Mediums v. Fortune-Tellers
Mediums v. Fortune-Tellers is an article written by Lady Conan Doyle published in the Sunday Dispatch on 11 january 1931.
Mediums v. Fortune-Tellers
LADY CONAN DOYLE at her desk at Bignell Wood Cottage.
By LADY CONAN DOYLE.
LADY CONAN DOYLE says Law on Spiritualism.
Parry Thomas Warning Saves the Life of Famous Racing Motorist.
A SUGGESTION that certificates should be issued to genuine spiritualist mediums to protect them from the law of fortune-telling is made here by Lady Conan Doyle.
Her article is the second of a short series giving her husbands testimony, and her own, in support of spiritualism, and relating many strange messages of warning from the Beyond.
In the treatment meted out to them by the State Spiritualists are very much like the early Christians; they were subjected to persecution and we still are — although we are tax-paying citizens.
We are the only people under the British flag who have not religious freedom. All others under British rule, black, brown, or yellow in colour, have full freedom in their religious observances.
But we? Oh, no! Our mediums are fined or put in gaol, and yet they are as essential to us to communicate with the other world as a battery is to a wireless set.
Not long ago a noble and most unselfish medium, aged 72, who had brought untold comfort to many bereaved hearts and who had proved immortality to numbers of people, was visited by two women draped in mourning who charged fortune telling against her and she was imprisoned for four months with hard labour.
Our Demand.
Such proceedings are a disgraceful injustice and must be put right. We are not a handful of people. There are hundreds of thousands of Spiritualists in the British Isles alone, and the movement is spreading like a prairie fire. We are to be reckoned with, and we demand as our right, justice and freedom.
Spiritualists do not countenance fortune-telling. We all loathe it and do all in our power to stop it. That is not Spiritualism.
In the alteration of the laws regarding mediums the idea among most Spiritualists is that a certificate should be issued to each medium from an accredited Central Spiritualistic Society to be renewed each year. By that means any medium discovered in fraud would at once lose the certificate and the fact would be published in all psychic papers, thereby cutting the ground from under their feet.
Very often in a séance, after getting in touch with dear ones beyond the veil, mediums may warn us of dangers ahead and tell us how to avoid them. They also give us good advice on things which may help us in daily life.
That is not fortune telling, although some twisted-minded and ignorant people have sometimes called it so. God allows us the infinite comfort and help of having our dear ones' loving care round us to benefit us.
When palmists tell their cheats of troubles or accidents which they see ahead of them, it is most wrong. I have known several friends who have been made very unhappy by being told of various unfortunate things which were supposed to be coming to them, or that they would have some great loss in such and such a year. These practices should be stopped.
Many clergymen are studying this subject and have found enormous help from it. Many of them wrote blessing my husband for the knowledge which he had given them, saying sometimes that he had restored their own faith and had given them fresh heart and strength to carry on in their work.
The Smug Ones.
I have no patience with those complacent people who think, because they have faith, that nothing else matters. In their self-satisfaction they entirely forget the countless numbers of people who have no faith — splendid people often, much truer and better Christians in reality in their daily lives than the smuggish ones. How Christ would have loathed the latter!
Faith is a very beautiful thing to possess and those who have faith are right in being thankful for it. Let them not forget that for everyone who has faith about twenty have not.
There are over 700 Spiritualist churches in Great Britain, and they are so packed that the members have to be asked sometimes to keep away in the evenings in order to leave room for all the inquirers.
Does that not tell its owe tale? People crowding to church not made to go, but eager to, because they know their souls and minds will be fed with a vital and happy new knowledge.
The teaching that comes from the higher spiritual sources is beautiful and lofty. If all the fine sermons I have heard were put together they will not compare with the wonder of owed the marvellous discourses from the higher Spirit people. I am not, of course, referring to the homely, more human, and intimate messages.
And the bigoted person says, "It is of the devil," just as scoffers said of Christ. "He hath a devil." History repeats itself!
C.I.D. Mediums.
I am sure that when the laws respecting mediums are altered the public will realise how much help they can have from the "other side " regarding mundane things.
For instance, every criminal investigation department will here its own medium to help in the detection of crime. Some police centres abroad have them now and find them wonderfully helpful.
A friend of once was instrumental in finding a murdered woman's body through a medium. It happened in this way. A young woman was missing and everything pointed to her having been murdered, but the police could not find the body.
Our friend had a sitting, and a relative of the missing girl on the "other side" communicated at the séance, saying that the girl's body would be found in a certain place down the river. The next day a search was made and there was the body in the very spot described by the spirit person.
