Mediumship in animals

Excerpts from an article about mediumship in animals, obtained from the Revista Espírita of August 1861.

To begin with, let's understand our facts. What is a medium? It is the being, the individual that serves the Spirits as a link, so that they can easily communicate with men, incarnated Spirits. Consequently, without a medium, no tangible communications, mental, written, physical, or of any kind.

Today I address the problem of animal mediumship, raised and supported by one of your most fervent followers. By virtue of the axiom who can do the most can do the least, he claims that we can mediate birds and other animals, using them in our communications with the human species. It is what, in Philosophy, or rather, in Logic, you call purely and simply a sophistry.

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Men are always willing to exaggerate everything. Some ─ and I'm not talking about materialists here ─ refuse animals a soul and others want to grant them one, so to speak, similar to ours. Why would you want to confuse the perfectible with the imperfectible? No no. Be well convinced that the fire that animates animals, the breath that makes them act, move and speak their language has, until now, no ability to mix, to unite, to merge with the divine breath, the ethereal soul, the Spirit, in a word, that animates the essentially perfectible being, man, this king of Creation. Now, isn’t what marks the superiority of the human species over other earthly species this essential condition of perfectibility? Then! Recognize, therefore, that it is not possible to assimilate to man, the only person perfectible in himself and in his works, any individual of the other living races on Earth.

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Certainly the Spirits can become visible and tangible by animals, often suddenly taken by that fear that seems unfounded to you, and which is caused by the sight of one or more of these Spirits with malicious intentions towards the individuals present or towards the owners of these animals. You often find horses that don't want to move forward or backward or that stall when faced with an imaginary obstacle. Well done! Be sure that the imaginary obstacle is often a Spirit or a group of Spirits who have fun preventing them from advancing. Remember Balaam's donkey, which saw an angel in front of him and, fearing his flaming sword, insisted on not moving forward. Before becoming visible to Balaam, the angel wanted to show himself only to the animal. But, I repeat, we do not directly mediumize animals or inert matter. We always need the conscious or unconscious assistance of a human medium, because we need the union of similar fluids, which we do not find in animals or in gross matter.

He says Mr. Thiry magnetized his dog. What happened? He killed him, because this unfortunate animal later fell into a kind of atony, of languor, as a result of the magnetization. In effect, flooding him with a fluid drawn from an essence superior to the special essence of his nature, it crushed him and acted upon him, albeit more slowly, in the manner of lightning. Thus, as there is no possible identification between our perispirit and the fluidic envelope of the animals themselves, we would crush them instantly if we were to mediumize them.

Having said that, I fully recognize that animals have different abilities; that certain feelings; that certain passions identical with human passions develop in them; who are sensitive and recognized, vengeful and hateful, depending on whether one acts well or badly towards them. It is because God, who makes nothing incomplete, gave animals companions or servants of man, qualities of sociability that are entirely lacking in wild animals that inhabit solitudes.

In short: mediumistic facts cannot manifest themselves without the conscious or unconscious assistance of the medium, and only among the incarnated, Spirits like us, can we find those who can serve us as mediums. As for educating dogs, birds or other animals to do such and such exercises, that is your business and not ours.

ERASTO.

Spiritist Magazine, August 1861 – The medium animals

Read more about mediumship.