The tendency of the age is to “serve the creature more than the Creator.” The boastful spirit of men is described by Paul. He says, “Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man.” (See Romans 1:25, 22, 23.)
These statements were literally fulfilled in the heathenism of ancient times, and are being as literally fulfilled in the spiritualism of today.
In the worship of man, the first step in either age is to exalt and deify him, and the next is to worship his departed spirit.
In the worship of devils, the first step is to make them respectable, and the next is to adore them as gods.
About 6,000 years ago, Satan, the father of lies, told Eve that if she and her husband would only disobey God, and sin, “Ye should be as gods.” In our day, we find spiritualism teaching the same old lie.
Mr. Pope, at the National Convention of Spiritualists, at Chicago, said “that whereas the devil, in the garden of Eden, declared if man … would disobey the prohibition against eating of the tree, … he should become as God, knowing good from evil. That voice has gone on until, in the latter days, we hear it repeating, ‘Ye are Gods.’ We know that this divinity is in humanity, that this God is manifest in the flesh.”
The high spiritualist authority, Judge Edmunds, says,
“The soul is a god of itself.” Spiritualism, Vol. 1, 10
Another writer speaks as follows:
“The being called God exists, organically, in the form of the being called man.” The Educator, 303
Heathen mythology converted dead heroes into gods, and modern spiritualism revives the heathen custom, and offers worship to dead friends, great scholars, and noted philanthropists. With men transformed into gods, the next logical step is to worship and pray to their spirits after death.
The following is an extract from a prayer offered by E. S. Wheeler, in Music Hall, Boston, Sunday, March 5, 1871:
“Most holy angels, O ye great and good and beautiful souls, who have made earth and heaven it is fast becoming, hear our prayers. Unable to comprehend an Infinite Mind, we offer our supplications to you. Great souls that have blessed the world, condescend to bless us. Martyrs, heroes, patriots—ye who have inspired in all times the hearts of men, give us your sympathy, your love, your wisdom, in this hour. Mighty ones of years gone by—Pythagoras, Zoroaster, Confucius, Budha—come to us. Socrates, Plato, Jesus, Mahomet, Ann Lee, Washington, Channing, Browning, Theodore Parker, hear us as we ask for strength and wisdom, and give, in answer to our practical prayer for help, that assistance which you well know is our necessity. Amen.”
This praying to the dead is not confined to avowed spiritualists, as evidenced by the following statement:
“Dr. George Adam Smith, in his ‘Life of Henry Drummond,’ mentions as a fact within his knowledge that certain persons habitually addressed prayers to Henry Drummond.” Living Church, November 14, 1899
The following is still more startling:
“Dr. Joseph Parker, of the City Temple, London, has openly declared that he prayed to his departed wife every day. He said that he ‘never came to the City Temple to preach without asking her to come with him.’ He further says, ‘I encourage my friend to pray to his wife, and to pray to God to ask her to come to his help. She will be more to him than twelve legions of unknown angels.’ ” Spiritism, 25, 26
Although not so outspoken, the following statement from the pen of General Booth, of the Salvation Army, is significant. Under the heading, “Communion with the Departed,” he says:
“Through all my history, my personal intercourse with the spirit world has been but limited. I have not been favored with many visions, and it is but seldom that I dream dreams that impart either pleasure or profit; and yet I have a spiritual communion with the departed saints that is not without both satisfaction and service. And especially of late the memories of those with whom my heart has the choicest communion in the past, if not the very beings themselves, have come in upon me as I have sat at my desk or lain wakeful on my bed in the night season. Amongst these, one form, true to her mission, comes more frequently than all besides, assuring me of her continued partnership in my struggle for the temporal and eternal salvation of the multitudes—and that is my blessed, my beautiful wife!” War Cry, November 27, 1897
The Devil is Their God and Father
“Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do.” John 8:44
The following question and answer were given through the medium, Mrs. Conant:
“Question: Do you know of any such spirit as a person we call the devil?
