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Ready to End the Unwanted Pursuit?
The haunting beauty of Llanada Villa was undeniably captivating. I had to go downstairs to procure another light. Echoes transcended time and space. Whispers were soft, indiscernible murmurs, barely distinguishable from the gentle rustle of the curtain. My heartbeat quickened as I strained to comprehend the words, but they remained elusively haunting. As I made my way back to my chamber, I found my windows open. The chilling draft caused the candles to flicker, casting shadows on the walls. Crossing the threshold, I shivered, and goosebumps formed on my arms as an unsettling feeling enveloped me. I was caught off guard by the shutters were flapping in the frigid breeze. As I went to bolt them again, a horse gave a scream that was too frantic for a neigh, and plunged madly off through the night, the wagon rattling crazily behind it. Vanishing into the darkness. As this ghastly situation progressed, the covers had been snatched from the bed, and my books had been scattered about. The sound that the wind made was something hellish, full of screams and wailing that raised the hackles on my neck. The Indians who used to live around here called it a “black wind”; they believed that it carried the voices of evil spirits, and that is you listened to it long enough, it could drive you mad and loose untold terrors on all humankind. A cold gust of wind swept through my chamber, extinguishing the candles. As darkness covered the room, I felt disoriented and vulnerable in the pitch-black abyss. The mansion seemed to come alive with a haunting presence. The moon had reached its zenith, casting an eerie light through the stained-glass windows of the Daisy Bedroom. #RandolphHarris 1 of 5
In the midst of the haunting beauty, there are black zones of shadows, and now and then some evil soul breaks through. However, it is a mistake to fancy that horror is associated inextricably with darkness, silence, and solitude. I slept fitfully that night, even in my sleep listening for footsteps on the veranda. It was already afternoon before I finally rose from my bed and ventured from my sunny room. I could feel strange energy permeating the air, like an intangible veil separating the living World from the dead. Llanada Villa had a life of its own. Its history seeped through the walls, whispering forgotten secrets to anyone who would listen. I sat in silence for a while, lost in a nightmare, my own private hell. These echoing words painted a tapestry of human suffering, of moments that had broken these spirits, shaped them and made them who they were. I had become a soul lost, adrift in a sea of sorrow, desperately seeking an anchor in my constantly expanding home. As the day wore on and became night, a chill ran down my spine, a nagging feeling that something was not quite right. The darkness in the mansion was a thick, oppressive weight on my chest. I could feel it, the sensation of being watched. My heart raced. Struggling to move, I realized I was trapped in my own body—the suffocating grip of sleep paralysis. My eyes, the only part of me that I could move, darted around, trying to make out of the shadows shifting in the corner of my room. Fear propelled me. Reality, with its vivid hues and resonant sounds, tried to assert its dominance, but the boundaries were blurring. Everywhere I looked, a surreal hazed seemed to cover my room, threatening to meld the familiar with the phantasmagorial. The intimacy was beyond untangling. #RandolphHarris 2 of 5
A gust of wind rattled the windows, amplifying a growing horror, of outré and morbid cast. Something was waving my fate in this dark tapestry, and I needed comfort. As I regain my strength, I ventured outside of my chamber. Each shadow seemed to harbour potential threats; every eerie whisper echoed with foreboding. Even my sleep was haunted. Every night, the same shadowed figure emerged, drawing near. Its presence is cold, its intentions unclear. Yet, there is an unspeakable dread that tugged at my soul. It was a warning? Maybe a premonition? I felt like it was calling me, urging me into its dark embrace. That path I was on was treacherous. However, sometimes salvation lies in the shadows. As the day went by, daylight, which once offered refuge from the terror of my nightmares, because just another playground for the menacing specters that haunted Llanada Villa. Morning’s golden glow no longer held the promise of safety, and the warmth of the sun could not dispel the bone-chilling cold that now seemed to follow me wherever I went. As the carpenter’s hammers fell, the miniature Tower of Babel rose course by course into an impressive nine stories. Afear gnawed at my inmost soul. Between my room and the staircase are two dark and empty chambers, which would have once caused me alarm, but which I now welcome. I opened a pair of the big windows, a grimy and, I fear a noisy task. I flitted out in the moon light on the balcony, and gazed down into the garden where the dwarf pines, pale birches, and a vast hiding place lay, where many forms often invisible life lurked in the dense undergrowth of the boxwood hedges. #RandolphHarris 3 of 5
The howl of what was supposed to be a dog brought me to an immediate standstill and for a while I listened, trying to determine from which direction the sound came. There was an unmistakable pricking sensation on the back of my neck, an exceedingly cold, almost icy chill slithered down my spine and gave me reason to remember the conditions laid down by legend and superstition. The howl rang out again. A long, drawn-out cry of canine anguish. I saw something dart behind a gnarled oak, a shadowy silhouette that moved with an unnatural fluidity. It was there and then it was not, leaving behind only the whisper of dread and the echoing silence of the night. There was a creaking of settling timbers, the ticking of an old grandfather clock. Then, without warning, the lights began to flicker, the bulbs were throwing a staccato pattern on the walls, turning the familiar into the grotesque. Then a growl erupted from the floor below. Pity fled like a leaf before a raging wind, and a stark terror filled my brain with blind, unreasoning panic. I ran, fell, got up and rain again, and from behind came the sound of a heavy body crashing on the floor, the rasp of a laboured breathing the bestial growl of some enraged being. Reason had gone, coherent thought had been replaced by an animal instinct for survival; I knew whatever ran behind me was closing the gap. In the blackness, I heard it—a whisper. A voice so faint and fragmented it was like the memory of a sound, speaking words that were not words, a language that transcended mere speech. It was a whisper that crawled into my ear and lay there, festering. Frozen with terror, I could only listen as the whisper grew louder, more insistent. It was calling to me, beckoning me, its very existence a violation of everything safe and sane. #RandolphHarris 4 of 5
My consciousness was blotted out by a merciful darkness. An hour passed, perhaps more, before I awakened. I lay quite still and tried to remember why I should be lying on the floor in the parlor. Then memory sent its first cold tentacles shuddering across my brain and I dared to sit up and face reality. Night was enforcing its guard, but I was still able to see the dead man who lay but a few feet away. I shrank back with a little muffled cry and tried to dispel this vision of a purple face and bulging eyes, by the simple act of closing my own. However, this was not a wise action for the image of that awful countenance was etched upon my brain, and the memory was even more macabre than the reality. I opened my eyes again, and there it was: a man in late middle life, with grey, close-cropped hair, a long moustache and yellow teeth, that were bared in a death grin. The purple face suggested he laid dead of a heart attack. The ghost of the Winchester Rifle grew more intrusive, more menacing, and with a boldness that sent cold shivers down my spine. They were no longer content to haunt the shadows; they demanded to be seen, to be felt, to be feared. I dragged myself through the halls of Llanada Villa and by sheer good fortune emerged out on to one of the main paths. I engrossed myself in research, buried in the arcane knowledge of the forbidden text, only to feel a chill breeze in the library where no windows were open. I looked up to find my notes shuffled, some even flung across the room. Blood spots, staring back at me like red eyes. My breath became labourious, my pulse quickened, but there was nothing there. Nothing I could see. A cyclone of cold carried with it whispers, indistinct yet filled with malice. Clutching my heart in fear, I could do nothing but listen. #RandolphHarris 5 of 5
The Winchester Mystery House
You do not have to believe in cursed objects to be fascinated by them. Because another, less paranormal definition of a cursed object is an item that gathers stories to itself—and more specifically, tragedies. Objects are intimately connected to people. We make them, live with them, use them, love them, and are sometimes even buried with them, and people continuously find themselves in the midst of tragedy. Cursed objects are those items that have simply been the mute witnesses to more tragedies than other items. They then become devices for remembering those stories and provide opportunities for retelling them. For those who are curious, visiting a museum is the easiest way to see a cursed object firsthand.
The people who have owned The Winchester Mystery House or inherited money from The Winchester Fortune have been ripped apart by dogs, shot, beheaded, pushed over cliffs, starved to death, and drowned aboard sinking ships. Many people believe The Winchester Mystery House to be the most popular object in California, making it more of a lucky charm for conservators of The Winchester Mystery House, than a cursed object. While it cannot be denied that everyone who has ever owned The Winchester Mystery House has died—The Winchester Mystery House can sometimes seem less the direct cause of trouble than a side effect. After all, you have to be extremely rich to own it. That level of wealth comes with its own problems, whether these problems are born of politics, vengeful spirits, or profligacy. But one thing is certain, the Devil is far more powerful than any person.
For further information about tours, including group tours, weddings, school events, birthday party packages, facility rentals, and special events please visit the website: https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
Please visit the online giftshop, and purchase a gift for friends and relatives as well as a special memento of The Winchester Mystery House. A variety of souvenirs and gifts are available to purchase. https://shopwinchestermysteryhouse.com/
What Miracles is He Not Capable!
Man is an indolent creature, but light the fire of fear under him, and of what miracles is he not capable! However, not only the forces that determine one’s own life directly but also those that seem to determine life in general are felt as unchangeable fate. It is fate that there are wars and that one part of humankind has to be ruled by another. It is fate that the amount of suffering can never be less than it always has been. Fate may be rationalized philosophically as “natural law” or as “destiny of man,” religiously as the “will of the Lord,” ethically as a higher power outside of the individual, toward which the individual can do nothing but submit. The authoritarian character worships the past. What has been, will eternally be. To wish or to work for something that has not yet been before is crime or madness. The miracle of creation—and creation is always a miracle—is outside of one’s range of emotional experience. Religious experience as experience of absolute dependence is the definition of the masochistic experience in general; a special role in this feeling of dependence is played by sin. The concept of original sin, which weighs upon all future generations, is characteristic of the authoritarian experience. Moral like any other kind of human failure becomes a fate which humans can never escape. Whoever has once sinned is chained eternally to one’s own sin with iron shackles. Human’s own doing becomes the power that rules over one and never lets one free. The consequences of guilt can never be softened by atonement, but atonement can never do away with the guilt. Isaiah’s words, “though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow,” express the very opposite of the authoritarian philosophy. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
The feature common to all authoritarian thinking is the conviction that life is determined by forced outside of humans’ own self, one’s interest one’s wishes. They only possible happiness lies in the submission to these forces. The powerlessness of humans is the leitmotif of masochistic philosophy. One of the ideological fathers of Nazism, Moeller van der Bruck, expressed this feeling very clearly. He writes: “The conservative believers rather in catastrophe, in the powerlessness of man to avoid it, in its necessity, and in the terrible disappointment of the seduced optimist.” In Mr. Hitler’s writings we shall see more illustrations of the same spirit. The authoritarian character does not lack activity, courage, or belief. However, these qualities for one mean something entirely different from what they mean for the person who does not long for submission. For the authoritarian character activity is rooted in a basic feeling of powerlessness which it tends to overcome. Activity in this sense means to act in the name of something higher than one’s own self. It is possible in the name of God, the past, nature, or duty, but never in the name of the future, of the unborn, of what has no power, or of life as such. The authoritarian character wins one’s strength to act through one’s leaning on superior power. This power is never assailable or changeable. For one lack of power is always an unmistakable sign of guilt and inferiority, and if the authority in which one believes shows signs of weakness, one’s love and respect change into contempt and hatred. One lacks an “offensive potency” which can attack established power without first feeling subservient to another and stronger power. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
The courage of the authoritarian character is essentially a courage to suffer what fate or its personal representative or “leader” may have destined one for. To suffer without complaining is one’s highest virtue—not the courage of trying to end suffering or at least to diminish it. Not to change fate, but to submit to it, is the heroism of the authoritarian character. One has belief in authority as long as it is strong and commanding. One’s belief is rooted ultimately in one’s doubts and constitutes an attempt to compensate them. However, if we mean by faith the secure confidence in the realization of what now exists only as a potentiality, one has no faith. Authoritarian philosophy is essentially relativistic and nihilistic, in spite of the fact that it often claims so violently to have conquered relativism and in spite of its show of activity. It is rooted in extreme desperation, in the complete lack of faith, and it leads to nihilism, to the denial of life. Authoritarian leaders come out to speak to crowds. These wild-eyed charismatic people mount stages in the darkness and feed crowds words like manna. As they stand out on the balcony—gazing out over the masses in their own kind of uniform—they may telegraph, at least for some, a specific and undeniable memory: that of Mr. Hitler addressing the Volk. Those memories, those aesthetic elements: they charge the air with emotional fervor, at least, for those inclined to be so enchanted. This is not to discount the religious significance so many attach to the leader’s presence and ability to cure the sick. There is no reason in fact to separate those two things at all. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
For some of the people standing in these fields on an Alpine summer’s night, seeing an authoritarian leader is a little like seeing a friendly ghost. That encounter has enormous, even curative, power. In authoritarian philosophy the concept of equality does not exist. The authoritarian character may sometimes use the word equality either conventionally or become it suits one’s purpose. However, it has no real meaning or weight for one, since it concerns something outside the reach of one’s emotional experiences. For one the World is composed of people with power and those without it, of superior ones and inferior ones. On the basis of one’s sado-masochistic strivings, one experiences only domination or submission, but never solidarity. Differences, whether of gender or race, to one are necessarily signs of superiority or inferiority. A difference which does not have this connotation is unthinkable to one. In Germany, reporters described many people getting suddenly healed at the Trotter Farm, especially of paralysis, and trouble with their ears or eyes. Maria Wurstel told the journalist Heueck how she had suffered since 1938 from near-paralysis of the spine. The slightest movement caused her terrible pain. Her doctor had recommended she see Herr Groning. Heueck saw her run like a child, “partly laughing, partly crying from happiness.” Another woman—she had had polio and had used a wheelchair since the age of three—got up and walked too. A man who said he had suffered brain damage in the war rejoiced, “The buzzing in my ears is gone, my head is free again!” Sometimes people brought photos of their sick relatives—perhaps those too ill to travel—and held them up before the resort’s windows in the hopes of receiving Mr. Groning’s energies. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
As new of these gatherings and cures multiplied, the crowds grew larger. The description of the sado-masochistic strivings and the authoritarian character refers to the more extreme forms of helplessness and the correspondingly more extreme forms of escaping it by the symbiotic relationship to the object of worship or domination. Although these sado-masochistic strivings are common, we can consider only certain individuals and social groups as typically sado-masochistic. There is, however, a milder form of dependency which is so general in our culture that only in exceptional cases does it seem to be lacking. This dependency does not have the dangerous and passionate qualities of sado-masochism, but it is important enough not to be omitted from out discussion here. I am referring to the kind of persons whose whole life is in a subtle way related to some power outside themselves. There is nothing they do, feel, or think which is not somehow related to this power. They expect protection from “him,” wished to be take care of by “him,” make “him” also responsible for whatever may be the outcome of their own actions. Often the fact of his dependence is something the person is not aware of at all. It worried police. “There people cannot understand why anyone would hinder” Mr. Groning’s “practicing,” one reported, and said he feared a riot if anyone tried. In truth, banning Mr. Groning’s healing work, as Herford officials had done, was not much discussed in local papers. Rather, something like the opposite was generally true. A number of local politicians and officials spoke up for him publicly. Munich’s police commissioner, Social Democrat Franz Xaver Pitzer, thanked Mr. Groning personally in the front of the Trotter Farm crowds for helping him over an illness. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
A state parliamentary representative, Hans Hagn of Bavaria’s conservative party, the Christian Social Union, exhorted the crowds to “believe in the healing power of Groning and to trust him.” Even the highest officeholder in the Bavarian government, Minister President Hans Ehard, openly expressed support for Mr. Groning. The healer should not be subject to a lot of “red tape” (Paragraphenschwierigkeiten), Mr. Ehard said. Members of the press were as smitten as politicians. One local paper described the public’s trust in Mr. Groning—“a simple, uneducated man…the son of a Danzig bricklayer”—as “limitless.” The very air in Rosenheim, correspondent Hans Bentzinger rhapsodized, was “filled with a special excitement” that “grows from hour to hour, as it becomes known that Her Groning will speak to the waiting crowds.” Mr. Bentzinger described an “unbearable” tension, the atmosphere “so laden with the energy of expectation that one can hear his own heart beating and that of his neighbor at the same time.” Everyone and everything in Germany was waiting for some kind of miracle. Even if there is a dim awareness of some dependency, the person or power on whom one is dependent often remains nebulous. There is no definite image linked up with that power. Its essential quality is to represent a certain function, namely to protect, help, and develop the individual, to be with one and never leave one alone. The “X” which has these qualities may be called the magic helper. Frequently, of course, the “magic helper” is personified: one is conceived of as God, as a principle, or as real persons such as one’s parent, husband, wife, or superior. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
It is important to recognize that when real persons assume the role of the magic helper they are endowed with magic qualities, and the significance they have results from their being the personification of the magic helper. This process of personification of the magic helper is to be observed frequently in what is called “falling in love.” A person with that kind of relatedness to the magic helper seeks to find one in flesh and blood. For some reason or other—often supported by sexual desires—a certain other person assumes for one those magic qualities, and one makes that person into the being to whom and whom one’s whole life becomes related and dependent. The fact that the other person frequently does the same with the first one does not alter the picture. It only helps to strengthen the impression that this relationship is one of “real love.” This need for the magic helper can be studied under experiment-like conditions in the psychoanalytic procedure. Often the person who is analyzed forms a deep attachment to the psychoanalyst and his or her whole life, all actions, thoughts, and feelings are related to the analyst. Consciously or unconsciously the analysand asks oneself: would he (the analyst) be pleased with this, displeased with that, agree to this, scold me for that? In love relationships the fact that one chooses this or that person as a partner serves as a proof that this particular person is loved just because he is “he”; but in the psychoanalytic situation this illusion cannot be upheld. The most different kinds of persons develop the same feelings toward the most different kind of psychoanalysts. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
The relationship looks like love; it is often accompanied by sexual desires; yet magic helper, a role which obviously a psychoanalyst, like certain other persons who have some authority (physicians, ministers, teachers), is able to play satisfactorily for the person who is seeking the personified magic helper. The reasons why a person is bound to a magic helper are, in principle, the same that we have found at the root of the symbiotic drives: an inability to stand alone and to fully express one’s own individual potentialities. In the sado-masochistic strivings this inability leads to a tendency to get rid of one’s individual self through dependency on the magic helper—in the milder form of dependency I am discussing now it only leads to a wish for guidance and protection. The intensity of the relatedness to the magic helper is in reverse proportion to the ability to express spontaneously one’s own intellectual, emotional, and sensuous potentialities. In other words, one hopes to get everything one expects from life, from the magic helper, instead of by one’s own actions. The more this is the case, the more is the center of life shifted from one’s own person to the magic helper and one’s personifications. The question is then no longer how to life oneself, but how to manipulate “him” in order not to lose him and how to make him do what one wants, even to make him responsible for what one is responsible oneself. In the more extreme cases, a person’s whole life consists almost entirely in the attempt to manipulate “him”; people differ in the means which they use; for some obedience, for some “goodness,” for others suffering is the main means of manipulation. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
We see, then, that there is no feeling, thought, or emotion that is not at least coloured by the need to manipulate “him”; in other words, that no psychic act is really spontaneous or free. This dependency, springing from and at the same time leading to a blockage of spontaneity, not only gives a certain amount of security but also results in a feeling of weakness and bondage. As far as this is the case, the very person who is dependent on the magic helper also feels, although often unconsciously, enslaved by “him” or “her” and to a greater or lesser degree, rebels against “him” or “her.” The television show Buffy The Vampire Slayer is another example of a magic helper. This rebelliousness against the very person on whom one has put one’s hopes for security and happiness, creates new conflicts. It has to be suppressed is one is not to lose “him” or “her,” but the underlying antagonism constantly threatens the security sought for in the relationship. If the magic helper is personified in an actual person, the disappointment that follows when one falls short of what one is expecting for this person—and since the expectation is an illusory one, any actual person is inevitably disappointing—in addition to the resentment resulting from one’s own enslavement to that person, leads to continuous conflicts. This can be seen in the conflicts between Buffy and her friends, which frequently arise. These sometimes end only with separation, which is usually followed by a choice of another object who is expected to fill all the hopes connected with the magic helper. This is seen many times with Buffy, like when her friends abandon her when she runs for homecoming queen, or when her mother kicks her out of the house, or when Buffy’s friends kick her out of her own house and turn to the leadership of Faith, another slayer. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
If this relationship proves to be a failure too, it may be broken up again or the person involved may decide that this is just “life,” and resign. What one does not recognize is the fact that one’s failure is not essentially the result of one’s not having chosen the right magic person; it is the direct result of having tried to obtain by the manipulation of a magic force that which only the individual can achieve oneself by one’s own spontaneous activity. The phenomenon of life-long dependency on an object outside of oneself has been seen by Dr. Freud. He has interpreted it as the continuation of the early, essentially nurturing bonds with the parents throughout life. As long as the infant is small it is quite naturally dependent on the parents, but this dependence does not necessarily imply a restriction of the child’s own spontaneity. However, when the parents, acting as the agents of society, start to suppress the child’s spontaneity and independence, the growing child feels more and more unable to stand on its own feet; it therefore seeks for the magic helper and often makes the parents the personification of “him” or “her.” Later on, the individual transfers these feelings to somebody else, for instance, to a teacher, a husband, or a psychoanalyst. Again, the need for being related to such a symbol of authority is caused by anxiety. What we can observe at the kernel of every neurosis, as well as of normal development, is the struggle for freedom and independence. For many normal persons this struggle has ended in a complete giving up of their individual selves, so that they are thus well adapted and considered to be normal. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
