What is a mystification and how to avoid it
Astolfo O. de Oliveira Filho

As we pointed out in the book 20 lessons on Mediumship, chapter 14, published at the end of 2003 by Leopoldo Machado publishing, mystification means to deceit, cheat, scam, and abuse someone’s credulity.

The Spiritualistic practice is not free of mystification, given that we learn with the study of spiritual rankings that there are frivolous, ignorant, malicious, thoughtless and mocking Spirits, who get involved in all subjects and answer everything without caring for the truth. “They enjoy causing little griefs and brief joys, intriguingly and maliciously inducing to error, by means of mystifications and trickery.” (Book of Spirits, question n^o 103.)

Those Spirits may be incarnated or disincarnated, meaning the mystification can come from the medium, which is not very common within a serious Spiritualistic environment.

Alan Kardec claims that mystification is easy to avoid. It takes, however – so teaches the Decoder- not to demand from Spiritualism what it cannot give, which is the moral improvement of Mankind. “If you don’t step away from it, you will never be cheated”, warned us the Spirit of Truth, who at the same time clarified: “Spirits come to teach and guide you in the path of good and not in the path of honors and fortune, or to serve your cheap passions. If you don’t ask again any questions that are futile or outside their attributions, you’d never give voice to deceiving Spirits; whence you can conclude the mystified only gets what he deserves.” (The Book of Mediums, chapter XXVII, item 303, 1^st question.)

In the same work and the same item, the Spirit of Truth states that “God allows mystifications to test the perseverance of the real followers and punish those who make Spiritualism an object of entertainment”. (L.M. chap. XXVII, item 303, 2^nd question.) 

Animism and Mystification are different things – The mystifications experienced by a medium, so explains Emmanuel, always carries a useful purpose, which is to drive him away from self-love, sluggishness when learning about his own needs, his own vanity or the excess of confidence in himself, reason by which a mystification doesn’t happen without the knowledge of a medium’s most elevated mentors, who, only thus, lead him to the necessary vigilance and the accomplishment of humility and prudence in their subjective world. (O Consolador, question n^o 401.)

In this sense, having a perfect notion of the pitfalls of the medium practice, those who renounce Spiritualism because of a disappointment, such as the occurrence of a mystification, prove only that they don’t understand and don’t see the serious part of it. (The Book of Mediums, chap. XXVII, item 303, 2nd question.)

By behaving this way, such people show that they’ve never been true Spiritualists; they are in fact, like leaves that the wind blows away easily.

Kardec, when commenting the subject, states that one of the most common ways Spirits use to deceive is to stimulate our greed and our interest towards fortunes or material gain. We should also be alert of predictions of specific dates and avoid any provisions prescribed or suggested by Spirits, when the purpose is not evidently rational. Let us not be mesmerized by the names taken by Spirits in order to give their words an aspect of truth and be suspicious of “theories and risky scientific systems” and “of everything that drives us away from the moral objective of the manifestations”. (The Book of Mediums, chap. XXVII, Kardec’s observation after the 2^nd question of item 303.)

We must, however, not confuse mystification with animism. Animism is a phenomenon produced by the soul of the medium, who is not always aware of what happens. We suggest the reader to get acquainted with the subject animism reading the book Medium, who is and who is not, by Demétrio Pável Bastos, chapters XX and XXI, published by Institute Maria, from Juiz de Fora, MG.

Mystification- as we stated at the beginning of this article – presupposes lying, cheating, trickery and may occur, as previously seen, with the knowledge of Spiritual mentors, like the time when, in the Parisian Society of Spiritualistic Studies, a deceptive Spirit used the name of St. Louis, a spiritual leader of the Society, when he himself was present.

Nothing, absolutely nothing happens by accident. The ones who are dedicated to mediumship must, therefore, remain vigilant and never ignore the warning made by Erasto, in chapter XX, item 230, of the Book of Mediums: “It’s better to repel 10 truths than to admit one single lie, one single false theory”. “False communications, received by a medium from time to time, according to Divaldo P. Franco -, are warnings intended to make him not see himself as infallible and not grow proud (Molding the Third Millenium, from Fernando Worm, chap. 7, page 62.) 

Ways to avoid mystification – Besides the warnings and recommendations already mentioned, Allan Kardec provides us with safe orientations about the theme on chapter. XXIV, item 268 of The Book of Mediums, from which we extracted the following excerpts:

a)     among Spirits, few posses names known on Earth, thus most times they decline to provide one;

b)     as men, almost always, want to know the name of the communicator, a high-ranking Spirit may take up the one of someone revered on Earth in order to satisfy them. That does not mean it is a mystification or a fraud. It’d be if they did it in order to trick us, but, when it’s for the good, God allows spirits of the same category to proceed this way, for among them, there’s solidarity and analogy of thought. It happens that, many times the evoked Spirit is not able to descend and sends an agent, who will represent him in the meeting;

c)      when Spirits of low moral standards adopt names of respected figures to induce us to error, it’s not with the permission of such wrongly named Spirits. Deceivers shall be punished by this fault. Rest assured, however, that if we weren’t imperfect, we would be surrounded by nothing but good Spirits. If we are fooled, we are the only ones to blame;

