Spiritualism and Psychical Research

Empires and Autonomy: Moments in the History of Globalization, 2009

This paper revises current understandings of the connections between electrical and psychic forms of communication in the early twentieth century. It builds on and moves beyond scholarly studies that explore the metaphorical and analogical uses of electrical communication in understanding telepathy, spiritualism and other psychic phenomena. I argue that in British and American cultures of wireless telegraphy, electrical experimentation, psychical research and spiritualism, there were sincere attempts to extend electrical-psychic analogies into technological thinking and realisation. Inspired by debates about telepathy, brain waves and other psychic effects, members of these cultures imagined and constructed electrical communication technologies that would address a range of psychic puzzles. Although the technological solutions to psychic puzzles ultimately proved inconclusive, they provide historians with striking insights into the role of ‘irrational’ topics in shaping imagined and actual technological development.

So what is spiritualism and spirit photography?, 2021

According to a definition adopted by the National Spiritualist Association of America, spiritualism "is the science, philosophy and religion of continuous life, based upon the demonstrated fact of communication, using mediumship, with those who live in the spirit world." [1] So what is spiritualism and spirit photography? The basis of many ancient religions is the idea that disembodied spirits of the dead are able and willing to communicate with the living under certain conditions. Its theme re-occurs in myths, fables, legends and anecdotes from all cultures at all periods in man's history. But it is also fair to say that modern spiritualism, as a social phenomenon, had its origins in a small house in Hydesville, New York, on Friday night 31 March 1848.

Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, 2018

Recent media studies research on 19th-century Spiritualism has foregrounded the technological metaphors that suffuse Spiritualist models of the seance. However, this article shows that the actual phatic channels proposed by Spiritualism consisted almost entirely of mediating chains of human spirits who stood between the bereaved seance guests and the spirits of the dear departed called “strangers.” While the “strangers” were, like the seance guests, departed white people, the authoritative “control spirits” were frequently exotic others such as “Indians” from the American imaginary of the Frontier. Beginning in 1875, the apparent transparency of the Spiritualist seance became the object of critique of an emerging occultist movement of Theosophy, which sought to undermine the authoritative human spirits of Spiritualism by turning the human spirits of the Spiritualist s_eance wholesale into disruptive non-human mediators called “Diakkas,” “Bhuts,” and “Elementals,” and replacing Spiritualism’s authoritative “Indian” control spirits drawn from the imaginary of the American frontier with Tibetan “Mahatmas” drawn from the orientalist imaginary of the Empire. These elementals initially represented noisy non-human “parasites” of Spiritualist channels, but later these parasites take over the channel and become the channel themselves in the form of what came to be called the “elemental essence.” [Spiritualism, Theosophy, Phaticity, Voice, Animation]

George H. Doran Company, 1919

' a little eamest attention to the matter was bound to admit that, making every allowance for fraud, there was xx INTRODUCTION response introduced the idea of intelligence into what had previously been a mere chaos of noises and movements. The American mind is open to new impressions, and probably the cult spread more rapidly there than it could have done elsewhere. But the biggest brain which tumed itself upon this new subject and drew others behind it, was not American but French. Allan Kardec, with his spiritualist philosophy, differed in some details from the Americans, but founded his conclusions upon the same phenomena. When the whole story comes to be told, however, there is no doubt that it is to England that the new branch of science owes most, and, indeed, that it is due to England that it can be called a science at all. Cambridge University will always be the Mecca of systematic psychic investigation, which is the avenue that nearly always leads eventually to complete acceptance of the spiritual hypothesis. There have seldom, if ever, been a more brilliant set of minds than those which engaged themselves upon this subject.

2005

Spirituality has had a profound effect and influence upon all of humanity since the beginning of time. Primitive cave dwellers who looked at natural phenomena (like thunder and lightening) as being godly signs from a force much greater than themselves, wondered, ...

Kültür araştırmaları dergisi, 2021

Spiritualists in the 19 th century have endeavored to prove their assessments by using science itself which tried to debunk their field's phenomena. The most principal claims of spiritualism have been the possibility of communicating with spirits through the agency of mediums and visioning a close person who has been in the moment of dying or far away. Scientific studies have not only been used to prove these assessments but to create new concepts and perceptions about psychic experiences. The aim of this article is to determine that spiritualists have assimilated themselves into society by using science apart from being denounced as superstitious. Hereby, what spiritualists have suggested in terms of science will be documented within a historical process and the terms which they have coined will be examined. It will be clarified that the people who have evaluated these phenomena consisted of scientists, scholars and literary figures. SPR (The Society for Psychical Research), which was completely formed by scientists and scholars, investigated the mediums and put them under multiple psychical experiments. These researches were published in their anthology named as Phantasms of The Living and their periodicals named as "The Proceedings". The terms which were coined in order to scientificate spiritualism have been "psychic force", "telepathy", "hallucination" and "ectoplasm". It will be concluded that these terms have enabled to categorize the assessments of spiritualism which were communicating and visioning spirits, and also accommodated the psychic researchers and mediums to express themselves subjectively by assimilation into society.

Signs and Society, 2021

Nineteenth-century Spiritualism was a watershed moment in which many of the keywords of our communication vocabulary-"medium," "channel," and "communication" itselfwere first given fleshly and ghostly form in the spiritualist séance, which early on was likened to a "spiritual telegraph." Throughout this period, newfangled ghosts and communication infrastructures (including the telegraph, but also the equally novel postal service) developed in tandem. This article explores three such boundary genres of communication between the living and the dead: how the séance converted the "spectral aphasia" of haunted houses into the domestic séance; how ghosts of loved ones dying far away across the "phantasmal empire" turned the ghost from an actor to a message, working in tandem with telegrams and letters in the "psychical ghost story"; and lastly, how the American spiritualist press created "spirit post offices" to publish communications from the dead alongside ordinary postal "correspondence" from the living. s John Durham Peters points out in his wide-ranging history of the idea of communication, Speaking into the Air, nineteenth-century Spiritualism was a key watershed moment in which many of the keywords of

Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 2010

During an initial period of rapid expansion, American Spiritualists did not form churches or settle ministers. As a result, something other than numbers and locations of churches and ministers must chart the 19th-century rise of this religious movement. Fortunately, the leading Spiritualist newspaper of the period, the Banner of Light, published extensive lists of public meetings, lectures, and prospective lecturers. In addition, both the Banner and the Spiritual Telegraph newspapers published early lists of their subscription agents. Even though they do not directly address the central Spiritualist activity of the seance, these lists offer a detailed view of where and when the initial and rapid growth of American Spiritualist activity occurred. Data gathered from these lists put explanations about the rise of this 19th-century Spiritualist movement on a better empirical foundation.