Observations placeholder
W.Y. Evans-Wentz - The Death Prayers of the Christian Scientists
Identifier
014048
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
This would only work if he had been given a hint that a death prayer ahd been issued and he believed in the Christian science doctrine. The mind plays very strange tricks on people.
A description of the experience
The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries, by W.Y. Evans-Wentz, [1911]
In our own age, a parallel development, which adequately illustrates our subject of inquiry, has taken place in the United States: fragments of magical lore bequeathed by Mesmer and his immediate predecessors, the alchemists, were practically and honestly applied to the practice of magnetic healing and healing through mental suggestion by a small group of practitioners in Massachusetts, and then with much ingenuity and real genius were applied by Mary Baker Eddy to the interpretation of miraculous healing by Jesus Christ.
From this arose a new religion called Christian Science.
But this religious movement did not stop at mental healing: according to published reports, during the years 1908-9 the leader of the New York First Church of Christ, Scientist, was deposed, and, with certain of her close associates, was charged with having projected daily against the late Mrs. Eddy's adjutant a current of 'malicious animal magnetism' from New York to Boston, in order to bring about his death.
The process is said to have been for the deposed leader and her friends to sit together in a darkened room with their eyes closed.
'Then one of them would say: "You all know Mr. ------. You all know that his place is in the darkness whence he came. If his place is six feet under ground, that is where he should be." Then all present would concentrate their minds on the one thought--Mr. ------ and six feet under ground.'
And this practice is supposed to have been kept up for days.
Mrs. ------, who gives this testimony, is a friend of the victim, and she asserts that these evil thought-waves slowly but surely began his effacement, and that had the black magicians down in New York not been discovered in time, Mr. ------ could not have withstood the forces.
Perhaps so enlightened a country as the United States may in time see history repeat itself, and add a new chapter to witchcraft; for the true witches were not the kind who are popularly supposed to ride on broomsticks and to keep a house full of black cats, and the sooner this is recognized the better.