Pioneers of Spiritualism # 1

Joseph Rodes Buchanan (1814-1899)

Joseph Rodes Buchanan was an American scientist, Faculty Dean and Professor in the Eclectic Medical Institute, in Covington, Kentucky, and research pioneer in psychometry. It was Joseph Buchanan who, in 1842, coined the term "psychometry" as meaning the "measuring of the soul."

General Bishop Polk of the Civil War once told Professor Buchanan of his curious sensitivity to atmospheric, electric, and other physical conditions. If he touched brass in the dark, he immediately knew it by its influence and the offensive metallic taste in his mouth.

Dr. Buchanan began to experiment and soon discovered that these sensations are not restricted to the sense of taste alone. Students of a Cincinnati medical school registered distinct impressions from medicines held in their hands. In order to eliminate thought transference, the substances were wrapped in paper parcels and mixed.

Eventually, it became very evident to Dr. Buchanan that some type of emanation is thrown off by all substances, even by the human body; furthermore, certain sensitives can feel and interpret these emanations in their normal state. Actually, he was staggered by the possibilities of this discovery. He stated:

"The past is entombed in the present, the world is its own enduring monument; and that which is true of its physical is likewise true of its mental career. The discoveries of Psychometry will enable us to explore the history of man, as those of geology enable us to explore the history of the earth. There are mental fossils for psychologists as well as mineral fossils for the geologists; and I believe that hereafter the psychologist and the geologist will go hand in hand, the one portraying the earth, its animals and its vegetation, while the other portrays the human beings who have roamed over its surface in the shadows, and the darkness of primeval barbarism. Aye, the mental telescope is now discovered which may pierce the depths of the past and bring us in full view of the grand and tragic passages of ancient history."

If you consider this statement, along with the era in which it was spoken, it really is quite remarkable how far ahead of his time Dr. Buchanan was.

Read more about Joseph Buchanan here

Victor Zammit on the afterlife :

THE AFTERLIFE

THE OBJECTIVE EVIDENCE FOR THE AFTERLIFE HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH PERSONAL BELIEF!

On this site you will get to know the findings of many of highly intelligent scientists, empiricists and other professionals who systematically investigated the afterlife and psychic phenomena over more than a century. AND you will get to know with absolute certainty that everyone survives death. The afterlife is inevitable and has huge consequences.

# Victor Zammit is an Australian lawyer who has offered a $1M challenge to skeptics to prove there is no afterlife. His fascinating website is here.

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SUNDAY SERVICE 28TH FEBRUARY 2010

Begins at 3pm thru to 5pm. Bring a flower in a paper bag for a reading from the medium. Cost is by donation in the collection plate.

Friday and Sunday service

There is a service this Friday 26th February 2010 at 7pm.

also Sunday 28th February at 3pm.

Bring a flower in a paper bag for a platform reading from the medium.
The cost is by collection plate donation.

Please refer to the column on the right for Healing nights for the 2010.

a spirit photograph ?

The ghostly image of a young boy was captured on camera as builders demolished an old school building.

John Fores, 47, insists the spectral figure was not present when he took the picture of the part-demolished brick building.

But when he looked back at the images he spotted the boy, aged around eight with short hair and wearing a dark top, standing on the right of the picture looking into the camera.

The  Mail on Sunday 

Development classes

There is a new development class that has begun : every Monday night at 7pm.

Please phone the Church and leave your details so the teacher Kerrie can contact you.

Services as usual every : Friday 7pm-9pm
                                     Sunday 3.pm-5pm
(bring a flower in a paper bag !)

We will have news soon of our visiting British medium Sandi who will be with us in May.
Sandi will also be giving private readings but these will be limited so please contact the Church as soon as the exact dates are announced to make a booking.

Telephone : 02-9519 6436     Email : info@enmorespiritualistchurch.org.au

Services this weekend

Friday 19th February 2010 Service begins at 7pm
Sunday 21st February 2010 Service begins at 3pm

#bring a flower in a paper bag for a reading. Cost is by donation in the collection plate.

Spiritualism photographs

GHOST PHOTO BY WILLIAM HOPE

The spirit photos you can view here are taken from a collection of some 500 glass slides which a Spiritualist Minister, Mr Alan Millichamp, holds in trust. The commentary is by my good friend Vi Kipling with a few additional comments added by myself. (Craig Hamilton-Parker)

view more photos at http://www.spiritualists.org/

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Ghost

famous Spiritualists : Edvard Munch

Norwegian painter Edvard Munch (1863-1944) is regarded as one of the greatest artists in world history. His most famous paintings include The Kiss (1897) and The Scream (1893).

