Is Christmas Celebrated in the Spheres?

        According to Silver Birch, the spirit entity who communicated for nearly 50 years through the trance mediumship of Maurice Barbanell, a British journalist, certain groups in the afterlife spheres celebrate the holidays - both Christmas and Easter.   However, he pointed out that these celebrations were going on well before the Christian era gave added meaning to them. 

      At what is now Christmas time, the birth of the sun was celebrated - the end of the long cycle when there arose the first sign that new life was being born into the earthly world.  Then, when the sun attained its fully glory it was regarded as a period of resurrection.  "Those times had significance to us because it was then that we received the greatest communion from the Great Spirit," he explained.  "You do not yet understand very much the influence of the sun. At these times, we held for many days what you call séances.  We received at those festivals much inspiration."

        The festival of the birth of the sun was the most important, Silver Birch added, because it represented the beginning of a new era.   It was the end of one cycle and the beginning of a new one.   Because the festivals were held in the world of matter, they were celebrated in the world of spirit.   "A spiritual meaning has now come out of them," Silver Birch continued.  "Instead of celebrating the dawn of the new life, we now use it to withdraw from the world of matter to get new power of the spirit so that we can bring new light to the world."  

      At what might be called retreats here on earth, these advanced spirits take counsel from even higher spirits, share experiences, learn how far they have succeeded or failed, and formulate plans for future missions.   Among those higher spirits who give counsel, he said, "is the great figure of the Nazarene, who is still imbued with the task of teaching humanity age-old truth enshrined in all that we seek to do, that love is the fulfilling of the law."

      However, Silver Birch stressed that he is not the Nazarene of the Churches, exalted into a deified place, but rather a great spirit who strives still to serve through many instruments.   "I wish that you could see and hear the Nazarene and feel that great love as he encourages us in our missions, as he expresses his knowledge of all that has been done and urges us to go forward with new strength, with new hope, with new vision, and with new purpose."

       One of the sitters asked Silver Birch if in referring to the Nazarene, he was speaking of the man Jesus or the spirit forces working through him. "The man," Silver Birch replied through the entranced medium.  "But he has since evolved and there is now a far greater spiritual consciousness expressed through him than there was in the earthly incarnation, for the amount that he expressed then had to be in consonance with the limitations of his day.  There has never been on earth anyone through whom the manifestation of the spirit has been greater than through the Nazarene.  There has never been any through whom the laws have revealed themselves at so great an intensity as through the Nazarene."

       At another sitting, a person asked Silver Birch if Jesus was "God the Son," as the Church teaches, or if he was an ordinary man with great mediumistic powers.  Silver Birch answered: "The Nazarene was a messenger of the Great Spirit who came into your world in order to fulfill a mission of the Great Spirit.  He fulfilled his mission on earth, but he has not yet fulfilled the rest of his mission, which is till being directed from the world of spirit.  It is wrong to worship the Nazarene, for worship should be given only to the Great Spirit and not to His messengers.  The Nazarene came into your world by fulfilling the natural laws which the Great Spirit had ordained, the same natural laws which all must fulfill in order to be born into your world. You cannot live, you cannot be born into your world, you cannot pass from your world into mine, except through the natural laws of the Great Spirit."

       Asked about the Christian doctrine of atonement, Silver Birch said:  "How pitiable a conception is this of the Great Spirit and of the mission of the Nazarene!  He was full of the love and mercy and gentleness of a loving Father.  You are all placed in the world of matter to build your own character and accomplish your own soul evolution...All else is a doctrine of cowardice and injustice.  If you have done wrong, be a man and pay the price!  Do not attempt to shelve your responsibilities on to the back of another."     

Homosexuality and Possession

      In my blog post of November 7,  reference was made to a book by Wanda Pratnicka, Possessed by Ghosts (2006), in which she claims that a primary cause of homosexuality is possession at birth by an earth-bound spirit of the opposite sex.   Several people responded somewhat emotionally to the post, both at the site and by e-mail to me.  A couple of them implied that I was endorsing the view or that it was disparaging to gays to even give recognition to such a theory.  

         As I told them, I am highly skeptical of that particular claim by Pratnicka, although I am much less skeptical when it comes to possession or overshadowing, in general.  However, I offered Pratnicka's views on the subject as food for thought.  I am not qualified to accept or reject her assertions on the subject.  Moreover, to the extent that I find most everything else she states to be consistent with what others have written on the subject of possession,  I think it would be irresponsible for me to reject her statements because it offends some people or because some people are unable to set emotion aside in considering such a "theory," even though Prtnicka presents it as fact, not theory.

