A CONJURER AMONG THE SPIRITUALISTS

[The Theosophist, Vol. III, No. 5, February, 1882, p. 137]

Following is an article* taken from the Bombay Gazette of January 30, in which we find a new and very important proof of the reality of the phenomena produced by some genuine mediums. The testimony of an eminent conjurer well versed in every professional and non-professional trick, and actually alive to the possibilities of legerdemain, carries more weight with it, we trust, than the denial of a thousand worldly sceptics educated in Greek and Latin, but utterly ignorant of the possibilities of nature and the limitations of legerdemain. We feel doubly happy for the opportunity offered us by adding the testimony of Mr. H. Kellar to those of Messrs. Maskelyne and Cook, Bellachini, and other eminent conjurers, to confound our detractors: happy for the Spiritualists who have found in Mr. Eglinton such a powerful and useful ally, and happy for those Theosophists who either believe in or themselves produce various phenomena. It matters comparatively little whether the latter are regarded as mediums or occultists, as being “controlled” and “guided” by “disembodied spirits” or inspired by living cis-or trans-Himalayan “Brothers.” Before the vexed question—“Do the BROTHERS exist?”—is settled, the reality and genuineness of the phenomena variously ascribed to both spirits and Brothers must be proved. In our deadly strife with society, it is far more important
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* [The article referred to takes the form of a letter by Mr. Harry Kellar describing a séance with the famous medium Eglinton when phenomena took place which could not be accounted for as the result of trickery or sleight-of-hand.—Compiler.]
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to us to gain our chief point with them—namely, the right to take our critics publicly to task, and challenge them to prove which of us—the millions of Spiritualists and Theosophists, or the masses of sneering and insulting sceptics who deny that of which they know nothing—may best be described as deluded fools, impostors and bigots. We have reason to hope and believe that the time when our good friends, the psychophobists and materialists, may be invited to keep company with those fossils of old who voted to burn Galileo—is at hand. Meanwhile, cooly waving them off, we might ask these importunate and infatuated Alexanders “not to stand between us and the SUN.”

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