Hannen Swaffer's Home Circle.
My first contact with
Hannen Swaffers home circle was in 1932, when I attended as a visitor on the
same night that Frank Decker, the American physical medium, was invited to
attend. That was a big night for me, because White Shadow asked me to join the
circle, and for all of us, because it was Deckers visit that paved the way to
our own development of the direct voice. Some psychic gifts seem, to some
extent, infectious. There must, of course, be the psychic power latent, but
sometimes a fillip is given to its development by contact with a medium
possessing the same gift. Dennis Bradley caught the direct voice from
Valiantine; we caught it from Decker.
We had both the direct
voice and materialization phenomena that night, Deckers mediumship, of course,
being responsible. We were sitting quietly in the darkness when suddenly
Deckers guide, White Eagle, gave his war cry. It was so loud and sudden we
all nearly jumped out of our skins and the wires of the piano vibrated. Later,
Patsy, another of Deckers guides, shouted out, Good night. I felt a
materialized hand laid upon mine and, at the same time, Decker said he saw
clairvoyantly the word Test. He wondered what it meant. White Shadow
explained that White Eagle intended the materialized hand to be a test for the
man who writes for the paper. He could not speak, as he was not controlling
the medium, so he had caused the word to be seen clairvoyantly.
At this sitting, Decker
told us that we had latent the power for developing direct voice mediumship. We
asked White Shadow about it and he agreed and encouraged us to try to develop
it. With his permission, we started sitting with trumpets on the floor in the
centre of the circle. Within eight months, we heard the direct voice
independently of the trumpet. Then, six weeks after Decker visited us again,
the trumpet was used and longer talks in the direct voice were possible.
When I joined the circle,
we had two good trance mediums, used by White Shadow and Silver Birch.
Gradually, as the physical phenomena developed, Silver Birch took the place of
White Shadow as the teacher, while the other medium was used more and more for
direct voice. Both spirits, though they claimed to be simple savages - later
communications have convinced us that they are really highly evolved spirits,
using the astral bodies of the Indians as mediums - were most eloquent. Their
language would put any earthly orator to shame. But, as White Shadows medium
could be used better as the focal point of the direct voice, Silver Birch
became the teacher.
It was explained to us that
all the sitters and their guides had been carefully chosen by the spirit
people. For over two years they had been working for a perfect circle, one in
which all the sitters and all the guides would blend in harmony. At last they
were satisfied they had got it. Each sitter brought some necessary power for
the phenomena; each guide and spirit helper had some special task. Gradually
the sitters would develop their mediumistic gifts. Each had some special work in
front of him. The guides took us into their confidence, told us what they had
to do and encouraged us to question them about their work. Their descriptions
were supplemented by those who could see the spirits at work. We began to learn
psychic laws and cooperation reached a fine point.
For weeks before we heard
the direct voice we saw the trumpet moved in graceful motions in all
directions. The guides told us the voice was nearly ready. We have had
rehearsals, they said. We can make the voices all right, but we cannot make
them heard in your world. On that first night, we heard just a few words. The
guide spoke from the floor, from near the ceiling, from positions all over the
circle, but mostly from the floor. He said it was easier to speak from there.
The voice did not come through the trumpet, though this was moved with perfect
control. Each sitter was gently touched by the trumpet, in the order we asked,
and one of us felt a materialized hand.
The guides had never used the vocal cords of the medium, even in trance. They
said there was healing power in her voice and if they used her cords that
property might be impaired. They used vocal cords of their own construction.
When Anny Ahlers, the actress, controlled the medium a few weeks after her death,
she complained that it was very difficult because White Shadow would not let
her use the mediums vocal cords.
The materialization
phenomena grew as the direct voice developed. The father of White Shadows
medium was able to materialize his hands sufficiently to make, for evidence,
the loud clicking noise peculiar to his habit during earth life, and strum on
the wall in his accustomed manner. The favourite dog of one of the sitters was
sometimes materialized and we heard its tail wagging against the leg of a
chair. A pet cat scratched at the carpet and a bird which the medium had taken
into shelter when she found it injured used to materialize and fly about the
room. Often ornaments were moved from a high mantelshelf and were found after
the sitting in the middle of the circle. We often felt materialized
hands.
