The Angel of CholeraOne of our corresponding members in Warsaw sent us the following:
“… I dare call your attention to a fact that is so extraordinary that
it would be necessary to classify it as absurd if the character of the
person that reported it to me were not a guarantee of its reality. All
of us who know everything that has been so carefully analyzed by you
regarding Spiritism, and who believe that understand it well, we
cannot find an explanation for this fact. Thus, we pass it on for your
discretion, hoping that will forgive the time required to read it all in
case you don’t find it worthy of a more serious examination. Here are
the facts:
“The person that I mentioned above was in Vilnius in 1852, a
city of Lithuania, then devastated by cholera. Her beautiful twelveyear-old
daughter was gifted with every quality that characterizes
a great nature. Her outstanding intelligence was noticed at a very
young age combined with a truly angelical kindness and goodness
of heart. She was one of the first to enjoy a mediumistic faculty in
our land always supervised by spirits of higher order. She frequently
had premonitions of what was about to happen, and not in a somnambulistic
state, always predicting with accuracy. The details above
seem relevant to give you a proper assessment of her honesty. One
evening, when the candles had just been put out, the girl who was still perfectly awake saw an enraged and bloody figure of an old woman
standing by her bedside, notably giving her the shivers. The woman
approached the girl and said: ‘I am cholera and I come to demand
a kiss from you. If you kiss me I will leave for good and the city shall
be free from my presence.’ The heroic girl did not step away from the
sacrifice. She pressed her lips against the frigid and humid face of the
old woman and the vision, if that was a vision, vanished. The girl
could only find consolation in her father’s arms. Her father could not
understand a thing but he believed that she was telling the truth.
They said nothing to nobody though. Around noon they received the
visit of a doctor friend of the family who said: ‘I come to bring you
good news. Not one patient was taken to the cholera hospital last
night and I just came from there.’ In fact since that night there was
no more new cholera cases. About three years later the same person
and her family visited the same town again. During their stay the
cholera reappeared and the number of victims was in the hundreds.
One night the same old woman showed up again to the young lady
who was perfectly awake, asking her for the same thing, adding this
time that if she obeyed her wishes the cholera would disappear for
good. Like in the first event, the girl did not refuse. She then saw a
grave opening up and then consuming the old woman. The cholera
faded away like in a miracle and I am not aware of any other case in
Vilnius. Was it hallucination or a real apparition? I don’t know. All
I can say is that I don’t have any reason not to believe the young lady
and her parents.”
This is actually a very singular fact. The skeptics will certainly say that it
is hallucination but it will probably be very difficult for them to explain
the coincidences with a material event that could not be foreseen. In the
first occurrence this could have been taken by an event of chance, that
convenient way of explaining what one cannot understand. But two occurrences
in identical circumstances are more extraordinary. Admitting
that there was an apparition, it was still necessary to understand the meaning of that woman. Would that really be an angel, exterminator of
cholera? Would the pandemics be personified by certain spirits in charge
of provoking or eliminating them? One could be led to believe so by observing
the extinction following the will of that woman. However, why
would she address that girl, a stranger in town, and how could a kiss from
that girl have such an influence? Although Spiritism has given us the key
to so many things, we have not gotten the final word and with reference
to the case above the latter hypothesis was not completely absurd. We
must confess that in the beginning we were inclined to believe so since we
could not identify traces of hallucination. However, the teachings of the
spirits came to knock our hypothesis down. Here is the simple and very
logical explanation given by St. Louis in a session at the Society on April
19th, 1861.
Q – The event that has just been reported seems very authentic. We
would like to have an explanation about it. To begin with, could you tell
us who that woman was that appeared to the young lady saying that she
was cholera?
A – She was not cholera. A material plague has no human appearance.
It was the girl’s familiar spirit trying her faith, making such a trial to coincide
with the end of the scourge. The trial was beneficial to the young
lady. It fortified the blossoming virtues in that blessed and protected creature.
High ranking spirits that keep the memory of their acquired virtues
when returning to the world sometimes receive such warnings that would
be dangerous to a not so elevated soul hence not so well prepared by previous
migrations through testimonies of love and faith.
Q – Had her familiar spirit enough power to predict the future and
the end of such plague?
A – The spirits are instruments of the divine will and are frequently
turned into celestial messengers.
Q – Do the spirits have any influence over the scourges as their producing
agents?
A – They have nothing to do with that like the trees don’t act upon
the winds or the effects on their causes.
Since we expected answers according to our initial thoughts we had
previously prepared a number of questions that became useless. Once
more this demonstrates that the mediums are not a reflex of the thought
of someone that questions them. As a matter of fact, we must say that we
had no previous opinion about this subject. In the absence of something
better we were inclined to believe in what we said because it did not seem
impossible to us. However we find the simple and more rational explanation
given by the spirit infinitely preferable. In reality another instruction
may be drawn from the fact. What happened to that girl may have
happened before on other occasions and even in former times since the
spiritist phenomena are from all times. Couldn’t that be the reason why
former peoples were led to personify everything and see a particular genie
in everything? We don’t believe that its cause is in the poetic vein since
these ideas are found in the least advanced peoples.
Let us suppose for a moment that an event similar to the one described
above had occurred in a superstitious and barbarian people.
Nothing else was needed to lead them to believe in a malevolent entity
that could only be appeased by the sacrifice of victims. As we have already
said, all gods of paganism have no other origin but the spiritist manifestations.
Christianity came to knock their altars down, but it was reserved to
Spiritism to unveil their true nature, shedding light onto the phenomena
either mystified by superstition or exploited by greed.
