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during the night that she saw this same young man about to ascend a steep place, and she had said to him, "Do not go there, that mountain leads to a churchyard." Spirits are about us, but they cannot or perhaps do not desire to ward off fate. W. R. T.

AN INTERESTING

EXPERIENCE.

To the Editor of the "Spiritual Magazine."

a

SIR,-It may, perhaps, interest some of your readers to learn that few months ago I went with my friends, Mr. and Mrs. to visit the Marshall's. Mrs. Marshall, my two friends, and myself sat at the table. My friend, Mr. undertook to conduct the séance, and asked to whom the spirit then present desired to communicate. The answer given through the alphabet (which I took charge of) was, himself. He then asked who it was that desired to speak with him, and we got in reply a by no means common Christian and surname. His wife immediately said, "Why that is the name of the young man who lived with us, and left to go to Australia." "Ask him," said she, "how long he has been in the spirit-world?" A reply was given. Having myself been in Australia, I said, "Ask him where, or in what part of Australia he was when he left this earth?" The reply given was "In the Bush." I would here observe, that any and every part of Australia not laid out or known as a town, or township, is called "The Bush." My friend's wife, then said to her husband, "I have got something at home belonging to him, which even you do not know of, ask him what it is ?" The question was asked, and the reply given, "A letter." My friend told her husband it was true, she would shew him the letter when they got home. "Now ask," said she, "if we shall send and tell his mother ?" The reply was No." He then asked, "Why not ?" The reply was "Too much for her." Such manifestations need no

comment.

Before we closed our séance I took a clean sheet of paper and made a private mark on it, having previously handed it to my friends for their inspection. I then placed it under the table, and in not more than two minutes after I took it from the floor and found there was some writing on it, but, strange to say, I could not read it, so I handed it to my friends for their inspection, when they easily read the words Elizabeth and Eliza written thereon. When I looked at the paper a second time I saw plainly enough the words Elizabeth and Eliza. While we were each asking the other the probable solution of the mystery before us, it suddenly occurred to me that I had two sisters in the spirit-world named respectively Elizabeth and Eliza. Elizabeth entered the spirit-world when an infant, now more than fifty years ago, while Eliza grew up to womanhood, and was, at at the time she departed this life, a member of a Christian Church. I have the paper still in my possession.

I am thinking, Mr. Editor, if those small-minded persons who tell us that Spiritualism is the work of Satan were asked what motive they could attribute to his Satanic majesty in sending one of his emissaries to personate the spirit of a dear departed infant, what reply they could possibly give; for, they cannot, surely, be so small-minded as to believe that any intelligence, whether of earth, heaven, or hell, can act without a motive.

Yours, &c.,

EDWD. E. MOFFLIN,

Dec. 1867.

328, High-street, Poplar.

THE

Spiritual Magazine.

MARCH, 1868.

SPIRITUALISM AMONG THE ANTHROPOLOGISTS.

SPIRITUALISM penetrates into very unexpected quarters. Independent investigators into the phenomena of Nature and of human life following out their own several lines of researcheven when these relate to arts and sciences that seem most remote from it, ever and anon come in contact with some one or other of its varied phases; Spiritualism being in fact the centre of many converging lines. For example, who would have looked for any illustration of Spiritualism in the pages of The Builder. And yet, without at all travelling beyond its own proper province, the article quoted from it in our last number (and others might be given from its pages) opens out what to most readers we apprehend will be a new view in regard to Spiritualism as practised in one of the most celebrated nations of antiquity. And who could have anticipated that the Saul of Spiritualism would have found its way among the prophets of Anthropology? Yet so it is. Amid papers on bone caves, and measurements of jawbones, and discussions on doliocephalic skulls, we have in the number for July and October, 1867, no less than three papers by as many writers, each from very different sides, dealing more or less with the facts of Spiritualism or with questions closely related to it. The first paper from which I shall give an illustration is entitled, Phenomena of the Higher Civilization traceable to a Rudimental Origin among Savage Tribes. By EDWARD B. TAYLOR, Esq., F.A.S.L., F.R.G.S. The paper, or at least that portion of it we are about to quote, might almost be taken for a reprint of a chapter from Mr. Brevior's Two

N.S.-III.

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Worlds, or Mr. Howitt's History of the Supernatural. The immediate subject is

AN INQUIRY INTO THE ORIGIN OF THE RITES OF SACRIFICE AND FASTING.

"If we make ourselves familiar with the state of thought among lower races, if we can see with their eyes, and judge by their canons of reasoning, we shall find many things full of sense and purpose to them which it would be far more difficult to explain from the point of view of higher races, among whom similar phenomena are to be found. I will take as instances two of the great religious practices of the world, found in most known times and places the rites of sacrifice and fasting.