One of the guides must have
been huge - he told us that on the earth he was over seven feet tall, which was
corroborated by the mediums clairvoyant vision - for I would sometimes feel
both my ankles grasped in one large hand. We heard the heavy tread of the
guides going about the room and one of them, for our amusement, repeated a
dance he used on earth, chanting while he did it an Indian tune which was
always played for that particular dance.
At one sitting I shook
hands with my dead sister, who passed on at the age of seven about twelve
years before. I had been told that she acted as my guide, and I had had various
messages from her, but this was the first occasion on which she had spoken directly
to me. She controlled White Shadows medium in trance and spoke so quietly we
could hardly hear what she said. She asked me to stretch out my hand towards
the medium and she grasped it with her own - one she had manufactured out of
ectoplasm.
She told us that trance control was very difficult as White Shadow would not
allow the vocal cords to be used. Usually, cords were made of ectoplasm for the
spirits use, but in her case, she told us, a different system had been
specially arranged. By some method of using compressed air - we would not have
understood, she said, even if she were able to explain it exhaustively - she
was able to make her voice heard without using any vocal cords.
At this sitting, one of the
guides explained to us that the circle was formed as much for the dead as for
the living. Many in the spirit world, it was said, are held back by their
desire to communicate with their friends on this side of the veil. Until they
are able to do this, their advance is impeded. We were also told something of
the difficulties experienced by the guides. Before any new phenomenon was
introduced, consideration had to be given to the mental reactions of the
sitters, for on that depended to a large extent the psychic power that was
available.
Frank Decker sat with us
again in 1933 - about nine months after his first visit - and a few weeks later
our own trumpet was used for the direct voice. When Decker was there, one of
the guides was speaking to us through a trance medium and we were surprised suddenly
to hear Patsy, Deckers newspaper-boy guide, announce himself in the direct
voice. Later on, Patsy sang two songs, White Eagle, another of Deckers guides,
spoke to us and White Shadow had a talk with his medium. This was the first
time she had heard White Shadow speak, as always before she was in trance when
he manifested. We saw wonderful control of the trumpet at this sitting, Patsy
taking it all round the circle at lightning speed. The whizzing trumpet came so
near to us that we felt a distinct breeze as it went by, but no one was touched
by it.
Then, a few weeks later,
after Decker had gone back to America and we had no outside help, we
experienced our first voice through our own trumpet. It had taken three years
of constant sittings to reach this stage and that voice gave us all a thrill.
Only one word was spoken. The spirit merely announced her name - it was Lottie,
Hannen Swaffers dead sister-in-law - but it showed that our own direct voice
phenomena had started. At the next sitting, a guide said two or three words to
his medium. The next time there were seven voices, and so it went on, gradually
improving until we were able to hold long, sustained conversations directly
with those living in another world, hearing their own voices speaking to us and
giving us evidence of their continued existence.
At first the voices were
weak, though each was distinctive, and the personality spread even to the
movements of the trumpet. In many cases, we were able to tell who was about to
speak by the way in which the trumpet was moved. One guide always traced in the
air the letter S, the initial of his name. Another always made peculiar
movements which suggested the name by which he was known. One spirit, the
father of White Shadows medium, always tapped the trumpet with his fingers
before speaking, recalling an earthly habit as a means of identification. Each
of the regular communicators had a special way of introducing himself before
the voice was heard.
In the early stages of the
direct-voice phenomena, White Shadows medium was in trance. The communicating
spirits seemed to get additional power from her for, after leaving the floor,
the trumpet would always move towards her before a voice was heard. Later, she
was sometimes able to hear the voices while she remained out of trance.
Within the first month of hearing our first voice, we had talks with four of the guides of the circle, the father and sister of White Shadows medium, the mother, father and brother of the mediums husband, Hannen Swaffers sister- in-law, my sister, Hall Caine, Gilbert Parker and Lord Northcliffe, Swaffers former Chief in the newspaper world.
A.W. Austen
As Published by Zerdini on: http://www.spiritualistchatroom.forumotion.com