- 25 - Suddenly toward midnight the girl uttered repeated sounds, maintained for as much as a quarter of an hour, that constituted a single scream of despair so powerful that it seemed to threaten to shake the house to pieces. Nothing more horrifying can be imagined. Inevitably, half the population of the village heard the conflict and was terrified. In the midst of it, Katharina was seized with a fit of trembling so violent that it seemed as though all of her limbs wanted to shake themselves loose from each other. Amid exclamations of fear and despair, the demonic voice could be heard expressing gigantic defiance, challenging God to give some sign that it should be spared the ignominy of laying down its part like an ordinary sinner, and that it be allowed to go to hell with honours, so to speak. It is hardly likely that such a horrifying display of mingled malice, despair, defiance and arrogance has been seen elsewhere. Finally, there came the most moving moment, which cannot possibly be conceived by anyone not actually present as an eye- and ear-witness. At two o’clock in the morning, the alleged angel of Satan bellowed out, in a voice of which the human throat seemed scarcely capable, while the girl threw her head and upper body backward over the back of her chair: ‘Jesus is the victor! Jesus is the victor!’ These words could be understood as far as they could be heard and they made an indelible impression on many hearers. Now the strength and power of the demon appeared to fail more and more from moment to moment. It became ever quieter and calmer, less and less able to move, and finally it disappeared by imperceptible stages, as life ebbs away in the dying, but not until about eight o’clock in the morning.” Thus, ended the two-year battle. What Blumhardt had experienced were the manifestations of the low and evil spirit world through human mediums. In themselves, these were nothing new, but for him they were a novel experience. Had he not looked after these mediums who were in the Evil One’s power, the same thing would have happened to them that happens daily to so many people whom, in our general complete ignorance of the phenomena, we leave to their own devices. They would either have landed in an insane asylum, or would have put an end to their lives by committing suicide. • The inmates of our asylums are in large part the victims of the low spirit world, and these same uncanny forces are also often at play in the case of suicides. Gottliebin Dittus was a “deep-trance medium.” How she developed as a medium cannot be determined from Blumhardt’s report. It is quite probable that she had engaged in “table tapping” with her brothers and sisters, and that her innate mediumistic abilities became stronger and stronger in this way. She would lose consciousness whenever her own spirit was forced from her body by foreign spirit beings that then took possession of her. At the departure of her own spirit, she would fall down as though dead and would be brought back into an upright position by the spirit of some demon that had entered her body and made its pronouncements. • The powerful rapping sounds were produced by means of the od that Gottliebin’s strong mediumistic abilities made available to the spirit world, and with which the latter brought about those resounding blows that seemed so inexplicable to the witnesses. 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.
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