we deprive ourselves of the means of acquiring the most important knowledge of all. Thus, in a sense, it is by dint of studying humans that we have rendered ourselves incapable of knowing them. It is easy to say that it is in these successive changes of the human constitution that we must seek the first origin of the differences that distinguish humans, who, by common consensus, are naturally as equal among themselves as were the terrestrial beings of each species the varieties we now observe among some of them. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21
In effect, it is inconceivable that these first changes, by whatever means they took place, should have altered all at once and in the same manner all the individuals of the species. However, while some improved or declined and acquired various good and bad qualities which were not inherent in their nature, the others remained longer in their original state. And such was the first source of inequality among humans, which it is easier to demonstrate thus in general than to assign with precision its true causes. Let my readers not imagine, then, that I dare flatter myself with having seen what appears to me so difficult to see. I have begun some lines of reasoning; I have hazarded some guesses, less in the hope of resolving the question than with intention of clarifying it and of reducing it to its true state. Others will easily be able to go farther on this same route, though it will not be easy for anyone to reach the end of it. For it is no light undertaking to separate what is original from what is artificial in the present nature of humans, and to have a proper understanding of a state which no longer exists, which perhaps never existed, which probably never will exist, and yet about which it is necessary to have accurate notions in order to judge properly our own present state. One who would attempt to determine precisely which precautions to take in order to make solid observations on the subject would need even more philosophy than is generally supposed; and a good solution of the following problem would not seem to me unworthy of the Aristotles and Plinys of our century: What experiments would be necessary to achieve knowledge of natural man? And what are the means of carrying out these experiments in the midst of society? #RandolphHarris 14 of 21
Far from undertaking to resolve this problem, I believe I have meditated sufficiently on the subject to dare respond in advance that the greatest philosophers will not be too good to direct these experiments, nor the most powerful sovereigns to carry them out. It is hardly reasonable to expect such a combination, especially with the perseverance or rather the succession of understanding and good will needed on both sides in order to achieve success. These investigations, so difficult to carry out and so little thought about until now, are nevertheless the only means we have left of removing a multitude of difficulties that conceal from us the knowledge of the real foundations of human society. It is this ignorance of the nature of humans which throws so much uncertainty and obscurity on the true definition of natural right. For the ideal of right, and even more that of natural right, are manifestly ideas relative to the nature of humans. Therefore, one continues, the principles of this science must be deuced from this very nature of humans, from human’s constitution and state. It is not without surprise and a sense of outrage that one observes the paucity of agreement that prevails among the various authors who have treated it. Among the most serious writers one can hardly find two who are of the same opinion on this point. The Roman jurists—not to mention the ancient philosophers who seem to have done their best to contradict each other on the most fundamental principles—subject human and all other terrestrial beings indifferently to the same natural law, because they take this expression to refer to the law that nature imposes on itself rather than the law she prescribes, or rather because of the particular sense in which those jurists understood the word “law,” which on this occasion they seem to have taken only for the expression of the general relations established by nature among all animate beings for their common preservation. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21
The moderns, in acknowledging under the word “law” merely a rule prescribed to a moral being, that is to say, intelligent, free, and considered in one’s relations with other beings, consequently limit the competence of the natural law to the only terrestrial being who know of endowed with reason, that is, to humans. However, with each other defining this law in one’s own fashion, they all establish it on some metaphysical principles that even among us there are very few people in a position to grasp these principles, far from being able to find them by themselves. So that all the definitions of these wise humans, otherwise in perpetual contradiction with one another agree on this alone that it is impossible to understand the law of nature and consequently to obey it without being a great reasoner and a profound metaphysician, which humans do not naturally have, and from advantages the idea of which they cannot conceive until after having left the state of nature. Writers begin by seeking the rules on which, for the common utility, it would be appropriate for humans to agree among themselves; and then they give the name natural law to the collection of these rules, with no other proof than the good which presumably would result from their universal observance. Surely this is a very convenient way to compose definitions and to explain the nature of things by virtually arbitrary views of what is seemly. However, as long as we are unaware of natural man, it is futile for us to attempt to determine the law he has received or which is best suited to his constitution. #RandolphHarris 16 of 21
All that we can see very clearly regarding this law is that, for it to be law, not only must he will of one who is obliged by it be capable of knowing submission to it, but also, for it to be natural, it must speak directly by the voice of nature. Leaving aside therefore all he scientific books which teach us only to see humans as they have made themselves, and meditating on the first and most simple operations of the human soul, I believe I perceive in it two principles that are prior to reason, of which one makes us ardently interested in our well-being and our self-preservation, and the other inspires in us a natural repugnance to seeing any sentient being, especially our fellow humans, perish or suffer. It is from the conjunction and combination that our mind is in a position to make regarding these two principles, without the need for introducing that of sociability, that all the rules of natura right appear to me to flow; rules which reason is later forced to reestablish on other foundations, when, by its successive developments, it has succeeded in smothering nature. In this way one is not obliged to make a human a philosopher before making one a human. One’s duties toward others are not uniquely dictated to one by the belated lessons of wisdom; and as long as one does no resist the inner impulse of compassion, one will never harm another human or even another sentient being, except in the legitimate instance where, if one preservation were involved, one is obliged to give preference to oneself. By this means, an end can also be made to the ancient disputes regarding the participation of non-human terrestrial beings in the natural law. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21
For it is clear that, lacking intelligence and liberty, some terrestrial beings cannot recognize this natural law; but since they share to some extent in our nature by virtue of the sentient quality with which they are endowed, one will judge that they should also patriciate in natural right, and that humans are subject to some sort of duties toward them. It seems, in effect, that if I am obliged not to do any harm to my fellow humans, it is less because one is a rational being than because one is a sentient being: a quality that, since it is common to both non-human terrestrial beings and human beings, should at least give the former the right not to be needlessly mistreated by the latter. This same study or original man, of his true needs and the fundamental principles of his duties, is also the only good means that can be used to remove those multitudes of difficulties which present themselves regarding the origin of moral inequality, the true foundations of the body politic, the reciprocal rights of is members, and a thousand other similar questions that are as important as they are poorly explained. In considering human society from a tranquil and disinterested point of view it seems at firs to manifest merely the violence of powerful men and the oppression of the weak. The mind revolt against the harshness of the former; one is inclined to deplore the blindness of the latter. And since nothing is less stable among men than those external relationships which chance brings about more often than wisdom, and which are called weakness or power, wealth or poverty, human establishments appear at first glance to be based on piles of shifting sand. It is only in examining them closely, only after having cleared away the dust and sand that surround the edifice, hat one perceives the unshakable base on which it is raised and one learns to respect its foundations. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21
Now without a serious study of man, of his natural faculties and their successive developments, one will never succeed in making these distinctions and in separating, in the present constitution of things, what the divine will has done from what human art has pretended to do. The political and moral investigations occasioned by the important question I am examining are therefore useful in every way; and the hypothetical history of governments is an instructive lesson for man in every respect. In considering what we would have become, left to ourselves, we ought to learn to bless him whose beneficent hand, in correcting our institutions and giving them an unshakable foundation, has prevented the disorders that must otherwise result from them, and has brought about our happiness from the means that seemed likely to add to our misery. Learn whom God has ordered you to be, and in what part of human affairs you have been placed. As it stands, 52 percent of evangelicals do not accept or do not believe in absolute moral truths! What is happening? When the church does not get it right, the World certainly cannot get it right. Revival is coming! The Heavenly messengers will quiet your fears as you learn to find Jesus Christ. “Then I saw another mighty Angel coming down from Heaven. He was robed in a cloud, with a rainbow above his head; his face was like the sun, and his legs were like fiery pillars. He was holding a little scroll, which lay open in his hand. He planted his right foot on the sea, and his left foot on the land, and he gave a loud shout like the roar of a lion. When he shouted, the voices of the seven thunders spoke. And when the seven thunders spoke, I was about to write; but I heard a voice from Heaven say, ‘Seal up what thunders have said and do not write it down.’ #RandolphHarris 19 of 21
“Then the Angel I had seen standing on the sea and on the land raised his right and to Heaven. And he swore by him who lives for ever and ever, who created the Heavens and all that is in them, the Earth and the sea and all that is in it, and said, ‘There will be no more delay! However, in the days when the seventh Angel is about to sound his trumpet, the mystery of God will be accomplished, just as he announced to his servants the prophets.’ Then then voice that I had heard from Heaven spoke to me once more: ‘Go, take the scroll that lies open in the hand of the Angel who is standing on the sea and on the land.’ So I went to the Angel and asked him to give me the little scroll. He said to me, ‘Take it and eat it. It will turn your stomach sour, but in your mouth it will be as sweet as honey.’ I took the little scroll from the Angel’s hand and ate it. It tasted sweet as honey in my mouth, but when I had eaten it, my stomach turned sour. Then I was told, “You must prophesy again about many people, nations, languages and kings,” reports Revelation 10.1-11. With tender regard for human weaknesses, the Angel will give humans time to become accustomed to the divine radiance. Then the joy and glory will no longer be hidden. The whole plain will light up with the bright shinning of the hosts of God. Earth will be hushed, and the Heavens will stoop to listen to the son—“Glory to God in the highest, and on Earth peace, good will towards humans.” “For the Lord your God is brining you into a good land, a land of flowing streams, with springs and underground waters welling up in valleys and hills, a land of wheat and barley, of vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a long of olive trees and honey, a land where you may eat bread without scarcity. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21
“God is blessing us with a land where we will lack nothing, a land whose stones are iron, and from whose hills you may mine copper, blue sapphires and diamond. You shall eat your fill and bless the Lord your God for the good land He has given you,” reports Deuteronomy 8.7-11. Tall, lush rain forest dripping in the morning wild orchids banana flowers, thick vines drape los palos del sol and great white cedar; others with five foot green elephant ears flopping, hundreds of butterflies, orange caterpillars, blue birds, pink mushrooms, through billion of green leaves quivering moist in the patchy sunlight. There are exalted but rare occasion when inspiration, peace, and spiritual majesty conjoin their blessed presence within us. It is with one for the flicker of a second—an unfathomable tranquility, an indefinable beauty—and then gone. Some enter into this experience only once in a lifetime; others repeat it a few times. Only a rare individual here and there enters it frequently. In the book of life, blessing, peace, and ample sustenance, may we, together with all Thy people, the house of America, be remembered and inscribed before Thee for a happy life and for peace. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, who establishest peace. O Lord, please guard my tongue from evil and my lips from speaking guile, and to those who slander me, let e give no heed. May my soul be humble and forgiving unto all. Please open Thou my heart, O Lord, unto Thy sacred Law, that Thy statutes I may know and all Thy truths pursue. Please bring to naught designs of those who seek to do me ill; speedily defeat their aims and thwart their purposes for Thine own sake, for Thine own power, for Thy holiness and Law. That Thy loved ones be delivered, answer us, O Lord, and save with Thy redeeming power. May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable unto Thee, O Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer. Thou who establishes peace in the Heavens, please grant peace unto us and unto All America. Amen. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21
Cresleigh Homes
Space for the whole family is a hallmark of the Brighton Station Res 4 model. Between that expansive kitchen and the 4 bedrooms (with the option of converting the loft to a fifth), you’ll make memories here to last a lifetime. 😇
Cresleigh Ranch at Brighton Station offers innovative detail and thoughtful attention to our award-winning, eye catching architecture styles such as Mid-Century Modern, California Modern, Prairie, and Contemporary Farmhouse designs; several options are available to personalize your home.
