VarietiesQueen Victoria and Spiritism
Le Salut Public, Lyon July 3rd, 1866, in the news from Paris, reads:
“Lord Granville, during his stay in Paris, told a few friends that Queen Vitoria seemed more concerned than she had ever been seen any time in her life, due to the Austro-Prussian conflict. The honorable Lord, President of the private council of her British Majesty, added that the Queen believed to obey the voice of the deceased Prince Albert, sparing nothing to avoid a war that would throw the whole Germany in the bonfire. It was under that constant impression that she wrote several times to the King of Prussia, as well as to the Emperor of Austria, and that she would have written an autograph letter to the Empress Eugenia, begging her to join her efforts in favor of peace.”
This fact confirms what we published in the Spiritist Review, March 1864 with the title A Queen that was a medium. There it was said, according to a correspondence form London, reproduced by several newspapers, that Queen Victoria communicated with the Spirit of Prince Albert, and used to take his advices in certain circumstances, as she did when he was alive. We refer to that article for the details of the fact, and for the reflections that it aroused. Moreover, we can affirm that Queen Victoria is not the only crowned head or near the crown that sympathizes with the Spiritist ideas, and every time we said that the doctrine had followers in the highest degrees of the social scale, we did not exaggerated.
It was frequently asked why the sovereigns, convict of the truth and the existence of this doctrine, did not consider it to be a duty to openly support it, with the authority of their names. The sovereigns are perhaps the least free men; more than simple individuals, they are submitted to the demands of the world, and obliged, for reasons of State, to certain maneuvers. We would not allow ourselves to cite Queen Victoria, regarding Spiritism, if other newspapers had not taken the initiative, and because the fact was not belied, nor there was any complaint, then we assessed we could do it without inconveniences. There will certainly come a day when the sovereigns will confess to be Spiritists, as they confess to be Protestant, Greek or Roman Catholic. While we wait, their sympathy is not as sterile as one would believe, because in certain countries, if Spiritism is not officially blocked and persecuted, as Christianity was in Rome, it owes it to high influences. Before it is officially protected, it must be happy for being tolerated, by accepting what is given and do not ask much or take the risk of receiving nothing. Before being an oak, it is just a reed, and if the reed does not break, it is for the fact that it folds with the wind.
