The following article was given to me by the late Jean Bassett as part of my research into Gordon. I presume it was given to Jean as background to her biography of Gordon, ‘On the Side of Angels.’ The article offers a fascinating insight into what took place on Physical Phenomena Week at the Arthur Findlay College and contains two great descriptions of Gordon’s physical seances and the evidence within them. Given the value of the article, I feel it should be shared for all to benefit, and I do hope you enjoy it. The author is unknown other than we know she is called Mary. If anyone knows the identity of the author, do let me know.
Archives for September 2018
Presidential Address 1988 – Scrapheap Warning
SNU President Issues ‘Scrapheap’ Warning on Spiritualism’s Future
In a rousing speech to the Spiritualists National Union’s annual conference at Sheffield, President Gordon Higginson urged delegates to rekindle the fervour of Spiritualism’s pioneers and carry forward their beliefs. The world was crying out for the message of Spiritualism but too often “we go on altering our rules, worrying about petty things instead of concentrating on the main issue concerning life itself and our purpose on earth.”
Gordon warned delegates that unless Spiritualists found a way of getting the fundamental philosophy of Spiritualism across, the movement would “end up like all past religions – on the scrapheap of the world.”
New Website Launched
I am pleased to announce that this new Gordon Higginson Tribute website is now complete and all of the content has been transferred from the old website. The old website was built in 2008 and served us well for 10 years. It has now been gracefully retired. The old website was built with a website builder that used Adobe Flash. Flash is being phased out by 2020 and many browsers are removing support. So there was an urgent need to move the website to a new platform and rebuild it from scratch.
This new website has been built on WordPress. This is the world’s most popular blogging and content management platform as it powers over 30% of the internet. As such, this new website should see us well into the future for at least another decade.Continue Reading
The Spirit in Spiritualism
THE SPIRIT IN SPIRITUALISM BY GORDON HIGGINSON
As I see it, the spirit has gone out of Spiritualism; it is all too often just not there. Once inspiration goes out, then the Spirit cannot stay. With trance mediumship, we get such a close contact with the Spirit and are moved by their power. Not all mediums will be deep trance, but a true medium can develop some level of this type of work. We need to get our mediums more in contact with the Spirit and our congregations to be spiritualised.
If we can get the movement more aware of the presence of Spirit, then I think we will be able to get in contact with higher powers. Until we do that, we are just people who have found something wonderful, but not using it intelligently.
I am sure that Spirit are guiding us gently back to this realisation. In the past, we had wonderful guides like Red Cloud, Silver Birch and White Eagle who were able to share their wisdom with us. We need to be looking to developing mediums once again who can act as channels for these sorts of guides. We need to bring that back; there has never been anything written like the teachings of Silver Birch. He was a personality so very different from his medium, Maurice Barbanell.Continue Reading