d)     there are people in whom the high-ranking Spirits are interested, and, when they find appropriate, are spared from the threat of lies. Deceivers are completely weak against these people. High-ranking Spirits are interested in those who accurately use the ability to discern and seriously work towards self-improvement. They give them their preference and support;

e)     high-ranking Spirits have no other means to make themselves recognizable, besides the superiority of their ideas and their language. Material signs can be easily imitated. On the other hand, inferior Spirits cheat in so many ways, that you’d have to be blind to let yourself be fooled. Spirits only deceive those who want to be deceived;

f)       There are people who are seduced by emphatic language, and appreciate more words rather than ideas and who, in many instances, take false and vulgar ideas for sublime. How can these people, who are not fit to judge the work of men, judge the work of Spirits?;

g)     when people are humble enough to recognize their inaptitude, they don’t rely only on themselves; when, out of pride, believe they are more capable than they really are, bring within themselves the sentence of the foolish vanity that they feed. Mystifiers know perfectly who to address. There are simple people with little education who are easier to deceive than others, who are refined and knowledgeable. By flattering, they do whatever they want with men.  

The Day a Spirit stole St. Louis’ name

On May 11^th, 1860, at a session carried out at the Parisian Society of Spiritualistic Studies, Allan Kardec addressed a few questions to St. Louis, spiritual mentor of the Society, about a case of vision that took place with Mr. T… The answers were otherwise vague and incoherent, which indicated, according to the Decoder himself, “the evident interference of a cheating Spirit”. (Spiritualistic Magazine from 1860, page 171.)

At the following session, which took place on May 18^th, Kardec inquired why St. Louis allowed, in the previous week, that a mystifying Spirit spoke in his name.

-         St. Louis was present but did not want to speak – one of the Spirits present said.

-         Why didn’t he want to speak? – inquired Kardec.

St. Louis himself manifested and clarified:

-         You were upset about what happened, but you should know that nothing happens without a reason. Often, there are things whose purpose you don’t understand; that at first sight look evil, for you are very impatient, but whose wisdom you’ll later recognize. Stay calm and don’t worry about a thing; we know how to recognize the sincere ones and watch over them. (Spiritualistic Magazine from 1860, page 172.)

-         In the follow-up to the conversation between Kardec and St. Louis, the Decoder inquired why even after appealing to the good Spirits to steer away impostors, the request was not heard.

St. Louis explained:

-         It was heard, no doubt about it. But make sure the appeal comes from the bottom of the hearts of all the assistants, or aren’t there among you some who, by evil thought or by desire, attracts evil Spirits to your environment?

-         To sum up the clarification, St. Louis then revealed to Kardec something that never, by any means, the Decoder thought could happen there, when more than once, according to the director of the Spiritualistic Society of Paris, “a sarcastic smirk could be seen on the faces of the people who surrounded him” in the intimacy of those meetings (Spiritualistic Magazine from 1860, page 173.)

-         What kinds of Spirits do these people bring? – inquired the spiritual mentor.

And he answered:

-         Spirits who, like them, laugh at the most sacred things (Spiritualistic Magazine from 1860, page 173.)

The mystification that took place in the previous session was aimed at those people, who were not up to the works done by the Home that the Decoder himself founded and directed.

A case of mystification without a happy ending

Disincarnated on May 1^st, 1860 and evoked by the Decoder of Spiritualism himself, the writing medium Mrs. Duret revealed to Kardec that, in her activities of mediumship, she had been cheated be Spirits and there are few mediums who aren’t to some extent. (Spiritualistic Magazine from 1860, page 183.)

Such fact, explained Mrs. Duret, depends a lot on the medium and who is enquiring, but it’s always possible, if you wish, to be safeguarded from evil Spirits. “And it is a must not to attract them by their weaknesses and defects.” (Quoted work, page 184.)

We find it important to remind of the warning of Mrs. Duret, as an introduction to the following account of events.

In a respectable spiritualistic institution in an important Brazilian city, a Spirit manifested itself using the language of a child.

Taken in with sympathy by the team of mediums, the Spirit revealed it had prepared a gift for the group: an account of its own history, which could later, when finished, be published as a book.

In the following week, it came back and started the narrative, which extended for many weeks, taking advantage of the psychographic abilities of one of the mediums of the group.

At the end of every meeting, the chapter transmitted was read and then corrected and typed by the director of activities.

Some time later, when every member of the group of mediums was happy with the outcome of events, a notable medium, trusted by the leader of the group, comes to town and is invited to watch one of the meetings as a mere observer.

The meeting took place as usual, channelling manifestations happened as always, and, towards the end, the Spirit started the automatic writing, making use of the same medium as before. He certainly, didn’t notice the visitor in the premises, someone equipped with clairvoyance and owner of great knowledge in the Spiritualist practice.

As soon as the automatic writing started, the visitor whispered to the director of the meeting, warning that the Spirit was, in fact, a mystifier who had been wasting time during the session and, in secrecy, rejoice in the credulity of the members of that group.

Once found out, the Spirit itself confirmed the hoax, putting an end to the dictation of the supposed book.

The director, however, oblivious to Kardec’s lessons about mystifications and their purposes, departed from the Spiritualistic realm for many years, certain that the team lead by him lacked a greater protection from the so-called protectors and spiritual guides.