NEUOFFENBARUNG6 August 1847
[JS.01_005,01] Here is another early death, that of a young heroine of fashion. She gave herself over to dancing too heartily at a ball, hoping to dance her way to a young and wealthy husband. All she danced her way to was an early death.
[JS.01_005,02] A nineteen-year-old girl of exceedingly pleasing figure was invited to a ball in high society. Naturally, with her parents' permission, she was only too glad to accept. The fashionable shops were inspected at once. Fortunately, among a thousand items they had one that suited our invited beauty. Then off she went to the leading dressmaker, with orders to make the gown in the very latest fashion, from Madrid or New York if possible, for the latest Paris or London fashion would hardly do. That way one could appear at such a splendid ball in something out of the ordinary, cause the greatest sensation and be regarded as an extraordinary sight oneself!
[JS.01_005,03] The dressmaker was more than a little anxious about this commission, for he knew his customer and the many dozens of whims with which she was anointed on such occasions. He therefore applied himself with all his might and really did produce a masterpiece of a ball gown, to his customer's full satisfaction. The dress could be put on without a laced corset. Yet its many fine elastic bands pulled the body in so tightly that our heroine was thinner about the waist than about her rounded neck.
[JS.01_005,04] This fashionable New York dress was the very cause of her early and almost sudden death. As the queen of beauty and grace at the ball, she danced so furiously and so much with a young, wealthy ape who had decidedly caught her eye that a large blood vessel burst in her over-compressed lung. The heavy loss of blood left her dead within minutes.
[JS.01_005,05] She collapsed on the dance floor and a stream of blood poured from her rosebud lips, to the horror of the many girls and ladies who themselves were hardly laced any more loosely. Her parents, relatives and the doctors naturally rushed up, tore the clothes from her body, drenched her with ice-cold water and gave her medicines which, being quite dead already, she could of course no longer take.
[JS.01_005,06] Everyone wept and lamented aloud. Her parents and her chivalrous ape of a suitor tore their hair in despair. Some cursed such a fate, while others pitied the unfortunate girl. Many left the ballroom and took the warning home with them, though to little more effect, of course, than the sparrows driven off the roof by a shot.
[JS.01_005,07] In this case we shall see little of consequence in the world of spirits. Even so, you shall see what such passages look like there.
[JS.01_005,08] Look, our heroine is still lying huddled on the floor, visibly stained with blood. And there, some way off, you see an angelic spirit standing with his arms crossed. His face shows sorrow, a kind of melancholy that such a guardian spirit feels at these instances of the grossest human folly, when for all his care he is unable to help.
[JS.01_005,09] What will this grieving angel do here? Look, he is approaching the girl, who still appears as a corpse in the world of spirits. Now he is beside her and says, ‘O foolish creature! What shall I awaken in you now, when everything I look upon in you is dead? O Lord, look down in mercy! The strength You have given me is insufficient here. Stretch out Your almighty hand and do with this foolish woman as it pleases You!’
[JS.01_005,10] Now look, another angel is coming, all aflame! Here he is, and look, his fire takes hold of the dead girl and consumes her to ashes in an instant. (This cannot be perceived in the natural world, because the act concerns only the body of the soul.) Something in the ashes begins to stir. The angel prays over them. The last words of his prayer are, ‘Lord, Your will be done!’
[JS.01_005,11] Then the second angel leaves the ashes, which stir more and more, but the first angel stays. This stirring is the gathering together anew of the constituent particles of the soul, which have been utterly destroyed, scattered and thrown into the greatest disorder. This now happens directly through My power. In a moment we shall see what and how much is left of this girl's soul.
[JS.01_005,12] Look, a little dark-grey cloud is rising. It grows more and more distinct. And look, there is already a shape! You could compare it with nothing like it on earth. The head is like a bat's, the body like a giant locust's, the hands like a goose's feet and the feet like a stork's. How do you like this fashion as the fruit of that worldly one? The fashion itself would be nothing so extraordinary. What matters is that this foolish woman, having, as it were, brought about her own death, will scarcely ever enter the fields of heaven's light.
[JS.01_005,13] It will probably be several hundred years before she attains human form, and that only in a very painful way. Afterwards she will be in the realm of spirits what albinos are on earth, namely averse to light.
[JS.01_005,14] There is nothing further to see or learn from this case, so another example will follow.