"What meaning and intention is applied to these rites in periods of high culture we know perfectly well. They are partly held as ceremonies or ordinances to be practised because enjoined upon men, and partly as producing an effect on the mind of the worshipper who places himself under a discipline of privation or suffering. But if we turn to study the same rites among the lower races, we shall see them in a new light-we shall find them done for what, to the mind of these people, are perfectly direct and matter-of-fact purposes. We shall find a state of thought under which it is as practical and straightforward a thing to burn or bury a sacrificial offering for a spirit, as it is to pay a debt or give a present to a living man, and as practical and significant a proceeding to fast as to eat. A modern European, who holds that he has a soul, but that even his horse or dog has not, must transport himself into an entirely different philosophical atmosphere when he begins to study savages. He will find then that not only men and dogs, and horses and birds, but even trees and corn, fruit, hatchets, and spears and boats have souls. When a man dies, his soul, which is an impalpable, usually invisible something, goes away like his body, somewhere into a future life. Therefore the slaves or wives who have attended him when he was alive, must go and attend him still, and they are, therefore, killed that their souls may follow his soul. And in precisely the same way, and for precisely the same reason, the horse and the dog are killed that their souls may go to serve their master; the corpse, the clothes, the bow and arrow, the pipe and pouch are burnt, buried, or abandoned, with the distinct understanding that their souls or spirits are to go for the spirits of the deceased. Thus, among the Indians of North America, fishing and boating tribes bury their dead with canoe and paddles ready to launch in the next world; the dead man's soul accompanies the soul of his canoe, with the souls of the paddle and the fishing spear within his grasp.

Or if he belongs to a hunting tribe he will

have his bow and arrow, his gun, or his horse, ready for his soul to mount in the happy hunting-grounds of the next world.

"It would be quite tedious to give a detailed account of these funeral rites-the lower races who do not practise them are the exception, not the rule. We find sacrificed for the use of the deceased every part of his possessions, wives, slaves, relatives, horses, house, food, weapons, boats, clothes, ornaments, provisions for the journey, the dog to guide the dead along the difficult road, to the other world, the coin to pay the ferry over the gulf which separates this life from the next, or for the toll to pass the heaven-bridge. And there is not the least break to the purpose for which these things are sacrificed-it is not that the wives or slaves are sent to accompany the dead, and the horses, canoes, or weapons destroyed for some other purpose. The philosophy of the lower races is distinct and unbroken throughout; when the slave or the horse, or the bow and arrow are burnt to ascend in smoke to the sky, or buried to rot in the ground, the souls of these things are sent to follow the soul of their possessor. The wife of Eukrates comes back for her slipper. It had been left behind a wardrobe, and thus not burnt with her other things, and so she was in the other world without it. So the ghost of Melissa appeared shivering to her husband, for her clothes had not been burnt for her to wear in the other life. So in the East of our own times the native of the Sulu Archipelago buys for a great price the criminal condemned to death, that he may kill him himself and so secure the service of his soul as a slave to his own in the next existence; and so the soul of the Emperor of Cochin-China is provided with every article of furniture and luxury which belonged to him when alive, and is sent to him by burning it after his death, while supplies of food go on being prepared for him as usual for his spiritual sustenance.

"When we find that in parts of South America these practices actually stop the rise of civilisation, because when a man dies everything he has, house, trees, weapons, all must be sent after him, and so accumulation of property is impossible-or when we find it specified among the customs of some North American tribes that the polished stones or bowls used in the national game are the property of the community, and so are exempted from being buried with the dead like other things; we may gain some idea of the strength of this opinion as exemplified in thousands of recorded accounts from early and late times in most distant portions of the world. The sacrifice to the dead is, indeed, the leading branch of sacrifice among the lower races.

"We follow it up into symbolism and ceremony at last, after the manner of rites in general, when they are taken up into the religion of the more advanced races.

"We are all familiar with the silvered paper dollars, the paper clothes and presents which the Chinese burn with their dead; and the like transition from practical purpose to fading symbolism is well marked in the offerings to the dead kept up as a mere ceremony at Rome, in the models of toys and ornaments in early Christian graves, and the flowers thrown into graves or hung in garlands above them in our own times.

But sacrifice to other spiritual beings, to elves, wood-spirits, gods inferior or superior, is conducted in the same way and on the same principle as that to the spirits of the dead; though it is, perhaps, oftener found passed into a ceremonial ordinance among the higher races than as a matter of practical purpose among the lower. Yet we shall find no distinct demarcation between the souls of the dead, who are held to become spirits, demons, or gods, and spiritual beings in general; and we may find just the same explanation of the intention of sacrifice laid down with reference to them as to ghosts. The Chinaman sets out his feast of the dead, waits awhile till the ghosts have eaten their fill of the soul food, and then falls to himself on the corpse. Exactly so the Fijian sets out feasts to satisfy the enormous hunger of his gods; but they are spiritual beings, and what they eat is not the visible substance of the food, but its soul which is capable of separating from it. So a sacrifice of meat and rice is set out by the Rajmahal tribes under a tent, and when the god has had time to eat his fill the worshippers uncover the tent and eat the rest themselves. This is, indeed, a most common practice throughout the world, that when an offering has been made to a god the worshippers themselves may feast on it; and this idea is perfectly reasonable when we understand the theory of souls to which it belongs.

"Thus we may see among the lower races that the rite of sacrifice is not the ceremonial observance, or even the act of abnegation, that it is among the higher races who have carried it on into their religious system; but a plain and practical action done to produce what is, to their state of opinion, a plain and practical result that of giving to the ghosts of the dead, or other spiritual beings the spirits of men, animals and things acceptable to them, just as they would give a gift to a living man, or pay tribute to a king.

"With the philosophy of these lower races we find associated another widely-spread rite. To the savage philosopher the world is swarming with spiritual beings. Every man and animal has a separable soul which can go out and come back-everything has its spirit as well as its body-every tree and river, and star and wind is animated by a presiding spirit, which is not necessarily always resident in it, but comes and goes. These spirits

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