dual spiritism

• superstition of good and bad spirits

69:3.53. Dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion based on re­li­gion. The med­i­cine men were the first hu­man be­ings to be ex­empted from phys­i­cal toil; they were the pi­o­neer pro­fes­sional class. The smiths were a small group who com­peted with the med­i­cine men as ma­gi­cians. Their skill in work­ing with met­als made the peo­ple afraid of them. The “white smiths” and the “black smiths” gave ori­gin to the early be­liefs in white and black magic. And this be­lief later be­came in­volved in the su­per­sti­tion of good and bad ghosts, good and bad spir­its.

• 2 kinds of ghosts

87:4.3The no­tion of two kinds of spirit ghosts made slow but sure prog­ress through­out the world. This new dual spiritism did not have to spread from tribe to tribe; it sprang up in­de­pen­dently all over the world. In in­flu­enc­ing the ex­pand­ing evo­lu­tion­ary mind, the power of an idea lies not in its re­al­ity or rea­son­able­ness but rather in its vivid­ness and the uni­ver­sal­ity of its ready and sim­ple ap­pli­ca­tion.

87:4.4Still later the imag­i­na­tion of man en­vi­sioned the con­cept of both good and bad super­nat­u­ral agen­cies; some ghosts never evolved to the level of good spir­its. The early monospiritism of ghost fear was grad­u­ally evolv­ing into a dual spiritism, a new con­cept of the in­vis­i­ble con­trol of earthly af­fairs. At last good luck and bad luck were pic­tured as hav­ing their re­spec­tive con­trol­lers. And of the two classes, the group that brought bad luck were be­lieved to be the more ac­tive and nu­mer­ous.

87:4.5When the doc­trine of good and bad spir­its fi­nally ma­tured, it be­came the most wide­spread and per­sis­tent of all re­li­gious be­liefs. This du­al­ism rep­re­sented a great re­li­gio-philo­sophic ad­vance be­cause it en­abled man to ac­count for both good luck and bad luck while at the same time be­liev­ing in super­mor­tal be­ings who were to some ex­tent con­sis­tent in their be­hav­ior. The spir­its could be counted on to be ei­ther good or bad; they were not thought of as be­ing com­pletely tem­per­a­men­tal as the early ghosts of the monospiritism of most prim­i­tive re­li­gions had been con­ceived to be. Man was at last able to con­ceive of super­mor­tal forces that were con­sis­tent in be­hav­ior, and this was one of the most mo­men­tous dis­cov­er­ies of truth in the en­tire his­tory of the evo­lu­tion of re­li­gion and in the ex­pan­sion of hu­man phi­los­o­phy.

• doctrine complicated conception of cosmic unity

87:4.6Evo­lu­tion­ary re­li­gion has, how­ever, paid a ter­ri­ble price for the con­cept of dual spiritism. Man’s early phi­los­o­phy was able to rec­on­cile spirit con­stancy with the vi­cis­si­tudes of tem­po­ral for­tune only by pos­tu­lat­ing two kinds of spir­its, one good and the other bad. And while this be­lief did en­able man to rec­on­cile the vari­ables of chance with a con­cept of un­chang­ing super­mor­tal forces, this doc­trine has ever since made it dif­fi­cult for re­li­gion­ists to con­ceive of cos­mic unity. The gods of evo­lu­tion­ary re­li­gion have gen­er­ally been op­posed by the forces of dark­ness.

87:4.7The tragedy of all this lies in the fact that, when these ideas were tak­ing root in the prim­i­tive mind of man, there re­ally were no bad or dishar­mo­nious spir­its in all the world. Such an un­for­tu­nate sit­u­a­tion did not de­velop un­til af­ter the Cali­gas­tic re­bel­lion and only per­sisted un­til Pen­te­cost. The con­cept of good and evil as cos­mic co-or­di­nates is, even in the twen­ti­eth cen­tury, very much alive in hu­man phi­los­o­phy; most of the world’s re­li­gions still carry this cul­tural birth­mark of the long-gone days of the emerg­ing ghost cults.

