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DIVINATION & AUGURY IN A MODERN LIGHT 215
described by clairvoyants can only be explained by the actual verdical existence of these beings and their communication with ourselves in abnormal states.
Out of the views and experiences of this last party tempered also with those of Swedenborg, arose the group we shall next consider, viz., the Modern Spiritualists. These went further than the mesmerists, in believing that these abnormal states may be induced by other means than passes and suggestions, viz., by sitting in circles, and consequent development of mediumship, and, as their mediums persisted like mesmerized clairvoyants in maintaining that they saw and heard other invisible beings, the spiritualistic camp maintained the existence of these beings as a fact, and then went beyond the mesmerists in affirming that a susceptible subject can be mesmerized not only by living incarnated operators, but also by these unseen beings, provided these unseen beings have certain conditions allowed them, viz., tranquility or passivity of the minds of all present, absence of disturbing influences in the ether, like strong light, the presence of harmonious vibration of the air as caused by music, perfumes and incense,--and the presence of the bodily emanations (or magnetism) of certain others in the circle.
Once admit this possibility as a fact and nearly every case of augury becomes easily explained. The unseen spirits can automatically move the mediumistic fingers
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