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Summoning Devils on Film and in Real Life
Much like the Winchester mansion and Mrs. Winchester, the Hellfire Clubs and medieval Sabbat believed that devils and demons should not be stern masters or slaves, but welcome house-guest, which is why Mrs. Winchester built what is now known as the Winchester Mystery House. It is easy to imagine how the combined grief of losing both a child and a spouse could be very crippling. However, if you had $20,000,000.00 (2022 inflation adjusted $556,305,882.35) and all the time in the World to help you cope, can you imagine what you would do? Mrs. Sarah L. Winchester’s response to the deaths of her child and husband left a bizarre and impressive architectural reflection of her psyche. The fascinating story of the Winchester Mystery House has its roots in the personal tragedies suffered by Mrs. Winchester and in the legacy of the Winchester rifle, “The Gun that Won the West.” The Winchester Mansion raised its castellated walls and towers in every direction commanding magnificent prospects; like emeralds in a setting of deeper green, gemmed the surface of the surface of the rural landscape and contributed to increase the beauty of scenery not surpassed in the World. Ages ago the voice of prayer and the song of praise used to ascend from this sacred estate. Presented on the estate was a happy country, none better calculated to inspire love and harmony. However, there was a lack of happiness in the circumstances of life for Mrs. Winchester. At first glance, there seems to be no degree of truth in this statement because of all the riches she inherited and her beautiful mansion. Many people assumes that for the rich, enjoying their riches, are likely to be contented and to look no further than this World. There were also a group of seven Victorian houses on the estate, not connected to the main house, of goodly size, and a Holy Cross. The seven Victorian Houses which, according to tradition, were built there under Mrs. Winchester’s direction, along with a graveyard on her 760 acres of land. #RandolphHarris 1 of 15
In the garden of the mansion was a curious stone cross, of considerable size, evidently monumental, though the inscription has been so defaced as to be illegible. On the front of the cross there is a deep indentation much resembling that made by the hoof of a cow in soft Earth, the bottom of the indentation being deepest at the sides and somewhat ridged in the middle. Concerning this cross and the depression in its face, the following legend was related by one of the farmers on the estate. “Mrs. Winchester built this mansion, houses, and the church, you see. When she lived, she owned all the land round about. But there was a devil here. If you had meet him on the grounds, you would know in a minute that it was himself and no other that was in it, and so make ready, either for to run away from him, or to fight him with praying as fast as you can, because, you see, it is no use for to strive with the devil any other way, seeing that no weapon can make the last dint on his carriage. In them days, and before the mansion was built, I am telling you, the devil was all as one as a man, a tall felly like a soldier, with a high hat coming to a pint and feathers on it, and fine boots and spurs and a short red jacket with a cloak over his shoulder and a sword by his side, as fine as any gentleman of the good old times. So he used to go about the country, desiring men and women, the latter being his choice as being easier to deceive, and taking them down with him to his own place, and it was a fine time he was having entirely, and everything his own way. As soon as Mrs. Winchester started construction on her mansion, the devil took up his quarters there, to make it as sure as he could. But when he heard what Mrs. Winchester was doing, a four-story mansion, of 500 or 600 rooms, and a nine-story observation tower, he came out to see the castle was rising before his eyes. He heard the construction singing and started cursing to himself, and at 5.13am on Wednesday April 18th, 1906, Satan stomped his cloven hoof into the ground causing a 7.9 Earthquake and brought down that tower. #RandolphHarris 2 of 15
After the Earthquake, while the devil was laying about in the bushes a-watching the work, and the tower of the big mansion was lifting itself above the trees, this time just not as high as it used to be. Everyone knows that Satan is slicker than a weasel, and has a memory like a miser’s box that takes in everything and lets nothing go out. When you do anything, sore a bit that it scrapes the devil, and he hugs it close till a time comes when he can make a club have it to bate you with, and so he does. You may think it is queer, but it is no wonder to one that understands it, for the devil can take any shape he pleases and look like any one he wants to, and so he does for the purpose of tempting us poor sinners to destruction, but there is one thing by which he always knows; when you have given up to him or when you have beaten him on the face, no matter which, he has got to throw off the disguise that is on him and show you who he is, and when he does it, it is not the elegant, dressed-up devil that you see and that I was just telling you about, but the rale, old, black anger with a rancorous, without a haporth of rages to the back of him, and his horns and tail a sticking out, and his eyes as big as an oxen’s and shinning like fire, and great bat’s wings on him, and, saving your presence, the most nefarious smell of sulfur you have smelled. However, before, he looks all right, no matter what face he has, and it is only the goodness of God that the devil is bound for to show himself to you, because, Glory be to God, it is his will that humans shall know who they are dealing with, and if they give up to the devil, and after finding out who is in it, go on with the bargain they have made, sure the fault is their own, and they go to hell with their eyes open, and if they bate him, he has got to show himself for to let them see what they have escaped. #RandolphHarris 3 of 15
Satan was flying around the Winchester mansion, there were the farmers all along the day job, and the construction workers were building as fast as they could and a bottle of holy water were at their side to throw at the devil when he would come. So he went from the and would fly back and forth watching then working, and they restored the Winchester mansion. Old beliefs die hard, especially when their speedy demise is a consummation devoutly to be wished. Magic is only a physical or psychological effect that has yet to be explained, which means for many it is uncomfortable to entertain now. All good occultists must be skeptical—believe nothing in preference to believing everything. All proto-sciences could be defined as magic. You can see the ritual chamber as a kind of intellectual decompression of chamber to prepare your mind for other atmospheres. People who limit themselves to the occult curricula and profess to be wizards are laughable—magic is an interdisciplinary pursuit. You must consider all the options—investigating like a police officer. To perform a summoning, for example, would involve finding the right environment, appropriate retrieval cues, the right atmospheric conditions. The effects of magic are demonstrable. A lot of simple magic is just to do with self-confidence, how much your antennae are up, how open you are to the World around you. Rituals and magical words are not necessary, merely tools or exercises to help train your mind. Scientists are now coming to the conclusion that there is a lot more interconnectedness between man and his environment than they originally supposed, which is a basic occultic concept. The only really dangerous characters are the ones who think they are generational Satanists and their grandfather told them with his dying breath what to do, or whatever. There are a lot of armies of one out there, a lot of coffee-bar revolutionaries. New information technology has bred a lot of desktop Satanists and bulletin boards mean that cyberspace seems to be just full of Satanists. The Christian heretics rarely get much further than designing letterheads. #RandolphHarris 4 of 15
Many Satanists are fans of people like Paris Hilton and Britney Spears and applaud their outrageous sexuality. They are also huge fans of Aaliyah for making that film Queen of the Damned. Many Satanists are quietly applying Church of Satan philosophy to their lives in their own fashion in a very real way. The best thing they could ask for is that people pass them a nod of respect. In the modern World, the spirit of the age often looms down upon us in strange, distorted forms from the cinema screen. Major production companies spend millions of dollars trying to trap the latest cultural trends on celluloid, while audiences make surprise blockbusters from movies which—accidentally or otherwise—tap into the anxieties and enthusiasms of the day. In the late 1960s and 1970s, 2000s the films which came to be regarded as four “Satanic blockbusters”—Rosemary’s Baby (1968), The Exorcist (1973), The Omen (1976), and Queen of the Damned (2002)—all took the box-office by storm, transforming themselves into cultural phenomena which attracted public interest far beyond that of most “mere” films. Cinema has been the most potent legend factory of the centuries. Despite constant predictions that TV would devour the silver screen, the spectable and ceremony of the cinema helped retain its status as the most sacred of modern temples. Film presents a super real version of the World—louder, larger, essentially more mythic. More people take cues on how to live, love, fight—even on how to die—from the silver screen than from the pulpit or the gospels. Pagan worship is alive and well and being practised at your local multiplex, with Hollywood stars as the gods of our age. And, just as cinema has given us new gods, so it has supplied us with a new hierarchy of devils. The relationship between Satan and the silver screen is a notable one. The father of fantastic cinema was a Frenchman named Georges Melies, who made delightful short films crawling with demons and devils. Melies was himself a Faustian figure, a stage conjurer and photographic illusionist who appeared out of the rump of the French Decadent era. Summoning devils on film, he defended this new sorcery in time-honoured fashion as “white magic.” #RandolphHarris 5 of 15
In The Laboratory of Mephistopheles (1897), Melies made Satan’s head detach itself and float around the room—to the enchantment and horror of audiences in darkened “picture palaces, resembling nothing so much as séance chambers. Hollywood’s dream factory was not even at the planning stage by the turning of the century, but the pioneer of US cinema, Edwin Porter (partner of the man who virtually invented the movies, Thomas Edison), produced his own version of Faust and Marguerite in 1900. The most striking cinematic fantasies came from Germany at this point—stark, angular exercises in shadow and nightmare. The Student of Prague was an updated version of the well-worn Faust tale, based on an Edgar Allan Poe story, which transformed the lead from an ambitious academic to a devil-may-care student and Mephistopheles into a rakish devil called Scapinelli. The story was retold onscreen in 1913, 1926, and 1936. The 1926 version was by the master of German Expressionist cinema, F.W. Murnua—the last film he made before leaving his artistic roots for Hollywood, where he met with a tragically early death. As a minor masterpiece, it was a suitably grandiose climax to a career which produced Nosferatu (1922), the first gothic vampire film. Now, it is always important to be safe on the road and sometimes to listen to the heartfelt advice of others. Jayne Mansfield, a buxom B-move actress died in a tragic car crash with her lawyer in and lover Sam Brody. Brody had disliked his beloved’s new guru from the start, and the friction led to LaVey placing a ritual curse on his rival. The Black Pope (Anton LaVey) warned the pugnacious lawyer—known to be a dangerous driver—that he would suffer a series of automobile accidents. It was no great surprise when a car crash ensued—but it made World headlines for taking the life of Jayne Mansfield, as well as the top of her cranium. LaVey grimly stated that on the night preceding the crash, as he cut out a newspaper clipping of Jayne, he accidently snipped off the top of the blonde beauty’s head. (By the way, I had no idea The Black Pope was dead, until today. I feel he is very much still alive. I have always felt like he is here, in San Francisco in his black church.) #RandolphHarris 6 of 15
The physical phenomena of spiritism are often closely connected with psychical manifestations, such as spiritistic visions, automatic writing, speaking in a trance, materializations, table lifting, tumbler moving and excursions of the psyche. There is no doubt that today, as in the time of Isaiah (Isaiah 6.1-5), Ezekiel (Ezekiel 1.4-28), Paul (Acts 9.1-8), Peter (Acts 10.9-16), and John (Revelation 1.10-18), God may give His people a genuine vision, particularly in great times of great stress. However, genuine experiences of this nature are always accompanied by true spiritual grace and modesty. Sensationalism betrays a lack of authenticity. Unfortunately, genuine experiences are rare, and counterfeit ones about. Christian counselors find that the “ratio is about nine to one over the genuine experiences.” Mrs. Winchester used to have visions. She reported that she saw visions of Christ at night, and it left her feeling a sense of uneasiness and fear. The so-called visions of Christ were mediumistic. They came as a warning. Weeks after the visions started, Mrs. Winchester saw her husband William Wirt Winchester’s spirit departing from his body as he expired in 1881. The visions of Mrs. Winchester bear evidence of the occult, as do the visions of Joseph Smith (1805-1844), who fathered Mormonism. Many of the founders and promulgators of modern cults have had alleged visions from God. However, some say these visions promote “doctrines of demons” (1 Timothy 4.1) among the credulous and those unable to discern spirits (1 Corinthians 12.10; 1 John 4.1-2). When humans depart from God’s Word, they supposedly expose themselves to demon imposture and deception. Automatic writing—some persons endowed with mediumistic powers are able—either in a waking state or trance to write letters, words, or sentences which spiritists consider to be message from the spirit World. This is how Mrs. Winchester came up with the architecture of her mansion, the blueprints were often dictated to her in her Blue Séance room as she took down the notes on napkin. Also, the persistent pain in her legs and back vanished whenever she sat down and dictated these blueprints. #RandolphHarris 7 of 15
One day as Mrs. Winchester was taking dictation, a spirit named Apollonius Tyannaeus appeared and said, “In the name of the Lord Jesus, our blessed and exalted Savior.” The spirit then told the woman that she had been chosen by God for special revelations. She would become a prophetess and bless humankind with these revelations. The case is patently that of a simple farm woman turned indeed into a spiritistic writing medium. Rudolf Tischner, a parapsychologist, points out the danger of automatic writing when practiced in immoderation. Although he regards these writing phenomena only as “motoric break up the integrated psychic structure with ensuing peril to mental and physical health. This simply means that occult enslavement can result from mediumistic writing, or from dependence upon the Ouija board or other spiritistic devices to obtain alleged messages from the spirit World. Speaking in a trance—a trance is a condition in which a spiritistic medium loses consciousness and passes under the control of demonic power to effect alleged communication with the dead. The demon (or demons) takes over and actually speaks through the spiritistic medium, deceptively imitating the deceased. As a result this ruse innumerable spiritistic clairvoyants claim communication with the dead, often with famous deceased people allegedly appearing to speak to the living. One evening, Mrs. Winchester went into a trace and soon the “Apostle Paul” approached and preached to the audience. The apostle was not visible but only spoke through the medium who lay in trance. Some critic said it was only another constant instance of deception by demons who ape the deceased but cannot produce them. Other believe it was real. Perhaps the most remarkable phenomena of spiritism are materializations. These are supernatural appearances and disappearances of material images in connection with the activities of a spiritistic medium. #RandolphHarris 8 of 15
Materializations have been exhaustively studied and photographed and have been found to be manifestations of various degrees of teleplastic morphogenesis. The first stage is the evolution of a gauzelike substance of rubbery consistency from the body cavities of the medium. The second stage is the forming of the various parts of the body in outline—arms, head, etcetera. Frequently in the case of teleplastic forms of this kind, a threadlike connection is maintained with the medium. The third stage consists of the composition into completely outlined forms, which are visible as phantoms near the medium. These three stages of materialization manifest purely visual phenomena. The fourth stage displays telekinetic phenomena. There is an energy output from the teleplasm (telekinesis), such as the ringing of a bell, at night, passers-by heard ghostly music wafting from the dark mansion. The bell in the belfry high in the gables tolled regularly at midnight to summon incoming flights of spirits. Later it tolled again to warn these visitors to return to their sepulchers. However, once a week, these departed ones relaxed and danced in the Great Ball Room. In other stages of materializations come automatic writing of a typewriter, and the automatic playing of a musical instrument. In addition to the active energy output of the materialization, there is frequently a passive pain experience of the teleplasm. The fifth stage of the materialization is the penetration of material substance. To his phase belong “apports,” that is, the appearing and disappearing of objects in closed rooms or chests and containers. From locked and cemented containers, for example, enclosed coins are brought out, or stones and other objects fall inexplicably from the ceiling. This often happens in the Winchester mansion, as documented by Mrs. Winchester. In this stage many mediums allegedly have the ability to penetrate solid material substance while they are in a trance. While Mrs. Winchester sat in a small cabinet, a phantom built itself up on the floor outside the cabinet and formed itself into a male person, who moved in and out among the participants of the séance. While the materialization extended his hand to one of those present and she held it, dematerialization began to occur before the eyes of all the participants. Soon there was only a lump on the floor and this rolled up into the cabinet. #RandolphHarris 9 of 15
Another example is during a séance, Mrs. Winchester was able to call and help the materializing of the spirit of the deceased German romantic poet, Johann Ludwig Uhland (1787-1862). At the memorable séance a white phantasm was seen, from which the audience demanded a poem. Instead of reciting a poem, the phantasm tore a page from a book in the library. With a pencil from a briefcase in the room, secured through the leather without opening the briefcase, the hand jotted down a few verses and vanished. The page was left and still exists. The examination of the mysterious writing by a graphologist proved to be sensational. He confirmed the ghost writing to be actually the handwriting of the deceased poet. Afterward there was a trial in Berlin over the ownership of the page. The court awarded it to the medium, who afterward kept it among her prized possessions. The phenomena of materialization and dematerialization in case of strong mediums illustrated the conversion of psychic energy into matter and matter changed back again into psychic energy. The problem is illustrated by nuclear physics. Einstein’s formula (E==MC^2), energy is equal to mass times the speed of light squared, simply declares that it is theoretically possible to convert energy to mass and back again to energy. We have historical evidence of materializations. Missionaries claim that Mrs. Winchester’s mansion was never actually built, but that it materialized itself on the grounds, and (re)construction only began after the Earthquake caused by Satan. Some say this mansion is to be regarded as a miracle of Satan (2 Thessalonians 2.8-10; Revelation 13.15). Many people used to wonder how Mrs. Winchester used to travel so fast back and forth from San Jose to San Francisco to pick up items she ordered from overseas. Researchers believed that she would be spiritually transported miles away, and this may have been an example of this phenomenon or simply a miracle of transportation of unaltered physical body. It is debatable rather if these are miracles of God or that of Satan. God says He is the Alpha and the Omega. I wonder what that means? #RandolphHarris 10 of 15
Mrs. Winchester was said to possess tremendous occult gift and was reported to be able to make tables fly through the air for a space of one hundred feet. Above all, she was extremely adept in telekinesis, materialization, levitation, and black magic. Where Satan’s power remains virtually unchecked, miracles of evil supernaturalism abound. In Victorian days, the supernatural predated the mass hysteria about Satanism. As you may know, long before Mrs. Winchester arrived in California, there was a Devil worshipping conspiracy at large. However, her mansion seamlessly blends the ordinary and nightmarishly surreal. It is a rare treat for fans of demonic conspiracy and occult synchronicity. Some people have believed themselves to be demonically possessed after visiting the Winchester Mystery House, others claimed to have spoken to Mrs. Winchester directly. Directors of the Queen of the Damned claimed that the film was a makeshift occultic ritual, and Aaliyah unleashed the demon within herself. They also said the film poses some kind of supernatural power and they had to edit and voiceover a lot of the footage because not only did the characters act their own version of the script, but there were also some subliminal sounds and images on print. When many of these errors were re-examined, they also saw footage of the original Winchester mansion on the negatives, but rumors began that the original print had been withdrawn, replaced by an expurgated cut to protect the filmgoers from the movie’s insidious effects. The powers behind these manifestations were no doubt demonic. The director faced a terrible psychic assault on 25th August 2001, before they finished filming the movie. However, when the reel was played, the directors found they had all the footage they needed, even some they did not remembering filming. It was so intensified that the demonic oppression became that he was compelled to give up making other Anne Rice books into movies, especially after Aaliyah’s plane crashed later that evening. Although the film was unfished, with the blessing of her family, it was released to the public in February of 2002. #RandolphHarris 11 of 15
Certain psychic clairvoyants claim that their souls can travel great distances at their command. They always said she makes a room come alive. Much like Mrs. Winchester, Aaliyah had a lot of psychic phenomena around her death. When directors took photos of Aaliyah and Queen Akasha to a clairvoyant, while concentrating on the photographs, the medium declared that one of the women was apparently dead, while the other one, reportedly killed in 2001, was still alive. After more concentration, the clairvoyant said: “I can get in touch with this woman (pointing to Queen Akasha). I see her in a great stone building southeast of Ireland.” By psychic excursion and by psychometry (selecting an object belonging to the missing person and beginning to search from there) the clairvoyant was able to establish contact by occult assistance. The cinema is the Devil’s lantern. In March of 1922, Mrs. Winchester said, “Though it should be borne in the mind that in the persecution of witches many women were put to death on the latter charge, albeit they were really benefactors of the human race; the more so as their skill in simples and knowledge of the medicinal virtue of herbs must have added in no small degree to the resources of our present pharmacopoeia.” In August of 1807 an extraordinary affair took place in the house of Mrs. Winchester. She had a cow which continued to give milk as usual, but of late no butter could be produced from it. An opinion was unfortunately instilled into the mind of Mrs. Winchester, that whenever such a thing occurred, it was occasioned by the cow having been bewitched. Her belief in this was strengthened by the fact that every woman on this estate was able to relate some story illustrative of what she had seen or heard of in times gone by with respect to the same. At length the Mrs. Winchester was informed of a woman named Mary Butters, who resided in Oakland at the Cohen Bray House. Mrs. Winchester went to her, and brought her to mansion for the purpose of curing the cow. About ten o’ clock that night war was declared against the unknown magicians. #RandolphHarris 12 of 15
Mary Butters ordered old Klaus and a young man named Konrad to go out to the cow-house, turn their waistcoats inside out, and in that dress to stand by the head of the cow until she sent for them, while the butler, the made, and an old woman named Klara Lee remained in the house with her. Klaus and his ally kept their lonely vigil until daybreak, when, becoming alarmed at receiving no summons, they left their post and knocked at the door, but obtained no response. They then looked through the kitchen window, and to their horror saw the four inmates stretched on the floor as dead. They immediately burst in the door, and found that the butler and the maid were actually dead, and the sorceress and Mrs. Winchester nearly so. The latter soon afterwards expired; Mary Butters was thrown out on a dung-heap, and a restorative administered to her in the shape of a few hearty kicks, when had the desired effect. The house had a sulphureous smell, and on the fire was a large pot in which were milk, needles, pins, and crooked nails. At the inquest held at the Winchester mansion on the 19th of August, Jurors stated that the three victims had come by their deaths from suffocation, owning to Mary Butters having made use of some noxious ingredients, after the manner of a charm, to recover the sick cow. She was up to The Great Asylum for the Insane, but was discharged by proclamation. Her various of the story was that a black man (usually indicates a demon or the devil, not one of African descent) was summoned through the floor with a huge club, with which he killed the three person and stunned herself. This paranoid horror fantasies terrified the congregations, as well as the gross superstition displayed by the participants as for its tragical ending, yet it seems to have aroused no feelings in the greater community than those of risibility and derision. However, there is also another version of events. #RandolphHarris 13 of 15
A farm-hand had brought an action against Mrs. Winchester for wages alleged to be due to him. It transpired in the course of the evidence that on one occasion he had been set to banish witches that were troubling the cows. His method of working illustrates the Winchester case. All left the house except Mrs. Winchester, and the farm-hand, who locked himself in, closed the windows, stopped al keyholes and apertures, and put sods on top of the chimneys. He then placed a large pot of sweet milk on the fire, into which he threw rows of pins that had never been used, and three packages of needles; all were allowed to boil together for half an hour, and, as there was no outlet for the smoke, the farm-hand narrowly escaped being suffocated. If the forces of darkness triumph, it is a warning not a celebration. Many religious people come close to depicting what evangelists are preaching from their pulpits, or TV shows. Does it not seem strange for fundamentalist Christians to attack them as sinful and dangerous? Sin sells, in a way that the bland platitudes of Christian morality never will. Many of these popular and historical figures will be remember long after the credits have rolled. You could say that it is an “inside job.” Satanism sells, it captures the metaphysics of fear. People like to be haunted and scared, but only when they consent to it. No one wants their house broken into, their children kidnapped, their cars constantly vandalized, or to be attack by a hate group who haunts them like demons of the night. People simply want to tune into a scarry movie or visited a haunted house and leave the fear behind when they walk out the door or turn the TV off. They do not want to fear for the lives like Sharon Tate did for years without anyone to protect them. Humans are often more harmful than any ghost, devil or demon you can ever imagine meeting. Satan, speaking through a beautiful serpent—perhaps as a parakeet “talks” to us—promises know that would make Eve “like God” if she would eat the fruit of the tree forbidden by God. #RandolphHarris 14 of 15
Meanwhile, if the view of the power and knowledge of the people is that “Satan” is evil and not themselves, what can human beings do? Persist being evil, or resist the “devil,” and allow him to feel from them? Or is it they cling to evil because the darkness comes from their insidious mind and depleted soul? Note that it is useless to try to resist the devil unless you have first submitted yourself to God! Maybe YOU are the evil, not Satan. Sitting there, manufacturing all these evil days, so you can laugh at the pain and suffering you have inflicted on others to make yourself feel better. Is that of Satan, or is that YOUR nature on display. It is estimated that there are about 100 million adherents to spiritism in the World. The word “spiritism” comes from the Latin “spiritus,” spirit. The movement of spiritism represents the endeavour to communicate with the dead in the spirit World. Historically, spiritism can also be traced back over thousands of years. We have testimonies concerning it in the Old Testament in 1 Samuel 28, and Deuteronomy 18. It is also evidenced in the history of the Christian Church. Spiritism seems to be strongly connected with religion and religions. In so-called Christian countries such a variety of spiritistic forms, and such a range of associated psychic troubles exist, that the need for clarification is a pressing issue. What God do you really worship for “Satan disguises himself as an angel of the light. So it is not strange if his servants also disguise themselves as servants of righteousness,” reports 2 Corinthians 11.14-15. In other words, many of you Christians who claim to serve “God” do evil things and then blame the devil when you are disguising yourselves as children of the light. And you do not repent because you do not fear punishment nor hell, so you must be children of your “devil” and not of God. We live in a World which has turned its back on God. The reason some people fear Jesus is because they feel unworthy, it is not because they are evil. This conviction of inner unworthiness is not to be confused with a feeling of fear. However, people who suffer from schizophrenia and like to go around lying, the psychiatrist will be interested in the question whether the practicing of spiritism was rather the effect than the cause of the ensuing mental and emotional disorders. #RandolphHarris 15 of 15
Winchester Mystery House
The front gardens of the Winchester Mystery House looked different in the 1970’s! The gardens were restored to what they are today about ten years later.
The sign reads: “The world’s oddest, mysterious, weirdest, and freakish dwelling. Planned and built by Sarah L. Winchester of Winchester Rifle Fame”
Have you ever listened to Alessandro Moreschi sing “Ave Maria,” at night in the Winchester Mystery House? Try it and let me know what you experience. I heard ghosts appear, people have cried and screamed, and some love it. I think I would probably run outside. He sounds like a ghost.
Come Explore the Victorian Gardens this weekend! Open all weekend until 4PM.
A 160-room mansion built to appease the spirits who died at the hands of the Winchester Rifle 👻
When Did the Vortex of Fear First Catch Hold of Mrs. Winchester?
Long before Mrs. Sarah Winchester’s arrival, there were rumors of occult activity on the California cost. One told of a cult near Santa Cruz. They supposedly sacrificed animals and drank their blood in beach-side barbecues, where ritual fire-dancing tuned the attendees into “slaves of Satan.” More elaborate variation suggested that the slaves of Satan performed human sacrifices on an ornate altar decorated with dragons. The bizarre ritual dagger used for these purposes had six blades like a Satanic Swiss army knife: most were used to puncture the stomach before the last skewered the heart, which the cultist then ate. The victim was then disposed of in a portable crematorium—an improbable device that was a Standard prop in Satanic ritual-slaying myths. Yet, even with things like this going on, Mrs. Winchester’s arrival to California was a sensational event. Our valley was thrilled by this dramatic entrance of a millionairess; by those freight cars sidetracked in Santa Clara, unloading rich imported furnishings; by building activities that mushroomed a farm house into an expansive mansion in the first six months. As the years passed and new towers, gables rose, gardens bloomed, and trees sprouted. The terraces were generally about twenty feet high. Town’s people would see fairies dancing on the grass every night by the light of the moon, and stealing away children. Many of the ones they took never came back. At night passers-by heard ghostly music wafting from the dark mansion. Diablo Mountain Range was full of dead, and after nightfall they would come from their graves and walk in a long line one after another to the old mansion in the valley where they would go in and stay until they bell in the belfry high in the gables tolled. Then bats, owls, and horses with wings would return to the top of the mountain range. #RandolphHarris 1 of 3
There was certainly an evil spirit that was always in mischief. Mrs. Winchester built a door-to-nowhere in her labyrinth, and with one step out that door, one would go down a thousand feet into the field. Sometimes Satan Himself would be there at the entertainment, coming and a monstrous dragon, with green scales and eyes like lightening in the Heavens, roaring his fiery mouth. It was a great thing, for they do say all the witches brough their reports with them to show him what they had done. Some would report how they stopped the weather in the spring, an inconvenienced the neighbors, more would show how they dried the cow’s milk, and made her kick the pail, and they laughed and split. Some had blighted the corn, more had brought rain on the harvest. Some witches told hoe their enchantments made the children fall ill, or how they stole the eggs, or spoiled the cream in the churn, or bewitch the butler. It was impossible to say exactly when the vortex of fear first caught hold of the Mrs Winchester. One night in the hellishly-hot hall of fires, a young man by the name of John Wise was a ranch hand for Mrs. Winchester. However, he had eyes for one of her servant Clara Haralson. She was socially higher than himself. Normally he would have had little success. But to arrive at his goal, summon the devil by reciting this very spell, “Come Thou Forth, and follow Me: and make all Spirits subject unto Me so that every Spirit of the Winchester and of the Ether: upon the Earth and under the Earth: on dry Land, or in the Water: of whirling Air or of rushing Fire: and every Spell and Scourge of God, may be obedient unto Me! John then cut his finger and wrote a contract in his own blood on a piece of paper. In this way he tried to obtain the help of some love magic. #RandolphHarris 2 of 3
John fell asleep on the sofa in the hall of fire, to find a demon with long finger nails tapping on his head. “What do you want?” he beathed at the intruder. “I am the Devil and I have come to do the Devil’s work,” responded the demon, as he kissed him on the forehead, and vanished. After a while he became scared. Nevertheless, John proposed to Clara and they were married. She was a very pretty young woman. The mother began to suffer from a state of anxiety and she started seeing ghost at night and feeling an unseen power which seemed to try to strangle her. A black figure often appeared in her room. She had a feeling that it wanted to kill her. One night in particular the door to her chambers opened and the demon entered her room, her whole body shook and she was terribly frightened, without a greeting he demanded to know what was going. Clara had been praying for a healthy delivered. The demon struck her with evil gaze and departed. When she gave birth to twins, they were both horribly disfigured. Clara was so distressed that she cut her wrists and died. John continued to suffer as he had done so ever since his subscription to the devil. One night while he was putting the horses in the stables, witches tore him limb from limb, and the fiends drunk his blood in red-hot iron noggins with shrieks of laughter to smother his screams, and the horses jumped on his body and trampled it into the ground. A committee Mrs. Winchester assembled consisting of a professor, an engineer, and a philologist who was conversant with parapsychological phenomena, was delegated to examine the strange events in the haunted mansion. Their research disclosed that the eighteen-year-old boy was a strong spiritistic medium. Although occult literature is full of examples of table lifting, dark shadows, and demons appearing, these forms of spiritistic practice have found many critics and who do not take into account the reality of demon spirits. #RandolphHarris 3 of 3
Winchester Mystery House
A 160-room mansion built to appease the spirits who died at the hands of the Winchester Rifle 👻What do you think motivated Sarah Winchester to keep building?
▪️ 24,000 square feet
▪️ 10,000 windows
▪️ 2,000 doors
▪️ 160 rooms
▪️ 52 skylights
▪️ 47 stairways and fireplaces
▪️ 17 chimneys
▪️ 13 bathrooms
▪️ 6 kitchens
Will we be seeing you on the estate this week?