The neurotic person is the one who has not given up fighting against complete submission, but who, at the same time, has remained bound to the figure of the magic helper, whatever form or shape “one” may have assumed. One’s neurosis is always to be understood as an attempt, and essentially an unsuccessful one, to solve the conflict between that basic dependency and the quest for freedom. The concept of social character is not only a theoretical one lending itself to general speculation; it is useful and important for empirical studies which aim at finding out what the incidence of various kinds of social character is in a given society or social class. Assuming that one defines the “peasant character” as individualistic, hoarding, stubborn, with little satisfaction in cooperation, little sense of time and punctuality, this syndrome of traits is by no means a summation of various traits, but a structure, charged with energy. This structure will show intensive resistance by either violence or silent obstructionism if attempts are made to change it; even economic advantages will not easily produce any effects. The syndrome owes its existence to the common mode of production which has been characteristic of peasant life for thousands of years. The same holds true for a declining lower-middle class, whether it is that which brought Mr. Hitler to power, or the poor Whites in the South of the United States of America. The lack of any kind of beneficial cultural stimulation, the resentment against their situation, which is one of being left behind by the forward-moving currents of their society, the hate toward those who destroy the images which once gave them pride, have created a character syndrome which is made up of love and death (necrophilia), intense malignant fixation to blood and soil, and intense group narcissism (the latter expressed in intense nationalism and racism). #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
The striking feature of a socialist economy is the fact that there is no private ownership in the fact that there is no private ownership in the means of production, and that all enterprises are administered by a state-appointed managerial bureaucracy. (There is, of course, private ownership of consumer goods, like houses, furniture, automobiles, and personal accumulation of saving such as bank accounts and government bonds, just as in the United States of America. The differences in this respect is only that one cannot own a factory or stock in a corporation, a difference, incidentally, which would be relevant only for a small part of the population of the United States of America.) The Soviet leaders and their peoples, assuming that Marxist socialism is characterized by the ownership and management of enterprises by the state, take this to mean that their system is socialism. Whether this claim is justified or nor will be discussed later, along with the fact that current developments in the Soviet system are in many respects more akin to the trends existing in the twenty-first century capitalism than they are to socialism. Over-all planning, introduced for the first time by Mr. Stalin’s Five-Year Plan in 1928, offers Soviet ideology an additional reason to speak of their system as socialism. The over-all plan (Gosplan) is centrally made in Moscow for the USSR after intensive deliberation over a great amount of data. The planning determines what is to be produced and at what rate, in contrast to the relatively free market in the Western countries. Until 1957 the Moscow ministries for various ranches of industry were the central authorities for the respective industries under their administration. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
Mr. Khrushchev abolished this centralized system, which had existed for over twenty years, and inaugurated a process of decentralization by replacing the ministries by regional economic councils (sownarkhoz). In the United States of American 1 percent of all families own 4/5 of all Industrial stocks which can be owned by individuals. There are somewhat over one hundred such councils within the Soviet Union. They appoint the top personnel (or confirm their appointments) in the enterprises under them, determine the production program of “their” industries (although within the framework of the general plan), are active in determining prices and production methods, and the securing of scarce materials and conduct research on the quality of products et cetera. The control of the sownarkhoz over the many industries under its control is exercised through subdivisions, the “chief administrations,” which in turn control the individual enterprises, headed by their managers. Who are the administrators working in the regional councils, the chief administrations, and the individual enterprises? The majority have a college education (in fact, a greater percentage than in the United States of America), with the greater proportion of graduates in engineering and a small proportion in business administration. The vast majority of them are members of the Communist Party. (It is important for the America reader to remember that the Communist Party in Russia is, by intention, not a mass party, but represents the elite of those who want to get to the highest position and who are willing to exert the greatest efforts; actually, only about 4 percent of the total population are party members.) The director of a plant earns from five to ten times (including bonuses) what the worker earns, depending on the size and kind of factory. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
If we compare the American situation, an American plant director would have to earn $232,115.88 a year to attain the same position in relation to the worker. A small scale study of American firms showed that in actual fact the top policy-making executive in firms of under 1,000 employees earned an annual average of $305,933.38 in salary and bonus. These figures are difficult to compare since on the one hand prices for consumer goods are relatively much higher in the Soviet Union than in the United States of America, while on the other hand rents are much lower in the Soviet Union and fringe benefits are higher than in the United States of America. Thus, the income differential between managers and workers is not too different in the Soviet Union from what it is in the United States of America. What is particularly important is the role of bonuses which reach 50 to 100 percent of the manager’s salary and which constitutes the most important incentive for optimal production. (Often this system emphasizes quantity rather than quality—hence leading to the production of inferior consumer goods.) Thus, the managers represent a social group that in income, consumption, and authority, is as different from the workers as in any capitalist country of the West. In fact, judging from many reports, rigidities in class stratification, status-differential, et cetera, are greater than in the United States of America. Something we value in the United States of America is legal property rights. Legal property rights are not absolute. They are to some extent subject to private modification by mutual consent for mutual benefit. More generally, security of property rights depends on: government protection, private protection, and other people’s attempts to capture some of the rights. All these are costly in different ways; therefore rights are generally not complete. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
When transacting is costly, all contract forms are costly, so choice of governance form is at best a constrained optimum. Most assets and commodities have multiple dimensions. It may be optimal to divide the property rights to different attributes of a commodity between different owners. Different dimensions of assets and contracts interact: they may be mutually substitutes or complements. This can be utilized to achieve better outcomes for seemingly incomplete contracts. For example, in a short-term rental contract, the landlord is usually responsible for maintenance and improvement, whereas in the long-term contract, the tenant is. This goes with their natural incentives; therefore it can even be left unspecified. When the rights and responsibilities governing real aspects of behaviour have been efficiently specified, the financial aspects of the contract can adjust to satisfy the participation constraints and division of surplus. Even a given attribute may have shared ownership, of if ownership is not specified or enforced because of incompleteness, it may be placed in the public domain. Actions of individuals in shared ownership can be constrained for their mutual benefit. Income from an asset or attribute may be affected by the actions of others; transaction costs may preclude attainment of the optimum indicated by the Coase Theorem. As transaction technology (information, enforcement, et cetera) changes, the nature and governance mode of property rights also evolves. Disputes arise when some previously unexercised rights become worth exercising, so an owner who had preciously left them in the public domain now wants to reclaim them. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
Leicap (1989) studies how property rights come to be delineated and enforced in the first place. His general idea is that property rights are needed t reduce or eliminate efficiency losses due to common pool problems. However, the process is political, with distributional conflicts. Bargaining may not lead to an efficient outcome, or may do so only with long delay. The analytical framework argues that efficient adaptation of rights to new circumstances is more difficult if: aggregate gains are small; the number of participants is large; interests are heterogeneous; the sizes of participants’ gains or losses are private information; the efficient regime will involve greater concentration of wealth, so there will be more losers. The outcome of the political conflict between the winners and losers may be determined by who is better able to organize for political action; this is usually the smaller group with more concentrated benefits or costs. When participation in the conduct of programs lags, these programs cease to represent planning, and become something else, for which epithets abound, if analytic concepts do not. Planning, by definition, stands for the guidance of present action by prospective and retrospective reference. It does not stand for mere maintenance of present routine, however well devised, or it does so only to the extent that this may be useful within the context of a more enveloping goal. The vital element, or condition, in maintaining participation by clientele and personal in the programs of agencies is the constant emergence of new goals. Only thus can the sense of creation, of values in process of realization, be maintained. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
In part, this is a task of leadership, by leaders who do not sink into mere office-holding, but continually find new and inspiring areas for effort. Viewed thus, leadership may spring from any member of a group; if anything, the reverse may be true. It is the realization of such a relationship which provides the political solution to the problem of maintaining both citizen participation in government and clientele participation in social agencies. One way of maintaining public interests is through competition for office, success in which occurs through appeals to the diverse interests and shifting ideas among the public. The dynamic effect of aspiring leaders setting forth rival promises regarding the future, as a mans of securing office, is to generate new wants, new hopes and aspirations, new goals for concerted effort. It happens, however, that even competition for office may be an insufficient source of renewal of group purpose. The insecurities of office-holding may be so intense that, by various schemes of co-optation, monopoly, quietism, or even more drastic devices, office-holders succeed in cementing themselves into place. Or it may be that imagination lag, and rivals come to be so little different that they make no difference. Or, on the other hand, the strife of competition for office may become so intense that its contribution to unified community action is nullified and reversed. Without depreciating the stimulus of competitive politics, of the part they play as a guarantee against worse events, as incentive to progress they must be assessed as sporadic, inconsistent, and unpredictable. Happily, it is quite possible for new goals to form rationally, continually, and effectively without continual changes of personnel. This can come about through the vigorous and careful implementation of the fifth phase of the planning process, the making of the periodic appraisals of progress. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
Walking “after the spirit” and “minding the spirit”—these expressions do not merely mean mind and body are subservient to the spirit, but they denote the humans’ own spirit co-working with the Holy Spirit in one’s daily life, and in all the occasions of life. To do this, the believer needs to know the laws of the spirit—not only the conditions necessary for the Holy Spirit’s working but the laws also governing one’s own spirit, so that it may be kept open to the Spirit of God. When the Holy Spirit takes the spirit of human beings as His sanctuary, psychopathological offenders attack the spirit to get it our of their object being to close the outlet of the Spirit of God dwelling at the center. And yet, when the human is “spiritual” and the mind and body is subservient to the spirit, the spiritual forces of the ultimate negative can come into DIRECT CONTACT with the spirit—and then follows the “wrestling” referred to by Paul (Eph. 6.12). If the human is ignorant of the laws of the spirit, especially the tactics of the ultimate negative, one is liable to yield to an onslaught of deceiving spirits by which they forced one’s spirit into strained ecstasy, or elation, or elation, or else press it down, as it were into a vice. In the former case one has given “visions” and revelations which appear to be divine, but afterwards are proved to have been of the enemy, by their passing away with no results; in the latter, the mortal sinks into darkness and deadness as if one had lost all knowledge of God. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
The relationship between the churches and society are within the context of the functions of the churches. Certain functions flow from their very nature. However, a function of the church is not the same as that of an institution. To further highlight this illustration, mediation is a constitutive function of the church, and it frequently is served by the institution of the priesthood. However, mediation may take place without the priesthood, for an institution is only an organizational mechanism for the function. Institutions may come and go, but the function always remains. The function of a church is constitution. By its constitutive function a church receives and mediates the New Being. Expansion is the church function that is behind missionary activity, education, and evangelization of fallen-away members. The constructive function of the churches includes both Theoria (the aesthetic and cognitive functions) and praxis (the personal and communal functions). The aesthetic function struggles to express the meaning of the church through medium of religious art—pictorial, musical, and visual. Theology is the cognitive function which interprets religious symbols and relates them to the categories or rational knowledge. The personal function of the church is the development of saintliness in its members, while the communal function promotes the Holy Community in which justice and holiness flourish together. The problem in all these functions of the church is how to preserve their autonomy of form within the body of the church. Must aesthetic expressiveness, cognitive truth, personal humanity, and communal justice be twisted out of shape in order to fit within the cadre of the church? #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
I feel it is possible to maintain autonomy of form in these functions by the Spiritual Presence; in other words, though theonomy. We come now to the relating function, the function that governs the mutual interaction between the churches and other groups in society. The relating function operates in a threefold way: the way of the silent interpenetration, the way of critical judgment, and the way of political establishment. By silent interpretation the churches radiate the Spirital Presence into the social units which they are contiguous. One could call it the pouring of priestly substance into the social structure of which the churches are a part. The rapid spread of secularism obscures this influence, but if the churches disappeared overnight, society would be impoverished. Interpenetration also means that the current of influence flows from society toward the churches via the cultural forms develop in society. The most obvious of these influences is felt in the continuous transformation of the ways of understanding and expressing experiences in a living culture. To put it another way, the churches’ creative function of Theoria and praxis draws upon society for the forms in which its substance is preserved and conveyed. You shall deal your bread to the hungry, and bring the poor that are cast out to your house. When you see the naked, cover him or her, and hide not yourself from your own flesh. Then shall your light break forth as the morning, and your healing shall spring forth speedily; your righteousness shall go before you, the glory of God shall be your protection. I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic, for which it stands, One Nation, Under God, Indivisible with Liberty and Justice for all. And please open your hearts and be kind enough to donate to the Sacramento Fire Depart for they are not receiving all of their vital resources. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
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The Hopeful and the Despairing Heart
The scream tore through the house. I rose to find the sky uncommonly clear and full of visible stars. A good omen for Llanada Villa. On the desk in the library, I was astonished to see an ancient book, more of a handwritten codex, with brilliant illustrations on its wooden cover. Carefully lifting the pages, which were bound by three different ties of human skin made into thong, the very first page revealed several magic spells, written in faded but clearly visible and very crowded Latin script. It was as old a book of magic as I have ever beheld, and of course its claim—the claim of its title page—was to the very earliest of all black arts ever known since the Fall of Man. I was more than familiar with the legends surrounding vampires and the tale of the Watcher Angels who lay with woman, and taught magic to the Daughters of Men, as so the Book of Genesis states. However, the most important sentences were as follows: “It was a belief very strongly and generally held by the ancients—of whose wisdom in these matters I have had such experience as induces me to place confidence in their assertions—that by enacting certain processes, which to us moderns have something of a barbaric complexion, a very remarkable enlightenment of the spiritual faculties in man may be attained: that, for example, by absorbing the personalities of a certain number of one’s fellow-creatures, an individual may gain a complete ascendancy over those orders of spiritual beings which control the elemental forces of our universe. It is recorded of Adam that he was able to fly in the air, to become invisible, or to assume any form he pleased, by the agency of the soul of a boy whom he had ‘murdered.’” #RandolphHarris 1 of 6
“Similar happy results may be produced by the absorption of the hearts of not less than three human beings blow the age of twenty-one years. The best means of effecting the required absorption is to remove the heart from the living subject, to reduce it to ashes, and to mingle them with a pint of some red wine, preferably port. The remains of the first two subjects, at least, it will be well to conceal: a disused wine-cellar will be found convenient for such a purpose. Some annoyance may be experienced from the psychic portion of the subjects, which popular language dignifies with the of ghosts. However, the man of philosophic temperament—to whom alone the experiment is appropriate—will be little prone to attach importance to the feeble efforts of these beings to wreck their vengeance on him. I contemplate with the liveliest satisfaction the enlarged and emancipated existence which the experiment, if successful, will confer; not only placing one beyond the reach of human justice (so-called), but eliminating to a great extent the prospect of death itself.” Frightened by the pages that had just been translated, I no longer wanted to fear the torment of those words. I could not believe such words had been written. Deep in the bowels of my mansion are dungeons. I supposed I could burry the codex there and no one would ever discover it, nor attempt the experiments mentioned in the ancient text. However, after reaching the dreadful dungeon, a creature abhorrent to the eyes, was found, his head thrown back, his face stamped with an expression of rage, fright, and mortal pain. #RandolphHarris 2 of 6
To my surprise, it was my butler, Josef Schwalber. In his left side was a terrible lacerated wound, exposing the heart. There was no blood on his hands, and a long knife that lay on the table was perfectly clean. A savage wild-dog might have inflicted the injuries. The window of the dungeon was open, and it was the opinion of the Detective Kasberger, that Mr. Schwalber had met his death by the agency of some wild creature. However, after study of the codex, I am led to a very different conclusion. The next morning while I was drinking my coffee and eating my panini (always very flaky and powdery like in Italy), I had the servants sweep the spiders out of the Bath House at the far end of the formal garden (it is said to have been built by the Byzantines). The transformation is quite bewildering. A team of seamstresses had to work day and night for 48 hours, in in the fairy tales, to create my new impracticable dress. Nevertheless, I had quite enough dresses already even if it were the Pope and his cardinals who were going to entertain me. I have learned from experience that new dresses are more often than not thoroughly disappointing. I keep remind myself of that, but I needed to forget about what transpired last evening. But I can say no more than I had said already. Everything that I can remember, I have told with perfect candour. Nothing has been distorted or concealed, and if anything remains vague, it is only because of the dark cloud which has come over my mind—that cloud and the nebulous nature of the horrors which brought it upon me. #RandolphHarris 3 of 6
Vision or nightmare it may have been—vision or nightmare I fervently hope it was—yet it is all that my mind retains of what took place in those shocking hours after I went into the dungeon. It saddens me that Mr. Schwalber had gotten into my vast collections of strange, rare books on forbidden subjects, which many are written in languages that I master; but there are some with those in languages I cannot understand. I remembered how I shuddered at his facial expression on the night before the awful happening, when he talked so incessantly of his theory, why certain corpses never decay, but rest firm and fat in their tombs for a thousand years. Certainly it had something to do with the ancient book in undecipherable characters Mr. Schwalber left on my desk in the library. The picture seared into my soul is of one scene only, and the hour must have been long after midnight; for a waning crescent moon was high in the vaporous Heavens. I have been thinking on and off all day about the differences between the ways we are supposed to behave and the ways we actually do behave. And both are different from the ways in which God calls upon us to behave, and which we can never achieve whatever we do and however hard we apply ourselves. I am so friendless and alone in this alien land. It occurs to me that I must have great inner strength to bear up as I do and to fulfill my duties with so little complaint. The portrait, at the beginning of the beautifully engraved codex, I have begun to feat that I shall see that face looking over my shoulder as I sit gazing into the looking glass. I live on a spiritual plane and desire only the sweet and stimulating companionship of my husband. #RandolphHarris 4 of 6
Small pleasures seemed greater for having been snatched in the shadow of wretchedness. I have been subjected to a fate I fear more than the slowest tortures. My life has become filled with gore and grue, ghosts and ghouls and ghastly events, and I must confess I am impartial to such entertainments. The servants show me stains on the wall and tell me it is the blood of a murdered innocent killed by the Winchester Rifle fifty years before: no amount of washing will ever remove that stain, they tell me in sepulchral tones, and indeed it deepens and darkens on a certain day of the year, the anniversary of the violent passing. One is expected to nod gravely, of course, and one does, if one wishes. Back in the eleventh century, you will be apprised, a battalion of foreign invaders were vanquished by the skeletons of long-dead patriots who arose from their tombs to defend their homeland and then returned to the Earth when the enemy had been driven from their borders. (And since the servants are able to show you the very graves of these lively bones, how can one disbelieve them?) The servants have pointed to the Observational Tower and told me of a spectral tyrant who, a scant dozen years before, is suspected of having died from poisoning. My silver used to be store in the part of the tower where she is seen, and a footman was employed to sleep here and guard it. One night, when the footman had turned in to sleep, he was approached by a very pale-looking lady in white who asked him for some water. Think it was one of the mansion’s guests, he turned to get her some when he remembered he was locked in and no visitor could have possibly entered. When he turned back, the apparition had disappeared. It is thought that her longing for water suggest that she was poisoned. #RandolphHarris 5 of 6
Beside the Grand Ball Room, the voices of two men are often heard talking although no one can make out what they are talking about. If one makes an effort to trace them, they stop talking suggesting that whoever the ghosts are, they are aware of what is going on around them. Servants have also reported having their hair pulled, arms scratched, and even being bitten by unseen assailants while in the dark of its mahogany walls and corridors. I am cursed by Lucifer, they say, suffering the tortures. From the day, I wish the ghost would not strike terror to my soul and stop filling my heart with but paltry pity. Still, I have journeyed in foreign countries, and I long for peace at Llanada Villa. Amorphous shadows seem to lurk in the darker recesses of the mansion and to flit as in some blasphemous ceremonial procession past the portals of the catacombs; shadows which could not have been cast by a trick of light. These things are too utterly beyond thought—I dare not tell a soul—no one could know it and live—Great God! I never dreamed of THIS! Around me there are ghost and the darkness and the shadows; below me, some peril beyond the radius of the human imagination. Curse these hellish things—legions—My God! Beat it! Beat it! Beat it! After that was silence. I know not how many interminable aeons I sat stupefied; whispering, muttering, calling, screaming into the Heavens. Over and over again through those aeons I whispered and muttered, called, shouted, and screamed, “William! William! Answer me—are you there?” And then there came to me the crowing horror of all—the unbelievable, unthinkable, almost unmentionable thing. I watched amorphous, necrophagous shadows dance beneath my silver German chandelier. And this is what it said: “YOU FOOL, WILLIAM IS DEAD!” #RandolphHarris 6 of 6
You have fallen into a time loop and cannot get out. Most paranormal accounts of hauntings fall into the realm of the residual. A cacophony of footsteps, knocking on the walls, music playing by unseen hands, and even smells repeat themselves when the time—and audience—is right. There is no actual ghost interacting during a residual haunting—you have simply stepped into a memory and gotten a bit on your soul. Some objects seem to react to certain dates, such as anniversaries or a time of death, and we think that whatever is making it reach out and say, “YOU FOOL, WILLIAM IS DEAD!” is trapped within its own vortex. Demons can literally attach themselves to certain types of objects. And if a person happens to bring one of these cursed objects into their house, the demon can then start to attack the people who are living in the house as a result of them being attached to that object.