#CresleighRanch
#CresleighHomes
Love is the God-Given Goal of Human Relationships!
Fashionable men and women do not just put on fashionable clothes. The truly fashionable are beyond fashion. Ageism, which refers to discrimination or prejudice based on age, can oppress the young as well as seniors. For instance, a person applying for a job may just as well be told, “You are too young” as “You are too old.” In some societies, ageism is based on respect for the elderly. In japan, for instance, aging is seen as beneficial, and greater age brings with it more status and respect. In most nations in the New World, however, ageism tends to have a negative impact on older individuals. Usually, it is expressed as a rejection of the elderly. The concept of “oldness” is often to expel people from useful work: Too often, retirement is just another name for dismissal and unemployment. Zest is the secret of all beauty. There is no beauty that is attractive without zest. You have almost certainly encountered ageism in one way or another. Stereotyping is a major facet of ageism. Popular stereotypes of the “dirty old man,” “meddling old woman,” ‘senile old fool,” and the like, help perpetuate the myths underlying ageism. Contrast such as images to those associated with youthfulness: The young are perceived as fresh, whole, attractive, energetic, active, emerging, and appealing. Yet, even good stereotypes can be a problem. For example, if older people are perceived as financially well off, wise, or experienced, it can blind others to the real problems of the elderly. The important point is that age-based stereotypes are often wrong. #RandolphHarris 1 of 25
A tremendous diversity exists among the elderly—ranging from the infirm and demented to aerobic-dancing grandmothers. The Lord knows and love the elderly among His people. It has always been so, and upon them He has bestowed many of His greatest responsibilities. In various dispensations He has guided His people through prophets who were in their advancing years. God has needed the wisdom and experience of age, the inspired direction from those with long years of proven faithfulness to His gospel. Two apparently contrasting images of the future grip the popular imagination today. Most people—to the extent that they bother to think about the future at all—assume the World they know will last indefinitely. They find it difficult to imagine a truly different way of life for themselves, let alone a totally new civilization. Of course they recognize that things are changing. However, they assume today’s changes will somehow pass them by and that nothing will shake the familiar economic framework and political structure. They confidently expect the future to continue the present. This straight-line thinking comes in various packages. At one level it appears as an unexamined assumption lying behind the decisions of business people, teachers, parents, and politicians. At a more sophisticated level it comes dressed up in statistics, computerized data, and forecasters’ jargon. Either way it adds up to a vision of a future World that is essentially “more of the same”—Second Wave industrialism writ even larger and spread over more of this planet. #RandolphHarris 2 of 25
Recent events have severely shaken this confident image of the future. As crisis after crisis has crackled across the headlines, as Israel erupted, as Dictator Lukashenko is considered out of control, as oil prices skyrocket, as inflation runs wild, as terrorism spreads, and governments seem helpless to stop it, a bleaker vision has become increasingly popular. Thus, large numbers of people—feed on a steady diet of bad and fake news, disaster movies, apocalyptic Bible stories, and nightmare scenarios issued by prestigious think tanks—have apparently concluded that today’s society cannot be projected into the future because no future. For them, Armageddon is only minutes away. The Earth is racing toward its final cataclysmic shudder. On the surface these two visions of the future seem very different. Yet both produce similar psychological and political effects. For both lead to the paralysis of imagination and will. If tomorrow’s society is simply an enlarged, Cinerama version of the present, there is little we need do to prepare for it. If, on the other hand, society is inevitably destined to self-destruct within out lifetime, there is noting we can do about it. In short, both these ways of looking at the future generate privatism and passivity. Both freeze us into inaction. Yet, in trying to understand what is happening to us, we are not limited to this simpleminded choice between Armageddon and More-of-the-Same. There are many more clarifying and constructive ways to think about tomorrow—ways that prepare us for the present. #RandolphHarris 3 of 25
The revolutionary premise assumes that, even though the decades immediately ahead are likely to be filled with upheavals, turbulence, perhaps even widespread violence, we will not totally destroy ourselves. It assumes that the jolting changes we are now experiencing are not chaotic or random but that, in fact, they form a sharp, clearly discernible pattern. It assumes, moreover, that these changes are cumulative—that they add up to a giant transformation in the way we live, work, play, and think, and that a sane and desirable future is possible. In short, what follows begins with the premise that what is happening now is nothing less than a global revolution, quantum jump in history. Put differently, we are working with the assumption that we are the final generation of an old civilization and the first generation of a new one, and that much of our personal confusion, anguish, and disorientation can be traced directly to the conflict within us, and within our political institutions, between the dying Second Wave civilization and the emergent Third Wave civilization that is thundering in to take it place. When we finally understand this, many seemingly senseless events become suddenly comprehensible. The broad patterns of change begin to emerge clearly. Action for survival becomes possible and plausible again. In short, the revolutionary premise liberates our intellect and our will. We Devouts know more about Christ than we do about the Saints. For example, whoever finds the spirit of Christ discovers in the process many “unexpected delights,” if I may use the expression of the Apostle John’s from the Last Book of the New Testament (2.17). #RandolphHarris 4 of 25
However, that is not often the case. Many who have heard the Gospel over and over again thin they know it ll. If there is more to the story, they have little desire to discover it. That is because, as the Apostle Paul diagnosed it in his Letter to the Romans (8.9), “they do not have the spirit of Christ. On the other hand, whoever wants to understand the words of Christ and fully and slowly savour their sweetness has to work hard at making oneself another Christ. if you are not humble, you make the Trinity nervous, and that wretched state what possible good do you get out of standing up in public and disputing to high Heaven about the Trinity as an intellectual entity? The real truth, if only you would learn it, is that highfalutin words do not make us Saints. Only a virtuous life can do that, and only that can make God care for us. “Contemplation” is a good example. The School people at the University—that is to say, the Philosophers and the Theologians—could produce lengthy, perhaps even lacy, definitions of this holy word, but that would not move them one inch closer to the Gate of Heaven. The humble Devout, on the other hand, who can neither read nor write, might very well have experienced compunction every day of one’s life; one’s the one, whether one knows it or not, who will find oneself already waiting at that very gate when the Final Day comes. By the way, I do know what compunction means, and so should you: a prickling or stinging of the conscience. If I may put it the way Paul did in his First Letter to the Corinthians (13.3), are you any the richer for knowing all the proverbs of the Bible and all the axioms of Philosophers, when you re really all the poorer for not knowing the charity and the grace of God? #RandolphHarris 5 of 25
“Vanity of vanities, and everything is vanity,” says the Ancient Hebrew Preacher in Ecclesiastes (1.2). The only thing that is not vanity is loving God and, as Moses preached to the Israelites in Deuteronomy, serving him alone (6.13). That is the highest wisdom, to navigate one’s courses, using the contempt of the World as a chart, toward that Heavenly Port. Just what is vanity? Well, it is many things. A portfolio of assets that are bound to crash. A bird breast of medals and decorations. A brassy solo before an unhearing crowd. Alley-catting one’s “carnal desires,” as Paul so lustily put it to the Galatians (5.16), only to discover that punishment awaits further up and father in. Pining for a long life and at the same time paying no attention to the good life. Focusing both eyes on the present without casting an eye toward the future. Marching smartly in the passing parade instead of falling all over oneself trying to get back to that reviewing stand where Eternal Joy is queen. Do not forget the horary wisdom of the Ancient Hebrew Preacher: “The eye is never satisfied by what they it sees; nor the ears by what they hear” (1.8). With that in mind, try to transfer your holdings from the visible market into the invisible one. The reason? Those who trade in their own sensualities only muck up their own account and, in the process, muddy up God’s final account. To say the changes we face will be revolutionary, however, is not enough. Before we can control or channel them we need a fresh way to identify and analyze them. Without this we are hopelessly lost. #RandolphHarris 6 of 25
One powerful new approach might be called social “wavefront” analysis. It looks at history as a succession of rolling waves of change and asks where the leading edge of each wave is carrying us. It focuses our attention not so much on the continuities of history (important as they are) as on the discontinuities—the innovations and breakpoints. It identifies key change patterns as they emerge, so that we can influence them. Beginning with the very simple idea that the rise of agriculture was the first turning point in human social development, and that the industrial revolution was the second great breakthrough, it views each of these not as a discrete, one-time event but as a wave of change moving at a certain velocity. Before the First Wave of change, most humans lived in small, often migratory groups and fed themselves by foraging, fishing, hunting, or herding. At some point, roughly ten millennia ago, the agricultural revolution began, and it crept slowly across the planet spreading villages, settlements, cultivated land, and a new way of life. This First Wave of change had no yet exhausted itself by the end of the seventeenth century, when the industrial revolution broke over Europe and unleashed the second great wave of planetary change. This new process—industrialization—began moving much more rapidly across nations and continents. Thus two separate and distinct change processes were rolling across the Earth simultaneously, at different speeds. #RandolphHarris 7 of 25