I recently received the below e-mail from Dr. Paul D. Biscop, of Nanaimo, British Columbia, and would like to present his view on the subject:

        "While I have not read [Pratnicka's] book, I would nonetheless like to respond for your readers from my professional point of view as a Registered Art Therapist (ATR) and a Cultural Anthropologist (Ph.D.) and from my personal point of view as a Spiritualist medium of 40 years.

         "As a professional anthropologist teaching at College and University levels, my teaching specialties include Anthropology of Religion; Healing (Medical) and Human Sexuality, the latter of which I pioneered in teaching in western Canada, first at Simon Fraser University and then at Douglas College here in British Columbia.  Patricka‘s claim that homosexuality is caused by possession at birth by an earth-bound spirit of the opposite sex is one that could be accepted only by those who might share what appears to be a mediaeval religious world view, one in which any kind of non-reproductive sex is considered "unnatural" and therefore "of the Devil", thus leading to an explanation of homosexuality as "unnatural" and more or less demonic, a demonic etiology of homosexuality if you will.   I suspect her work is a published attempt to validate and legitimate not a clinical or academic point of view but rather a bizarre religious point of view. There are serious flaws of assumptions as well as ignorance of cross-cultural data on human sexual behaviors in general and the meanings given to the variants found, especially in regard to homosexual behaviour and gender as well.

        "It appears that Pratnicka considers both sex (male/female) and gender (masculine/feminine) a part of "nature" (as ordered by God?) and not a part of culture, as created by humankind. From an anthropological cross-cultural perspective, a number of points are clear: biology provides the basis for sex (male/female/intersexed) but culture provides the meanings that become attached both to sex and sexual behaviour; sexual behaviour and sexual identity are separate and not necessarily consistent; gender roles are created by society and culture, and vary accordingly. In fact, both sexual and gender identities are far more numerous and flexible cross-culturally than the usual narrow definitions of orthodox Western thinking might expect. Sexual behaviour that has one meaning in one culture might have an opposite or other meaning in another culture. As for gender, there are many societies that permit of plural genders and gender identities rather than only two, as in Western concepts. In a few societies, gender is not fixed but assigned according to particular tasks which either men or women may take up or leave aside as they choose or are required.

        "Homosexuality, as defined in Western terms, may or may not occur in every society, but homosexual activities may occur without any particular identity being attached to them. In some cases, the presence of homosexuality may be missed by outside observers because the natives have no particular term or perception of it as such.  While the biological similarity of males everywhere, as females every where, is much the same, it is reasonable to expect some similarity in gender roles as well. This we find cross-culturally, but at the same time we also find considerable variation in gender roles.

"Indeed, the example of ritual homosexuality as required in some Melanesian societies, which is not defined as homosexual behaviourbut rather a necessity of biology in order to "grow boys into men", shows the poverty of Pratnicka's concepts. What the cross-cultural study of human sexuality strongly suggests is that "nature" gives us the drive to eroticize something or other, but culture and individual factors shape what is ultimately eroticized by anyone, male, female, intersexed or other. In fact, the variety of human sexual behaviour, and the flexibility with which it is expressed, would support not a genetic likelihood for homosexuality, but rather a socially learned pattern of behaviour and identity construction.

       "Spirit possession beliefs and practices vary greatly from culture to culture as well, and, though common, are not quite universally found either. Both the kinds and nature of spirits are culturally conceived and experienced. Possession may be involuntary or it may be voluntary; most commonly, it begins as involuntary and progresses to be voluntary.  I have not heard of any culture in which possession is believed to occur at birth and continue throughout the lifetime, whether that possession be by a spirit of the same sex or opposite sex. In some cases, spirits do not have sex as male or female at all.

       "As an Art Therapist formerly in clinical practice with adolescents in a psychiatric facility, and as a cultural anthropologist, I am aware of many claims in our society to have "cured" homosexuality that generally do not hold up to scrutiny either clinically or over the long term. Most of these claims seem to serve only to validate the status of the claimant, whether scientist, pastor, therapist or snake oil salesman!

        "Finally, I might add that in forty years of public mediumship, I have never encountered a case of actual possession under any circumstances.  All I have ever seen is some great fiction, based loosely on some early social science research, and lots of anecdotal tales that cannot be confirmed. I have, however, seen possession that does fit the anthropological profile, and I respect the use of what is believed to be possession as a genuine means to spiritual experience in the context of those particular cultures in which it is documented.

        "What we see in Pratnicka's tale is not science or social science, but the politics of explanation, in which explanation is tied to ideology and personal expedience at the expense of peoples' experience of human needs and even of truth itself. One can only shake one's head at such incredible nonsense."