BORN WITH A VEIL

 

This is a claim usually made by clairvoyants, or rather, fortune-tellers, who advertise in the daily papers, and, to be most regretted, in some of the spiritual journals, as "seventh daughter of a seventh daughter, born with a veil," and claiming for that cause wonderful ability. There is no reason why a seventh daughter or the seventh son should be more sensitive than the sixth or the first. As far as the "veil," is concerned, it is always present, and the peculiarity to which so much stress is given is simply an accident, having no significance pathologically or psychologically. Were a discussion of the anatomy and physiology of this subject admissible in these pages, the folly of the claims made for the "veil" would be apparent, and pretension would not impose on the ignorance of the credulous.

 

In the times past, of ignorance of the laws of nature, everything out of the common observed order was considered supernatural, and all the superstitions which have their source in such misconceptions linger in the light of the present and mock the intelligence of the age. Spiritualism in its phenomena and philosophy is entirely distinct from and has no relation whatever to the soothsaying, fortune-telling makeshifts of the past. The "veil" has a place with the "goose-bone" prophecy of the weather, the observation of the spleen of slaughtered animals to find what the winter is to be, and countless other signs which prove their folly by their having no relation to the causes of the results prophesied.