Today the First Wave has virtually subsided. Only a few tiny tribal populations, in South America or Papua New Guinea, for example, remain to be reached by agriculture. However, the force of this great First Wave has basically been spent. Meanwhile, the Second Wave, having revolutionized life in Europe, North America, and some other parts of the globe in a few short centuries, continues to spread, as many countries, until now basically agricultural, scramble to build steel mills, auto plants, textile factories, railroad, and food processing plants. The momentum of industrialization is still felt. The Second Wave has not entirely spent its force. However, even as this process continues, another, even more important, has begun. For as the tide of industrialism peaked in the decades after World War In, a little-understood Third Wave began to surge across the Earth, transforming everything it touched. Many countries, therefore, are feeling the simultaneous impact of two, even three, quite different waves of change, all moving at different rates of speed and with different degrees of force behind them. For our purposes, we shall consider the First Wave era to have begun sometime around 8000 B.C. and to have dominated the Earth unchallenged until sometime around A.D. 1650-1750. From this moment on, the First Wave lost momentum as the Second Wave picked up steam. Industrial civilization, the product of the Second Wave, then dominated the planet in its turn until it, too, created. This latest historical turning point arrived in the United States during the decade beginning around 1955—the decade that saw white-collar and service workers outnumber blue-collar workers for the first time. #RandolphHarris 8 of 25
That same decade, which started in 1955 saw widespread introduction of the computer, commercial jet travel, oral contraceptives, and many other high-impact innovations. It was precisely during this decade that the Third Wave began to gather its force in the United States of America. Since then it has arrived—at slightly different dates—in most of the other industrial nations, including Britain, France, Sweden, Germany, Russian, and Japan. Today all the high-technology nations are reeling from the collision between the Third Wave and the obsolete, encrusted economies and institutions of the Second. Understanding this is the secret to making sense of much of the political and social conflict we see around us. A tool that can help us cope with these changes is psychology. What is true of psychology is also true of the other academic disciplines, each of which provides a perspective from which we can study nature and our place in it. These range from the scientific fields that study the most elementary building blocks of nature up to philosophy and theology, which address some of life’s global questions. Which perspective is pertinent depends on what you want to talk about. Take romantic love, for example. A physiologist might describe love as a state of arousal. A social psychologist would examine how various characteristics and conditions—good looks, similarity of partners, sheer repeated exposure to one another—enhance the emotion of love. A poet would express the sublime experience that love can sometimes be. A theologian might describe love as the God-given goal of human relationship. #RandolphHarris 9 of 25
Since love can often be described simultaneously at various levels, we need not assume that one level is causing the other—by supposing for example, that a brain state is causing the emotion of love or that the emotion is causing the brain state. The emotional and physiological views are simply two complementary perspectives. There is a Partial Hierarchy of Disciplines. The disciplines range from basic sciences that study nature’s building blocks up to more integrative disciplines that study whole complex systems. Successful explanation of human functioning at one level need not invalidate explanation at other levels. At the Top of the scale at the disciplines that are considered Integrative Explanation and at the bottom are Elemental Explanation. Those that fall lower and in between the two extremes are a specific degree combination of the two explanations. At starts off with: Theology, and as we work our way down the scale, we see Literature and Philosophy, Political Science, Sociology, Psychology, Biology, Chemistry, and at the very bottom Physics. The hierarchy on the scale does not make one explanation more valuable than another. Nature is, to be sure, all of a piece. For convenience, we necessarily view it as multilayered, but it is actually a seamless unity. Thus the different ways of looking at a phenomenon like romantic love (or belief or consciousness) can sometimes be correlated, enabling us to build bridges between different perspectives. Attempts at building bridges between religion and the human sciences have sometimes proceeded smoothly. A religious explanation of the incest taboo (in terms of divine will or a moral absolute) is nicely complemented by biological explanation (in terms of the genetic penalty that offsprings pay for inbreeding) and sociological explanation (in terms of preserving the marital and family units). #RandolphHarris 10 of 25
Other times the bridge-building efforts extending from both sides see not to connect in the middle, as when a conviction that God performs miracles in answer to prayers is met with scientific skepticism and psychological explanation of how people form illusory beliefs. To say that religious and scientific levels of explanation can be complementary does not mean there is never conflict or that any unsupported idea is to be welcomes as truth. It just means that different types of explanation may actually fit coherently together. In God’s World, all truth is one. So we arrive at a simple but basic point that resolves a good deal of fruitless debate over whether the religious or the psychological account of human nature is preferable: different levels of explanation can be complementary. The methods of psychology are appropriate, and appropriate only, for their own purposes. Psychological explanation has provided satisfying answers to many important questions regarding why people think, feel, and act as they do. However, it does not even pretend to answer life’s ultimate questions. Let us therefore celebrate and use psychology for what it offers us, remembering that it is but one aspect of the larger whole. From the admission that God exists and is the author of Nature, it by no means follows that miracles must, or even can, occur. God Himself might be a being of such a kind that it was contrary to His character to work miracles. Or again, He might have made Nature the sort of thing that cannot be added to, subtracted from, or modified. #RandolphHarris 11 of 25
Accordingly, the case against Miracles relies on two different grounds. You either think that the character of God excludes them or that the character of Nature excludes them. We will begin with the second which is the more popular ground. The first Red Herring is this. Any say you may hear a human (and not necessarily a disbeliever in God) say of some alleged miracle, “No. Of course I do not believe that. We know it is contrary to the laws of Nature. People could believe it in olden times because they did not know that laws of Nature. We know now that it is a scientific impossibility.” By the “laws of Nature” such a human means, I think, the observed course of Nature. If one means anything more than that one is not the plain human I take one for but a philosophic Naturalist and will be dealt with in later discussions. The human I have in this view believes that mere experience (and specially those artificially contrived experiences which we call Experiments) can tell us what regularly happens in Nature. And one thinks that what we have discovered excludes the possibility of Miracle. This is a confusion of mind. Granted that miracles can occur, it is, of course, for experience to day whether one has done so on any given occasion. However, mere experience, even if prolonged for a million years, cannot tell us whether the thing is possible. Experiment finds out what regularly happens in Nature: the norm or rule to which she works. Those who believe in miracles are not denying that there is such a norm or rule: they are only saying that it can be suspended. #RandolphHarris 12 of 25
A miracle is by definition an exception. How can the discovery of the rule tell you whether, granted a sufficient cause, the rule can be suspended? If we said that the rule was A, then experience might refute us by discovering the it was B. If we said that there was no rule, then experience might refute us by observing that there is. However, we are saying neither of these things. We agree that there is a rule and that the rule is B. What has that got to do with the question whether the rule can be suspended? You replay, “But experience shows that it never has.” We reply, “Even if that were so, this would not prove that it never can. However, does experience show that it never has? The World is full of stories of people who say they have experienced miracles. Perhaps the stories are false: perhaps they are true. However, before you can decide on that historical question, you must first discover whether the things is possible, and if possible, how probable.” The idea that the progress of science has somehow altered this question is closely bound up with the idea that people in ancient time believed in them because they did not know the laws of Nature. Thus you will hear people say, “The early Christians believed that Christ was the son of a virgin, but we know that this is a scientific impossibility.” Such people seem to have an idea that belief in miracles arose at a period when humans were so ignorant of the cause of nature that they did not perceive a miracle to be contrary to it. A moment’s thought shows this to be nonsense: and the story of the Virgin Birth is a particularly striking example. #RandolphHarris 13 of 25