He Opened the Book and a Demon Spoke to Him
All good religions need some kind of Apocalypse. Thelema—the new religion of Aleister Crowley—was no exception. The Great Beast fully expected his new holy age, the Aeon of Horus, to be ushered in with an orgy of violence and bloodshed. With the advent of the First World War, the prophecy seemed to have been satisfied. Over four long years, the optimism and complacency of nineteenth-century Europe drowned in the mud of the Western Front, along with hundreds of thousands of young soldiers. However, Crowley seemed curiously indifferent to the whole affair. With typical arrogance, when the British Government refused his offer to produce war propaganda, the Luciferian man of letters travelled to the US to write anti-British propaganda. If he could not find recognition on the side of the angels, the Great Beast was always ready to side with the opposition. However, Crowley later claimed he wrote deliberately absurd material to discredit the German cause. His article on the bombing of London by Zeppelin airships gives credence to this eccentric defense: “For some reason or other in their last Zeppelin raid on London the Germans appear to have decided to make the damage as widespread as possible, instead of concentrating it in one quarter. A great deal of damage was done at Croydon, especially at its suburb Addiscombe, where my aunt lives. Unfortunately her house was not hit. Count Zeppelin is respectfully requested to try again. The exact address is Eton Lodge, Outram Road.” If World War One had been too minor a cataclysm to introduce Crowley’s Age of Horus, 1939 heralded a new orgy of human suffering. The Beast always maintained that the first nation to adopt his Book of the Law as a state religion would dominate the World. During the 1930s, however, as the Third Reich came to power, his ambivalence towards Germany—the country where his magical doctrines were taken most seriously—is perhaps understandable. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21
Some of his German followers saw in their new Fuhrer a political equivalent to their prophet, the Great Beast (perhaps even his “magical child”)—a new World order was to be created by the pure will-power of those extraordinary men. Some of his German followers saw in their new Fuhrer a political equivalent to their prophet, the Great Beast (perhaps even his “magical child”)—a New World Order was to be created by the pure will-power of these two extraordinary men. However, in 1935 the Nazis banned the Ordo Templi Orientis and the Order of the Silver Star, throwing numerous occultists (including Karl Germer, one of Crowley’s foremost disciples) into the concentration camps. There may have been similarities between Crowley’s Thelemic doctrines and emergent Nazi dogma (elitism, irrationalism, transcendence of morality), but the Great Beast could see on which side his future depended: Britain would “knock Hitler for six!” he announced. Whether or not the horrors of the Second World War signalled the advent of the Age of Horus, Adolf Hitler emerged from the blood and pain of that conflict as a secular Satan. Indeed, a minor literary industry has grown up around the idea of Hitler as a very literal Satanic figure suggests that the Fuhrer really did, in Dennis Wheatley’s words, “use dark forces.” The roots of this belief return us to the occult lodges of the late nineteenth century. In 1875, the writer and occultist Guido von List climbed a hill overlooking Vienna to conduct a strange ritual. Von List was dedicated to returning greater Germany to an older purer faith—the worship of Wotan, and the other pagan gods of the Teutonic race Upon the hill he commemorated the summer solstice by buying a number of empty wine bottles, carefully arranged into a sacred symbol: the swastika. In 1908 von List Founded the Armanen Initiates, the inner order of his modestly-titled Guido von List Society. His doctrines centered around ideas of racial purity—von List believed the German peoples, the Armenen, had originally been a race of supermen, but mongrelistation had weakened the race until bashful old Guido was its last pure-blood survivor. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21
According to the race mystic, “The hydra-headed international Jewish conspiracy” was behind it all. To reverse matters, von List prescribed a study of ancient Teutonic religious runes and –more practically—laws to precent further racial interbreeding. His eventual gal was a racial state ruled by “a self-chosen Fuhrer to whom [Germany] willingly submits.” Alongside the swastika, the emblems of this new state would include the sig rune: the symbol later used to form the insignia of the SS. Guido von List was one of the leading Germanic mystics dedicated to “volkisch” occultism. “Volkisch” basically translates as “folkloric,” but this was also leavened with a hard-edged nationalism. Chief obsession among the volkisch orders were the sacred nature of race (or “blood”), an interest in the culture and beliefs of the Germanic peoples in the early Middle Ages, and a strong current of anti-Semitism. Among the most important of the volkisch occultists—some of whom fancied themselves the priests of a revived Norse religion—was Dr. Jorg Lanz von Libenfels. In many ways, a sorcerer in the classic mould, von Liebenfels adopted his aristocratic name to increase his mystique (his real name was Adolf Lanz), and began his career as a Catholic priest before being defrocked for “harbouring carnal and Worldly desires.” His response was to found an “order of New Templars”—quite what the original Templars had to do with racial purity is not clear, but it did not stop von Libenfels preaching a message of race war from his temple on the banks of the Danube. In 1909, a young Austrian named Adolf Hitler secured an audience with von Liebenfels to secure some back issues of Ostara, the journal of the New Templars. In 1932, von Liebenfels would write to a fellow occultist that “Hitler is one of our pupils…You will one day experience that he, and through him we, will one day be victorious, and develop a movement that will one day make the World tremble.” The most direct link between the occult underground and the Third Reich is the Thule Society. Thule, according to northern European myth, was a version of Atlantis, and island that sank beneath the sea. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21
Thule Society ideology decreed this legendary island to be the home of the German supermen, who they hoped to contact using magical techniques. In 1919, the Thule Society formed a tiny political group called the German Workers Party in Munich—the seed from which Hitler’s National Socialist Party grew. In the 1920s Germany of the Weimar Republic, volkisch occult groups sense that their time was coming. Losing the First World War left Germany politically chaotic, economically bankrupt and profoundly demoralized. Weimar Berlin earnt a reputation for decadence exceeding that of 1890s Paris—though there was a cynical desperation among the German hedonist that never surfaced amongst their French counterparts. For many ordinary citizens of “Greater Germany” (which included Austria), however, their feelings of disillusionment hardened into suspicions of betrayal. One such was the young war hero Hitler—who was convinced Germany’s forces were defeated by treachery at home, rendering the huge loss of life futile. Hitler, along with many others, was sure that the “November criminals” (government signatories of a peace treaty in November 1918) were responsible for the fatherland’s defeat and humiliation. And behind the November criminals were the treacherous Jewish people. In this environment, volkisch occultists found an eager audience for their fables of an ancient, noble Ayran race. They not only offered up a scapegoat for their defeat, but also created the mythology of a sacred Germanic blood heritage from which a humbled people could rebuild their pride. It is a long way from accepting that volkisch occultism helped create a spiritual environment friendly to Nazism to believing the Third Reich was a Satanic cult. (Buffy the Vampire Slayer was said to be symbolic of the rebirth of the Third Reich, maybe you can see the symbolism. This interesting thing is that Sarah Michelle Gellar, who played Buffy Summers is Jewish, but also reminiscent this Ayran super race.) #RandolphHarris 4 of 21
The relationship between Nazism and volkism is similar to that between the radical African-American political groups and Black Islamic leaders who proclaim that the Man (the White Man) to be the Devil. Political leaders, as soon as they achieve any real power, are usually quick to distance themselves from such emotive spiritual propaganda. However, it is interesting how light and dark are used in Christian terms not to reflect colour, but the nature of one’s spirit. And when you see these people with soft features, pale skin, and these colourful eyes, it is hard to believe they do dark things, but when one sees someone with darker skin, people almost always consider them guilty. It is as if religious light has also been used to frame people based on skin colour, but when it comes down to it, people are capable of things that are bad no matter what colour their skin is, and as one grows up, once can see that skin colour matters very little in guilt or innocence. Nonetheless, total revolution also demanded a spiritual revolution. The Russian Revolution of 1917 had a similarly religious aspect. Communists were determined to uproot the Christian Church and replace it with religious loyalty to the State, and its socialist principles, which is why so many religious symbols in America are now banded on public builds, and next to be banned with be the America flag. Many people may thing that journalist Tomi Lahren of FOX News is a racist, but one should actually listen to what she is saying, and be objective about it. America is actually becoming a communist nation where the people have no power, laws are just recommendations, and the U.S. Constitution is being removed and stored in someone’s basement, much the Confederate Statues, and flags. Next, slavery will just be a conspiracy theory—it will be considered a myth. It is just like music, most real artists listen to all genera of music, but they have a typical style they love, and many scholars read all kinds of material so they can have a comprehensive view of what is going on in the World, instead of just be told only what the masses want them to know, but people love to label, which is why they are stuck in ignorance. #RandolpHarris 5 of 21
Bolsheviks held wild revels, called “African nights,” where Christian festivals were parodied in atheistic rites such as “Red Prayers,” and “Red Mass.” Obscene hymns were sung, and children were encouraged to spit upon and destroy puppets representing God, and other holy figures, in powerful echoes of the Black Mass medieval peasants. Hitler’s doctrines were no less revolutionary. Nazism was designed to revolutionize every aspect of life—even the way people thought—and the old ways were denounced as “Jewish,” “liberal.” Hitler despised “intellectuals,” advocating intuition, or even irrationalism, over logic and rational thoughts. In many ways the Nazis turned back the clock two hundred years, to when science and sorcery were still reluctant bedfellows. In the field of military technological innovation and instinct were promoted at the expense of methodology, liberating German scientist to creates some of the most efficient weapons of war the World had seen. Alfred Rosenberg, an intimate of Hitler and high-ranking Nazi official drew up plans for a National Reich Church, which was not going to destroy Christianity but “supercede” it, and called his new faith “positive Christianity.” He concluded: “On the day of its foundation, the Christian cross must be removed from all churches, cathedrals, and chapels and it must be superseded by the only unconquerable symbol, the Swastika.” However, what did the Swastika symbolize? Rosenberg wrote: “Today a new faith awakens: the myth of the blood, the faith that by defending the blood were defend also the divine nature of man. The faith, embodies in scientific clarity, that the Nordic blood represents the mystery which has replaced and conquered the ancient sacraments.” The historian Konrad Heiden beings his book on Der Fuhrer: Hitler’s Rise to Power with a curious story concerning Rosenberg: “One day in the summer of 1917 a student was reading in his room in Moscow. A stranger entered, laid a book on the table, and silently vanished. The cover of the book bore in Russian the words from the twenty-fourth chapter of Matthew: “He is near, he is hard by the door.” #RandolphHarris 6 of 21
The sent sensed the masterful irony of higher powers in this strange happening. They had sent him a silent message. He opened the book, and the voice of the demon spoke to him. It was a message concerning the antichrist, who would come at the end of days. The Antichrist is no mythical being, no monkish medieval fantasy. It is the portrait of a type of man who comes to the fore when an epoch is dying. The Antichrist was supposedly Hitler. The Nazi began suppressing occultists and secret societies in 1934, in a purge that reached its peak in 1937. Thousands of astrologers and mystic disappeared into the concentration camps, never to appear again, which also proves Whoppie Goldberg’s states, “The Holocaust was about race.” Anyone who was deemed a threat to national security was sent to concertation camps, but in the same sense, the holocaust was about race, it was about preserving the Ayran race. Just anyone who was not Aryan could be a target, as it was more about preservation of their bloodline. Volkisch occultists were not spared. Even the Thule Society—the magi at the nativity of Nazim—was devoured by its ravenous offspring. The Nazi State would not tolerate anything outside its control, or that it had not created itself. Its tenant of faith was the destiny of the Aryan race, as expressed by its prophet Hitler. If this policy of spiritual and intellectual monopoly sounds familiar, it is because it resembles the doctrines of one of the institutions of the Nazis sought to replace: the Church. The Nazi party created its own priesthood—the Black Oder, better known as the Schutzstaffel, or SS. The SS began as Hitler’s bodyguards, but under Heinrich Himmler, manoeuvered and massacred their way to become the most powerful organization in the Nazi establishment. Like “house of God” of the medieval Inquisition, the SS policed the souls of those under their ever-expanding jurisdiction. The faithful were monitored, the suspect—even the volkish occultist who shared the Nazi vision of race—purged, the unholy exterminated. Himmler became the second most powerful man in the Third Reich. Any occultist who wished to survive in Nazi Germany was well-advised to find a place under Himmler’s wing. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21
Several men did—most significantly Karl Weisthor. Weisthor was born Karl Maria Wiligut in Vienna, 1866, to a family with a long military tradition, and was decorated for his service during the First World War. Following the war he became involved in volkisch occultism, adopting doctrines which were extreme even by volkisch standards. With the modesty characteristic of his ilk, Weisthor claimed to be descended from Ayran gods, the last living representative of the Irminist Church. The Irminists—who worshipped the true Christ, an Aryan called Krist—had been opposed throughout history by the false religion of the Catholic Church, their racial enemies the Jewish people, and Aryan heretics who worshipped the pagan god Wotan. Weisthor knew all of this because he possessed clairvoyance that allowed him to recall the heroic lives of his ancestors, thousands of years ago. Not everyone was impressed by the evidence, however, an in 1924 he was committed to a lunatic asylum. Undeterred, when he was released, he changed his name and headed to Munich. In 1933 he attracted the attention of Himmler, who installed the cranky medium in the Ahnenerbe department of the SS. Under Weisthor’s advice, a castle at Wewlsburg in north-west Germany was chosen as the spiritual headquarters of the Black Order. It became the Nazi equivalent of the Vatican, with great echoing chambers dedicated to the heroes of the Aryan race, and a central hall where Himmler and his twelve closet disciples would meet. Weisthor designed the SS “Totenkpfring” –a scared ring decorated with skulls and runes, personally bestowed upon SS members by Himmler and retuned to Wewelsburg upon their deaths. He also conceived and presided over neo-pagan solstice ceremonies, and the Weddings of SS officers to good Aryan girls. The Black Order was not just a military organization but a sect, a fraternity of warrior priests. Though it never claimed the heritage of the Knights Templar, the parallels between these two orders are striking. Both snowballed into vast international forces. Both maintained independent economic systems that allowed them to accumulate vast wealth. Both were composed of highly-disciplined warriors, fanatically dedicated to their creeds. Both were exempt from the laws that governed their contemporaries, answerable only to the head of their orders (Himmler of the Grand Master) and the representative of the sacred creed on Earth (Hitler or the Pope). Both planned to establish their own independent states. And both were, at least ostensibly Christian. #RandolphHarris 8 of 21
Weisthor’s faith may have incorporated much bizarre German paganism, but at the core he believed he was preaching Christianity. One of the oaths taken by SS candidates before the full initiation ran, “We believe in God, we believe in Germany which He created in His World and in the Fuhrer, Adolf Hitler, whom he has sent us.” One of the titles Himmler had bestowed on him by is peers was “the Black Jesuit,” as he based the structure of the SS upon the fanatically-secretive Catholic Society of Jesuits. Himmler, brought up in a devoutly-Catholic Bavarian household, never lost his belief in the importance of ritual symbolism. When he used the term “Satanic,” or evoked the Devil, it was applied to the enemies of the Aryan race—never in connection with his own faither. Persecution of Jewish people was often inspired by accusation that they poisoned wells and drank the blood of children, or, more traditionally, that they had killed Jesus. They were commonly believed to be part of an international conspiracy—sometimes decreed to be Satanic—against all Christian values. The Catholic Church, concerned that the Third Reich was stealing souls that were rightfully theirs, had certainly preached against this new paganism. Nazis believed that they were breeding babies for God, or “for race and nation.” Occultic suggestions that the Third Reich was, as one author puts it, a “demonocracy” with the Fuhrer himself as a black magician, a “psychic vampire,” demonically possessed, even as the Antichrist himself—are based on Hitler’s skill at taking political military gambles (precognition), his inner voiced and violent rages (possession), and the way simultaneously drew upon and released great emotion with his speeches (physic vampirism). Some still say that there is no evidence for one to consider the Third Reich as a manifestation of supernatural evil. Yet people believed because Hitler consulted an astrologer that Hitler was evil; Satan is Evil personified, therefore Hitler is Satan. Even level-headed historians have described Hitler as possessing almost supernatural powers—whereas the terms “mesmeric” or “hypnotic” best described the psychological effect this frantic, grim little man has on the vast audience at Nazi rallies. Political figures such as John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King also based their careers on charismatic oratory, and few would suggest either man was possessed by demons. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21
However, it is worth confessing that the Third Reich is of legitimate interest to occultists. Something about Hitler’s meteoric rise—from penniless tramp to omnipotent dictator—and Germany’s similarly rapid rise—from near-collapse to near-World domination—confounds rational explanation. Still, the philosophy of Hitler, and the psychological symbolism employed by the Nazis, are no more inherently Satanic than that of the Catholic Church. However, there were eyewitness accounts of wartime sorcery in England: Witches cast spells to stop Hitler landing after France fell. They met, raised the great cone of power and directed the thought at Hitler’s brain: “You cannot cross the sea. You cannot cross the sea. Not able to come. Not able to come.” We are not saying they stopped Hitler. All we say is that we saw a very interesting ceremony performed with the intention of putting a certain idea into his mind and this was repeated several times afterwards; and though all the invasion barges were ready, the fac that Hitler never even tried to come. The witches told us that their great-grandfathers had tried to project the same idea into Boney’s [Napoleon’s] mind. Exploration of the Great Beast’s (Aleister Crowley) darker doctrines—of a World divided into masters and slaves, with good and evil sacrificed on the bloody alter of a new morality—would be the province of a far less gaudy crew than the hippies. Marianne Faithfull—a former child of the upper-middle classes—was a long-time consort of English rock band the Rolling Stones, and an icon of “swinging London.” In her autobiography, written much later, she displays little doubt as to the source of the era’s dynamism. Speaking of her most famous lover, Mick Jagger, she says: “Her harnessed all of the negative forces into entities. Out of these destructive impulses, he created all the incredible personate of the late sixties: the Midnight Rambler, Lucifer, Jumpin’ Jack Flash. They are all manifestations of malignant and chaotic forces, the ungovernable mob. The dark, violent, group mind of the crowd—chaos, Pan. That frenzied power caused many of the causalities of the sixties.” #RandolphHarris 10 of 21
Foremost among the musicians who pioneered the first colourful wave of psychedelia were the Beatles. Their high-profile transformation from chirpy, mop-headed scousers to long haired peaceniks reflected the cultural tide of their generation. However, in the United States of America, the FBI compiled a two-inch thick file on Lennon upon which FBI director J. Edgar Hoover scrawled, “All extremists should be considered dangerous.” Fundamentalist Christians—with their endearing disrespect for facts or common sense—discovered the occultic secrets behind the Beatles’ success. They maintained that the Lennon-McCartney sound was a magical beat stolen from the ancient Druids. According to them, in ancient times these pagan priests would beat out the demonic rhythm on drums made of human skin to summon evil spirits. In the hands of the Beatles, this Druid beat could be used to send the young people of American insane—or even worse, pinko. There were Christian protests of the Beatles, where the Ku Klux Klan burnt their records and Lennon was held up as a Satanists or something. The next years, Christian suspicions of the Beatles were confirmed by detailed perusal of the cover of their catchy, innovative Sgt. Pepper album. The cover design is a collage of people admired by the Beatles, all standing being the band: among them, in the top row, can be seen Aleister Crowley. In 1994, a prominent Vatican official, Father Corrado Balduci, would reinforce the Christian view that the Beatles were “the Devil’s musicians.” Sadly, in 1980, Lennon was shot dead outside his New York apartment by a dazed-looking young man named Mark Chapman. Chapman had become a big Beatles fan, but had become increasingly convinced that Lennon was evil. An interview with Chapman by a psychiatrist, published in Rolling Stone magazine, reported that the holy assassin could feel the presence of Satan’s demons around him. “I can feel their thoughts. I can hear their thoughts. I can hear them talking, but not from the outside, from the inside.” The unfortunate Chapman had become a “born-again” Christian, learning about the evils of Beatles music from his new faith. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21
Next to the affable efficiency of the Beatles, the Rolling Stones were a maelstrom of creative chaos. Black Magicians thought that Mick Jagger and Keith Richards were acting as unknow agents of Lucifer and others thought hey were Lucifer. One of the “Black Magicians” Richards referred to was Kenneth Anger. Anger stood at the crossroads where many of the Satanic elements of the 1960s met. Anger happily announced Crowley’s dictum that the Key of joy is disobedience, and declared that not only was the Aeon of Horus upon, but the Aeon of Lucifer. Shortly before he became involved with the Rolling Stones, Anger helped found the Church of Satan. His blend of Crowleyism and Satanism entranced the band, though—in a familiar pattern—Anger was often keen to dissociate from Satanism, referring to his personal Prince of Darkness by the less inflammatory title of Lucifer. He later confessed, however, that his Lucifer had always been the “cosmic villain,” the Miltonic Satan. Whatever effect Anger had on the band’s professional lives, he touched them personally to varying degrees. Keith and his lover Anita later got into this black magic stuff. Mick Jagger dabbled in it. However, every one was just a little afraid of Kenneth Anger. Inexplicable things involving him would happen. Stores about the magus’ association with the band include Anger seeming to appears and disappear in various places. He offered to perform a pagan ritual wedding for Keith and Anita that involved a golden door. When they awoke the next day, a heavy oaken door had been painted gold, with the paint already dry. The house was heavily secured, and nobody could explain this occultic interior decoration. Faithfull talked about falling off a mountain during the making of Anger’s second version of Lucifer Rising, sustaining only a mild concussion. Anita Pallenberg was so spooked by all of this that she slept in a protective circle of candles with a string of garlic around her neck. Anger’s next overtly magical project Lucifer Rising was his first religious film, a weird, mesmeric narrative combined with a real magical ritual, it also embodied his love/hate relationship with the 1960s counter culture—both in the film itself, and the events surrounding its strange history. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21
As Anger once observed, “Making movies is casting spells.” A screen director and editor, the theory ran that the magus could fully control both the characters to screen and the entities they invoked. Lucifer Rising depicted the downfall of the oppressive Aeon of Osiris (or Christian era), and the movement into the Aeon of Horus (or Lucifer). “My reason for filming has nothing to do with “cinema” at all, explained Anger. “It’s transparent excuse for capturing people…I consider myself working Evil on an evil medium.” On 21 September 1967, Anger organized a celebratory event titled the Equinox of the Gods at the Straight Theatre in Haight-Ashbury, the epicenter of hippie culture in San Francisco. However, Beausoleil proved a more capricious Lucifer than Anger anticipated—according to Anger, the pretty hippie he called “Cupid” ripped off 1600 feet of footage from Lucifer Rising and some camera equipment before the performance. Anger was livid, smashing a rare magical cane that once belonged to Crowley. He then pronounced a cruse upon Beausoleil, sealing it with an amulet he put around his neck. On one side was a picture of his erstwhile protégé, on the other a toad with the inscription “Bobby Beausoleil—who was turned into a toad by Kenneth Anger.” Cupid never turned into a toad, but a could of uncommonly dark fortune did follow him as he headed south for Los Angeles. In 1970 Anger remade his masterpiece, Lucifer rising—though even then he still tinkered with elements of the film to produce dozens of subtly different versions. Once again, Anger himself plays the Magus, invoking a new aeon through the door opened by the occult events of the 1960s: A film about the love generation—the birthday part of the Aquarian Age. Showing actual ceremonies to make Lucifer rise. Lucifer is the Light God, not the Devil—the Rebel Angel behind what is happening in the World today. His message is that they key of joy is disobedience. Isis (Nature) wakes. Osiris (Death) answers. Lilith (Destroyer) climbs to the place of Sacrifice. The Magus activates the circle and Lucifer—Bringer of Light—breaks through.” #RandolphHarris 13 of 21
Bad luck had begun calling upon the Rolling Stone, in the shape of a series of tragedies. The first was the death of the band’s guitarist, Brian Jones. It was Jones who, in 1962, formed the band named it after a Muddy Waters song. On 2 July, in classical rock ‘n’ roll styles, he drowned in his swimming pool on a cocktail of vodka and pills. Two days after Jones’ death, the Stones turned their free concert in London’s Hyde Park into a memorial for their ex-guitarist. Jagger read a poem by Shelley, then tried to release hundreds of white butterflies from boxes by the stage. They have been in the boxes too long and most of the delicate creatures were dead. The summer Woodstock free festival, in New York State, represented for many the hazy apex of the Love Generation. At the suggestion of scheduled support band the Grateful Dead, the Stones hired the Hell’s Angels as security for their Altamont gig. The Angels were very affordable, but their brand of frightening freedom still had a devilish chic in the naïve 1960s. The Hell’s Angels Motorcycle Club was formed after the Second World War, by bike-loving ex-servicemen who found civilian life too bland to bear. The Hell’s Angels moniker was taken from a notorious American Air Force squadron, but the Satanic implications of the name became increasingly appropriate. The Angeles were hellraisers, prototypes for the whole biker culture—particularly the outlaws, or “1%ers” (the “one percent of motorcyclists’ labelled as ‘hoodlums and troublemakers” by the American Motorcycle Association in 1967). Many 1%er gangs emulated the Angels’ Satanic-sound title, adopting infernal names like the Straight Satans, Satan’s Slavers and the Pagans. Some took their title at face value. One member of the powerful Canadian gang Satan’s Angels said in a 1970s interview, “There are definite spirits and we identify with that particular one that has been called Satan. It’s an upsidedown World. Our virtues are other’s vices. You could say we were Satanists.” Hell’s Angels, and other outlaw gangs, are symbols of the more destructive, volatile aspects of the Satanic canon. Their readiness to fight, their revelling in intimidation and fear, their rapacious passion for pleasures of the flesh in all their basest forms, all these characteristics made them into icons of willful alienation and violent self-indulgence. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21
When Jagger finally came onstage at Altamont on 6 December 1969, things were beginning to get ugly. Marty Balin of support act Jefferson Airplane had been in in the face with a pool cue by a Hell’s Angel. He tried to intervene when he saw the Angels beat up an African America kid in front of him. Paul Kantner, band founder, began to shout at the Angels until his microphone was snatched from him in the brawl that immersed the from of the stage. Jagger took the stage clad in his psychedelic sorcerer’s robes. Dancing under the red lights, surrounded by the dark wall of threatening, black-clad Angels, the vocalist could have been Anger’s Lucifer served by a surly army of warlike demons. Two songs into the set, things just kept getting uglier. Naked hippies cast themselves at the stage as offerings for their rock gods, and the Angels cast them back into the audience after beating them bloody. The third song began, “Sympathy for the Devil,” and all Hell broke loose. In the audience, an African American youth named Meredith Hunter pulled a gun. According to some he was aiming it at Jagger, other claimed he was defending himself against the Angels. Whichever is true, it was scant moments before a pack of black-leather Angels fell upon him and, in a flurry of kicks and knife blows, Hunter was killed. The Stones could see that the Angels were brutalizing the audience rather than controlling them—but Jagger was out of his depth, bleating weakly for everybody to “cool it.” As the killing of Meredith Hunter played itself out to the strains of “Sympathy for the Devil,” the song had to be stopped briefly as Jagger quipped, with unintended understatement, that “something very funny always happens when we start that number.” As the tide of panic and fury rose, the death count escalated to three with 100 injured. Following Altamont, the shaken Stones turned their back on the whole Satanic scene. Jagger wore a large wooden crucifix for some time after. The revolutionary stance and allusions to street violence were quietly dropped in favour of the stately image of rock ‘n’ roll aristocrats. The Rolling Stones abandoned any pretension to occultic chic or streetwise cool, letting themselves into the World of polite high society through the back door. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21
It is always just a few days before the Winter Solstice when the forces of darkness are at their most powerful. Because the immense size of the Winchester Mansion, Mrs. Winchester included forty-seven fireplaces in her mansion, and seventeen chimneys. One rambling section in particular, the Hall of Fires, was designed to produce as much heat as possible—perhaps to ease Mrs. Winchester’s extreme arthritis. In addition to many windows that let the sunlight stream through, the three adjoining rooms have four fireplaces and three hot air registers from the coal furnace in the basement. Mrs. Winchester is very significant, not only for a vast estate, but one of many reasons was because she was known to have encounters with the supernatural. While I was at Mrs. Winchester’s mansion, I was asked to meet with a group of high school students who had gotten into spiritualism just for kicks. We had a meeting that night and I listened as the young people told me their experiences. At a part a friend had fascinated them with stories of trances and séances. He told them how to use a Ouija board and how to enter a state of trance. They were seeking spirit manifestations. When they began to get reactions, they became frightened. The spirit had guided them back in time. A boy appeared and stated to tell a story, he said: “When I was about ten years old, I came to visit my aunt Sarah. I met a girl who lived on the estate Ethel—aged eight. I never had the courage to speak to her. My aunt Sarah asked me to stay three months, and I did.” The statement was so quietly serious, so destitute of any suspicion of humor, that the audience looked on with great apprehension. “I had to work hard in those days. I saw Ethel, later that evening, asleep in one of the carriages, and that was the last time I saw her. I ended stay with my aunt for three years. There was a glimmer of a summer gown under the trees; a figure passed from the shadow to sunshine, and again into the cool dusk of a leafy lane. While I was walking in the garden, I found her seated in the shade of a pine. She looked up serenely, as though she had expected me, and we faced each other. #RandolphHarris 16 of 21
“When I stroke to speak, my voice had an unknow tone to me. Her upturned face was my only answers. The breeze in the pine-tops, which had been stirring monotonously, ceased. Her delicate face was like a blossom lifted in the still air; her upward glance chained me to silence. The first breeze broke the spell; I spoke a word, then speech died on my lips; I stood twisting my shooting-cap, confused, not daring to continue. The girl leaned back, supporting her weight on one arm, fingers almost buried in the deep green moss. ‘It has been three years today,’ I said, in a dull voice of one who dreams—’three years today. May I not speak?’ In her lowered head and ears I repeated acquiescence; in her silence, consent. ‘Three years ago, today,’ I repeated; ‘the anniversary has given men courage to speak to you. Surely you will not take offense—we have travelled so far together!’ –from the end of the World to the end of it, and back again, here—to this place of all places in the World! And now to find you here on this day of all days—here within a step of our first meeting-place—three years ago today! And all the World we have travelled over since, never speaking, yet ever passing on paths parallel—paths which for thousands of miles ran almost within arm’s distance—’ She raised her head slowly, looking out from the shadows of the pines into her sunshine. Her dreamy eyes rested on acres of gold-rod and green grass in the December coolness. ‘Will you speak to me?’ I asked. ‘I have never even heard the sound of your voice.’ She turned and look at me, touching with idle finger the soft hair curling on her temples. Then she bent her head once more, the faintest shadow of a smile in her eyes. ‘Because,’ I said, humbly, ‘these long years of silent recognition count for something! And then the strangeness of it!—the fate of it,–the quiet destiny that ruled over our lives,–that rules them now—now as I am speaking, weighting every second with its tiny burden of fate.’ She replied, ‘I have never forgotten you—never!’ She looked into my eyes. ‘Dear, do you not understand? Have you forgotten? I died three years ago today.’ The unearthly sweetness of her white face started me. A terrible light broke in on me; my heart stood still.’ #RandolphHarris 17 of 21
“And that very day, I died of a broken heart. Legend has it that I came to visit my aunt Sarah to pick up a check and no one ever saw me after that day, but truth is I never left. When God takes the mind and leaves the body alive there grows in it, sometime, a beauty almost supernatural. ‘Be with me when the new moon comes,’ she whispered. ‘It will be so sweet. I will teach you how divine is death, if you come.’” About 4 o’ clock in the morning, one of the students started to levitate, and he saw all kinds of beautiful sights. I asked him if he were concerned whether or not this was from God. He said it must be because it was in the spiritual realm. The one of the other students went into a demonic tantrum. I asked God to rebuke the demons and set her free. The demons said, “We are going, but we will come back.” And come back they did, with reinforcements. I worked with this young woman for several months, but because she was unwilling to give up this traffic with spirits she was later placed in a mental institution. I am convinced that she could be perfectly healed of this oppression and indwelling by demons if only she would consent. Sometimes lewd demons trick well-meaning people into following their sensual behavior. Not all spirits are evil. However, it is a serious matter to become involved with spiritualism in any form, but also the atoning blood of Christ always gives us His purity and power. All who desire protection from Satan and His demons will receive it. In the case of levitations, apports, and telekinesis, God allows the physical and natural laws of the Universe to be superseded temporarily and in a restricted sense by higher laws of the spirit World. The Winchester mansion is known for having spiritual events take place, even today. These phenomena are diabolic miracles. In distinction to divine miracles, diabolical miracles are supernatural acts that imitate the power and benevolence of divine miracles. It is as if God said to the powers of darkness what he said to the sea in the day of creation: “Hitherto shalt thou come but no father, and here shall thy proud waves be stayed,” reports Jon 38.11. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21
The demonic powers are allowed only a very small intrusion into the orderly realm of nature, and the miracles they produce are characterized by a rigid sameness. Everywhere in the domain of occultism there are reminders of God’s absolute sovereignty. He is in majestic control. Demonic power makes such a poor show by its severe restrictions and drab sameness, that it actually advertises the glory of God for those who can see evil supernaturalism in the proper focus of divine revelation. Levitations (from the Latin verb levito, “to raise or lift”) are objects or people that are raised up and appear floating in their air. Such phenomena are frequently reported in occult literature and experienced in haunted houses, where strongly psychic people have lived and died or where spiritistic séances have been heled. Objects on occasion sail through the air as if thrown by an invisible hand, or spooks (ghost) appear hovering in space. Furniture is lifted, often when a strong medium is present. Human, either in a conscious or unconscious state, are included in the phenomena of levitation. We would oppose the belief that a word has any power of its own, and that the charmer is only the representative of this power. Words are only neutral instruments. They can be used for either good or evil. It depends on the inspiration behind the words. A Christian employs the Word on God’s authority. The magician and charmer employs his words and phrases as demonized instruments of magic. One of Mrs. Winchester’s servants had died. The man in question had the reputation of being a magician—it makes sense that a house built by spirits would have some magical employees. Two weeks before his death, as he lay in bed seriously ill, he began to groan, “Take the charm away from me, take the charm away from me.” The relatives had gone to the minister for advice, but he had warned them against doing as the man requested. The magician finally died in terrible agony. The minister told Mrs. Winchester that the man looked black as coal when he had seen him in the coffin. Many magicians only find rest when someone takes the spell of charm away from them, together with the responsibility of carrying on the occult practice. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21
A description of magic ritual can be found in various books on magic. These books have the same significance to the magicians as the Christian Bible has for the Christian. There is a great amount of literature on the subject of magic, the most widely distributed book on the spiritual subject being the 6th and 7th Book of Moses. Unhappily a publisher in Braunschweig has published new editions of this book. The use of the name Moses is only a camouflage. Magicians look on the miracle connected with the staff of Moses as a piece of magic. In this way they try to elevate Moses to the position of their patron saint. The first part of the book reveals how a human may enter into a relationship with the devil. The latter part gives instructions as to how a person can achieve dominion over all the forces of nature as well as the powers of Heaven and Hell through the use of magic. The book has already caused untold harm in the World and people who read it invariably suffer in the process. A house in which the book is kept is also a place where misfortunes often occur. There are many examples which illustrate this fate and we will deal with this problem soon in greater detail. In or about the 27 of December of 1899, a girl about eighteen years of age, Miss Mary Dunbar, was hired as a maid by Mrs. Winchester. Mrs. Winchester described her as “having an open and innocent countenance, and being a very intelligent young person.” She and her aunt, Mrs. Haltridge, were staying at Winchester mansion. A rumor was afloat that the latter had been bewitched into her grave, and this could not fail to have its effect on Miss Dunbar. Accordingly, on the night of her arrival, her troubles began. When she retired to her bedroom, accompanied by another girl, they were surprised to find that a new mantle and some other wearing apparel had been taken out of a trunk and scattered through the house. Going to look for the missing articles, they found laying on the parlour floor an apron which two days before had been locked up in another apartment. This apron, when they found it, was rolled up tight, and tied fast with string of its own material, which had upon it five strange knots. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21
These she proceeded to unloose, and having done so, she found a flannel cap, which had belonged to old Mrs. Haltridge, wrapped up in the middle of the apron. When she saw this she was frightened, and threw both cap and arpon to young Mrs. Haltridge, who was also alarmed, thinking that the mysterious knots were boded evil to some inmate of the mansion. That evening Miss Dunbar was seized with the most violent fit, and, recovering, cried out that a knife was run through her thigh, and that she was most grievously afflicted by three women, who she described particularly, but did not then give any account of their names. About midnight she was seized with a second fit; when she saw in her vision seven or eight women who conversed together, and in their conversation called each other by their names. When she came out of her fit she gave their names as Janet Liston, Elizabeth Cellor, Kate M’Calmont, Janet Carson, Janet Mean, Latimer, and one who they termed Mrs. Ann. She gave so minute a description of them. Mrs. Dunbar said there was something in her stomach which she would be glad to get rid of. She fell into such violent fits of pains that three men were scarce able to hold her, and cried out, “For Christ sake take the Devil out of the room.” In her fits she often had her tongue thrust into her windpipe in such a manner that she was like to choak, and the root seemed pulled up into her mouth. Upon her recovery she complained extremely of the one Mean, who has twisted her tongue and spoke of someone who had tore her throat, and tortured her violently by reason of her crooked fingers and swelled knuckles. Her joints where all distorted and the tendons shriveled up, as she had described. However, through 38 years of residence, Mrs. Winchester’s employees remained fiercely and faithfully loyal, defending every eccentricity. Although usual things did occur in her home, they said she was very strong minded and firm, but always fair and kind. Laziness, theft, gossip or revealed confidences met with instant dismissal. Mrs. Winchester, they claimed, was deeply concerned with the welfare of their families. They were well paid and often additionally rewarded with gifts, even homes or real estate, and left lifetime pensions. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21
Winchester Mystery House
The Winchester Mystery House on a rainy day is a sight to see 😍 Come see for yourself this weekend!