“Answer: We certainly do. And yet this same devil is our god, our father.” Banner of Light, November 4, 1865
A.B. Child, another medium, says:
“What is called the devil is the spirit of god in nature.” Christ and the People, 167
In another work the same author says:
“It is the mission of the devil, yet unthought of by men, to carry them through the hell of earth, and prepare them for the heaven of the spiritual world.” Better Views of Living, 41
Spiritualism and Worshiping Devils
Concerning the origin of the heathen worship of demons, the author Gibbon writes:
“It was the universal sentiment, both of the church and of heretics, that the demons were the authors, the patrons, and the objects, of idolatry. Those rebellious spirits who had been degraded from the ranks of angels and cast down into the infernal pit, were still permitted to roam upon the earth, to torment the bodies and to seduce the minds of sinful men. The demons soon discovered and abused the natural propensities of the human heart toward devotion, and, artfully withdrawing the adoration of mankind from their Creator, they usurped the place and honors of the Supreme Deity. By the success of their malicious contrivances, they at once gratified their own vanity and revenge, and obtained the only comfort of which they were yet susceptible—the hope of involving the human species in the participation of their guilt and misery.” History of the Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire, Vol. 1, 523
The nations of Caanan, when Israel came up from Egypt, deified the dead and worshiped them. In Numbers 25:1, 2, we read that the daughters of Moah invited Israel to “the sacrifices of their gods.” These occasions were celebrated with feasting and the most debasing orgies. David, referring to this very sin of Israel, said, they “ate the sacrifices of the dead.” Psalm 106:28. Hence the gods of Moab were deified dead men. Paul traces back such worship to its legitimate source. He says, “that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to devils.” 1 Corinthians 10:20. Hence, at Baal-Peor, Israel took part in devil worship. Likewise, all communication with so-called spirits of the dead is communication with devils, and the worship of spirits is no more nor less than heathen devil worship.
Writing upon “Demonology,” Farmer says:
“To some persons it may appear strange that possessions should be ascribed by many of the fathers after the time of Justin Martyr, to fallen angels.
“Several philosophers taught that the heathen demons were evil spirits of a rank superior to mankind, and that these demons personated the souls of the dead, gods, and genii, and procured themselves to be worshiped under their names.”
The gods of the Chinese are malignant devils. Prayers to them are to propriate these undesirable gods, and prevent them from doing injury to the worshipers.
Spiritualism has progressed backward toward heathenism in the matter of devil worship. Listen to this from a prayer offered by Miss Lizzie Doten, at the opening of one of her trance lectures:
“O Lucifer, thou son of the morning, who fell from thy high estate, and whom mortals are prone to call the embodiment of evil, we lift up our voices to thee.”
It has been seen that Satan is acknowledged as their god and father. It is, therefore, but natural that they should pray to him. And this worship is given with eyes open. In this prayer is the acknowledgment that their devil-god is the Lucifer who fell from his “high estate,” or, in the words of the Bible, was “cast as profane out of the mountain of God.” Ezekiel 28:16
We are informed, on good authority, that before the earthquake and fire destroyed San Francisco, there was in that city a temple devoted to the worship of the devil. And why not? We have read the prayers offered to the devil. Why should there not be temples for his worship?
In Everybody’s Magazine for March 1906, appeared an article by Vance Thompson, under the heading, “The Invisible World.” Perhaps we may be pardoned for quoting some of the earlier sentences from this article, and closing with his statements regarding demon worship in Paris. He says:
“A skeptical age; we do not believe in much of anything—unless, indeed, it bears the trade mark of science. The intellectual fashion is all for materialism. For the rest there is only an easy incredulity.
“And yet—the paradox is curious—never was the world so ghost-ridden. Never has it turned so wistfully to the occult. Never has it listened with an exception so painful at that closed door behind which mysterious silences stretch away—the door of the tomb.
“I dare say it is natural enough. Always in epochs of unbelief, when the conservative forms of faith are weakened, there is an immense growth of vague supernaturalism. It was in the cynical eighteenth century, when Voltaire had sneered religion out of fashion, that sorcerers, fortune tellers, magicians—all the Mesmers and Cagliostros—ruled the world.
“Our new century, quite as skeptical, is equally in love with the marvelous. Only the fashion in wizards has changed. The modern magician comes from the laboratory. He speaks in the name of science, for there is a science of the immaterial—a science of witchcraft—a science which has its professors and learned societies, its journals and magazines.
“The very ghosts that haunt the societies for psychical research have taken on a scientific air; they walk no more in windy corridors, clanking spectral chains; in a practical, modern way they exhibit themselves to scientific congresses.