When Saint Joseph discovered that his fiancée was going to have a baby, he not unnaturally decided to repudiate her. Why? because he knew just as well as any modern gynaecologist that in the ordinary course of nature women do not have babies unless they have lain with men. No doubt the modern gynaecologist knows several things about birth and begetting which Saint Joseph did not know. However, those things do not concern the main point—that a virgin birth is contrary to the course of nature. And Saint Joseph obviously knew that. In any sense in which it is true to say now, “The thing is scientifically impossible,” he would have said the same: the thing always was, and was always known to be, impossible unless the regular processes of nature were, in this particular case, being over-ruled or supplemented by something from beyond nature. When Saint Joseph finally accepted the view that his fiancée’s pregnancy was not due to unchastity but to a miracle, he accepted the miracle as something contrary to the known order of nature. All records of miracles teach the same thing. In such stories the miracles excite fear and wonder (that is what the very word miracle implies) among the spectators, and are taken as evidence of supernatural power. If they were not known to be contrary to the laws of nature how could they suggest the presence of the supernatural? How could they be surprising unless they were seen to be exceptions to the rules? And how can anything be seen to be an exception till the rules are know? If there were ever humans who did not know the laws of nature at all, they would have no idea of a miracle and feel no particular interest in one if it were performed before them. #RandolphHarris 14 of 25
Nothing can seem extraordinary until you have discovered what is ordinary. Belief in miracles, far from depending on an ignorance of the laws of nature, is only possible in so far as those laws are known. We must now add that you will equally perceive no miracles until you believe that nature works adducing to regular laws. If you have not yet noticed that the sun always rises in the East you will see nothing miraculous about his rising one morning in the West. If the miracles were offered us as event that normally occurred, then the process of science, whose business is to tell us what normally occurs, would render belief in them gradually harder and finally impossible. The progress of science has in just this way (and greatly to our benefit) made all sorts of things incredible which our ancestors believed; human-eating ants and gryphons in Scythia, humans with one single gigantic foot, magnetic islands that draw all ships towards them, mermaids and fire-breathing dragons. However, those things were never put forward as supernatural interruptions of the course of nature. They were put forward as items within her ordinary course—in fact as “science.” Later and better science has therefore rightly removed them. Miracles are in a wholly different position. If there were fire-breathing dragons our big-game hunters would find them: but no one ever pretended that the Virgin Birth or Christ’s walking on the water could be reckoned on to recur. When a thing professes from the very outset to be a unique invasion of Nature by something from outside, increasing knowledge of Nature can never make it either more or less credible that it was at the beginning. #RandolphHarris 15 of 25
In this sense it is mere confusion of thought to suppose that advancing science has made it harder for us to accept miracles. We always knew they were contrary to the natural course of events; we know still that if there is something beyond Nature, they are possible. Those are the bare bones of the question; time and progress and science and civilization have not altered them in the least. The grounds for belief and disbelief are the same today as they were two thousand—or ten thousand—years ago. If Saint Joseph had lacked faith to trust God or humility to perceive the holiness of one’s spouse, one could have disbelieved in the miraculous origin of her Son as easily as any modern human; and any modern human who believes in God can accept the miracles as easily as Saint Joseph did. You and I my not agree, no matter what I say, as to whether miracles happen or not. However, at least let us not talk nonsense. Let us not allow vague rhetoric about the march of science to fool us into supposing that the most complicated account of birth, in terms of genes and spermatozoa, leaves us any more convinced than we were before that nature does not send babies to young women who “know not a man.” The second Red Herring is this. Many people say, “They could believe in miracles in olden times because they had a false conception of the Universe. They thought the Earth was the largest thing in it and Man the most important creature. It therefore seemed reasonable to suppose that the Creator was specially interested in Man and might even interrupt the course of Nature for his benefit. #RandolphHarris 16 of 25
“However, now that we know the real immensity of the Universe—now that we perceive our own planet and even the whole Solar System to be only a speck—it becomes ludicrous to believe in them any longer. We have discovered our insignificance and can no longer suppose that God is so drastically concerned in our petty affairs.” Whatever its value my be as an argument, it ay be stated at once that this view is quite wrong about facts. The immensity of the Universe is not a recent discovery. More than seventeen hundred years ago Ptolemy taught that in relation to the distance of the fixed stars the whole Earth must be regarded as a point with no magnitude. His astronomical system was universally accepted in the Dark and Middle Ages. The insignificance of Earth was as much a commonplace to Boethius, King Alfred, Dante, and Chaucer as it is to Mr. H. G. Wells, or Professor Haldane. Statements to the contrary in modern books are due to ignorance. The real question is quite different from what we commonly suppose. The real question is why the spatial insignificance of Earth, after being asserted by Christian philosophers, sung by Christian poets, and commented on by Christian moralist for some fifteen centuries, without the slightest suspicion that it conflicted with their theology, should suddenly in quite modern times have been set up as a stock argument against Christianity and enjoyed, in that capacity, a brilliant career. I will offer a guess at the answer to this question presently. For the moment, let us consider he strength of this stock argument. When the doctor at post-mortem looks at the dead human’s organs and diagnoses poison one has a clear idea of the different state in which the organs would have been if the human had died a natural death. #RandolphHarris 17 of 25
If from the vastness of the Universe and the smallness of Earth we diagnose that Christianity is false we ought to have a clear idea of the sort of Universe we should have expected if it were true. However, have we? Whatever space may really be, it is certain that our perceptions make it appear three dimensional; and to a three-dimensional space no boundaries are conceivable. By the very forms of our perceptions therefore we must feel as if we lived somewhere in infinite space: and whatever size the Earth happens to be, it must of course be very small in comparison with infinite. And this infinite space must either be empty or contain bodies. If it were empty, if it contained noting but our own Sun, then that vast vacancy would certainly be used as an argument against the very existence of God. Why, it would be asked, should He create one speck and leave all the rest of space to nonentity? If, on the other hand, we find (as we actually do) countless bodies floating in space, they must be either habitable or uninhabitable. Now the odd thing is that both alternatives are equally used as objections to Christianity. If the Universe is teeming with life other than ours, then this, we are told, makes it quite ridiculous to believe that God should be so concerned with the human race as to “come down from Heaven” and be made man for its redemption. If, on the other hand, our planet is really unique in harbouring organic life, then this is thought to prove that life is only an accidental by-product in the Universe and so again to disprove our religion. We treat God as the policeman in the story treated the suspect; whatever he does “will be used in evidence against Him.” #RandolphHarris 18 of 25
This kind of objection to the Christian faith is not really based on the observed nature of the actual Universe at all. You can make it without waiting to find out what the Universe is like, for it will fit any kind of Universe we choose to imagine. The doctor here can diagnose poison without looking at the corpse for one has a theory of poison which one will maintain whatever the state of the organs turns out to be. The reason why we cannot even imagine a Universe so built as to exclude these objections is, perhaps, as follows. Man is a finite creature who has sense enough to know that he is finite: therefore, on any conceivable view, he finds himself dwarfed by reality as a whole. He is also a derivative being: the cause of his existence lies not in himself but (immediately) in his parents and (ultimately0 either in the character of Nature as a whole or (if there is a God) in God. However, there must be something, whether it be God or the totality of Nature, which exists in its own right or goes on “of its own accord”; not as the product of causes beyond itself, but simply because it does. In the face of that something, whichever it turns out to be, man must feel his own derived existence to be unimportant, irrelevant, almost accidental. There is no question of religious people fancying that all exists for man and scientific people discovering that is does not. Whether the ultimate and inexplicable being—that which simply is—turns out to be God or “the whole show,” of course it does not exist for us. #RandolphHarris 19 of 25
On either view we are faced with something which existed before the human race appeared and will exist after the Earth has become uninhabitable; which is utterly independent of us though we are totally dependent on it; and which, through vast ranges of its being, has no relevance to our own hopes and fears. For no human was, I suppose, ever so mad as to think that man, or all creation, filled the Divine Mind; if we are a smaller thing to God. It is profound mistake to imagine that Christianity ever intended to dissipate the bewilderment and ever the terror, the sense of our own nothingness, which come upon us when we think about the nature of things. It comes to intensify them. Without such sensations there is no religion. Many a human, brought up in the glib profession of some shallow form of Christianity, who comes through reading Astronomy to realise for the first time how majestically indifferent most reality is to humans, and who perhaps abandons one’s religion on that account, may at that moment be having one’s first genuinely religious experience. Christianity does not involve the belief that God loves humans and for their sake became man and died. I have not yet succeeded in seeing how what we know (and have known since the days of Ptolemy) about the size of the Universe affects the credibility of this doctrine one way or the other. The sceptic asks how we can believe that God so “came down” to this one tiny planet. If we knew that there are rational creatures on any of the other bodies that float is space; that they have, like us, fallen and need redemption; that their redemption must be in the same mode as ours; and that redemption in this mode has been withheld from them, the questions would be embarrassing. #RandolphHarris 20 of 25