Curses petition the deities for rulings in a Heavenly court. Although it is not surprising, it is unfortunately common that tourists will try to steal artifacts from archaeological sites. What may be surprising is that the tourists have tried to steal relics or artifacts from the Winchester Mystery House, but often voluntarily return them or turn themselves in to the authorities. Some have sent notes apologizing for the theft, claiming that the artifacts are cursed. However, sometimes the thieves just regret their actions and feel guilty, but the Winchester Mystery House has received hundreds of packages through its one hundred years of tours of stolen antiques, as the accompanying letters would say, those objects were responsible for harm to the relic thieves and their families. Some people have even donated things it hopes that the spirits of The Winchester Mystery House would save their lives. Could such curses be real? It seems more believable, perhaps, for objects once owned by Sarah L. Winchester, to be cursed. It adds to the mystery and mystique of the Winchester Mystery House. However, many people have claimed that everyday objects harbour negative energies, including decorative items, paintings, dolls, jewelry, and even a set of Mercedes Benz automobiles!
For further information about tours, including group tours, weddings, school events, birthday party packages, facility rentals, and special events please visit the website: https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
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Why this Symptom? Why Now?
After World War I, psychosomatic practitioners tended to be critical of more mainstream medicine, finding fault with that they perceived as an overly reductionist attitude among fellow physicians, one that failed to treat patients as whole beings, body and soul. Psychosomatic doctors rejected narrowly natural-scientific ideas about illness and disability and sought, along side science, to engage in questions of meaning. They placed patients’ biographies and social environment at the center of their treatment and philosophy. Neurologist Viktor von Weizsacher’s teacher and mentor Ludolf von Krehl believed that healing required knowing a patient’s “entire nature.” Dr. Von Krehl declared himself to be no “mystic,” and “also no occultists or such. But what is spirit is spirit,” he said, “and a human being is a totality, spirit, and body.” Dr. Von Weizsacher was much influenced by these ideas, believing that on had to contemplate seriously not just the appearance of disease or organ dysfunction but also its symbolic aspects. He listened to the stories his patients told for clues about the meanings of their troubles. From their life stories, he wrote “pathosophies”—narratives that analyzed aspects of his patients’ lives to unlock hidden significance about their ailments. Rather than asking his patients “What seems to be the trouble?” Dr. Von Weizacker asked, in a way a psychoanalyst might, “Why this symptom? Why now?” It was believed that if medicine had failed patients, the reason was because they were treating their bodies like failing machines while neglecting their souls. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
Medicine’s psychosomatic transformation toward a more holistic approach to treatment that would take people’s inner lives and life experiences into account was deemed to be more beneficial. This would help to restore trust. Why trust had to be restored—the recent history of forced sterilizations and “mercy killings” of those with disabilities. Through experimentation and observation, German doctors believed that a damaged soul could make the body ill. Patients were also asked how they perceived their bodily sensations. Many patients were spiritually disoriented. They saw “no way out,” felt terribly lonely, thought of suicide, and had “no one in whom they could confide.” One patient described his wife as herzkrank—heartsick—after losing their daughter. Another woman described how her daughter had been raped eight times, had been sick ever since, and no longer wanted to ea. For most doctors in 1949, unless there was an “organic basis” for illness, that illness did not exist. When patients complained of pain for which no manifestly physical cause could be located, doctors sought other explanations. Not unlike the problem of chronic pain in our own day, these explanations could cast a shadow on the sufferer’s moral constitution, suggest a family taint, or hint at a lack of personal integrity. Perhaps the patient was a malingerer, angling for a disability check, or lacked the fortitude or individual strength of character to overcome hard times. Perhaps the patient was too sensitive or weak-willed, or there had already been something wrong with him or her. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
Doctor’s who practiced psychosomatic medicine believed that these were not phantom ailments: they were manifestly physical maladies with origins in the soul. Individual stories of distress of mass fate; nights under falling bombs, flight and hunger, fallen fathers, fallen sons, assaults and rape. Psychosomatic illness had become the epidemic of war time. They also revealed the history of German suffering. People whose limps suddenly refused to move, or who had stomach ailments, or whose children’s kidneys were failing—these were the products not so much of individual experience but of the nation’s collective fate. They were reactions to the extraordinary burdens that had been the yield of the events of the wars. However, prominent doctors argued that suffering and ill people should not be coddled, but learn to tolerate pain with equanimity. During the war, the remedy prescribed for terrible experiences was not talk, but hard and uncomplaining work. Hard work, that is, and silence. A psychological study conducted in 1944 with people who related their symptoms of illness to experiences in the wartime air raids cautioned that talking about feelings could lead to depression. A culture of silence, in other words, was not only a generalized social imperative born of taboos surrounding Nazism and the war, it was an authoritative medical recommendation because an unseen World of pain and illness, previously confined to the privacy of the home and family, had become increasingly revealed. Every house in Germany was a hospital. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
Dr. Freud considered character as the relatively stable manifestation of various kinds of libidinous strivings, that is, of psychic energy directed to certain goals and stemming from certain sources. In his concepts of the oral, anal, and genital characters, Dr. Freud presented a new model of human character which explained behaviour as the outcome of distinct passionate strivings; Dr. Freud assumed that the direction and intensity of these strivings was the result of early childhood experiences in relation to the “erogenous zones” (mouth, anus, genitals), and aside from constitutional elements the behaviour of parents was mainly responsible for the libido development. The concept of social character refers to the matrix of the character structure common to a group. It assumes that the fundamental factor in the formation of the social character is the practice of life as it is constituted by the mode of production and the resulting social stratification. The social character is that particular structure of psychic energy which is molded by any given society so as to be useful for the functioning of that particular society. The average person must want to do what one has to do in order to function in a way that permits society to use one’s energies for its purposes. Humans’ energy appears in the social process only partly as simple physical energy (labourers tilling the soil or building roads) and partly in specific forms of psychic energy. A member of a primitive people, living from assaulting and robbing other tribes, must have the character of a warrior, with a passion for war, killing, and robbing. The members of a peaceful, agricultural tribe must have an inclination for cooperation as against violence #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
Only if its members have a striving for submission to authority, and respect and admiration for those who are their superiors, does feudal society function well. Capitalism functions only with men who are eager to work, who are disciplined and punctual, whose main interest is monetary gain, and whose main principle in life is profit as a result of production and exchange. In the nineteenth century capitalism needed men who liked to save; in the first quarter of the twenty-first century, it needs men and women who are passionately interested in spending and consuming. The social character is the form in which human energy is molded for its use as a productive force in the social process. The social character is reinforced by all the instruments of influence available to a society—its educational system, its religion, its literature, its songs, its jokes, its customs, and most of all, its parents’ methods of bringing up their children. This last is so important because the character structure of individuals is formed to a considerable extent in the first five or six years of their lives. However, the influence of the parents is not essentially an individual or accidental one, as classic psychoanalysts believe. The parents are primarily the agents of society, both through their own characters and through their educational methods; they differ from each other only to a small degree, and these differences usually do not diminish their influence in creating the socially desirable matrix of the social character. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
A condition for the formulation of the concept of the social character as being molded by the practice of life in any given society was a revision of Dr. Freud’s libido theory, which is the basis for his concept of character. The libido theory is rooted in the mechanistic concept of humans as machines, with the libido (aside from the drive for self-preservation) as the energy source, governed by the “pleasure principle,” the reduction of increased libidinal tension to its normal level. In contrast to this concept, various strivings of man, who is primarily a social being, develop as a result of one’s need for “assimilation” (of things) and “socialization” (with people), and that the forms of assimilation and socialization that constitute their main passions depend on the social structure in which one exists. Humans in this concept are seen as characterized by their passionate strivings toward objects—men, women, and nature—and their need of relating themselves to the World. The concept of the social character answers important questions which were not dealt with adequately in Marxist theory. If their reason tells them that their allegiance to it is harmful to them, why is it that a society succeeds in gaining the allegiance of most of its members, even when they suffer under the system? Why has their real interest as human beings not outweighed their functions interests produced by all kinds of ideological influences and social engineering? Why has consciousness of their class situation and of the advantage of socialism not been as effective as Mr. Marx believed it would be. Because of the phenomenon of the social character. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
Once a society has succeeded in molding the character structure of the average person in such a way that one likes to do that which one has to do, one is satisfied with the very condition that society imposes upon one. As one of Ibsen’s characters once said, “He can do anything he wants to do because he wants only what he can do.” Needless to say, a social character which is, for instance, satisfied with submission is a crippled character. However, crippled or not, it serves the purpose of a society requiring submissive men and women for its proper function. The concept of social character also serves to explain the link between the material basis of a society and the “ideological superstructure.” Mr. Marx has often been interpreted as imply that the ideological superstructure was nothing but the reflection of the economic basis. This interpretation is not correct; but the fact is that in Mr. Marx’s theory the nature of the relation between basis and superstructure was not sufficiently explained. A dynamic psychological theory can show that society produces the social character, and that the social character tends to produce and to hold onto ideas and ideologies which fit it and are nourished by it. However, it is not only the economic basis which creates a certain social character which, in turn, creates certain ideas. The ideas, once created, also influence the social character and, indirectly, the socioeconomic structure. The social character is the intermediary between the socioeconomic structure and the ideas and ideals prevalent in a society. It is the intermediary in both directions, from the economic basis to the ideas and from the ideas to the economic basis. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
The concept of social character can explain how human energy, like any other raw material, is used by a society for the needs and purposes of that society. Humans, in fact, are one of the most pliable natural forces; they can be made to serve almost any purpose; they can be made to hate or to cooperate, to submit or to stand up, to enjoy suffering or happiness. While all this is true, it is also true that humans can solve the problem of their existence only by the full unfolding of their human powers. The more crippled a society makes a human, the more sicker one becomes, even though consciously one may be satisfied with one’s lot. However, unconsciously one is dissatisfied; and this very dissatisfaction is the element which clines one eventually to change the social forms that cripple one. If one cannot do this, one’s particular kind of pathogenic society will die out. Social change and revolution are caused not only by new productive forces which conflict with older forms of social organization, but also by the conflict between inhuman social conditions and unalterable human needs. One can do almost anything to humans, yet only almost. The history of man’s fight for freedom is the most telling manifestation of this principle. In recent decades “conscience” has lost much of its significance. It seems as though neither external nor internal authorities play any prominent role in the individual’s life. If only one does not interfere with other people’s legitimate claims, then is everybody is completely “free.” However, what we find is rather that instead of disappearing, authority has made itself invisible. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
Instead of overt authority, “anonymous” authority reigns. It is disguised as common sense, science, psychic health, normality, public opinion. It does not demand anything except the self-evident. It seems to use no pressure but only mild persuasion. Whether a mother says to her daughter, “I know you will not like to go out with that boy,” or an advertisement suggest “Drink the brand of premium cranberry juice—you will like its coolness,” it has the same atmosphere of subtle suggestion which actually pervades our whole social life. Anonymous authority is more effective than overt authority, since one never suspects that there is any order which one is expected to follow. In external authority it is clear that there is an order and who gives it; one can fight against the authority, and in this fight personal independence and moral courage can develop. However, whereas internalized authority the common, though an internal one, remains visible, in anonymous authority both command and commander have become invisible. It is like being fired at by an invisible enemy. There is nobody and nothing to fight back against. The most important aspect of the authoritarian character is the attitude towards power. For the authoritarian character there exists, so to speak, two genders: the powerful ones and the powerless ones. One’s love, admiration and readiness for submission are automatically aroused by power, whether of a person or of an institution. Power fascinates one not for any values for which a specific power may stand, but just because it is power. Just as his “love” is automatically aroused by power, so powerless people or institutions automatically arouses one’s contempt. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
The very sight of a powerless person makes one want to attack, dominate, humiliate one. Whereas a different kind of character is appalled by the idea of attacking one who is helpless, the authoritarian character feels the more aroused the more helpless one’s object has become. There is one feature of the authoritarian character which has mislead many observers: a tendency to defy authority and to resent any kind of influence from “above.” Sometimes this defiance overshadows the whole picture and the submissive tendencies are in the background. This type of person will constantly rebel against any kind of authority, even one that actually furthers one’s interest and has no elements of suppression. Sometimes the attitude toward authority is divided. Such persons might fight against one set of authorities, especially if they are disappointed by its lack of power, and at the same time or later on submit to another set of authorities which through greater power or greater promises seems to fulfill their masochistic longings. Finally, there is a type in which the rebellious tendencies are completely repressed and come to the surface only when conscious control is weakened; or they can be recognized ex posteriori, in the hatred that arises against an authority when its power is weakened and when it begins to totter. In persons of the first type in whom the rebellious attitude is the center of the picture, one is easily led to believe that their character structure is just the opposite to that of the submissive masochistic type. It appears as if they are persons who oppose every authority on the basis of an extreme degree of independence. They look like persons who, on the basis of their inner strength and integrity, fight those forces that block their freedom and independence. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
However, the authoritarian character’s fight against authority is essentially defiance. It is an attempt to assert oneself and to overcome one’s feeling of powerlessness by fighting authority, although the longing for submission remains present, whether consciously or unconsciously. The authoritarian character is never a “revolutionary”; I should like to call one a “rebel.” There are many individuals and political movements that are puzzling to the superficial observer because of what seems to be an inexplicable change from “radicalism” to extreme authoritarianism. Psychologically, these people are the typical “rebels.” The end of the terror—the most obvious new factor by which Khruschevism is distinguished from Stalinism is the liquidation of the terror. If terror was necessary in a system where the masses had to work hard without getting any corresponding material satisfaction, it could be diminished once the workers could begin to enjoy the fruits of their labour and could hope for increasing enjoyment. Mr. Stalin’s successors were also sufficiently traumatized themselves by the crazy terror which he had exercised during his last years and which daily threatened each one of the top leaders with extinction. A psychological phenomenon, similar to that in France before the fall of Robespierre, probably existed in the Russian top leadership which led, together with the reasons first mentioned, to the decision to liquidate the terror. All reports from Russian confirm that the system of terror has ceased to exist. The slave labour camps which were not only institutions of terror but also a source of inexpensive labor under Mr. Stalin were dissolved. Arbitrary arrests and punishments were abolished. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
The Khruschev state might be compared with a reactionary police stat of the nineteenth century as far as political freedom is concerned, perhaps not too different from the Czarist system. Yet this comparison would be misleading; not only because of the obvious differences in the economic structure of the two systems but also because of another and more complex factor. Political freedom comes up as a manifest problem only when there is considerable dissent within the fundamental structure of a given society. In the Czarist system, the majority of the population—peasants, workers, the middle class—were in opposition to the system, and the system took oppressive measures to insure its own existence. On the other hand, there is a reason to assume that the Khruschev system has succeeded in ensuring the allegiance of the majority of the Soviet population. It has done this partly by the real economic satisfactions it provides at present and the reasonable hope for far greater improvements in the future and partly by its success in the ideological manipulation of people’s minds. From all reports it seems fairly clear that the average Russian is convinced that his system worked reasonably well, looked forward to a better future, enjoyed the possibilities for more education and amusement, and was mainly afraid of one thing—war. When one criticized the system one criticized details of its operation, bureaucratic stupidities, and the shoddy quality of consumer goods, but not the Soviet systems as such. One certainly did not think of substituting the capitalist system for it. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
No doubt under Mr. Stalin’s terror the situation was quite different. The ruthless arbitrariness of the terror threatened everyone, high or low, with prison or physical extinction, not only as a result of making mistakes, but as a consequence of denunciations, intrigues, et cetera. However, this terror has gone and things are different. The average American misjudges the Russian situation by putting oneself in the role of an anti-Communist within Russia, and considering the degree to which expression of one’s opinion would be discouraged. One forgets that, apart from writers and social scientists who might be prone to criticize the system, the average Russian feels little of such an urge. Hence the problem of political freedom is by far less real for one than it appears from the American perspective. (The average Russian might feel similarly to the average American if, picturing oneself as a Communist, one considered the restrictions and hazards one would face in the United States of America.) All this does not alter the fact that Khruschev’s Russian is a police state with much less freedom to dissent and to criticize the government and majority opinion than there is within the Western democracies. Furthermore, after many years of unrestricted terror, it will take years to dispell the residue of fear and intimidation created by terror. Yet, when all is considered, the net result if that Khrushchevism marks a considerable improvement over the Stalinist era as far as political freedom is concerned. Closely related to the disappearance of the terror system is also a change in the nature of the method of leadership in Russia. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
Mr. Stalin’s rule was a one-man rule, without any serious consultation with collaborators and anything that in the broadest sense could be called discussion or majority rule. It is clear that such a one-man regime needed a terror-force by which the dictator could strike at any person who dared to oppose one. With the execution of Beria, the power of the terrorist state police was considerably restricted and none of the Russian leaders since Mr. Stalin’s death has assumed a dictatorial position that could be compared with that of Stalin. It appears that the leader, whoever he is, has to convince the top echelon in the party of the correctness of his views, and that there is something like discussion and majority rule in the ruling committee. All events in the last few years of Mr. Khruschev’s rule had to defend his policy against opponents, that he had to show successes in order to maintain himself on top, and that he was in some ways in a position not too different from that of a statesman in the West, whose continued political failures would lead to his political disappearance. The attitude of the authoritarian character toward life, one’s whole philosophy, is determined by one’s emotional strivings. The authoritarian character loves those conditions that limit human freedom, one loves being submitted to fate. It depends on one’s social position what “fate” means to one. For a solider it may mean the will or whim of one’s superior, to which one gladly submits. For the small businessperson, the economic laws are one’s fate. Crisis and prosperity to one are not social phenomena which might be changed by human activity, but the expression of a higher power to which one has to submit. For those on the top of the pyramid it is basically not different. The difference lies only in the size and generality of the power to which one submits, not in the feeling of dependence as such. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
