MEDIUMSHIP: NATURE AND IDENTIFICATION OF SPIRITS 

Introduction
Identification: The Need for Caution | Superior Spirits
General Nature: Identity of Little Importance | Superior vs Inferior | An Additional Caution

Identification of Spirits

 Superior Spirits

What about the communications purporting to come from superior spirits or honored personages?  Kardec tells us ("Mediums' Book" Ch XXIV) that when a superior spirit communicates under any well-known name and says nothing inconsistent with the elevated character of that personage, the presumption is considered in favor of the identity claimed, and that, at the very least, we may be sure that it is a spirit of the same degree.  The superior spirits explain that spirits of a high degree form a collective whole of sympathetic groups, uniform in perfection, and that the majority of them are completely unknown to us.  After all, those whom we know are the relatively few who have lived on Earth.  As such, they can, when needed, and without any practical inconvenience for us, substitute themselves for one another, in response to our human need for names to fix our ideas upon, with regard to the spirits who communicate.  Keep in mind, however, that this is a completely different case from spirits of an inferior rank who assume honored names to gain credit for their statements. We must always be on high guard against such deception, and these latter spirits, in due time, will always display an inconsistency that reveals, by their attempts to deceive, their true nature.    

We include here this quote from "The Mediums' Book":  

The best of all proofs of identity is found in the language of the communications, and in the fortuitous circumstances by which the manifestations are accompanied.... The style of a speaker or writer may be imitated by inferior spirits, but not the thought; ignorance can never imitate knowledge, nor vice, nor virtue.... In order to distinguish between truth and falsehood, the medium and the evoker must employ all their good judgment.  They must understand that perverse spirits are capable of attempting anything and everything, and that the higher the name assumed by a spirit, the more suspicious we should be of his veracity.