The Universe may be full of happy lives that never needed redemption. It may be full of lives that have been redeemed in the very same mode as our own. It may be full of things quite other than life in which God is interested though we are not. If it is maintained that anything so small as the Earth must, in any event, be too unimportant to merit the love of the Creator, we reply that no Christian ever supposed we did merit it. Christ did not die for human because they were intrinsically worth dying for, but because He is intrinsically love, and therefore loves infinitely. And what, after all, does the size of a World or a creature tell us about its “importance” or value? There is no doubt that we feel the incongruity of supposing, say, that the planet Earth might be more important than the Great Nebula in Andromeda. On the other hand, we are all equally certain that only a lunatic would think a man six-feet high necessarily more important than a man five-feet high, or a horse necessarily more important than a man, or a man’s legs than his brain. In other words this supposed ratio of size to importance feels plausible only when one of the sizes to importance feels plausible only when one of the sizes involved is very great. And that betrays the true basic of this type of thought. When a relation is perceived by Reason, it is perceived to hold good universally. If our Reason told us that size was proportional to importance, then small differences in size would be accompanied by small differences in importance just as surely as great differences in size were accompanied by great differences in importance. #RandolphHarris 21 of 25
Your six-foot man would have to be slightly more valuable than the man of five feet, and your leg slightly more important than your brain—which every knows to be nonsense. The conclusion is inevitable: the importance we attach to great differences of size is an affair not of reason but of emotion—of that peculiar emotion which superiorities in seize begin to produce in us only after a certain point of absolute size has been reached. We are inveterate poets. When a quantity is very great we cease to regard it as a mere quantity. Our imaginations awake. Instead of mere quantity, we now have a quality—the Sublime. However, for this, the merely arithmetical greatness of the Galaxy would be no mor impressive than the figures in an account book. To a mind which did not share our emotions and lacked our imaginative energies, the argument against Christianity from the size of the Universe would be simply unintelligible. It is there for from ourselves that the material Universe derives its power to overawe us. Humans of sensibility look up on the night sky with awe: brutal and stupid humans do not. When the silence of the eternal spaces terrified Pascal, it was Pascal’s own greatness that enabled them to do so; to be frightened by the bigness of the nebulae is, almost literally, to be frightened at our own shadow. For light years and geological periods are mere arithmetic until the shadow of human, the poet, the maker of myths, falls upon them. As a Christian I do not say we are wrong to tremble at that shadow, for I believe it to be the shadow of an image of God. However, if the vastness of Nature ever threatens to overcrowd our spirits, we must remember that it is only Nature spiritualized by human imaginations. #RandolphHaris 22 of 25
This suggest a possible answer to the question raised recently—why is the size of the Universe, known for centuries, should first in modern times become an argument against Christianity? Has it perhaps done so because in modern times the imagination has become more sensitive to bigness? From this point of view the argument from size might almost be regarded as a by-product of the Romantic Movement in poetry. In addition to the absolute increase of imaginative vitality on this topic, there has pretty certainly been a decline on others. Any reader of old poetry can see that brightness appealed to ancient and medieval humans more than bigness, and more than it does to us. Medieval thinkers believed that the stars must be somehow superior to the Earth because they looked bright and it did not. Moderns think that the Galaxy ought to be more important than the Earth because it is bigger. Both states of mind can produce good poetry. Both can supply mental pictures which rouse very respectable emotions—emotions of awe, humility, or exhilaration. However, taken as serious philosophical argument both are ridiculous. The atheist’s argument from size is, in fact, an instance of just that picture-thinking to which, as we shall later discover, the Christian is no committee. It is the particular mode in which picture-thinking appears in the twenty-first century: for what we fondly call “primitive” errors do not pass away. They merely change their form. The glimpse in its most elementary form does not come only to specially gifted persons. It belongs to the portrait of every human being as natural and no a mysterious part of one’s life-experience. #RandolphHarris 23 of 25
It is simply a part of the feeling for Nature, to whose systems one belongs, and for the Sun which is Nature’s supreme expression. The Sun’s glory, beauty, power, and benignity arouse reverence. Old World faiths mostly recognized this and made prayers obligatory at dawn and twilight. The point which has yet to be made is that these glimpses are no supernatural superhuman and solely religious experiences. When scientific psychology has advanced to the point where it really understands the human being in all one’s height and depth, and not merely one’s surface, it will see this. Although one is normally quite unconscious of this connection with the Overself, once at least in a lifetime there is a flash which visits one and break the unconsciousness. One has a glimpse of one’s highest possibility. However, the clearness of intensity of this glimpse depends upon one’s receptivity. They may amount to little or much. Many people without pretensions to mystical knowledge or belief have had this experience, this glimpse of timeless loveliness, through Nature, art, music or even for no apparent reason at all. And I though over again my small adventures as with a shore-wind I drifted out in my yacht, and thought I was in danger, my fears, those small ones that I thought so big for all the vital things I have to get and to reach. And yet, there is only one great thing; to live to see in hunts and on journeys the great day that dawns, and the light that fills the World. Our God and God of our fathers, accept our rest. Sanctify us through Thy commandments, and please grant our portion in Thy Torah. #RandolphHarris 24 of 25
Can the true reason we fear the unknown, be that we know ourselves too well? Please give us abundantly of Thy goodness and please make us rejoice in Thy salvation. Please purify our hearts to serve Thee in truth. In Thy loving favour, O Lord our God, please grant that Thy holy Sabbath be our joyous heritage, and may America who sanctifies Thy name, rest thereon. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, who hallowest the Sabbath. May they who observe the Sabbath and call it a delight, rejoice in Thy kingdom. May the people who sanctify the seventh day be sated and delighted with Thy bounty. For Thou didst find pleasure in the seventh day, and didst sanctify it, calling it the most desirable of days, in remembrance of creation. May human beings begin to think of and dwell upon he One Infinite Life-Power, filling all space and pervading the entire Universe, existing everywhere, containing and permeating all creatures, all humanity, including one’s self. Accept and stress God’s existence. Next, call on God’s help, then concentrate on the truth of His recuperative power, which develops and sustains every cell of the body from birth, heals its wounds and knits its bones. Imagine God’s power to be flowing into you as White Light. Mentally draw the current into the body, through the forehead, the palms, and the solar plexus. Lastly, bring it to the part of the body that needs healing and concentrate it there. Think of the whole body as being manifestation of Creative Intelligence and as a projection of the higher self. #RandolphHarris 25 of 25
BRIGHTON STATION AT CRESLEIGH RANCH
Rancho Cordova, CA |
Now Selling!
Brighton Station at Cresleigh Ranch is Rancho Cordova’s newest home community! This charming neighborhood offers an array of home types with eye catching architecture styles such as Mid-Century Modern, California Modern, Prairie, and Contemporary Farmhouse.
Located off Douglas Road and Rancho Cordova Parkway, the residents of Cresleigh Ranch will enjoy, being just minutes from shopping, dining, and entertainment, and quick access to Highway 50 and Grant Line Road providing a direct route into Folsom. Residents here also benefit from no HOA fees, two community parks and the benefits of being a part of the highly-rated Elk Grove Unified School District.
Best of all, each Cresleigh home comes fully equipped with an All Ready connected home! This smart home package comes included with your home and features great tools including: video door bell and digital deadbolt for the front door, connect home hub so you can set scenes and routines to make life just a little easier. Two smart switches and USB outlets are also included, plus we’ll gift you a Google Home Hub and Google Mini to help connect everything together!
Cresleigh Ranch is a single-family home community, with luxurious architecture. Offering spacious estate home designs with two-story foyers, butler’s pantries, family rooms, luxurious primary bedroom suites, and 3-car garages.
From home offices and school workspaces to multi-gen suites, craft rooms to libraries—whatever you desire, we help you achieve your dreams. Come find out why Cresleigh is America’s Favourite!
The Source of those Accusations Was a Committee of Demons Who Had Infested Her!
