Ghosts, appearances of the dead and cultural transformation (fantasmas, aparições dos mortos e transformação cultural [Portuguese])

By Ronald C. Finucane:

LX Portugal. (2016). Colecção Enigmas de Todos os Tempos (Bertrand Editora). [online] Available at: https://www.olx.pt/anuncio/coleco-enigmas-de-todos-os-tempos-bertrand-editora-IDzcYdx.html [Accessed 12 Nov. 2016].

It is a book of world history. It tells us many stories told in various parts of the world. The author seems impartial, but he tends not to believe in them. Hovewer, there are many inexplicable and terrifying facts. Nevertheless, the book is important for the historical wealth.

Some interesting passages:

• «(...) a moment of earthly life represents a very, very long time in purgatorio.» (in F.C. Tubach, Speculum Laicorum, Folklore fellow communications, 1969).
• «(...) Glanvill hoped that these apparitions of ghosts would confuse the materialistic atheists and the heretical sectarians of his time./Nonconformists were also interested in collecting and publishing examples of evidence of immortality.» (in Chapter 5 - Baroque hauntings of the seventeenth century).
• «(...) about half of the narratives deal with precautions about heirs, warnings to the living, and murders.» (in Chapter 5 - Baroque hauntings of the seventeenth century).
• «(...) poltergeists. (...) the name of two German words, which mean "creating a disturbance" (or, more specifically, producing deaf noises, rolling or blowing furiously), and "spirits." Although examples can be found in the early centuries, this form of spiritual persecution only becomes vulgar in the post-Reformation era.» (in Chapter 5 - Baroque hauntings of the seventeenth century).
• «(...) Flowers on the graves - originally a pagan custom (...).»
• «Nothing is more common, in rural areas, than an entire family on a winter night, sitting around the fire and telling stories of apparitions and ghosts. (...) this helps the fears of men and makes them often imagine that they see things, which in reality are no more than their imagination [said by Henry Bourne].» (in Chapter 6 - The Enlightenment and "Atheism").
• «As for the nature of legitimate appearances, Defoe believes that they are demonic agents or benevolent celestial beings, like the ethereal and astral spirits of previous generations, that occasionally provide men with warnings and advice [in Moreton/Defoe, Secrets, pp. 78 ff.].» (in Chapter 6 - The Enlightenment and "Atheism").
• «It is wonderful how it has been five thousand years since the creation of the world and it has not yet been decided whether or not the spirit of some person has ever appeared after death. All arguments are against; but faith is in favor.», said Dr. Johnson.
• «(...) funeral in life (...). (...) tafophobia (...). (...) premature funeral (...). (...) Edgar Allan Poe reproduced accurately the contemporary apprehensions in his "premature funeral" of the 40s.»
• «(...) Victorian interest in funerary things was also reflected in the way it was depicted and encouraged in the "Gothic" horror or ghost stories, that attracted the best authors in the second half of the nineteenth century. (...) products of the Romantic movement. (...), this movement was in itself a reaction to the scientific and agnostic tendencies of the time, (...).»
• «(...) mesmerism (...). The work of Anton Mesmer (...). Supposedly, the spirits of the dead used "animal magnetism" over certain living beings - "sensitives", or mediums - to carry out these interviews, (...). (...), the original idea of Mesmer, of channeling the animal magnetism for the accomplishment of cures, (...).»
• «(...) the famous case of the "Rochester Beats" of 1848. (...) it is said that the modern spiritualist movement dates from 1848, (...). (...) Rochester has captivated the imaginations of those seeking evidence of what they wanted to believe.»
• «(...) dead spoke (...) assuring that there is no pain on the Other Side and that the spirits ascended to various levels - current gnosticism - until all were finally saved (...).»
• «(...) these people wanted in such a way to communicate with spirits, that any approach to their expectations was accepted as reality. (...) the best results were achieved only with "believing" participants [nineteenth century].»

The amazing power of deliberate intent (o fantástico poder da intenção deliberada [Portuguese])

By Esther & Jerry Hicks:

I took two years to read this book. Why? Because I stopped several times in the exhausting, repetitive and excessive examples that the authors were giving chapter after chapter. It's a great book of good messages, but I delete from it their examples.

