295 - (30). Can spirits enable us to discover hidden treasures?

"Spirits of high degree take no interest in such matters; but mocking spirits frequently pretend to indicate treasures which do not exist, or which are in some other place than that in which they cause you to see them. Such deceptions, however, are sometimes useful, by showing you that the true source of fortune is work. If Providence designs a hidden treasure to be found by some one, it will be found by him in what will appear to him as a natural way; otherwise, it will not be found at all."

31. Is there any truth in the belief that hidden treasures have their guardian-spirits?

"Spirits not yet dematerialised may attach themselves to such things. Misers, who have hidden their treasures, often keep watch and ward over them after death; and the perplexity they feel on seeing them removed is a chastisement for their folly, and one which they are made to undergo until they understand the uselessness of such hoardings. There are also the spirits of the earth, who are charged with the direction of its interior transformations, and who have been allegorically represented as the guardians of natural riches."

Remark - The question of hidden treasures may be placed in the same list with that of lost inheritances; a man must he insane to count upon the pretended revelations that may be made to him by the wags of the other world. As previously stated, when spirits are desirous or able to make revelations of this kind, they do so spontaneously, and without having any need of mediums. Here is an example to the point: -

A lady who had lost her husband, after having been married to him for thirty years, was on the eve of being turned out of her house, without resources, by her stepsons, on whom she had lavished the devotion of a mother. She was in the very depths of despair, when, one evening, her husband appeared to her, and told her to follow him into his study, where he showed her his writing-desk, which was still under seal, and of which he caused her, by a sort of second-sight, to see the interior. He thus showed her a secret drawer, the existence of which she had not been aware, and the mechanism of which he explained to her, adding: