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A toasted slice from the middle of a springy, oaty loaf blessed with a rich green schmear and sprinkled with lemon juice and lavender sea salt.
Weight | 1 oz |
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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.
In certain cases, emotionally charged complexes of representation, which have become autonomous and dissociated, seem to automatically and compulsively press for discharge and realisation through haunting phenomena…. Hence, the so-called haunting occurs in place of a neurosis.
—Albert von Schrenck-Notzing
Repressed rage, terror, and subjugated sexuality erupting through fierce bursts of uncontrollable psychic phenomena: black leather and red musk with aged black patchouli, Chinese rose, black pepper, coconut meat, Haitian vetiver, and igneous red ginger.
The case I allude to is that of an invalid woman who belongs to the humblest class of society. She is nearly thirty years old and very ignorant; her look is neither fascinating nor endowed with the power which modern criminologists call irresistible; but when she wishes, be it by day or by night, she can divert a curious group for an hour or so with the most surprising phenomena. Either bound to a seat or firmly held by the hands of the curious, she attracts to her the articles of furniture which surround her, lifts them up, holds them suspended in the air like Mahomet’s coffin, and makes them come down again with undulatory movements, as if they were obeying her will. She increases their weight or lessens it according to her pleasure. She raps or taps upon the walls, the ceiling, the floor, with fine rhythm and cadence. In response to the requests of the spectators, something like flashes of electricity shoot forth from her body, and envelop her or enwrap the spectators of these marvellous scenes. She draws upon cards that you hold out, everything that you want – figures, signatures, numbers, sentences – by just stretching out her hand toward the indicated place.
If you place in the corner of the room a vessel containing a layer of soft clay, you find after some moments the imprint in it of a small or a large hand, the image of a face (front view or profile) from which a plaster cast can be taken. In this way portraits of a face taken at different angles have been preserved, and those who desire so to do can thus make serious and important studies.
This woman rises in the air, no matter what bands tie her down. She seems to lie upon the empty air, as on a couch, contrary to all the laws of gravity; she plays on musical instruments – organs, bells, tambourines – as if they had been touched by her hands or moved by the breath of invisible gnomes… This woman at times can increase her stature by more than four inches.
—Chiaia, in a letter to Lombroso
Pale lilacs, white tea, and candle wax.
This Spiritualism is the nepenthe which the ancient philosophers sought, to prolong life for ever; you cast off your bodies like an old garment. The pathway of this new science is as clear to the spirit as the names of the constellations are to the astronomer. In the great realm of the spirit there is no room for death to abide ; he has gone out with the ignorance, and blindness, and prejudice of the past, and life, only life, remains as your inheritance.
Mrs. Tappan then paused. After a moment’s silence she delivered the following inspirational poem:—
O beautiful white mother Death,
Thou silent and shadowy soul,
Thou mystical, magical soul,
How soothing and cooling thy breath!
Ere the morning stars sang in their spheres,
Thou didst dwell in the spirit of things,
Brooding there with thy wonderful wings,
Incubating the germs of the years.
Coeval with Time and with Space,
Thy sisters are Silence and Sleep ;
Three sisters—Death, Silence, and Sleep,
How strange and how still is thy face!
In the marriage of matter to soul,”
Thou wert wedded to young fiery Time,
The now weary and hoary-haired Time,
With him thou hast shared earth’s control.
O beautiful spirit of Death,
Thy brothers are Winter and Night;
Stern Winter and shadowy Night,
They bear thy still image and breath.
Summer buds fall asleep in thy arms,
’Neath the fleecy and soft-footed snow,
The silent, pure, beautiful snow;
And the earth their new life-being warms.
All the world is endowed with thy breath,
Summer splendours and purple of wine
Flow out of this magic of thine,
O beautiful angel of Death
What wonders in silence we see
The lily grows pale in thy sight;
The rose thro’ the long summer night
Sighs its life out in fragrance to thee.
O beautiful angel of Death,
The beloved are thine, all are thine !
They have drunk the nepenthe divine,
They have felt the full flow of thy breath.
Out into thy realm they are gone,
Like the incense that greeteth the morn,
On the wings of thy might they’re up-borne,
As bright birds to thy Paradise flown.
They are folded and safe in thy sight,
Thro’ thy portals they pass from earth’s prison;
From the cold clod of clay they have risen,
To dwell in thy temple of light.
O beautiful Angel of Life,
Germs feel thee and burst into bloom,
Souls see thee and rise from the tomb,
With beauty and loveliness rife.
On earth thou art named cold Death,
Dim, dark, dismal, dire, dreadful Death,
In heaven thou art “Angel of Life.”
We are one with thy spirit, O Death ;
We spring to thy arms unafraid,
One with thee are our glad spirits made.
We are born when we drink thy cold breath,—
Oh, Angel of Life, lovely Death.
The concluding hymn was then sung, after which Mrs. Tappan uttered the following benediction—“ May the peace of the loving spirit of the Heavenly Father and His angels abide with you, and the life that knows no death bear you on to the immortal world.”
The Spiritualist, Oct. 15, 1873
Poem by Cora L.V. Richmond
The lily grows pale in thy sight; the rose, through the long summer night, sighs its life out in fragrance to thee.
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