This article originally appeared in The Skeptic, Volume 5, Issue 5, from 1991.
Many nice, intelligent middle class people have no religious beliefs, but are strangely protective of other people’s. ‘But don’t you respect other people’s beliefs?’ they say, ‘Surely if illusions bring comfort you shouldn’t interfere?’ When Marx called religion ‘opium’ he didn’t mean it in a pejorative sense, he meant it was something like valium. His remark is always quoted out of context – what he said was ‘Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people’.
The spiritualist church in Homsey looks like a superior scout hut. The sign outside lists the ten precepts of Christian spiritualism, including the fatherhood of God, the brotherhood of man, personal responsibility, the continuance of the human spirit, retribution after death, but the possibility of progress for everyone. Inside the atmosphere is warm, with many potted plants, pictures by Margaret W. Tarrant, wood-effect wallpaper and a carpeted sanctuary. The congregation on a Sunday evening is small. There is a low murmur of conversation. Somehow, it is easier to relax in a roomful of strangers than it is to meditate, for the good of one’s health, alone in one’s room. No one can deny that religions have social benefits, even if it’s only tea afterwards. A man comes out of the vestry and installs himself behind the lectern. He seems about 55, moustached, tieless. He speaks with an accent which could be Polish. He announces a hymn (Blest are the Poor in Heart) and sets off singing, after a count of three in a wavering tenor. There is no organ, and we are led, informally, by a girl in the congregation with a strong tuneful voice.
The officiator introduces the medium, a lady of about 60 in trousers and a mauve and jade cardigan. The only divergence from ordinariness is the ankh hanging from her necklace. Her introductory talk sketches in the beliefs of spiritualism (newcomers are asked to raise their hands). The afterlife sounds like this one, only better. The spirits have everything they want. The body is a ‘physical coat’ that we wear on the ‘earth plane’. After death we will meet ‘loved ones who have passed’. The spirit world, not this one, is the real world (which seems counter-intuitive).
The old-fashioned homeliness of her address is attractive, there is no New Age jargon. Spiritualists are divided about reincarnation, but personally she believes it. We come here to receive lessons. (But if everything that happens to us in this life is a corrective lesson based on our past life, how do our lessons intersect with everybody else’s? And if we deserve people’s bad actions towards us, how can the perpetrators be punished? It sounds like an administrative nightmare for someone). There are seven planes of existence but ‘ordinary people like us’ end up in the third plane, Summerland.’ There is nothing ethereal about it, our spiritual bodies will seem solid. (This is having your dualism and eating it!).
It’s time for the clairvoyance: ‘Don’t think about what you want me to tell you, because that will block me.’ A collection plate is passed round. Briskly, the performance starts. ‘I want to come to you,’ she points to two middle aged women who had confessed to being newcomers. The first two names she mentions, Charlie and Frank, are not claimed. They are the names of two of my uncles, both dead. I am tempted to claim them, but too shy. ‘A lady called Dolly who is what you call dead. Do you take Dolly, please? The dark-haired woman who is dignified and soft-spoken, denies knowing Dolly. An Annie ‘a big lady, big here, you know what I mean’ is also not recognised. ‘That’s what I’m hearing. She’s saying you have burned your bridges, but not to regret.’ She then offers them three anniversaries, which could be of a wedding, a birthday, a ‘passing’. For two she just names a month; for the third she names June 12, and gets the response ‘yes’. This sets the pattern for her interactions with the congregation. She uses stereotyped gestures rather like sign language. The dead are behind her. She points to parts of her body to indicate ailments (There’s a lady called Florrie, can you take her? She passed with her heart, but I’m getting that she kept going till the end’.)
She turns to ‘listen’ to the spirits. Names are dateable, the spirits who bring messages to an elderly lady in the front row are Martha, Ethel, Gladys. After casting around for a name that is recognised, she gives a sentence or two of banal advice, in the Russell Grant class. Her benign folksiness has been replaced by a much more aggressive manner. She wants the answer ‘yes’. She closes each encounter by offering three ‘anniversaries’, a technique which ensures a hit (who can think of a month of the year which doesn’t have a sister’s cousin’s niece’s birthday in it?).
‘I’d like to come to you, the newcomer lady at the back there’. She tells me to uncross my legs, because ‘I’m full of wires’. Do I know the name of Slater? I say yes (I know a Lizzie Slater). She then talks about grandparents, one from each side of the family (none called Slater). I smile and say ‘Yes, I see’ a lot, trying not to give away too much. My grandparents tell me not to change my career or course of study, as I was thinking of doing (I wasn’t). ‘And post that letter! I don’t recognise the names Kathy or Anne, but I am told to ‘hold on to them’ and ask my mother. Links with America are suggested, and it’s predicted I will go there in the next three years (I really must post that letter to my friend in Ecuador, where I am going in the summer. Does South America count?)
A dark-skinned man sitting alone is singled out (‘I keep getting Singapore’). All his family who are in spirit are surrounding him with loving thoughts and one of them is wearing a beautiful sari. They tell him he plans to travel to many countries. ‘Not exactly’ he says. A youngish pretty woman in a fringed suede miniskirt is asked if Dad is in spirit. She says she doesn’t know. The medium sees a great cold gap between her father and mother. ‘I have to tell you that he is in spirit. The name Taylor isn’t recognised, but it is rapidly changed to a man who used to make tailor-made costumes, who brings the message ‘Don’t let your head be turned by flattery’. The medium picks out a lady, ‘Or is it a gentleman?’ at the back. Another newcomer. Unruffled, this woman consistently denies that any of her friends or relatives had anything wrong with their eyes, though the same questions are asked more than once: ‘It’s your mother, then? I’m not going to take it back’. The spirits tell her that ‘all is taken care of, all will be well. Does that make sense? Nothing makes sense to me – I am just the telephone’.
When a man can’t place an Arthur with lung trouble, the medium explains ‘there are so many coming, I get confused’. He is told: ‘Don’t be sorry. You did the right thing. They will come back and apologise’. The officiator gets up and thanks the medium for her clairvoyance, reads some notices (healing is on Tuesdays and Fridays at 6pm) and offers tea for those who want to stay. We stand and sing a moving and beautiful hymn called ‘O Love that Wilt Not Let Me Go’ The two women who initially denied knowing Charlie, Frank, Dolly and Annie precede me out of the building. Once outside, the dark-haired woman bursts into tears, saying in a broken voice ‘I’ve never-never…’ I assume that she has been bereaved, and is crying because she has never had a message from the dead person. The implications of Marx’s famous ‘opium’ remark are further changed by the rest of the passage:
‘The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that demands illusions.’
I don’t respect people’s beliefs, I respect people. I respect people too much to respect their beliefs. I want them to really have what they want, not an illusion, because an illusion is fragile, and in any case doesn’t deliver the goods. Quite Justifiably people want to be reunited with their loved ones; want eternal life, youth, health and beauty. They can’t have these things, but they could at least have a functioning National Health Service.
Nice middle-class people are also fond of saying that ‘we’ need a sense of mystery, of wonder. There are things we need more: enough to eat, love and affection, a just society.
