This Insidious Form Of Necromancy

Although I do not subscribe to all the doctrine and teachings expressed between the covers of this brochure, yet do I gladly recommend it to the public as an exposition of the menace of Spiritualism in our midst. The public has plenty of temptations to encounter on the road of life without its being enticed and drawn into these sideshows where freaks, frauds, and fiends may rob them not only of their money, but, perhaps, even leave them stripped of their physical outfit and of their moral attributes.

Naturally I do not place all under the same damnation because I can but judge of the ruin wrought through Spiritualism by the cases that have come under my own observation.

But you may depend upon it that the Catholic Church would not forbid her children to have anything at all to do with this insidious form of necromancy unless she was satisfied that harm only and no good Comes out of it. Her experience of Spiritualism covers nearly two thousand years, and she seems to regard it, not as a means of getting into communion with saints, but as a snare trapping you into communion with devils.

I have, on not a few occasions, been brought into contact with both men and women who have been caught, like moths in a candle-flame, by these false flashlights, and lured on to quicksands from which there was no saving them. When lost they shout out that they are saved.

It looks as if the penalty of trying to force the hand of God, and of lifting the veil to communicate with the Great Beyond was total loss of that childlike and clinging faith which is the priceless inheritance of the sons of God—"Unless you become as a little child."

Up to date in rare cases only have I been able to persuade necromancers to shake off Spiritistic practices and to return once more to the Church of their childhood. They tell you that they have actually seen, and that it is more blessed to have seen than to believe. When their choice lies between Christianity and Necromancy they choose the latter.

To some of us who have studied Spiritualism in many of its phases, the wonder is that any persons, with common sense and appreciation of life's values, can allow themselves to be sucked into such a vortex.

Firstly, let me remind you that no one attending a seance in which spirits from the vast deep make themselves heard or seen can prove that their spirit visitants are the creatures they claim to be. How can any one disprove them to be satanic spirits? You may be sure that evil spirits can quite as cleverly personate the dead as music-hall artists do the living.

Secondly, let me ask you, what have spirits, after thousands of years practice, revealed to mankind calculated to be of any practical service to humanity? As yet they have not even solved the problem as to what is a sardine, or what a new-laid egg.

There is a great deal to say against Spiritism, but not much that I know of for it. But I shall be reminded that it has disproved the doctrine for materialism and proved the immortality of man. Not so; it may have only proved the immortality of demons. It is a queer blend of immortality and infidelity. If the spirits, who speak through mediums, five, on the other side, the lives they describe, then the other side ought to be the soul's probation for this—not this for that.

My advice to all readers of this spirited exposure of Spiritualism is to shun it as they would cocaine. In neither drug is to be discovered the Will of God, which is man's end in life, but in both may be found ruin of body and loss of soul. This very morning I heard of a girl, who, being told in a seance by her deceased lover that he would not live on the other side without her, drowned herself to join him, not, I fancy, in heaven—"Notum fac mihi, Domine, finem" (Psalm 38 Verse 5 "My iniquities overwhelm me, a burden beyond my strength")

BeRnaRd Vaughan, S.J.

Link (here) to the Forward of the book entitled the, The Menace of Spiritualism, by Elliott O'Donnell

Link (here) to Fr. Z's post on the pink ouija board