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Weight | 1 oz |
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$29.00
The perfected winter rose, dew covered and freshly cut.
Weight | 1 oz |
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The Rev. Joseph Glanvil, chaplain in ordinary to Charles II., was a writer of great erudition and ability. In his “Sadducismus Triumphatus,” written to show that the phenomena of witchcraft were genuine occurrences, he gives an account of Mr. Mompesson’s haunted house at Tedworth, where it was observed that, on beating or calling for any tune, it would be exactly answered by drumming. When asked by some one to give three knocks, if it were a certain spirit, it gave three knocks and no more. Other questions were put, and answered by knocks exactly. Glanvil himself says, that, being told it would imitate noises, he scratched, on the sheet of the bed, five, then seven, then ten times ; and it returned exactly the number of scratches each time.
Melanethon relates that at Oppenheim, in Germany, in 1620, the same experiment of rapping, and having the raps exactly answered by the spirit which haunted a house, was successfully tried ; and he tells us that Luther was visited by a spirit who announced his coming by “a rapping at his door.”
In the famous Wesley case, the haunting of the house of John Wesley’s father, the Parsonage at Epworth, Lincolnshire, in 1716, for a period of two months, the supposed spirit used to imitate Mr. Wesley’s knock at the gate. It responded to the Amen at prayers. Emily, one of the daughters, knocked ; and it answered her. Mr. Wesley knocked a stick on the joists of the kitchen ; and it knocked again, in number of strokes and in loudness exactly replying. When Mrs. Wesley stamped, it knocked in reply.
It is not surprising that John Wesley was a Spiritualist. “With my last breath,” he writes, “will I bear my testimony against giving up to infidels one great proof of the invisible world ; I mean that of witchcraft, confirmed by the testimony of all ages.”
Planchette, or The Despair of Science : being a full account of modern spiritualism, its phenomena, and the various theories regarding it : with a survey of French Spiritism, Epes Sargent
Green balsam, bay leaf, fossilized amber, blackened vetiver, and clove bud cloaked in oud.
For the sake of continuity the subsequent history of the Fox sisters will now be given after the events at Hydesville. It is a remarkable, and to Spiritualists a painful, story, but it bears its own lesson and should be faithfully recorded. When men have an honest and whole-hearted aspiration for truth there is no development which can ever leave them abashed or find no place in their scheme.
For some years the two younger sisters, Kate and Margaret, gave séances at New York and other places, successfully meeting every test which was applied to them. Horace Greeley, afterwards a candidate for the United States presidency, was, as already shown, deeply interested in them and convinced of their entire honesty. He is said to have furnished the funds by which the younger girl completed her very imperfect education.
During these years of public mediumship, when the girls were all the rage among those who had no conception of the religious significance of this new revelation, and who concerned themselves with it purely in the hope of worldly advantage, the sisters exposed themselves to the enervating influences of promiscuous séances in a way which no earnest Spiritualist could justify. The dangers of such practices were not then so clearly realized as now, nor had it occurred to people that it is unlikely that high spirits would descend to earth in order to advise as to the state of railway stocks or the issue of love affairs. The ignorance was universal, and there was no wise mentor at the elbow of these poor pioneers to point the higher and the safer path. Worst of all, their jaded energies were renewed by the offer of wine at a time when one at least of them was hardly more than a child. It is said that there was some family predisposition towards alcoholism, but even without such a taint their whole procedure and mode of life were rash to the last degree. Against their moral character there has never been a breath of suspicion, but they had taken a road which leads to degeneration of mind and character, though it was many years before the more serious effects were manifest.
Some idea of the pressure upon the Fox girls at this time may be gathered from Mrs. Hardinge Britten’s* description from her own observation. She talks of “pausing on the first floor to hear poor patient Kate Fox, in the midst of a captious, grumbling crowd of investigators, repeating hour after hour the letters of the alphabet, while the no less poor, patient spirits rapped out names, ages and dates to suit all comers.” Can one wonder that the girls, with vitality sapped, the beautiful, watchful influence of the mother removed, and harassed by enemies, succumbed to a gradually increasing temptation in the direction of stimulants?
—Arthur Conan Doyle
Deception and despair: rose geranium and tea roses with mahogany wood, bourbon vanilla, and apple peel.
A nocturnal bounty of fae dew-kissed petals and pale fruits: white grape, white peach, iced pear, musk rose, sweet pea, moonflower and snapdragon.
The perfected winter rose, dew covered and freshly cut.
Illustrated by Jessie Willcox Smith.
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