With the Tongues of Men and Angels: A Study of Channeling PDF
With the Tongues of Men and Angels: A Study of Channeling. Arthur Hastings. (Holt, Rinehart and Winston: San Francisco, London, Montreal, et al, 1991) 227 pp. Illustrations and photographs. References. Index. Appendix.
By Stephan A. Schwartz
Sometimes it is important to go back and re-examine a book that has been overlooked. This is a review of such a book: With the Tongues of Men and Angeles. Arthur Hastings, its author, sets himself two tasks, and does very well at answering them: What is the nature of channeling? What is the significance of channeling for us? These are questions worth attention, not least because the phenomena of channeling has been around for thousands of years, and defies all attempts to explain it away. It is so compelling that even the exposure of occasional frauds has not slowed the public?s interest. Perhaps this is because, as Hastings states, fully 15 per cent of the population — in the U.S. today that would be approximately 41 million people — report hearing voices and receiving guidance. I don?t know where Hastings got that astounding — at least to me — figure, but it conjures an arresting reality.
Hastings approaches his subject with an open mind — a surprisingly rare attitude, as anyone who takes the trouble to look at the literature of channeling quickly discovers. Whether it is called channeling, mediumship, automatic writing, guidance, prophecy, or anyone of several other names, as a rule it excites more passion than insight. Hastings also writes with a light touch which, for anyone doing research in this area, will be much appreciated. With the notable exception of Jon Klimo?s recent and excellent Channeling[i], much of the modern literature on this subject is famously insubstantial, and the more serious studies, dating mostly from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, is so turgid and self-important, whether espousing or denigrating the subject, that reading it becomes an act of penance.