Edvard Munch was raised as a devout Lutheran. As an adult, however, he abandoned the strongly-held Protestant Christian beliefs that had shaped his childhood. Munch was never again an orthodox member of any religious denomination or formally organized religion, but he remained intensely interested in spirituality and religion. Munch and his wife were involved in and interested in Spiritualism.

How to Heal by Harry Edwards

Healing is a state of attunement of the helper's spirit mind with the spirit doctors, the patient and the healing effort being made The act of holding forth the hands is symbolic of the desire, but has no practical use.

Healing takes place because a spirit remedial force is directed from the spirit doctors to the patient. This force is not a physical force but a spirit force. Therefore the physical hands are not needed as a conveyor of the force. The actual "healing time" may be a fraction of a second, and the best service contact healing can give is to gently see, by movement of limbs, etc.. the extent to which the ill condition has yielded. Healing is yielding. One cannot make a poker spine become flexible by pushing it.

Read more at The Spiritualist News

ALEXANDER MCQUEEN: PSYCHIC SEARCH THAT HAUNTED STAR

TRAGIC Alexander McQueen ­had ­consulted a medium in an attempt to resolve his personal troubles.

Top psychic Sally Morgan describes how the fashion designer, who died at the age of 40 last week just before his mother’s funeral, first came to see her two days after the death of his best friend and style icon Isabella Blow in 2007.

She says: “This woman called Issy ‘came through’ immediately. He was very troubled by her passing and the nature of it – the fact that she took her own life with poison.

“He was her confidant and she was his confidante. She was possibly the only person apart from his mother who understood him and didn’t want ­anything from him.”

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle-a noted Spiritualist

The creator of Sherlock Holmes was a devoted follower of Spiritualism:

"Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle was born on May 22, 1859, in Edinburgh, Scotland. The Doyles were a prosperous Irish-Catholic family, who had a prominent position in the world of Art. Charles Altamont Doyle, Arthur's father, a chronic alcoholic, was the only member of his family, who apart from fathering a brilliant son, never accomplished anything of note. At the age of twenty-two, Charles had married Mary Foley, a vivacious and very well educated young woman of seventeen.


After Arthur reached his ninth birthday, the wealthy members of the Doyle family offered to pay for his studies. He was in tears all the way to England, where for seven years he had to go to a Jesuit boarding school. Arthur loathed the bigotry surrounding his studies and rebelled at corporal punishment, which was prevalent and incredibly brutal in most English schools of that epoch.
 


A third novel, written at that time, was a very strange and confusing tale about the afterlife of three vengeful Buddhist monks called The Mystery of Cloomber. This story illustrates the most serious and incomprehensible schism in Conan Doyle's personality. Under one hand, he was capable of writing brilliantly about deduction and pure logic, on the other, he was obviously fascinated by and inexorably drawn to the paranormal and ultimately to spiritualism.

Read more at the Conan Doyle estate website.

The Beginnings of Modern Spiritualism

a short documentary brought to you by the Spiritualist National Union

Who was Helen Duncan ?

Mrs. Duncan was a Spiritualist Materialisation Medium through whose ample body, milky ectoplasm flowed and formed into complete human figures, which could walk and talk and greet their living relatives with intimate secrets known only within their families.

This is the true story of a woman sent to prison accused of being a witch when she was a well-known and proven psychic. During WWII Helen's accurate 'death notices' were verified countless times. When she materialized the full form of a sailor with the name H.M.S. BARHAM on his cap, a ship which the English government denied had been sunk; she was arrested and jailed as a spy and then a witch. Even after she was proven correct, she was held as a witch. Her story is still unfolding today and is documented here :

http://www.helenduncan.org.uk/

53% of Australians believe in lfe after death

...and nearly half of the population believe in psychic powers.

The surprising findings from a Nielsen poll for Fairfax newspapers show Australia is a credulous nation, willing to mix and match religious faith with belief in other phenomena.
The research shows that Australians are more religious than thought - 68 per cent believe in God or a universal spirit.

But God is not the only thing Australians believe in. They place their faith in a range of other phenomena. For example, 63 per cent believe in miracles. Angels are also popular, with 51 per cent of respondents saying they believe in them.

Read more about the Nielsen poll at crikey.com.au

Another big thank you

Our warm thanks to those who attended the special service tonight in the Church.

In particular we welcome the 2 neighbours of the Church who have provided such valuable assistance over the past year.

## the Judgement / Order obtained by the Church in the NSW Supreme Court has been viewed 162 times.
Click on the link at the right to view it.

### The Church and Reverend Cleary would like to thank the well-wishes from the many Spiritualist churches and organisations from home and abroad that continue to reach us. In the last 2 days we have received messages from the  Calagary First Spiritualist Church in Canada and the NSCU in  Denmark. It's a testament to the high regard in which the Enmore Spiritualist Church is held around the world.