The infinite power of God to create is far beyond what we can grasp or understand. If the Almighty devoted so much of His Word to prophecy, it certainly benefits every believer to study it. The study of the prophetic scriptures and their fulfillment attests to the authority of the Word of God. Every soul has cost an infinite price, and how terrible is the sin of turning one soul away from Christ, so that for Him the Saviour’s love and humiliation and agony shall have been in vain. Contrary to popular opinion, New England’s record in regard to witchcraft is surprisingly good, as Governor Thomas Hutchinson pointed out in 1750: “more having been put to death in a single country in England from the first settlement until the present time.” Through most of the seventeenth century the record is really astonishing. While Europe hanged and burned literally thousands, executions in New England were few and far between. (Witches were burned on the Continent and in Scotland, where witchcraft was a heresy, but hanged in England and in New England, where it was a felony. Burning a witch seems not to have been motivated by the wish to inflict a particularly painful death; Scottish witches, for instance, were first garroted by the executioner, who then proceeded to burn the corpse and scatter its ashes. Most probably, burning was an attempt to prevent the resurrection of the body.) There are some fascinating accounts in New England that deal with cases of witchcraft before 1692, and we shall look at a few of these for they will illuminate some interesting aspects of the Salem witch trials. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21
The first is that of Mrs. Anne Hibbins. Her husband, who died in 1654, had been a man of importance: Boston merchant, a Colonial Agent, and for several years one of the Assistants. Tradition has it that she was a sister of Governor Bellingham. She was apparently quarrelsome—quarrelsome enough so that her church censured her for it—and one quarrel was her undoing. She seems to have come upon two of her neighbours talking, to have told them she knew they were talking about her, and then to have reconstructed their conversation with enough fidelity to convince the she was possessed of “preternatural” knowledge (something Mrs. Sarah Winchester used to also have the ability to do, and a reason she dismissed so many staff members for gossiping). Nonetheless, Mrs. Hibbins was brought to trail in 1655, and the jury brought her in guilty. However, the presiding magistrates refused to accept the verdict, apparently believing her innocent, and their refusal automatically threw the case into the General Court. There again she was found guilty; the governor pronounced the required sentence of death; and in 1656 she was executed. We have seen that some of the magistrates were not satisfied of her guilt, and apparently the same were true of some of the clergy. To masses of people, death was a dread mystery; beyond was uncertainty and gloom. These people were seeking for truth, and to learn them the Spirit of Inspiration was imparted. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21
A surviving letter tells us that the Reverend John Norton “once said at his own table” before the Reverend John Wilson and others that Mistress Hibbins “was hanged for a witch only for having more with than her neighbours. It was his very expression; she having, as he explained it, unhappily guessed that two of her persecutors, whom she saw talking in the street, were talking of her—which cost her her life, not withstanding all he could do to the contrary, as he himself told us.” The Hibbins case shows how slender and how circumstantial were the grounds necessary to bring an accusation of witchcraft against anyone with a reputation for malice. It also shows that the popular elements in society (the jury, and the people’s representatives in the General Court) were far more ready to believe in witchcraft than the leaders of society (the magistrates and ministers.) This latter conclusion is reinforced by the fact that before 1692 there were far more acquittals than convictions in New England; there were more people willing to charge their neighbours with witchcraft than magistrates willing to convict them. A case which took place in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1662 is known in rather more detail than that of Mrs. Hibbins. Anne Cole, “a person esteemed pious,” was taken with “strange fits.” As with the Salem girls, the fits were both violent and public. Extremely violent bodily motions she many times had, even to the hazard of her life in the apprehensions of those that saw them. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21
And very often great disturbances was given in the public worship of God by her and two other women who had also strange fits. Once in especial, on a day of prayer kept on that account, the motion and noised of the afflicted was so terrible that a godly person fainted under the appearance of it. In some of her fits strange voices came from her, voices that were clearly not her own. Such voices are now known to be a consequence of multiple personality, which is the extreme form of the hysterical fugue. However, the seventeenth-century observers of Anne Cole judged them to be the voices of demons who had entered into her, and that judgment was sensible enough in view of the fact that the voices seemed to be plotting ways in which Anne Cole might be further afflicted. Eventually, seeming to realize that they were being overheard, one of the voices announced, “‘Let us confound her language, [that] she may tell no more tales.’” For some time nothing came from her but “unintelligible mutterings”; then the conversation resumed in a Dutch accent, and this time names were mentioned, names of the witches who were responsible for these afflictions. When Anne Cole was out of her fits, she “knew nothing of those things that were spoken by her” during them, but she was understandably distressed to find she had been speaking things which, to the best of her knowledge, had never been in her mind; it was a “matter of great affliction to her.” #RandolphHarris 4 of 21
It must have been afflicting to the local magistrates as well; they now had accusations of witchcraft against several persons, but the source of these accusations was not Anne Cole; it was a committee of demons who had infested her. The magistrates investigated further, and imprisoned some (and perhaps all) of the accused on suspicion of witchcraft One of these, a “lewd, ignorant, considerably aged woman” named Rebecca Greensmith sent for the two clergymen who has taken down in writing the demonic conversation issuing from the mouth of Anne Cole. She had the transcript read to er, and then “forthwith and freely confessed those things to be true,” confirming the statement of the voiced “that she (and other persons named in the discourse) had familiarity with the Devil.” She confessed to a number of other things as well, including “that the Devil has frequent use of her body with much seeming (but indeed horrible, hellish) delight to her.” Reports of copulation with demons (including the unpleasantness of the experience) are common in the literature of Continental witchcraft, but this is one of the few known cases in New England. What is involved is apparently an erotic fit in which the woman actually goes through the motions of copulation and achieves a climax; similar fits have been observed in mental patients in the twenty-first century. Thus it appears that in the case of Anne Cole the confessor as well as the afflicted person was an hysteric. This pattern we shall see again at Salem. #RandolphHarris 5 of 21
Rebecca Greensmith was hanged in 1663. So was her husband Nathaniel, although we do not know the grounds for his conviction; according to Increase Mather he did not confess. “Most” of the other persons accused by the demonic voices “made their escape into another part of the country.” What happened to the others we do not know, but they were apparently not executed. And since at least one of those who made her escape had at first been imprisoned in suspicion of witchcraft (Judith Varlet, a relative of Governor Peter Stuyvesant of New York), it can be assumed that the authorities were reluctant to press the matter further. The evidence they had was, after all, highly suspect, coming from demonic voices on the one hand and a confessed witch on the other. (Confessors are a group of women with the power to make anyone they touch love them. This love, however, is more aptly described as a soul-destroying obsession whose objective is pleasing the Confessor in any way possible. Confessors were created by warlocks to travel Medieval lands and act as law enforcers. The Confessors could possess anyone and make them tell the truth in great detail. There were also a few male Confessors, but they became megalomanics and plunged the entire World into a dark age. As a result, after all the male Confessors were defeated and wiped out, the warlocks and female Confessors took up the tradition of killing all male Confessors shortly after birth.) In any event, after the “execution of some and escape of others” Anne Cole’s fits ceased, and did not return. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21
Twenty years later, in 1682, the Reverend John Whiting reported that “she yet remains maintaining her integrity.” This together with what the voices said, suggests that Anne Cole’s fits probably were caused by her fear of witchcraft and cured by the removal of the fear. A few other cases are remarkable for a number of reasons, one of them being the exemplary thoroughness with which the symptoms of the affiliated persons are described, which makes it possible to say without question that these were pathological cases of hysteria. The first took place in Groton, Massachusetts, in 1671-1671 and was recorded by the Reverend Samuel Willard, then minister of Groton (during the Salem trials he was a member of the Boston Clergy). On 30 October 1671, Elizabeth Knapp began to behave strangely: “In the evening, a little before she went to bed, sitting by the fire she cried out, ‘Oh! My legs!’ and clapped her hands on them; immediately, ‘Oh! My breast!’ and removed her hands thither; and forthwith, ‘Oh! I am strangled’ and put her hands on her throat.” The similarity to Janet’s twentieth-century description of the onset of a typical hysterical fit is unmistakable; it starts, he writes “with a pain or a strange sensation situated at such or such a point of the body…[It] often begins in the lower part of the abdomen [and] seems to ascend and to spread to other organs. For instance, it very often spreads to the epigastrium, to the breast, then to the throat. There it assumes rather an interesting form, which was for a very long time considered as quite characteristic of hysteria. The patient has the sensation of too big an object, as it were, a ball, rising in her throat and choking her.” #RandolphHarris 7 of 21
The chocking sensation we shall find over and over again; it is the bolus hystericus and is related to the “lump in the throat” felt by normal people in moments of extreme stress. The normal person, like the hysteric, tries to relieve it by swallowing; this is why the comic-strip artist has one’s characters say “Gulp” when they are in trouble. The choking sensations in the throat was followed by “fits in which she was violent in bodily motions, leapings, strainings and strange agitations, scarce to be held in bound by the strength of three or four; violent also in roarings and screamings.” The fits continued until 15 January 1692, the date of Willard’s writings. Several of the details he recorded are worth noting. On 15 November, “her tongue was for many hours together drawn into a semicircle up to the roof of her mouth, and not to be removed, for some tried with the fingers to do it.” On 17 December her tongue was drawn “out of her mouth most frightfully, to an extraordinary length and greatness.” Devils appeared to her, and witches; “Oh,” she cried to one of them, “you are a rouge.” On 29 November she had a particularly grotesque hallucination, when she believed a witch in the shape of a dog with a woman’s head was strangling her. The hallucinations and the woman’s sufferings were terrifyingly convincing; Willard noted that when she thought the witch was strangling her, “she did often times seem to our apprehension as of she would forthwith be strangled.” #RandolphHarris 8 of 21