Economic theorists have always recognized the importance of secure property rights in creating the right incentives to produce and to invest. This has been critical to the rise of Western European economies. Students of less-developed countries (LCDs) and transition economies reinforce this lesson. They also show how insecure property rights remain in many countries. The threats to property rights come from two broad classes of predators. Other individual may encroach on one’s property, may extort money by making threats of damaging property, or may steal the property outright; a weak state maybe unable to deter or prevent such actions. Even worse, the state itself or its agents may engage in extortion of private property to further their own objectives, whether they be wasteful public monuments and displays, aggression against other states, or simple person consumption. Faced with such threats, individuals will be deterred from production and investment, but will also attempt to take some countermeasures to preserve their property. Property rights over assets consist of: control—decision about them; entitlement to income produced by them; alienation—selling one or both of the control or income rights, fully or partially, to someone else. All of these are subject to formal or informal constraints. Control rights can be leased or sold under contracts, but where contracts are incomplete, the unspecified or residual rights remain with the owner. Income rights are often shared with other stakeholders under various social norms, terms or covenants in a higher-level contract, general laws, et cetera; some control right may also be similarly shared. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
And sales are also subject to similar constraints, such as covenants restricting what homeowner can and cannot do to the exterior of their homes, to fences and yards, and on. Much academic discussion of the principle of an administration, while admirably giving increasing emphasis to participation by personnel, tends to overlook the probably much more important matter of participation by clientele. Indeed, some of the academic discussion seem to take for granted that participation by the clientele is impossible, that at best the clientele may consume the services of the agency, and these services are related directly to their preconceived wants. By some administrators and writers on administration, however, it is well understood that the benefits of participation by the clientele of an agency overweighs the hazards. The existence of an alert, informed, interested clientele may expose the inept administrator to observation and correction that one would escape if it were more apathetic; on the other hand, a favourable public goes far to assure the success of a program. The attempt to evoke such a favourable response from its clientele often leads agency administrators into unilateral forms of publicity, public relations, and propaganda. A free flow of valid information is rightly to be desired. A system of interim progress reporting, for the clientele as well as the personnel, is indispensable to optimum co-ordination and motivation in democratic planning agencies. Nevertheless, the practice of unilateral public relations is currently probably justly a little suspect. It produces far fewer results than might be supposed from its analogy to commercial advertising. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
Though it will be granted by many that public relations will not take the place of participation by an agency’s clientele, some continue to rely upon public relations as a means of obtaining participation. That is, they exhort and cajole their clients to participate, or to feel a sense of participation, as if such a feeling could be induced by will power. Participation to deepen must commence with the definition of the problem, and carry through the debate of proposals and the adoption of policy. It is too late in the process of commence trying to evoke participation after everything is cut and dried. Countless instances can be cited to demonstrate people’s lack of enthusiasm for projects which have been fashioned and thrust on them by others. The best of intentions often go awry because of such methods. Let us suppose, however, that the public has participated fully in the first three phases, in defining the problem, debating the alternative solutions, and, at least through representatives, making the policy decision which launches a program for action. And for the clientele to participate in the conduct of the program. Is it then certain that their involvement will be high, with a resulting flow of effort and ingenuity, or initiative and responsibility? Unfortunately, this cannot be assumed. If participation in the planning process were deemed to go only as far as participation in the conduct of programs and no farther, it would soon dwindle into routine. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
To the extent that participation of the clientele was voluntary, it would cease. The public would in a sense abdicate, becoming content to leave matters in the hands of the paid and delegated personnel of the agency, as long as they did not to greatly transgress routine expectations. This spectacle of public which is satisfied after setting up a program to leave it to be run by a few is familiar in agencies of all kinds. In the beginning of its existence an agency may enjoy a high degree of interests from its clientele; there is hope, energy, idealism, enthusiasm; but once a permanent personnel is established, all this often wanes. A crisis may seem to waken it again, but only ephemerally. The most persistent obstacle to continuing participation is an intangible one. For the baffling opponent is complacency, especially the sort of complacency which seems permitted if not justified by the tolerable success of an agency in meeting some routine minimum of performance. Some of the bitterest struggles of leadership can occur in the minds of leaders, as the same complacency infiltrates and begins to be felt as dull poisoning of their energy. It is then that the question arises, “Why not relax? Why not let things find a level routine? As long as no one is complaining, why is it not sufficient just to let things amble along as they have been?” A swarm of rationalizations can be found to justify such doubts about the desirability of continued progress, and to support the policy of simply mending troubles as they arise. The decline and failure of participation may this occur insidiously, from within, despite good will, as readily as from arbitrariness without. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
Many believers are not even aware that they have a spirit. At the other extreme, however, some people imagine that every experience which takes place in the realm of their senses is spirit-based—or perhaps even directly “of the Spirit.” These believers consider everything which takes place in their inner life to be His working. In each of these cases the humans’ own spirit is left out of account. In the first instance, the believer’s religious life is, if we may say so, “spiritually mental,” that is, the mind is illuminated and enjoys spiritual truth, but what “spirit” means one does not clearly know. In the second instance the believer is really “soulish,” although one thinks one is spiritual. And in the case where the believer think that the Holy Spirit’s indwelling means every moment is of Him, one becomes dangerously open to the deception of evil spirits counterfeiting the Holy Spirit, because without discrimination one attributes all inner “movements” or experiences to Him. The conversion of an individual to one of the churches is a gradual process that finally ends in the ecstatic moment of Christian faith. Conversion is the transition from the latent stage of the Spiritual Community to its manifest stage. Thus it is relative, not absolute, conversion, for humans is never completely without faith, without an ultimate concern through which they participate in the Spiritual Community. The missionary and evangelistic efforts of the churches must take this fact into account. The lost sheep are never completely lost; the manifest church builds upon the latent church. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
The Spiritual Community is a community of Spiritual personalities, of individuals determined by the Spiritual Presence in a state of faith and love. One is either grasped by the Spirit or one is not; there is no special status within the Spiritual Community. Everyone is a priest. However, for the sake of efficiency and orderly procedure, certain individual experts may be called to a regular and trained performance of priestly activities. Though the convert in one’s actual being is subject to the ambiguities of the churches, in one’s essential being one is a Spiritual personality, a participant in the Spiritual Community. This is situation is called the experience of the New Being. By experience, we mean the awareness of something that happens to somebody, namely, the state of being grasped by the Spiritual Presence. According to the three elements of salvation, the New Being is experienced as creative (Regeneration), as paradox (Justification), and as process (Sanctification). The stranger that sojourns with you, shall be unto you as the native among you, and you shall love one as you love yourself, for you were all strangers in the land of America. One law shall be among you, for the native and the stranger alike. If your fellowman become poor and one’s means fail, you shall uphold one. Harden not your heart to the needy in your midst, nor shut your hand to your needy brother; but open your hand unto one; and lend one sufficient for one’s needs. Behold how good and how pleasant it is when brethren dwell together in unity. Hate not your brother in your heart; love your neighbour as yourself. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic, for which it stands, One Nation, Under God, with Liberty and Justice for all. And please donate to the Sacramento Fire Department, as they are not receiving all of their resources. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
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It is Time to Investigate the Curse
During the Victorian era, too few physicians knew how to treat seelische illnesses, which literally meant illness “of the soul,” but depending on its context, could also mean spiritual, psychological, emotional, or mental. As a result, patients wandered without a cure from doctor to doctor and medications did nothing from them. Those deemed “fit,” that is, who had an Aryan racial identity, experienced freedom from hereditary disease, and an ability to work vigorously and produce. However, those regarded as biologically dangerous usually suffered from disability, and a range of illnesses or conditions that were inherited (or believed to be). My butler Frau Joest had been afflicted with stomach trouble and digestive complaints. As a rule, he kept to himself in his own pantry. One night, I asked him to grab a bottle of wine from the wine cellar, and he replied, “Mrs. Winchester, you may get your own wine, if you like, this evening. Either I do it in the daytime or not at all. I don’t know what it maybe: very like it’s the rats, or the wind got into the cellars; but I’m not so young as I was, and I can’t go through it as I have done.” “Well, Mr. Joest,” I replied, “you know it is a surprising place to find rats. “I’m not denying that, Mrs. Winchester; and, to be sure, many a time I’ve heard the tale from men in the shipyards about the rat that could speak. I never laid no confidence in that before; but tonight, if I’d demeaned myself to lay my ear to the door of the further bin, I could pretty have heard what they was saying.” “Oh, there Mr. Joest, I have no patience with your fancies! Rats talking in the wine-cellar indeed!” “Well, Mrs. Winchester, I’ve no wish to argue with you: all I say is, if you choose to go to the far bin, and lay your ear to the door, you may prove my words this minute.” #RandolphHarris 1 of 8
“What nonsense do you talk, Mr. Joest—not fit for children to listen to! Why, you’ll be frightening Mrs. Winchester there out of her wits,” replied Daisy. “Mrs. Winchester knows well enough when I’m playing a joke with her, Daisy,” he said. In fact, I knew much too well to suppose that Mr. Joest had in the first instance intended a joke. I was interested, not altogether pleasantly, in the situation; but all my questions were unsuccessful in inducing the butler to give any more detailed account of his experiences in the wine-cellar. We have now arrived at February 24, 1891. It was a day of curious experiences for Frau Joest: a windy, noisy day, which filled the house and the gardens with a restless impression. As Frau stood the gate of the grounds, and looked out into the park, he felt as if an endless procession of unseen people were sweeping past him on the wind, borne on resistlessly and aimlessly, vainly striving to stop themselves, to catch at something that might arrest their flight and bring them once again into contact with the living World of which they had formed a part. After luncheon that day I said, “Frau, my boy, do you think you could manage to come to me tonight as late as eight o’clock in my study? I shall be busy until that time, and I wish to show you something connected with your future life which it is most important that you should know. You are not to mention this to Daisy nor to anyone else in the house; and you had better go to your room at the usual time.” Here was a new excitement added to life: Frau eagerly grasped at the opportunity. He looked in at the library door on his way upstairs that evening, and saw written sheets of paper laying on the desk. #RandolphHarris 2 of 8
The wind had fallen, and there was a still night and a full moon. At about seven o’clock Frau was standing at the open window of his bedroom, looking out over the country. Still as the night was, the mysterious population of the distant moonlit woods was not yet lulled to rest. From time to times strange cries as of lost and despairing wanderers sounded from across the mere. They might be the notes of owls or water-birds, yet they did not quite resemble either sound. Were not they coming nearer? Now they sounded from the nearer side among the shrubberies. Then they ceased; but just as Frau was thinking of shutting the window and resuming his reading of Voyages to the Moon and Sun by Cyrano de Bergerac, he caught sight of two figure standing on the terrace that ran along the garden ide of the Mansion—the figures of two men, as it seemed; they stood side by side, looking up at the windows. Something in them inspired him with acute fear. One man stood still, half smiling, with his hands clasped over his heart, the other man, a thin shape, with black hair and ragged clothing, raised his arms in the air with an appearance of menace and of unappeasable hunger and longing. The moon shone upon hi almost transparent hands, and Frau saw that the nails were fearfully long and that the light shone through them. As he stood with his arms this raised, he disclosed a terrifying spectacle. On the left side of his chest there opened a black and gaping rent; and there fell upon Frau’s brain, rather than upon his ear, the impression of one of those hungry and desolate cries that he had heard resounding over the woods of The Winchester Mansion all that evening. In another moment this dreadful pair had moved swiftly and noiselessly over the terrace, and he saw them no more #RandolphHarris 3 of 8
Inexpressibly frightened as he was, he determined to take his candle and go down to my study, for the hour appointed for our meeting was near at hand. The library opened out of the front hall on one side, and Fraud, urged on by his terrors, did not take long in getting there. To effect an entrance was not so easy. The door was not locked, he felt sure, for the key was on the outside of it as usual. His repeated knocks produced no answer. Frau felt that the library was further than he realized—and his travel to it had taken him back in some vague realm or dimension outside our material Universe; some vague abyss out of which only the most accursed rites of human blasphemy could ever have called him for a moment. There was a brief silence, and in that pause the scattered senses of poor Frau Joest began to knit back into a sort of continuity; so that he put his hands to his head with a moan. Memory seemed to pick itself up where it had left off, and the horror of that sight on the terrace had prostrated him burst in upon him again. “Oh oh, my Gawds, that haff face—that haff face on top of it…that face with the red eyes an’ crinkly albino hair, an’ no…It was a octopus, centipede, spider kind o’ thing, but they was haff-shaped man’s face on top of it, an’ it looked like a wizard.” Crystallized into fresh terror, he paused, exhausted. It was—well, it was most likely a kind of force that does not belong in our World; a kind of force that acts and grows and shapes itself by other laws than those of our sort of Nature. We have no business calling in such things from outside, and only very wicked people and very wicked cults ever try to. There was something in my mansion—enough to make a devil and a precocious monster appear, and to make Frau’s passing out a pretty terrible sight. #RandolphHarris 4 of 8
Nature, meaning sometimes the forces and processes that produce everything according to the laws of nature (which include what we call physical laws), sometimes simply those laws, and sometimes all that nature produces—nature, after the Fall, did not wholly lose her original power to produce and control natural, perfect, ordered phenomena, any more than Satan lost all his original brightness on man all his power to reason or to intuit natural laws and God’s will. The other servants carried Frau to bed. After sitting by the fire for a few more hours, I found that I was colder than ever any my arms were quite stiff. However, I had to drag myself to my room and take off my clothes somehow, blow out the candles, and insinuate my tiny self into that enormous, frightening bed. I wished I had slept in a more cheerful room, with better furniture, though tonight I have succeeded in bringing to bed a bottle of mineral water and even a glass from which to drink it. It is only the Italian mineral water, of course. I only wish I were not so sensitive, so that the rooms in my home and other things did not matter so much. The water from my well was actually much more pure. On nights like this, and most particularly on nights when the moon is slim or cloud-enshrouded, it is a heavy blot upon the horizon, a shadow only, without feature save for its many-turreted outline; and should the moon be temporarily released from her cloudy confinement, her fugitive rays lend scant comfort, for they but serve to throw the mansion into sudden, startling chiaroscuro, its windows fleetingly assuming the appearance of sightless though all-seeing orbs, its portcullis becoming for an instant a gaping mouth, its entire form striking the physical and the mental eyes as would the sight of a giant skull. #RandolphHarris 5 of 8
I believe it is entirely possible for a man to possess not a single one of the virtues, to be a demon in human flesh. Frau’s actions seem to have become quite ghoulish. I often wondered had he not been responsible for robbing graves and then feeding upon the disgusting nourishment he found therein? Ghouls are by no means imaginary. A human being can sink into a truly monstrous man. To understand, one must transport their mind back a few years and to a rural region of New Haven. One must become acquainted with a family of country folk—hard-working, law-abiding, God-fearing, or moderate means—the head of which was a simple, good man named man named Alfred Dieck. When he died, it was his expressed wish that he would be buried with his gold and that his wife and sons were not to be told about it. Several weeks after his funeral, the family was desperate for money and Pastor Kuntz told his wife about the gold. The sons began making plans to exhume the dead man. However, the widow spoke firmly: “You father rests peacefully,” she said. “He must not be disturbed. If we disturbed him, no amount of gold would sooth our hearts.” The sons protested with vehemence, but the widow stood her ground. “No son of mine will profane his father’s grave—unless he first kills his mother!” Grumbling, those sons withdrew their plans. However, that night, Claus awoke to find his mother gone from the house. He was frightened, for this was not like her. Intuition sent him to the graveyard, where he found her, keeping a lonely vigil over the grave of her husband, protecting him from the greed of grave robbers. Claus implored her to come out of the cold, to return home; she at first refused; only when Claus offered to keep vigil all night himself did, she relent and return home, leaving her youngest son to guard the have from profanation. #RandolphHarris 6 of 8
Claus waited a full hour. Then he produced from under his shirt a small shovel. He was a strong boy, and the greed of a youngest son who has been deprived of inheritance lent added strength to his arms. He dug relentlessly, stopping seldom for rest, until finally the coffin was uncovered. He raised the creaking lid. An overpowering fetor filled his nostrils and nearly made him faint. Gathering courage, he searched the coffin. The moon proved to be his undoing. For suddenly its rays, hitherto hidden, struck the face of his father, and at the sight of that face, the boy recoiled and went reeling around the wall of the grave, the breath forced from his body. Now, you must know that the mere sight of the father—even in advanced state of decomposition—he had steeled himself to withstand; but what he had not foreseen—what he had not foreseen was that the face of his father, in the rigor of death, would look directly and hideously upon him. And most terrible and most unforeseen of all, the dead lips were drawn back from the teeth in a constant and soul-shattering smile! The remembrance of that night, though it is now many years past, fills me with dread. Fraud Joest was is that ghoulish son, Claus. When his sense returned, he ran out of the grave and ran as swiftly as his limbs would carry him. He reached the graveyard gate, and was smitten by the fact that he had not accomplished the purpose of his mission—the gold in the coffin. His terror notwithstanding, he halted, and forced himself to retrace those hasty steps. His fear notwithstanding, he descended once more into that noisome grave. He threw his father’s body out of the coffin and robbed him of his gold. But the true horror came when he reached him. He was stricken with stomach troubles and when he looked in the mirror, he screamed so loud as to wake the entire house. His face was a replica of his dead father’s: the lips drawn back in perpetual, mocking grin. He tried to close his mouth. He could not. The muscles were immoveable, as if held in the gelid rigor of death. He could hear his family’s stirring at his scream, and since he did not wish to look upon the, he ran from the house and came here, to Llanada Villa. #RandolphHarris 7 of 8
As he wandered the rural roads, his mind sought the cause of the affliction that had been visited upon him. Though but a country lad, he had read much and he had a blunt, rational mind that was not susceptible to the easy explanations of the supernatural. I would not believe that God had placed a malediction upon him to punish him for his act. He would not believe that some black force from beyond the grave had reached out to stamp his face. At length, he began to believe it was the massive shock that had forced his face to its present state, and that his great gilt had helped to shape it even as his father’s dead face was shaped. Shock and guilt: strong powers not from God above or the Fiend below, but from within his own breast, his own brain, his own soul. You need only know that, despite his blighted face, he stole the gold and thus gained an amount of money that would not seem large to me, but which was more than he had ever seen before that time. It was this gold that made him one of the richest men in New Haven. Naturally, he sought out physicians and begged them to restore his face to its previous state. None succeeded, though he offered them vast sums. His face remained fixed in that damnable unceasing smile, and his heart knew the most profound despair imaginable. He could not even pronounce his own name! God and Satan are very much alive. Though readily most people cannot fully explain all the mysteries of life. Spinning hears. Levitating bodies. Otherworldly strength. These are all curious things I have dealt with, here, at Llanada Villa. Gratuitous violence. Eerie voices spouting off vicious claims and threats. These are just some of the things that come with The Curse of the Winchester Fortune. Dozens of my servants are so horribly frightened or so confused that they begin to lose their grip on reality. We are not struggling with flesh and blood, but against the spiritual forces of evil. #RandolphHarris 8 of 8
The Winchester Mystery House
Devils and demons bring up frightening images and terrified thoughts. Mrs. Sarah L. Winchester was forced to look upon these objects of horror and live in fear. As we read tales of this haunted wine-cellar, there may be a real treasure hidden away in The Winchester Mansion. At one time, Mrs. Winchester enjoyed the finest vintage wines and liqueurs. However, one evening when she went to the wine cellar to locate a special bottle, she came across a black handprint on the wall. It was most likely a dirt smudge left by a workman, yet she took it as an omen and ordered the cellar boarded up. To this day the wine cellar had not been rediscovered, which means that there might still be spirits in The Winchester Mystery House—intoxicating and otherwise. We live in a World of duality. Darkness and light. Good and evil. Heaven and Hell. Most likely evil existed before human beings were around to interpret darkness and bad behaviour as such. Demons were created in a Hell-like dimension. Demons are minions, and the most intriguing part of their nature is that we need not believe in their existence to feel the effect they have on our lives. It is believed that demons were summoned, one after another, after which they were forced to give their true names, and reveal what they governed, and offer instructions on how to banish them. Nearly all of these demons were sent to work on the construction of The Winchester Mansion. Many of them more powerfully ranked demons were also empowered with hordes of servitors to do their bidding, as they themselves were subject to their liege’s commands.
