When the claim is put forth that it is the disembodied spirits of dead men who make the communications, the…
- Date of account
- Published 1896
- Source
- Modern Spiritualism
- Reference
- Modern Spiritualism · selected passage 28
- Rights
- public_domain
- Language
- English
- Record updated
- 2026-08-24
Record summary
When the claim is put forth that it is the disembodied spirits of dead men who make the communications, the Bible reader is at once aware of a conflict of claims
Published source text
Read the available text below. Archive transcriptions may contain OCR errors; later context is labelled separately. A recorded claim is not a finding that it happened.
Source passage
Source text · mention onlyWhen the claim is put forth that it is the disembodied spirits of dead men who make the communications, the Bible reader is at once aware of a conflict of claims. In times when the Bible was written, there were practices among men which went under the names of “enchantment,” “sorcery,” “witchcraft,” “necromancy,” “divination,” “consulting with familiar spirits,” etc. These practices were all more or less related, but some of them bear an unmistakable meaning. Thus, “necromancy” is defined to mean “a pretended communication with the dead.” A “familiar spirit” was “a spirit or demon supposed to attend on an individual, or to come at his call; the invisible agent of a necromancer’s will.”—_Century Dictionary._ Spiritualists do not deny that their intercourse with the invisible world comes under some, at least, of these heads.
Historical context
Contextual commentary · mention onlyThis is a historical account assembled under the reporting and publishing conventions of its period. It may preserve testimony, hearsay, retelling and editorial interpretation together.
Modern context
Contextual commentary · mention onlyA modern comparison can identify recurring descriptions and possible explanations, but the account is not treated as independently verified evidence merely because it appeared in print.
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