Elizabeth Knapp’s case is strikingly similar to that of Ler—one of the best-known cases of J.-M. Charcot, the nineteenth-century psychologist. Her fits, he wrote, “are characterized in the first stage by epileptiform and tetaniform convulsions; after this come great gesticulations of a voluntary character, in which the patient, assuming the most frightful postures, reminds one of the attitudes which history assigns to the demoniacs…At this stage of the attack, se is a prey to delirium, and raves evidently of the events which seem to have determined her first seizures. She hurls furious invectives against imaginary individuals, crying out, “villains! robbers! brigands! fire! fire! O, the dogs! I’m bitten!”—Reminiscences, doubtless, of the emotions experienced in her youth.” When the convulsive portion of Ler—’s attack was over other symptoms usually followed, including “hallucination of vision: the patient beholds horrible animals, skeletons, and specters” and “lastly, a more or less marked permanent contracture of the tongue.” Charcot drew this contracture of the tongue; it is quite appalling. Willard was not exaggerating in calling it frightful. Elizabeth Knapp displayed still other symptoms are identifiably hysterical, including loss of speech on some occasions, and on others speaking in voices other than her own; once “she barked like a dog, and bleated like a calf.” Willard noted that her fits did not seem to do her any permanent physical damage: “She hath no ways in body or strength by all these fits, though so dreadful, but gathered flesh exceedingly, and hath her natural strength when her fits are off, for the most part.” #RandolphHarris 9 of 21
This is typical; as Janet remarks, the “hysteric patient, after howling for several hours, feels rather comfortable; she experiences, as it were, a relaxation, and declares she is out of her fits has often raised the question of whether they are genuine. Willard thought they must be, if only for their violence: “such a strength is beyond the force of dissimulation.” (It should be noted that hysterics are not always well in the intervals between their fits. Some, for instance, lose their appetites and starve themselves. It is probably such cases who are referred to in the statue of James I against witchcraft as being “wasted, consumed, pined.) On 1 November, Elizabeth Knapp named one of her neighbour as the probable cause of her afflictions. The accused woman was sent for, and entered the house while the afflicted girl was in a fit. Her eyes were closed, as they usually were in her fits, yet she could distinguish this neighbour’s touch from all others, “though no voice was uttered.” That would have been quite enough to convict the neighbour in many witchcraft cases. However, fortunately she was permitted to pray with the afflicted girl, and at the conclusions Miss Knapp “confessed that she believed Satan had deluded her.” Willian was happy that “God was pleased to vindicate the case and justify the innocent,” and reported that Miss Knapp never again complained of any “apparition or disturbance from this neighbour.” Instead, she turned to accusing the Devil, who had, she said, been offering her a covenant for several years, a covenant she had frequently been tempted to sign. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21
The dark shadow that Satan has cast over the World grew deeper and deeper. About a month later Miss Knapp accused another person of witchcraft, this time during a period of hallucinations. Her father brought the woman to the house, and Willard, who had been asked to be present, noted that her fit became particularly violent when this woman entered. However, Willard, wrote, “we made nothing of it” since her fits had been as violent on other occasions. Instead they inquired carefully into the mater and found “two evident and clear mistakes” in the accusation. This was enough to exonerate the second accused woman. Satan had implanted this principle. Wherever it was held, people had no barrier against sin. Elizabeth Knapp was still having fits when Willard wrote about her, and all he could be certain of was that “she is an object of pity.” He did not think she was bewitched, but he did believe she was possessed (that is, that Devils has entered into her). This remained his opinion (and that of most others) when the case was remembered in 1692. He also believed that the girl’s terrible afflictions provided an occasion for the community to examine its collective conscience. Therefore he admonished his congregation in a sermon, “Let us all examine by this Providence [id est, this event] what sins they have been, that have given Satan so much footing in this poor place.” Satan was seeking to shut out from humans a knowledge of God, to turn their attention from the temple of God, and to establish His own kingdom. His strife for supremacy had seemed to be almost wholly successful. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21
They robbed God of His glory, and defrauded the World by a counterfeit of the gospel. They had refused to surrender themselves to God for the salvation of the World, and they became agents of Satan for its destruction. They were doing the work Satan designed them to do, taking a course to misrepresent the character of God, and cause the World to look upon Him as a tyrant. The convulsive fits which played so prominent a part in most witchcraft cases, and continued to be one of the most common symptoms of hysteria through the earl years of the twentieth century, have no become relatively rare in Western civilization. D.W. Abse reports fits occurred in only six out of one hundred and sixty-one cases of hysteria treated at a British military hospital during World War II, but that they were the most common symptom among Indian Army hysterics treated at Delhi during the same period. There are a number of possible explanations for this curious fact. Hysterics are notoriously suggestible, so the change may be ascribable to nothing more than the refusal of our culture to give the hysterical fit the respectful and awed attention it used to command. In any case, it seems clear that abnormal behaviour varies with time and place just as normal behaviour does. However, since this particular variation occurred so recently, after the classic studies of hysteria had been completed, it is possible to identify the seventeenth-century Massachusetts fits for what they were. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21
Mr. William Wirt Winchester, while we were attending lectures, purchased three or four old houses in California, one of which was unoccupied. He resided in the country, and he proposed that he wanted his wife and myself to take up our abode in the untenanted house, so long as it should continue unlet; a move which we would accomplish the double end of settling us nearer alike to our lecture-rooms and to our amusements, and of relieving us from the weekly charge of rent for our lodgings. Our furniture was very scant—our whole equipage remarkably modest and primitive; and in short, our arrangements pretty nearly as simple as those of a bivouac. Mrs. Sarah Winchester’s new plan was, therefore, executed almost as soon as conceived. The front drawing-room was our sitting-room. I had the bedroom over it, and Mrs. Winchester had the back bedroom on the same floor, which nothing could have induced me to occupy. The house to begin with was an incomplete, three-story farm house with a basement. It was very old. Dated back to the sixteenth century, I believe. It had nothing modern about it. The agent who looked into the property titles for Mrs. Winchester told her it was originally sold, along with much other forfeited property in 1702; and it had belonged to John Conduit, whose wife was the niece of Sir Isaac Newton, a father of modern science, although keenly interested in the occult. How old it was then, I cannot say; but, at all events, in had seen years and changes enough to have contracted all the mysterious and saddened air, at once exciting and depressing, which belongs to most old mansions. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21
There had been very little done in the way of modernizing details and, perhaps, it was better so; for there was something queer and by-gone in the very walls and ceilings—in the shape of doors and windows—in the odd diagonal site of the chimney-pieces—in the beams and ponderous cornices—not to mention the singular solidity of all the woodwork, from the bannisters to the window-frames, which hopelessly defined disguise, and would have emphatically proclaimed their antiquity through any conceivable amount of modern finery and varnish. An effort had, indeed, been made, to the extent of papering the drawing-rooms; but somehow, the paper looked raw and out of keeping. This woman said, old Judge Sir James Hales (who, having earned the reputation of a particularly ‘hanging judge’, ended by hanging himself, as the corner’s jury found, under an impulse of ‘temporary insanity’, with a child’s skipping-rope, over the massive old bannisters) resided there, entertaining good company, with fine venison and rare old port. In those halcyon days, the drawing-rooms were hung with gilded leather, and, I dare say, cut a good figure, for they were really spacious rooms. The bedrooms were wainscoted, but the front one was not gloomy; and in it the cosiness of antiquity quite overcame its somber associations. However, the back bedrooms, with its two queerly-placed melancholy windows, staring vacantly at the foot of the bed, and with the shadowy recess to be found in most old houses in Dublin, like a large ghostly closet, which, from congeniality of temperament, had amalgamated with the bedchamber, and dissolved the partition. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21
At the night-time, this “alcove”—as our “maid” was wont to call it—had, in my eyes, a specially sinister and suggestive character. Mrs. Winchester’s distant and solitary candle glimmered vainly into its darkness. There it was always overlooking her—always itself impenetrable. However, this was only part of the effect. The whole room was, I cannot tell, how repulsive to me. There was, I supposed, in its proportions and features, a latent discord—a certain mysterious and indiscernible relation, which jarred indistinctly upon some secret sense of the fitting and the safe, and raised indefinable suspicious and apprehensions of the imagination. On the whole, as I began saying, nothing could have induced me to pass a night alone in it. We have not been very long in occupation of our respective chambers, when I began to complain of uneasy nights and disturbed sleep. I was, I suppose, the more impatient under this annoyance, as I was usually a sound sleeper, and by no means prone to nightmares. It was not, however, my destiny, instead of enjoying my customary repose, every night to “sup full of horrors.” After a preliminary course of disagreeable and frightful dreams, my troubles took a definite form, and the same vision, without an appreciable variation in a single detail, visited me at least (on average) every second night of the week. Now, this dream, nightmare, or infernal illusion—which you please—of which I was the miserable port, was on this wise: I saw, or thought I saw, with the most abominable distinctness although at the time in profound darkness, every article of furniture and accidental arrangement of the chamber in which I lay. This, as you know, is incidental to ordinary nightmare. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21