Some ranked and named demons had only a few lesser spirits to act on their behest while others had servants in the hundreds of thousands. Always a few of the most important servitors were named but seldom if ever was any real or extensive information about them given. Nearly every culture has some belief in cursed objects, things that cause unnatural harm to the person whom owns or uses them. Often, these objects have roots in a tragic past, and according to those who believe in curses, something from a tragedy sticks with the objects, becoming part of them and spelling disaster for anyone who might come across them. Almost anything can be a cursed object: a fortune put under a spell by a murdered witch, a car owned by a movie star who died in a wreck, a mansion protected by the power of misfortune. Even normally rational people may occasionally fall into a certain superstition to avoid brining a curse down on themselves. Despite this abundance of allegedly unfortunate object, few come close to one of the most legendary of all: The Winchester Mystery House. The recorded history of this jinxed mansion stretches nearly two centuries, and over that time period, dozens of people have claimed ownership of the stunningly beautiful mansion. Of the owners of The Winchester Mystery House, a few have experienced such great catastrophes that many claim it to be cursed. Fortunes have been lost, noble men executed, and entire communities thrown into chaos and war. The history of The Winchester Mystery House is certainly one of intrigue, but is it true that it, as well as other objects Mrs. Winchester owned, are sources of tragedy?
Some individuals have little choice than to recognize their own abilities to interact with the spirit World. If their gift is strong, it may be difficult to get the ghosts to pipe down. Their abilities to pick up on paranormal vibrations help them to work with ghosts and send messages to those that have departed. It is likely that a ghost has wiggled its way between the molecules of The Winchester Mansion, fortune, family, and objects Mrs. Winchester once owned, and is embedded within the fibers of these objects because it cannot bare to be without them. The first law of thermodynamics states that energy cannot be created nor destroyed—it can only be transferred—so one theory about what we call a “haunted object” is simply that energy is being deposited onto an item instead of floating around the ether and popping up at inopportune times. The energy leaves a residue that enables the object to present itself to people sensitive enough to pick up on its energy in the way of movement, talking, feelings of doom—you get the picture. An item may also be used for the spirit to manipulate, sch as a chair being thrown across a room, but does that mean the possession is possessed, or merely in the right place at the wrong time? Other objects such as roads, buildings, houses, and waterways may also be haunted through the transference of a great emotional experience. Some owners of haunted objects want to get rid of the goods fast. An auction, either online or local, can move an item out of the basement and into your hands in no time. Local auctions many not have the label “haunted” attached to a particular item, so take the time to visit the objects beforehand to try to get a feel for what is being offered. If you are interested in bringing home a haunted object, ask the auctioneer to keep an eye out for you. You could be first on their list for something special, and if curse is real, you may be able to being home a new piece for your collection at a great price.
For further information about tours, including group tours, weddings, school events, birthday party packages, facility rentals, and special events please visit the website: https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
Please visit the online giftshop, and purchase a gift for friends and relatives as well as a special memento of The Winchester Mystery House. A variety of souvenirs and gifts are available to purchase. https://shopwinchestermysteryhouse.com/
Say Your Prayers so No One Can Hurt You
Oliver Fisher Winchester was an entrepreneur who made a fortune in the shirt manufacturing business during the 1830s and 1840s. He took over a bankrupt arms manufacturing company in New Haven, Connecticut in 1857, which eventually became the Winchester Repeating Arms Company. All this time a growing feeling of discomfort had been creeping over him—nervous reaction, perhaps, after the delight of discovery. After he passed in 1880, his son William Wirt Winchester became the second President of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company. However, this accomplishment was shortly enjoyed. William Winchester died in 1881, leaving his fortune and most of the company to me, his wife, Sarah L. Winchester. It was, as far as I can ascertain, March 7, 1881 that I drew open the door of Winchester Hall, in the heart of New Haven, Connecticut. Only to find my husband had died in his sleep. Terribly distraught, I laid beside him. That evening, light shone on the building, making the window-panes glow like so many fires. The clock in the church-tower, buried in tress of the edge of the park, only its golden weathercock catching the light, was striking six, and the sound came gently beating down the wind. It was altogether a pleasant impression, though tinged with the sort of melancholy appropriate to an evening like this. Several years later, I relocated to Santa Clara, California and started on the construction of Llanda villa. It presents a somewhat forbidding aspect to the World, for the rumours of the curse, do not suggest gaiety or warmth or any of those qualities put into its construction. Rather, these stories make this vast edifice of stone exude an austerity, cold and repellant, a hint of ancient mysteries, medieval darkness and hauntings. #RandolphHarris 1 of 7
There were plenty things about the mansion and the gardens which Daisy, my niece, who was of an adventurous and inquiring turn, was anxious to have explained to her. “Why did you build the nine story Observational Tower? Who was the old man lurking on the staircase to the ceiling, sitting at a table, with a skull under his hand?” These and many similar points were cleared up by the resources of my powerful intellect. There were others, however, of which the explanations furnished were less satisfactory. One November evening Diasy was sitting by the fire in the housekeeper’s room reflecting on her surroundings. “Did uncle William go to Heaven?” she suddenly asked, with the peculiar confidence which youth possess in the ability of their elders to settle these questions, the decision of which is believed to be reserved for other tribunals. “Good?—bless the child,” said the maid, Denise Kurlander. “Master was as kind a soul as ever I saw.” Didn’t I never tell you of the he took in out of the street, as you may say, this nine years back? and the little girl, three years after I first started working for your family? “No. Do tell me about them,” Mrs. Kurlander—now this minute!” “Well,” said Mrs. Kurlander, “the little girl I don’t seem to recollect so much about. I know master bought her back with him from his walk one day, give orders to Mrs. Heidelberg, as was housekeeper then, as she should be took every care with. And the pre child hadn’t no one belonging to her—she telled me her own self—and here she lived with us a matter of three weeks it might be; and then, one morning she out of her bed afore any of us had opened, a eye, and neither track nor yet trace of her have I set eyes on since. #RandolphHarris 2 of 7
“Master was wonderful put about, and had all the ponds dragged; but it’s my belief she had away by them witches, for there was singing round the house for as much as an hour the night she went, and Turkheim, he declare as he heard them a-calling in the woods all that afternoon. Dear, dear ! a hodd child she was, so silent in her ways and all, but I was wonderful taken with her, so domesticated she was—surprising. “And what about the little boy?” said Diasy. “Ah, that pore boy!” sighed Mrs. Kurlander. “He were a foreigner—Eduard he called hisself—and he came a tweaking his ‘urdy-gurdy round and about the drive one winter day, and master ‘ad him in that minute, and ast all about where he came from, and how old he was, and how he made his way, and where was his relatives, and all as kind as heart could wish. But it went the same with him. They’re a hunruly lot, them foreign nations, I do suppose, and he was off one fine morning just the same as the girl. Why he went an what he done was our question for as much as a year after; for he never took his ‘urdy-gurdy, and there it lay on the self.” The remainder of the evening was spent by Daisy in miscellaneous cross-examination of Mrs. Kurlander and in efforts to extract a tune from the hurdy-gurdy. That night she had a curious dream. At the end of the passage of the house, in which her bedroom was situated, there was an old disused bathroom. It was kept locked, but the upper half of the door was glazed, and, since the muslin curtains which used to hand there had long been gone, you could look in and see the lead-lined bath affixed to the wall on the right hand, with its head towards the window. #RandolphHarris 3 of 7
On the night of which I am speaking, Diasy found herself, as he thought, looking through the glazed door. The moon was shining through the window, and she was gazing at a figure which lay in the bath. She described a horrid figured, inexpressibly thin and pathetic, of a dusty leaden colour, enveloped in a shroud-like garment, thin lips crooked into a faint and dreadful smile, the hands pressed tightly over the region of his heart. As she looked upon it, a distant, almost inaudible moan seemed to issues from its lips, and the arms began to stir. The terror of the sight forced Daisy backwards, and she awoke to the fact that she was indeed standing on the cold boarded floor of the passage in the full light of the moon. With a courage which I do not think can be common among a young lady her age, she went to the door of the bathroom to ascertain if the figure of her dream were really there. It was not, and she went back to bed. Mrs. Kurlander was much impressed next morning by her story, and went so far as to replace the muslin curtain over the glazed door of the bathroom. That evening, when I came up here to my room after dinner, I just sat in front of the long glass and stared and stared. I must have done it for half an hour or perhaps an hour. I only roe to my feet when it had become quite dark outside. I decided it was time to move to another bedroom. The Crystal Bedroom was much too big and there were only two wooden chairs, painted in greeny-blue with gold lines, or once painted like that. I hate to having to lie on my bed when I should prefer to it and everyone knows how bad it is or the back. Besides, this bed, though it’s enormous, seems to be as hard as when the Earth’s dried up in summer. Not that the Earth’s like that here. Far from it. #RandolphHarris 4 of 7
The rain has never stopped since I left New Haven. Never once. This bed is really huge. It would take at least eight people my size. I do not like to think about it. I have just remembered: it is the third of the month so that I have been gone exactly a year. What a lot of places I have been to in that time—or been through! Already I have quite forgotten some of them. I never properly saw them in any case. Llanada Villa is a huge palace—castle—fortress that simply frightens me some times. The housemaid provided me with no fewer than thirteen candles. I found them in one of the drawers. I suppose there is nothing else to do but read—except perhaps to say one’s prayers. Unfortunately, I finished all the book I brought with me long ago, and it is so difficult to buy any news ones. Daisy would do well to take care of herself, and shut her bedroom windows at night. Two incidents occurred recently that made an impression upon her mind. The first was after an unusually uneasy and oppressed night that she had passed—though she could not recall any particular dream that she had had. The following evening Mrs. Kurlander was occupying herself in mending her nightgown. “Gracious Me, Ms. Daisy!” she broke forth rather irritably, “how did you manage to tear your nightdress all to flinders this way? Look here, Ms. Daisy, what trouble you do give to poor servants that have to darn and mend after you!” There was indeed a most destructive and apparently wanton series of slits or scorings in the garment, which would undoubtedly require a skillful needle to make good. They were confined to the left side of the chest—long, parallel slits, about six inches in length, some of them not quite piercing the texture of the linen. Daisy could only express her entire ignorance of their origin: she was sure they were not there the night before. #RandolphHarris 5 of 7
“But, she said, Mrs. Kurlander, they are just the same as the scratches on the outside of my bedroom door; and I am sure I never has anything to do with making them.” Mrs. Kurlander gazed at her open-mouthed, then snatched up a candle, departed hastily from the room, and was heard making her way upstairs. In a few minutes she came down. “Well,” she said, “Ms. Daisy, it’s a funny thing to me how them marks and scratched can ‘a’ come there—too high up for any car or dog to ‘ave made ‘em, much less a rat: for all the World like a vampire’s finger-nails, as my uncle archeology used to tell us of when we was young girls together. I wouldn’t say nothing to Mrs. Winchester, not if I was you, Ms. Daisy, my dear; and just turn the key to the door when you go to bed.” “I always do, Mrs. Kurlander, as soon as I have said my prayers.” “Ah, that’s a good child: always say your prayers, and then no one can’t hurt you.” Herewith Mrs. Kurlander addressed herself to mending the injured nightgown, with intervals of meditation, until bed-time. This was on Friday night in March, 1898. In a shrill chorus there seemed to lurk a note of tense and evil expectancy. Without warning came these deep, cracked, raucous vocal sounds which would never leave the memory. Not from any human throat were they born, for the organs of man can yield no such acoustic perversions. Rather would one have said they came from the mansion itself. It is almost erroneous to call them sounds at all, since so much of their ghastly, infra-bass timbre spoke to dim seats of consciousness and terror far subtler than the ear; yet one must do so, since their form was indisputably though vaguely that of half-articulate words. #RandolphHarris 6 of 7
They were loud—loud as the rumblings and thunder from the bowels of the mansion from which the echoed—yet did they come from no visible being. And because imagination might suggest a conjectural source in the World of non-visible beings, I winched as if in expectation of a blow. More hideous sounds came croaking out from the bowels of the mansion. The speaking impulse seemed to falter, as if some frightful psychic struggle were going on. There appeared three grotesquely silhouetted human figures in the Observational Tower, all moving their arms furiously in strange gestures as their incantation drew near its culmination. From the black pits of Hell, Acherontic fear or feeling, from the unplumbed gulfs of the mansion’s consciousness or obscure, long-latent heredity, were those half-articulate thunder-croakings drawn? Presently they began to gather renewed force and coherence as they grew in stark, utter, ultimate frenzy. Indisputably English syllables poured thickly and thunderously from the basement. I jumped violently at the deafening, cataclysmic peal whose source, be inner Earth. A single lightning-bolt shot from the sky. Outside, trees, grass, and underbrush were whipped into a fury and the frightened servants in the mansion, were weakened by the lethal foetor that seemed about to asphyxiate them, as they were hurled off their feet. Wolves howled from the distance hills, green grass and foliage wilted to curious, sickly yellow-gray, and over field forest were scattered the bodies of the dead. Slowly the beams of a sunlight shone more brilliant and untainted. My estate was grave and quiet, and seemed shaken by memories and reflection even more terrible than those which had reduced the groups of Indians to a state of quivering. #RandolphHarris 7 of 7
After the death of Mrs. Winchester, the items in her home were auction off in San Francisco, California. However, the queer atmosphere which clings to all in The Winchester Mansion were responsible for the wide-spread story that in opening the mansion of Sarah L. Winchester, and selling all of her possessions, people exposed themselves to the fury of some malignant influence. Recirculating rumours about fears of a curse under sent collectors in a panic. All over the country, people were sending their treasures to museums, anxious to get rid of them because of the superstition that Mrs. Winchester was killed by vengeful spirits. E.E. Evans-Pritchard argued that “cruses are capable of proving effective even after the lapse of thousands of years.” Rumours of The Curse of the Winchester Fortune were always cited. It was said that on the day Pastor Kunst laid bared the entrance to The Winchester Mansion, his pet dog had been devoured by a cobra. Julius Streicher, closely involved with the auction of items from The Winchester Mansion, recalled that “News of this spread quickly and all the natives now said, ‘Alas, that was Oliver Winchester’s cobra, revenging itself on the dog for having betrayed the place of the Winchester Repeating Arms.’” It was said that a solid gold tablet had been discovered in the mansion with the inscription “Death shall come on swift wings to whoever toucheth the home of The Winchester’s.” Mr. Streicher allegedly destroyed the tablet to prevent the superstitious fellaheen from abandoning the auction and so, one believer in the curse states, it was “wiped from the written record of the mansion’s history.”
Heinz Bongartz, however, remembers on his visit to the mansion that “Death the who enter” was an “inscription over the door.” It was said that when Gustav Jungbauer opened Mrs. Winchester’s main safe, they found a fortune in diamonds, gold, silver, and other precious stones, and he was bitten by a mosquito, and died shortly afterwards. Soon enough people, anyone who was loosely connected to the sale of the estate and auction of Mrs. Winchester’s goods died, their deaths were folded into the dreamlike elaboration of the curse rumour. The conservators of the estate then decided it would be best to keep the mansion from being further disturbed, and opened it as a tourist attraction to help with the repairs and maintenance of the estate. In May of 1923, Mr. Streicher’s half-brother Peter Geschiere warned that “seeds of destruction are hidden inside,” before he died after a long illness. Close attention was paid to any association with the sale of the estate and items from it. In November of 1929, Tore Olsson, who helped organize the auction, died suddenly in his sleep and is believed to have been troubled by the legendary curse which is said to be associated with those who looted The Winchester Mansion. Victor Petrov, who was also involved, was found dead at his London club in ambiguous circumstances.
Three months later, Mr. Petrov’s father incoherent suicide note included the line: “I really can’t stand any more horrors.” Luke Eggers, a caretaker of The Winchester Mansion, claimed that Pastor Kunst was eventually murdered by shadowy authorities for knowing too much about the truth behind The Winchester Family. This includes the claim that Pastor Kunst’s first operation—supposedly for cancer—in 1923 was a deception and the first attempt in a conspiracy to kill him. Other enthusiasts have continued to track The Curse of the Winchester Fortune into the present day. By 1980, Arthur Jores, German physician, counted one hundred and thirteen victims. Johann Kruse has suggested that the death of Ernst Haeckel, Director of Antiquities, in a car accident in 1976, followed his denunciation of curse stories. When treasures from Mrs. Winchester’s estate were displayed in a New York Museum in 1925, rumours circulated that the crew that transported the items from Santa Clara, California were also subject to misfortune. In 2001, Bedfordshire on Sunday carried a headline “Is Boy, 2, latest Winchester Victim?”, regarding a story about his home in Sacramento, California; “a luxury villa said to be jinxed by the Cruse of the Winchester Fortune.” Such stories have been partly fostered by allegedly authoritive sources. There is a weird fusion of history, myth, and occultism surrounding The Winchester fortune and bloodline. Might the dead return or punish the living for shortcomings of their ritual propitiations? Superstitions proliferate where such borders are breached. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic, for witches stand, One Nation, Under God, Indivisible, for Liberty and Justice for all.
For further information about tours, including group tours, weddings, school events, birthday party packages, facility rentals, and special events please visit the website: https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
Please visit the online giftshop, and purchase a gift for friends and relatives as well as a special memento of The Winchester Mystery House. A variety of souvenirs and gifts are available to purchase. https://shopwinchestermysteryhouse.com/
Comin’ Straight Out of Brooklyn, Crush Your Spine, Corrupt Your Mind!
