Spiritist Teachings and Dissertations Mrs. de Girardin
(Parisian Society of Spiritist Studies, medium Mrs. Costel)
NOTE: Since some criticism was made about a communication given
by Mrs. de Girardin in a previous session, she gave a spontaneous answer
to them. She indicates the circumstances around that communication.
“I come to thank the member that kindly came out in my defense
and moral rehabilitation before you. In fact when alive I used to love
and respect the laws of good taste, those of delicacy I tell you from my
heart, given my gender during that time. After my death God allowed
me to raise to higher levels and to practice with simplicity the duties of
charity that unite us all, people and spirits. With this explanation, I will
not discuss the communication that bears my name since criticism and
censorship are neither suitable to me nor to the medium. Thus, believe me
that I will come whenever I am evoked but I will never get into futile discussions.
I spoke about the children. Let me go back to that subject that
was the painful ulcer of my life. Women need the double crown of love
and maternity to fulfill the mandate of self-sacrifice entrusted by God
when sending them to Earth. Alas! I never knew those sweet and tender worries that imprint in our soul by those frail submissions. How often I
have gazed at those playful children touching my dress with bitter tears
in my eyes. I felt the anguish and humiliation of my failure. I shuddered,
waited, listened, and my life filled with worldly success, was a fruit filled
with ashes, that left me a bitter and disappointing taste.”
Delphine de Girardin
OBSERVATION: There is a lesson in this message that cannot go
unnoticed. Mrs. Girardin said that when alive she used to love and respect
the laws of good taste, those of delicacy, making reference to certain
passages of her preceding communication that had provoked some
objections. She also says that she preserved those feeling after her death.
Consequently she rejects everything that may bear her name and denies
those feelings. The soul mirrors the qualities and defects that are shown
during their corporeal life with the exception of eventual progress that
may have occurred but the soul is never inferior to its prior condition.
Therefore there are sometimes very subtle nuances to be observed in the
communications from the spirits so as to distinguish between what could
be a replacement and what is really from that spirit. The really superior
spirits are never caught in contradiction and one can boldly reject anything
that may betray their character. This assessment is more difficult
since a perfectly authentic communication may be mixed with thoughts
from the medium, who does not clearly express the idea, or a strange
spirit that interposes his thoughts between the medium and the communicating
spirit. Hence, communications that denies the character of the
communicating spirit in all points and in the essence of his ideas must
be considered of doubtful authenticity. Nevertheless, it would be unfair
to condemn the whole text due to some partial stained remarks that may
come from the causes above.
Painting and Music
(Parisian Society of Spiritist Studies, medium Mr. Alfred Didier)
Art has been defined a hundred thousand times: it is beauty, truth,
and goodness. Music that is one branch of art belongs entirely to
the domain of sensations. Let us be clear and understand one another.
The sensation is produced when a person understands art in two different
but entirely interconnected ways: through the mind that leads
to melancholy or philosophy and through the heart, through emotion.
Music, in my opinion, it is the art that goes straight to the heart. The
feeling, you understand– is thoroughly in the heart; painting, architecture,
sculpture, in particular painting, mostly reaches the brain. In
short, music flows from the heart to the spirit, painting from the mind
to the heart.
The organ was created by religious elation. When poetry plays on
the organ on Earth, the angels respond from heaven and serious and religious
music elevates thoughts and soul; gentle music vibrates the nerves,
nothing more. I wish I could cite a few personalities but I don’t have the
right: I am no longer on Earth. Like Mozart’s Requiem, that killed him. I don’t wish that any more spirits receive their death through music, but the
living-dead, however, must forget all that is earthly, to raise their moral
evolution.
Lamennais
Celebration of Good Spirits
at the Arrival of a Brother
(Sent by Mrs. Cazemajoux, a medium from Bordeaux)
We also have celebrations, and that happens frequently because the
good spirits from Earth, our beloved brothers and sisters, when
they leave behind their material envelope they reach out to us and we go
in large numbers to welcome them at the door of the dwelling they will
now inhabit with us; and these celebrations are not agitated, as in yours.
Human passions have no place in such celebrations, your passions disguised
by kind faces and heads crowned with flowers that hide jealousy,
pride, envy, vanity, the desire to please and prevail over their rivals, enjoying
fictitious pleasures.
Here is the kingdom of joy, peace and concord; everyone is happy with
their position and glad for their brother’s happiness. Then, my friends!
