- 174 - The greater the odic power accumulated in the medium, the louder these blows became, and this odic power was reinforced by the quantities of od emitted by the people around her. Although he was unaware of the fact, Blumhardt was also endowed with considerable mediumistic power; hence, the manifestations of the spirit world through the medium were stronger during his presence than they were in his absence. • The phenomena of materialization and the appearance of light also were brought about by the demons with the aid of Gottliebin’s mediumistic od. Her sister Katharina was not a deep-trance medium, but went into part-trance only. Consequently, her spirit was not entirely displaced from her body and could hear everything spoken through her by the foreign spirit. She was able, therefore, to remember everything that had happened, even though she could not prevent the manifestations themselves, since she was completely in the power of the foreign spirit being. Blumhardt gradually learned to distinguish the different kinds of spirits. Above all, he became convinced of the important fact that a Divine control presides when higher spirits and spirits that, although suffering, are of good will appear, so that everything proceeds in perfect order. This controlling spirit determines which spirits are to be admitted. Hence, the suffering spirits that had been granted access by the higher controlling spirit did not obey Blumhardt in the beginning, when he tried to send them away without having given them any help. They had entered the medium at the order of a higher authority for the sake of being instructed by Blumhardt and having him show them the way to God; they were therefore entitled to this instruction and it was his duty to grant their petitions. Unfortunately, he did not recognize this duty until later. The instructive feature of these occurrences for Blumhardt was the undeniable fact that communication with the spirit world exists. The events that took place before his eyes were no delusions, and cannot be relegated to the realm of fable by anyone, since they were enacted quite openly and could be confirmed by a large number of witnesses who had seen and heard what went on. The reality of the occurrences was also the reason why the ecclesiastical authorities requested Blumhardt to submit a report of the events. At first Blumhardt could see only the undeniable facts of what took place before his eyes, and it was not until later that he gradually learned to correlate certain things in this field. The eternal laws governing communication with the spirit world seem to have remained unknown to him until his death. For this reason, he was unable to recognize the way in which both the people of Israel and the first Christians communicated with the good spirit world. He did, indeed, experience in a harrowing manner the speech of evil and greatly suffering spirits through human mediums, but the wonderful messages brought by God’s high spirits through speaking mediums were denied him. There was a good reason also for this, for there is a time for everything that happens. Undoubtedly the conditions of the times in which Blumhardt lived were not suited to purposely established communication with the good spirit world, and undoubtedly also, given the attitude of his church toward these matters, Blumhardt would have endangered his entire activities and his position. As it was, he met with enough opposition on the part of his ecclesiastical superiors, when later the good spirits began to manifest themselves to him and his parishioners, as I shall relate presently. To have ventured further in this field, as, for instance, by holding spiritistic meetings,
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