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Weight | 1 oz |
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Limoncello-soaked blueberries nestled between layers of golden crepe, topped with a splort of lavender whipped cream and sprinkled with tiny curls of lemon zest.
Weight | 1 oz |
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A hard candy for hard times: bright, sticky berry with an extra crystalline sparkle and just a pinch of grit.
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.
Practical Occultism consists, first, of a perfect mastery of the individual’s own spirit. No advance whatever can be made in acquiring power over other spirits, such as controlling the lower or supplicating the higher, until the spirit within has acquired such perfect mastery of itself, that it can never be moved to anger or emotion—realizes no pleasure, cares for no pain; experiences no mortification at insult, loss, or disappointment—in a word, subdues every emotion that stirs common men’s minds.
To arrive at this state, severe and painful as well as long continued discipline is necessary. Having acquired this perfect equilibrium, the next step is power. The individual must be able to wake when he pleases and sleep when he pleases; go in spirit during bodily sleep where he will, and visit—as well as remember when awake—distant scenes.
He must be enabled by practice, to telegraph, mentally, with his fellow associates, and present himself, spiritually, in their midst.
He must, by practice, acquire psychological control over the minds of any persons—not his associates—beneath his own calibre of mind. He must be able to still a crying infant, subdue fierce animals or angry men, and by will, transfer his thought without speech or outward sign to any person of a mental calibre below himself; he must be enabled to summon to his presence elementary spirits, and if he desires to do so (knowing the penalties attached), to make them serve him in the special departments of Nature to which they belong.
He must, by virtue of complete subjugation of his earthly nature, be able to invoke Planetary and even Solar Spirits, and commune with them to a certain degree.
To attain these degrees of power the processes are so difficult that a thorough practical occultist can scarcely become one and yet continue his relations with his fellow-men.
He must continue, from the first to the last degree, a long series of exercises, each one of which must be perfected before another is undertaken.
A practical occultist may be of either sex, but must observe as the first law inviolable chastity—and that with a view of conserving all the virile powers of the organism. No aged person, especially one who has not lived the life of strict chastity, can acquire the full sum of the powers above named. It is better to commence practice in early youth, for after the meridian of life, when the processes of waste prevail over repair, few of the powers above described can be attained; the full sum never.
Strict abstinence from animal food and all stimulants is necessary. Frequent ablutions and long periods of silent contemplation are essential. Codes of exercises for the attainment of these powers can be prescribed, but few, if any, of the self-indulgent livers of modern times can perform their routine.
The arts necessary for study to the practical occultist are, in addition to those prescribed in speculative occultism, a knowledge of the qualities of drugs, vapors, minerals, electricity, perfumes, fumigations, and all kinds of anæsthetics.
And now, having given in brief as much as is consistent with my position—as the former associate of a secret society—I have simply to add, that, whilst there are, as in Masonry, certain preliminary degrees to pass through, there are numerous others to which a thoroughly well organized and faithful association might advance. In each degree there are some valuable elements of practical occultism demanded, whilst the teachings conveyed are essential preliminaries. In a word, speculative occultism must precede practical occultism; the former is love and wisdom, the latter, simply power.
A Victorian occultist’s incense, invoking the Four Archangels: precious wildcrafted Indian frankincense with myrrh, cassia, sandarac, palmarosa, white sage, red sandalwood, elemi, and drops of star anise bound with grains of kyphi.
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.
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