The mistake of criticism is confusing Good and Evil, which often happens because of some people acting in bad faith and the ignorance of most. (Allan Kardec)  

Religions, whichever they are, never gained anything by sustaining manifest errors. (Ary Lex)

This episode is called, by bible scholars, Transfiguration; although mentioned by synoptic Gospels, it is not featured in John’s; here’s what it is told in Mathew’s narrative:

Mt 17:1-9: “Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and his brother John and led them up a high mountain by themselves. There in their presence he was transfigured: his face shone like the sun and his clothes became as dazzling as light. And suddenly Moses and Elijah appeared to them; they were talking with him. Then Peter spoke to Jesus. 'Lord,' he said, 'it is wonderful for us to be here; if you want me to, I will make three shelters here, one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah.'He was still speaking when suddenly a bright cloud covered them with shadow, and suddenly from the cloud there came a voice which said, 'This is my Son, the Beloved; he enjoys my favor. Listen to him. When they heard this, the disciples fell on their faces, overcome with fear. But Jesus came up and touched them, saying, 'Stand up, do not be afraid. And when they raised their eyes they saw no one but Jesus. As they came down from the mountain Jesus gave them this order, 'Tell no one about this vision until the Son of man has risen from the dead”. (Jerusalem Bible, 1987). 

Firstly, we would like to register that there are a few divergences about biblical texts. One of them is that of Mathew and Mark reporting the event “six days” later (Mt 17, 1; Mk 9,2), whilst Luke states that it was “eight days” later (Lk 9, 28). More blatant is the fact that Mathew and Luke affirming that it was Jesus’ face that shone, whereas Mark says it was his mantle. Luke, on the other hand, is the only one who mentions the subject of Jesus’ conversation with the spirits Moses and Elijah, that is:  “They appeared in glory, and spoke of his decease which he should accomplish at Jerusalem” (Lk 9, 31); the silence of the other two is disturbing. It’d only speak against the thesis of biblical infallibility, common to those who refuse to see that biblical texts have a lot of human “inspiration” and very little divine.

What exactly happened on Mount Tabor – Let’s see which the three medium phenomena in the narration were.

If Luke described the phenomena accurately, when he said “Peter and his companions were very sleepy, but when they became fully awake, they saw his glory and the two men standing with him” (Luke 9, 32), from the words “very sleepy” we may classify them as physical effects, having the disciples Peter, Jake and John donating ectoplasm. Let’s clarify that it is common, in materialization phenomena, the production of “a luminous mist” at the moment in which the ectoplasm exudes from the medium who, most of the time, already finds himself or herself in a state of deep sleep, exactly like in these reports. Coincidently, those three disciples were also with Jesus when he cured the daughter of Jairus, who was deemed dead (Mk 5, 21-24. 35-43).

1^st - Transfiguration:

That’s what happened with Jesus, when his Perispirit involved his physical body in a radiant light, exposing his high spiritual condition. It’s quite probable that the ectoplasm used came from Peter, Jake and John in order to produce such phenomenon.

2^nd – Materialization:

The two protagonists of the event were Moses and Elijah, when they materialized to talk to Jesus, a phenomenon witnessed by the three disciples who were following him.

3^rd – Direct voice:

The voice that came out of the cloud, was certainly a phenomenon of direct voice, in which some spiritual being, using ectoplasm, presented in the form of a cloud, produced an ectoplasmic throat in order to deliver its message, identifying Jesus as sent by God, which was what everyone wanted to hear.

In those kinds of phenomena all who are in the environment or where it takes place will see or perceive them, exactly, for they are physical phenomena. 

King Saul and his contact with a disincarnated Samuel – In the text we see clearly that the person who they ascribe the information that the communication with the dead is “abominable in the eyes of the Lord”, comes personally, after passing away, to take part in a Séance. This participation of Moses and the fact that Jesus had taken part in it, is enough for us not to have it as a divine prohibition, but from Moses himself, outside the narrow dogmatic view, which attributes it to the Creator.

Let’s see the biblical passage about it, which will be divided into two excerpts:

Dt 18,9-12: “When thou art come into the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee, thou shalt not learn to do after the abominations of those nations. here shall not be found among you any one that maketh his son or his daughter to pass through the fire, or that useth divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch, or a charmer, or a consulter with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer. For all that do these things are an abomination unto the Lord: and because of these abominations the Lord thy God doth drive them out from before thee.”

Dt 18,13-14: “Thou shalt be perfect with the Lord thy God. For these nations, which thou shalt possess, hearkened unto observers of times, and unto diviners: but as for thee, the Lord thy God hath not suffered thee so to do.”

The reason why we divided it is because no one who uses such determinations against Spiritualism is being ethical enough to mention verses 13 and 14, by the sheer fact that they sum up everything Moses was trying to stop his people from doing; any kid in kindergarten understands this. Therefore, it is clear that he never condemned indiscriminately communications with the dead, like some fanatics are trying to make us believe, but only those which were aimed at guessing or foretelling things about the future, with material purposes. A good example of this kind of communication can be seen in 1Sm 28, 3-25, when Saul, the first king of Israel, goes to Endor to, through a necromancer, consult with the Spirit Samuel,   about what was going to happen in the war against the Philistines approaching near. A necromancer is a person who consults with the dead in order to foretell, exactly what had been forbidden by the Hebrew legislator.