With that perfect harmony among us our celebrations have an indescribable
appeal. Millions of musicians sing the wonders of God and His creation
followed by harmonious lyres, a sound more dazzling than your
sweetest melodies. Long processions of air bound spirits fly like zephyrs casting clouds of flowers upon the newly arrived, flowers whose aroma
and wide-ranging nuances you cannot understand. Then there is the fraternal
banquet to the guests who have just finished their trials and come
to receive their rewards for a job well done. Oh! My friend, I wish I could
tell you more but your language is limited to describe such magnificence.
I have told you enough, my beloved ones, to stimulate in you the
desire and then, my dear Émile, free from the mission that I have been
assigned by your side on the Earth, I will continue to lead you through
space, helping you to thoroughly enjoy that happiness.
Felicia (wife of the evoked, Émile and his guiding spirit since last year)
Come to us
(Sent by Mrs. Cazemajoux, a medium from Bordeaux)
Spiritism is the application of the purest moral of the Gospels preached
by Christ; and those who condemn it without knowing it are not very
sensible. In fact, why classify it as superstition, charlatanism, sorcery, demonic,
things that even the vulgar common sense would accept if properly
investigated? The soul is immortal: it is the spirit. The perishable
body is the inert matter left behind by the spirit, which then becomes a
rotting nameless pile of decomposition. And you who are skeptical about
Spiritism, you believe that this life of pain, sufferings and deception to the
majority has no other objective but the grave!
Make no mistake. You poor ones, disowned from any Earthly wealth,
from its greatness and pleasures, come to us! Come to us and you shall
be consoled when you see that your sufferings and hardship will open
the doors of happy worlds to you and that God, fair and good to all
creatures, has only tried us for our own good, according to the words of
Jesus: Blessed are those that mourn: for they shall be comforted – Thus, come
skeptical and materialists. Hold the flag that reads: Love and charity to everyone, all brothers; benevolence and justice, indulgence from a great
and generous father to all of his creatures that advance through safe but
unknown paths. Charity and moral progress, together with intellectual
development, will lead you to the Author and Lord of all things.
We only give you these lessons so that you can work and spread the
teachings but more than anything else that you use them without any
bitterness. Sow the seed. Your good thoughts and God’s help will make
it fruitful, in the beginning to a small group only but that will grow and
help you reach a good and plentiful harvest.
Ferdinand, medium’s son
Intellectual and
Moral Progress
(Sent by Mr. Sabò, from Bordeaux)
I am here to tell you that moral progress is the most useful to acquire because
it disciplines us against our bad inclinations and make us good, charitable
and dedicated to our brothers and sisters. Intellectual progress, however, is
also useful to our advancement because it elevates the soul helping us to
make healthier assessments of our actions, facilitating moral progress.
It introduces us to the teachings provided by God for many centuries
by many people of various merits, who came in all shapes and forms,
speaking all languages to help us understand the truth, and were nothing
more than spirits already advanced, sent by God for the development of
human knowledge. But in time, the light that used to illuminate only to a
few will shine for all. Do your best to understand the greatness, the power,
the magnificence and justice of God; to understand the sublime beauty
of his work; the magnificent rewards to the good and the punishments to the bad ones; to understand, at last, that the only objective that you must
have is to get closer to Him.
Georges, Bishop of Périgueux and Sarlat,
happy to be one of the guides to the medium
The Floods
(Sent by Mr. Casimir H., from Innsbruck, translated from
the German Language)
Once upon a time a water spring appeared in a formerly barren region.
At first it was only a trickle of water that flowed into the plains, to
which no importance was given. Gradually it became bigger, turning into
a small creek and then a river; expanding, it encroached upon neighboring
terrain, but those who remained untouched by the waters, had their fields
fertilized bringing large profits to them. A nearby landowner, discontent
seeing his land diminish, tried to stop the flow to recover his stretch of
land, thinking that such action would expand his wealth. As it turned
out, the blocked river flooded everything, land and owner.
Such is the image of progress: like the impetuous river, it breaks opposing
levees, dragging along the unwise that instead of following its
course, try to block it. The same will happen to Spiritism. God sends it to
fertilize the moral terrain of humanity. Blessed are the ones who are able
to take advantage of that and unfortunate are the ones who try to oppose
God’s designs! Don’t you see it advancing by leaps and bounds in the four corners of the globe? Its voice is heard everywhere and it will soon muffle
the voice of the adversaries in such a way that they will be forced to silence
and forced to bow before the obvious. Humanity! Those who try to stop
the irresistible march of progress await difficult trials. God allows that to
happen for the glorification of some and punishment of others but gives
you in Spiritism, the pilot which shall lead you to the harbor, carrying in
its hand the flag of hope.
Wilhelm, the medium’s grandfather