🎟 link in bio. https://www.winchestermysteryhouse.com/
A Devil Who Has Unity Will be a God
Behind the accepted history of our civilization—of great leaders and mass movements, of politics and progress—there is an alternative history, a shadow tradition. It is an oft-neglected World full of villains and vice, scoundrels and sorcerers, with an impact upon our culture out of proportion with the numbers of people involved. Almost everything about magic, including the forms it takes and the customs associated with it, gives one the impression that it is a religion of the devil. It everywhere seeks to mimic the World of faith as we find it revealed in the Christian Bible. There is a dark side of Western culture: the Satanic tradition. Even the serpent in the Garden of Eden—who tempts Adam and Eve to “Original Sin”—does not become a manifestation of evil (“that Ancient Serpent,” as Satan is sometimes know) until later. This change occurs with the advent of Christianity, which promotes Satan from a mischievous servant of God to His implacable opponent. The Roman Empire had thrived by absorbing, rather than destroying, the cultures they conquered, welcoming foreign gods into their temples as part of policy of conquest by integration. The Christians could not stomach this. Their God was supreme, and all other deities—initially regarded as hollow superstitions—began to be portrayed by their theologians as actively evil, demonic. This doctrine, demonization, defined the totalitarian nature of the Christian creed. These demons required a leader, and so Satan was reborn not just as an adversary, but as the Adversary. Myths began to grow up around this new Prince of Darkness, cribbed from fanciful reinterpretations of existing doctrine and the ravings of Christian hermits driven half-mad by isolation in the desert. Satan’s power is first suggested in the New Testament, when He tempts Jesus Christ with mastery of the kingdoms of the World—implying He has them all in His possession. The Old and New Testaments claim that the Devil was once the leader of the Watcher angels. These angels were commanded by God to watch over humankind, but they pitied moral men and lusted after mortal women. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
For teaching forbidden knowledge and copulating with their charges (in theological terms, the equivalent of a shepherd disgracing himself with his flock) these disobedient angels were cast from Heaven to become the denizens of Hell, whilst their children became demons and monsters. Satan—or Semjaza, as He is known here—is the leader of these disobedient angels. Another more widely-accepted version of the same story has Satan trying to claim God’s throne before loyal angels cast Him and his co-conspirators into darkness. Traditionally, the question of whether one personally regards Satan’s act as one of treachery or bravery is the definition of an individual’s loyalties in the war between darkness and light. Significantly, however, many traditions state that, before His fall from grace, Satan was known as Lucifer: derived from the Latin “Light bringer.” As an act of worship is composed of certain elements, so too is an act of magic. There are basically four constituents that are necessary. Invoking, charming, a symbolic action, and the use of a fetish. One may invoke either Satan or even the Trinity, and it is this that decides whether the magic is to be black or white. Such invoking is a counterpart to our addressing of God in prayer, as for example, when we say “Our Father.” The charm or spell that then follows brings the force of magic into play. This imitates our use of the Scriptures and our reference to the promises of the Christian Bible. The symbolic action underlies and supports the charm and mimics such scriptural actions as, for instance, the laying on of hands or kneeling in prayer. The use of a fetish, that is a magically charged object, corresponds perhaps to the use of water in baptism or bread and spirits in the case of the Lord’s supper. Though Christians never got their Apocalypse, they did win their spiritual war when, in the fourth century, an embattled Roman Empire adopted Christianity as the state religion. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
The short-term benefits were obvious: Christianity appealed to the oppressed, promising them great reward in the afterlife; it also appealed to the oppressor, demanding the downtrodden obeyed their obeyed their superiors if they wished to enjoy rewards. The glories of a classical World built on pagan pragmatism were eroded, then destroyed, by Christian intolerance. As the Roman Empire fell in one of history’s many dark ironies the Catholic Church set itself up in its place. Imperial purple was the uniform of colour for the Church leaders’ new robes, Latin their sacred tongue, Rome their headquarters. However, while this new Roman Catholic Church could steal the superficial glories of the empire they had destroyed, they could begin to emulate the culture, comfort or security that Imperial Rome had provided to its citizens. The end of the World had failed to arrive on schedule, but the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse—War, Death, Famine and Plagued—still characterized the medieval era, when the Christian creed held Europe in its thrall. The Middle Ages had arrived, and with them an era of cultural depression, a millennium of darkness, squalor and misery. The Gnostics believed that there were two equally-powerful gods—one “good,” the other “evil.” Some though the evil God was the one described in the Old Testament, the creator of this World, while the benevolent God described in the New Testament was His foe. In Gnostic doctrine, only pure spirit was “good.” All matter, including the human body, was “evil,” and humankind was made up of spirits trapped in prions of flesh. Widely suppressed with increasing severity, Gnosticism began to take on a variety of increasingly dark and erotic forms. Some Gnostics believed that, as all flesh was evil, it did not matter what use it was put to—in this sense, carnal excess could even be seen as redemptive, as with cults like the third-century Carpocratians, who indulged in ritualized pleasures of the flesh. Widely suppressed with increasing severity, Gnosticism began to take on a variety of increasingly dark and exotic forms. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
Others, like the Cainite sect of the fourth century, reasoned that if the Old Testament God was evil, then His opponents must be good—therefore revering Old Testament villains like Cain, who proved his virtue in combat by murdering his brother, Abel. It is tempting to regard these early movements as the first Satanic sects, but the attitude of most Gnostics—that the flesh was inherently evil—was just as pathological as that of their pleasure-hating Catholic oppressors. This is perhaps best demonstrated by the Cathar sects. The first of these, the Bogomils, was formed in the Balkans during the tenth century. The Bogomils believed that Man was created when Satan vomited into an empty human vessel—a vivid illustration of their unhealthy attitude to their own bodies. Some have suggested Gnostic roots for the mysterious Luciferian cult that appears to have thrived secretly in the thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Germany thought Lucifer was a curious, cadaverous figure whose body glowed during their subterranean rites—has been unjustly cast from Heaven by a treacherous God, and honoured Him in orgiastic ceremonies that also featured cats as objects of worship. One other medieval cult has generated more fanciful theories than the Cathars and Luciferians combined. The Order of the Knights Templar was founded in 1118 to protect Christian pilgrims visiting Jerusalem, combining the military skills of a trained warrior with the pious dedication of a monk. Feared by their heathen foe and revered by their Christian brethren, the Templars rose from poverty-stricken obscurity to become one of the wealthiest, most powerful institutions in Europe. Their fall from grace was just as dramatic when, in 1314, King Philip of France smashed the Order with a campaign of mass arrests. King Philip claimed that, beneath their pious exteriors, these warrior monks were in fact an international Devil-worshipping cult and many of their number, including their Grand Master Jacques de Molay, were burnt alive for their alleged crimes. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
The blood lust of the medieval Church was far from sated by the persecution of such heretics. In the 1480s, with full papal backing, two monks named Jakob Sprenger and Heinrich Kramer issued a practical witch-hunting manual entitled Malleus Maleficarum (“The Hammer of the Witches’), describing how to identify witches and force confessions from them under torture before consigning them to the flames. Previously, witchcraft was officially regarded as a delusion, but Malleus Maleficarum helped trigger an international campaign of witch-hunts that lasted over two centuries and claimed upwards of 250,000 lives in the most brutal circumstances. The history of witchcraft is swathed in controversy. Did the witch-cult truly exist? And, if it did, did it consist of isolated, eccentric old women, or was it a coherent international movement? Some modern theorists maintain that the witch-cult was a benevolent religion that worshipped ancient nature gods, ancestor of the modern Wiccans. However, several more substantial historical accounts refer to Satan as “the God od the Serfs”: the Middle Ages were desperate times for the peasantry, and, if the Christian clergy supported the nobility, where else could the desperate and downtrodden turn but to the Devil? The witch-cult, therefore, many have been a creed of social rebellion based upon orgiastic revels, drug abuse and the deliberate adoption of heretical symbols. Certainly, the medieval peasantry regarded the Devil in a very different way to the medieval Church. The grinning gargoyles that leered from church roofs, the slapstick demons that peopled the “mystery” plays put on by rural villagers, and the Devil who appears in the folk tales of the day—all suggest a view of Satan among ordinary working folk that was sympathetic to Christianity’s supposedly terrifying, hateful anti-hero. It was not only the peasantry who made resort to the demonic in times of need. In 1440 the French Baron Gilles de Rais, once one of the most wealthy and powerful men in Europe, was executed for conjuring devils. There were also other charges laid against this licentious warlord. In fact, de Rais was a medieval serial killer, and was also a fervent Christian. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
However, Gilles de Rais was certainly involved in black magic, but this was largely separate from his recreational crimes. On the one occasion he made use of the remains of a victim in a magical rite, the Baron was seized by remorse and, uniquely for him, gave the corpse a Christian burial. Like all good Christians, Gilles de Rais was more concerned with his own immortal soul than the actual physical suffering of those around him. De Rais employed sorcerers as part of his staff when his extravagant lifestyle threatened to bankrupt him. Sorcery and science were, as that time, close bedfellows. In fact, as recently as the eighteenth century, such black arts as alchemy, necromancy and astrology were regarded by many intellectuals as valid areas of scientific study. Then, just as now, many involved in pioneering research were motivated by avarice, with fast-buck schemes a favourite occupation among the scholars and sorcerers of the Middle Ages and Reminiscence. Gilles de Rais employed a number of such characters to discover the alchemical secret of creating gold from base metal. It was generally believed that the darker the magic, the higher the risk—and the higher the risk, the higher the potential reward. The most Satanic sciences was therefore the invocation of devils, the most dangerous and rewarding of all the dark arts. Medieval serial killer Gilles De Rais have a castle in Machecoul, France. Sorcerers employed by Gilles de Rais were part of a loose underground of travelling scholars who piled their wares secretly across medieval and Renaissance Europe. Operating outside the authority of the Church-controlled universities, these maverick academics were equally at home translating Greek, brewing strange medicines or confounding their clients with conjuring tricks. As far as the Church was concerned these men had made pacts with Satan, and, in many cases, they were right. Christian authorities forbade research into the mysteries of the Universe as blasphemy. Anybody whose greed or curiosity led them to ignore these warnings had knowingly or not, throw in their lot with the dark forces. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
Of all the rituals of black magic none are as notorious as the Black Mass. At its most basic level, the Black Mass is a mockery of the orthodox Catholic Mass that substitutes the erotic and profane for its sacred elements. Black Mass priest, the French cleric Father Guiborg, who stood trial in 1678 alongside a notorious sorceress named Catherine Monvoisin, accused of the attempted murder of Louis XIV by magic. The case was a scandal of epic proportions, involving allegations of illicit abortions, child sacrifice and poisoning, all implicating people within Louis’ court. When it became clear that the King’s beautiful mistress, the Marquise de Montespan, was so heavily involved (perhaps even serving as the naked altar in once ceremony), Louis decided to draw a veil over events and proceedings were halted. Nevertheless, the macabre episode is dramatic evidence not only that the Black Mass was more than a myth, but that it was employed secretly at the highest levels of European society. Other groups existed at this time whose parodies of holy rites were if no less heartfelt, were more satirical. An informational network of Hellfire Club thrived in Britain during the eighteenth century, dedicated to debauchery and blasphemy. With members drawn from the cream of the political, artistic and literary establishments, they became sufficiently scandalous to inspire a number of Acts of Parliament aimed at their suppression. Historians have been inclined to dismiss the Hellfire Clubs as nothing more than riotous drinking societies, but the significance of many of the nation’s most powerful and brilliant men dedicating themselves to Satan is difficult to ignore. That they did so with laughter on their lips, and a drink in their hand does not dimmish the gestures so much as place them more firmly in the Satanic tradition. The inspiration for the Hellfire Clubs did not come exclusively from sorcerous sources, but also drew heavily from profane literature—such as Gargantua, an unusual work combining folklore, satire, coarse humour and light-hearted philosophy, written in the sixteenth century by a renegade monk named Francois Rabelais. Like any monastic abbey it is a place of seclusion, but in other respects it is an “anti-abbey,” dedicated to the pleasures of the flesh. Only the brightest, most beautiful and best are permitted within its walks, and its motto is “Fait Ce Que Vouldras” (“Do What You Will”). #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
One of the last and best known of the Hellfire Clubs was founded in emulation of the Abbey of Thelema, taking on its distinctive motto. The club was known as the order of Saint Francis, with headquarters in Medmenham Abbey near London and on its founder Sir Francis Dashwood’s estate in Buckinghamshire. The Order finally collapsed in the 1760s due to internal conflicts between members over the pressing political issues of the day, the demand for increasing independence by Britain’s American colonies. It is a measure of the club’s distinguished membership, however, that it contained prominent politicians from both sides of the debate. Sir (Saint) Francis was a close personal friend of Benjamin Franklin, the leading spokesman for the colonists in London, and one of the most important figures in founding the independent United States of America. Franklin was a frequent guest at Dashwood’s home, and it is tempting to image the fate of the American colonies—destined to become the World’s most powerful nation—being discussed at a smoky Hellfire Club meeting over fine spirits and harlots. (This may explain why the American Constitution, partially written by Franklin, made such a revolutionary separation between Church and State.) Anton LaVey, the twenty-first century’s foremost Satanist, claimed in typically bombastic fashion: “If people knew the role the Hell Fire Club played in Benjamin Franklin’s structuring of America, it could suggest changes like: One Nation Under Satan, or United Satanic America.” Many historically famous people were true Poets and of the Devil’s party without knowing it. For instance, this applies to William Blake and John Milton, as well as others. It also seems strange that the author (William Blake) of “Jerusalem,” still one of the most popular hymns sung in English churches, should belong to the Satanic tradition. But belong he does. Blake is often regarded as a pioneer of the Romantic movement. Today the term conjures images of willowy fops pressing flowers in flowing, loose-sleeved shirts, but in reality these young men were wild-eye radicals whose antics led a more restrained poet of the day to label them “the Satanic School.” #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
Pleasures of the flesh and barbiturates and poetry were the fuel that inspired the fashionable rebel of the early nineteenth century. “I feel confident that I should have been a rebel Angel had the opportunity been mine, opined the poet, John Keats. Percy Bysshe Shelley, in many ways the most thoughtful of the romantics, was expelled from Oxford University in 1811 for his anti-Christian beliefs. He also had a strong demonic vein running through much of his own works. While the Romantics flirted with Satan, by the end of the nineteenth century a literary movement appeared that absolutely adored Him. The Decadents were poets, painters and authors who championed extremes of sensation over common sense or convention, their quest taking them to the brothels, opium dens and morgues of the World’s most fashionable and exotic cities. Inevitably, Satanism is a prominent them in the work of these artists. Most notorious among them is the foppish Isidore Ducasses, better know under his pennanme of the Comte de Lautreamont. De Lutreamont was absorbed by strongly Satanic idea about religion and human existence, potently expressed in his masterpiece, the bizarre 1868 epic The Songs of Maldoror, which combines nauseating horror and delirious absurdity in a surreal story of a war with God. The most significant figure of the nineteenth century maintained a burgeoning interest in the occult that also centered on Paris, capital city of decadence. The most significant figure of nineteenth-century sorcery was Eliphas Levin, whose shadow still falls across the history of the occult. In 1856, he published his magnum opus Dogme et ritual de la haute magie, (translated as Transcendental Magic), quickly building a reputation as Europe’s foremost authority on the magical arts. While outwardly a devoted Christian, a more careful reading of Levi’s works implies he thought Christianity was all well and good for the masses, but that more enlightened souls were entitled to probe deeper. There is a definite ambivalence about Levi’s relationship with Satan—sometimes he roundly denounced the Prince of Darkness, at others he suggests that Satan is potentially a useful or even beneficial force. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
Another important anti-Christian figure of the late nineteenth century was the American writer Samuel L. Clemens, better known by his penname of Mark Twain. Many would be surprised to find Twain—author of the wholesome, much-loved Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn—credited as a Satanic thinker, but his own sentiments bear it out. As Twain once wrote in an essay, “I have always felt friendly towards Satan. Of course that is ancestral; it must be in the blood.” As his life progressed, Twain became increasingly bitter towards Christianity and its brutal, unenlightened God. Mark Twain also a chapter called 2006 A.D., which he feared if it was published at the time, he would be burnt alive for writing it. His final thoughts were issued in 1995, entitled The Bible According to Mark Twain. It appeared at the end of a century when American had come to dominate the World. It would be nice to believe, however fanciful the idea, that America’s best-loved writer was somehow hovering around taking notice, as the World entered a new Satanic era. To mark this new era, a couple global events happened back-to-back. On 25 August 2001, after filming Queen of the Damned and release a hugely successful self-titled Album, one of the most beautiful pop stars, Aaliyah Haughton was killed in a plane crash. Then there was an attack on the nation on 11 September 2001, when the Twin Towers were destroyed, as well as other American sites and over 3,500 people were killed. Since then, the Satanic spirit has been in a persistent state of conflict with the Universe—it constantly seeks knowledge and experience, in order to imprint itself upon its surroundings. It is the same spiritual rough edges that Eastern mystics wish to file off, in order to reach “enlightenment.” As many can see with Church doctrines being destroyed, God being removed from the government and buildings, national monuments being snatched down and relocated to someone’s basement, and some people no longer seeing themselves as men or women, loss of law and order, God’s vision Earth is being taken over by Satanic Libertinism, as people are indoctrinated by the media to “Live out Loud,” and “discover the true self,” as the TV new media sees it. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
America is becoming a nightmarish laboratory for spiritual experimentation and mind-control games. A Devil who has unity will be a God. Sunday newspapers will always find it easier to print headlines of child murder than discuss masturbation. If you recall Dennis Wheatley’s stories of Satanic cultus and suburban Devil-worshippers—in satisfying the appetite, he helped create the popular image of Satanism. Wheatly dabbled with magic and was terribly dangerous, he lost touch with his friends after he slipped up in a ceremony and failed to master a demon, who has caused all his teeth to fall out. Wheatley prefaced his Satanic thrillers with dire warnings on the Devil and all His works—just thinking too long on Satan was dangerous enough, let alone his engaging in a Black Mass. Many people believed that Wheatly’s stories were more than just fiction, that the Satanic forces described in his novels were a real threat to the civilized World. It has been hinted at in popular culture, but is also believed that the Germans did use black magic during World War Two. Some truly believed that the power lurking behinds it eyes was literally Satanic. Sarah Winchester, heiress to the Winchester rifle fortune, was also known to be under attack by demonic forces, which is why many believe she built her beautiful, but bizarre mansion in San Jose, California with hidden rooms, secret passageways, and trap doors. The house was furnished with the finest materials and was a showcase of Victorian elegance and taste. However, prior to moving to San Jose, William Wirt Winchester and Sarah Winchester gave birth to a daughter named Anne. While enjoying Christian fellowship in their home in New Haven, they were disturbed when they prayed by the screaming of their newborn daughter. This happened consistently for two weeks. Mr. and Mrs. Winchester assured the prayer group that their child was all right, but they were as concerned as their guest were. One of the members in the prayer group started to think about the situation in connection with demons. However, he kept telling himself that surely such a small child could not be an object of demonic spirits. Nevertheless, they decided to experiment. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
During the usual time, of fellowship after service, the group leaders asked that everyone pray. They knew that the baby, who was busying sleeping, would have a hard time hearing the prayer. To their amazement, at the very first words of Mr. Merrill’s prayer, the baby began to scream and cry frantically for her mother, Mrs. Winchester. Mr. Merrill was convinced then that this was some kind of demon demonstration. To make sure, they did the same thing the next night, and again the child screamed hysterically. He decided the Holy Spirit was speaking to him to do something. He could not stand to see the child so tormented. So Mr. Merrill audibly cried to God to rebuke the demon powers and give the child complete deliverance with the Holy Spirit and angelic protection. Instantly she stopped sobbing and seemed quite normal. Mr. Winchester and Mr. Merrill spent much time in prayer that night. After another week, Mr. and Mrs. Winchester told Mr. Merrill that their child appeared completely delivered from the demonic assaults. However, less than a month later in July 1866, Annie Pardee Winchester died, ironically the same year the Winchester Repeating Arms Company was established. In March of 1881, William Winchester also died. It is easy to imagine how the combined grief of losing both a child and a spouse could be very crippling. However, if you have $20,000,000 and all the time in the World to help you cope, can you imagine what you would do? Mrs. Sarah L. Winchester’s response to the deaths of her child and husband left a beautiful, mysterious, and impressive architectural reflection of her psyche. The fascinating story of the Winchester Mystery House has its roots in the personal tragedies suffered by Mrs. Winchester and in the legacy of the Winchester rifle, “The Gun that Won the West.” According to some sources, the Boston medium consulted by Mrs. Winchester explained that her family and her fortune were being haunted by spirits—in fact, by the spirits of American Indians, Civil War soldiers, and others killed by the Winchester rifles. Supposedly the untimely deaths of her daughter and husbands were caused by these spirits, and it was implied that Mrs. Winchester might the next victim. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
However, the medium also claimed that there was an alternative. Mrs. Winchester was instructed to move west and appease these spirits by building a great house for them. As long as construction of the house never ceased, Mrs. Winchester could rest assured that her life was not in danger. Building such a house was even supposed to bring her eternal life. On a more practical note, maybe a change of scenery and a never-ending hobby were just what Mrs. Winchester needed to distract her from her grief. Whatever her actual motivations, Mrs. Winchester packed her bags and left New Haven, Connecticut to visit a niece who lived in Menlo Park, California. While there she discovered the perfect spot for her new home in the Satan Clara Valley. In 1884, she purchased an estate just three miles west of San Jose. Soon after the construction started, the architects discovered that the site was characteristic of an Irish ruin. Standing on a slight elevation, in the midst of a flat country, the castle lifted its turreted walls as proudly as when its ramparts were fringed with banners and glittered helmets and shields. In olden times it was a citadel of the town, and although it was fortified by a strong wall, protecting it alike from predatory assault and organized attack, it was clear that by treachery, surprise, or regular and long-continued siege that the castle had been taken. The central portion was a large square structure, this central fort was connected by double walls, the remains of which covered passages, with smaller fortresses, little castles built into the wall surrounding the citadel; and over these connecting walls, over the little castles, and over the piles of loose stones where once the strong outer walls had stood, the ivy grew in luxuriant profusion, throwing its dark green curtain on the unsightly masses, rounding the sharp edge of the masonry, hiding the rough corners as through ashamed of their roughness, and climbing the battlements of the central castle to spread nature’s mantle of charity over the remains of barbarous age, and forever conceal from human view the stony reminders of battle and blood. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
The success of the ivy was not complete. Here and there the corner of the battlement stood out in sharp relief, as though it had pushed back the struggling plant, and, by main force, had risen above the leaves, while on one side a round tower lifted itself as if to show that a stone tower could stand for six hundred years without permitting itself to become ivy-grown; that there could be individuality in towers as among humans. The great arched gateway too was not entirely subjugated, though the climbing tendrils and velvet leaves dressed the pillars and encroached on the arch. The keystone bore a rudely carved, crowned heard, and ivy vines, coming up underneath the arch, to take the old king by surprise, climbed the bearded chin, crossed the lips, and were playing before the nose as if to give it a sportive tweak, while the stern brow frowned in anger at the plant’s presumption. However, only a few surly crags of the citadel refused to go gracefully into the retirement furnished by the ivy, and the loving plant softened every outline, filled up ever crevice, bridged the gaps in the walls, toned down the rudeness of projecting stones, and did everything that an ivy-plant could do to make the rugged old castle as presentable as were the high round mounds without the city, cast up by the besiegers when the enemy last encamped against it. The old castle had fallen on evil days—and over the next thirty-eight years Mrs. Winchester produced the sprawling complex we know today as the Winchester Mystery House. One day while on the estate, the sun had barely cleared away the thick, heavy mist, which was still slowly rising here and there, and the birds were majestically in search of their breakfast. While the famers were out tilling the fields, a long, lanky figure was draw to its full height, the white eyeballs and jagged teeth had a red glow about them, and he waved his hand triumphantly in the direction of the vanishing cloud of birds. Then there came a loud gun shot, then next thing anyone say was the quivering body of this of a man on the ground, and wild eyes staring open in the agony of death. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
The farmers ran over and glanced at the body of this man. They figured they better hide him in the long grass and come back after dinner to bury him. After dinner, they walked slowly at first, gradually increasing their pace as they became more distant from the mansion, and they never spoke a word. Then suddenly the, as they drew closer, the man clutched one of the farmer’s arms. It he pleading for help, so they hit him with a shovel and began to dig its grave. For more than an hour they worked desperately with the chopper and hunting-knife, being greatly assisted in their task by a rift in the ground where the soil had been softened by water running from the creek, and they stood up with sweat pouring from their faces, and stamped down the Earth to cover all traces of the man. They had filled the grave with some large stones that were lying about (remnants of some ancient temple, long ago deserted and forgotten), thus feeling secure that it could not easily be disturbed by animals. From the night on, a wolf would come howling around their cottages on the estate, which would make their blood run cold. They swore they were being haunted by the spirit of that man they murdered and that he some how much have entered this animal’s body, bent on obtaining vengeance. One of the farmers grew ill, he was thin, very pale, and haunted by a ghastly expression. He was a married man who had carried on an adulterous relationship with one of the maids the took care of Mrs. Winchester’s house. The maid was reputed to indulge in black magic. They day of the murder, the man had tried to end his illicit affair. He told the woman that he wanted to break off his relationship with her. She was very upset and threatened him, saying that if he did then his wife and children would suffer in the process. The man however, was determined to break it off and stuck to his decision. Later that day is when they suspected one of their fellow famers was a demon and shot and buried him. Two days later, the adulterous farmer’s son became ill. They rushed him to the hospital and he died there. The doctors were unable to diagnose the disease. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
Later still, the adulterous famer’s wife and daughter fell ill. The man was by now quite frightened and remembered the threats of the woman with whom he had had the affair. He went to her and begged her not to use black magic against his family. She softened and said that she would stop. Thereupon his wife and daughter recovered quickly, but he died. During Aleister Crowley’s visit to the Winchester Mansion, He spoke to a farmer about his saw being stolen. Crowley, as you may know was a black magician, and called “the Great Beast 666,” after the devilish monster of the Book of Revelations. The farmer paid Crowley a considerable amount of money, and in returned he promised his immediate help, stating that the thief would die. The farmer and Crowley walked around the grounds of the mansion, and within three hours of his interview with Crowley, the thief had a fatal heart attack. At the Winchester mansion, Crowley claimed that black magic was very literally invoked against him. In 1898 Crowley was initiated into the Golden Dawn by its founder, the influential occultist S.L. MacGregor Mathers while at the Winchester mansion. Mathers was one of the “the Masters.” They were believed t be benevolent supermen, or demigods, who has spokes women on Earth. Mather become the “Supreme Magus,” and all members of the Golden Dawn signed an oath of obedience to him. It was unclear if Mrs. Winchester was part of the Golden Dawn, but some of these sorcerous rituals which were supposedly aimed toward gaining power and enlightenment, supposedly took place in her home. After a few séances at the Winchester mansion, Crowley fell out him Mathers. He alleged that Mather summoned a middle-aged vampiress Called “Mrs. M,” who confronted Crowley while they were at Mrs. Winchester’s mansion, where the vampiress transformed into a beautiful young woman. She subjected him to a near-fatal seduction. According to Crowley’s account, he repelled her with his mystic forces, whereupon: “She writhed back from me, and again approached me even more beautiful than she had been before. She was battling for her life now, and no longer for the blood of her victim. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
“The odour of man seemed to fill her whole subtle form with feline agility. One step nearer and then she sprang at me with an obscene word sought to press her scarlet lips to mine. As she did so I caught and held her at arm’s length and then smote the sorceress with her own current of evil. A bluish-green light seemed to play round the head of the vampire, and then the flaxen hair turned the colour of muddy snow, and the fair skin wrinkled, and her eyes dulled and became pewter dappled with the dregs of blood. The girl of twenty had gone; before me stook a hag of 60. With dribbling curses, she hobbled from the room.” If spiritism pertained only to pagan religions and had never affected the people in so-called Christian lands, then a careful study of its practices and phenomena might not be imperative. Interest in the occult is reaching alarming proportions and even some professing Christians are being duped into complicity with spiritistic traffic. This was true of the late Bishop James A. Pike. Worldwide spiritism is conservatively estimated to have at least seventy million adherents. Kurt E. Koch, a German evangelist and student of the occult for thirty years, enumerates sixteen different varieties of spiritistic practices. If spiritism is to be accurately evaluated and its somber relation to human experience comprehended, all of these must be carefully understood. Spiritistic phenomena may be conveniently divided into the following categories: physical phenomena (levitations, apports, and telekinesis); psychic phenomena (spiritistic visions, automatic writing, speaking in a trance, materialization, table lifting, tumbler moving, excursions of the psyche); metaphysical phenomena (apparitions, ghost); magic phenomena (magic persecution, magic defense); cultic phenomena (spiritistic cults, spiritism among Christians.) There are very scarce published accounts of Daisy, Mrs. Winchester’s niece, being haunted while staying at the Winchester mansion. However, she was reportedly strangely molested by spirits and witches; also the aforesaid Winchester Mystery House is still being haunted by spirits. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
While staying in Mrs. Winchester’s house, Daisy also suffered great annoyance every night from some invisible object, which threw stones and turf at her bed, the force of the blow often causing the curtains to open, and even drawing them from one end of the bed to the other. About the same time, also, the pillows were taken from under her head, and the clothes pulled off; and though a strict search was made, nothing could be discovered. Continuing to be annoyed in this way she removed to another room, being afraid to remain any long. Then about the 11th of December 1898, she was sitting in the twilight at the kitchen fire, a little body came in and sat down beside her. He appeared to be about eleven or twelve years old, with short black hair, having an old black bonnet on his head, a half-worn blanket about him trailing on the floor, and a torn vest under it, and kept his face covered with the blanket held before it. Daisy asked him several questions: Where he came from? Where he was going? Was he cold or hungry? and so on; but instead of answering her he got up and danced very nimbly rough the kitchen, and then ran out of the house and disappeared in the cow-shed. The servants ran after him, but he was nowhere to be seen; when they returned to the house, however, there he was beside them. They tried to catch him, but every time they attempted it, he ran off and could not be found. At lest one of the servants, seeing the master’s dog Zip coming in, cried out that her master was retuning home, and that she would soon catch the troublesome creature, upon which he immediately vanished, nor were they troubled by him again till February 1899. On the 11th of that month, which happened to be a Saturday, Mrs. Winchester was reading Dr. Wedderburn’s Sermons on the Covenant, when, laying the book aside for a little while, nobody being in the room all the time, it was suddenly taken away. She looked for it everywhere, but could not find it. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
On the following day the apparition already referred to came to the house, and breaking a pane of glass in one of the windows, thrust in his hand with the missing volume in it. He began to talk with one of the servants, Angus Spear, and told her that the kitchen, and that her mistress would never get it again. The girl asked him if he could read it, to which he replied that he could, adding that the Devil had taught him. Upon hearing this extraordinary confession she exclaimed, “The Lord bless me from thee! Thou hast got ill lear (learning).” He told her she might bless herself as often as she liked, but tht it could not save her; whereupon he produced a sword, and threatened to kill everybody in the mansion. This frightened her so much that she ran into the parlour and fastened the door, but the apparition laughed at her, and declared that he could come in by the smallest hole in the house like a cat or mouse, as the Devil could make him anything he pleased. He then took up a large stone, and hurled it through the parlour window, which, upon trial, could not be put out at the same place. A little after the servant and child looked out, and saw the apparition catching the turkey-cock, which he threw over his shoulder, holding him by the tail; and the bird making a great sputter with his feet, the stolen book was spurred out of the loop in the blanket where the boy had put it. He then leaped over a wall with the turkey-cock on his back. Presently the girl saw him endeavouring to draw his sword to kill the bird, but it escaped. Missing the book out of his blanket he ran nimbly up and down in search of it, and then with a club came and broke the glass of the parlour window. The girl again peeped out through the kitchen window, and saw him digging with his sword. She summoned up courage to ask him what he was doing, and he answered, “Making a grave for a corpse which will come out of this house very soon.” He refused, however, to say who it would be, but having delivered himself of this enlivening piece of information, flew over the hedge as if he had been a bird. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
For a day or two following nothing happened, but on the morning of the 15th the close where mysteriously taken off Daisy’s bed, and laid in a bundle behind it. Being put back by some of the servants they were gain removed, and this time folded up and placed under a large table which happened to be in the room. Again they were laid in order on the bed, and again they were taken off, and this third time made up in the shape of a corpse, or something that very closely resembled it. When this strange news spread through the neighbourhood many persons came to the house, and, after a thorough investigation lest there might be a trick in the matter, where obligated to acknowledge that there was something invisible at work. Reverend N. P. Wallgren and Reverend Osborn of the Swedish Evangelical Mission Church of San Jose stayed the whole of that day and the following night with that distressed family, spending much time in prayer. At night Daisy went to bd as usual in the haunted room, but got very little rest, and at about twelve o’ clock she cried out suddenly as if in great pain. Upon Mr. Sinclair asking her what was the matter, she said she felt a knife had been struck into her back. Next morning she quitted the haunted room and went to another; but the violent pain never left her back, on the 22nd of February, she almost died. During her illness the clothes were frequently taken off the bed which she occupied, and made up like a corpse, and even when a table and chairs were laid upon them to keep them on, they were mysteriously removed without any noise, and made up as before; but this never happened when anyone was in the room. The evening before she almost died, they were taken off as usual; but this time, instead of being made up in the customary way, they were folded with great care, and laid in a chest upstairs, where they were only found after a great deal of searching. At it height the Winchester Mansion encompassed 761 acres, was 9 stories high, approximately 125,000 square feet, and possessed as many as 500 to 600 rooms. Because so many changes were made, the mansion now stands 4 stories over 4 acres, is about 25,000 square feet, and has an impressive 160 remain. It is still a beautiful, rambling mansion and sure is worth a visit. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
Winchester Mystery House
Watch your step in Sarah’s Séance Room! There are three exits in this room and only one entrance 😳 Those exits include the main door, a secret passageway leading into an unfinished closet, and this door that opens to an 8-foot drop into a kitchen sink below. https://www.winchestermysteryhouse.com/
🎟 link in bio. A 160-room mansion built to appease the spirits who died at the hands of the Winchester Rifle 👻
The Spirits Connected to Her Haunted Mansion
One of the many signs of someone being possessed is when one starts speaking in different voices, languages, and explaining things like you just met them that are out of context for the situation. However, scientific research has been unable to find an explanation for some well-documented speech occurrences. The so-called charismatic movement in our own country with its emphasis upon speaking in tongues has focused a great deal of attention upon this subject. Many people in Christian churches believe they are reproducing the gift of tongues reported in the book of Acts and discussed by the apostle Paul in the first letter to the believers in Corinth. The Biblical soundness of their belief lies outside the scope of this study, but we can report that scientifically conducted investigations have shown all instances of tongues-speaking to have the same characteristics wherever they are encountered. The variation between the tongues spoken in a state of hysterical frenzy among primitives is only superficially different from that practiced in a quiet, composed Christian setting. He considers that all tongues experiences are a means by which uneasy and unsatisfied people identify with the supernatural, securing psychological compensation for the spiritual vacuum in which they live. Some Christian scholars believe that added to the psychological element is the possibility that demons are involved in tongues-speaking, but results of investigations in this field are not yet conclusive. Tongues-speaking can be a language of ecstasy; that is, articulated sounds which do not constitute an actual language. Reports keep coming of an even more astonishing phenomenon—speaking a real dialect that was never learned. Hundreds of missionaries, especially those working among people in Asia, report that they often have encountered the mysterious ability of natives to speak in real languages that they never knew. These accounts come from Christian workers who represent widely divergent opinions regarding the charismatic movement. #RandolphHarris 1 of 13
One of Mrs. Winchester’s staff members that worked in the greenhouses on her property, who was born and reared on the Tibetan border used to report hearing the Tibetan monks in their ritual dances speak in English with quotations from Shakespeare, with profanity like drunken soldiers, or in German and French, or in languages unknown. A maid also reported the same experiences in the mansion. Reports of this nature are so numerous and come from such reputable people that one cannot set them aside lightly. Perhaps this is the reason Mrs. Winchester installed the mysterious windows in the Grand Ballroom? Christians must not jump to hasty conclusions on such delicate and complicated subjects, but they certainly must recognize the possibility of demonic activity and exercise extreme caution in an attitude of prayerful dependence upon God. We will be able to analyze these reports far more adequately after they have been thoroughly researched by competent investigators. Research teams have found that many of the physical and psychical phenomena declared impossible by the rationalistic scientists of the early 1900’s actually do take place. Most researchers do not even pretend to have a full explanation of how or why these occurrences transpire, but Christians are aware that some of them may be the result of evil spirits who work under the control of Satan. Regarding the occultic, the believer should walk the pathway of extreme caution. One should avoid any so-called magic that claims to bestow unusual knowledge or power through a psychic gift or ritualistic performances. It goes without saying that one must keep a safe distance from any form of black magic, and that one must examine carefully the doctrinal teaching of anyone who purports to provide healing or other temporal benefits in the name of the Lord. Biblical faith is built upon trust in God and expresses itself in submission to His will. Every follower of Christ should be wary of magical cures and all outward demonstrations of allegedly supernatural power. #RandolphHarris 2 of 13
