Friday, March 17, 2006

Betty Friedan's roots in the occult and spiritualism (A Must Read)

From http://www.theamericanview.com/index.php?id=562



Feminist Movement Betty Friedan Led Has Its Roots In The Occult, Necromancy, Demonic Spiritualism

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BETTY FRIEDAN pushed for, we are told, among other things, ‘sex-neutral help-wanted ads’
Feminism icon Betty Friedan, an early advocate of murdering innocent unborn babies – she founded the National Association For The Repeal Of Abortion Laws in 1968 – has died. Eleanor Smeal, a fellow-feminist, says of Friedan that she left “a legacy that’s living beyond her wildest dreams in the 1960s.”
Well, yes, she did leave a legacy but it was more of a nightmare than a mere dream.
The “womens’ rights”/feminist/”pro-choice” movement began, of course, in disobedience to God in the Garden of Eden. But in her revealing book “Radical Spirits: Spiritualism And Women’s Rights In Nineteenth-Century America”(Beacon Press, 1989), Ann Brauden, an assistant professor of religion at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota, documents the connection between this movement, in modern times, and the occult.

Spiritualism, she shows, sprang up in 1848 in upstate New York when the Fox sisters (Kate, Leah and Margaret) convinced many of their ability to communicate with spirits. This “new religious movement,” which aimed to prove the immortality of the soul by establishing contacts with spirits of the dead, grew by leaps and bounds as “investigators” across the country experimented in their homes with planchettes (Ouija boards) or turned out en masse to hear women give lectures “channeled” from the spirit world. These trance speakers, we are told, became the first large group of American women to speak in public.
ANTI-CHRISTIAN Fox sisters Kate, Leah, Margaret were necromancers, early advocates of ‘rights’ for women

Indeed, it is said that these female spiritualists — who were in opposition to established religion (Christianity) — “became the only religious sect to embrace women’s rights as a first priority,” advocating, among other things, the female vote, dress reform, marriage reform, “free love,” socialism, the abolition of slavery, vegetarianism and anti-Sabbatarianism. Brauden says:
“Spiritualists believed individuals could serve as vehicles of truth because each embodied the laws of nature in his or her being. Such individualism laid the foundation for Spiritualism’s rejection of male headship over women — or indeed of any individual over any other — whether in religion, politics or society….The movement viewed the individual as the ultimate vehicle of truth.”

One of those who attended spiritualist seances for years was the abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison. His co-worker, Henry C. Wright, sat at Leah Fox’s table in 1851 and said that he conversed with the spirit of Jesus who, supposedly, rapped in the affirmative when Wright asked him if he (Wright) was “mortal like other men.” One observer is quoted as counting Spiritualism high among “Certain Dangerous Tendencies In American Life.”

But, despite this, incredibly, it was estimated: “Perhaps a majority (!) of the members of evangelical Protestant churches in this country have at sometime consulted the spirits of dead people, by the help of some professional ghost-seer or medium.” And the 1871 “American Bookseller Guide” advised its readers that the sale of Spiritualist books was “as steady as of books in any other department of the trade” — with 50,000 Spiritualist books and 50,000 Spiritualist pamphlets sold annually.
ABOLITIONIST FANATIC William Lloyd Garrison also attended ‘spiritualist seances’
In a book they edited, “History of Woman Suffrage,” Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony declared:”The only religious sect in the world…that has recognized the equality of women is the Spiritualists.” Says Brauden: “Spiritualism appealed to people in search of new justification for a wavering faith. For those no longer convinced of the ‘evidences’ of Christianity, Spiritualism provided ‘scientific’ evidence of religious truth….It provided a way to remain religious for those disaffected with Calvinism or evangelicalism in the antebellum years….the movement participated in the optimistic equation of science and progress that bolstered the conviction of so many 19th century reform groups.”

Every notable “progressive” family in the 19th century had its advocates of Spiritualism. The Beecher family contributed Charles Beecher, Isabella Beecher Hooker and Harriet Beecher Stowe, the author of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” And President Lincoln’s wife, Mary Todd Lincoln, spoke, supposedly, with her dead son, Willie, and brought mediums into the White House where they conducted seances for Senators and Cabinet members.


In conclusion, Brauden says: “Woman suffrage benefitted more than any other movement from the self-confidence women gained in Spiritualism.” She says the California suffrage campaign may have had opportunities to utilize Spiritualist trance speakers “because mediums and radicals responded disproportionately to the call of the West during the last quarter of the 19th century.” She says that by the end of the last century, the success of moderate versions of the Spiritualist program would be evident in the triumph of liberal theology, drastically transformed attitudes toward death and mourning and the “feminization of American religion.”
HARRIET BEECHER STOWE among the ‘progressives’ advocating ‘spiritualism’
Brauden says: “To dismiss Spiritualists as a ‘lunatic fringe’ is to ignore the significant ways in which their faith reflected the values of Victorian America….Spiritualism helped a crucial generation of American women find their voice….More women stepped beyond conventional female roles because of Spiritualism that they would have without it. In mediumship and in its inherent individualism, Spiritualism held up a model of women’s unlimited (!) capacity for autonomous action to the men and women of 19th century America.”


Well, Spiritualism may have helped some women find “a voice.” But it is doubtful that it was their voice. No way. The voices found were, probably, either the voice of the Devil or his demon helpers. And these demonic spirits are still moving the lips of many in the so-called “womens’ rights”/feminist/”pro-choice” movement. – J.L.
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