Now, Mr. Critic, where is your grand bogy "telepathy" coming in? Telepathy between whom? Reason must tell you that the information could only have come from an unseen spirit entity who knew more than the human agent.
If telepathy is so easy, how is it then that all around on people are not daily getting valuable business information from another's brain? How is it that students don't know what a professor is going to say, although their brains are tuned in to the same vibration?
Telepathy does, of course, exist, but is a very rare gift. It does not apply when, during communication between a human and a spirit person, the latter gives information of things unknown to the human entity and which afterwards proves to be true.
Drowned Boys.
I will give a case in point. Two young men, sons of Mr. Juno Brown, a prominent Australian citizen who married the Premier's daughter, went out in a sailing boat in Sydney Harbour and never returned.
The parents were fortunately Spiritualists. After waiting two or three days in fearful anxiety and grief they called in a medium named George Spriggs to have a séance with them.
The two boys at once came through and told their parents that they bad been waiting, as they knew they would have a séance to try to get into touch with them. They said that their boat had been caught in a squall and had cap-sized and they had been drowned.
Then Frank, the elder one, through the medium, took his father aside and said that he did not want his mother to hear, but he wanted to tell him that John, the younger brother, had been eaten by a great fish.
The horrified father said, "shark, I suppose." The son replied, "Not the kind of shark I had ever seen."
The father put it all down at once and had it printed privately.
Three weeks later a great ocean-going shark, quite different from those usually found round Sydney Harbour, was caught at Geelong, down the coast. When opened, in it was found the watch and other things belonging to the boy.
Shark Only Knew.
When my husband was telling this story at one of his lectures in Australia a man in the audience jumped up and said that he was the fisherman who had helped to cut the shark open, and it was all quite true.
Now, Mr. Critic, what about telepathy? Who was it between? The father and the shark's brain? No! All the bogy words which the would-be clever person so glibly uses are wiped out by the facts of the case, the father being told of something by his son, on the other side of the this veil of death, which no human soul in the world could know. It was known only to the shark!
Let me give a further example of the way in which those on the "other side" can guide and assist us by their greater and farseeing knowledge. Had attention only been paid to the warnings and messages which Captain Hinchliffe, the Atlantic airman, sent through about the R101 all those lives might have been saved.
He said in his first message to his wife on July 19, 1928: "I want to say something about a new airship is now being built. You know some of the people that have to do with it, but you won't like to broach the subject. It will come down one side first. They will start without thinking of disaster. Vessel won't stand the strain..."
Warning Ignored.
Again, in April 1929 a message came through from him to his wife "....This one is not sound...." Many more messages he sent through. On October 4, 1930, the following startling message was received from him, "Storms rising. Nothing but a miracle can save them."
Mrs. Hinchliffe passed on the messages to one of the engineers of the R 101. What was the result? No attention was paid and the airship crashed as he said it would.
Through another medium they were warned that it would crash in flames and only four would be saved. Think of those forty-eight lives which might have been saved had they only listened to the warnings from the spirit world.
Unhurt in Crash.
Another interesting case I will give you. An American lawyer friend of ours and his wife and sister-in-law were travelling in France. The wife is a very fine medium. When they were in the train, her spirit guide told her that there was going to be an accident, but that they would be taken care of and not hurt.
Within an hour, there was a terrible smash in which nine people were killed and many others more or less injured. Our three friends had not so much as a scratch and even their suitcases were intact.
Now had they pulled the communication cord and said there was going to be an accident and so tried to prevent it, imagine the headlines in the papers, "Mad Spiritualist stops train," etc., etc."
On the other hand, if communication with the other world was universal, then the warning would have been taken thankfully and all those lives and much suffering would have been saved.
Some say, "Why were our friends not warned before they went on the train? My answer is that God works in devious ways and everything has a purpose.
The purpose in this case was that after such a tremendous proof of the protective power of their spirit friends on the other side, for the rest of their lives their faith and trust would be doubled; and they in turn are telling humanity what spirit communication and aid can do for them, by the example of their experience.
Motor Defect.
That help and guidance may be received in everyday matters is further proved by the experience of a famous racing motorist. On his way to try to break as important record he received a cable telling him to change his right-hand driving-chain. He did so.
When he got back to England he asked why they had cabled him to make the change. He was told that Parry Thomas, the racing motorist, who was killed a few years ago, had come through at a seance and said that the chain would snap when doing 171 miles an hour. The chain was tested on the bench and it did break at 174.
Now the motorist broke the record at far greater speed than that. He must, therefore, have been killed had Parry Thomas's warning not been given and acted upon.
[World copyright.]
Next week: My Husband's Messages from the "Other Side."