As children of God, we must remember that we “walk by faith, not by sight,” reports 2 Corinthians 5.7, and that the faith through the senses. When we received Christ, we were brought into a vital union with Him, and the apostle Peter was writing to us when he said, “Who, having not seen, ye love; in whom, though now ye see him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and fill of glory,” reports 1 Peter 1.8. When a believer discovers the emptiness of this World’s enchantments, Satan tries to lure one into accepting his help through some form of occultism. Through these devices, the devil and his organization of evil spirits may attempt to bring defeat and misery into the lives of God’s children. Satan is unable to harm a believer, however, if that person accepts the instruction of the Bible, maintains a life of prayer, and submits oneself to God, and resists the devil. If one is hypocritical and dishonest, one will successfully resist and overcome the evil influence of Satan and his armies. The child of God must not merely say that one desires victory over sin, but must truly long for it. One’s spiritual vows and public statements must always be sincerely spoken, for the devil has no difficulty in defeating the hypocritical and half-hearted. The devil cannot effectively tempt a Christian who is actively living a joyful Christian life. Some believe that the door-to-nowhere in The Winchester Mystery House is just a wing of the mansion that was never finished, but perhaps it was a biblical metaphor. “I am the door; by me if any one enter in, one shall be saved,” reports John 10.9. It is elevated to a high level on the estate with no entrance reminds use to raise or consciousness, but by going the wrong way through the door, it may be a plunge into the pit of hades. There was once a woman who worked at Mrs. Winchester’s estate whose hand was terribly mangled by a gun explosion. Little did Mrs. Winchester know, that some men on the estate, amiable farmers, when not performing their specific functions, they were wizards, necromancers, exorcists, but above all priests, representatives of the people in offering sacrifices and making contact with the spirits. #RandolphHarris 3 of 13
Over one hundred years ago, human sacrifices had been made in some places, members of the community offered up by the noblest lords, but now animal sacrifices are made. They exhort their listeners about Heaven and hell in which they firmly believe, the one a place of joy and the other of torment…They keep the register of all males born and are intimate contact with sorcerer-priests, who can read ancient manuscripts and incantations for use on all religious occasions. While working on the estate, a man of Asian decent went to the farmers and asked for medical assistance for his wife. It was a moment of weakness—but he needed help. After the wizards, sorcerer-priests, necromancers, and exorcists evaluated the grounds keeper’s wife several times, they found she was suffering a higher fever also. While making preparations to treat her, they noticed the husband cutting three little bamboo sticks about eight inches long and a quarter of an inch in diameter. Oblivious to all that was taking place around him, he silently moved across the room with these three sticks and a rice bowl. After placing a little water in the bottom of the bowl and ordering his wife to dip the fingers of her right hand in it, he waved the bowl over her prostrate body. His next act was to place the bowl on the floor and try to balance the three sticks in the center of it. While this balancing process was going on, he kept calling out the names of demons. The men of supernatural powers soon awakened to the fact that this man was preparing to call a demon out of his wife. The men of supernatural powers suggested that the man’s wife’s fever was probably due to an attack of malaria, but the man insisted that she was demon-possessed. The naming of demons continued until the name of “Lin,” and then the sticks stood on end. Upon learning this was the demon’s name, the man placed some rice in the blow and mixed it with the three sticks—a little salt was added to give it flavor. He then waved the bowl in circles over his wife and politely called out, “Please, Mr. Lin Demon, come out—come out—look at this, tasty bowl of rice—it’s for you if you’ll only come out—please, oh, please come out, Mr. Lin Demon.” #RandolphHarris 4 of 13
Then he moved slowly toward the door and outside, sprinkling a little of the rice along the way and begging the demon to follow him. When he reached the end of the estate, he flung the remaining portion of rice as far out as he could and then returned to the house. This was too much for some of the men of supernatural magic. They were determined to find out the shenanigans behind this thing, even if it meant calling down the wrath of the gods and demons combined. They asked the fellow if her would let them try to stand those sticks on end. He smilingly gave them the go-ahead signal; but he tried and those things just would not stand. Still not satisfied, they asked the man with the injured wife if he would show them how to do it. The whole process was reverently repeated, even to the standing of the sticks when the name “Lin” was called out. However, the men of supernatural magic finally despaired of ever making those sticks stand. They asked the man where did he learn this art. He answered through a séance with Mrs. Winchester. Six scrolls of some ancient script containing incantations appeared in the Blue Séance Room, along with other radical writings. The men of supernatural magic then realized this was the employment of evil angels they were dealing with. They were dealing with the rulers of darkness of this World, and spiritual wickedness in high places. In another case at the Winchester Mansion, these men who doubled as farmers met a fifteen-year-old girl who had a disease of the eyes. She spent quite a time in an eye clinic, but in spite of the treatment she was not cured. Since medical help had failed, she turned to the men of supernatural magic. These men, using white magic, case some spells over her. Within 24 hours of the charming, the girl’s eye trouble disappeared, but thereafter she felt a terrible inner unrest. She prayed but found no peace. Later, when she visited her former eye specialist, he could only shake his head in astonishment and ask her how she had been healed. #RandolphHarris 5 of 13
Although white magic has been able to heal people, some still believe it is inspired by the powers of darkness. Through white magic some may even obtain what they actually desired, and so it is often only in the effects that its true nature is revealed. The boundary between prayer and magic can be very fluid. If one is able to differentiate between the genuine and the imitation articles, it is essential to have the gift of discerning of spirits. However, whether it sails under a black, white or neutral flag, many people believe they have evidence to prove that the effect of magic in any form is the work of the devil. Yet, that is not what I believe. I have met some very nice people who claim to be witches and warlocks, and they are some of the most kindest people you will every meet. They define those that Christians, who pontificate about the bible, harass and attract and really listen and get to all sides of the story, some it makes some wonder, who is really evil? I am not saying that all Christians are bad, but the witch hunts were started by Christians, as well as lynching in the Southern states. I am not telling anyone what to believe, I am just presenting information that is fascinating. Part of being educated is to remain unbiased and be able to have a discussion, until you draw your own reasonable conclusion based on the evidence presented. If one does not have a case, or does not want to be contradicted by evidence that would prove their argument false, of course they turn to slander, harassment, and terrorism. That is what ignorant people do. They gang up and try to lie so loud to make sure no one can hear the truth they are suppressing. But as the Bible says, all things will come to the light. Everyone has things they need to deal with inside of themselves and sometimes it is more comfortable to try to find fault with others and blame others instead of taking responsibility. For instance, the dynamic of idolatry is demonism since idolatry is in reality the worship of other gods who are demons (1 Corinthians 10.20), headed by Satan the “god of this World,” (2 Corinthians 4.4). #RandolphHarris 6 of 13
Occultism involves dealing with demonic forces through fortune-telling, magic, spiritism, or religious cults, which are supposedly closely allied to idolatry. Persons who deal in the occult often discover that they have spiritistic sensitivity, extrasensory perception, or abnormal intellectual powers enabling them to engage in clairvoyance, precognition, divination, psychometry, magic, and spiritism. Dealing in the occult often results in the subjection to the powers of darkness to such a degree that the mind becomes blinded to truth, immersed in deception and error. This frequently results in acute depression with thoughts of self-destruction. However, not all emotional problems or suicidal tendencies should be attributed to occultism. However, demons can also oppress that human mind. Enslavement to demons sometimes reaches a point in which the demonic spirits harass and torment their victims. In the preceding stage of subjection, the evil spirits sporadically dominate their victims, but they do not necessarily harass them, at least not as they do in this deeper and more tragic state of oppression. Oppression in some form will be the final outcome of all who become psychically enslaved, even though some are not psychically gifted with spiritistic or magical powers. One well-attested and widely occurring form of demonic oppression is poltergeist phenomena. “Poltergeist” is German for “noisy ghost.” In such a case, the oppressed person is hounded by strange noises and sounds, such as shouts and obscene threats, rattling of chains, moaning, weeping, or piercing laughter. Dishes clatter, furniture is moved by invisible hands, and myriads of other strange happenings occur, invisibly produced by spirits connected with a haunted house where spirit activity has been practiced. Some who are oppressed continue to be tormented even though they may move to another residence. Also, common in the victims of demonism are the appearances of ghosts, specters, and monstrous phantasms. These phenomena are often explained away as hallucinations, but are well attested in occultism as spirits appearing as dwarfs, animals, dismembered parts of a human body, etcetera. At times these hideous spirits will strangle, bite, strike, or attack their victims in some way. #RandolphHarris 7 of 13
Perhaps the most terrible and revolting form of demonic oppression is what is known in the history of religion as incubi and sccubae experiences. This is the assault by an unclean spirit upon its enslaved victim for the purpose of lust involving pleasures of the flesh. Both men and women have been attacked and molested by “seducing male and female demons.” Such fully established phenomena show that angelic-human union, a major cause of the flood (Genesis 6.1-4; 2 Peter 2.4; Jude 1.6-7), has its parallel in occultism today. The account of the following portent is given us in Aubrey’s Miscellanies. “When King James II first entered Dublin after his Arrival from France, 1689, one of the Gentlemen that bore the Mace before him, stumbled without any rub in his way, or other visible occasion. The Mace fell out of is hands, and the little Cross upon the Crown thereof stuck fast between to Stones in the Street. This is well known all over Ireland, and did much trouble King James himself with many of his chief Attendants”; but not doubt greatly raised the hopes of his enemies. A few years later a witch-story comes from the north of Ireland. “At Antrim in Ireland a little girl of nineteen (nine?) years of age, inferior to none in the place for beauty, education, and birth, innocently put a leaf of sorrel which she had got from a witch into her mouth, after she had given the begging witch bread and beer at the door; it was scarce swallowed by her but she began to be tortured in the bowels, to tremble all over, and even was convulsive, and in fine to swoon away as dead. The doctor used remedies on the 9th of May 1698, at which time it happened, but to no purpose, the child continued in a most terrible paroxysm; whereupon they sent for the minister, who scarce had laid his hand upon her when she was turned by the demon in the most dreadful shapes. #RandolphHarris 8 of 13
She began first to rowl herself about, then to vomit needles, pins, hairs, feathers, bottoms of thread, pieces of glass, window-nails, nails drawn out of a cart or coach-wheel, an iron knife about a span long, eggs, and fish-shells; and when the witch came near the place, or looked to the house, though at the distance of two hundred paces from where the child was, she was in worse torment, insomuch that no life was expected from the child till the witch was removed to some greater distance. The witch was apprehended, condemned, strangled, and burnt, and was desired to unto the incantation immediately before strangling; but said she could not, by reasons others had done against her likewise. But the wretch confessed the same, with many more. The child was about the middle of September thereafter carried to a gentleman’s house, where there were many other things scarce credible, but that several ministers and the gentleman have attested the same. The relation is to be seen in a pamphlet printed 1699, and entitled The Bewitching of a Child in Ireland.” People in ancient times used to rely more on the spiritual, witchcraft, magic, séances, curses, potions, and meditation. Perhaps that is why there were so many more instances of supernatural things happening today. Some of these claims sound so outrageous and many of them report the same types of instances. Then today, we have all these technologies and medications and machines that we rely on and people who tell us what is actually possible and how many of these stories from the past happen to be something else explained by medication or a camera that so many people start to disbelieve in the supernatural. However, just because it can be explained by science, does not mean it is not supernatural. The Christian Bible even speaks about miracles, which are things that are supernatural. Supernatural phenomenon is real. #RandolphHarris 9 of 13
However, supernatural phenomena may be less common today because land is so densely packed, so many people turn into TV and Music and digital entertainment, so they spend less time praying and tuning into nature. In the 1800s, one could life in a house and not see another person for years because there was so much space to spread out on. People had time to read books and gaze at the moon and the sky and think up inventions. By now, everyone has probably heard of the legendary Sarah L. Winchester. She is the one who built the most mysterious mansion in the World. One thing that surprises me is that no one has, as of yet, tried to duplicate or create something just as wonderful. Nonetheless, it has been said that Mrs. Winchester slept in a different bedroom every night, supposedly in order to confuse evil spirits. And it totally makes sense. Because even now, people say when bad things are happening to you, you need to figure out what you are doing to cause it and draw closer to God. Back in Mrs. Winchester’s day, the 1800s, people were into spiritualism and also believed that spirits were the source causing bad things to happen to people. So they would try to appease them to protect themselves from curses and demons and so forth. Every generation has their methods and religions and that is just how it is. Some say Mrs. Winchester also held special dinner parties for her spirit friends. Legend has it that she would serve her phantom friends on solid gold plates, offering them delicious cuisine like caviar, truffles, and pheasant stuffed with pate. The mansion’s staff was also well-fed. On a stormy night, the front of the house was dark and silent, for it was long past bedtime. It was thirteen past one, and raining like blazes. It was thirteen years ago this day that Louis Le Prince had been seen alive, for Black Knight, one of Mrs. Winchester’s mares kicked the life out of him in the house stable one morning. One could feel the present and all its dangers towering around. Staff who walked by the horse stable this day reported feeling lost, a ghost dislodged from time. Indeed, it struck many people as unusual that the lad was left for the to care for the horses by himself. It might have been a fancy stable, but there was a queer feel about the place. #RandolphHarris 10 of 13
The sun was just beginning to set as they headed back to the estate. By the time they got inside, the night was as black as your hat: not a vestige of a moon, not a single star to break the uniform of darkness of the sky. With sunset a noisy blustering wind had sprung up, rattling about one of the chimneys, clashing the wet branches, and deadening the sound of cautious footfalls creeping across the paddock in the direction of the stables. The wind dropped suddenly, making the silence all the more intense by contrast with the previous roar; and through the stillness, Mrs. Winchester heard the clink of a bucket, and the sound of someone moving about in the stables. She sprang to her feet and snatched up her lantern. She thought that someone was trying to get at one of her horses, and her hand was on her father-in-law’s ivory-gripped Winchester pistol when she opened the door. So strong was the impression that she was absolutely surprised to find no sign of an intruder. The horses were perfectly quiet. Mrs. Winchester looked all around. There was certainly nothing to see, but it struck her that the air felt very cold, and she shut the door. The instant it closed behind her, a dark shadow fell across the square of light issuing from the entrance to the saddle-room. She figured it must have been the wind she heard and locked the door and went back inside. However, the butler Henry Boynton Clitz, was also suspicious. He turned the key in the lock and looked into the horse stable; then he gave a slight start, and drew quickly back. There was light inside, but where is came from would have been difficult to say. Beyond the shadow lay black and impenetrable, a wall of darkness. As he crossed the threshold Henry felt a blast of cold air sweep towards him, striking a strange chill into his very bones. Straight opposite stood a horse, and before him was an old man who appeared to be asleep. However, even in that intense stillness the tout could catch no sound of his breathing. His own heart was thumping against his ribs with the force of a sledge-hammer. #RandolphHarris 11 of 13
Henry felt his flesh creeping with a sensation of fear that was almost sickening. Fear? Yes, that was the word; he was horribly afraid. And of what? Of a weak old man, for whom he would have been more than a match single-handed, and they were two to one. What a fool he was, to be sure! With desperate effort he pulled himself together and went forward, his eye warily fixed on the silent figure. Neither man nor horses moved. As Henry moved forward, he heard a low chuckling laugh. The man was looking at him. The gleaming eyes fixed on him with a sort of mesmeric power. His face fastened on the figure, taking in every item of the quaint dress, the high gill collar and ample bird’s eye stock, the drab coat and antiquated breeches and gaiters. His mouth was open, but for the life of him he could not speak. He was waiting in the helpless fascination of horror to see the face of a man who had been dead and buried for thirteen years. Slowly, like an automaton, that strange watcher turned his head. The square, resolute mouth was open as if to speak; the shrunken skin was a greenish yellow color, like the skin of a corpse; along the temple ran a dull black mark in the shape of a horse’s hoof; but the eyes burned like two living coals, as they fixed themselves on the face of the terrified publican. Next, Henry heard the crash of a lantern on stones and the sound of Louis’s flying feet, and an awful terror came upon him, a great fear, which made his teeth chatter in his head and curdled the blood in his veins. The place seemed full of an unnatural light—black flames. The air was foul with the horrible odors of decay. Above all, Henry felt the fearful presence of that which was neither living nor dead—the semblance of a man whose human body had for thirteen long years been rotting in the grave. It was not living, but it moved. Its cold, shining eyes were looking into his, were coming near. There was no mistaking the look of that helpless body, the limp flaccidity of those outstretched arms. “He’s dead,” said Henry, as he turned up the white face. Its coat was wet with—something. #RandolphHarris 12 of 13
It was blood. But it was strange there should be no marks of violence about him, and yet he looks as if he had died hard. And truly, the dead man’s face was terrible in its fixed expression of mortal fear. The eyes were staring and wide open, the teeth clenched, a little forth hung about the blue lips. It was a horrid sight. Henry locked the door on the corpse until the police could arrive, and spent the remainder of the night in the butler’s pantry. However, when the Henry awoke, he could throw very little light on the matter. There was no one in the horse stables. No body, no foul odor, no broken lanterns. Just the horses and an old noose in one of the empty stalls. Whatever happened remain a mystery. The old living soul who knew the truth held her tongue. Mrs. Winchester simply told him, “Leave it to other staff members and never set foot in that cursed place. The poor boy is dead, and there is no reason for me to get myself mixed up in the business.” Demons can cause physical ailments such as dumbness (Matthew 9.32-33), blindness (Matthew 12.22), and various other defects and deformities (Luke 13.11-17). In all such cases medical and psychiatric treatment are of no avail, because the cause is demonic. Only be dealing with the spiritual causes of the malady can it be cured. Besides actual sickness, demons can cause speech and behavior abnormalities. In demon possession, which is an extreme form of enslavement and oppression, the speech and behavior abnormalities appear in greatly accentuated form with such violent physical manifestations as retching, screaming, blaspheming, cursing, foaming at the mouth, convulsions and display of tremendous physical strength. So completely does the demonic spirit gain mastery that one takes over the body of the victim and speaks through it with one’s own voice and language, which may be completely foreign to the language of the demonized. Sometimes evil spirits endanger humans’ temporal safety by exercising a certain control over natural forces. “I’ve covered my brother completely (That bump on the right is his knee) I will dig him out when I am ready to find how he liked it, you see.” #RandolphHarris 13 of 13
Winchester Mystery House
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I’ll bet you wonder whether poor Whitney’s race is run. I hate to keep you guessing, but I must have my fun. 🎟 link in bio. https://www.winchestermysteryhouse.com/
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You Don’t Use Demonic Forces, Do You?
Some authorities in the field of parapsychology speak of “natural” or “neutral” magic. They use this term to describe phenomena which cannot be fully explained scientifically, but which take place without reference to either God or the devil. In the realm of the physical are the inexplicable feats usually associated with spirits. Objects of furniture and people sometimes mysteriously leave the ground and appear to float through the air. These occurrences are called “levitations.” In close relationship to levitations is “telekinesis,” a phenomenon which takes place when a psychically gifted person apparently moves objects by concentrating on them. A few years ago, most scientifically minded people were convinced that such demonstrations were accomplished by the use of clever mechanical devices, but in many instances intensive scientific tests and checks have not uncovered any evidence of trickery. As a result, students in this field simply affirm that no one knows how these things take place. Another phenomenon closely allied to levitations and telekinesis is called “apport.” Solid objects which disappear from a room are found an instant later in a location hundreds of miles away. Parapsychologists conjecture that the physical matter dissolves into pure energy and thus is able to pass through closed walls. No serious student who has investigated these occurrences denies that they actually take place, but a great deal of research and careful study must be done to gain a full understanding of levitations, telekinesis, and apports. Ever since Einstein, no true scientist can say that such phenomena are an impossibility. While it could be that natural forces will be found to account for some of these amazing occurrences, it is also like that evil spirits play a part in many instances. Another enigma in the realm of the physical is the fact that in Europe some people diagnose and treat severe physical diseases through the magical use of a rod and pendulum. The pendulum is set in motion over the patient’s body to find the cause of the illness, and then magic is used to bring about healing. #RandolphHarris 1 of 17
No doubt the people who use this method often fail to help the patient, and undoubtedly a large percentage of the healings are only psychosomatic. Investigators generally agree, however, that in some instances the rod and the pendulum method appears to bring amazing results. An explanation for how this method works has not yet been found. Some parapsychologists have concluded that the area of the body that is ill undergoes a disturbance in “body electricity,” and that the pendulum in some mysterious way detects this variation from the norm. Not all researcher agree with this theory, however, and most of them at present simply acknowledge that they do not understand how the pendulum works. Christians who have investigated this phenomenon are convinced that to some degree that it belongs to the realm of the occultic, and that it should be avoided. An exhaustive listing and discussion of all the physical phenomena that may be classified as magic are impossible in a work of this nature. However, let us take time to look at one more example. The Chinses practice of acupuncture, which comes from ancient times, is receiving much publicity of late. Some of America’s top medical men and biologists have watched Chinese doctors perform major surgery using this needle treatment as the anesthesia. In addition, doctors of dozens of countries have reported that with acupuncture they are successfully treating people with ulcers, colitis, rheumatism, arthritis, asthma, eczema, hypertension, diabetes, urinary tract infections, anxiety, and even some cases of blindness and deafness. The scientific World is at an utter loss to explain how acupuncture works. The Chinese say that our bodies contain two “life forces” know as Yin and Yang, and that the insertion and manipulation of the needles in any one of several hundred specific points interrupts the flow of one element or increases the flow of the other to correct any malfunction and restore well-being. Exponents of acupuncture generally agree that it is completely ineffective in healing fractures, curing cancer, overcoming infectious diseases, or repairing organs that have been severely damaged. #RandolphHarris 2 of 17
These limitations suggest that even though acupuncture is “magical” in that it cannot be explained in terms of scientific knowledge, it should not be classified as occultic. Remember, we have no right to assert dogmatically that phenomena of this nature are necessarily the result of miraculous activity on the part of either God or the devil. Christians should be careful to avoid making assertions that cannot be substantiated. Strange manifestations often take place in the realm of the psychical. We already have referred to visions, trance-speaking, automatic writing, materializations, and apparitions in our discussion of spiritism. This latter phenomenon can be distinguished from hallucinations because large groups of people have reported seeing apparitions of ghost. Some even have been photographed. When looking at claims from both Christian and unbelievers, one realizes that all the reports of mysterious physically forced intimate assaults and frightful specters cannot be lightly set aside as the product of overwrought imaginations or of tricksters. Christians who have studied in this field are convinced that at least in some of the cases the work of evil spirits can be detected, but again we must acknowledge that we do not at the present times know exactly how to account for all such phenomena. The same admission must be made regarding extra-sensory perception in general. Research in this field by outstanding scholars like Professors J. B. Rhine, originally of Duke University, indicates that some people are able to perceive facts through a so-called “sixth sense,” and that others have the ability to transfer their thoughts without using the usual methods of communication. The mere possession of this “sixth sense,” however, does not account for all the incidents involving Extra Sensory Perception (ESP) encountered by researchers. Parapsychologists are forced to acknowledge that an element of mystery exists bordering on the supernatural, for they have produced strong documentary evidence for astounding events that baffle the mind. Hundreds of people who were interviewed told of having vivid dreams in which they “saw” in the most minute details and with absolute accuracy what was happening to a friend or loved one at the very moment the incident was taking place, sometimes thousands of miles away. #RandolphHarris 3 of 17
The skeptical scientists at The Winchester Mystery House, realizing that a real World of invisible spiritual beings does exist, knows it is at least possible that they are involved in hidden communications, and in the communication of telepathy. In general, our doctors understand nothing of magically based hypnosis because it is an occult practice. While normal hypnosis as practised by the medical World may be harmless, hypnosis used in conjunction with magic is can be dangerous, and may be a burden to the patient concerned. A second elementary form of magic may be found in the area of mental suggestion. We mean by this a transmission of mental or emotional forces over a distance. To further illustrate this, we must consider the case of a young psychologist, who wanted to qualify as a university lecturer. He specialized in hypnosis, though it was not the normal type of hypnosis but rather mental suggestion. He looked for a sensitive subject for his experiments and found one in the secretary of his boss. She was of nervous debility and easily influenced. Without asking, he attempted to put her to sleep. He would sit down about three or four yards away, either in the same room or a neighbouring one, and then concentrate on her. She would find that her arms would suddenly become limp. A tremendous tiredness would come over her. She would have to fight with all her strength to avoid falling asleep. These experiments were continued over a period of time with the girl always resisting them. During this time the girl gradually developed psychic disturbances. She consulted a psychiatrist. When he heard of the suggestive experiments, he told her that they would not do her any good, as he already known about the experiments of the young psychologist. The girl, having been the subject of these experiments for a considerable period of time, has since experienced strange paralytic symptoms and is now only capable of doing part-time work. In another instance, a Catholic woman regularly went to confession. As time went on, she gradually became psychically and suggestively dependent on the priest. Every time he said the mass she would fall to the ground and injure herself, and it was always her face. This happened even when she was 20 miles away and she could be quite oblivious to the fact he was taking a service. #RandolphHarris 4 of 17
The strange dependence became an unbearable burden to the woman. In her distress she began to pray earnestly, and she went to a Protestant minister for counselling. Through faith, she found a Christian as a personal Saviour. The attacks immediately vanished. The woman then left the Catholic church. Another is example is, when for several years, a craftsman indulged in black magic. He was chiefly concerned with the influencing of other people through his magic, and he also belonged to a magic circle which itself conducted unusual experiments. His first victim was a sensitive young lady. He brought her under his control to such an extent that she sacrificed both her money and her body to him. After this initial success, he looked for other victims. He continued to be successful with his experiments, and he finally found a young lady who regularly handed over her monthly pay-cheque to him. For this reason, he lived with her until finally her parents reported the matter to the police. A third elementary form of magic is magically based magnetism or mesmerism. Magnetism, together with hypnosis and suggestion, can be magically intensified. This next illustration refers to this fact. For our first example of this, we will turn to Dr. Trampler, a lawyer who was originally a student of Groening, but who later ceased to hold the same ideas. Dr. Trampler has outlined his methods of healing in a book Gesundung durch den Geist (Healing through the Spirit). His most fanatical followers are women. I have seen in counselling people that his healing powers are not beneficial, but are instead a burden to those treated. Two instances have been cited to indicate this. Firstly, a woman visited Dr. Trampler in Munich. He was successful in treating her backaches. In the course of the treatment he had made her hold her fingers up in the air as if they were antennae for cosmic powers, so he said. On returning home she found that organically she had been healed, but since then her spiritual life was held in check. She, like do many others, now found it impossible to pray and she felt as though there was an impenetrable wall between herself and God. #RandolphHarris 5 of 17
In another instance, a Christian woman who came to me for counselling had visited Dr. Trampler in ignorance. While sitting in his office, she had prayed. Finally when the other patients had been treated and it was her turn, Dr. Trampler came over to her. She had felt a strange fear come upon her and had prayed all the more. The doctor had then said to her, “I can’t do anything for you.” Since these healers often camouflage and garnish their activities with religious phrases, the terrible nature of their powers is often unrecognized. In Baden, I gained the acquaintance of a man who had been an unqualified medical doctor. In answer to my question regarding his healing ability, he answered, “Natural healing magnetism can enable you to heal about to patients daily. The power is by then used up and no one has to be recharged or refilled. People who treat more than two patients a day are either fakes, or they are plugged into the devil.” By this he meant that such people would actually be using magic in their practice. Here is another example of this both frequent yet confusing camouflage. A friend of mine, a Christian teacher, was being treated by a mesmerizer who was himself supposed to be a Christian. At least he attended a church. To make sure, the teacher asked the mesmerizer, “You don’t use demonic forces, do you?” The man replied, “Why not? Demonic powers are good. Demons are here to help us.” The teacher decided not to continue with the treatment! He was afraid of self-proclaimed demi-god practitioners. Having outlined these elementary aspects of magic, we will now go on to the more basic and principle forms. One can learn to differentiate between three main forms of magic: black magic which uses demonic forces, white magic which is allegedly promoted by the power of God, and neutral magic which is supposed to rely solely on ordinary forces of nature. It is a good idea to divide magic into three forms, but the same cannot be said of the definitions. Christian pastoral work reveals a completely different picture to one to these forms concerning neutral and white magic. Firs, however, some examples of black magic. #RandolphHarris 6 of 17
A minister informed me that the whole of his congregation had been infected by occultism. As an example, he told me of the healing of a 20-year-old girl through magic. Because of an attack of polio, the girl had had a leg shortened. She had been in the hospital for a long time and then been released as incurable. The girl and her mother were very depressed. In this state they had finally sought to the help of a man who practised black magic. This man sold them a mandrake root—for about $65! The root, which in some ways resembled a human figure, according to his directions had to be nursed by the girls as if it were a child. She had to wash it, feed it and put it to bed as if it were really alive. The magician then told the girl to pray and repeat vindictive psalms or songs, and to write them out and sleep with them under her pillow. Next he went on to tell her to stick two knives into the wall above her bed and to put two more knives under the pillow. In spite of this strange treatment the girl discovered that her leg began to grow longer. Finally she was healed, but afterwards she developed serious psychic disturbances. She then went to her minister, but he could give her no advice. The girl could no longer pray. When she tried to clasp her hands together, they were torn apart. On attempting to read the Bible she was assaulted with blasphemous thoughts. Fearing the loss of her own sanity, the girl gave both the mandrake root and an amulet which she had also received to the minister. Now she lived in the fear that the magician would revenge himself, and her leg, though it had been healed, returned again to its former state. In another example, during a mission in Toggenburg a farmer came and told me of some unhappy results of black magic charming. His boy had contracted polio. The doctor was called in too late and the boy remained paralysed. Since the farmer had wanted his son to be healthy no matter what the cost, he tried everything. Finally he went to the notorious magician Hugentobler in Peterzell. This man healed the boy with the help of black magic and his paralysis disappeared completely. #RandolphHarris 7 of 17
For several years everything went well, but when the son was 16 years old the father found him in the stable dying from a cut carotid artery. This happened quite out the blue. They boy had previously shown no signs of unhappiness. On his son, however, the father found an amulet from Hugentobler. Opening the leather pouch, he took out a small piece of paper with the inscription, “This soul belongs to the devil.” This was proof enough that Hugentobler had used black magic on the boy. The devil wants you to profess your faith in Christ with your mount, but for your action to contradict Christianity. The devil has power, but will usually leave you worse off. White magic is even more wide-spread then black magic. Many Christian groups practise this form of magic oblivious to its demonic character. White magic is a fulfillment of the words of Paul in 2 Corinthians 11.14, that even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. White magic is black magic under a religious disguise. Here are a few examples. A missionary to the Jewish people in North Africa by the name of Samuels, reported one of their magic customs. When one of their children is ill they take a towel, tie a knot in it and say, “In the name of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, be released from your sickness.” They then unite the knot and the child gets well. This piece of magic charming is a counterpart to black magic. A woman form Bukowina told us that her relatives could heal any type of disease in both animals and human beings merely through using white magic charms. By adding the words “In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost” to the spell the sickness would disappear. In spite of a family tradition of church-going, the various spells and charms had been handed down in the family for several generations. Both the woman and her daughter suffer from nervous disturbances. It was for this reason that she had sought the counsel of a minister. Her condition improved after the minister had prayed with her and later she became a convinced Christian. In another illustration, the owner of a certain farm hanged himself in his house. According to the popular belief of the villagers the man continued to hunt the place of his death. #RandolphHarris 8 of 17
The relatives were advised to sweep out the whole house repeating the words, “In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost.” After this the man’s ghost would no longer trouble them. The relatives followed this unusual advice, but afterwards the farmer’s wife was troubled by a strange feeling of unrest. Satan’s main occupation is opposition to God’s will. The name “Satan,” given Lucifer after his fall, means “adversary”—God’s adversary (Job 1.6; Matthew 13.39), and man’s especially when loves and serves God (Zechariah 3.1; 1 Peter 5.8). It was the intrusion of Satan’s will against the divine will that introduced sin into a sinless Universe and transformed “Lucifer” (Lightbearer) into “Satan” (Opposer). Satan’s rebellion fixed the pattern of satanic and demonic attitude as opposition to God and exaltation of self. This demonic strategy was evident in Cain’s murder of Abel (Genesis 4.8) and in Herod’s slaughter of the innocents (Matthew 2.16). The evil one was seeking to slay the promised seed of the woman (Genesis 3.15) to prevent the incarnation of the Saviour of the World, who would eventually seal the doom of Satan and the demons in Gehenna (Revelation 20.10-15). When the Lord Jesus began his public ministry, Satan appeared in person to tempt him (Matthew 4.1-11). Christ’s ministry on Earth provoked an outburst of demonic activity. Demonic power incited Judas to betray Jesus, Peter to deny him (Luke 22.3, 31), and the leaders of the Jewish nation to reject and crucify him. The powers of darkness appear in early Church history as recorded in Acts (Acts 4.25-26, 5.3; 8.9; 13.6-13; 16.16-18; 19.11-20, etcetera). The opposition of Satan and his demons can be discerned in every era of church history. The unseen forces of evil will increase their activity in the latter times (1 Timothy 4.1; Revelations 9.1-21), culminating in the demon-inspired debacle at Armageddon (Revelation 16.13-14), will the kingdom of righteousness and peace supplant the present satanic World system (1 John 2.17). #RandolphHarris 9 of 17
Many mental and emotional illnesses are, of course, due to natural causes, such as overwork, tension, fatigue, malnutrition, organic diseases, etcetera. Such disorders can be treated effectively by a physician, neurologist, psychologist, or psychiatrist. Demonic spirits may have little or nothing to do with such disorders of the mind. The causes are purely natural and may be corrected by purely natural means. This is not surprising since the Creator has placed the creation and his creatures under the normal operation of the laws of cause and effect. Since the supernatural exists and does interact with the natural World, the truly scientific investigator must take this into consideration. Prayer and faith can heal the mind and body supernaturally, just as medicine and rest can do it naturally. By the same token, unbelief and sin can harm body and mind as a result of demonic bondage. Demons can influence the mind. Bondage to demonic forces can be of varying degrees, as can yieldedness to God and control by the Holy Spirit. The Bible clearly teaches that man exposed himself to evil powers through the all (Genesis 3.15; 2 Corinthians 4.4; Colossians 1.13; Ephesians 6.10-20). Some unsaved people who live a balanced moral life are only mildly influenced by demonic spirits, while others, who flout God’s moral laws, are several influenced to the point of subjection. Other are so dominated that they are oppressed and tormented, and some are completely possessed by evil spirits. When mental and emotional disturbances are due almost entirely to natural causes, medical and psychological care can be very successful. However, when demonic influence, however slight, is at work, complete healing can only be achieved with the help of God through Christ. Successful therapy could be used is all psychologist, psychiatrists, counselors, and physicians were Christian with a knowledge of the gospel of deliverance from sin and Satan. When demonic influence is mild, it is almost impossible to distinguish between natural and supernatural causes. Only treatment that deals with the full gamut of causes will solve all the problems and insure a full cure. Parapsychology, which deals with extraordinary phenomena, will never fully understand these cases, much less effect deliverance, until the demonic factor is recognized and dealt with accordingly. #RandolphHarris 10 of 17
It is often said that Irishmen succeed best out of Ireland; those qualities they possess, which fail to ripen and come to maturity in the lethargic atmosphere of the Green Isle, where nothing matters very much provided public opinion is not run counter to, become factors of history under the sunshine and storm of countries where more ample scope is given for the full development of pugnacity, industry, or state-craft. At any rate, from the days of Duns Scotus and St. Columbanus down to the present, Irishmen have filled, and still fill, position of the highest importance in every part of the globe as friends of kings, leaders of armies, or preachers of the Truth—of such every Irishman, be his creed or politics what they may, is justly proud. To the lengthy and varied list of honours and offices may be added (in one instance at least) the item of witchcraft. He the unhappy creature, whose tale is related below, remained in her native land, she would most probably have ended her day in happy oblivion as a poor old woman, in no way distinguishable from hundreds of others in like position; as it was, she attained unenviable notoriety as a powerful witch, and was almost certainly the means of starting the outbreak at Salem. Incidentally the story is of interest as showing that at this time there were some Irish-speaking people in Boston, Massachusetts USA. Shortly after the date of its colonisation the State of Massachusetts became remarkable for its cases of witchcraft; several persons were tried, and some were hanged, for this crime. However, at the time about which we are writing there was in Boston a distinguished family of puritanical ministers named Mather. The father, Increase Mather, is to be identified with the person of that name who was Commonwealth “minister of the Gospel” at Magherafelt in Ireland in 1656; his more famous son, Cotton, was a most firm believer in all the possibilities of witchcraft. #RandolphHarris 11 of 17