The era of large-scale witch hunting in Europe ended long ago. The last legal execution that we know of, of a witch in German-speaking Europe took place in Glarus, Switzerland, in 1782. However, that did not end the fear of witches. Perhaps not all witches are bad, but there are renewed concerns in America that people are cohabitating with devilry. The early modern witch hunt has powerfully shaped what we assume witchcraft to be about, and it has also limited what we think it is, and when we think it was. However, in the most basic sense, to accuse someone of being a witch is to accuse that person of conspiring to do covert evil: to inflict harm, misfortune, and sickness. Even if they are unwilling to admit it, some people are using arts of the Devil and in league with demonic forces, which are intended to perplex humanity. Witchcraft, in this regard, is a cultural idiom, a way of understanding and explaining the bad things that befall us. Illness has often been associated with dirt, pollution, and disorder. However, illness is also seen as a form of cosmic judgment, as punishment for improper or irresponsible behaviour. It reflects the order of society and the cosmos write large, and may reveal sins of various orders and magnitude. As such, during Victorian times, it structured the community’s moral economy: those who suffered from heart disease, or had circulatory problems, people believed, had lives wrong. Perhaps they had not worked hard enough, or had recklessly participated in life, creating a social burden for the community. Cancer and ulcers were perceived as punishments, perhaps for youthful sexual indiscretion. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19
Maintaining health was a sign of one’s self-discipline and accountability within a community where people depended on one another to get the work done that allowed the community to continue and to thrive. However, inhabitants did not perceive all illnesses as moral judgments or as the result of cosmic sanction. Tuberculosis and pneumonia, they felt, could befall anyone; those were simply two of humanity’s burdens. Furthermore, it has been asked whether experiences of betrayal, interpersonal alienation, and power politics might help explain some manifestations of illness or sudden disability. One of the striking examples concerns the air-traffic-controller crisis of the early 1980s. In 1981, air traffic controllers went on strike to protest their working conditions and the intolerable stress associated with their jobs. However, researchers readily conceded that the controllers were under stress, they could find no physical evidence of it, like heightened levels of cortisol or elevated blood pressure. Ultimately, Robert Rose, a prominent psychiatrist on a Federal Aviation Administration team researching the problem, concluded that the cause of the controllers’ suffering was not so much stress as a lack of social support. They felt that no one cared about how hard their work was, or how they fared in their jobs. The stress they experienced, Mr. Rose became convinced, was not just biological or physiological, and it “wasn’t just inside the individual.” Their illness was a product of social experience. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19
Also, during World War I, some supplicants were described as suffering from war blindness (Kriegsblindheit). While many other ailments continued to be part of the parade of affliction, illness vaguely attributed to war damage and impairments to sufferers’ limbs and sensory organs were especially prominent themes. Applying these ideas to postwar Germany, we might ask how pervasive unease, a sense of collective failure, persistent questions of blame, and fears of betrayal might have influenced the ways people experienced the fragility of their bodies after the war. Did people become suddenly blind or deaf because they could not bear to see or hear what was happening around them—could not bear defeat and its consequences? Did some suddenly lose their ability to walk as a form of unconscious protest against volition, against agency, against responsibility for genocide and war or defense crimes? Did they lose the ability to speak because there were so many things that could not be discussed out loud? The loss of speech can stand for a refusal of co-existence. The human spirit is a distinct organism. Separation of soul and spirit can happen. This is because of the Fall. The spirit which had been in union with God—which once ruled and dominated the soul and body—feel from its predominated position into the vessel of the soul and could no longer rule. In the “new birth,” which the Lord told Nicodemus was necessary for every man, the regeneration of the fallen spirit takes place. “That which is born of the Spirit is spirit,” reports John 3.6; “a new spirit will I put within you,” reports Ezekiel 36.26. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19
And through cognizance of the death of the old creation with Christ, as set forth in Romans 6.6, is the new spirit liberated, divided from the soul, and joined to the Risen Lord. “Dead to the law…joined to Another”; “Having died…that we might serve in newness of the spirit,” reports Romans 7.4-6. The believer’s life is therefore to be a walk after the spirit, minding the things of the spirit. However, the believer can only thus walk after the spirit if the Spirit of God dwells in one. The Holy Spirit lifts one’s spirit to the place of rule over soul and body—“flesh,” both ethically and physically—by joining it to the Risen Lord, and making it “one spirit” with Him. That the believer retains volitional control over one’s own spirit is the important point to note, for through ignorance one can withdraw one’s spirit from cooperation with the Holy Spirit, and thus, so to speak, walk after the soul, or after the flesh—unwittingly. A surrendered will to do the will of God I therefore no guarantee that one is doing that will; one must understand what the will of the Lord is, and for doing that will must seek to be filled in spirit to the utmost of one’s capacity. The knowledge that the Spirit of God has come to indwell the shrine of the spirit is not enough to guarantee that the believer will continue to walk in the spirit and not fulfill the lusts of the flesh. If one wishes to truly “live” in the realm of the Spirit and know His power, one must learn how to “walk” with the Spirit. And for this, one must understand how to “combine” and “compare” spiritual things with spiritual, so as to interpret truly the things of the Spirit of God—exercising the spirit faculty by which one is able to examine all things, and so discern the mind of the Lord. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19
Such a believer should know how to walk after the spirit, so that one does not quench its action, movements or admonitions as it is moved or exercised by the Spirit of God—cultivating its strength by use, so that one becomes strong in spirit, and a truly spiritual human of “full age” in the Church of God. The Spiritual Community is the assembly of God of the Old Testament, the body of Christ of the New Testament, and the church invisible or Spiritual of the Reformers. It is the invisible essence of the religious communities, both non-Christian and Christian alike. However, those religious groups which are consciously founded upon the reception of Jesus as the Christ are the churches. The Christian churches constitute the manifest Spiritual Community. The Spiritual Community does not exist as a separate entity. For the Spiritual Community is the invisible essence, the inner telos, the essential power in every actual church. The spiritual essence of the churches permits them to participate in unambiguous life under the Spiritual Presence. However, they are also groups of human beings under the conditions of existence. They are simultaneously both the actualization and the distortion of the Spiritual Community. Consequently, there are two aspects to the churches which make them a paradox: the theological aspect, which points to their spiritual essence, and the sociological aspect, which reveals their ambiguities. Every church is a sociological reality. As such it is subject to the laws which determine the life of social groups with all their ambiguities. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19
The sociologists of religion are justified in conducting these inquiries in the same way as the sociologists of law, of the arts, and of the sciences. They rightly point to the social stratification within the churches, to the rise and fall of elites, to power struggles and the destructive weapons used in them, to the conflict between freedom and organization, to aristocratic esotericism in contrast to democratic exotericism, and so forth. Seen in this light, the history of the churches is a secular history with all the disintegrating, destructive, and tragic-demonic elements which make historical life as ambiguous as all other life processes. Despite the sociological trappings which envelop the churches, at their core lies the Spiritual Community. It supplies the “in spite of” element in their paradoxical character, the dynamism which does not eliminate, but conquers the ambiguities of religion at least in principle. The phrase “in principle” means “the power of beginning, which remains the controlling power in a whole process.” In this sense, the Spiritual Presence, the New Being, and the Spiritual Community are principles (archai). Since our primary interest in the mutual relationship between religion and culture, we shall not delay to describe how the Spiritual Presence overcomes the ambiguities of religion within religion itself. Instead, we consider the influence of the churches upon individuals and upon society. As regards the ambiguities of religion, it suffices to note the operative factor, the Protestant principle: The Protestant principle is an expression of the conquest of religion by the Spiritual Presence and consequently an expression of the victory over the ambiguities of religion, its profanization, and its demonization. In this sense, we can speak of the victory of the Spirit over religion. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19
Marxism is humanism, and its amin is the full unfolding of the human potentialities—not humans as deduced from their ideas or their consciousness, but humans with their physical and psychic properties, the real human who does not live in a vacuum but in a social context, the human who has to produce in order to live. It I precisely the fact that the whole human, as well as one’s consciousness, is the concern of Marxist thought which differentiates Mrs. Marx’s “materialism” from Mr. Hegel’s idealism, as well as from the economistic-mechanistic deformation of Marxism. It was Mr. Marx’s great achievement to liberate the economic and philosophical categories that referred to humans from their abstract and alienated expressions and to apply philosophy and economics ad hominem. Mr. Marx’s concern was humans, and his aim was humans’ liberation from the predomination of material interests, from the prison one’s own arrangements and deeds had built around them. If one does not understand this concern of Mr. Marx, one will never understand either his theory or the falsification of it by many who claim to practice it. Even though Mr. Marx’s main work is entitled Capital (Das Kapital), this work was meant to be only a step in his total research, to be followed by a history of philosophy. For Mr. Marx the study of capital was a critical tool to be used for understanding humans’ crippled state in industrial society. It is one step in the great work which, if he had been able to write it, might have been entitled On Man and Society. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19
Mr. Marx’s work, that of the “young” Mr. Marx as well as that of the author of Capital, is fully of psychological concepts. He deals with concepts like the “essence of man,” and the “crippled man,” with “alienation,” with “consciousness,” with “passionate strivings,” and with “independence,” to name only some of the most important. Yet, in contrast to Mr. Aristotle and Mr. Spinoza, who based ethics on a systematic psychology, Mr. Marx’s work contains almost no psychological theory. Aside from fragmentary remarks on the distinction between fixed drives (like hunger and sexuality) and flexible drives which are socially produced, there is hardly any relevant psychology to be found in Mr. Marx’s writings or, for that matter, in those of his successors. The reason for this failure does not lie in a lack of interest in or talent for analyzing psychological phenomena (the volumes containing the unabridged correspondence between Mr. Marx and Mr. Engels show a capacity for penetrating analysis of unconscious motivations that would be a credit to any gifted psychoanalyst); it is to be found in the fact that during Mr. Marx’s lifetime there was no dynamic psychology that he could have applied to the problems of human beings. Mr. Marx died in 1883; Dr. Freud began to publish his work more than ten years after Mr. Marx’s death. Even though in need of many revisions, the kind of psychology necessary to supplement Mr. Marx’s analysis was created by Dr. Freud. Psychoanalysis is, first of all, a dynamic psychology. It deals with psychic forces, which motivate human behaviour, action, feelings, ides. These forces cannot always be seen as such; they have to be inferred from the observable phenomena, and to be studied in their contradictions and transformations. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19
To be useful for Marxist thinking, a psychology must also be one which sees the evolution of these psychic forces as a process of constant interaction between humans’ need and the social and historical reality in which one participates. It must be a psychology which is from the very beginning social psychology. Eventually, it must be a critical psychology, particularly one critical of humans’ consciousness. Dr. Freud’s psychoanalysis fulfills these main conditions, even though their relevance for Marxist thought was grasped neither by most Freudians nor by Marxists. The reasons for this failure to make contact are apparent on both sides. Marxist continued in the tradition of ignoring psychology; Dr. Freud and his disciples developed their ideas within the framework of mechanistic materialism, which proved restrictive to the development of the great discoveries of Dr. Freud and incompatible with “historical materialism.” In the revival of Marxist humanism, those in the West became aware of the fact that socialism must satisfy humans’ need for a system of orientation and devotion; that it must deal with the questions of who humans are and what the meaning and aim of their lives are. It must be the foundation for ethical norms and spiritual development beyond the empty phrase stating that “good is that which serves the revolution” (the worker’s state, historical evolution, et cetera). On the other hand, the criticism arising in the psychoanalytic camp against the mechanistic materialism underlying Dr. Freud’s thinking has led to a critical reevaluation of psychoanalysis, essentially of the libido theory. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19
Because of the development in both Marxist and psychoanalytic thinking, the time seems to have come for humanist Marxist to recognize that the use of a dynamic, critical, socially oriented psychology is of crucial importance for the further development of Marxist theory and socialist practice; that a theory centered around man can no longer remain a theory without psychology if it is not to lose touch with human reality. The sado-masochistic person is always characterized by one’s attitude toward authority. One admires authority and tends to submit to it, but at the same time one wants to be an authority oneself and have others submit to one. There is an additional reason for choosing this term. The Fascist systems call themselves authoritarian because of the dominant role of authority in their social and political structure. By the term “authoritarian character,” we imply that it represents the personality structure which is the human basis of Fascism. Authority is not a quality one person “has,” in the sense that one had property or physical qualities. Authority refers to an interpersonal relation in which one person looks upon another as somebody superior to one. However, there is a fundamental difference between a kind of superiority-inferiority relation which can be called rational authority and one which may be described as inhibiting authority. An example is the relationship between teacher and student and that between slave and owner and slave are both based on the superiority of the one over the other. The interests of teacher and pupil lie in the same direction. If one succeeds in furthering the pupil, the teacher is satisfied; if one has failed to do so, the failure is that of the teacher and the pupil. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19
The slaver owner, on the other hand, wants to exploit the slave as much as possible; the more one gets out of the slave, the more one is satisfied. At the same time, the slave seeks to defend as best one can one’s claims for a minimum of happiness. These interests are definitely antagonistic, as what is of advantage to the one is detrimental to the other. The superiority has a different function in both cases: in the first, it is the condition for the helping of the person subjected to the authority; in the second, it is the condition for one’s exploitation. The dynamics of authority in these two types are different too: the more the student learns, the less wide is the gap between one and the teacher. One becomes more and more like the teacher oneself. In other words, the authority relationship tends to dissolve itself. However, when the superiority serves as a basis for exploitation, the distance becomes intensified through its long duration. The psychological situation is different in each of these authority situations. In the first, elements of love, admiration, or gratitude are prevalent. The authority is at the same time an example with which one wants to identify one’s self partially or totally. In the second situation, resentment or hostility will arise against the exploiter, subordination to whom is against one’s own interest. However, often, as in the case of a slave, this hatred would only lead to conflicts which would subject the slave to suffering without a chance of winning. Therefore, the tendency will usually be to repress the feeling of hatred and sometimes even to replace it by a feeling of blind admiration. This has two functions: to remove the painful dangerous feeling of hatred, and to soften the feeling of humiliation. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19
If the person who rules over me is so wonderful or perfect, then I should not be ashamed of obeying one. I cannot be one’s equal because one is so much stronger, wiser, better, and so on, than I am. As a result, in the inhibiting kind of authority, the element either of hatred or of irrational overestimation and admiration of the authority, the element either of hatred or of irrational overestimation and admiration of the authority will tend to increase. In the rational kind of authority, it will tend to decrease in direct proportion to the degree in which the person subjected to the authority becomes stronger and thereby more similar to the authority. The difference between rational and inhibiting authority is only a relative one. Even in the relationship between slave and master there are elements of advantage for the slave. One gets a minimum of food and protection which at least enables one to work for one’s master. (However, with being beat and working in the broiling hot sun and freeze cold could lead to death, as well as the beatings.) On the other hand, it is only in an ideal relationship between teacher and student that we find a complete lack of antagonism of interests. There are many gradations between these two extreme cases, as in the relationship of a factory worker, with one’s boss, or a farmer’s son with his father, of a hausfrau with her husband. Nevertheless, although in reality two types of authority are blended, they are essentially different, and an analysis of a concrete authority situation must always determine the specific weight of each kind of authority. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19
Authority does not have to be a person or institution which says: you have to do this, or you are not allowed to do that. While this kind of authority may be called external authority, authority can appear as internal authority, under the name of duty, conscience, or superego. As a matter of fact, the development of modern thinking from Protestantism to Mr. Kant’s philosophy, can be characterized as the substitution of internalized authority for an external one. With the political victories of the rising middle class, external authority lost prestige and man’s own conscience assumed the place which external authority once had held. This change appeared to many as the victory of freedom. To submit to orders from the outside (at least in spiritual matters) appeared to be unworthy of a free man; but the conquest of one’s natural inclinations, and the establishment of the domination of one part of the individual, one’s nature, by another, one’s reason, will or conscience, seemed to be the very essence of freedom. Analysis shows that conscience rules with a harshness as great as external authorities, and furthermore that frequently the contents of the orders issues by humans’ conscience are ultimately not governed by demands which have assumed the dignity of ethical norms. The rulership of conscience can be even harsher than that of external authorities, since the individual feels its orders to be one’s own; how can one rebel against oneself? Mr. Stalin, a shrewd, cynical opportunist with an insatiable lust for personal power, drew the consequences of the failure. Given his personality, socialism could never have meant for him the human vision of Mr. Marx or Mr. Engles, and hence he had no scruples in introducing the enforced industrialization of Russian under the name of “socialism in one country.” #RandolphHarris 13 of 19
This formula was only the transparent cover for the goal to be achieved—the building of a totalitarian state managerialism in Russia, and the rapid capital accumulation (and mobilization of human energy) necessary for this goal. Mr. Stalin liquidated the socialist revolution in the name of “socialism.” He used terror to enforce acceptance of the material deprivations which resulted from the rapid build-up of basic industries at the expense of the production of consumer goods; furthermore, the terror served to create a new work morale by mobilizing the energies of an essentially agrarian population and forcing them to work at the pace necessary for this rapid industrial expansion. He used terror probably far beyond what was necessary for the achievement of his economic program because he was possessed by an extraordinary thirst for power, a paranoid suspicion of rivals, and a pathological pleasure in revenge. If a highly industrialized, centralized Russian state managerialism was Mr. Stalin’s aim, he certainly could not have said so. Terror alone, even the most extreme terror, would not have sufficed to force the masses into co-operation had not Mr. Stalin been able also to influence humans’ minds and thoughts He could, of course, have made a complete about-face, staging an ideological counterrevolution employing a fascist-nationalist ideology. Thus he might have had the ideological means which would have led to similar results. Mr. Stalin did not choose this course, and hence there was nothing left for him to do but to use the only ideology which had any influence on the masses at that time—that of communism and World revolution. Religion had been depreciated by the Communist Party; nationalism had been depreciated; “Marxism-Leninism” was the only prestigious ideology left. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19
And no one this, but the figures of Mr. Marx, Mr. Engel, and Mr. Lenin had a charismatic appeal for the Russian people and Mr. Stalin used this appeal by presenting himself as their legitimate successor. In order to perpetrate the great historical fraud, Mr. Stalin had to get rid of Mr. Trotsky and eventually to exterminate almost all the old Bolsheviks to have the way completely free for his transformation of the socialist goal into one of a reactionary state managerialism. He had to rewrite history in order to wipe out even the memory of the old revolutionaries and their ideas. Maybe, unconsciously, he feared and suspected the old revolutionaries in his paranoid fashion, because he felt guilty of having betrayed the ideals of which they were symbols. If not in the whole World, Mr. Stalin succeeded in his goal, which was not World revolution but an industrialized Russia that should become the strongest industrial power in Europe. The economic success of his method of totalitarian state planning later continued with some changes by Mr. Malenkov and Mr. Khrushchev, is no long a matter of dispute. “The Soviet system of centralized direction has proved itself to be more or less the peer of the market economy, as exemplified by the United States of America.” This judgment is borne out by the Russian industrial growth. While the estimates of various American economists vary somewhat, the differences are relatively small. Mr. Bornstein estimates the annual rate of growth of gross national product from 1950 to 1958 in the Soviet Union at 6.5-7.5 percent and for the United States of America in the name period at 2.9 percent. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19
Kaplan-Moorsteen estimate the Russian industrial rate of growth for the same period as being 9.2 percent. The current GDP in Russia for 2023 is 1.3 percent. If one considers the Russian annual rate of growth since 1913, that is to say for the period including the destruction of the First World War and the Civil War, the figures are, of course, quite different. They are according to Mr. Nutter, for civilian industrial output from 1913 to 1955 only 4.2 percent, while the rate of growth for the last forty years of the Czarist period was 5.3 percent. However, between 1928 and 1940 (that is to say, in a period of peace) the Soviet rate was 8.3 percent and between 1950 and 1955 9.0 percent, more or less twice the United States of America during the same time, and somewhat less than twice that of the Czarist rate. Mr. Nutter estimates that if one looks to the immediate future—“it seems reasonably certain that industrial growth will proceed more rapidly in the Soviet Union than in the United States of America, in the absence of radical institutional changes in either country,” while, “it is more doubtful that industrial growth in the Soviet Union will be faster than in rapidly expanding Western economies, such as Western Germany, France, and Japan.” Mr. Nutter doubts, however, that in the long run the Soviet system will generate a more rapid growth than the private enterprise system. In contrast to industrial production, Russian agricultural production has been lagging far behind the planned figures and still constitutes one of the difficult problems of the Russian system. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19