“World over, psychic phenomena are being studied by trained scientists. Dismissing theories, they give themselves to the observation of scientifically established facts. Their labors range from the study of hysteria, of hypnosis and the transmission of psychic forces, to the time-old mysteries of enchantment and apparition. …
“Science recognizes the existence of an invisible world, wherein unknown forces flit to and fro; what ghostly things they are it knows not, but they are very real, very strong and terrible. They are not material; they are masters of matter. Occult forces, but no longer unknown; science has given them passports and names. …
“In Paris I had an opportunity of studying some of these dark exploits of modern magic. Among those who dabbled in it were men so eminent as Paul Adam—the greatest living novelist, were not Meredith alive—Laurent Tailhade, the poet Edouard Dubus, Jules Bois, Suzanne Gay, the actress, and Stanislas de Guaita.
“De Guaita risked his life and his reason in his conflicts with the unknown. His astral body was detachable, as the occultists say; that is, his soul possessed the power of leaving his body, without breaking entirely the fluidic cord that attached it to the body. This, by the way, was an accomplishment of the medieval sorcerers. This dangerous practice led De Guaita to madness and death; it led the poet Dubus to madness and death; and, at one time, Laurent Tailhade was cared for in a madhouse.”
Thompson speaks further of a known and named “sudden death” which overtakes those who dabble too deeply in occult lore. He speaks of the sudden death of Irving Bishop, Charcot, and “the blithe actress, Suzanne Gay, whom he [Charcot] married and led with him into the vertigo of sorcery and death.”
Thompson continues, “Would you look farther? I have come close to stormy and mystic adventures in this occult world of Paris; I have seen men die and men go mad in their attempts to explore the land beyond the frontier [the spirit land], that cloudy land of superstitions, of hopes and terrors, where the unknown forces flit to and fro. It is not well to adventure there. The practice of magic [the arts of spirits] is dangerous. It is the most perfidious of psychic intoxicants.
“The dark forces which science recognizes, but does not define, exercise marvelous attraction on minds of a certain order. In scores of temples they [“dark forces”—devils] are worshiped under different names. I know a little temple in Bruges where the followers of Lucifer gather, and not far from the Pantheon in Paris there is an altar to Pandœmon. This may seem grotesque; perhaps it is, but it is formidable.
“It need hardly be said that the rites wherewith Lucifer is worshiped are hid in much mystery. A couple of years ago I visited one of the ‘chapels’; it was in the rue Rochechouart. The black mass, which I have no desire to describe, was celebrated. It was Friday at three o’clock. Over the altar was a winged figure of Lucifer, amid flames; he trampled under foot a crocodile—symbol of the church.
“A few days ago, I found the chapel closed. Only after patient research did I find the new abode of the Satanists. Their chapel now is in a great new apartment house at No. 22, Rue du Ruisseau, within the shadow of the cathedral of the Sacred Heart on Montmartre. As of old, Satan is worshiped; every Friday the Luciferians gather. I could name many of them—men not unknown in the learned profession.
“Some of them have influence enough to secure now and then, a right of midnight entry to the catacombs; there amid skulls and bones, with orgies I do not care to describe, they have worshiped the spirit of evil—calling upon Baphomet, upon Lucifer and Beelzebub and Ashtaroth and Moloch, with cries and wailing hysteria. This attempt to reestablish the worship of the fallen archangel is, I think, the most remarkable manifestation of modern occultism.”
Connecting, in a measure, the manifestations of these occult forces with spiritualism, Mr. Thompson continues:
“Paris, the city of light and laughter, is dotted over with spiritualistic temples—there is a notable one in the rue Saint Jacques; another is in the rue des Martyrs. One and all they derive from the Fox sisters, who amazed New York a half century ago.
“Among the faithful are such men as Sardou—himself a medium—and Saint-René Taillandier, the French envoy to Morocco, and Camille Flammarion. If they are to be believed—and why not?—the ghosts are more active in unbelieving Paris than in any other city at the present moment.
“Jean Lorrain, the novelist, assures me that their activity is a menace to workaday life. For a long time, he called them and they came; now they come unbidden; cold hands are laid upon him in the dark. And Paul Adam, that great, serene man, was troubled for a year by the attacks of larvæ, which whispered disturbing suggestions to him.
“Spiritualism is the successor of the medieval occultism and of the older magic. Today science, without accepting its manifestations, studies them; and in these troubled waters almost all the facts upon which the new metaphysics is founded have been fished up.”
Past, Present, and Future, James Edson White, ©1909, 292–303