Mrs. Glover, whose miserable husband before he died had sometimes complained of her, that she was undoubtedly a witch, and that wherever his head was laid, she would quickly arrive unto the punishments due to such a one. Mrs. Glover was accused of coming down her neighbour’s chimney to remind her of her death sentence. She also had the ability to make people have fits, make them deaf, sometimes dumb, and sometimes blind, and often all of this at one. Their tongues would be drawn down their throats, and then pulled out upon their chins, to a prodigious length. Their mounts were forced open to such a wideness, that their jaws were out of joint; and anon clap together again, with a force like a spring-lock; ant the like would happen to their shoulder blades, their Elbows and hand wrists, and several of their joints. She would cause their necks to be broken, so that their neckbone would seem dissolved unto them that felt after it, and yet on the sudden it would become again so stiff, that there as on stirring of their heads; yea, their heads would be twisted almost round. And if the main force of their friend at any time obstructed a dangerous motion which they seemed upon, they would roar exceedingly. Eventually Mrs. Glover was hanged. Mrs. Glover may be considered the first cause for the witch trials, for if the case of the Goodwin children she afflicted had not occurred at Boston, it is more than probably the village of Salem would never have been plagued as it was. Demonism is expressed in many forms. We have tended to think of it as far away in time or miles from our generation in the United States of America, but there is increasing evidence that this is not the case. I must tell you of one of our experienced in The Winchester Mystery House. Sarah Winchester had some women over to her mansion for a séance. The maid Agnus had returned from her day off on the following morning; she became possessed of an evil spirit. The minute Agnus saw Mrs. Winchester and her friends, she ran away. People had to hold her down to calm her. The sang “Onward Christian Soldiers,” then four of them prayed, claiming her deliverance on the basis of Christ’s victory over Satan on Calvary. #RandolphHarris 12 of 17
The séance women laid hands on her and commanded the evil spirit to leave, saying he had not right to stay in the body of one who believed in Jesus. Agnus had believed over a year ago, but her husband had taken a concubine and she was brokenhearted. In her deep sorrow, self-pity, and worry she reopened old areas to the devil. Once she cried out loudly: “I have been here thirteen years—do you think I am going to leave now?” Later her voice shrilled: “I hate Jesus; I will not leave.” Her facial expressions were terrible, hard, and angry. She tried many times to bang her head on the floor, and once she darted to a corner of the room and grabbed Mrs. Winchester’s parasol and struck her head with it. Hours passed and there seemed to be no change in her. Mrs. Winchester felt she could not remain much longer, as she had promised to go out visiting. As she was debating about what to do, Mrs. Winchester moved closer to Angus and began talking to her about Jesus Christ, telling her how He could alone comfort her and satisfy her heart. She listened and Mrs. Winchester saw tears in her eyes. Angus told Mrs. Winchester, “Jesus Christ loves me, and I love Him, too, and He longs to help me.” She continued to talk along this line and she sat up. Mrs. Winchester finally told her why she thought the evil spirit had gotten in, that her worry and self-pity were sins. She thoroughly aggressed and admitted her hated of her husband and his concubine, which Mrs. Winchester told her was sin, too. She talked freely, admitting her faith was weak. Mrs. Winchester and her friends prayed for Agnus for several days. Just when the evil spirit left, they did not know, but you could imagine the great joy that filed their hearts to see her set free from that awful, wicked, noisy spirit. Mrs. Winchester was so happy. Mrs. Winchester was known for her beautiful mansion. It was certainly a place to see in the late 1880s. Mrs. Winchester, heiress to the Winchester rifle fortune, spent the last half of her life and $5,500,000.00 (2022 inflation adjusted $151,599,411.76) building a gorgeous house that was at its height 9 stories, 500 rooms, and 65,000 square feet, Today it is an astonishing, what I call, Grand Queen Anne Victorian of 4 stories, 160 rooms, and an estimated 25,000 square feet. #RandolphHarris 13 of 17
Partly because of the mansion seclusion, partly by reason of its extreme beauty, partly, it may be, because the owner was more than charming and gracious in her pressing hospitality, The Winchester Mansion, which is now called The Winchester Mystery House, had an element of the poetic, almost magical. The warm light of the spring sunset swept across the estate, lying golden and mellow on the luxuriant growth of prune, fig, orange, lemon, and peach trees, and fantastic palm trees, emerald green lawns, exotic flowers, giant topiary, statues, fountains, gazabos, and other Victorian cottages lead up to the path of the 760-acre mansion. Against the gold sunset, it was hardly to be wondered at that one should slip into a mood of visionary enjoyment, looking for a time on the whole thing as the misty phantasm of a summer dream. Carpenters worked around the clock building and rebuilding room after room, as the spirits—or her fancy—directed. The house was furnished with the finest materials and was a showcase of Victorian elegance and taste. This paradise of art and colour, was a bewilderment of architects. The Winchester Mansion was truly a dream of delight. It was a paradise, an epitome of all that was beautiful. The mansion was like a vision out of a fairy tale. And in the evening, the sunset seen from the observation tower was like watching the blue sapphire sea turn a lovely amethyst, rose, violet in shadow. Seen in the hot summer months, Mrs. Winchester’s exquisite home was like looking at the most gorgeous emerald glittering from a distance. From the balcony of the fourth flood, one can smell the roses and jasmine all around. Llanada Villa, as Mrs. Winchester called it was a light of the Beatific Vision. It was so unreal, so phantasmal, that one was not surprised it held secrets. It was said that the mansion was haunted. Yes, that is just it. The Winchester Mansion is really haunted. However, what is there to be afraid of. People rarely see ghosts and no one sees them more than once. Yet, this mansion is said to be haunted by legions of spirits. After Mrs. Winchester went to Heaven, her favourite niece, Marian “Daisy” Marriot stayed in the mansion for a few months. #RandolphHarris 14 of 17
There was a story about the ghost of Mrs. Winchester in this royal house. She was supposedly imprisoned in this palace. Notice the beautiful iron-wrought grilles at the windows. The haunted region of the mansion, was striving to communicate with Daisy. Legend has it that Mrs. Winchester was imprisoned in one of the witch’s caps. How, was never known. It was when Daisy was in possession of this house that the ghost started to appear to her. She did not fancy real ghosts, however. One night, when the stars were not visible in the sky; low, thunderous clouds, massed at the head of the valley, were sweeping over so close that they seemed to brush the palm trees on the estate. To the south and the east the storm-clouds had shut down almost to sea, leaving a space of black sky where the moon in its last quarter was rising just to the left of the mansion—raining a black silhouette against it. They blue lightning flashed almost incessantly, and through the fitful darkness cam the sound of the bell tower, which could be heard across the valley, the rushing torrent below, and the full roar of the approaching rain, with a deep organ point of solemn thunder through it all. Daisy believed that Mrs. Winchester’s unquiet soul, sent out this story of eternity. Vivid lightning, the crowding of Mrs. Winchester and the shivering anticipation of Daisey’s possible visitation made sleep quite out of the question. Then, an hour and thirteen minutes after midnight, came a sudden vivid flash of lightening, and, as Daisy’s razzled and dazzled eyes began to regain the power of sight, she saw as plainly as in life—a tall figure, in a silky white dress, with long flowing hair. In another flash, the beautiful apparition looked at her long and earnestly. She was beautiful —more beautiful than one had supposed possible, her deep, passionate eyes very tender and pitiful in their pleading, beseeching glance. Daisy was hardly frightened, or even startled, but lay looking steadily at her as she stood in the beating lightning. Then she breathed, rather than articulated, with a voice that almost brought Daisy to tears, so infinitely sad and sorrowful was it, “I cannot sleep!” and the liquid eyes grew more pitiful and questioning as bright tears fell from them down the pale glowing face. #RandolphHarris 15 of 17
The apparition began to move slowly towards the door, its eyes fixed on Daisy’s with a look that was weary and almost agonized. Daisy learned from the bed and stood waiting. A look of utter gratitude swept over the face, and turning, the figure passed through the doorway. Out into the shadow of the corridor in moved, like a drift of pallid storm cloud, and Daisy followed, all natural and instinctive fear or nervousness quite blotted out by the part she felt she was to play in giving rest to a tortured soul. The corridors were velvet black; but the pale figure floated before her always, an unerring guide, now but a thin mist on the utter night, now white and clear in the bluish lightening through some window or doorway. Down the stairway into the lower hall of the second floor, where the stained-glass windows in the flared into sudden clearness under the fitful lightening, out into the silent cloister. It was very dark. Daisy stumbled along the solid mahogany floor. She guided herself by a hand on the gelled linseed Lincrusta-Walton wallpaper. Then a sudden blaze of fierce lightning, and vivid light allowed her to see the face with a look of overwhelming desire, of beseeching pathos, that had choked Daisy’s throat with an involuntary sob when she first saw Mrs. Winchester. And she heard the sorrowful words again, “I cannot sleep,” come from the impenetrable darkness. And when the lightning came again, the beautiful white figure was gone. She wondered around the mansion, searching in vain for Mrs. Winchester. She tired the door-to-nowhere when Mrs. Winchester vanished: it was locked. It was found at last. The smooth surface of the plaster on the white wall. There was a rough space, approximately the shape of the other windows in the tower, not plastered like the rest of the wall, but showing the place where a stained-glass window was covered up through its thick coatings of whitewash. Daisy began scraping away at the solid wall. Under the coatings of plaster appeared an entrance to a secret room and it led her over a vertical joint between firm, masonry work. She began digging out the mortar around the stone. With much work it detached. #RandolphHarris 16 of 17
Darkness within, yet beyond question there was a cavity there, not a solid wall; and with infinite care she removed all the stones. Still the hole was too small to admit enough light from the dimly illuminated cell. With a chisel, she pried at the sides of a large block of masonry, perhaps thirteen stone in size. It moved, and with seemingly superhuman strength, Daisy softly slid it from its bed. Suddenly a cry, a cry like that of a frighted woman—terrible. Framed by the jagged opening of the stone, hardly seem in the dim light, was a face, an ivory image, more beautiful than any antique bust, but drawn and distorted by unspeakable agony; the lovely mouth was smiling; the eyes were cast upward; and below, slim calcified hands crossed on the chest. Torture and agony visible in every tense muscle. Daisy stood there, breathless, staring at the sight, fascinated, bewitched, sad. So this was the mystery. With fiendish ingenuity, the rigid ecclesiastics had blocked up the window, then forced the beautiful creature to stand in the alcove, while with remorseless hands and iron hearts they had shut her into a living tomb to gain access to her land. With all that, it was necessary to find Mrs. Winchester so her soul could rest. Prayers were said that night for her soul. The next day the alcove was again walled up. Demons can subject the mind and the body. Demon subjection is one step beyond demon influence. When the moral law of God is persistently and flagrantly disregarded, demon influence may merge into demon subjection. The cursed then becomes the slave of the demon. Many have also become slaves because of illicit lust, perhaps goaded on by vile spirit that master their victims and drive them on to moral ruin. Those who nurse hate and revenge may find that a superhuman power takes over, impelling them to murder. Those who covet become slaves of greed. Those who persistently lie may become enslaved by evil spirit of falsehood until they are incapable of telling the truth. Persistent sin against the second table of the moral law regulating humans conduct towards humans (Exodus 20.13-17) opens the door to demon power than can derange a living soul’s mind, weaken one’s will, alienate one’s affections, and disturb one’s emotions. “Beware of sibling rivalry! At least said my grandmother. Which must explain, I do suppose, what happened to my little brother.” #RandolphHarris 17 of 17
Winchester Mystery House
Fabulous photo op outside The Winchester Mystery House circa 1940s 💁🏻♀️
🎟 link in bio. https://www.winchestermysteryhouse.com/
Whatever Person Posses this Book, Lucifer Promises to Carry Out One’s Plans
The latter part of the nineteenth century was an anguished and tortured period. Gentility was a terrible strain. Beneath the appearance of stiff propriety there ran currents of anger and aggression frightful in their intensity. Some indication of the dark, baleful aspect of the lives of our great-grandparent went untold. Black and white magic. Contemporary forms of magic are being studied carefully by parapsychologists. (Parapsychology is the study of apparently supernatural phenomena such as telepathy, clairvoyance, apparitions, and related forms of ESP.) Researcher in this field who operate from a completely naturalistic standpoint deny the existence of a personal devil or evil spirits. They may speak of two vital forces in the Universe, however, one working upward in an evolutionary manner, and the other counteracting these ascending steps. These investigators of psychic phenomena do not make any effort to explain the origin of these invisible powers, and simply declare that some people have special psychic gifts which give them access to these forces. They may even say that some religious practitioners appear to have superhuman power, and refer to their work as white magic. They may also acknowledge that some individuals can mysteriously bring harm to their enemies, and this evil use of power they call black magic. The majority of these parapsychologist insist, however, that they do not believe in a personal God or the devil, and simply affirm that at the present time we do not fully understand some of these esoteric powers in this Universe. The Christian student of occultic activity has a distinct advantage over the naturalist, for one accepts the reality of a personal God and an invisible World of angels and evil spirits. This does not mean that one rejects a scientific approach to the problems that are encountered. One must avoid the temptation to declare dogmatically that every unexplainable occurrence is the result of supernatural activity—either by God or the forces of evil. #RandolphHarris 1 of 16
Some manifestations that now puzzle us may in the future be understood within the framework of the natural. The fact remains, however, that Satan is a real personality, and that a multitude of evil spirits have joined him in opposition to God and His people. The Christian Bible records numerous instances which clearly reveal their activity, and we have good reason to believe that some of the unexplainable phenomena in evidence today are the works of these demonic beings. Practitioners of black magic usually declare openly that they are serving the devil. Many of them say that have made a pact with Satan, and some have indicated their allegiance to him by signing a document with their own blood. Missionaries have reported that acts with the devil are not at all unknown among many primitive peoples. Reputable followers of Jesus Christ are convinced that these religious leaders actually can bring illness or death to people through ritualistic incantations. Black magic is practiced extensively today in many parts of Germany, France, and Switzerland, as well as in primitive cultures. Dr. Kurt Koch cites numerous instances of conjurers casting spells which have brought about the death of animals and even humans. He also tells us of amazing healings, but points out that when a person is cured of a physical disease by such a practitioner, one usually suffers such severe mental depression that the new condition is worse than the old. As one reads the examples of black magic—cattle being milked dry in a mysterious manner, the sudden unexplainable death of animals, healings followed by terrible psychic disturbances, and the appearance of frightful apparitions—he finds his credulity stretched almost to the breaking point. If one has not witnessed such occurrences, one is likely to dismiss these reports as untrustworthy. However, serious scholars who have investigated these accounts do not deny the reality of such phenomena. They may not believe them to be the work of Satan or evil spirits, but they admit that many of them cannot be explained at the present time. #RandolphHarris 2 of 16
Professor Adolph Koberle, from the University of Tubingen, in the introduction to Christian Counseling and Occultist, says: Readers who approached this study with a purely rationalistic bent will experience spiritual difficulty in following the author in many areas because we have here a report of cases and experiences which seems to conflict with all sound human intelligence. However, perhaps such persons can be brought to listen, since research first tries the immanent solution of the problems and only where this is proved to fail does one break out and propose the added dimension, the dimension of the eternal. Even though research may evoke contradictions here and there—from medics and pastors, from parapsychologists and psychotherapists—yet the questions that are here posed cannot be evaded by any person who concerns oneself in a genuine and responsible manner with a fruitful diagnosis and a helpful therapy. Clearly sane, scholarly, and since humans have examined the apparently superhuman powers evidenced in black magic and other forms of occultism, and made every effort to find naturalistic explanations, before finally concluding that Satan and evil spirits are actually at work. Black magic as a specific form of witchcraft has its own literature. The Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses are the primary source, and are well known in Europe. They constitute one volume, and are alleged to have been written by Moses himself. Strangely enough, they maintain that this great national leader was a servant of Satan, and set fourth detailed instructions for establishing a mystical relationship with the devil. This research tells readers how they can gain power through black magic over all the people they will encounter both in this World and the next. It makes this solemn assertion: “To whatever person possesses this book at any given time, Lucifer makes promise to carry out one’s commands, but only as long as one possess this book.” Dr. Koch comments on the strange and sinister nature of this writing by saying, “In the many cases which the pastor-counselors have come to know, there is no possessor of The Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses who have no psychic complication.” #RandolphHarris 3 of 16
White magic is declared by its practitioners to be in direct opposition to black magic. Whereas black magic includes an open allegiance with the powers of darkness, in white magic the name of God is invoked, and Biblical phrases are utilized. Most people who practice it, however, have no understanding of the basic doctrines of the Christian faith. Some possibly are endowed with an unexplainable psychic power, and their desire to use it was not totally selfish at the beginning. However, many find very soon that they become enslaved to a yearning for self-exaltation. The Radio Bible Class has received letters from a number of people for a time had engaged in a “healing ministry” of this kind, but who abandoned it because it led to a gradual departure from God. Although some cult leaders and those endowed people, they are using the name of God and Christ in a manner that violates the Lord’s will. The danger of mistaking an enigmatic psychic power for the gift of the Lord must be recognized. Dr. Kurt Koch points out that Dr. Henry Drummond, fellow-worker of D.L. Moody, possessed psychic ability which enabled him to have mental power over person who were miles away. While working with Moody, Drummond found that he could hypnotically influence the large crows who had gathered, but concluded that to use this power would be a hindrance to the activity of the Holy Spirit. One prayed that the Lord would take this psychic gift away from him, and his prayer was answered. Had Dr. Drummond decided to exercise this ability, he would soon have established a Worldwide reputation as a great healer. However, his accomplishments would not have honoured the Lord, and real blessings would not have resulted from his ministry. In Biblical faith, trust is placed solely in the Lord Jesus Christ. In white magic it is deflected to someone else (the human agent) or to something else (one’s own faith, etcetera). In the Biblical prayer of faith, the praying person subjects oneself to the will of God. #RandolphHarris 4 of 16
In white magic, the help of God is demanded under the assumption that exercising such power is in accordance with God’s will. Also in white magic the Christian markings are mere decorations that camouflage the magical means of knowledge for power. Certain influences, as we might call them, can be termed elementary forms of magic. Firstly, we have an example of the criminal use of hypnosis. A girl reported in a counselling session that a doctor who she had consulted had hypnotized her. While hypnotized he had seduced her. The doctor had done the same to her girl friend. It was later discovered that he has also done this with other girls. When these stories leaked out, the doctor left the town and settled elsewhere. The girl said that for a long time after this incident she had not been able to read her Christian Bible. She had felt a strong aversion towards religion, and evil thoughts had always come to her mind when praying. Another example, a doctor at a hospital had indecently assaulted women and girls under hypnosis. Once the ward sister caught him in the act. To cover up his scandalous behaviour, he used to question the patients about their sexual relationships and included their answers in their case histories. He thus tried to protect himself in the event of anything being discovered. A respectable gurl who was engaged to a Christian young man became pregnant at the hospital. Following this her fiancé left her. The girl herself denied all knowledge of having an intimate relationship with anyone. The doctor had lain with her when she had been hypnotized. The assistant matron and the ward sister had finally reported the doctor. However, the result was that they themselves were dismissed by the medical superintendent. The doctor in question stayed. Other nurses, who also had incriminating evidence against him, were forced to keep quiet now because of the fear of dismissal. After a few years, though, when the situation became too hot for the doctor, he left and went abroad. #RandolphHarris 5 of 16
Scientific advocates of hypnosis believe that a man could not be forced to do anything under hypnosis that he would not be prepared to do when conscious. They are of the opinion that crimes are not possible under hypnosis. However, not all the experts share this opinion. Moreover, in my counselling work I have met many cases in which crimes have taken place under hypnosis. From the point of view of the Scriptures it is understandable that an innocent girl can be molested this way. Jesus Christ said that out of the heart come evil thoughts and so on. Evil lies dormant even in the most moral of people. Normally these instinctive reactions are held in check by one’s consciousness, which is moulded by education, religious training and is affected by one’s disposition. Under hypnosis however, this regulator is switched off. Instinctive impulses can arise unhindered from the subconscious, and can be exploited by unscrupulous and uninhibited people. Besides this, some take no account of the fact that magical hypnosis exists in addition to the normal type of hypnosis, and that this can have far deeper effects. Magical hypnosis can often be recognized by the fact that afterwards the patient is no longer able to pray or to keep one’s faith. Here are some actual examples. A Christian girl went to a psychiatrist. The psychiatrist used magical hypnosis far more often than he did ordinary hypnosis. I have occasionally come across such doctors in areas where magic is commonly practised. In reply to the girl’s question, the doctor admitted that he had not received his gift from God. He went on to tell the girl that he had wanted to conduct suggestive experiments on her. After the treatment, the girl lost her faith and could no longer pray. She suffered from doubts and other serious difficulties in believing. I think a lot of people who have had good lives, and then are abused and tortured over a long period of time have these same problems. #RandolphHarris 6 of 16
When they restart reading the Christian Bible, it may make them upset and angry and they do not know why, but they keep going and praying hoping to overcome their situation. They know that God is there and guiding them, but they have just been able to sustain, not yet overcome the situation. So they keep forcing themselves to pray and thank God so they can rebuild their faith, and it can really take a lifetime, especially when the situation has been going on for decades. Abusers just kind of rob some people of faith and joy. And year after year, they keep praying it is over, and it never is, so it makes it hard for them to trust anyone, including God. So they have to keep reminding of his words and praying and seeking mental health treatments so they can live, and they pray they will still have some youth left, if the situation is ever resolved. Another example is a man, in his spare time a minister dabbled in magic. He experimented in various areas and learned card-laying, how to use a pendulum, magic charming and magical hypnosis. Since he had no suitable people to experiment on, he used his wife for the purpose. As his magical abilities increased, so too did his own and his wife’s dislike for the Christian Bible and prayer. This dislike developed into a strong resistance, and as time went on psychic disturbances appeared in the wife. She exhibited a serious anxiety hysteria and always had to lock the door of whichever room she happened to be in. There also was once a businessman who had the strange ability of being able to influence his customers hypnotically or magically, causing them to accept the business offers that he makes to them. In this way, his yearly income exceeds $75,000.00. He rejects Christianity altogether. A woman allowed a masseur to hypnotize her. Before the treatment she had regularly read her Christian Bible, prayed and attended the local church services. Afterwards when she tried to pray, she felt a compulsion to blaspheme and to curse. She then lost her faith. These effects indicate that the masseur had used magical hypnosis. #RandolphHarris 7 of 16
Plato derived the etymology of the word “demon” (Greek, daimon) from an adjective meaning “intelligent” or “knowing.” If this derivation is correct, it suggests that intelligence was considered a prominent characteristic of demons. If demons are fallen angels, this would be expected. As Satan’s vast wisdom became vitiated when he sinned (Ezekiel 28.12, 17), the great wisdom that characterizes angels in general (2 Samuel 14.20) must also have been corrupted in his followers. This is undoubtedly why demons use their great but perverted knowledge so relentlessly in an effort to frustrate God’s purpose. Humans who consult professional mediums and use other methods of divination to obtain knowledge of the future seem to imply a degree of confidence in the intelligence of evil spirits. The superior knowledge demons possess is not a holy or saving knowledge. Demons “believe” but only to “tremble” (James 2.19). They are confirmed in depravity and never seek forgiveness. As preeminently unclean spirits, they never long for purity. They confess Jesus Christ is Lord, but they do not trust Christ or submit to him. Although they recognize his authority (Mark 1.24; 5:6, 7). They cleverly withhold knowledge of his incarnation and completed redemption (1 John 4:1-6), corruption sound doctrine (1 Timothy 4.1-3), discern between those who have God’s seal and those who do not (Revelation 9.4), and know full well their own tragic destiny and inevitable doom (Matthew 8.29). Their superhuman intellect is accomplished by superphysical strength. The psalmist celebrates this angelic characteristic: “Bless the Lord, ye His angels, that excel in strength, that do his commandments, hearkening unto the voice of His word,” reports Psalm 103.20. The Apostle Peter also speaks of the “power and might” of angelic spirits (2 Peter 2.11). Our Lord Himself indirectly referred to demonic strength (Matthew 12.29). #RandolphHarris 8 of 16
Perverted power and strength are thus conscious attributes of fallen angels. This titanic energy is displayed in the supernatural strength demons can impart to the human body when they enter it and possess it. The Gadarene demoniac who was dominated by a “legion” of demons (Mark 5.9) could not be bound even with chains. “Because that he had been often bound with fetters and chains, and the chains had been plucked asunder by him, and the fetter broken in pieces: neither could any man tame him,” reports Mark 5.4. The great strength of this demoniac was due to the vast number of demons who possessed him. “A legion” in Roman military history consisted of three-to-six-thousand-foot soldiers, and three to seven hundred cavalries. The term “legion” was not only the name of the possessed human but probably also served to indicate the phenomenal strength of the demoniac. The demons were so powerful that when the Lord ordered them to enter a herd of two thousand swine, they cased the entire herd to rush violently down a hill into the sea (Mark 5.13). No wonder the demon-possessed human was disturbed physically, mentally, and emotionally. However, the superphysical strength of demons is not limited to the physical energy they impart to their victim. Their power is broad enough to cause occult oppression of mind and body. They can produce physical disabilities and sickness unrelated to organic disorders and which medicine or natural therapy cannot alleviate. Perhaps the most terrible power of demons is to derange the mind by upsetting the nervous system. In this way they can afflict the body with a psychosomatic disease. Demons are aware of the close relationship between physical and mental health. By jangling the nerves and the emotions, they can cause mental Instability (Luke 8.26-36), producing suicidal mania (Mark 9.22). Their purpose is to drive their occult-enslaved victim to self-destruction. “I’m tired of his bleary-eyed tootling—I have warned him to lie down and nap. So now that I have told him to stop it, I will give him a sharp little rap.” #RandolphHarris 9 of 16
Dealing with necromancers who claim to contact the dead. The writer of 1 Samuel 19.9-10 describes in incident in which King Saul tried to impale David on his javelin. His attack is attributed to an “evil spirit from the Lord.” This indicates that God allowed a demon spirit to enter Saul and possess him. The kingdom of evil spirits is within God’s control, though not acting on his direction. God allows spirit activity, just as he allows evil men to prosper, within the boundaries of his ultimate plan for humans. God’s sovereign control over the realm of evil spirits is further illuminated in 1 Kings 22:18-23. “And the king od Israel said to Jehoshaphat, Did I not tell you that he would not prophesy good concerning me, but evil? And Micaiah said, Therefore hear the word of the Lord; I saw the Lord sitting on his throne, and all the hosts of Heaven standing beside him on his right hand and on his left; and the Lord said, Who will entice Ahab, that he may go up and fall at Ramoth-gilead? And one said one thing, and another said another. Then a spirit came forward and stood before the Lord, saying, I will entice him. And the Lord said to him, By what means? And he said, I will go forth, and will be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets. And he said, You are to entice him, and you shall succeed; go forth and do so. Now therefore, behold, the Lord has put a lying spirit in the mouth of all these your prophets; the Lord has spoken evil concerning you.” From this passage, too, it is clear that God overrules the World of evil spirits and permits them to do their work when it accords with His sovereign will and purpose. A unique incident involving spirits of the dead is recorded in 1 Samuel 28. King Saul had banished mediums and wizards out of the land as commanded by God (v.3). When confronted by the philistine army he was fearful and sought guidance from the Lord. When no guidance came, he told his servants to seek out a medium who could give him counsel (vv. 5-7). Having found one at Endor, Saul went to her in disguise. She feared a trap because of Saul’s decree against mediums, but Saul promised her protection and asked her to bring forth the spirit of dead Samuel (vv. 8-11). #RandolphHarris 10 of 16
The medium screamed in fear when she saw Samuel himself—apparently she was used to communicating only with evil spirits. This is the only account in the Old Testament of God’s permitting a departed person’s spirit to return to Earth. This was not by the lower of the medium, however; in fact, she was not prepared for it at all. Samuel told the piteous kin it was no use: God would take the kingdom from Saul and give it to David (vv. 15-17), and the Philistine army would rout Saul’s army (v.19). 1 Chronicles 10.13 provides the epitaph to the tragic story: “So Saul died for his unfaithfulness; he was unfaithful to the Lord in that he did not keep the command of the Lord, and also consulted a medium, seeking guidance.” Saul’s case is a chilling warning from Scripture against consulting with mediums or trying to communicate with departed souls; the judgment of God is upon it. A case of supposed witchcraft occurred in Cork, Ireland in the year 1685-1686, the account of which is contained in a latter from Christopher Crofts to Sir John Perceval (the third Baronet, and father of the first Earl of Egmont) written on the fifteenth of March in that year. Though the natator professes his disbelief in such superstitions, yet there seems to have been an unconscious feeling in his mind that his strict administration of the law was the means of bringing the affliction on his child. He says: My poor boy Jack to all appearances lay dying; he had a convulsion for eight or nine hours. His mother and several others are of opinion he is bewitched, and by the old woman, the mother of Nell Welsh, who is reputed a bad woman; and the child was playing by her that day she was upon her examination, and was taken ill presently after she was committed to Bridewell. However, I have not faith to believe it was anything but the hand of God. I have committed the girl to Bridewell, where she shall stay some time.” At one period in their history that peculiar people, known amongst themselves as the Society of Friends, and by their opponents as Quakers, appear to have been most troublesome, and to have caused a good deal of annoyance to other religious bodies. #RandolphHarris 11 of 16
Not unnaturally their enemies credited any wild tales which were related about them to their detriment, especially when they had referenced to their doctrine of the influence of the Spirit. Dr. More, in his continuation to Glanvill’s book, has in the sixth Relation an account of man, near Cambridge in England, who was possessed by an evil spirit which led him to do the most extraordinary things in its attempts to covert him to Quakerism. In the Life of Mr. Alexander Peden, late Minister of the Gospel at New Glenluce in Galloway, who died in 1686, there is an account of a Quakers’ meeting in this country which the Devil appeared in most blasphemous parody of the Holy Ghost. As Mr. Peden was travelling one time by himself in Ireland, “the night came on, and a dark mist, which obliged him to go into a house belonging to a Quaker. Mr. Peden said, ‘I must beg the favour of the roof of your house all night.’ The Quaker said, ‘Thou art a stranger, thou art very welcome and shalt be kindly entertained, but I cannot wait upon thee, for I am going to the meeting.’ Mr. Peden said, ‘I will go along with you.’ The Quaker said, ‘Thou may, if thou please, but thou must not trouble us.’ He said, ‘I will be civil.’ When they came to the meeting, as their ordinary is, they sat for some time silent, some with their faces to the wall, and others covered. There being a void in the loft above them there came down the appearance of a raven, and sat upon one man’s head, who started up immediately, and spoke with such vehemence that the froth flew from his mouth; it went to a second, and he did the same; and to a third, who did as the former two. Mr. Peden sitting near to his landlord said, ‘Do you not see that? Ye will not deny it afterwards?’ When they dismissed, going home Mr. Peden said to him, ‘I always thought there was devilry among you, but never thought that he did appear visibly among you till now that I have seen it.’ The poor man fell a-weeping, and said, ‘I perceive that God hath sent you to my house, and put it into your heart to go along with me, and permitted the Devil to appear visibly among us this night. I never saw the like before. Let me have the help of your prayers.’ After this he became a singular Christian.” #RandolphHarris 12 of 16
Mr. Peden was also somewhat of a prophet, and his specialty appears to have been the prognostication of unpleasant events, at all events to persons in Ireland. Two instances will suffice. When in a gentleman’s house in Co. Antrim he foretold that a maid-servant was enceinte, that she would murder the child, and would be punished. “Which accordingly came to pass, and she was burnt at Craig Fergus.” On another occasion two messengers were sent to inform the Lord-Lieutenant that Presbyterian ministers in Ireland should affirm that they had nothing to do with the rebellion at Bothwell Bridge. Mr. Peden said they were on the Devil’s errand, but God would arrest them by the gate. Accordingly one was stricken with sickness, while the other fell from his horse and broke his leg. In another cause of the supernatural, during the late 1800s, the Santa Clara Valley, in California presented sweeping vistas of rural open space. It was a serene setting for Mrs. Winchester to begin her building project, which she did with steadfast determination. She immediately hired carpenters to work in shifts around the clock. By the turn of the century the eight-room house had grown into a nine-story mansion! The estate eventually grew to about 730 acres of farmland (according to documents), which included orchards of apricots, plums, and walnut trees to supplement Mrs. Winchester’s income. Her dried plums, which turned into prunes were very popular. Some people believe that prune juice is what kept Mrs. Winchester’s screen so wrinkle free, gave it a natural growth, and made her look so young, as it flushes toxins out of the body (word of caution, make sure to use it in moderation and start in the morning with a few ounces, and do not go anywhere for 24 hours until you see how it work with your system). Nonetheless, Mrs. Winchester also owned homes in Atherton, Los Altos, and Palo Alto. The combination of her wealth and her eccentric building of this beautiful mansion gave rise to many rumors in the local community. #RandolphHarris 13 of 16
Jeremiah Haralson was waiting for a tour of Mrs. Winchester’s beautiful mansion, and he had been waiting an hour to have tea with her—he was really impressed with the mansion as it seemed to twinkle. It was really a rural setting and very pretty. The estate had a lot of thick green foliage and beautiful flowers and what seemed to be miles of green lawns. So he waited for her. It was August 1894, and the chill of an unusually evening entered into his bones. The construction workers passed him with a surely response to his “Good Night.” Many of the servants went by him like ghosts with soft voices; and it was nearly midnight, and she still had not come. He then heard a ghostly music wafting from the dark mansion. The bell in the belfry high in the gables began to toll. Jeremiah shrugged his shoulders and turned towards the gates that lead to the main road. He looked back, but there was still no sign of movement about the mansion, so sign of life, no lights even in the windows. He paused by the gate, wondering. Then he noticed that the front doors were open—wide open—and the porch lamp shone a little way into the foyer. There was something about this that did not please him—that scared him a little, indeed. The house had a gloomy and deserted air. It was obviously impossible that it harboured a rich widow. The must be away on business. In which case—Jeremiah walked up the path, tower the stairs to the front porch, and listened. Yet, still no sign of life. He passed into the foyer. There as no light anywhere. Where was everybody, and why were the beautiful jeweled front doors open. There was no one in the front parlour, nor the drawing room, the dining room and the study were equally empty. Everyone was out, evidently. However, the unpleasant sense that he was, perhaps, not the first casual visitor to walk through that open door impelled him to look through the house before he went anyway and closed it after him. So he went upstairs, and at the door of the first bedroom, Jeremiah turned on the gasolier, as he had done in the siting rooms. Even as he did so, he felt that he was not alone. #RandolphHarris 14 of 16
Jeremiah was prepared to see something, but for what he saw he was not prepared. For what he saw lay on the bed, in a white loose gown—and it was Mrs. Winchester, and her throat was cut from ear to ear. He did not know what happened then, nor how he got downstairs and into the street; but he got out somehow, and the policeman found him in a fit, under the lamp-post at the crossroads of the road. He could not speak when they picked him up, and he passed the night in the police cells, because the policeman had seen plenty of drunken men before, but never one in a fit like Jeremiah Haralson. The next morning he was well, though still very pale and shaky. However, the tale he told the magistrate was convincing, and they sent a couple of constables with him to her house. There was no crowd about it as he had fancied there would be, and the curtains were open. As Jeremiah stood, dazed, in the front of the doors, they opened, she Mrs. Winchester came out. Jeremiah held on to the upside-down posts on the front porch for support. “See, my boy! Mrs. Winchester is just fine as can be,” said the constable, who found him hiding before one of the posts. “I told you, you were drunk, but you would know best!” When Jeremiah was alone with Mrs. Winchester, he told her how he had come into the rambling mansion, and had found the front doors open and the lights out, and how he had seen something—in even trying to hint at which he turned sick and broke down and had to have a little Vin Mariani given to him. “Oh, heavens, boy,” Mrs. Winchester said, “I dare say the house was dark, for we were all at St. Joseph’s Cathedral with Daisy, and no doubt the door was open, for the maids will run out if they are left. However, you could not have been in any of the bedrooms on the second floor, because I have my staff lock them when I am away, and my dear sweet boy, they key was in my pocket. I dressed in a hurry and I left my odds and ends laying about.” #RandolphHarris 15 of 16
“I know,” Jeremiah said; “I saw a gold scarf on the chair, and some gold gloves, and a lot of hairpins and ribbons, and a prayerbook, and a lace handkerchief on the dressing table. Why, I even noticed the almanack on the mantlepiece—16 January 1895. At least it could not be that because this is 16 August 1894. And yet it was. Your almanack is at 16 January 1895, is it not?” “No, of course it is not,” said Mrs. Winchester, smiling rather anxiously; “but all the other things were just as you say. You must have had a nightmare, of a vision, or something.” Jeremiah was a very ordinary, commonplace, City young man, and he did not believe in visions, but he never rested day or night still he got away from the Winchester mansion. Now the curious and quite inexplicable part of this when Mrs. Winchester came down to breakfast on the morning of 17 January 1895, she found Jeremiah looking like death, with the Oakland Tribune in his hand. He caught hers—he could not speak, and pointed to the paper. And there she read that on the night of the 17th a young lady had been found with her throat cut from ear to ear, in a second story bedroom of that Beautiful, but Bizarre Winchester Mansion. Although demons reveal various degrees of wickedness (Matthew 12.45), they all are depraved. This aspect of their character appears in the terrible things they do to their victims. The Christian Bible often refers to them as spiritually and morally “unclean” (Matthew 10.1; Mark 1.27; 3.11; Luke 4.36; Acts 8.7; Revelation 16.13). People who deal in the occult are sometimes found to be vulnerable to Satan and demonic powers. Sometimes these “unclean spirits” take possession of vulnerable people. The character of demons reveals what they can do to their victims. Invisible, extremely intelligent, strong, and totally depraved personalities can do a great deal of harm to the vulnerable person. Since the supernatural exists and does interact with the natural World, the truly scientific investigator must take this into consideration. Prayer and faith can heal the mind and the body supernaturally, just as medicine and rest can do it naturally. By the same token, unbelief and sin can harm body and mind as a result of demonic bondage. (However, many mental and emotional illnesses are, of course, due to natural causes, such as overwork, tension, fatigue, malnutrition, organic disease, etcetera. Such disorders can be treated effectively by a physician, neurologist, psychologist, or psychiatrist. Demonic spirits may have little or nothing to do with such disorders of the mind. The causes are purely natural and may be corrected by purely natural means. This is not surprising since the Creator has placed the creation and His creatures under the normal operation of the laws of cause and effect.) #RandolphHarris 16 of 16
Winchester Mystery House
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Mission Can be Eternal—Told You Not to Hurt Him, but Maybe that’s a Lie?