Well, while in this clairvoyant condition, which seemed but the lighting up of the theatre in which was to be exhibited the monotonous tableau of horror, which made my nights insupportable, my attention invariably became, I know not why, fixed upon the windows opposite the foot of my bed; and, uniformly with the same effect, a sense of dreadful anticipation always took slow but sure possession of me. I became somehow conscious of a sort of horrid but undefined preparation going forward in some unknown quarter, and by some unknown agency, for my torment; and, after an interval, which always seemed to me of the same length, a picture suddenly flew up the window, where it remained fixed, as if by an electrical attraction, and my discipline of horror then commenced, to last perhaps for hours. The picture this mysteriously glued to the window-panes, was the portrait of an old man, in crimson flowered silk dressing-gown, the folds of which I could now describe, with countenance embodying a strange mixture of intellect, sensuality, and power, but withal sinister and full of malignant omen. His nose was hooked, like the beak of a vulture; his eyes large, grey, and prominent and lighted up with a more than mortal cruelty and coldness. The features were surmounted by a crimson velvet cap, the hair that peeped from under which was white with age, while the eyebrows retained their original blackness. Well I remember every line, hue, and shadow of that stony countenance, and well I may! The gaze of this hellish visage was fixed upon me, and mine returned it with the inexplicable fascination of nightmare, for what appeared to me to be hours of agony. #RandolphHarris 16 of 21
At last—the cock he crew, away then flew, the fiend who had enslaved me through the awful watches of the night and, harassed and nervous, I rose to the duties of the day. I had—I cannot say exactly why, but it may have been from the exquisite anguish and profound impressions of unearthly horror, with which this strange phantasmagoria was associated—an insurmountable antipathy to describing the exact nature of my nightly troubles to Mrs. Winchester. Generally, however, I told her I was haunted by abominable dreams; and, true to the imputed materialism of medicine, we put our heads together to dispel my horrors, not by exorcism, but by a tonic Vin Mariani. However, the evil spirit, who enthralled my senses in the shape of that portrait, may have been just as near me, just as energetic, just as malignant, though I saw him not. Everybody knows how contagious is fear of all sort, but more especially that particular kind of fear under which poor Mrs. Winchester was at that moment labouring. I would not have heard, nor I believe would she have recapitulated, just at that moment, for half the World, the details of the hideous vision which had so unmanned her. “I was sitting in my room,” said Mrs. Winchester “by my fireplace, the door locked when I heard a step on the flight of stairs descending from the attics. It was two o’ clock, and the streets were as silent as a churchyard—the sounds were, therefore, perfectly distinct. There was slow, heavy tread, characterized by the emphasis and deliberation of age, descending by the narrow staircase from above; and, what made the sound more singular, it was plain that the feet which produced it were perfectly bare measuring a descent with something between a pound and a flop, very ugly to hear. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21
“I knew quite well that you and my attendant had gone away many hours before, and that nobody but myself has any business in the house. It was quite plain also that the person who was coming down stairs had no intention whatever of concealing his movements; but, on the contrary, appeared disposed to make even more noise, and proceed more deliberately, than was at all necessary. When the step reached the foot of the stairs outside my room, it seemed to stop; and I expected every moment to see my door open spontaneously, and give admission to soul killed by the Winchester rifle. I was, however, relieved in a few second by hearing the descent renewed, just in the same manner, upon the stair case leading down to the drawing-rooms, and thence, after another pause, down the next flight, and so on to the hall, whence I heard no more. Now, by the time the sound had ceased, I was wound up, as they say, to a very unpleasant pitch of excitement. I listened, but there was not a stir. I screw up my courage to a decisive experiment—opened my door, and in a stentorian voice bawled over the banisters, ‘Who’s there?’ There was no answer but the ringing of my own voice through the empty old house—no renewal of the movement; nothing short, to give my unpleasant sensations a definite direction. There is, I think, something most disagreeably disenchanting in the sound of one’s own voice under such circumstances, exerted in solitude, and in vain. It redoubled my sense of isolation, and my misgivings increased on perceiving that the door, which I certainly thought I had left open, was closed behind me. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21
“In a vague alarm, lest my retreat should be cut off, I got again into my room as quickly as I could, where I remained in a state of imaginary blockade, and very uncomfortable indeed, till morning. Next night brought no return of my barefooted fellow-lodger; but the night following, being in my bed, and in the dark—somewhere, I supposed, about the same hour as before, I distinctly heard the old fellow again descending from the garrets. This time I jumped out of bed, clutched the poker as I passed the expiring fire, and in a moment was upon the lobby. The sound had ceased by this time—the dark and chill were discouraging; and, guess my horror, when I saw, or thought I saw, a monster, whether in the shape of a man or a bear I could not say, standing, with its back to the wall, on the lobby, facing me, with a pair of great greenish eyes shinning dimly out. Now, I must be frank, and confess that the cupboard which displayed our plates and cups stood just there, though at that moment I did not recollect it. At the same time I must never could satisfy myself that I was made the dupe of my own fancy in this matter; for this apparition, after one or two shiftings of shape, as if in the act of incipient transformation, began, as it seemed on second thoughts, to advance upon me in its original form. From an instinct of terror rather than of courage, I hurled the poker, with all my force, at its head; and to the music of a horrid crash made my way into my room, and double-locked the door. Then, in a minute more, I heard the horrid bare feet walk down the stairs, till the sound ceased in the halls, as on the former occasion. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21
“In a vague alarm, lest my retreat should be cut off, I got again into my room as quickly as I could, where I remained in a state of imaginary blockade, and very uncomfortable indeed, till morning. Next night brought no return of my barefooted fellow-lodger; but the night following, being in my bed, and in the dark—somewhere, I supposed, about the same hour as before, I distinctly heard the old fellow again descending from the garrets. This time I jumped out of bed, clutched the poker as I passed the expiring fire, and in a moment was upon the lobby. The sound had ceased by this time—the dark and chill were discouraging; and, guess my horror, when I saw, or thought I saw, a monster, whether in the shape of a man or a bear I could not say, standing, with its back to the wall, on the lobby, facing me, with a pair of great greenish eyes shinning dimly out. Now, I must be frank, and confess that the cupboard which displayed our plates and cups stood just there, though at that moment I did not recollect it. At the same time I must never could satisfy myself that I was made the dupe of my own fancy in this matter; for this apparition, after one or two shiftings of shape, as if in the act of incipient transformation, began, as it seemed on second thoughts, to advance upon me in its original form. From an instinct of terror rather than of courage, I hurled the poker, with all my force, at its head; and to the music of a horrid crash made my way into my room, and double-locked the door. Then, in a minute more, I heard the horrid bare feet walk down the stairs, till the sound ceased in the halls, as on the former occasion. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21
“If the apparition of the night before was an ocular delusion of my fancy sporting with the dark outlines of our cupboard, and if tis horrid eyes were nothing but a pair of inverted teacups, I had, at all events, the satisfaction of having launched the poker with admirable effect, and in true ‘fancy’ phrase, ‘knocked its two daylights into one,’ as the commingled fragments of my tea-service testified. I did my best to gather comfort and courage from these evidences; but it would not do. And then what could I say of those horrid bare feet, and the regular tramp, tramp, tramp, which measured the distance of the entire staircase through the solitude of my haunted dwelling, and at an hour when no good influence was stirring? Confound it!—the whole affair was abominable. I was out of spirits, and dreaded the approach of night. It came, ushered ominously in with a thunderstorm and dull torrents of depressing rain. Earlier than usual the streets grew silent; and by twelve o’clock nothing but the comfortless patterning of the rain was to be heard. I made myself as snug as I could. I lighted two candles instead of one. I forswore bed, and held myself in readiness for a sally, candle in hand; for, coute qui coute, I was resolved to see the being, if visible at all, who troubled the nightly stillness of my mansion. I was fidgety and nervous and, tried in vain to interest myself with my books. I walked up and down my room, whistling in turn martial and hilarious music, and listening ever and anon for the dreaded noise.” #RandolphHarris 20 of 21
Do not Grieve. Anything you lose comes around in another form. The child weaned from mother’s milk now drinks cranberry juice. God’s joy moves from unmarked box to unmarked box, from cell to cell. As rainwater, down into flowerbed. As roses, up from ground. Now it looks like a plate of rice and fish, now a cliff covered with vines, now a horse being saddled. It hides within these, till one day it cracks them open. There is the light gold of wheat in the sun, and the gold of bread made from wheat. I have neither, I am only talking about them as a town in the desert looks up to stars on a clear night. The Son of God, looking upon the World, beheld suffering and misery. With pity He saw how humans had become victims of satanic cruelty. He looked with compassion upon those who were being corrupted, murdered, and lost. They had chosen a ruler who chained them to his carriage as captives. God’s glory pervades the Universe; His ministering Angels inquire of one another: Where is the place of His glory? In response they give praise: Praised be the glory of the Lord from His Heavenly abode. From His Heavenly abode may He turn in mercy and bestow grace unto the people who, reciting the Shema evening and morning, twice daily, proclaim in love the unity of His name, saying: Hear, O America: the Lord our God, the Lord is One. He is our God; He is our Father, our sovereign and our Deliverer. In His mercy He will make known in presence of all the living that He will be your God. “I am the Lord your God.” As it is written in holy Scripture: The Lord shall reign forever; Thy God, O America, shall be Sovereign unto all generations. Hallelujah. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21
Winchester Mystery House
Ghostly tales are bountiful at Sarah Winchester’s Mystery House. What have you experienced? Photos are encouraged!
The Winchester mansion is 160-room mansion built to appease the spirits who died at the hands of the Winchester Rifle 👻
🗝 winchestermysteryhouse.com
“Whoever shadows my every move will not lose me in the dark.” At least that is what Christ says, or what the Evangelist John heard Him say (8.12). He tells us to walk on, through the darkness, with Christ as our only torch. That way, when we mayn’t have gained a step, but we won’t have lost one either. And on into the day we must pursue with dogged tread the life of Jesus Christ. Is this the secret to Mrs. Winchester’s 7-11 staircase?
Randolph Harris II International Institute 