Some quotes that I found interesting:

• «When students are ready, the teacher appears! (...) liberate the inner struggle over the 'art of allowing'», by Louise L. Hay.
• «(...) by quieting our minds (by meditating) for 15 minutes a day, we could get the answers to what we were looking for.»
• «But you're going to be amazed to discover that when you find and deliberately keep your vibrational equilibrium in your intended path to happiness, you will also be able to attract whatever you want to be, do or have - and you can also have happiness.»
• «Life should be fun.»
• «But we never look to the past in search of better days, because we understand that what is happening now and what is to come will always give us the best that life has to offer.»
• «Life is, then, the renovation of continuous and endless focus from every vantage point.»
• «And it's only when you understand yourself how a vibrational being who is able to recognize the vibrational energy continuum that, at bottom, you are.»
• «At all times, your emotions give you an indicator of the vibrational relationship between your physical and nonphysical selves.»
• «(...) there is no substitute for the vibrational alignment with yourself.»
• «As you focus your perspective on the subject, you offer a vibrational frequency that either matches or does not correspond to the frequency that reflects how your inner self sees you.»
• «Find deliberately thoughts that cause the vibrational alignment of these two points is the only real significance of energy balance.»
• «From an energy balance state you experience the clarity, vitality, eagerness, physical well-being, abundance in all the things that you think are good and even a lush state of happiness, pleasure and joy. This is the natural state of who-you-really-are.»
• «The key to the pleasant deliberate creation is to choose the objects or subjects of your thoughts intentionally, giving careful attention to how each feeling makes you feel or how you feel it, because if you are not aware as to what a feeling makes you feel, you will not be aware of where you are positioned in the subtle vibrational range of possibilities.»
• «(...) your personal preferences (...) make you offers an emanation of vibrations (a request) and the powerful Law of Attraction responds to your emanation of vibrations with other vibrational offers that correspond to them.»
• «(...) you (...) are a vibrational being and that creates, in fact, their own reality (...) by focusing on their thoughts.»
• «The more you focus on a subject, the vibration becomes more active and this attracts what corresponds it vibrationally.»
• «Everyone and everything in the universe is consciousness, all consciousness is vibration or energy.»
• «And here comes your emotional guidance system, because your emotions are indicators of the vibrational alignment or the lack of it.»
• «Emotions (...) help you recognize the relationship between the vibration of your desire and the vibration that you are offering or emanating.»
• «(...) (remember this: a belief is no more than a recurring thought)».
• «You are (...) sending (...) signals to your future experience.»
• «The better you feel, the more you will be allowing your connection to your source.»
• «(...) deliberate choice of thoughts that cause an increasing sense of well-being (...)... All the things you want will flow quickly and easily to your life experience.»
• «(...) They are just your vibrational emanations that affect your personal life experience.»
• «You are a creator who creates from the power of your focus.»
• «(...) the release of resistance (...) will help you to shorten the time that separates the 'where you are now, at this moment' and the position of 'where you want to be.'»
• «(...) whenever you continue to blame something or someone for something, you lose power. Because this will mean that this person or thing has power over you. And nothing and no one should have this power, because no one can vibrate for you.»
• «(...) when people die (...). Usually what they say is: "My God, how I was wrong!" (...) "So much concern for anything. So much that I kept myself to live my happy life, with so much useless worry (...)".»
• «We want you climb on the scale of emotional orientation (...). That's why you're here. You are here to live, here and now.»

Histórias de um Portugal assombrado (Portuguese) (stories of a haunted Portugal)

By Vanessa Fidalgo:

A book that travels around Portugal and its history. I think it is worth reading the book, at least, by the historical and geographical information that it makes available. The author has compiled stories of haunted houses, the appearance of spirits and, in the end, tales told from north to south and islands. We get to know some mysteries that took place in Portugal.
Some quotes to think about:

• «"A call to pay attention and learn from everything that surrounds us materially and can be observed by the sensuousness." (...) "Ghosts, visions and the whole series of fantastic figures explored in literature, film and the arts in general, are attempts to materialize something that is in our minds and emotional experiences." (...) "extrasensorial stimuli (...) include integration of sensory data with not consciously or automatic perception dimensions, and that are also in the enlargement of sensory perception zones, ie the perception of sound or light frequencies below or above the normal sensory perception area." (...) "The nervous system has a normal operating state or excitement and differentiated states. These altered states (internal or external excitation of the person) can create conditions for changing states of consciousness." (...) our mind is prepared to work in cooperation or interaction with other minds (...). "(...) it is not acceptable for those who are not the same psychological 'wave'." (...) "A person only dies truly when the last who met them in life, died." (...) ghostly buildings (...) a role in the evolution of society: "they stimulate the minds and society for paths that are not known yet or are poorly explained and they lack of exploitation. (...) we can overcome us in building scenarios and unlimited spectra where we can give vent to emotions and desires that are close to the territories of our alter egos." (...) a mysterious and unknown world, which (...) attracts and seduces the man», by José Carlos Garrucho.
• «"(...) supernatural entities do not have a defined silhouette, often not even a form. They are almost always shadows of a translucent white, or black" (...)», by Joaquim Coelho.
• «(...) breaking barriers was never an easy task, and it is easy to guess that through the halls of the Faculdade de Belas-Artes [Fine Arts School] have spent many rebellious, avant-garde, revolutionary minds and not always understood by the rest of society.»
• «Even António de Oliveira Salazar has suffered from tuberculosis, having been isolated in a sanatorium at all equal to the Mon'Alto sanatorium, in the neighboring Caramulo mountains. (...) Winston Churchill, ranked Portugal with an unpleasant but illustrative epithet: "a country of tuberculosis, governed by a tuberculous".»
• «The hostel from Valongo (...). On April 25, 1974, it was plundered, occupied and vandalized and little else was remained to tell his story than its skeleton.»
• «"The memory effect is to take us to the missing people, so that we are with them, and bring them to us, to be with us."», by Father Antonio Vieira.
• «The places where we lived and grew up, where we loved and lost, (...). By way of memories, the mind easily gives them emotions, depending on the nature, positive or negative, of the experiences that experienced.»
• «(...) such myths arise from a 'creeping' of the susceptible human memory. "The crimes, especially the passion crimes, stir with our fundamental fears." (...) "we are fundamentally social beings, (...). When the supernatural intervenes, in particular, these reports become unusual, exciting, arouse our curiosity to learn more and awaken our imagination, reasons why are spread more widely in space and time".», by Maria Francisca Rebocho.
• «Errancy appears as a form of penitentiary for those who were not conspicuous by their virtue in life.»
• «"(...) only people who believe or who wish to have paranormal experiences to have them in fact because their energies attract certain types of sensory perception".», by João Pedro F.
• «(...): love is really blind and sometimes can lead to committing the worst atrocities...»
• «(...) man can not control himself when passion dominates him!»
• «"The study of world folklore - which reflects the activity, the thought of a time and of a people - is as the study of humanity. (...) the evocation of local values, private and human conceptions." (...) "the historical legend is based on real facts, but the narrator changes the truth in order to prove it.», by Jean-Pierre Bayard.
• «"The legends (...) are true mirrors of the mentality that created them." (...). "(...) myths that may possibly respond or explain their anxieties, their worries..."», by Manuela Mendonça.
• «The legends (...) are stories about (...) nobility of character (...).»
• «(...) the enchanted Moorish women (...), only in Portugal do not have the baleful feature attributed to them in other cultures. (...), some argue that they are the riches that the Arabs left behind in their flight.»
• «In general, the apparitions happen more often at 'midnight', at 'midday' or at the 'St. John evenings' - Solstice - which have a very old meaning and linked to pagan cults of ancestors. (...) St. John evening, that in which conventional wisdom said to be the evening that 'all spirits are let loose on earth' (...).»
• «In medieval times, as well as functioning as barracks, lookout post and residence of the lords of the nobility, castles were also true centers of promotion of village life, and so it was not by chance that most cities grew from these points (...). (...) cultural exchange circuit (...).»
• «In the old Quinta da Lagoa [farm of the pond], in Faia (...), (...) king Chiquito (...) loved sow discord and intrigue and had fun with the hassles of others, (...) he kept causing disparate disorders among friends, neighbors and even families with no guilty conscience.», by Fernanda Frazão.

The book on mediums (o livros dos médiuns [Portuguese])

By Allan Kardec:

It is a descriptive book that does not teach to be a medium. This book is more boring than «the spirits' book», a book from the same author. Allan Kardec, before anything else, was a scientist and he respected the observational method and the rigor. However, the author was also a great writer in that he describes and explains impartially all the facts. I advise you to read «the spirits' book» first, and thus you already get a good perspective of what is Spiritualism, a branch of Christianity.