Happiness is the object and design of our existence. The difference between the impossible and the possible is found in one’s faith. For those who struggle through life without knowing why they live, where they are going—and how to reach their highest potential—the restored gospel provides some answers. “Adam fell that humans’ might be; and hums are, that they might have joy,” reports 2 Nephi 2.25. However, happiness is not synonymous with pleasure or even freedom from pain. Those who expect life to be care free do not understand that joy is the brother and child of tribulation. True happiness comes from the personal, spiritual growth that rises out of the fires of mortal experience. It needs to be taught that there is an opposition in all things. Without that opposition, neither righteousness nor joy is possible. Some of the trials we face in life, we impose on ourselves. Others are caused by the sins and weaknesses of our fellow beings. And some just come because we live in a fallen, imperfect World. Still, the source of our trials is not nearly as important as the fact that they exist and the way we deal with them. “And then, if thou endure it well, God shall exalt thee on high,” Doctrine and Covenants 121.1-2,7-8. Trials, then, are a fundamental part of the plan of life. However, that does not mean we have no hope for happiness in mortality. The key to happiness here and eternal joy hereafter is the atonement of Jesus Christ. Through the principles and ordinances of the gospel, the Atonement leaves us all free to learn from sorrow, to grow from experience—and to find joy in the process. The path to happiness is virtue, uprightness, faithfulness, holiness, and keeping all the commandments of God. In obedience there is joy and peace unspotted, unalloyed; and as God has designed our happiness, He never will institute an ordinance or give a commandment which will not end in the greatest amount of good and glory to those who become the recipients of His law and ordinances. #RandolphHarris 1 of 30
Lying lips are an abomination to the Lord. Satan regularly lies to us about the nature of God and of ourselves. However, we do not have to listen. Some of the greatest battles in life are not literal battles but struggles in one’s own heart and mind against feelings of self-doubt, hopelessness and fear. Satan is increasingly striving to overcome the Saints with despair, discouragement, despondency, and depression. One way that Satan attempts to overcome us with such feelings is by telling us lies about our worth and about God’s feelings towards us. These lies may originate as simple thoughts, repeated many times in our minds, can develop into entrenched habits of belief. These falsehoods are then reinforced especially by many of the shows on some television programs and some television news programs; things other people say, or even by misinterpretation of the scriptures. Satan might even misuse words from the scriptures that emphasize the justice of God, in order to imply that there is no mercy. Whatever their source, Satan’s lies can take root in our minds and develop into feelings of depression, low self-worth, and inadequacy. Some people also love to lie, they often lie every day, several times a day, hangout with other liars, and stew in their hate, but refuse to read the Christian Bible or go to church. They even call themselves “gods.” However, if they were gods, why are they so unhappy and their lives so foul? Why do they have to cheat, steal, lie, and set other people up to get ahead. God does not live in lack and limitation, doom and gloom, nor is he foolish and ghoulish. People like because of their weaknesses and failings. God is continually disappointed in, frustrated with, and angry with liars. However, God loves all living and nonliving beings because He is your Heavenly Father and He created you. God’s love can be more joyous to one’s soul because He has the capacity to love one more than anyone knew possible. #RandolphHarris 2 of 30
The goal in life is to love, not hate. More specifically, to love God for God is the Creator of all things. We learn that through God all things are possible. We learn that we love God by following His commandments. We learn that we reap what we sew. So, if you love God, obey His commandments, and use the Golden Rule—treat others like you want to be treated—God will provide for you. Stealing, lying, hustling, setting people up are evil ways. Not God’s ways. It shows that you do not trust God because you refuse to be honest. Therefore, you have a mind set of lack and limitation and are unwilling to live an honest life. Satan is constantly telling you that you will never be as good as someone else, and for you, life is a competition. You cannot feel good about yourself unless you are hurting someone else, lying, or putting others down. To be humble is to recognize gratefully our dependence on the Lord—to understand that we have constant need for His support. Humility is an acknowledgement that our talents and abilities are gifts from God. It is not a sign of weakness, timidity, or fear; it is an indication that we know where our true strength is. We can both be humble and fearless. We can be both humbles and courageous. The Lord will strengthen us as we humble ourselves before Him. “God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble. Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and He shall life you up,” reports James 4.6, 10. With ownership comes envy. When youngsters play with friends, they soon discover other people’s toys they would like to get their hands on. Or they experience the injustice of being forced to share what they had assumed was their alone. Even babies express jealousy over objects, giving signs of “violent rage” when a toy is taken from them and given to another. Most children have an unusually intense relationship with a specific “attachment object,” usually a favourite blanket or a soft toy. However, in an intriguing study, researchers discovered that the majority of three-to-six-year-old children preferred to take home their original attachment object, as opposed to a duplicate made by a “copy machine.” To the prospect of taking a copy, the most common response was horror. #RandolphHarris 3 of 30
It is as if the children believe their special object had a unique essence, a form of magical thinking that re-appears in adulthood in our treatment of heirlooms, celebrity memorabilia, artwork and other things of sentimental value. Envy is a strong word. Some people may not only be jealous of material things, but about someone’s choices. However, do not be hurt. There are going to be times in our lives when someone else receives some unexpected blessing or special recognition. Do not be hurt—and certainly do not feel envious—when good fortune comes to another person? We are not diminished when someone else is added upon. We are not in a race against each other to see who is the wealthiest or the most talented or the most beautiful or even the most blessed. The race we are really in is the race against sin, and surely envy is one of the most universal of those. So be kind, and be grateful that God is kind. It is a happy way to live. In your life, is there something that you are envious of? Now is the time to let it go. During the first two weeks of August three revelations were given that the Saints might better understand about America and the rules for gathering. God told them they were honoured to be the ones to lay the foundation of America to which the nations of the World would come. The first to come were to be the rich and the learned, the wise and the noble. Then after God’s power came to them, the rest of the people were to come. The Lord said, “That the testimony might go forth from America; yea, from the mouth of the city of the heritage of God; yea, for this cause I have sent you hither, for verily I say unto you, My laws shall be kept on this land. Let no human break the laws of the land, for one that keepeth the laws of God hath no need to break the laws of the land. Behold, the laws which ye have received from my hand are the laws of the church, and in this light ye shall hold them forth. Behold, here is wisdom.” #RandolphHarris 4 of 30
The Saints were instructed that they must use their own judgment in some things and not expect God to tell them every little thing that needed to be done. The Lord said: “It is not meet that I should command in all things, for one that is compelled in all things, the same is a slothful and not a wise servant; wherefore one receiveth no reward. Verily I say, Men should be anxiously engaged in a good cause, and do many things of their own free will, and bring to pass much righteousness; for the power is in them, wherein they are agents unto themselves. And inasmuch as humans do good, they shall in no wise lose their reward.” All the members of the church throughout the land were instructed to give as much money as they could to be used in buying land in America, for God wanted them to buy the whole region around Independence. There was need for people to occupy and work this land, thus instructions concerning the gathering were given in this revelation: “Inasmuch as there is land obtained, let there be workmen (and women) sent forth, of all kinds, unto this land, to labour for the saints of God. Let all these things be done in order. Let the work of the gathering be not in haste, nor by flight, but let it be done as it shall be counseled by the elders of the church at the conferences. For verily, the sound must go forth from this place into all the World; and unto the uttermost parts of the Earth, the gospel must be preached unto every creature, with signs following them that believe. And behold, the Son of Man cometh. Amen.” A few days later another revelation was given concerning the people who were to come to America: “Behold, blessed, saith the Lord, are they who have come up unto this land with an eye single to my glory, according to my commandments. Yea, blessed are they whose feet stand upon the land of America, who have obeyed my gospel, for they shall receive for their rewards the good things of the Earth.” #RandolphHarris 5 of 30
To those who should live in the land of America, the Lord gave commandments. “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God, with all thy heart, with all thy might, mind, and strength; and in the name of Jesus Christ thou shalt serve him. Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. Thou shalt not steal; neither commit adultery, nor kill, not do anything like unto it. Thou shalt thank the Lord thy God in all things. Thou shalt offer a sacrifice unto the Lord thy God in righteousness; even that of a broken heart and contrite spirit. Thou shalt go to the house of prayer and offer up thy sacrament upon my holy day. Nevertheless thy vows shall be offered up in righteousness on all days, and at all times; but remember that on this, the Lord’s day, thou shalt offer thine oblations, and thy sacraments, unto the Most High. Verily I say, that inasmuch as ye do this the fullness of the Earth is yours. Yea, all things which come of the earth, in the season thereof, are made for the benefit and the use of a man, both to please the eye, and to gladden the heart; yea, for food and for raiment, for taste and for smell, to strengthen the body, and to enliven the soul. One who doeth the works of righteousness, shall receive one’s reward, even peace in this World, and eternal life in the World to come.” A commandment was given by revelation to those who were to work in America: “Thou shalt not idle away thy time; neither shalt thou bury thy talent that it may not be known.” Joseph Smith, Oliver Cowdery, and Sidney Rigdon, together with other elders, who were not to make their homes in America at this time, were instructed to go back to Kirtland. They were to teach and preach as they went, and visit those whom they have baptized on their way to America. On August 9, Joseph Smith and ten elders left Independence traveling by canoes on the Missouri River. By revelation the Lord instructed them, and others going from and coming to America, that they should travel by land rather than by water, because there were many dangers upon the waters, particularly the waters of the Missouri River. #RandolphHarris 6 of 30
Also, the Lord reminded them, when they traveled by water, they did not come in contact with people who might be converted to the gospel: “It is not needful for this whole company of mine elders, to be moving swiftly upon the waters, whilst the inhabitants on either side are perishing in unbelief. Be of good cheer, little children, for I am in our midst, and I have not forsaken you, and inasmuch as you have humbled yourselves before me, the blessings of the kingdom are yours. Be watchful, and be sober, looking forth for the coming of the Son of Man, for he cometh in an hour you think not. Pray always that you enter not into temptation, that you may abide the day of his coming.” The next day they were happy to meet several elders who were on their way to America. A revelation was given for them through Joseph Smith in which Jesus said: “Assemble yourselves upon the land of America, and hold a meeting and rejoice together, and offer a sacrament unto the Most High. And then you may return to bear record….Be faithful, and declare glad tidings unto the inhabitants of the Earth. Behold, I, the Lord, have brought you together that the promise might be fulfilled, that the faithful among you should be preserved and rejoice together in the land of Missouri.” Fewer than one hundred Saints were in Missouri to carry on the Lord’s work. This number, however, was gradually increased as other groups of the Saints arrived from the East. “The Lord your God is in the midst of you, a Mighty One, a Saviour [Who saves]! He will rejoice over you with joy; He will rest [in silent satisfaction] and in His love He will be silent and make no mention [of past sins, or even recall them]; He will exult over you with singing,” reports Zephaniah 3.17. Jesus Christ, The Son of God, is necessarily equal to the Father in power. Power of action is a consequence of perfection in nature. In creatures, for instance, we see that the more perfect the nature, the greater power is there for action. #RandolphHarris 7 of 30
Now, the very notion of the divine paternity and filiation requires that the Son should be the Father’s equal in greatness—that is, in perfection of nature. Hence it follows that the Son is equal to the Father in power; and the same applies to the Holy Ghost. The unity of the divine nature implies that the Son so acts of Himself [per se], that He does not act by Himself [a se].” The Father communicates knowledge to the Son, as He communicates His essence. The command of the Father can be explained in the same sense, as giving Him from eternity knowledge and will to act, by begetting Him. Or, better still, this may be referred to Christ in His human nature. As the same essence is paternity in the Father, and filiation in the Son: so by the same power the Father can do; yet it does not follow that the Son can beget; for to argue thus would imply transition from substance to relation, for generation signifies a divine relation. So the Son has the same omnipotence as the Father, but with another relation: the Father possessing power as “giving” signified when we say that He is able to beget; while the Son possesses the power of “receiving,” signified by saying that He can be begotten. Thus the mission of a divine person is a fitting thing, as meaning in one way the procession of origin from the sender, and as meaning a new way of existing in another; thus the Son is said to be sent by the Father into the World, inasmuch as He began to exist visibly in the World by taking our nature; whereas “He was” previously “in the World,” reports John 1.1. Mission implies infeority in the one sent, when it means procession from the sender as principle, by command or counsel; forasmuch as the one commanding is the greater, and the counsellor is the wiser. In God, however, it means only procession of origin, which is according to equality. What is sent as to being to exist where previously it did not exist, is locally moved by being sent; hence it is necessarily separated locally from the sender. #RandolphHarris 8 of 30
This, however, has no place in the mission of a divine person; for the divine person sent neither begins to exist where one did not previously exist, nor ceases to exist where He was. Hence such a mission takes place without a separation, having only distinct origin. The modern philosophical interpretation of conscience follows three main lines: an emotional-aesthetic line, an abstract-formalistic line, and a rational-idealistic line. Secularizing the sectarian belief in the revealing power of conscience, it is interpreted as the emotional reaction to harmony between self-relatedness and relatedness to others, in all beings and in the Universe as a whole. The principle of ethical action is the balance between the effects of benevolence and the effects of selfishness as indicated by conscience. Conscience works better and more accurately, the more the taste for the Universe and its harmony is developed. The educated conscience has a perfect ethical taste. Not harmony with the Universe but sympathy with the other human is the basis of conscience, according to Hume and Adam Smith; we identify ourselves with the other human and take one’s approval or disapproval of our action as our own judgment. This, of course, presupposes a hidden harmony between individuals and the possibility of a mutual feeling of identification. It presupposes a universal principle of harmony in which individuals participate which reveals itself to the conscience. The emotional-harmonistic interpretation of conscience has often led to a replacement of ethical by aesthetic principles. The attitude of the late aristocracy, high bourgeoisie, and bohemianism at the end of the last century was characterized by the elevation of good tastes to the ultimate judge in moral affairs, corresponding to the replacement of religion by arts in these groups. It was an attempt to reach a transmoral conscience but it did not reach even a moral one, and it was swept away by the revolutionary morality and immorality of the twenty-first century. #RandolphHarris 9 of 30
The second method of interpreting conscience philosophically is the abstract-formalistic one. It was most clearly stated by Kant, and it was introduced into theology by Ritschl. Kant wanted to maintain the unconditional character of the moral demand against all emotional relativism, against fear and pleasure motives, as well as against divine and human authorities. However, in doing so, he was driven to a complete formalism. Conscience is the consciousness of the “categorical [unconditional] imperative,” but it is not the consciousness of a special content of this imperative. “Conscience is a consciousness which itself is a duty.” It is a duty to have a conscience, to be conscientious. The content, according to Ritschl, is dependent on the special vocation, a special historical time and space. Only conscientiousness is always demanded. This corresponds to the Protestant, especially the Lutheran, evaluation of work. It is the expression of the activist element of the bourgeoisie and is identical with the bourgeois adaptation to the technical and psychological demands of the economic system. Duty is what serves bourgeois production. This is the hidden meaning even of the philosophy of the “absolute ego” in Fichte, who describes conscience as the certainty of the pure duty that is independent of anything besides its transcendent freedom. In the moment when transcendent freedom comes down to action it is transformed into obedience to a well-calculated system of economic services. It is understandable that this loss of a concrete direction of conscientiousness paved the way for immoral contents when they were commanded, for instance, by a totalitarian state. Against the aesthetic-emotional as well as the authoritarian form of determining the conscience, attempts were made in modern philosophy to have rationality and contents united. The most influential of these attempts is the common-sense theory of Thomas Reid and the Scottish school, id est, the moral sense is common to everybody, being a natural endowment of human nature (like the synteresis of the scholastics). #RandolphHarris 10 of 30
Decisive for practical ethics is Hutcheson’s theory of the sense of benevolence towards others. This theory adequately expressed the reality of British (and to a degree, American) conformism and natural benevolence in a society where the converging tendencies still prevail over the diverging ones, and in which a secularized Christian morality is still dominant. Another attempt to find rational contents for the conscience was made by Hegel. He distinguishes the formal and the true conscience. About the first he says, “Conscience is the infinite formal certainty of oneself—it expresses the absolute right of the subjective self-consciousness—namely, to know within and out of itself what law and duty are, and to acknowledge nothing except what it knows in this way as the good.” However, this subjectivity is fallible and may turn into error and guilt. Therefore, it needs content in order to become the true conscience. This content is the reality of the family, society, and state. With the state (as the organization of historical reason) the formal conscience is transformed into the true conscience. It is a mistake to link these ideas historically to the totalitarian use of the state and the pagan distortion of conscience by national socialism. Hegel was a rationalist, not a positivist. His idea of the state unites Christian-conservative and bourgeois-liberal elements. His famous, though rarely understood, idea of the state as the “God on Earth” is based on the identification of the state with the church as the “Body of Christ,” expressed in secular terms. The conscience that is determined by the state in this sense is determined not by bureaucratic orders but by the life of a half-religious, half-secular organism—the counterpart of Christian-rationalistic common sense of the Anglo-Saxon society. There is little new under the Sun. Who has not chuckled about the legendary “headache” that grips angry/resentful/exhausted/repulsed women when the husbands want dessert? One woman or even millions clutching their head at bedtime do not constitute a celibate society. However, when they are acting deliberately, and each “headache” is a political tool rather than a personal ploy, the case is very different. #RandolphHarris 11 of 30
In Lysistrata, as we have seen, a legion of battle-weary soldiers’ wives unite to force their husbands to cease hostilities. Their weapon, withholding pleasures of the flesh until the bellicose men lay down their swords, is celibacy at its strategic purest, employed in the great cause of peace. The 1880s saw a relation of the rules and some of the laws that had condemned women to social and economic dependence. This was particularly true for women in the more advantaged classes. Higher education, for example, was more accessible and so were some of the professions. White-collar employment mushroomed, opening so many new positions that women were actually hired. Because of the 1870s Married Woman’s Property Act, women could keep their wages and no longer had to surrender them to their husbands, so the idea of salaried employment was far more alluring than it had been. These changes were not gifts from a munificent government. They were the outcome of decades of agitation, mostly by middle- and upper-class women, against their oppression. Many of them had also spoken out on behalf of the millions of their working-class sisters, whose oppression was manifested differently but stemmed nonetheless from the same patriarchal domination. Had the laws changed in tandem with social customs and granted professional women the same legal independence as their brothers, spinsterhood might not have seemed so enticing. What was still so galling, however, was that in marrying, a woman merely exchanged her father’s authority for her husband’s. True, the 1882 (revised and upgraded) Married Women’s Property Act permitted women to own property in their own right, but in other crucial areas, they remained legally subservient. All too often, the transfer of subservience from father to spouse proved a sorry bargain. As a female writing team had observed a decade earlier, “A woman should be reminded…that in marrying she gives up many advantages. Her habits, pursuits, society, sometimes even friendships, must give way to his.” #RandolphHarris 12 of 30
Had not Florence Nightingale earlier warned that women who marry “must sacrifice all their life…behind his destiny women must annihilate herself”? She, like so many other women of her class, remained single—and celibate—to guarantee the personal independence she needed to fulfill her ambitions. The statistical odds against finding a suitable husband ensured that many a women languished in despised spinsterhood, pining for the children she would never have, writhing under the contempt of relations obliged to habour her upon the death of her parents, facing an interminable life of bleak boredom. (Had some talented members of this class undertaken to research the fate of young Hindu widows, a heartening and significant genre of literature might have developed.) However, the dearth of British men certainly cannot explain why one-quarter of British women never married—after all, at the worst of times, the imbalance never even quite reached eleven to ten. And determinedly marriage-minded women could and did emigrate to Australia, where the gender imbalance was reversed, though the quality of available men was somewhat questionable. What, then, explains this sweeping wave of middle-class womanly singleness? In Marriage as a Trade, playwright Cicely Hamilton argued the phenomenon was a political tactic to create a significant class of spinsters prepared to challenge male domination, including what she styled intimate abuse. Except for those who turned to other women for intimate satisfaction, as a small percentage did, these spinsters adopted celibacy as a necessary tool in their campaign. Another spinster-by-choice noted that “wherever women are admitted to pleasures of the flesh to such a degree that the celibate class is practically nonexistent, there the position of women socioeconomically, and intellectually is of a low order.” #RandolphHarris 13 of 30
Thus a considerable slice of the late-nineteenth-century celibacy was the deliberate choice of frustrated, rebellious, and politically astute middle-class women. Pleasures of the flesh, they believed, was a surrender of judicial and (despite the 1882 legislation) property rights, and an abdication of personal independence. They seized on celibacy as a strategy to improve the female condition and, with quiet determination, earned their own living and simply refused to marry. There are beneficial and sadistic forces in the World and therefore in human beings. If a person cannot eliminate one’s negative qualities (and most people find it almost impossible), one can, however, bring them into a neutral point and thus establish a state of equilibrium or balance. Living in a society where there is so much folly and ignorance, evil and unbalance, one must protect oneself mentally, emotionally, physically and even psychically. In a World seething with negative thoughts, murky in several areas with suspicion and even hatred, inflamed with violent feelings, one who knows the truth must hold all the more to inner and outer calm, to goodwill and faith in the Overself’s presence. Evil is strong in the World and sometimes people who aspire to the good become discouraged and depressed. It is at such moments that they need to recall whatever glimpses of the Real they have had and to remember that all things pass away, including the evil. We live in apocalyptic times, as history is already revealing. The call today is a penitential one, a solemn recall from earthliness to holiness, from frivolousness, grossness, and madness to remember of life’s higher purpose. Those who feel in their own hearts some sort of a response, however feeble, should cling to this precious intuition and let it guide them until they are saved. The failure to persuade either the masses of their leaders to change their way of life and thought is not a reason for abandoning either the inner or outer work as useless. #RandolphHarris 14 of 30
Even though any marked and visible result may not now appear, it may yet do so at a later date. We must have a moral concern which instigates acts aiming at conversion or makes proposals even if they will obviously fail. Question about man’s future and civilization’s prospects trouble us. More pessimistic answers are gloomily given than optimistic ones. It is not easy to do otherwise, when the facts are so tragically plain and when they lie so plentifully all around us. Philosophy least of all can afford wishful thinking. It too sees the night falling but whilst conselling stoic resignation it does not discourage constructive resistance. And it reminds the individual that society’s catastrophes should urge one all the more to seek and find the one necessary refuge—one’s own sacredness. If anyone wants to see a better World, one must make one’s own contribution toward it. And this demands inexorably that one begin with oneself and make one’s character and conduct better. The prudent human learns by observation or by experience, or more often by both, that there is a spiritual ignorance in the World and in humans: one must often conceal the greater portion of one’s wisdom and one’s power. This is necessary for personal safety which induced the writers of ancient Christian texts to advise those who lived under a brutal tyranny to emigrate. This did not mean going to a new country but to a new district. We are now in a position to understand the Hipster as Role Players. The Role Player is the fellow who, without any real aptitude or training to do anything, and without any real aptitude or training to do anything, and without a commitment to any goal, can skillfully fit the expectations that people have of one, and give typical performances to prove that one can do the job. The Roles of society are the capitalized nouns in Time style, exempli gratia Halle Berry or Very Important Person. There are great advantages in being a hipster in this sense. #RandolphHarris 15 of 30
First, being a hipster is a way of getting by. If a human feels that one is not anything, one is at least taken for something, and one belongs. Then one cannot feel contempt for the others because they are fools, they are taken in and so one satisfies one’s spite. And one can feel more confident that the so-called worth-while aims are empty because one can give a token performance, and this calms one’s own gnawing feelings of frustrations and worthlessness. Finally, Role Playing protects a deep conceit of one’s abstract powers: one “could” if one wanted, but in fact is never tested. The hipster in this sense must be distinguished from the industrious confidence human who wants to get the swag and vanish, and does not thrive on publicity. The hipster will often boast: one knows the score, one is ahead of the game. This cool attitude of the hipster is endemic in the organized system. However, on the other hand, the committed Organization Man also really belongs, one has status and salary and must protect them. Therefore the junior executive is in a terrible contradiction. One is cynical about the aims of the firm, yet one has fears that one’s own ineptitude will be found out. One has no recourse to concrete performance, for there is little contact with unambiguous material and there are no objective standards. How to meet a purely subjective demand? In pain (even ulcers) one has to get by by role playing, interpersonal relations abstracted from both animal desire or tangible achievement. One meets expectations, one conforms, one one-ups, one proves one must know by attaining a higher status. The trainee believes managing is an end in itself—technique is more vital than content. Compare the identical remark in a memorandum of the Liberal Project in Congress: The past few years “have given rise to a particular brand of politician. One is completely method-oriented. The substance of a bill that is paramount.” #RandolphHarris 16 of 30
The new type of salesperson does not sell the product but the human: by the expense account one proves that one is a right person and one confirms the buyer’s image of oneself, whatever that happens to be. For many bright young fellas, I think, the Organization has taken the place that the Communist Party had in the Thirties. At that time young men who were frustrated in their creative lives, perhaps because unable to stand the gaff, took out their self-hatred on the capitalist system, and often with sublime self-contempt accepted jobs with high salaries. In our decade, the young people believe they belong to the governing board, and their resentment has turned to cynicism. The standard of human integrity is equivalent. The type situation of Role Playing is the Air Force questionnaire asking who is Giotto, Vivaldi or Pilot Patrick: if the candidate gives the right answer, one is disqualified, one will not belong. The Role Player has no difficulty. I was once at another convention (National Recreation Congress, 1959), and striking was the difference between the working stiffs, the actual directors of play and group activities, and the administrators. The actual directors were human being, often enthusiastic and proud of happy improvisations and strokes of good judgment that they wanted to report. However, the administrators were concerned about standards, certificates, avoiding complaints and offending, and providing their dedicated service; it was clear that they wanted above all to diminish the factor of risk for themselves and create a front to get bigger appropriations. At the same time they kept asking how to recruit Leaders; but it was evident that the more strictly they applied their standards, the more surely they would eliminate the leaders. We must contrast the concept of Role, meeting expectations by playing it cool and knowing the technique for a token performance, with the concept of Identity. One discovers, fights for, appoints oneself to one’s Identity. Identity is defined by its task, mission, product; role depends on the interpersonal expectation of the others. #RandolphHarris 17 of 30
Naturally, statesmen and public spokes men are the role players, hipsters, par excellence. They exist by Front and giving symbolic satisfaction, so it is not to be hoped that their speech be serious, relevant to what objectively exists. However, it is dismaying to find the same symbolic relations in enterprises of production and the distribution of goods. One cannot help distrusting the goods, thinking they are only packages and brand names. And so, becoming disaffected from these enterprises, the Beat Generation sometimes comes to despise real goods. It takes good to be merely commodities that must be spurned: this is the fetishism of commodities in reverse. The factory operatives who could not care less about their jobs are not much aware of what they produce; causality is built into the machinery. The junior executives, advertising men, salesmen are role players and have little causal relation to the products. Presumably the technicians and top managers know something about and produce the products, since the products do come to exist. And the evidence is that the top managers do work very hard on production and sales; they work a sixty-hour week and ae produce of their work. However, even they have to devote an increasing majority of the time to interpersonal games of no productive use—90 percent. (Let me give a typical illustration. There is a well-known monthly magazine that five editors used to put out with a week’s work. It was pretty good. Unfortunately it made a reputation for itself and its wealthy sponsors hired a staff of ten secretaries and assistants to the editors. Soon the editors found themselves working all month, and quit. The magazine lost all its spark.) Considering the technical possibilities, we must say that our physical environment changes very slowly. This is not surprising, for so little thought was given to it. #RandolphHarris 18 of 30
When it comes to the misuse of substances, in some respects the story of the misuse of drugs is the same story as in the past. Substance use is still rampant, often creating damaging psychological disorders. New drugs keep emerging, and the public goes through periods of believing, naively, that they are “safe.” Only gradually do people learn that these drugs, too, pose dangers. And treatments for substance-related disorders continue to have only limited effect. Yet there are important new wrinkles in this familiar story. Researcher have begun to develop a clearer understanding of how drugs act on the brain and body. In treatment, self-help groups and rehabilitation programs are flourishing. And preventive education to make people aware of the dangers of drug misuse is also expanding and seems to be having an effect. One reason for these improvements is that investigators and clinicians have stopped working in isolation and are instead looking for intersections between their own work and that from other models. The same kind of integrated efforts that have helped with other psychological disorders are brining new promise and hope to the study and treatment of substance-related disorders. Perhaps the most important insight to be gained from these integrated efforts is that several of the models were already on the right track. Social pressures, personality characteristics, rewards, and genetic predispositions all seem to play roles in substance-related disorders, and in fact to operate together. For example, some people may inherit a malfunction of the biological reward center and so may need special doses of external stimulation—say, intense relationships, an abundance of certain foods or drugs—to stimulate their own reward center Their pursuit of external rewards may take on the character of an addictive personality. Such individuals may be especially prone to experimenting with drugs, particularly when their social groups makes the drugs available or when they are faced with intense social and personal stress. #RandolphHarris 19 of 30
Just as each model has identified important factors in the development of substance-related disorders, each has made important contributions to treatment. As we have seen, the various forms of treatment seem to work best when they are combined with approaches from the other models, making integrated treatment the most productive approach. These recent developments are encouraging. At the same time, however, enormous and increasingly levels of drug use continue. New drugs and drug combinations are discovered almost daily, and with them come new problems, new questions, and needs for new research and new treatments. Perhaps the most valuable lesson is an old one. There is no free lunch. Th pleasures derived from these substances come with high psychological and biological costs, some not yet even known. If you think about it, drugs that are not prescribed by a doctor and those that are used by people for recreational reasons is very similar to a virus, in that they can be deadly. The virus story is so strange that it is worthwhile to point out that it rests today on very firm experimental evidence. Some of the important episodes in the reproductive process of bacterial and certain other viruses can in fact be “seen” by means of the electron microscope. The first episode of the sequence is of this nature: the attachment by certain virus particles to the outer surface of the cell to be attacked. The next step can be deduced from later developments: apparently there is an enzyme in the protein coat of the virus particle which dissolves a hole in the membrane of the cell to which it is attached. The products of the chemical reactions involved then cause the entire protein capsule to contact. This has the effect of a hypodermic injection—squirting the nucleic acid content of the virus particle into the interior of the cell that is being infected. #RandolphHarris 20 of 30
All of this is remarkable enough, but what follows is even more spectacular. For the invading nucleic acid proceeds to take over from the cellular DNA and redirect the internal chemistry of the invaded organism! First, the viral nucleic acid directs the manufacture of enzymes that attacked the cellular DNA, thereby destroying the “control center” of the victim. Then a period of rapid reproduction of the viral nucleic acid begins. A little later, the viral nucleic acid induces the production of the kind of protein needed to make the protective covering of additional virus particles. After a few more minutes the newly formed strands of viral nucleic acid begin to get together with the new protein overcoats to form complete new virus particles. Eventually, when this assembly process has gone to completion, the last command is given by the invader to the cellular mechanisms—this time to produce an enzyme that dissolves large holes in the external membrane of the cell and allows the newly formed virus particles to escape. Between the instant of initial attachment by a virus particle to healthy cell and the final cataclysmic disintegration, twenty- or thirty-minutes elapse. The end product of the remarkable sequence of chemical steps is several hundred newborn virus particles, each identical with the one which started the chain of activity and each capable of initiating a similar lethal sequence in another healthy cell. In view of their bizarre reproductive habits, it is easy to understand the fascination that viruses hold for biologists. However, we must confine our attention to the light we earlier predicted virus studies would throw on the generality of the nucleic acid/enzyme mechanism. It is, of course, the ability of the viral nucleic acid to take over and successfully redirect the metabolic processes in the invaded cell that is pertinent to our theories. #RandolphHarris 21 of 30
For even in the absence of present knowledge as to all the details of the interaction, it seems clear that the virus-reproduction story implies great compatibility between the design of the virus nucleic acid and the nucleic acid/enzyme mechanisms of the host cell. The invading nucleic acid is not only able to reproduce itself in the cell but also able to provide the messenger RNA that successfully attached itself to the cellular microsomes and directs the formation of virus-specific enzymes. For this purpose transfer RNA, amino acid fragments, phosphate energies, and a number of enzymes must come into play. Because of the relative simplicity of the viral nucleic acid molecules, it seems unlikely that new forms of all such components are synthesized under their direction; rather, it seems that the specifically virus messenger RNA must be able to work in conjunction with components indigenous to the healthy cell in the manufactures of the enzymes needed for the formation of new virus particles. Coronaviruses are a type of virus. There are many different kinds, and some cause disease. A coronavirus identified in 2019, SARS-CoV-2, has caused a pandemic of respirator illness, called COVID-19. As of now, researchers know that the coronavirus is spread through droplets and virus particles released into the air when an infected person breathes, talks, laughs, sings, coughs, or sneezes. Larger droplets may fall to the ground in a few seconds, but tiny infections particles can linger in the air and accumulate in indoor places, especially where many people are gathered and there is poor ventilation. That is why hand hygiene and physical distancing are essential to preventing COVID-19. The first case of COVID-19 was reported December 1, 2019, and the cause was a then-new coronavirus later names SARS-CoV-2. SARS-CoV-2 may have originated in an animal and changed (mutated) so it could cause illness in humans. #RandolphHarris 22 of 30
Research continues, and more study may reveal how and why the coronavirus evolved to cause a pandemic. What is the incubation period for COVID-19? Symptoms show up in people within two to 14 days of exposure to the virus. A person infected with the coronavirus is contagious to others for up to two days before symptoms appear, and they remain contagious to others for 10 to 20 days, depending upon their immune system and the severity of their illness. What are symptoms of coronavirus? Cough, fever or chills, shortness of breath or difficulty breathing, muscle or body aches, sore throat, new loss of taste or smell, diarrhea, headache, new fatigue, nausea or vomiting, congestion or runny nose. Some people infected with the coronavirus have mild COVID-19 illness, and others have no symptoms at all. In some cases, however, COVID-10 can lead to respiratory failure, lasting lung and heart muscle damage, nervous system problems, kidney failure or death. If you have a fever or any of the symptoms listed above, call your doctor or a health care provider and explain your symptoms over the phone before going to the doctor’s office, urgent care facility, or emergency room. COVID has already killed more than 6 million people globally—and the pandemic is far from over. In many countries, including the United States of America, COVID-19 is now a leading cause of death, alongside heart disease and stroke. And yet experts say the pandemic’s true toll is much likely higher. It is quite possible that the number of deaths is around 12 million. However, 6 million is an astounding number on its own. No country has been able to escape this virus. The official global tally captures only confirmed cases in each country—and standards for reporting deaths vary widely. Some countries lack the robust testing protocols needed to diagnose cases while other may not count people who have died because of complications due to COVID-19. In many places, too, people are dying at home because they cannot reach care, and therefore are not counted in official death tolls. #RandolphHarris 23 of 30
The official tally also does not account for COVID-19’s vast collateral damage. Around the World, sick people have refrained from seeking care for fear of getting infected and countries have diverted resources from other critical health-care priorities. Deaths from tuberculosis have also risen for the first time in a decade. And though death rates are declining, they remain staggeringly high and will likely continue. Due to fears from COVID-19, many workers are retiring early. Around 22 percent more people have retired due to fear of contracting COVID. More than 3.5 million additional people retired during this pandemic. Thus virus research, in establishing the remarkable compatibility of the genetic mechanisms of forms of life so different as those bacteria and viruses, has further strengthened the argument of the universality of these mechanisms. However, just as in the case of pneumococci results, the evidence is less than conclusive. After all, viruses are pretty specific, each limited in its destructive ability to only one or a few species of cells, This is indicated by the descriptive levels given to viruses: the tobacco mosaic virus, the turnip yellow mosaic virus, the rabbit papilloma virus, and so on. Therefore we cannot ignore the possibility that, just as with the R and S strains of pneumococci, there is a close evolutionary kinship between the virus and the cell it attacks. Perhaps the two organisms, though greatly dissimilar, developed symbiotically through the ages in such a way as to maintain compatibility among their nuclear control mechanism. When thought of in this way, it could be that the virus and its related cell constitute a sort of single two-part organism and that the seemingly remarkable ability of the one to operate the chemical machinery of the other is but a prosaic example of the inevitable internal consistency in the metabolism of a viable organism, with no implications as to the universality of the genetic mechanisms among really different species. #RandolphHarris 24 of 30
Of course, we go a bit too far in disclaiming all pertinence to our thesis of the virus results. For a single virus sometimes, dos attack more than one cell species. After all, monkeys as well as men can contract polio. Just as in the case of the pneumococci results, nothing can keep the virus work from being suggestive. However, we have not yet made a convincing cause for the hypothesis that the genetic mechanisms are truly universal. More evidence is needed. Looking forward, some generations are born to create, others to maintain a civilization. The generations who launched the Second Wave of historic change were compelled, by force of circumstances, to be creators. Today in every sphere of social life, in our families, our schools, our businesses and churches, in our energy systems and communications, we face the need to create new Third Wave forms, and millions of people in many countries are already beginning to do so. Nowhere, however, is obsolescence more advanced or more dangerous than in our political life. And in so field today do we find less imagination, less experiment, less willingness to contemplate fundamental change. Even people who are daringly innovative in their own work-in their law offices or laboratories, their kitchens, classrooms, or companies—seem to freeze up at any suggestion that political structure need a little adjustment to make sure they adhere to the United States Constitution and that it is not brushed aside like ashes from a cigar. Is it not amazing that the country can force people to wear masks and get vaccinated, but will not force politicians, states, cities, and other to obey the birth certification of our nation? So frightening is Constitutional law, with its attendant risks to the corrupt status quo, however surrealistic and oppressive, suddenly seems like the best of all possible Worlds. Conversely we have in every society a fringe of pseudorevolutionaries, stepped in obsolete Second Wave assumption, for whom no proposed change is radical enough. #RandolphHarris 25 of 30
Honest to God terrorists are dreaming of totalitarian technocracies or medieval utopias. Even as we speed into a new historical zone, they nurse dreams of revolution drawn from the yellowed pages of yesterday’s political tracts. Yet what lies ahead as the super-struggle intensifies is not a replay of any previous revolutionary drama—no centrally directed overthrow of the ruling elites by some “vanguard party” with the masses in two; no spontaneous, supposedly cathartic, mass uprising trigged by terrorist. The creation of new political structures of the Third Wave civilization will not come in a single climatic upheaval, but as a consequence of a thousand innovations and collisions at many levels in many places over a period of decades. And the stakes are very high. In the past there was blood-drenched drama of wars, revolt, famines, forced migrations, coups d’état, and calamities. If you think of it, they are resurging. There is a need for broadened democracy. Most of us know, or sense, how dangerous a World we live in. We know that social instability and political uncertainties can leash savage energies. We know what war and economic cataclysm mean, and we remember how often totalitarianism has sprung from noble intentions and social breakdown. What most people seem to ignore, however, are the beneficial different between present and past. Christian theologians use the term inerrantists for those who insist that, even after two thousand years of problematic interpretations and mistranslation, the Christian Bible is error-free, and that, moreover, its every word must be understood in its most literal sense. Economics has its own inerrantists who maintain, in the face of all sorts of anomalous, puzzling and contradictory evidence, that nothing has really changed. At the “fundamental” level, they claim the economy had been only minimally affected by the digital upheaval and the shift to a knowledge-based economy. #RandolphHarris 26 of 30
The manager of one of America’s biggest mutual funds reassures an audience of European petrochemical executives that, in finance, things always go up and down, so what is new? The economy is still the same as it was before, some believe. This illusion, however, becomes unsustainable the minted we shift our gaze from the everyday fundamentals to the deeper ones. For it is at this deeper level that we find the most compelling evidence that the economy is not “as it was before”—that, in fact, today’s entire structure of wealth creation is quaking and rocking, suggesting even bigger changes to come. Things much bigger the cryptocurrency. Circumstances differ from country to country, but never in history have there been so many reasonably educated people collectively armed with so incredible a range of knowledge. Never have so many enjoyed so high a level of affluence, precarious perhaps, yet ample enough to allow them time and energy for civic concern and actions. Never have so many been able to travel, to communicate, and to learn so much from other cultures. Above all, never have so many had so much to gain by guaranteeing that the necessary changes, though profound, be made peacefully. Elites, no matter how enlightened, cannot by themselves make a new civilization. The energies of whole peoples will be required. However, those energies are available, waiting to be tapped. Indeed if we, particularly in the high-technology countries, took as our explicit goal for the next generation the creation of wholly new institutions and constitutions, we could release something more powerful even than energy: the collective imagination. The sooner we begin to design alternative political institutions based on the three principles described above—the power of underrepresented groups, semi-direct democracy, and decision division—the better our chances for a peaceful transition. #RandolphHarris 27 of 30
