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Rescue Circles (26) Bertha Harris, and Casting Out of Obsessive Spirits.
As mentioned at the conclusion of article 25, this series will continue to review spirit rescue work, including the release work of rescue mediums amd the activities of the London-Malvern based Spirit Release Foundation - A couple of years ago another contributor to these columns, and a member of a spirit rescue circle in Devon, Michael Evans, published a useful handbook recording many rescue cases. See his book, "Dead Rescue."
The well-known English medium Bertha Harris did some rescue work with Carl
Wickland back in 1932. Dr. Wickland was looking for a medium to help him after the death of his wife, Anna, and he spent 6 weeks with
Bertha in a London hospital treating mental patients. However, even with offers of generous financial rewards he was unable to lure her back to the USA to work with him as his rescue medium. After WW II Bertha Harris did tour the States several times, and worked with George Meek among others. Wickland, along with Hugh Dowding, Arthur Guirdham, Johannes Greber and a few other more enlightened professionals was sure that much mental illness is the result of spirit obsession, and can be cured in most cases with
the help of a medium. The Spirit Release Foundation of London, UK, continues withthis kind of work and provides training for practitioners.
Here are a few more cases of rescue work recorded by Hugh Dowding. He
writes in a newspaper article:
"A Scotswoman in late middle age joined a development circle in Scotland
with a view to becoming a medium. She became obsessed by a malicious spirit, apparently of foreign origin judging by his speech and accent.
This case was peculiar in that the services of the medium in trance were
not required, because the patient herself was a natural medium. She sat down in a chair to tell us of her symptoms and the history of her case, and within ten seconds she was no longer speaking to us; the obsessing spirit had taken control and she was in trance.
At first the spirit was very blatant and triumphant, boasting that he had
prevented the development of a first-class medium and delighted with
the pain and distress which he had caused to his victim.
As soon as the electric treatment was started, however, he changed his
tune and began to express penitence for what he had done, and to ask to be
helped to break the connection which he no longer desired.
But he was an unpleasant creature, and I formed the opinion that in spite
of his protestations he was hanging on like grim death.
The patient had been in a mental home, and had been subjected
unsuccessfully to the heavy ECT shock treatment which is given in such places. Possibly this unsuccessful attempt had toughened the resistance
of the spirit to electricity, because, except for the change of tone in his
babblings, it seemed to have little effect on him.
Patiently, minute after minute, the aura specialist and the medium
continued to converse with the spirit, persuading him to leave of his own free
will. We were told that there was a cowled monk with a St. Bernard dog who had come to meet the obsessing spirit and to take charge of him when he was willing to go. The spirit could not see the monk at first, but eventually he saw him and ‘a fat dog’.
This went on for nearly half an hour, and then, suddenly, he was gone –
like a cork out of a bottle.
The patient came out of her trance, and could not believe at first that
the spirit was gone [this is a very common symptom]. She was in mortal dread of being sent back to a mental home for good by her
relatives; but she was asked to sit in a waiting-room with a member of the
circle, and after about an hour was quite composed and able to leave in a taxi
with her husband.
Unfortunately in this case the expelled entity later returned to his
victim, and is still in possession, although the fight has by no means been
abandoned by the circle.
Psychiatrists and the medical profession as a whole are not ready to
accept as a fact the separate existence of those discarnate spirits who are the
cause of obsession. It is also necessary to recognize the existence of and the
conscious co-operation of agents of the principle of Light [spirits and angels
from the higher spheres] in the never-ending fight against the darkness [the
influence of low-level or ‘astral’ spirits].
In point of fact, these higher spirits are the directors and we the
co-operators, and this is scarcely a point of view likely to be widely accepted
by professionals at the present time [THEY still like to be in control of
things!]. The onus is with the rescue circles to provide an adequate number of verifiable case-histories of people who have been restored to sane normality after orthodox methods have failed, before professionals can be expected to register anything in the nature of a practical interest. [This is still true, in 2008.
My own attitude is that, as in the time of our Lord, people are invaded
by unclean spirits, and, as in Biblical times, these spirits are susceptible to
eviction in accordance with the power and knowledge of the exorcist. The laws of nature are immutable; all that changes is the fashion which determines the type of window through which we look at them.
From an article by Hugh Dowding appearing in the Sunday Dispatch at the end of October, 1949 entitled “The Casting Out of Spirits”.
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