Is the Mosaic Law in disagreement with our times? – Why are we so sure that are rules of Moses and not divine? For the simple reason that it is completely illogical the God had created natural laws allowing the dead to communicate with the “living” and that would be something, at the same time, detestable to Him; only the minds of fanatics can conceive such an idea.

About this prohibition, let’s see what Allan Kardec (1804-1869) comments about it:

If Moses’ Law should be so rigorously enforced regarding this particular point, it should be enforced in all the other points too.  Why would it be good in what has to do with evocations and bad in other aspects? One needs to be sensible. Once we realize that Moses’ Law, in certain cases, is not in accordance with our times and customs anymore, the same reasoning applies to the prohibition we speak about.

Furthermore, we need to expend the reasons that justified this prohibition and today are completely nulled by each other. The Hebrew legislator wanted his people to abandon all the customs they acquired in Egypt, where evocations were in use (and often abused), as inferred in these words by Isaiah: “The Spirit of Egypt will annihilate itself and I’ll precipitate its advice; they’ll consult with their idols, their fortunetellers, their pythons and their wizards”. (19:3). (KARDEC, 2007d, p. 167-168).   

A good hint they didn’t follow Moses’ Law by the book was the fact that they stopped sending their rebellious children to be stoned by the elders at the city gates, as recommended by Dt 21, 18-21; they didn’t give a “death sentence” to someone who worked on Saturdays to accomplish Ex 21,15; why not apply a death sentence in the cases mentioned in Ex 21, 12-17?

There’s no relationship between Spiritualism and witchcraft – Many contradictors don’t acknowledge (or maybe don’t want to?) that “Spirits can communicate spontaneously, or come to our rescue, meaning being evoked”. (KARDEC, 2007B, P. 360); that is why they condemn Spiritualism, assuming that its practices consist only of evocations, as if there never have been spontaneous communications. We found that rather meaningless, because, whichever means the Spirits use – spontaneously or answering to an evocation - , they can only communicate because these was a permission from God for such. Unless we consider man powerful enough to go against God’s will in this aspect; therefore it’d be the condemnation of evocations.

In our book Spirits communicate in the Catholic Church, we show plenty of evidence that the Spirits only manifest themselves with God’s permission. We make a point in highlighting what the Spirit André told his father, the lawyer Lino Sardos Albertine (1915-2005), through a medium who Lino sought in order to make contact with his son, asked why he had died so soon: “[...] André said that he had been born to perform a very special mission, which was, to provide evidence of life after death, so that many people believe more in God and respect His law. [...] (ALBERTINI, 1989, p24-25). If it wasn’t for religious intolerance, André would not have died in vain.

Some misinformed detractors established a straight relationship between Spiritualism and witchcraft, but the answer to such fanatics was already given by Kardec:        

They accuse it of being in league with wizardry and witchcraft; [...] Certainly, the gap that separates Spiritualism, wizardry and witchcraft is even bigger than between Astronomy and Astrology, Chemistry and Alchemy. To confuse them is to prove that we know nothing about neither of them. (KARDEC, 2007e, p. 31-32).

Only the malevolence of sheer bad faith was able to confuse Spiritualism with witchcraft, when one repudiates its aim, its practices, its formulas and their mystic words. Some even came to compare séances to Sabbath assemblies, when they wait until midnight for the ghosts to appear.

Away from reviving witchcraft, Spiritualism annihilates it, stripping it from its pretense supernatural powers, its formulas, its dodgy plots, amulets and lucky charms, reducing it to its fair worth of possible phenomena, without leaving natural laws. (KARDEC, 2001, p. 104).

When Jesus appeared to Saul, he was blinded for three days – It takes a lot to believe that in the 21^st Century, we still find people capable of thinking that Spiritualism and witchcraft are the same, given the number of spiritualistic works available; by the way, thanks to the Internet, free to be read.

It is rather curious the fact that Jesus, after what happened, did not tell his disciples not to do as He was doing – talking to the dead -, but just asked them only to tell about it after His resurrection. And why exactly after His resurrection? Answer: only to prove the existence of the communication between Spirits and the living, and show that His presence, after death, was similar to Moses’ and Elijah’s, which happened at the time of “transfiguration”. See that the sheer manifestation of Jesus, after His physical death, proves that the dead can communicate: “After his suffering, he presented himself to them and gave many convincing proofs that he was alive. He appeared to them over a period of forty days and spoke about the kingdom of God” (Act 1,3). “He was alive”, for sure, whereas death only reaches the physical body; never the immortal Spirit. Remember when he showed himself up to Saul? The fierce persecutor of Christians was blinded for three days, showing that the light produced by Jesus’ perispirit  qualifies Him as a spirit of the highest degree.

Bibliographical references:

Bíblia de Jerusalém, 3ª impressão. São Paulo: Paulinas,1987.

ALBERTINI, L. O além existe. São Paulo: Loyola, 1989.

KARDEC, A. A Gênese. Rio de Janeiro: FEB, 2007e.

KARDEC, A. O Céu e o Inferno. Rio de Janeiro: FEB, 2007d.

KARDEC, A. O livro dos médiuns. Rio de Janeiro: FEB, 2007b.

KARDEC, A. O que é o Espiritismo. Rio de Janeiro: FEB, 2001.

NETO SOBRINHO, P. S. Os espíritos comunicam-se na Igreja Católica. Divinópolis, MG: GEEC, 2012.