Patience Worth

[criticalthinker]

Not sure if this has been discussed here previously.......

Patience Worth was allegedly a spirit who communicated via a Mrs Pearl Curran from 1913 when she first communicated via a ouija board "Many moons ago I lived. Again I come. Patience Worth my name. Wait, I would speak with thee. If thou shalt live, then so shall I. I make my bread at thy hearth. Good friends, let us be merrie. The time for work is past. Let the tabby drowse and blink her wisdom to the firelog." , until Pearl Curran's death on 1937.

What is notable about this spirit is that she alledgedly dictated works of literature, including novels and poems to Pearl, which were later published. In total she 'wrote' approx 400,000 words including several novels (The Sorry Tale, Hope Trueblood, The Pot upon the Wheel, Samuel Wheaton ) and as many as 5000 poems.

It has been suggested that The Sorry Tale particularly showed such in depth knowledge of the time period in which it is set (Jesus' Jerusalem) that Pearl Curran who had only had a very basic education could not have carried out the necessary research in the time it took for the book to be written.

So where did the words come from? Was it a ghost or was Patience Worth just a way for Pearl Curran to pursue a literary career?

 

[rynner2]

Not sure if this has been discussed here previously.......

Only briefly:

....her real name was Pearl Curran and she died in 1938.

Her name is always evoked in discussions of automatic writing and the
historic novels she penned are said to have been best-sellers in the
twenties. Oddly, they hardly ever show up and seem not to have
been reprinted in recent times. The brief samples I have read seem
fustian stuff.

Patience Worth was supposed to be a 17th Century Quaker girl who
emigrated to America and was killed by Native Americans! Bizarrely,
her literary productions were not tied to her own supposed life but
extended to Medieval England and a piece called The Sorry Tale. This
purported to be the life of a child born in Bethlehem on the same night
as Jesus! Later filmed as The Life of Brian??

http://www.forteantimes.com/forum/viewt ... 2481#62481

(You'll have to over Jame's sense of humour!)

 

[synchronicity]

I remember reading about this years ago--I was very curious about it!

 

[JamesWhitehead]

Automatic writing seems to relate to crypto-amnesia, multiple personalities, reincarnation, speaking in tongues and mediumism. It is an essential ingredient that the person with the pen should be perceived as not having normal access to the information given in the writing. Often there are issues of class and status, where the writer is by gender or birth not expected to find a literary voice. Once the career is launched, the automatic writers become extremely prolific, suggesting that the voices are not given to self-criticism. The acclaim that some writers have achieved in the form of positive contemporary reviews has not usually translated into lasting reputations.

The historical novel has naturally been a genre attempted by the spirits and it is notably one of the most popular forms of female writers in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. With the automatic writers, our attention is drawn to the knowledge displayed; in those whose inspiration or research is less mysterious, we are now inclined to see the historical displacement as the creation of an arena where strong females could thrive and strong issues be raised. This interpretation would perhaps not have been recognized by the writers themselves. Perhaps all our writing is opaque at some levels to ourselves!

The most prolific automatic writer I know of is not Patience Worth but the Brazilian Francisco Candido ('Chico') Xavier.

According to this page about Kardec and Spritism

(Xavier) is probably the best example of the Spiritist approach to mediumship in action.70 Despite having received only the barest education he has become Brazil's most prolific 'author' who has produced, on average, three books a year since 1932 on such diverse subjects as Spiritist philosophy, literature, history and science. His books have sold many millions, have been translated into many languages, and his name is a household world in his native country. However, 'writer' would probably be a more appropriate term for Chico, because he is an automatic writing medium who claims no credit or money for his prodigious output. He worked as a minor government official until his retirement in 1961 and still lives extremely modestly despite the massive royalties from his books which are all ploughed into helping the poor.

8)

 

[decipheringscars]

The most prolific automatic writer I know of is not Patience Worth but the Brazilian Francisco Candido ('Chico') Xavier.

Is 'Chico' the medium or the spirit in this case?

 

[JamesWhitehead]

Is 'Chico' the medium or the spirit in this case?

Oh, heavens! I've not read a single word of his prodigious output but I think this is a case of full name and nickname rather than medium and spirit guide. We might wonder why spirits can't condense their platitudes into a more potent brew.

With all eternity at their disposal, aphorism is an art they don't cultivate.

 

[rynner2]

With all eternity at their disposal, aphorism is an art they don't cultivate.

..or maybe they realise that the truth is too complex to be compressed into sound-bites

..or maybe they forget that we don't have all eternity down here to read this stuff. 8)

 

[lopaka]

I had not thought about Patience Worth for years, but came across her name the other day and found this pretty good, reasonably thorough write-up that was published in The Smithsonian.

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/patience-worth-author-from-the-great-beyond-54333749/?all

Speaking through a Ouija board operated by Pearl Lenore Curran, a St. Louis housewife of limited education, Patience Worth was nothing short of a national phenomenon in the early years of the 20th century. Though her works are virtually forgotten today, the prestigious Braithwaite anthology listed five of her poems among the nation’s best published in 1917, and the New York Times hailed her first novel as a “feat of literary composition.” Her output was stunning. In addition to seven books, she produced voluminous poetry, short stories, plays and reams of sparkling conversation—nearly four million words between 1913 and 1937.

 

[Naughty_Felid]

Robert E Howard felt that he had a similar link to an entity that became Conan in his stories.