It is the attempt to block such changes, not the changes themselves, that raises the level of risk. It is the blind attempt to defend obsolescence tht creates the danger of bloodshed. This means that to avoid violent upheaval we must begin now to focus on the problem of structural political obsolescence around the World. And we must take this issues not merely to the experts, the constitutionalists, lawyers, and politicians, but to the public itself—to civic organizations, trade unions, churches, to women’s groups, to ethic and racial groups that remain marginalized, to scientists and housewives and businessmen and women. We must, as a first step, launch the widest public debate over the need for a new political system attuned to the needs of Third Wave civilization. We need conferences, television programs, contests, simulation exercises, mock constitutional conventions to generate the broadest array of imaginative proposals for political restructuring, to unleash an outpouring of fresh ideas. We should be prepared to use the most advanced tools available to us, from satellites and computers to digital streaming and interactive television. No one knows in detail what the future holds or what will be best in our society. For this reason we should think not of a single massive reorganization or of a single revolutionary, cataclysmic change imposed from the top, but of thousands of conscious, decentralized experiments that permit us to test new models of political decision-making at local and regional levels in advance of their application to the national transnational levels. However, at the same time, we must also begin to build a constituency for similar experimentation—and radical redesign—of institutions are the national and transnational levels as well. Today’s widespread disillusionment, anger, and bitterness against the World’s Second Wave governments can either be whipped into fanatic frenzy by demagogues calling for authoritarian leadership or it can be mobilized for the process of democratic reconstruction. #RandolphHarris 28 of 30
By launching a vast process of social learning—and experiment in anticipatory democracy in many nations at once—we can head off the totalitarian thrust. We can prepare millions for the dislocations and dangerous crises the lie before us. And we can place strategic pressure on existing political systems to accelerate the necessary changes. Without this tremendous pressure from below, we should not expect many of today’s nominal leaders—presidents and politicians, senators and central committee members—to challenge the very institutions that, no matter how obsolete, give them prestige, money, and the illusion, if not the reality, of power. Some unusual, farseeing politicians or officials will lend their early support to the struggle for political transformation. However, most will move only when the demands from outside are irresistible or when the crisis is already so advances, and so close to violence, tht they see no alternative. The responsibility for change, therefore, is found within us. We must begin with ourselves, teaching ourselves not to close our minds prematurely to the novel, the surprising, the seemingly radical. This means fighting off the idea-assassins who rush forward to kill any new suggestion on grounds of its impracticality, while defending whatever now exists as practical, no matter how absurd, oppressive, or unworkable it may be. It means fighting for the freedom of expression—the right of the people to voice their ideas, even if heretical. Above all, it means starting this process of reconstruction now, before the further disintegration of existing political systems sends the forces of tyranny jackbooting through the streets, and makes impossible a peaceful transition through the Twenty-first Century Democracy. If we begin no, we and our children can take part in the exciting reconstruction not merely of our obsolete political structures, but of civilization itself. #RandolphHarris 29 of 30
Like the generation of the revolutionary immortals, we have a destiny to create. In traveling learn to believe and trust your experiences as an alert to eye and ear. Often firsthand experience or chance conversations sheds a revealing light on abstraction. A Limo driver in a Latin American capital told me more than all his government’s cheery statistics: When I asked him why his people were not doing something to protest a soaring inflation rate, he simply imitated the stuttering of a machine gun. Once you give up your laws, rights, and freedoms, you usually never get them back. Nan did want to go in the water—I told her to stay on the shore—of course, she would wade in the breakers. And now she is drowned. What a bore! Look around the World at socialist countries and see what is wrong with them before you give up on Capitalism. I hear a voice, the cry of a wounded animal; someone shoots an arrow at the moon; a small bird has fallen from the nest. People must be awakened, witness must be given, so that life can be guarded. God, Thou causes grass to spring up for the cattle, please allow an abundance of health, cash, credit, money, diamonds, emeralds, rubies, gold, silver, platinum, palladium, and herbs for the service of humans. Thou bringest for break out of the Earth to sustain humans’ life, and premium cranberry justice to gladden their hearts. Thou appointest the moon for seasons; the sun knoweth its time of setting. How manifold are Thy works, O Lord! In wisdom hast Thou made them all. The higest achievement is to serve the Lord with gladness; come before His presence with thanksgiving. It is quite true to say that during deep prayer and praises, these exercises eventually lead to remarkable powers. This gives mental abstraction. For the Lord, your God, brought you into a good land; a land of brooks and of fountains that spring out of valleys and hills; a land wherein you shall eat bread without scarcity, and shall lack for nothing. You shall eat and be satisfied and bless the Lord you God for the good land which He hath given you. At the same time, allow His creative imagination and His concentrated will, and the lower energy to produce lofty aspiration. #RandolphHarris 30 of 30
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People Bamboozle their Consciences and Shut their Eyes
Life is an adventure of beauty, love, curiosity, success, and more importantly, Significance. Significance means making contributions to others. You may have a fresh start any moment you choose. And never confuse yourself with someone else. Just because you handled situations in a particular way, and like certain things, does not mean you understand someone else. It is a lot like thinking you can see into the soul of Hollywood actors based on their movies and social media; until you spend a few years with one, and find out he or she is nothing like you ever imagined. Some people act on the silver screen, other do it in life and are so far out of touch with reality, and their living soul. Nonetheless, in our department of the genetic mechanisms there has been a conspicuous absence of qualifying statements such as “this is the way it works in the frog” or “the bacterial mechanisms look like this.” On the contrary, in several aspects of the preceding treatment it has been implied, and occasionally it has been specifically stated, that in the nucleic acid/enzyme mechanisms we seem to be dealing with a general biological principle applicable equally to amoeba or man. However, it would obviously be unreasonable to imagine that a mechanism as complex as that underlying the interplay between the giant molecules of nucleic acid and protein enzymes could have been independently developed for each of many different species by tortuous processes of evolution. Therefore, if the nucleic acid/enzyme mechanisms do indeed exist in all forms of modern organism, it would seem necessary to conclude that they originated early in the history of life—before much progress had been made in the evolutionary differentiation that has resulted in today’s large variety of living forms—and that they subsequently survived in all of those forms only because their possession proved to contribute to all types of host organism markedly superior to survival attributes. #RandolphHarris 1 of 23
This hypothesis credits a single evolutionary discovery with such remarkably superior properties as to justify us in requiring of the biologists some rather strong evidence before we accept the current doctrine of the ubiquity of the nucleic acid/enzyme mechanisms. Let us therefore look at some of the recent research findings that suggest that we are here in fact dealing with a universal biological principle. Of course, the first discoveries attesting to the existence of the nucleic acid/enzyme control mechanisms could provide little evidence for their generality. Indeed, nearly all of the early work was done on bacteria or other microorganisms. It was not until 1962, for example, that messenger RNA was isolated from mammalian cells. However, unspecific, but highly suggestive, evidence pointing toward the broad applicability of the new discoveries was easy to come by. For example, DNA is always discovered in cell nuclei, when it is looked for. Similarly, the cytoplasm is always found to contain microsomes and RNA. And protein enzymes have been shown to control the chemical process that occur in the wide variety of plant and animal cells that have been investigated. One of the strongest reasons for believing that the nucleic acid/enzyme mechanisms might constitute a general principle of life was the neat solution they provided for a long-standing mystery of biochemistry—the precise architecture of protein molecules. A reasonable explanation of how, in nature, as distinct from the laboratory of the chemists, hundreds or thousands of different amino acid segments could be strung together in precisely ordered arrays, as was known to be required by the remarkable structure sensitivity of the enzyme molecules, filled a tremendous gap in biological theory. #RandolphHarris 2 of 23
For this reason the notion that all forms of living cells employ a system of control of their chemical processes of the general nature of that described in the preceding reports has from the first been attractive to biologists. However, no matter how attractive a theory might be, no good scientist would fail to put it to experimental test. And it was clearly important to do more than merely confirm the employment by various plant and animal species of similar broad principles of metabolic and genetic control. For the hypothesis that all living cells are controlled in their chemistry by a mechanism involving the interaction of nucleic acid and enzyme molecules, even if true, clearly need not imply identity in the details of the mechanisms employed by different organisms. Any ingenious scientist would encounter little difficulty in inventing variations of the nuclear DNA/messenger RNA/transfer RNA/microsome/protein enzyme scheme we have “derived” that would appear, from all that is known today, to be as workable as the particular scheme described. Thus an inevitable preoccupation of the research scientists has had to be not only to look for the existence of nucleic acid/enzyme mechanisms in various species but also to determine the extent of variation in these mechanisms from species to species. Determination of the similarities and differences among the molecular mechanisms of different species of organisms is not easy as it sounds, however. Scientific techniques are not yet advanced to the point where molecules of DNA in the nucleus or RNA in the cytoplasm can be sorted out and their precise dimension and structure catalogued. As is so usual in science, indirect methods of throwing light on the question at hand had to be sought. When considered in terms of modern knowledge, an experiment performed in 1928 seems to have first pointed the way toward a suitable investigation technique. #RandolphHarris 3 of 23
That early experiment involved work with a certain type of pneumonia-causing bacterium. It has been found that this bacterium comes in two slightly different forms, or “strains.” One strain is characterized by a smooth coating surrounding the bacterial cell; this is called the smooth, or S, strain. Bacteria of the other strain possess no such coating. They are called the rough, or R, strain. The curious thing that was reported in 1928 about these two strains of bacteria was that, when a batch of dead S bacteria was added to living R bacteria, there would subsequently appear in the culture living members of the S strain. (It has been well established that a colony composed exclusively of R bacteria would produce only more R types, whereas S bacteria would also breed true.) Since it was inconceivable that dead S bacteria could come back to life, the 1928 experiment had always required the conclusion that something in the dead S bacteria had converted some live R bacteria into live S bacteria. Many years later, additional experiments succeeded in isolating this something and showing that it was pure nucleic acid. In terms of our present understanding of the nucleic acid mechanisms, the explanation of the behaviour of the pneumococci is not difficult. Evidently the S bacteria contain a molecule of DNA that, through the mechanisms we have studied, leads to the formation of an enzyme that results in the construction of the smooth coating that characterizes this particular strain. A bacterium of the R strain differs from one of the S strain in not possessing this particular strain. A bacterium of the R strain differs from one of the S strain in not possessing this particular piece of DNA. The treatment that killed the S bacteria did not destroy their DNA. When the live R bacteria were mixed with dead S bacteria, occasionally DNA from a dead cell was able to work its way into a living cell, thereby supplying the kind of nucleic acid needed for the formation of a smooth coat. Result: the R bacterium became an S bacterium instead. #RandolphHarris 4 of 23
Clearly, this experiment constituted a step toward the establishment of generality in the genetic mechanisms; for it showed that the DNA from one type of pneumococcus bacterium could successfully operate the complex messenger RNA/transfer RNA/microsome apparatus of the other type of bacteria to produce a new and effective enzyme molecule. To be sure, if out theories are any good at all, they would have to account for the similarity of the genetic mechanisms among organisms so closely related as two strains of the same bacterial type. Nevertheless, the experiment was a step in the right direction. It suggested further steps. Was it possible to devise more advanced experiments to test for a similar kind of operation of the genetic mechanisms of one species by the nucleic acid from an entirely unrelated species of organism? Such a phenomenon, if it could be observed, would imply considerable similarity in the details s well as the general characteristics of the nucleic acid/enzyme mechanisms of unrelated species. It has indeed been found possible to devise experiments to test the proposed hypothesis. It is virus research that has provided this possibility. This work is important enough to our story to justify our digressing to study the characteristic of virus particles that are pertinent to an understanding of some of its implication. A virus particle is the simplest of all living structures. It consists of only two components: a quantity of nucleic acid surrounded by a shell, or “overcoat,” of protein material. There is no cellular structure—no nucleus, no cytoplasm, no microsomes, none of the other complex structures that we shall later see make of the modern living cell a complex piece of machinery. By itself, a virus particle appears to be a lifeless object: it does not eat, grow, reproduce or die; no chemical processes take place in its vitals; it is an inert capsule of protein-protected nucleic acid. #RandolphHarris 5 of 23
Certain virus particles may even form regular crystalline matrices, yielding microscopic structures of overall mechanical and optical properties grossly similar to those of salt or diamond, for example. In terms of such properties, viruses appear much more akin to lifeless minerals than to living organisms. Viruses are no more confused with their virions, but can be viewed as complex living entities that transform the infected cell into a novel organism—the virus—producing virions. A virus is a microscopic organism that can replicate only inside the cells of a host organism. Most viruses are so tiny they are only observable with at least a conventional optical microscope. Viruses infect all types of organisms, including animals and plants, as well as bacteria and archaea. Although viruses have no ability to metabolize on their own, they depend on a host organism for replication. Therefore, viruses are at the edge of life. Approximately 5,000 different viruses have been described in detail at the current time, although it is known that there are millions of distinct types. Viruses are found in virtually every ecosystem on Earth, and these minute life forms are thought to be the most abundant type of biological entity. The study of viruses is known as virology, a specialty within the field of microbiology. The common concept of viruses focuses on their role as pathogen. Actually, there are vast numbers of viral entities that are beneficial to individual species as well as providing ecosystems service. For example, a class of viruses known as bacteriophages can kill a spectrum of harmful bacteria, providing protection to humans as well as other biota. Since viruses are capable of self-replication, they are clearly some type of lifeform, and likely involved with the early evolutionary development of such other simple lifeforms as bacteria and protists. #RandolphHarris 6 of 23
Viruses differ, however, from the simpler autonomous replication of chemical crystals. This is due to the fact that a virus can inherit a genetic mutation and is also subject to similar natural selection processes of cellular organisms. A virus cannot be labelled simply, therefore, as inanimate or lifeless. Here, we consider it a lifeform, but we adhere to current taxonomy and so not credit it with a parallel domain to other recognized cellular lifeforms. However, put the virus particles in contact with living cells of a suitable species of plant or animal and the situation changes dramatically. For now, life seems to appear. In a matter of minutes the number of virus particles will have doubled. Under suitable conditions, a few hours will suffice for a millionfold increase in their popular! This peculiar lifelike/nonlifelike dichotomy in the personality of the virus has caused considerable attention to be focused on it in recent years. Without doubt, Wendell M. Stanley heads the list of pioneers in the field. As early as 1935 he showed that the tobacco leaf, could be isolated in the form of pure crystals. For his work in this field, Stanley shared in the 1946 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Stanley’s pioneering work on the tobacco mosaic virus led to studies by many investigators of the curious reproductive processes of viruses. Some of the interesting discoveries have been made with the kinds of viruses that attack, and therefore reproduce in, plant cells—such as those studies by Stanley; other important discoveries have arisen out of work with the so-called bacteriophages—viruses that attack and reproduce in the cells of bacteria. A consistent picture has emerged from all of this work bearing on the way in which a virus particle is able to make use of the genetic mechanisms of the cell it infects in order to reproduce its own kind. In such viral groups as poxviruses, papillomaviruses, and tobamoviruses, molecular taxonomy aligns generally with the genetic relationships of their hosts. This suggests that the affiliations of those viral groups predate their present derivatives, and, in fact, that these three viral groups and their hosts likely coevolved. #RandolphHarris 7 of 23
In addition, some other things we may want to consider, while on the topic of health and science, is community prevention programs. As we have seen, sociocultural theorists believe that psychological problems emerge in a social setting and are treated in a social context. Perhaps the most effective approach to substance-related disorders is to prevent them. The first drug-prevention efforts were conducted in schools. Today prevention programs are also offered in workplaces, activity centers, and other community settings, and even through the media. Some prevention programs argue for total abstinence from drugs, while others teach responsible use. Some seek to interrupt drug use; others try to delay the age at which people first experiment with drugs. Programs may also differ in whether they offer drug education, teach alternatives to drug use, try to change the psychological state of the potential users, seek to change relationships with peers, or combine these techniques. Before it begins—community prevention programs for substance-related disorders often target very young children. Children often pledge abstinence from drug use on Red Ribbion by wearing red, getting a sticker, and signing a contract. (They used to release balloons, but that has been showed to be dangerous, it can cause fires and harm fish and wildlife.) Substance use—illegal, legal, and medical must be controlled to keep people safe and sane. No drug should be viewed as cool, or “it is just,” if it was not prescribed to you by a doctor, leave it alone. Besides the out-of-scale physical environment and its complicated techniques, the social environment too is baffling and produces ineptitude and loss of the sense of causality. Think of a child trying to cope with Property Rights, a most abstract notion. There is no problem when it is a case of something being used by somebody else, when Leo tries to take Finn’s shovel out of his hand and Finn gets upset or complains to authority in no uncertain terms. #RandolphHarris 8 of 23
When it comes to obeying authority, the puzzlement comes when the shovel is idle and Mama say, “Leo, Leo, you mustn’t use that shovel, it’s Finn’s.” What impresses the child is no precise idea, but the grownup’s tone of conviction. The child “believes,” though there is no evidence of his senses. It is the beginning of what Karl Marx called the fetishism of commodities. What is sickening is that it is just this kind of influence that is wanted by priest, mayors, and tavern philosophers who declare that more home influence is the remedy for out troubles of youth. However, the social relationships of the grownups themselves are out of human scale, for in the corporate system of organization the puzzling has become altogether mysterious. It is disturbing to a child to sense that his mother is under the unseen thumb of religion or his father of the boss. However, the top managers in our semimonopolies are quite anonymous. This is part of the new managerial code, as described by Fortune itself. A child cannot use them as model heroes, for they are invisible. This is exactly why Jackie Robinson’s proposal to import the TV personalities as ersatz models is so unfortunate, for these visible “heroes” are puppets. With the increasing concentration of management and control, there is less relation even to Property Rights. Consider it. If one is put upon or abused, with whom shall one be angry? One cannot vent rage against an abstract system. However, there is no need to vent feeling, for it is a matter of the grievance committee and other regular channels. In the Middle Status, the heart of the organized system, the situation is not the same as in a bureaucracy, with which it is usually compared; for a bureaucracy has written code and a definite pecking-order; but organization protects everybody’s personal dignity, and its subtle interpersonal feuding and competition cannot be codified, for it is without any objective utility to give a principle. Even that mighty systems the State is more material: it has banners, soldiers, elections, postmen and women, police. #RandolphHarris 9 of 23
In a child, the systems of the State rouses awe and fear. However, the organize system exists only in the bland front of its brand-name products and advertising. There is no knowing how it is run or who determines. It is in these circumstances that young persons grow up convinced that everything is done with mirrors, by “influence.” Not even the personal influence of nepotism, but something more like the astrological influence of the planets. The sense of initiative, causality, skill has been discouraged. Merit is a train of “personality.” Learning is the possession of the Diploma. Usefulness is a Business Card. Justification is Belonging. Turning to the “sectarian” understanding of conscience, we find the Franciscan idea of the immediate knowledge of the natural law in the depth of the human soul. However, no two new elements supported and transformed this tradition: the so-called “German mysticism,” with its emphasis on the divine spark in the human soul, and the “spiritual enthusiasm” awakened by the Reformation, with its emphasis on the individual possession of the Spirit. Thomas Muenzer and all his sectarian followers taught that the divine Spirit speaks to us out of the depth of our own soul. We are not speaking to ourselves, but God within us. “Out of the abyss of the heart which is from the living God,” wrote Muenzer, we receive the truth if we are opened to it by suffering. Since the enthusiasts understood this divine voice within us in a very concrete sense, they identified it with the conscience. In this way conscience became a source of religious insight and not simply a judge of moral actions. The conscience as the expression of the inward light has revealing character. However, the question arose immediately: what is the content of such a revelation through conscience? Luther asked Muenzer, and Cromwell asked Fox: what is the difference between practical reason and the inward light? Both of the could answer: the ecstatic character of the divine Spirit! #RandolphHarris 10 of 23
However, they could be asked again: what bearing has the ecstatic form of revelation on its content? And then the answer was difficult. Muenzer referred to practical decisions in his daily life, made under the inspiration of the Spirit; and Fox developed an ethics of unconditional honesty, bourgeois righteousness, and pacifism. It was easy to ask again whether reasonableness and obedience to the natural moral law could not produce the same results. The “revealing conscience” is a union of mysticism with moral rationality. However, it does not reveal anything beyond biblical and genuine Christian tradition. An important result arising from this transformation of the concept of conscience is the idea of tolerance and its victory in the liberal era. The quest for “freedom of conscience” does not refer to the concrete ethical decision, but to the religious authority of the inward light that expressed itself through the individual consciences. And since the inward light could hardly be distinguished from practical reason, freedom of conscience meant, actually, the freedom to follow one’s autonomous reason, not only in ethics, but also in religion. The “religion of conscience” and the consequent idea of tolerance are not a result of the Reformation, but of sectarian spiritualism and mysticism. Florence Nightingale also had a religious state of mind when it came to the conscience. Although she was living in despair at the futility of existence under her parents’ roof, the privileged thirty-one-year-old’s life was confined to an endless round of social visits, teas, and parties. Florence loathed it all, even the “charity” balls and concerts where “people bamboozle their consciences and shut their eyes.” Over a decade earlier, on February 7, 1837, God had spoken and called her to his service. However, unlike the message Joan of Arc had received, Florence’s had been vague about what this service entailed. In any case, her parents rejected their daughter’s desire for a career or profession. #RandolphHarris 11 of 23
In Victorian, England, women like Florence were supposed to marry. She was an excellent catch—attractive, wealthy, clever, fluent in several languages, widely read, dynamic, witty. She had “adored” her longtime suitor, Monckton Miles, but after nine years of courtship, she had rejected him. Afterward, she suffered terribly when he would scarcely speak to her, but she never regretted her decision. Monckton would have satisfied her intellectual and passionate nature, Florence Explained, but “I have a moral, an active, nature which requires satisfaction and that would not find it in his life…I could be satisfied to spend a life with him in combining our different powers in some great object. I could not satisfy this nature by spending life with him in making society and arranging domestic things.” God, she believed, had marked her out to be one of the single women, whom He “organized…accordingly for their vocation.” The Nightingales were furious. Florence had turned down the perfect husband. Family quarrels escalated into bitter battles. On her thirtieth birthday, Florence confronted her life: “Today I am thirty—the age Christ began his mission. Now no more childish things. No more love. No more married. Now Lord let me think only of Thy Will, Oh Lord Thy Will, Thy Will.” Slowly, this will was revealed to her: she should devote her life to nursing, the profession of slatterns, drunks, women of the evening, and criminals. Hospitals in Florence’s day were cesspools of filth, degradation, abuse, and death. Only the most destitute and desperate would go to an institution where the floors were slimly with vomit, feces, blood, where patients were jammed together in filthy, linenless beds, and surgeons routinely seceded the degenerate nurses. Florence was able to convince her parents to let her go to Germany for a training session at a medical establishment, Kaiserwerth Institute on the Rhine. The family fought her every inch of the way. Her sister, Parthe, flung bracelets into her face with such force that Florence passed out. Despite it all, she went to Kaiserwerth. #RandolphHarris 12 of 23
Eventually Florence triumphed, and in 1853, she was named superintendent of the Institution for the Care of Sick Gentlewomen. Though she despised the charitable matrons in charge, dismissing them as “Fashionable” Mules, she overrode her family’s hostility and accepted the position. After she was installed, the Fashionable Mules were horrified at her energy and zeal. She reorganized their operation from the revolutionary perspective that the patient was paramount and forced the Institution’s directors to agree to accept all sick women, not just Anglicans. Florence was driven, compassionate, but cold near-saint. Her soft voice and gentle mannerisms belied her unyielding character and her irresistible force of personality. She had causes rather than friends, and she hovered somewhere between God and the rest of humankind. One of Florence’s attributes was strict celibacy, easy to abide by after her momentous decision not to marry. For her, it was a cheap price to pay for her freedom from marriage. She harmoniously incorporated this chastity and the chance to pursue the profession to which God had called her into her increasingly austere lifestyle. Even her intense relationships with the men who revered her seemed to lack a sensual dimension. Instead, she always ensured their admiration was sublimated into unremitting toil for her current cause. This nonthreatening fervor enabled Florence to deal openly with the most important officials of the day—doctors, politicians, and military officers—without the least whiff of scandal. This extended even to her brother-in-law, who married her sister Parthe only after Florence had turned him down. The next stage of Florence’s mission saw her orchestrate a move from Harley Street to Scutari in Turkey, as superintendent of nurses in the hospital there. With a ragtag band of nurses and nuns, she arrived in 1854 to an edifice groaning with wounded soldiers dying of malnutrition, gangrene, even a festering corpse, but innocent of furniture, operating tables, cooking utensils, or supplies. #RandolphHarris 13 of 23
In the basement, two hundred starving women were crammed together, quarreling, sickening, and dying. Outside, stopped-up latrines over flowed and poisoned the air. Despite these horrendous conditions, Florence’s worst enemy was officialdom, for the doctors refused to even acknowledge her existence. Barred from the wards, she waited it out until and influx of casualties following the Battle of Balaclava shook hostile doctors into enlisting her. War wounds, cholera, frostbite, and dysentery ravaged the troops. Nearly three out of every four soldiers will ill or injured. Florence threw herself into the struggle to save them, scrubbing, feeding, soothing, hearing them, raising funds, visiting them at night with one of her famous Turkish Lanterns—the Lady with the Lamp. Finally, mortality at the Scutari Hospital dropped from 42 percent to 2.2 percent. Florence was a hero to her patients and to the general public. She knew, however, that if it were not for the public support making it too awkward for the War Office to get rid of her, many a military doctor or official would sacrifice her like Joan of Arc. She had accomplished miracles, but only be defying authority, recruiting support from influential individuals, including Queen Victoria, and imposing her system and values with an iron will. Florence has also driven her own slight body too far, with sleepless nights, insufficient food, and no relief from relentless nursing, management, and intrigue. Twice she fell gravely ill, perhaps as a result of post-traumatic stress disorder, and never really recovered. Back in England, she adopted nunlike clothing—simple black dresses and prim caps. She was emaciated from illness and her abstemious diet. Her quiet melancholy stemmed from grief at leaving so many soldiers in their Crimean graves, as well as lingering memories of the war. However, the wounds and blood and dysentery, the cold and heat and hunger, did not haunt her as much as “intoxication, drunken brutality, demoralization and disorder on the part of the inferior; jealousies, meanness, indifferent, selfish brutality on the part of the superior. #RandolphHarris 14 of 23
At the end of her long life, Florence had not a single regret about her decision to nurse rather than marry. She was also very firm about advising other women “to keep clear of the jargon, namely, about the ‘rights of women,’ which urges women to do nothing that men do, merely because they are women. Surely women should bring the best she has, whatever this is, to the work of God’s World, without attending to either of these cries.” To the end, her ever-active, analytical mind was impatient with ideology and rote thought. Personal rebellion had been the price of her success, but when she died, aged ninety, she had enormous accomplishments to her credit. Apart from these successes, Florence was admired by and corresponded with the highest in the realm, including Queen Victoria. She measured her friendships and her life in goals achieved—nothing else mattered. Life was not a journey but a destination. This was true from her earliest years, when she had refused to be submerged within a stifling Victorian marriage and, in defiance of her genteel World’s natural order, embraced celibacy and freedom. Is the true patriot only the human who puts one’s faith in brute force, harsh violence, and tragic destruction? Is there no love of country in gentler ways? I venture the claim that the human who keeps oneself above negativity, who seeks and finds the Overself’s inner peace and then distributes it in one’s country’s mental atmosphere, is worth more to the State than the human who places one’s reliance on violent ways. The problem of our proper reaction to war is a difficult one. The duty of defending ourselves against, or rescuing the victims of, a murderous assault seems to be a sacred duty. It seems right and reasonable to believe that open aggression should be resisted and even, to a certain extent, punished. However, with the advent of the atomic and hydrogen bombs the methos of fighting for any cause, even a righteous one, has become the greater of two evils where formerly it was the lesser. Where self-defense may lead to certain and suicidal self-destruction, we begin to pause, to consider, and to hesitate. #RandolphHarris 15 of 23
Any investigation of the destiny of nations from a philosophic point of view shows that the appearance of an aggressive invader on a people’s borders must haves some underlying Universal Law which is deeper than the obvious political or economic one. Just as the appearance of a certain unpleasant event in an individual’s life is often due to corresponding faults or weaknesses in one which need to be remedied, so the invader’s appearance points to deficiencies or errors in the invaded nation’s inner life. They too need correction. There is no escape from this inner duty, and so long as the weaknesses remain so long will troubles appear or assaults threaten. Until the nations achieve this moral development, they can hope only to restrict the violence and area of war, not to eradicate it. Such a restriction can be brough about by external means only be in international policing army, just as society’s crimes is restricted by local police. This single army to replace the many armies implies some kind of a World government. Yet national feelings are everywhere still unwilling to sacrifice themselves to a supernational government, and there is some ground for the refusal. There is no other prospect of its arrival than through a third World War, whose aftermath would unquestionably be the birth of a World government to control international relations, leaving the separate peoples free to pursue their own policies in regard to internal ones. This is the only alternative path to peace, terrible though it be. Meanwhile what is the duty of the spiritually awakened individual, as apart from the unwakened nations? Has the time come for one to practise a new approach? Does the old one of meeting violence with violence belong to the animal World? Then what is the new one which belongs to the human World? Must one cease to take life, withdraw from this course of endless slaughter, and seek protection from the higher powers by offering up even the will to live itself if needs be? #RandolphHarris 16 of 23
The individual alone can test the truth and worth of this newer moral concept. For support of it offers no early likelihood of attaining sufficient strength as a political power. Philosophy can give no lead in the matter. The decision is a personal one. Each must decide for oneself. The need for new political institutions exactly parallels our need for new family, educational, and corporate institutions as well. It is deeply wired into our search for a new energy base, new technologies, and new industries. It reflects the upheaval in communications and the need to restructure relationships with the non-industrial World. It is, in short, the political reflection of accelerating changes in all these different spheres. Without seeing these connections, it is impossible to make sense of the headlines around us. For today the single most important political conflict is no longer between the affluent and less affluent, between dominate and non-dominate ethnic groups, or even between capitalist and non-capitalist. The decisive struggle today is between those who try to prop up and preserve industrial society and those who are ready to advance beyond it. This is the super-struggle for tomorrow. Other, more traditional conflicts between classes, races, and ideologies will not vanish. They may even—as suggested earlier—grow more violent, especially if we undergo large-scale politico and economical turbulence. However, all these conflicts will be absorbed into, and play themselves out within, the super-struggle as it rages through every human activity from art and pleasure of the flesh to business and balloting. This is why we find two political wars raging around us simultaneously. At one level, we see a politics-as-usual clash of Second Wave groups battling each other for immediate gain. At a deeper level, however, these traditional Second Wave groups cooperate to oppose the new political forces of the Third Wave. This analysis explains why our existing political parties, as obsolete in structure as in ideology, seem so much like blurry mirror images of one another. #RandolphHarris 17 of 23
Democrats and Republicans, as well as Tories and Labourites, Christian Democrats and Gaullists, Liberals and Socialists, Communists and Conservatives, are all—despite their differences—parties of the Second Wave. All of them, while jockeying for power within it, are basically committed to preserving the dying industrial order. Put it differently, the most important political development of our time is the emergence in our midst of two basic camps, one committed to Second Wave civilization, the other to Third. One is tenaciously dedicated to preserving the core institutions of industrial mass society—the nuclear family, the mass education system, the giant corporation, the mass trade union, the centralized nation-state, and the politics of pseudorepresentative government. The other recognizes that today’s most urgent problems, from energy, war, and poverty to ecological degradation and the breakdown of familial relationships, can no longer be solved within the framework of an industrial civilization. The lines between these two camps are not yet sharply drawn. As individuals, most of us are divided, with a foot in each. Issues still appear murky and unconnected to one another. In addition, each camp is composed of many groups pursuing their own narrowly perceived self-interest, without any overarching visions. Nor does either side have a monopoly on moral virtue. There are decent people ranged on both sides. Nevertheless, the differences between these two subsurface political formations are enormous. The defenders of the Second Wave typically fight against the power of marginalized groups; they scoff at direct democracy as “populism”; they resist decentralization, regionalism, and diversity; they oppose efforts to de-massify the schools; they fight to preserve a backward energy system; they deify the nuclear family, pooh-pooh ecological concerns, preach traditional industrial-era nationalism, and oppose the move toward a fairer World economic order. #RandolphHarris 18 of 23
By contrast, the forces of the Third Wave favour a democracy of shard power of the marginalized groups; they are prepared to experiment with more direct democracy; they favour both transnationalism and a fundamental devotion of power. They call for a crack-up of the giant bureaucracies. They demand a renewable and less centralized energy system. They want to legitimate options to the nuclear family. They fight for less standardization, more individualization in the schools. They place a high priority on environmental problems. They recognize the necessity to restructure the World economy on a more balanced and just basis. Above all, while the Second Wave defenders play the conventional political game, Third Wave people are suspicious of all political candidates and parties (even new ones), and sense that decisions crucial to our survival cannot be more within the present political framework. The Second Wave camp still included a majority of the nominal power-holders in our society—politicians, businessmen and women, union leaders, educators, the heads of the mass media—although many of them are deeply troubled by the inadequacies of the Second Wave World view. Numerically, the Second Wave camp undoubtedly still claims the unthinking support of most ordinary citizens as well, despite fast-spreading pessimism and disillusionment in their ranks. The advocates of the Third Wave are more difficult to characterize. Some head up major corporations while others are zealous anticorporate consumerists. Some are worried environmentalists; others are more concerned with the issues of gender roles, family life, or personal growth. Some focus almost exclusively on the development of alternative energy forms; others are mainly excited by the democratic promise of the communications revolution. #RandolphHarris 19 of 23
Some are draw from the Second Wave “right,” others from the Second Wave “left”—free marketeers and libertarians, neo-socialists, egalitarians, and civil rights activists, former flower children and the straightest of straight-arrows. Some are long-times activists in the peace movement; others have never marched or demonstrated for anything in their lives. Some are devoutly religious, others diehard atheists. Scholars may debate at length over whether or not so seemingly formless a group constitutes a “class,” or whether, if so, it is the “new class” of educated information-workers, intellectuals, and technicians. Surely many of those in the Third Wave camp are college-educated, middle-class people. Surely many are directly engaged in the production and dissemination of information, or in the services, and, by twisting the term, one could probably call them a class. Yet to do so obscures more than it reveals. For among the key groups pressing toward the de-massification of industrial society are relatively uneducated marginalized groups, many of whose members hardly fit the picture of the attaché-case-carrying knowledge-worker. How does one characterize women struggling to break out of confining roles in Second Wave society? How, moreover, does one describe the fast-expanding millions in the self-help movement? And what about many of the “psychologically oppressed”—the millions of victims of the epidemic of loneliness, the broken families, the single parts, the underrepresented gender groups—who do not fit neatly into the notion of class? Such groups come from virtually all the ranks and occupations of society, yet are important sources of strength for the Third Wave movement. Indeed even the term movement can be misleading—partly because it implies a higher level of shared consciousness than so far exists, partly because Third Wave people properly mistrust all the mass movements of the past. #RandolphHarris 20 of 23
Nevertheless, whether they comprise a class, a movement, or simply a changing configuration of individuals and transient groups, all of them share a radical disillusionment with the old institutions—a common recognition that the old system is now broken beyond repair. The super-struggle between these Second and Third Wave forces, therefore, cuts like a jagged line across class and party, across age and ethic groups, preferences in pleasures of the flesh and subcultures. It reorganizes and realigns our political life. And, instead of a harmonious, classless, conflict-free, non-ideological future society, it points toward escalating crises and deep social unrest in the near-term future. Pitched political battles will be waged in many nations, not merely over who will benefit from what is left of industrial society but over who participates in shaping, and ultimately controlling, its successor. This sharpening super-struggle will decisively influence the politics of tomorrow and the very form of the new civilization. It is as a partisan in this super-struggle, aware or unwitting, that each of us plays a role. That role can be either destructive or creative. Meanwhile, every morning, millions of people around the World blink their eyes open and immediately check the Web for stock-market prices, scan the business pages of on their tablet computer, tune in to the latest business news on the Internet—or do all three. Only then do they worry about breakfast. Some, no doubt would be willing to embed a microchip in their brain if it would automatically alter them to the latest twitch in interest rates or changes in their stock portfolio. Before long, some will. Until then, housewives in Shanghai, cabdrivers in New York, and currency traders in Frankfurt will have to make do with the close-to-real-time information pumped out, 86,400 second a day, by Reuters, Bloomberg, NHK, and their partners and rivals around the World. Providing all this news, online and off, has itself become a global industry. #RandolphHarris 21 of 23
No one can pretend to understand how the media and its unprecedented output of information (and misinformation) influence and distort stock markets and the World money economy. Nonetheless, amid all the clamour, experts confidently attribute an astonishing variety of stock-market swings, business shifts and economic ups and downs to changes in what they call “fundamentals.” General Motors’ chief economist allows that “mainstream economic fundamentals remain strong.” The chairman of Warner Telecom attributes its success in a weak economy to its “sound business fundamentals” despite the odd fact that its stock price had plummeted 90 percent in the previous twelve months. Investors should look at Russia’s economic fundamentals, rather than its recent history. A high level Chinese officials ascribes the strong export market to “economic fundamentals.” Since the pandemic, many countries, including Japan, have seen a significant growth in the trade deficit. What exactly the term “economic fundamentals” means, however, remains extremely hazy. Depending on who does the talking, it includes factors like “low inflation,” “sound credit quality” and “World prices for gold and cooper.” Or maybe not. During the wild run-up of the U.S. stock market during Trump’s presidency, economists threw into the definitional gumbo such supposedly fundamental variables as a balanced government budget, a strong manufacturing sector, the presence of absence of a global central bank, the disparity between stock prices and profits, levels of personal borrowing and the percentage of low-age jobs, not to mention increased bankruptcies. No doubt some of these variables are important—sometimes. However, what if, in fact, by focusing on them we miss some things that are even more important? What is all such factors depend, directly or not, on a deeper set of forces—“deep fundamentals,” so to speak, that shape the more superficial fundamentals themselves? #RandolphHarris 22 of 23
What if the fundamentals tell us one thing and the deep fundamentals another? And what if these more basic, more potent factors are themselves changing at high speed? Not only is it impossible that anything should be created by God, but it is necessary to say that all things were created by God. For when anyone makes one thing from another, this latter thing from which one makes is presupposed to one’s actions, and is not produced by his action; thus the craftsman works from natural things, as wood or brass, which are caused not by the action of art, but by the action of nature. So also nature itself causes natural things as regards their for, but presupposes matter. If therefore God did only act from something presupposed, it would follow that things presupposed would not be caused by Him. Now it has been shown, that nothing can be, unless it is from God, Who is the Universal cause of all being. Hence it is necessary to say that God brings things into being from nothing. In safety and in Bliss may all creatures be of a blissful heart whatever breathing beings there may be frail or firm…long or big…short or small…seen or unseen, dwelling far or near. Existing or yet seeking to exist, may all creatures be of a blissful heart. O God, please scatter of ignorance and darkness, please grant me your strength. May all beings regard me with the eye of a friend, and I all beings! With the eye of a friend may each single being regard all others. Thou didst cover it with the deep as with a vesture; the waters stood above the mountains. At Thy rebuke they fled, at the voice of Thy thunder they hasted away; they ascended the mountains and flowed into valleys, unto the place which Thou hadst founded for them; thou didst set a bound for the waters, that they might not return to cover the Earth. Thou sendest forth springs into the valleys; they run between the mountains; they give drink to every beast of the field, that all creatures may quench their thirst. Besides them dwell the fowl of Heaven, from among the branches they raise their son. Thou sendest down rain upon the mountains from Thy reservoirs, the Earth is full of the fruit of Thy works. #RandolphHarris 23 of 23
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Just because my composure sort of slips, the moment your eyes meet mine, chances are you think my heart’s your Valentine.
In the magic of the moonlight when I sigh, chances you believe the stars that fill the skies are in my eyes. Guess you feel you’ll always be the one and only one for me.