As far as consumption is concerned, the annual growth, taking in account the growth in population, is estimated at about 5 percent, with a recent rise in consumption among peasants. “In terms of food and clothing,” Mr. Turgeon concludes, “the Soviet stands the best chance of overtaking our level of living,” while the United States of America is far ahead in automobiles and other durable consumer goods, and in expenditures for services and travel. Mr. Stalin laid the foundations for a new, industrialized Russia. He transformed, within less than thirty years, the economically most backward of the great European nations into an industrial system that soon would become the economically most advanced and prosperous, second only to the United States of America. He achieved this goal through the ruthless destruction of human lives and happiness, through the cynical falsification of socialist ideas, and through an inhumanity which together with that of Mr. Hitler, corroded the sense of humanity in the rest of the World. Yet apart from the question whether this goal could have been achieved in less inhuman way by using other methods, the fact that he left to his heirs a viable and strong economic and political system. Many of the Stalinist features have remained the same—others have been changed. It is probably not extreme to declare any quote of work externally imposed upon a person is bound to seem coercive to some degree. While the ways in which coercion is exercised are often subtle and difficult to discern, even where no effort is made deliberately to conceal them, the effects of coercion are registered in the attitude of the person to one’s work. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19
Instead of motivation to approach an ideal of performance, which removes all barriers to the release of energy, there is resistance to the coercion, a setting of limits to effort, and even discontent and sabotage. Instead of guilt over doing less than one’s best, there is often the feeling that integrity and self-respect are best maintained by a refusal to surrender to the coercion. To be sure, it is obvious that employment utterly free of coercion is almost nonexistent; even play can become rapidly adulterated with compulsion as it gets organized by teams and clubs. Nevertheless, there are enormous differences in quality of performance as coercion fluctuates. Conversely, if none of the personnel doe more than their specified and required minimum, no organization can survive long; even in prison, the prisoners must contribute more than is absolutely forced from them. In practice the participation of personnel in setting the goals of their own effort can help to release the energy for attaining them. In determining their respective quotas and schedules, personnel are in effect spelling out of the interim or subgoals within the over-all goals of the agency. Yet, since initiative in evoking responsibility lies almost entirely with the administrator, the burden of achieving the personnel’s genuine participation lies upon one’s shoulders, and failure to achieve it can only spuriously be blamed on the personnel. In other words, as generally recognized, the test of the administrator, although it may be expressed in term of objective results in completing one’s program, is basically a test of one’s ability to minimize coercion and maximize participation. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19
Where one has the least opportunity for coercion, one’s skill as an organizer and leader of group effort becomes most clearly manifest (such as in campaigns using unpaid volunteers). All other conditions being equal, it seems demonstrable that shared purpose will always release more energy and ingenuity, and produce better results, than coercion. Too often the planning aspect of administration is discussed loosely in terms of controls. Not only has the term a popular connotation of some form or degree of coercion, but this is all too often so in practice. In other words, the various quotas and schedules are set up unilaterally and hierarchically by the administrator and one’s lieutenants, as tasks imposed externally upon subordinates. The best forms of planning break down the broad goals of a program to apply to the various functional units of the executive agency, but much is lost, and the success of the program is jeopardized, if this is done solely for the sake of co-ordination. If quotas and schedules are instead construed not as controls in this limited sense but as interim goals, their other functions in facilitating motivation of personnel and morale of the agency then become feasible Beyond starting these general characteristics of the program phase of our model of the planning process, it is doubtful that much more could be said without getting down to particular cases. There are vast numbers of books about the familiar problems of administration, most of the conceived in terms of human relations. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic, for which it stands, One Nation, Under God, Indivisible with Liberty and Justice for all. If a stranger sojourns with you in your land, you shall not wrong him or her. And you shall love one as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of America. Please be sure to donate to the Sacramento Fire Depart, as they are not receiving all of their resources. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19
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The Whip of Wall Street Bosses
At one time, witchcraft was “ubiquitous,” and played a part in every activity of one’s life. If blight seized the groundnut crop, it was witchcraft; if the bush was vainly scoured for game, it was witchcraft; if women laboriously bale water out of a pool and were rewarded by but a few small fish, it was witchcraft;…if a prince was cold and distant with his subject, it was witchcraft;…if, in fact, any failure or misfortune fell upon anyone at any time and in relation to any of the manifold activities of one’s life, it might have be due to witchcraft. Witchcraft was foremost a way of making what happened in people’s lives intelligible in the fullest sense, of explaining what lay behind such misfortunes as poor harvest and sickness. Narratives proliferate in the spaces between what is known and what is not, especially in the spaces where life and knowledge are the most fragile. Illness is mysterious. It comes without warning, and its sources are often hidden. By explaining death or illness or bad luck, witchcraft acts as a form of theodicy, a way of understanding why bad things—like granaries collapsing—happen when they do, and to whom. Sadism, as it is often used, can be relatively free from destructiveness and blended with a friendly attitude towards it object. This kind of “loving” sadism has found classical expression in Balzac’s Lost Illusions, a description which also conveys the particular quality of what we mean by the need for symbiosis. In this passage Balzac describes the relationship between young Lucien and the Bango prisoner who poses as an Abbe. Shortly after he makes the acquaintance of the young man who has just tried to commit suicide the Abbe says: “…This young man has nothing in common with the poet who died just now. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19
“I have picked you up, I have given life to you, and you belong to me as the creature belongs to the creator, as-in the Orient’s fairy tales—the Ifrit belongs to the spirit, as the body belongs to the soul. With powerful hands I will keep you straight on the road to power; I promise you, nevertheless, a life of pleasures, of honours, of everlasting feasts. You will never lack money, you will sparkle, you will be brilliant; whereas I, stopped down in the filth of promoting, shall secure the brilliant edifice of your success. I love your power for the sake of power! I shall always enjoy your pleasures although I shall have to renounce them. Shortly: I shall be one and the same person with you…I will love my creature, I will mold him, will shape him to my services, in order to love him as a father loves his child. I shall drive at your side in your Tilbury, my dear boy, I shall delight in your successes with women. I have created this Marquis de Rubempre and have placed him among the aristocracy; his success is my product. He is silent and he talks with my voice, he follows my advice in everything.” Frequently, and not only in the popular usage, sado-masochism is confounded with love. Masochistic phenomena, especially, are looked upon as expressions of love. An attitude of complete self-denial for the sake of another person and the surrender of one’s own rights and claims to another person have been praised as examples of “great love.” It seems that there is no better proof for “love” than sacrifice and the readiness to give oneself up for the sake of the beloved person. Actually, in these cases, “love” is essentially a masochistic yearning and rooted in the symbiotic need of the person involved. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19
If we mean by love the passionate affirmation and active relatedness to the essence of a particular person, if we mean by it the union with another person on the basis of the independence and integrity of the two persons involved, then masochism and love are opposites. Love is based on subordination and loss of integrity of one partner, it is masochistic dependence, regardless of how the relationship is rationalized. Sadism also appears frequently under the disguise of love. To rule over another person, if one can claim that to rule him is for that person’s own sake, frequently appears as an expression of love, but the essential factor is the enjoyment of domination. Many are probably wondering: Is not sadism, as we have described it here, identical with the craving for power? Although the more destructive forms of sadism, in which the aim is to hurt and torture another person, are not identical with the wish for power, the latter is the most significant expression of sadism. The problem has gained added significance in the present day. Since Mr. Hobbes, one has seen in power the basic motive of human behaviour; the following centuries, however, gave increased weight to legal and moral factors which tended to curb power. With the rise of Fascism, the lust for power and the conviction of its right has reached new height. Millions are impressed by the victories of power and take it for the sigh of strength. To be sure, power over people is an expression of superior strength in a purely material sense. If I have the power over another person to kill him, I am “stronger” than he is. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19
However, in a psychological sense, the lust for power is not rooted in strength but in weakness. It is the expression of the inability of the individual self to stand alone and live. It is the desperate attempt to gain secondary strength where genuine strength is lacking. The word “power” has a twofold meaning One is the possession of power over somebody, the ability to dominate one; the other meaning is the possession of power to do something, to be able, to be potent. The latter meaning has nothing to do with domination; it expresses mastery in the sense of ability. If we speak of powerlessness, we have this meaning in mind; we do not think of a person who is not able to dominate others, but of a person who is not able to do what one wants. Thus power can on one of two things, domination or potency. Far from being identical, these two qualities are mutually exclusive. Impotence, using the term not only with regard to the sphere of pleasures of the flesh, but to all spheres of human potentialities, results in the sadistic striving for domination; to the extent to which an individual is potent, that is, able to realize one’s potentialities on the basis of freedom and integrity of one self, one does not need to dominate and is lacking the lust for power. Power, in the sense of domination, is the perversion of potency just as sexual sadism is the perversion of sexual love. Sadistic and masochistic traits are probably to be found in everybody. At one extreme there are individuals whose whole personality is dominated by these traits, and at the other there are those for whom these sado-masochistic traits are not characteristic. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19
Only in discussing the former can we speak of a sado-masochistic character. The term “character” is used here in the dynamic sense in which Dr. Freud speaks of character. In this sense it refers not to the sum total of behavior patterns characteristic for one person, but to the dominant drives that motivate behaviour. Since Dr. Freud assumed that the basic motivating forces are sexual ones, he arrived at concepts like “oral,” “anal,” or “genital” characters. If one does not share this assumption, one is forced to devise different character types. However, the dynamic concept remains the same. The driving forces are not necessarily conscious as such to a person whose character is dominated by them. A person can be entirely dominated by one’s sadistic strivings and consciously believe that one is motivated only by one’s sense of duty. One may not even commit any overt sadistic acts but suppress one’s sadistic drives sufficiently to make one appear on the surface as a person who is not sadistic. Nevertheless, any close analysis of one’s behaviour, one’s phantasies, dreams, and gestures, would show the sadistic impulses operating in deeper layers of one’s personality. Although the character of persons in whom sadomasochistic drives are dominant can be characterized as sado-masochistic, such persons are not necessarily neurotic. It depends to a large extent on the particular tasks people have to fulfill in their social situation and what patterns of feelings and behaviour are present in their culture whether or not a particular kind of character structure is “neurotic” or “normal.” As a matter of fact, for great parts of the lower middle class in Germany and other European countries, the sado-masochistic character is typical, and, it is this kind of character structure to which Nazi ideology had its strongest appeal. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19
A reason why it is so difficult to dare to disobey, to say “no” to power is because during most of human history obedience has been identified with virtue and disobedience with sin. The reason is simple: thus far throughout most of history a minority has ruled over the majority. This rule was made necessary by the fact that there was only enough of the good things of life for the few, and only the crumbs remained for the many. If the few wanted to enjoy the good things and, beyond that, to have the many serve them and work for them, one condition was necessary: the many had to learn obedience. To be sure, obedience can be established by sheer force. However, this method has many disadvantages. It constitutes a constant threat that one day the many might have the means to overthrow the few by force; furthermore there are many kinds of work which cannot be done properly if nothing but fear is behind the obedience. Hence the obedience which is only rooted in the fear of force must be transformed into one rooted in humans’ hearts. Humans want and even need to obey, instead of only fearing to disobey. If this is to be achieved, power must assume the qualities of the All Good, the All Wise; it must become All Knowing. If this happens, power can proclaim that disobedience is sin and obedience virtue; and once this has been proclaimed, the many can accept obedience because it is good and detest disobedience because it is bd, rather than to detest themselves for being cowards. From Mr. Luther to the nineteenth century one was concerned with overt and explicit authorities. Mr. Luther, the pope, the princes, wanted to uphold it; the middle class, the workers, the philosopher, tried to uproot it. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19
The fight against authority in the State as well as in the family was often the very basis for the development of an independent and daring person. The fight against authority was inseparable from the intellectual mood which characterized the philosophers of the enlightenment and the scientists. This “critical mood” was one of the faith in reason, and at the same time of doubt in everything which is said or thought, inasmuch as it is based on tradition, superstition, custom, power. The principles sapere aude and de omnibus est dubitandum—“dare to be wise” and “of all one must doubt”—were characteristic of the attitude which permitted and furthered the capacity to say “no.” The case of Adolf Eichmann is symbolic of our situation and has a significance far beyond the one which his accusers in the courtroom in Jerusalem were concerned with. Mr. Eichmann is a symbol of the organization man, of the alienated bureaucrat for whom men, women, and children have become numbers. He is a symbol of all of us. We can see ourselves in Mr. Eichmann. However, the most frightening thing about hi is that after the entire story was told in terms of his own admission, he was able in perfect good faith to plead his innocence. It is clear that if he were once more in the same situation, he would do it again. And so would we—and so do we. The organization man has lost the capacity to disobey, he is not even aware of the fact that he obeys. At this point in history the capacity to doubt, to criticize and to disobey may be all that stands between a future for humankind and the end of civilization. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19
The Soviet system is a mythical entity to most Americans; probably not any less mythical than the capitalist system is to most Russians. While the Russians see capitalism as a system of exploited wage salves obeying the whip of Wall Street bosses, Americans see Russia as led by men who are a blend of Mr. Lenin and Mr. Hitler, bent on subjugating the rest of the World by force or trickery. Since our whole foreign policy is based on the idea that the Soviet Union wants to conquer the World by force, it is of the utmost importance to examine the facts and to have a clear and realistic picture of the nature of the Soviet system. This task is all the more difficult because the nature of the Soviet system changed completely between 1917 and the present time. It changed from a revolutionary system, considering itself the center and the promotor of Communist revolutions in Europe and eventually throughout the whole World, to a conservative, industrial class society run along lines in many respects similar to the development of the “capitalistic” states of the West. This change, however, was never marked by any official break in the continuity, because many basic features such as the nationalization of means of production and the idea of a planned economy have remained the same. However, much more confusing than the continuity of certain economic patterns is the continuity of the ideology. Mr. Stalin and then Mr. Khrushchev had religiously stuck to the “Marxist-Leninist” formulations, and continued to speak the language of 1848 or 1917, although representing a system which is the very opposite of what revolutionaries like Mr. Marx and Mr. Lenin envisaged. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19
Actually we should be better able to recognize the difference between ritualized ideological formulae and realities. Are we not ourselves caught in a similar discrepancy when we talk of “individual initiative” in a society of the “organization man,” or of a “God-fearing society” when in reality we care mainly about money, comfort, health and education, and very little about God? However—and this makes the recognition of reality all the more confusing—neither the Russians nor are we liars. Both sides are convinced that they are telling the truth, and they approach each other with the common conviction that their own and, even to some extent, their opponent’s ideologies represent realities. Since Mr. Stalin’s ascendancy the Soviet rulers have never aimed at Communist revolution in the West but have used the Communist parties only as instruments for the support of the Soviet foreign policy. The middle of the nineteenth century was a time of socialist hope; this was based on the miraculous progress of science and its effect on industrial production, on the success of the middle-class revolutions of 1789, 1830, 1848, on the mounting protests of the workers, and on the spread of socialist ideas. Mr. Marx and Mr. Engels, like many other socialists, were convinced that the time was near in which the great revolution would occur and that shortly a new epoch in human history would begin, that there was every prospect, as Mr. Engles put it, “of turning the revolution of the minority” [as were all previous revolutions] “into a revolution of the majority” [as he visualized the socialist revolution]. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19
However, at the end of the century Mr. Engels had to admit: “History has proved us, and all who thought like us, wrong. It has made it clear that the state of economic development of the continent at that time was not, by a long way, ripe for the elimination of capitalist production.” The First World War marked a decisive change in the history of socialism. It marked the collapse of two of its most significant aims, internationalism and peace. With the beginning of the war, each socialist party took the side of its own government and fought the other socialists in the name of “freedom.” This moral debacle of socialism was not so much due to the personal betrayal of some leaders as to the change in general economic and political conditions. The naked and ruthless exploitation of the workers which had existed in the nineteenth century had slowly given way to the participation of the working class in the economic gains of their respective countries. Capitalism, instead of being unable to function because of its own inner contradictions, as Mr. Marx had predicted, proved to be a going concern, much more capable of coping with crises and difficulties than the radical revolutionaries had expected. The very success of capitalism led to a new interpretation of socialism. While Mr. Marx’s and Mr. Engles vision was that of a new form of society transcending that of capitalism, a society which would be the full realization of humanism and individualism, socialism began now to be interpreted by most of its adherents as a movement for the economic and political rise of the working class within the capitalist system. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19
While Mr. Marxist socialism in the nineteenth century was the most significant spiritual and moral movement of the century, antipositivistic and antimaterialistic in essence, it was slowly transformed into a purely political movement with essentially economic aims even though the older moral goals never entirely disappeared. The interpretation of socialism in terms of the categories of capitalism led to a new policy for the socialist parties, the aim of which was the welfare state rather than the fulfillment of the messianic hopes held by the founders of socialism. The war of 1914, that senseless slaughter of millions of people f all nations for the sake of certain economic advantages, led to the resurgence, in a new and vital form, of the older socialist attitude against war and nationalism. Radical socialists in all countries felt a profound indignation at the war, and they became the leaders of revolutionary movements in Russian, Germany, and France. In fact, the radicalization of the socialist movement was closely connected with the Zimmerwald movement, the attempt of internationalist socialists to end the war. The February revolution in Russia gave impetus to these revolutionary leaders. Originally Mr. Lenin, in accordance with Mr. Marx’s theory, had believed that a socialist revolution could be successful only within a highly developed, capitalist economy like Germany. He had thought it necessary that a less-developed country like Russia had to complete its bourgeois revolution before moving forward to a socialist revolution. For the same reason the majority of the Communist Central Committee was at first opposed to the seizure of power in 1917, but increasing protest of the peasant-soldier against the war coupled with the incapacity of the Czarist government and its revolutionary successor to end the war and reorganize the Russian economy pushed Mr. Lenin into the October revolution. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19
Mr. Lenin’s and Mr. Trotsky’s hopes were fastened on a German revolution, which both were sure would happen in a short while. They signed the peace treaty of Brest-Litovsk with Imperial Germany in the expectation that the German revolution would soon break out and invalidate the peace treaty. If a highly industrial Germany became a Soviet state and fused with mainly agricultural Russian, then, so they reasoned following Marxist theory, a socialist, German-Russian Soviet system would have a good chance to survive and to flourish. Like Mr. Marx and Mr. Engels in the middle of the nineteenth century, Mr. Lenin and Mr. Trotsky seventy years later believed for a short while that the socialist “kingdom is near,” and that they would lay the foundations for a truly socialist society. Mr. Lenin’s hope had its peaks and its valleys; 1917 and 1918 represented the first peak. Ten days after the October revolution he declared: “We shall march firmly and unswervingly to the victory of socialism which will be sealed by the leading workers of the most civilized countries and give to the people solid peace and deliverance from all oppression and all exploitation. When after the outbreak of the German revolution in November 1918, the new German government showed great reluctance to enter into diplomatic relations with Russian and when the German workers did not seem to follow the Russian example, doubts began to enter Mr. Lenin’s and Mr. Trotsky’s minds. In 1919 the Soviet revolution in Bavaria and Hungary gave rise to new hopes, only to be dashed shortly by the defeat of these revolutions. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19
The summer and fall of 1920, when the Russian civil war was moving toward its end and the Red Army stood at the gates of Warsaw, witnessed the peak of the prestige of the Comintern and of the Communists hopes for World revolution. The second Congress of the Comintern, 1920, was held in a mood of high revolutionary enthusiasm. Yet, only a short time after, with the defeat of the Red Army before Warsaw and the failure of the Polish workers to rise, everything changed dramatically. The revolutionary hopes received a shock from which they never recovered. Mr. Lenin, in ordering the march on Warsaw, after the successful defense against the Polish attack, had yielded to his frantic hope for the World revolution, this time being less realistic than Mr. Trotsky, who (with Mr. Tukhachevski) had advised against the Warsaw offensive. Once more history proved that the revolutionaries had been wrong in their estimates of the revolutionary possibilities. Mr. Lenin recognized the defeat; he admitted that Western capitalism still had a much greater vitality than he had expected and he initiated and organized the retreat in order to save what could be saved from the debacle. He started the NEP, the reintroduction of capitalism in large sectors of the Russian economy, he tried to persuade foreign capitalists to invest capital in “concessions” with the Soviet Union, he tried to arrive at a peaceful understanding with the great Western powers, and at the same time, he suppressed by force the movement of the Kronstadt sailors, directed against what they felt to be the betrayal of the revolution. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19
Mr. Lenin’s concept that the true interest of the working class resided in an elite of leaders, and not in the majority of workers, was not Mr. Marx’s; in fact, it was opposed by Mr. Trotsky during the many years of difference between him and Mr. Lenin before the outbreak of the First World War as it was opposed by Rosa Luxemburg, the most unwavering and clearsighted of Marxist revolutionary leaders until her assassination by German soldiers in 1919. Mr. Lenin did not see what Rosa Luxemburg and many others saw, that the centralized bureaucratic system in which an elite ruled for the workers had to end up in a system in which it would rule over the workers and extinguish whatever was left of socialism in Russia. However, whatever the differences between Mr. Marx and Mr. Lenin were, the fact is that for the second time the great hope had failed. This time however, the failure found Mr. Lenin and Mr. Trotsky in power, confronted with the historical dilemma of how to guide a socialist revolution in a country that did not have the objective conditions for a socialist society. They were spared the problem of having to solve this dilemma. Mr. Lenin, after a first stroke in 1922, which incapacitated him increasingly, died in January 1924; Mr. Trotsky was driven from power a few years later; Mr. Stalin, with whom Mr. Lenin had broken off all personal relations in the last months before his death, took over. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19