• pitted one agency against another

87:6.13But man did not stop with ghost co­er­cion; through re­li­gious rit­ual and other prac­tices he was soon at­tempt­ing to com­pel spirit ac­tion. Ex­or­cism was the em­ploy­ment of one spirit to con­trol or ban­ish an­other, and these tac­tics were also uti­lized for fright­en­ing ghosts and spir­its. The dual-spiritism con­cept of good and bad forces of­fered man am­ple op­por­tu­nity to at­tempt to pit one agency against an­other, for, if a pow­er­ful man could van­quish a weaker one, then cer­tainly a strong spirit could dom­i­nate an in­fe­rior ghost. Prim­i­tive curs­ing was a co­er­cive prac­tice de­signed to over­awe mi­nor spir­its. Later this cus­tom ex­panded into the pro­nounc­ing of curses upon en­e­mies.

• gave rise to beliefs in white and black magic

88:6.2There was both a pub­lic and a pri­vate phase to magic. That per­formed by the med­i­cine man, shaman, or priest was sup­posed to be for the good of the whole tribe. Witches, sor­cer­ers, and wiz­ards dis­pensed pri­vate magic, per­sonal and self­ish magic which was em­ployed as a co­er­cive method of bring­ing evil on one’s en­e­mies. The con­cept of dual spiritism, good and bad spir­its, gave rise to the later be­liefs in white and black magic. And as re­li­gion evolved, magic was the term ap­plied to spirit op­er­a­tions out­side one’s own cult, and it also re­ferred to older ghost be­liefs.

• Zoroaster much affected by

92:5.124. The sixth cen­tury be­fore Christ. Many men arose to pro­claim truth in this, one of the great­est cen­turies of re­li­gious awak­en­ing ever wit­nessed on Uran­tia. Among these should be re­corded Gau­tama, Con­fu­cius, Lao-tse, Zoroaster, and the Jain­ist teach­ers. The teach­ings of Gau­tama have be­come wide­spread in Asia, and he is revered as the Bud­dha by mil­lions. Con­fu­cius was to Chi­nese moral­ity what Plato was to Greek phi­los­o­phy, and while there were re­li­gious reper­cus­sions to the teach­ings of both, strictly speak­ing, nei­ther was a re­li­gious teacher; Lao-tse en­vi­sioned more of God in Tao than did Con­fu­cius in hu­man­ity or Plato in ide­al­ism. Zoroaster, while much af­fected by the preva­lent con­cept of dual spiritism, the good and the bad, at the same time def­i­nitely ex­alted the idea of one eter­nal De­ity and of the ul­ti­mate vic­tory of light over dark­ness.

• Zoroaster much affected by

95:6.5Zoroas­tri­an­ism is the only Uran­tian creed that per­pet­u­ates the Dala­ma­tian and Edenic teach­ings about the Seven Mas­ter Spir­its. While fail­ing to evolve the Trin­ity con­cept, it did in a cer­tain way ap­proach that of God the Sev­en­fold. Orig­i­nal Zoroas­tri­an­ism was not a pure du­al­ism; though the early teach­ings did pic­ture evil as a time co-or­di­nate of good­ness, it was def­i­nitely eter­nity-sub­merged in the ul­ti­mate re­al­ity of the good. Only in later times did the be­lief gain cre­dence that good and evil con­tended on equal terms.

• young Jesus long accepted

123:3.3Joseph’s first thought was to tell Je­sus that the earth­quake had been caused by God, but a mo­ment’s re­flec­tion ad­mon­ished him that such an an­swer would im­me­di­ately be provoca­tive of fur­ther and still more em­bar­rass­ing in­quiries. Even at an early age it was very dif­fi­cult to an­swer Je­sus’ ques­tions about phys­i­cal or so­cial phe­nom­ena by thought­lessly telling him that ei­ther God or the devil was re­spon­si­ble. In har­mony with the pre­vail­ing be­lief of the Jew­ish peo­ple, Je­sus was long will­ing to ac­cept the doc­trine of good spir­its and evil spir­its as the pos­si­ble ex­pla­na­tion of men­tal and spir­i­tual phe­nom­ena, but he very early be­came doubt­ful that such un­seen in­flu­ences were re­spon­si­ble for the phys­i­cal hap­pen­ings of the nat­u­ral world.