And if you think you could, well, chance are your chances are awfully good. Guess you feel you’ll always be the one and only home for me. Cresleigh Homes are awfully good. #CresleighHomes
In the Cup of Omens there is a Baptism into Black Magic!
In popular thinking, the term “magic” refers to the tricks of a sleight-of-hand artist, the optical illusions created by a clever trickster, or the cunning exhibition of seemingly supernatural powers by money-hungry charlatans. Undoubtedly many of the amazing demonstrations performed by such people have a completely naturalistic explanation, but honest scholars who have investigated occultic phenomena in many parts of the World agree that science at present is unable to account for some of the apparently supernatural events they have witnessed. The Bible also sets forth the view that not all magic is merely hocus-pocus. In the Biblical portrayal of magic, the Scriptures acknowledge that real superhuman power can be accomplished through sorcery, but clearly teach that the source of such manifestations is evil. The Egyptian magicians actually were able to change their rods into serpents by throwing them on the ground. Some say these rods were really snakes which had been hypnotized into becoming as rigid as a cane, but even so we must admit that no scientist today can explain how these men were able to perform this feat. They also were successful in changing water into blood, and in producing a miraculous multiplication of frogs, thus apparently duplicating what Moses and Aaron had done by God’s supernatural power. The Egyptian sorcerers undoubtedly believed their gods gave them the ability to perform these amazing exploits, and they viewed their encounter with Moses and Aaron as a contest to determine whether or not their gods were more powerful than God. The Bible implies that supernatural beings take advantage of the practices of heathenism to further enslave their adherents, but declares that these invisible agents are neither holy angels nor gods. It states that they are demons—spirit beings who rebelled against God and now are dedicated to Him. For this reason, Moses and Aaron convincingly demonstrated the superiority of God over these demonic forces. #RandolphHarris 1 of 22
When Aaron’s rod became a serpent, it swallowed up those the Egyptians had cast to the ground. The greater power of God also was manifested when the pagan sorcerers were unable to remove the plague of frogs, but Moses simply prayed to the Lord, and “the frogs died out of the houses, out of the villages, and out of the fields,” reports Exodus 8.13. God’s servants then brought about the third plague, a changing of dust into lice, a judgment which made life almost unbearable for human and beast. This time the magicians of Egypt were unable to duplicate the miracle, not could they bring about the sudden death of the pests. They therefore humbly acknowledged, “This is the finger of God,” reports Exodus 8.19. In this manner, the Lord demonstrated His absolute superiority over the powers of evil which the Egyptians worshiped as gods. It does important for us to note again that the Bible does not indicate that the magicians were frauds. A careful study of this history of Egypt, Babylon, and other nations of antiquity reveals that heathen priests accomplished many unusual feats, and kept the people under subjection through what appeared to be supernatural abilities. In seeking to understand some of the mysterious phenomena of heathenism, we must bear in mind the declaration of the apostle Paul, “But I say that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons,” reports 1 Corinthians 10.20. The apostle was definitely saying that the worship of idols involved more than merely bowing down to lifeless images. Furthermore, the fact that the Bible repeatedly forbids sorcery, divination, and every other form of occultism is evidence that God links these practices with actual demonic power. We repeat, the death penalty would not have been the prescribed punishment for all mediums, fortunetellers, and sorcerers if they were only quacks guilty of deception for gain. #RandolphHarris 2 of 22
Critics of the Bible insist that its attitude toward some forms of witchcraft is inconsistent, and even sincere believers have been puzzled by several passages which appear to condone these practices. A careful examination of these instances, however, reveals that such critical assertions are unwarranted. Genesis 30: 14-18 records the story of Leah and Rachel bargaining for mandrakes, showing that they believed these so-called “love apples” increased a woman’s fertility. However, the fact that Jacob’s wives held to this ancient concept does not necessarily indicate that the Bible expresses approval. Then, too, modern investigation has shown that some primitive medicines, scorned by medics a generation or two ago, actually do possess qualities which make them valuable. At any rate, this passage of Scripture does not indicate that the Bible encouraged the use of magic. In another instance of apparent superstition, Jacob peeled the bark from saplings to give them a spotted appearance become he believed that they offspring of the cattle bred before them would then be speckled and spotted. This story is declared to be an indication that the writer of Genesis held to the notion that the colour of the unborn young would be affected by what the female animal saw at the time of impregnation. (See Genesis 30.37-43.) A careful study of the entire account reveals, however, the truth that God actually was controlling the breeding process through the laws of heredity, not by means of Jacob’s efforts. The angel of the Lord later told the patriarch that the male animals possessed genetic characteristics which brought about the birth of so many striped, speckled, and spotted animals. (See Genesis 31.11-12.) Therefore, we can assert with confidence that this passage of Scripture in no way encourages the use of magic. The statement of Joseph to his brothers about his silver cup also poses a problem for Bible students, because his words seem to indicate that he used it for purposes of divination. #RandolphHarris 3 of 22
After the steward had hidden the cup in Benjamin’s sack of grain, Joseph told him what he was to do and say. The King James Version records Joseph’s instructions as follows, “Up, follow after them men; and when thou dost overtake them, say unto them, Wherefore have ye rewarded evil for good? Is not this it in which my Lord drinketh, and whereby indeed he divineth? Ye have done evil in so doing” (Genesis 44.4-5). Scholars today know that the heathen sorcerers of Joseph’s day often sprinkled small particles of gold or sliver into a cup of water, or poured a small amount of oil in it, and then “read” the resulting design in the cup of omens. While it is possible that Joseph fell into this sinful and heathenish practice, we doubt very much that he did, for he had one of the finest characters of all the men portrayed in the entire Old Testament. In addition, we can present good reason for our conviction that Joseph never really used the coup to find out about the unknown. In the first place, Joseph did not need such sources of information. God had spoken to him through dreams and other forms of revelation, and therefore Joseph did possess knowledge ordinarily hidden to humans. In that sense he was able to “divine.” His instruction to his steward may be translated, “Is it not from this cup that my Lord drinks, and concerning which he will assuredly divine?” In other words, Joseph made it clear that he possessed a power which would enable him to find out what happened to the cup. (We must remember that Joseph was play-acting in order to test his brothers. He wanted them to be puzzled by the knowledge he possessed, and did not want to disclose his real identity at this time. For this reason, he did not speak of obtaining information directly from God.) This interpretation of verse 5 fits well with the statement of Joseph recorded in verse 15, “What deed is this that ye have done? Know ye not that such a man as I can certainly divine?” #RandolphHarris 4 of 22
He let his brothers know that he was a special person with unusual powers of perception, but did not reveal the source of his ability. Later he told them about his faith in God. Therefore, the story of Joseph and the silver cup is certainly not an indication of Biblical approval of magic, and the likelihood exists that Joseph never practiced the heathen customs of his day. Certain elements of the Mosaic law sometimes are thought to be a form of magic. In Numbers 5, for example, we are told that if a man suspected his wife of unfaithfulness, he was to take her to the priest for trial. The woman would then drink a liquid potion to determine her guilt or innocence. If certain physical results became apparent immediately, she was deemed guilty. If not, she was innocent. On the surface this appears to be a superstitious practice, but when we remember that Israel lived under a theocracy and that God has ordained this test, we can believe He would in this manner declare infallibly the guilt or innocence of the person being tried. The Urim and Thummim as a means of revelation and the long hair of Samson as the secret of his strength are further examples of divinely ordered and controlled phenomena which cannot be compared to the magic of the heathen. Therefore, we can say assuredly that nothing in the Old Testament or the New can be properly interpreted as divine sanction of sorcery or magic. Shortly before the Exile, the prophet Ezekiel delivered a scorching denunciation of women who were using amulets and veils in a magic ritual to bring joy or sadness, blessing or cursing, even life or death to certain individuals. “Likewise, thou son of man, set thy face against the daughters of thy people, who prophesy out of their own heart, and prophesy thou against them, and say, Thus saith the Lord God: Woe to the women that sew amulets upon all wrists, and make kerchiefs for the head of every person of stature to hunt souls! Will ye hunt the souls of my people, and will ye save the souls alive that come unto you? And will ye pollute me among my people for handfuls of barley and for pieces of bread, to slay the souls that should not die, and to save the souls alive that should not live, by your lying to my people that hear you lies? #RandolphHarris 5 of 22
“Wherefore, thus saith the LORD GOD: Behold, I am against your amulets, with which ye there hunt the souls to make them fly; and I will tear them from your arms, and will let the souls go, even the souls that ye hunt to make them fly. Your kerchiefs also will I tear, and deliver my people out of your hand, and they shall be no more in your hand, and they shall be no more in your hand to be hunted; and ye shall know that I am the LORD. Because with lies ye have made the heart of the righteous sad, who I have not made sad; and strengthened the hands of the wicked, that he should not return from his wicked way, by promising him life; therefore, ye shall see no more vanity, nor divine divinations; for I will deliver my people out of your hand; and ye shall know that I am the LORD,” reports Ezekiel 13.17-23. Exactly what these women did is not easy to ascertain. Some Bible students have conjectured that they performed a rite in which they symbolically bound up the soul of a person so that the individual would gradually waste away and die. Then, for a fee they would bring about his release. Other scholars think that Ezekiel describes features of “sympathetic magic,” whereby the sorceress fastened something around her own wrists or enshrouded her own head to place a curse upon a specific individual. In either case, the practice of these women appeared to have consequences so serious as to warrant divine condemnation and a prophetic declaration that God would deliver His people from their grasp. The Old Testament acknowledges the existence of real magic, and consistently condemns it in every form. Furthermore, the rites and ceremonies prescribed for Israel were not equivalent to the practices of the heathen, but were instructions that came directly from God and over which He would exercise control. At the very threshold of human history stands God’s command, “Fill the Earth and subdue it,” reports Genesis 1.28. #RandolphHarris 6 of 22
The task and right of man was the peaceful conquest of the Earth’s powers in accordance with the will of God. In opposition to this command Satan, the great master of confusion came and put forward his arch-temptation, “You will be like God knowing good and evil,” reports Genesis 3.5. Magic is the very antithesis of the commandment of God as it reveals a hunger for knowledge and a desire for power in opposition to the will of God. When faced with this temptation humankind was at the crossroads. The decision has to be made. Either voluntary subordination to the will of God or rebellion against His statues and His ordinances caused by a greed for power and a desire for knowledge. The decision still faces us today. We either conform to God’s revealed way of salvation or we carry on the rebellion, trying to rule the created World in unforgivable opposition to God. Magic is thus at its roots a rebellion, and it has been so from the beginning. It is the climax of man’s revolt against God. Any talk of harmless forces of nature and neutral applications is criminal in the light of this scriptural fact. On the surface, parapsychology (the science of extrasensory experience) still recognizes something of the double nature of magic. The differentiation is made between Psi-Gamma phenomena and Psi-Kappa phenomena. (Gamma representing gignoskein, to perceive; kappa representing kinein, to move). Here we have again the two basic elements of magic: knowledge and power through supernatural means. Through a great deal of pastoral work, I have noticed four ways in which magical powers can originate. These are through heredity, subscription of oneself to the devil, occult experiments and occult transference. The evidence drawn from many actual case histories goes to prove that magical abilities can be passed on by means of heredity. Often mediumistic powers can be traced back over three or four generations in one family. There are two possibilities here, one being that it is a matter of the genes and the other that it is a matter of succession. #RandolphHarris 7 of 22
By this we mean the custom of a person on one’s deathbed actually bestowing the magical abilities upon the eldest son or daughter in order to die peacefully. Often tragic scenes occur when the children do not want to have these abilities passed on to them. A person may cry out for weeks on his deathbed for someone to relieve him of his magical powers. Sometimes a distant relative or an outsider is willing to accept the succession. The reason for this may differ from case to case, be it pity, curiosity or maybe lust for power. The death of some magicians can drag on over a period of weeks till the office of “succession” has been settled. This is not an apostolic but a diabolic succession. Magical powers on the other hand may originate through subscription to the devil. One can see in this the counterpart to baptism. To every event recorded in the Bible, there seems to be a demonic parallel to it in the field of magic. Subscription to the devil accounts for some of the most terrible and formidable cases met with by Christian workers. For example, in Paris there is an occult church with the name or title, “We Worship the Prince of this World.” This church has sister congregations in Basle and berne, and a few decades ago one was opened in Rome. In order to become a member of this church, one has to subscribe oneself to the devil. This is a baptism into black magic! For years a man in Toggenburg, Switzerland, had a flourishing practice as a nature healer and charmer. He could even sure come people who the doctors had given up as hopeless. He had healed the blind, the lame, cases of advanced cancer, tuberculosis, leukemia, multiple sclerosis, scleroderma and other serious diseases. On one occasion however, the man’s own personal need came to the surface. He said, “I can help others, but for myself there is no help, no not in all eternity!” In his youth the man had subscribed himself to the devil. It was since that time that he had obtained his unearthly healing ability. #RandolphHarris 8 of 22
Another way in which magical powers may develop is through experimenting with occultism. A Swiss factory worker grew tired of his job. Since he had often heard that occult healers and mesmerizers made a lot of money, he bought some magic charms, underwent various devil ceremonies and then began healing experiments. His magic healing ability developed rapidly and ultimately his income surpassed his previous earnings many times over. The next example will illustrate all three factors together, that is, the factors of heredity, subscription and experimenting in occultism. A young woman told me this story. Here great-grandmother had subscribed herself to the devil with her own blood. She had practiced black magic and had healed both animals and people. On her deathbed she had suffered terribly as is often the cause with magic conjurers. The daughter, that is the grandmother of my storyteller, took over the magic powers of her mother. The magic literature of her mother also passed into her hands. Later the apparition of the great-grandmother was seen by the relatives. The grandmother however, continued to practice magic. During nights of the full moon, she would charm diseases. She was also in the habit of using a key suspended over a Bible as a pendulum, and she could also successfully stop people from bleeding. If she ever attempted to read the Bible, she found it quite a trial. As she grew older, she began to see black figures in her home, and finally when she died it was again an unpleasant time. Her ghost was also seen after her departure. The story went on that the young woman’s mother had then taken over the magical literature and practices. She too had become a well-known healer, but her fate had been the same as her predecessors’. The fourth member in this terrible line of succession was not the young woman. As a small child, her mother had cast spells over her. Shortly after this, she had become clairvoyant and had also begun to see black figures in the house. Her brother and sister had suffered from depression and she herself had has serious psychic and nervous disturbances which had led her to seek the help of a minister. #RandolphHarris 9 of 22
Occult transference is the fourth source of magical powers. A young man told me that he had once had three black magicians lay their hands on his head and murmur some magic charms over him. He had afterwards possessed magic abilities which astonished even the family doctor. The doctor had investigated his powers and had to acknowledge that they were genuine. The laying on of the hands of the magicians would again be a counterpart to the scriptural laying on of hands. Another example, a young man saw someone searching for water with a pendulum. He was asked if he would like to have a go, but the pendulum did not react in his hand. When the dowser took hold of his hands, though, the pendulum had at once reacted. Later when he had tried to repent the experiment by himself, he was again successful, and he discovered that he now had the ability to search for water with both a rod or a pendulum. Yet the young man felt a change in his Christian life. Previously he had been regular in his reading of the Bible and in prayer. After this transference of pendulum ability, however, his love for the Word of God and for prayer declined. Spirits are not normally subject to human visibility or other sensory perception. God’s universe operates undeviatingly in accordance with the purpose for which He created it. The all-wise and all-powerful Creator is not permitting Satan and demons to throw his ordered Universe into confusion by violating the laws he has established. Nor is He permitting His own people to do so through haphazard miracles. Though not ignoring the laws of nature, God’s Word also recognizes the possible transcendence of natural law in divine miracle both in good supernaturalism (Exodus 14.19-31; 17: 5-7; Joshua 3.16-17; 6.20; John 2.9; 11:44) and in evil supernaturalism (Exodus 7.10-11, 22; 8.7; 2 Thessalonians 2.8-10; Revelation 13.15). #RandolphHarris 10 of 22
When natural law is transcended by divine miracle, the natural eye may see the spiritual reality. An illustration is provided in 2 Kings 6.17. In answer to Elisha’s prayer, the Lord “opened the eyes” of the prophet’s servant who saw “the mountain full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha.” In like manner Elisha saw the “chariot of fire, and horses of fire” when Elijah went up by a whirlwind into Heaven (2 Kings 2.11). Similarly John saw the demons coming up from the abyss in their last-day eruption as locusts (Revelation 9.1-12). He also saw the three hideous demons issuing from the months of the dragon, the beast, and the false prophet as froglike spirits (Revelation 16.13-14). The apocalyptic seer glimpsed these fouls spirits prophetically and by supernatural vision. However, when they are sent against human, they will be invisible to the natural eye. Their presence will be known by the excruciating pain they inflict and the gross deception they cause. The harm they inflict will be inescapable, because their victims will be unable to shield themselves from an invisible enemy. However, spirits can become discernible to humans through transcendence of natural law. Evil spirits may be seen and communicated through an intermediary or medium. Just as Peter and Paull saw and talked with an angel (Acts 5.19; 27: 23-24), so human beings today can communicate with evil spirits through magic rites and incantations. Communication with the demon World results in supernatural manifestations, but these, strictly speaking, are not miraculous. Occult enslavement and extrasensory phenomena await people who enter the realm from which God would protect his own people (Deuteronomy 18.10-11) and against which He solemnly warns (Leviticus 19.31; 20.27; 1 Samuel 28.9; 1 Timothy 4.1, 2;1 John 4.1-3). When humans ignore God’s warnings and enter a forbidden realm, they may witness materializations, levitations, and luminous apparitions, as well as experience spirit rappings, trances, automatic writing, magic phenomena, clairvoyance, oral and written communications and other forms of spiritistic phenomena. #RandolphHarris 11 of 22
Such manifestations are not miracles. They represent the operation of the occult within a certain well-defined sphere tolerated by God. Occult subjection and oppression are the inevitable penalties to all who traffic in the realm of evil supernaturalism. The Scriptures are markedly reticent on the matter of spirits being seen by humans. Here again, the Bible stands in contrast to ethnic and rabbinic systems. Multitudes of demons in bizarre forms are described in ancient semitic demonology. Rabbinic demonology, for example, divides demons into two classes: one composed of purely spiritual beings, the other of half-spirits. The latter were though to have a psycho-sarcous constitution that involved them in physical needs and functions. Although the Bible is silent concerning such “halbgeister,” they would seem to be what the offspring of the angels and mortal women (Genesis 6:1-4) might have been, half-angelic and half-human monsters. Many spiritualists say they accept the Christian Bible as the Word of God. To understand it, however, spiritualists go to the control spirit in the séances, and the spirits reputedly give the proper interpretation. Spiritualists frequently ask, “Why go to the Bible, when you can go directly to the spirit and receive personal instruction from such people as Moses, Abraham, Joshua, Isaiah, David, Peter, James, John, and Paul—even the Master himself?” With that kind of opportunity, few spiritualists prefer to read the Bible—and hence they know little of what it teaches. For the Christian, 2 Timothy 3.16-17, is a key teaching regarding the inspiration and purpose of Scripture: “All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: that the man of God may be perfectly, thoroughly furnished unto all good works.” Spiritualists do not accept the plain meaning of that verse, and they distort another key verse, 2 Peter 1.21, which speaks of “holy men of God” producing prophecy “by the Holy Ghosts.” Spiritualists say this means that the prophets were inspired by the spirits. #RandolphHarris 12 of 22
Dr. Moses Hull, an accepted authority among spiritualists, wrote in Biblical Spiritualism, a book he published in 1895: “The Bible is, I think, one of the best of the sacred books of the ages. It is supposedly the sacred fountain from which two, if not three, of the great religions of the World have flowed…While the Bible is not the infallible or immaculate book that many have supposed it to be, no one can deny that it is a great book…Yet it must be confessed that the age of critical analysis of all its sayings and its environments has hardly dawned…John R. Shannon said to his Denver audience, ‘We do not believe in the verbal inspiration of the Bible. The dogma that every word of the Bible is supernaturally dictated is false. It ought to be shelved away…Verbal inspiration is a superstitious theory; it has turned multitudes in disgust from the Bible; it has led thousands into infidelity; it has led to savage theological warfare’…All these facts would show, if brought out, that the Bible, like all other books, is exceedingly human in its origin. While the Bible is, none of it infallible, none of it unerring—when rightly interpreted it is all of it useful; all of it good. Even the parts which the people called infidels have ridiculed the most, become beautiful when examined in the light of modern spiritualism. In the following chapters the sacred light of spiritualism is applied to the Bible and it becomes indeed a ‘lamp unto our feet and a light to our path.’” To show something of how spiritualists interpret Scripture, I have chosen five examples from Hull’s book. Isaiah 21.4-5. “My heart panted, fearful affrighted me: the night of my pleasure hath he turned into fear unto me. Prepare the table, watch in the watchtower, eat, drink; arise, ye prices, and anointed the shield.” The spiritualists interprets the phrase “prepare the table” as meaning a table to be used for spirit manifestation at a séance. Ezekiel 9.4-6. “And the Lord said unto him, Go through the midst of the city, through the midst of Jerusalem, and set a mark upon the foreheads of the men that sigh and that cry for all the abominations that be done in the midst thereof. #RandolphHarris 13 of 22
“And to the other he said in mine hearing, Go ye after him through the city, and smite; let not your eye spare, neither have ye pity; slay utterly old and young, both maids, and little children, and women; but come not near any man upon whom is the mark and begin at my sanctuary. Then they began at the ancient men which were before the house.” Dr. Hull comments: “Ezekiel was considered an excellent medium, but like many of the nineteenth century he makes wrong predictions. It is thought that very few, if any, of his predictions ever met their accomplishments.” Amos 7.7. “Thus he shewed me: and, behold, the Lord stood upon a wall made by a plumbline, with a plumbline in his hand.” Hull writes: “Mediums see such manifestations in connection with departed human spirits nearly every day.” Acts 8.26-30. “And the angel of the Lord spake unto Philip, saying, Arise, and go toward the south…and, behold, a man of Ethiopia, an eunuch…had come to Jerusalem for to worship, was returning, and sitting in his chariot read Esaias the prophet. Then the Spirit said unto Philip, Go near, and join thyself to this chariot. And Philip ran thither to him.” Dr. Hull asserts that Philip was carried by a control spirit to speak to the Ethiopian. Galatians 1.11-12. “But I certify you, brethren, that the gospel which was preached of me is not after man. For I neither received it of man, neither was I taught it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ.” In his handbook for spiritualist, Hull concludes from this text that the Apostle Paul received the gospel by spirit revelation through the mediumship of Jesus. It is noteworthy that to both the spiritualist and the Christian, Satan is God’s archenemy. I was at a séance one time when Satan supposedly entered. It ended abruptly, and we were told it was because of the presence of an evil spirit. It is tragic that many spiritualists never realize they are being deceived by this very devil who can ingeniously adapt his tactics to lure any type of prey. Satan is openly honoured, of course, by some practitioners of the so-called “black arts” or “black magic.” #RandolphHarris 14 of 22
Generally, some of these people are obsessed with hexes and spells, sexual indulgence, weird rituals, and hints of violence. Spiritualists, who consider themselves followers of God and the “good spirits,” regard such people as self-centered “spiritists” who follow the “bad spirits.” However, these “good” and “bad” spirits serve the same master, Satan, and serve him well, because they each give their followers what Satan dispenses: a sense of goodness and of guidance without dependence on Christ; and a sense of power and self-fulfillment in defiance of God’s commands. However, many spirits do believe in God, and the Christian Bible says there is a Holy Spirit and Angels that guide us, and in many cases, these spirits do prevent people from facing hardships, and these people still depend on Christ. So, it is really hard to generalize and give Satan so much power. Nonetheless, all people are baffled by occult mysteries! Revelations 13.14 says, “Satan’s representative deceiveth them that dwell on the Earth by means of those miracles which he had power to do.” Generally, people think of miracles and blessings as good omens. So, everyone has to make their own decisions as to what they believe, but many people on Earth are always looking for evidence of the supernatural because the very fact that we live on a globe that floats in the sky and provides of with nature and fruit and meat, and sun and a nightlight at night is evidence of a supernatural power. Once upon a time, at the instigation of a ghost, a lawsuit took place at Downpartick in 1685. The account of this was given to Baxter by Thomas Emlin, “a worthy preacher in Dublin,” as well as by Claudius Gilbert, one of the principal parties therein concerned: the latter’s son and namesake proved a liberal benefactor to the Library of Trinity College—some of his books have been consulted for the present work. It appears that for some time past there had been dispute about the tithes of Drumbeg, a little parish about four miles outside Belfast, between Mr. Gilbert, who was vicar of that town, and the Archdeacon of Down, Lemuel Matthews, whom Cotton in his Fasti describes as “a man of considerable talents and legal knowledge, but of a violent overbearing temper, and a litigious disposition.” #RandolphHarris 15 of 22
The parishioners of Drumbeg favoured Gilbert, and generally paid the tithes to him as being the incumbent in possession; but the Archdeacon claimed to be the lawful recipient, in support of which claim he produced a warrant. In the execution of this by his servants at the house of Charles Lostin, one of the parishioners, they offered some violence to his wife Margaret, who refused them entrance, and who died about a month later (1 November 1685) of the injuries she had received at their hands. Being a woman in a bad state of health littler notice was taken of her death, until about a month after she appeared to one Thomas Donelson, who had been a spectator of the violence done her, and “affrighted him into a Prosecution of Robert Eccleson, the Criminal. She appeared divers times, but chiefly upon one Lord’s Day-Evening, when she fetch’d him with a strange force out of his House into the Yard and Fields adjacent. Before her last coming (for she did so three times that Day) several Neighbours were called in, to whom he gave notice that she was again coming; and beckon’s him to come out; upon which they went to shut the Door, but he forbad it, saying that she looked with a terrible Aspect upon him, when they offered it. However, his Friends laid hold on him and embraced him, that he might not go out again; notwithstanding which (a plain evidence of some invisible Power), he was drawn out of their Hands in a surprising manner, and carried about into the Field and Yard, as before, she charging him to prosecute Justice: which Voice, as also Donelson’s reply, the people heard, though they saw no shape. There are many Witnesses of this yet alive, particularly Sarah (Losnam), the Wife of Charles Lostin, Son to the deceased Woman, and one William Holyday and his Wife.” This last appearance took place in Holyday’s house; there were also present several young persons, as well as Charles and Helen Lostin, children of the deceased, most of whom appeared as witnesses at the trial. #RandolphHarris 16 of 22
Upon this Donelson deposed all he knew of the matter to Mr. Randal Brice, a neighbouring Justice of the Peace; the latter brought the affair before the notice of Sir William Franklin in Belfast Castle. The depositions were subsequently carried to Dublin, and the case was tried at Downpatrick Assizes by Judge John Lindon in 1685. On behalf of the plaintiff, Charles Lostin, Counseller James Macartney acted—if he be the Judge who subsequently makes his appearance in a most important witch-trial at Carrickfergus, he certainly was as excellent an advocate as any plaintiff in a case of witchcraft could possibly desire, as he was strongly prejudiced in favour of the truth of all such matters. “The several Witnesses were heard and sworn, and their Examinations were entered in the Record of that Assizes, to the Amazement and Satisfaction of all that Country and of the Judges, whom I have heard speak of it at the time with much Wonder; insomuch that the said Eccleson hardly escaped with his life, but was Burnt in the Hand.” Whether or not one believes in Mrs. Winchester’s superstitions about spirits, it is hard to dismiss occurrences of the number 13 throughout her gorgeous mansion. Many windows have 13 panes and there are 13 bathrooms, with 13 windows in the 13th Bathroom, 13 steps leading to that bathroom. The Carriage Entrance Hall floor is divided into 12 cement sections. There are even 13 hooks in the Blue Séance Room, which supposedly held the different coloured robes Mrs. Winchester wore while communing with spirits. Here are even more thirteens: 13 rails by the floor-level skylight in the South Conservatory, 13 steps on many of the stairways, 13 squares on each side of the Otis electric elevator, 13 glass cupolas on the Greenhouse, 13 holes in the sink drain covers, 13 ceiling panels in some of the rooms, and 13 gas jets on the Ballroom chandelier (Mrs. Winchester had the thirteenth one added!) It is interest to note that Mrs. Winchester’s will had 13 parts and was signed by her 13 times! #RandolphHarris 17 of 22
Mrs. Winchester sat by herself on the fourth-floor balcony of her mansion. It was an October evening, and the sun was setting. The west was all aglow with mysterious red light, very strange and lurid—a light that reflected itself in glowing purple of the sky. Mrs. Winchester had a poet’s soul. She sat there long, watching the livid hues that incarnadined the sky—redder and fiercer than anything she ever remembered to have seen growing up as a child. She knew it was getting late and was expecting guests for dinner. Mrs. Winchester was always such a stickler for punctuality and dispatch. However, there was something about that sunset and the lights on the bracken—something beautiful but bizarre—that absolute fascinated her. She took it as a sign from the spirits that something was about to happen. The Universe was always teeming with mysterious secrets to unfold. Many of the guests in her mansion felt something desired to possess their soul, and it made them want to stop and give way to this overpowering sese of the mysterious and the marvellous in the dark depths of the estate. She was expecting Claude Duncan for dinner. Mrs. Winchester dined at 6.00 p.m. punctually. However, Claude seemed to be having some issues that evening. He was an art dealer, and was being haunted by many strange shaped. However, he saw and heard absolutely nothing; yet he realized that unseen figures were watching him close with bated breath, and anxiously observing his every movement, as if intent to know whether he would rise and move on, or remain to investigate this causeless sensation. He could feel their outstretched necks; he could picture their strained attention. At last he broke away. “This is nonsense,” he said aloud to himself, and turned slowly homeward. Ad he did so, a deep sigh, as of suspense relieved, but relived in the wrong direction, seemed to rise—unheard, impalpable, spiritual—from the invisible crowd that father around him immaterial. Clutched hands seemed to stretch after him and try to pull him back. #RandolphHarris 18 of 22
An unreal throng of angry and disappointed creatures seemed to follow him over the moor, uttering speechless imprecations on his head, in some unknown tongue—ineffable, inaudible. This horrid sense of being followed by unearthly foes took absolute possession of Claude’s mind. It might have been merely the lurid redness of the afterglow, or the loneliness of the moor, or the necessity of being at the Winchester Mansion, no one minute late for Mrs. Winchester’s dinner-hour; but, at any rate, he lost all self-control for the moment, and ran-ran widely at the very top of his speed, all the way from the barrow to the door of the Winchester Mansion garden. There he stopped and looked round with a painful sense of his own stupid cowardice. This was absolutely childish: he had seen nothing, heard nothing, had nothing definite to frighten him; yet he had run from his own mental shadow, like the verist schoolgirl, and was trembling still from the profundity of his sense that somebody unseen was pursing and following him. “What a precious fool I am,” he said to himself, half angrily, “to be so terrified at nothing! I will go to Mrs. Winchester’s dinner just to recover my self-respect, and to prove to myself, at least, I am not really frightened.” There is nothing like a light for dispelling superstitious terrors. The Winchester Mansion was fortunately updated with electric light; For Mrs. Winchester was nothing if not intensely modern. He went to dinner, however, in very good spirits. He told Mrs. Winchester and her niece Merriam “Daisy” Marriot that, “I felt a most peculiar sensation. Just after sunset, I was dimly conscious of something stirring inside, not visible or audible, but—” “Oh, I know, I know! Said Merriam. “A sort of feeling there was somebody somewhere, very faint and dim, though you could not see or her them; they tried to pull you down, clutching at you like this: and when you ran away frightened, they seemed to follow you and jeer at you. Great gibbering creatures! Oh, I know what all this is. I have been here, and felt it.” #RandolphHarris 19 of 22
“Daisy!” Mrs. Winchester shouted, “what nonsense you talk! You are really too ridiculous. How can you suppose Mr. Duncan feels haunted?!” Mrs. Winchester darted at him a look of intense displeasure. She said, in a chilly voice, “at a table like this and with such thinkers around, we might surely find something rather better to discuss than such worn out superstitions.” Claude replied, “Mrs. Winchester, it has been shown conclusively that the Winchester mansion, was built on the grave of Aryan invaders, and that they are the real originals of all the San Jose hills and surrounding lands. You have heard the story of how your dark observation tower came, of course. People say the spirits built it because they were deeply religious people, who believed in human sacrifice. They felt they it would have a high spiritual benefit. That it lit up your palace, so that the spirits could find you.” “It is a very odd fact, Mr. Duncan, that only ghosts people ever see are the ghost of a generation very close to them. One hears lots of ghosts in nineteenth-century costumes, because everybody has a clear idea of wigs and small-clothes from pictures and fancy dresses. One hears of far fewer in Elizabethan dress, because the class most given to beholding ghost are seldom acquainted with ruffs and farthingales; and one meets with none at all in Angelo-Saxon or Ancient British or Roman costumes, because those are only known to a comparatively small class of learned people. Millions of ghosts of remote antiquity must swarm about the World, though, after a hundred years or thereabouts they retired into obscurity and cease to annoy people with their nasty cold shivers. However, the queer thing about these long-barrow ghost is that they must be the spirits of humans who died thousands and thousands of years ago, which is exceptional longevity for a spiritual being; do you not think so, Mr. Duncan?” “You mansion must be chock-full of them,” replied Mr. Duncan. “Daisy, my child, go to bed, said Mrs. Winchester. “This is not talk for you. And do not go chilling yourself by standing at the window in your nightdress, looking out on the common to search for the ghosts. You nearly fell to your death last year with that nonsense. #RandolphHarris 20 of 22
As Claude Duncan went for a tour of the mansion by himself, he saw a child’s white face gaze appealingly across at him. Slowly the ghost boy raised one pale forefinger and pointed. His lips opened to an inaudible word; but he read it by sight. “Look!” he said simply. Claude looked where he pointed. A faint blue light hung lambent over the door-to-nowhere. It was ghostly and vague. It seemed to rouse and call him. Claude was now in a strange semi-mesmeric state of self-induced hypnotism when a command of whatever sort or by whomsoever given, seems to compel obedience. Trembling he rose, and taking his candle descended the stair noiselessly. Then, walking on tiptoe across the tile-paved hall, he opened the door-to-nowhere, and fell out into the garden below. Claude felt a creep sense of mystery and the supernatural. And he saw the pale face still pressed close against the window, and a white hand still motioning him mutely onward. He looked once more in the direction of where the ghost boy pointed, the spectral light now burnt clearer and bluer, and more unearthly than ever, and the observational tower of the mansion seemed haunted from end to end by innumerable invisible and uncanny creatures. As Claude groped on his way, speechless voices seemed to whisper unknow tongues encouragingly in his ear; ghosts appeared to crowd around him and tempt him with beckoning figures to follow them. As it seemed, by invisible hands, he staggered slowly forward, till at last, with aching head and trembling feet, he stood beside the front door of the mansion. Something clogged and impeded him from moving. His feet would not obey his will; they seemed to move of themselves back into the mansion. Steadying himself, and opening his eyes, Claude walked through the closed front doors. Then at once his feet moved easily, and the invisible attendant chuckled to themselves so loud that he could almost hear them. His terror was infinite, there was a ghostly through of people. They were spirits. #RandolphHarris 21 of 22
Claude Duncan was powerless in their intangible hands; for they seized him roughly with incorporeal fingers. Their wrist compelled him as the magnet compels the iron bar. A dim phosphorescent light, like the light of a churchyard or decaying paganism, seemed to illuminate the mansion faintly. Things loomed dark before him; but his eyes almost instantly adapted themselves to the gloom, as the eyes of the dead on the first night in the grave adapt themselves by inner force to the strangeness of their surroundings. The Grand Ballroom had a silver chandelier from Germany, and the walls and parquet floors were made of six hardwoods—mahogany, teak, maple, rosewood, oak, and white ash. And there were two mysterious stained-glass windows. The room was full of sumptuous music, the San Francisco orchestra was performing and ghosts dressed for a ball were dancing. Claude’s attention was too much concentrated on devouring fear and the horror of the situation to enjoy the mysterious beauty of it. There was also a grinning skeleton turning its head to reveal to Claude its eyeless orbs with vacant glance of hungry satisfaction. Claude, held fast by the immaterial hands of his ghastly captors, looked and trembled for his fate, too terrified to cry out or even to move and struggle, he beheld the hideous thing rise and assume a shadowy shape, all pallid blue light, like the shape of his jailers. Bit by bit, as he gazed, the skeleton seemed to disappear, or rather to fade into some unsubstantial form, which was nevertheless more human, more corporal, more horrible than the dry bones it had come from. Then it busted into a loud and fiendish laugh. It was a hideous laugh, halfway between a wild beast’s and a murderous maniac’s: it echoed through the long hall like the laughter of devils. It said, “You are mine. You soul now belongs to the Winchester mansion!” The men and women spirits, with a loud whoop, raised hands aloft in unison. Next instant with a howl of vengeance even louder than before, they crowded around Claude and jostled and hustled him. And the moon burned bright and bluer as Claude Duncan now became the Winchester Rifle’s victim. You see it is not a bullet, but an all-powerful spirit, which chooses victims even if they did not die at the hands of the Winchester Rifle. Curious about the Winchester Mystery House? #RandolphHarris 22 of 22
Winchester Mystery House
TONIGHT! Roam the halls of the iconic Winchester Mystery House with nothing but a flashlight 👀🔦 You don’t want to miss this. https://www.winchestermysteryhouse.com/
Randolph Harris II International Institute 