Mr. Lenin’s death and Mr. Trotsky’s defeat only underscored the end of the period of revolutionary movements all over Europe and of hopes for a new socialist order. After 1919 the revolution was on the retreat, and by 1923, there was no longer any doubt about its failure. After all the expedient modifications and political concessions, the plan of action which has been adopted as a policy may be much like the original proposal or it may resemble it only very slightly. In either case, what has been adopted is a broad and general set of goals plus an indication of ways and means such as budget, personnel, schedule, which are to be made available for achieving them. There has been a steady evolution from embryonic intention to definite commitment, but even by the end of the third phase of planning, only the broader outlies of the program can be discerned. There is a considerable remaining margin for policy-formulation by the executives or administrators of the agency itself. Even their own status and powers are in part subject to their own definition. Utilizing this margin for initiative which has been left to them, many executives of agencies have distinguished themselves as leaders in conducting their programs. In order to lead successfully, they have to be responsive to their publics and to the policy -making bodies to which they are responsible, yet they prefer those programs which quite decisively state their responsibilities without spelling out in too great detail how they should be performed. Experienced policy-making bodies have realized that just how a policy will work out in practice can be predicted only to a limited extent, due to changing conditions and adjustment of estimates, so that it is best not to weigh an administrator down with too many rigid rules, rather letting these develop from experience. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19
It is better to outline the task and hold the administrator accountable for its performance than to bind one’s hands and hamper the initiative and morale of one’s agency through imposing rules, which may in the end seem more important than the success of the program. In most economic transactions, the player on the two sides are different in many respects. Buyers on one side and sellers on the other is the most usual distinction. The magnitude of the temptation to cheat, and the future consequences of such cheating, differ greatly for the two. For example, firms that produce durable consumer goods are usually in the market for a long time, and their reputation for good or poor quality can be spread by the media, but their consumers may be in the market only infrequently, and may be tempted to backout on payment unless the firms have a good network for exchanging information. Public information –the model of the test ignored any avenues of information dissemination other than the services provided by the intermediary. In practice some public information about traders’ behavior is available, and it is of interest to examine the interaction between such information and the intermediary’s service. Behaviour types—in the model of the text, all traders were identical and rational maximizers. Then in the equilibrium there was no cheating. Many applied models of repeated games have the same structure, but it is neither a good representation of reality, nor is it theoretically satisfactory. In reality there are some innately honest people, and some who are either innately dishonest or so short-lived that future consequence of cheating are not relevant for them. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19
Theoretically, we saw how the interpretation of deviation from equilibrium strategies becomes problematic when the deviant strategies are never played by anyone on the equilibrium path. Drawing the line between how far the policy-making body should go in spelling out details of the program and how much prerogative should be left to executive discretion is a matter of judgment and circumstance. Apart from the need to maintain the supremacy of the policy-making body, and the loyalty and morale of the personnel of the action agency, it is best to rely on ensuing experience rather than any general principles. Perhaps the one general statement that can be made about the proper organizational structure for executing a program of planned action is this corollary of our consistent emphasis on the sharing of purpose as the compass for procedure: Administrative structure is best which, given the problem, resources, and policy determinations binding an agency, maximizes the participation of its personnel and its clientele in the execution of the program. Participation here is viewed in least two senses, first, participation in further development of policy, and second, personal involvement in the goals of the program, leading to maximum effort and ingenuity in contributing to its success. The best test of participation in the program by the personnel of the agency is the degree to which each rank is consulted on the setting of quotas and schedules for its functional unit of the operation. It is precisely here that the two senses of participation, the matter of “voice” and the matter of motivation, will ideally merge. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19
Life in the Spiritual Community is unambiguous life. Religion, culture, and morality, essentially untied but existentially disrupted, are reunited by the Spiritual Presence. Consequently, religion in the narrow sense has no place in the Spiritual Community. Religion in the broad sense of faith animates every cultural creation at its depths: There are no religious symbols in the Spiritual Community because the encountered reality is in its totality symbolic of the Spiritual Presence, and there are no religious acts because every act is an act of self-transcendence. Thus, the essential relation between religion and culture—that culture is the form of religion, and religion the substance of culture—is realized in the Spiritual Community. Although the Spiritual Community unambiguously fulfills the biblical vision of the holy city without a temple, nevertheless, the fulfillment is not ultimate. It is fragmentary and anticipatory because of the temporal-spatial process of its realization. The Spiritual Community is as manifest and s hidden as the New Being in Jesus as the Christ. It is manifest to the Spirit and hidden to all but the Spirit. It is open only to faith as the state of being grasped by the Spiritual Presence. As we have said before: Only Spirit discerns Spirit. But the believer thus cooperating with God in the use of one’s volition must understand that the choice of the will is not sufficient alone. To will is present, but to do is not. Through the spirit, and by the strengthening of the Holy Spirit the soul is liberated will—desiring and determined to do God’s will—empowered to carry out its choice. It is God which works within you…to will, id est, to enable the believer to decide or choose. Then it is God which works in you…to do His good pleasure. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19
God energizes the believer with power to carry out the choice. In short, God gives the power to do—acting from the spirit where He dwells. However, the believer needs to understand the use of one’s spirit as clearly as one understands the use of one’s will, of one’s mind, or of one’s body. One must know how to discern the sense of one’s spirit so as to understand the will of God, before one can do it. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic, for which it stands, One Nation, Under God, Indivisible, with Liberty and Justice for All. God has given humans understanding and insight, and has shown them what is good and what is evil. God has revealed unto one what is good; He has given one to choose between right and wrong. God has given one a mind, that one might use one’s blessings wisely; a heart has God given one, and free will, that one might consider one’s ways, and live accordingly to God’s will. We are mindful of all the great gifts which God, O Lord, has given us; may we use them wisely that they may not be in vain. We have been told, O man and woman, what is good, and what the Lord requires of us: to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with God. Have we not all one Father? Has not one God created us? Why do we deal treacherously, a man against his brother? Justice, justice, shall you pursue, that you may live in your land. And be sure to donate to the Sacramento Fire Department, they are not receiving all of their resources. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19
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Parting is Such Sweet Sorrow
Death, darkness and horrible things lurked in the night. Some spirits here are created for vengeance, and in their fury lay on sore stroke. I hated the sight of blood. It was, as far as I can ascertain, in September of the year 1890 that the evening twilight fell when a gnawing fear and tremendous sense of terror strangely domed Llanada Villa and the, deep, shadowy fruit orchards. The quite dread and portent produced strange noises that troubled the large mansion and fell on my ear. Curious noises they were sometimes. I could have sworn I heard a thin metallic voice laughing high in the Observational Tower. I darted an inquiring glance at my carpenter. He was white to the lips. “It is he—that is—it is no one; the door is locked,” was all he said, and we looked at each other for a full minute. The mansion began to fill with shadows, while the curious noises—the muffled footfalls and distant talking voices that had been perceptible seemed, no doubt to becoming more frequent and insistent. A rain of tears appeared on my cheeks. The carpenter began for the first time to show signs of hurry and impatience. He heaved a sigh of relief when his tools and notebooks were finally packed up and stowed away, and hurriedly beckoned a carriage. He turned to his companion. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s go.” The other man nodded and climbed into the carriage as the horses quickly galloped away. The moon had vanished behind a cloud. I was able to go over to the library, and for the rest of the evening tortured my brain with strange and terrible books drawn voluminously from the stack shelves and from secure places of storage. #RandolphHarris 1 of 7
There were things in these books which simply could not be believed by those who had not seen the evidence. The more I reflected on these hellish diaries, the more I was inclined to believe in the Earth-threatening entity which, unknow to me, was the source of the curse. Rumors about “The Winchester Fortune,” were clearly sustained enough to reach the pages of The Oakland Tribune and be referred to as if they were common knowledge. The stories that surrounded The Winchester Fortune and my mansion were so persistent that inquirers were directed to an information sheet that was put together in 1889 to describe my family, legacy, and unique architecture of my home and fill in some of the “vast web of mythology [that] has formed around it.” After the information on provenance, the sheet told a loose variety of myths that around the purchase and construction of Llanada Villa, gesturing vaguely at the accidents, misfortunes and deaths said to have been suffered by carpenters, servants, and members of the Winchester family. It also spoke about the suit of armor—priceless relics, vast halls, tapestries evidenced throughout; strong, heavy, richly carved furniture everywhere. The time-defying walls, comfortable chairs, tea tables, and unusual architectural features were also of great curiosity. And of course, the curse that was principally attached to the fortune and mansion, or rather from whom the curse began its impressive path of contagion through. When disaster struck killing our infant daughter, and fifteen years later my husband, they were claimed to be subjects to the law of the recursive curse and were assumed to be victims. #RandolphHarris 2 of 7
The popular account of Williams’s death is that, not believing in the malignant powers of the celebrated curse of The Winchester Fortune, he determined to make a slashing attack on the belied in the columns of the Connecticut Gazette of New Haven, and went to the Winchester Factory Castle, and sent his photographer there, to collect materials for that purpose; that he was then, although in perfect health, struck down mysteriously by some malady of which he died. The Gazette published his piece and also reported ghost stories about Llanada Villa with a studiously neutral air. Yet William’s death, widely mourned by his colleagues, was probably the impetus for an outline of the alleged curse that appeared in the Connecticut Magazine, which spoke of a “terrible story” that “will never be written in full; but some of its chapters may be told in a few words.” The essay was curiously signed pseudonymously and again the historical actors were replaced by initials. This report likely prompted an anonymous person to syndicate an article on the story, which flashed the rumour of The Curse of the Winchester Fortune around the World. The Correspondence files in the New Haven press, for instance, carried a cutting sent by someone from The Oakland Tribune, which screamed “Ghost of those Killed by the Winchester Rifle Haunt the Sizable Fortune.” A journalist who died investigating the hauntings, along with William and Annie were merely the frames of The Winchester Curse, but their deaths seemed to confirm that even testing the strength of the chain of rumour associated with the Winchester Fortune came with risks. #RandolphHarris 3 of 7
Those who have often been so gay and vivacious, the delight of soirees, would become distant, and aloof, of serious mien, unsmiling after visiting my estate and succumbing to magical thinking, spooked by “the feeling of an unseen force, a fine net drawn around us with infinite skill and delicacy.” The atmospheric writing strained to evoke a liminal territory on the edge of American civilization where superstition merges into everyday experience. The allegedly rational solution to the deaths of my infant daughter and husband feeds into the formula for family curses, as Holmes solves the case through a proper understanding of heredity and threat of degeneracy within aristocratic bloodlines. “The deaths of Mr. William Winchester and infant daughter Annie Winchester was caused by demonic “elementals” guarding the land, because Mr. Winchester had expanded the family business and begun an investigation of the stories of “The Gun that Won the West’s” malevolence….I warned Mr. Winchester against concerning himself with the curse. He persisted, and his death proceeded the death of his infant daughter. He became engrossed in the subject, and wrote with feverish haste and in bewildering abundance. Of skepticism there was none. I told him he was tempting fate by pursuing his inquiries, but he was fascinated and would not desist. Then his daughter was overtaken by illness six weeks after her birth by the mysterious childhood disease marasmus. And Mr. Winchester premature death was fifteen years later from tuberculosis, which added to Mrs. Winchester’s distress. However, this is the way in which the demonic “elementals” guiding the Winchester bloodline might act.” A statement by Weston St. Joyce of the Hellfire Club. #RandolphHarris 4 of 7
One of Daisy’s reminiscences is striking for embroiling all the central figures of The Winchester story in occult: “I had attended at least two seances which my aunt had held at Llanada Villa…I had watched aunt Sarah put into a trance on an occasion when Bertha Haas had been present. It had been an eerie, not to say unpleasant, experience which had shaken me considerably…Suddenly she had started talking in an unknown tongue which, to everyone’s astonishment, Bertha Haas had pronounced as being Coptic…I remembered particularly one séance when Bertha has been placed in a trance.” Friday morning, the day was pleasant, but even in the brightest sunlight, a cold shudder ran through me and visitors like, and every ear seemed strained in a kind of instinctive, unconscious listening. I knew that I had come upon the horror and its monstrous work, and trembled with the responsibility I felt to be mind. Night would soon fall, and it was then that the spirits really became restless. No material weapon would be of help. Having read William’s diaries, I knew painfully well what kind of manifestations to expect, but I did not add to the fright of the servants by giving any hints or clues. As the shadows gathered, the servants commenced to disperse homeward, anxious to bar themselves indoors despite the present evidence that all human locks and bolts were useless before a force that could bend trees and crush houses when it chose. Whatever was in Llanada Villa was biding its time. A downpour waxed in heaviness, and distant peals of thunder sounded from far horizons. Sheet lighting shimmered, and then a forky bolt flashed near at hand, as if descending into my accursed mansion itself. They sky grew very dark, and watcher hoped that the storm would prove a short, sharp one followed by clear weather. #RandolphHarris 5 of 7
It was still gruesomely dark when, not much over an hour later, a confused babel of voices sounded down the hall. Another moment brought to view a frightened group of more than a dozen men, running, shouting, and even whimpering hysterically. But in another minute, we were in a sitting-room of the house, a large, high chamber with a mahogany floor, full of moving shadows cast by a wood-fire that flickered in on the great hearth. Before lay a large folio, bound, perhaps, late in the seventeenth century, with the arms of Canon Alberic de Mauleon stamped in gold on the sides. There may have been a hundred and fifty leaves of paper in the book, and on almost every one of them was fastened a lead from an illuminated manuscript. Such a collection I had hardly dreamed of in my wildest moments. Here were ten leaves from a copy of Genesis, illustrated with pictures, which could not be later than A.D 700. Further on was a complete set of pictures from a Psalter, of English execution, of the very finest kind that the thirteenth century could produce; and, perhaps best of all, there were twenty leaves of uncial writing in Latin, which, as a few words seen here and there told me at once, must belong to some very early unknown patristic treatise. Could it possibly be a fragment of the copy of Papias “On the Words of Our Lord,” which was known to have existed as late as the twelfth century at Nimes? In any case, my mind was soon brought back to the chaos. The swishing, lapping sound of the bending trees and bushes caught my attention. And there was an awful stomping and splashing in the mud. However, I did not see anything at all, only just the bending of the trees and the underbrush. #RandolphHarris 6 of 7
The I heard an awful creaking and straining. The servants were yelling and shrieking when something heavy struck the house—not lightning, nor anything, but something heavy and again, and again. It kept launching itself again and again, though I could not see anything. Lines of fright deepened on every face, we could hear a terrible crashing and a hall full of screaming. In the hall before us were grouped four carpenters, surrounding a crouching figure. A fifth carpenter lay dead on the floor, his neck distorted, and his eyeballs staring from his head. The four surrounding carpenters were looking at him. In their faces the sentiment of horror was intensified; they seemed, in fact, only restrained from flight by their implicit trust in me. All this terror was plainly excited by any words I could say. I absolutely refused to be alone for the rest of the evening, and for many nights I had not dared to put out my lights before going to sleep. All this time a growing feeling of discomfort had been creeping over me. Before my eyes appeared a mass of coarse, matted black hair, and this body of fearful thinness, almost a skeleton, but with the muscles standing out like wires out of my mind. The hands were of a dusky pallor, covered, like the body, with long, coarse hairs, and hideously taloned. The eyes, touched in with a burning yellow, had intensely black pupils, and were fixed upon the ceiling with a look of beast-like hate. This appalling effigy inspired terror. With such intense physical fear and the most profound mental loathing, I grasped blindly at my silver crucifix, that I was conscious of a movement toward me on the part of the demon, and then it screamed with the voice of an animal in hideous pain. Hans and Robert, two sturdy little serving-men, who rushed in, saw nothing, but felt themselves thrust aside by something that passed out between then, and found me in a swoon. They sat up with me that night. The phases of Nature can be utterly forbidden, and wholly outside the sane experience of mankind. #RandolphHarris 7 of 7
The Winchester Mystery House
When The Winchester Mansion was opened after the passing of Mrs. Winchester in 1922, a carpenter made a small breach in the upper left-hand corner of the front doors, and put a candle through the hole: “At first I could see nothing, the hot air escaping from the chamber causing the candle flame to flicker, but presently, as my eyes grew accustomed to the light, details of the room within emerged slowly from the mist, strange animals, statues, and gold—everywhere the glint of gold. For the moment—an eternity it must have seemed to the others standing by—I was struck dumb with amazement, and when the movers, unable to stand the suspense any longer, inquired anxiously, ‘Can you see anything?’ It was all I could do to get out the words. ‘Yes, wonderful things.’” It took seven weeks to clear the mansion of its objects, each item laboriously documented, photographed and carried out to moving vans. This took place under the intense gaze of tourist crowds and the restless journalists from the World’s press. Beyond the door, the foyer was almost entirely filled with a shrine covered in gold leaf, and shrines within shrines that protected sacred objects. They found an open store, stuffed with golden statuary and guarded by an impressive Anubis figure.
Daisy recalled the “dazed, bewildered look” of the esteemed visitors invited inside. However, she also stated, “I cannot but think that some risks are run by breaking into the last rest of my beloved aunt Sarah whose mansion is specially and solemnly guarded, and robbing her of her possessions.” A statue of gold was removed from The Winchester Mansion. Tourists had allegedly become supplicants to the statue, holding séances. There was a photograph in which “a shadowy human face has come between the camera and the object which was being photographed.” In other anecdotes, paintings gasped at the movers and the mansion exuded “an unaccountable sense of apprehension.” The first movers not only got lost, but came down with various illnesses (ophthalmia and delirium). A news story of the suicide that claimed one of the movers was frequently heard to mutter “the curse of the Winchester Fortune,” as though this had prayed on his mind. An auctioneer was also incorporated into the unfolding curse (in fact he had been ill with cancer, a fate of several movers). These people knew that they were meddling with terrible powers, yet saw that there was no other way to annul the deeper and more malign meddling which others had done before them.
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Had I Not Pledged My Soul?
Oh, these were terrible thoughts. Did I not love Llanada Villa? Had I not pledged my soul? I was consumed with self-hatred and dread that the curse was controlling my life. These thoughts were too horrendous. They divided me from all that desired. I had to banish them from my mind. However, there was a great clamor, and people were beating on my windows and doors. Rocks were being thrown at my house. The wooden shutters were about to be broken in. Across the field, my estate lay strewn with the carcasses of cows and horses and, in one of the fields, sheep. No flies buzzed near the dead animals; there were no maggots burrowing. No vultures; the sky was clean of birds. And in all the untended rolling hills of grass and trees which had once sung and pulsed with a million voices, in all the land there was this immense stillness now, still as years, still as the unheard motion of the stars. I looked up through the still-hanging poison cloud, up to where the moon was now risen in full coldness. A little fat bald man with old eyes sighed and began to wave in the October dusk. The outline of his form wavered and disappeared in the shadows under the trees where the moonlight did not reach. Other followed him. The wind came limping back from the mountains. #RandolphHarris 1 of 2
It blew the heavy iron bell high in the belfry, as if lifted ancient dusts and hissed again through the trees. I watched the air turn black. I listened to it fill with the flappings and the flutterings and the squeakings. This chaos had caused much worry and bafflement. As I paused for a moment, looking out at the silent place of high dark grass, there were scrolls of stone-frozen children stained silver in the night’s wet darkness. The people were gone; my estate was empty. Morning found me in a cold sweat of terror and a frenzy of wakeful concentration. I sat at the table under the electric light with shaking hands all night. All day long I rested, while guns thundered outside. Then, in the slanting shadows of the later afternoon, the rumbling echoes faded into the distance and I knew it was over. As I climbed the stairs and entered the roofless foyer of Llanada Villa, where only a configuration of cobwebs veiled the radiance of the rising moon, I realized that success had brought me to a state of such fatigue that I had begun seriously to contemplate a long rest. I had not enjoyed a proper holiday in nearly three years. I am quite well, and live in great comfort here, although I receive but rarely and am content with my own company most of the time. I have found deep enjoyment and spiritual profit in foreign cities, having arrived, the tedium of travel itself has often made me think twice before starting out on a long voyage. #RandolphHarris 2 of 2
A Blue Lady is said to haunt the mansion. According to legend, a princess wanted to marry one of Mrs. Winchester’s famers, but her father disapproved of him and his standing in life. To ensure the romance did not grow any stronger, the father sent the suitor overseas hoping that it would all blow over in time. After some time, the father told his daughter that her suitor had married someone else, and that she should forget all about him. To improve the spirits of the distraught girl, Mrs. Winchester asked her seamstress to make a dress in favourite colour, blue.
However, when it was completed, the princess put on the beautiful garment, then climbed to the top of the nine story Observational Tower, and threw herself to death. It is now said that the forlorn princess returns to the mansion every thirteen years, in her blue dress, wandering around, then making her way down to the veranda, where she stands at the front doors forever waiting the return of her lost love.
For further information about tours, including group tours, weddings, school events, birthday party packages, facility rentals, and special events please visit the website: https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
Please visit the online giftshop, and purchase a gift for friends and relatives as well as a special memento of The Winchester Mystery House. A variety of souvenirs and gifts are available to purchase. https://shopwinchestermysteryhouse.com/
Randolph Harris II International Institute 