667- If it is erroneous, why is polytheism one of the most ancient and widespread beliefs?
“The idea of a single God could only appear among humans as the result of the development of their minds. Incapable in their ignorance of conceiving of an immaterial being without a determined form and who acted upon matter, they endowed God with the attributes of the corporeal nature, that is, a form and a figure. From then on, everything that seemed to surpass the proportions of ordinary intelligence became a deity to them. Whatever they could not understand had to be the work of a supernatural power, and it was no more than a small step from that to believing in as many distinct powers as there were effects. Nonetheless, in all ages there have been enlightened individuals who have understood the impossibility of such a multitude of powers for governing the world without some higher direction over them all, and who, consequently, lifted up their thought to a single God.”
668- Since spirit phenomena have been produced throughout time and have been known about since the world began, couldn’t they have contributed to the belief in the plurality of gods?
“Of course, because humans labeled as God everything that was supra-human; thus, the spirits were gods to them. Also, that is why that, whenever individuals distinguished themselves among others by their actions, their genius or a secret power that the common folk could not comprehend, they were made into a god and worshipped after death.” (See no. 603)
Among the ancients, the word god had a wide range of meanings. It was not, as nowadays, a personification of the Author of Nature, but was a generic label attached to all beings that did not belong to the human condition. Moreover, since spirit manifestations revealed to the ancients the existence of incorporeal beings acting as powers of nature, they called them gods, just as we call them spirits. It is a mere question of words, but with the difference that in their ignorance – intentionally maintained by those who had an interest in doing so – they built lucrative temples and altars, whereas for us, spirits are merely creatures similar to us at differing degrees of perfection, and who have shed their earthly envelope. If we carefully study the various attributes of the pagan deities, we can easily recognize all those who characterize the spirits at every degree of the spirit scale, their physical state on more highly evolved worlds, all the properties of their perispirit and the role they perform concerning earthly things.
When Christianity came to enlighten the world with its divine light, it could not destroy a thing that was in nature itself; instead, it redirected worship towards the One to whom it really belonged. As for the spirits, their remembrance has been perpetuated under various names and according to various cultures. Their manifestations have never ceased and have been diversely interpreted and frequently exploited under the influence of mystery. While religion has regarded spirit manifestations as miraculous phenomena, disbelievers have taken them as charlatanism. Now, however, thanks to a more serious study that has been conducted in the full light of day, Spiritism has been freed from the superstitious ideas that had obscured it down through time and has revealed to us one of the greatest and most sublime principles of nature.
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