8 Famous Figures Who Believed in Communicating with the Dead

Spiritualism's popularity waxed and waned throughout the 19th century and the first decades of the 20th century, and surged on the heels of major wars and pandemics.

ELIZABETH YUKO
History.com

October 5, 2021

While belief in an afterlife is a cornerstone of many ancient and modern religions and cultures worldwide, the idea that it's possible to communicate with the dead never reached the same level of acceptance. But, for a period of about a century, beginning in the 1840s, sending messages between the human and spirit worlds was popular not only as a religion, but also as a pastime.

Though a few 18th-century European thinkers toyed with the concept of a potential connection between science and the supernatural, the new religious movement known as modern Spiritualism got its start in upstate New York in 1848. That's when two sisters, Margaret and Kate Fox, became locally and later, internationally famous after claiming they could get in touch with people beyond the grave. For some, the work of mediums like the Fox sisters was purely entertainment. But for others, it became a religion, and is still practiced as one in a few remaining communities today.

Spiritualism's popularity waxed and waned throughout the remainder of the 19th century and the first decades of the 20th century, predictably surging following massive losses of life, like the Civil War, World War I and the 1918 Flu Pandemic. And although the Spiritualist movement never completely faded out, it didn't hold the same appeal after World War II. But for close to 100 years, Spiritualism attracted people from every part of society—including celebrities.

Here's a look at eight famous figures who, at some point in their lives, believed it was possible to communicate with the dead.

1. Thomas Edison

When Thomas Edison invented the phonograph in 1877, the first record he created was of his own voice reciting the nursery rhyme "Mary Had a Little Lamb." Then, in 1920, he announced plans to capture a different type of voice: one that belonged to those no longer living. Specifically, a "spirit phone" capable of talking to the dead, says Marc Hartzman, historian and author of Chasing Ghosts: A Tour of Our Fascination with Spirits and the Supernatural.

"Aside from the life-changing feat of breaking through the veil, I believe his interest in Spiritualism was simply to demonstrate that science, not mediums and Ouija boards, was the way to do it," Hartzman says. In fact, in 1920, Edison told American Magazine that "the methods and apparatus commonly used and discussed are just a lot of unscientific nonsense."

Some believe Edison's supposed belief in communicating with the dead was a joke, or a chance to make headlines and capitalize on Spiritualism's popularity, according to Hartzman, who adds that is certainly possible. But at the same time, Edison did have an unusual hypothesis regarding what happens after humans die.

"The inventor spoke of his belief in the idea of life units," Hartzman explains. "In a nutshell, a hundred trillion of them make up a human being and keep us functioning. When we die, the life units move onto someone else."

2. Mae West

After experiencing severe abdominal pains while performing in Chicago in 1929, writer, activist and star of the vaudeville stage and silver screen Mae West, then age 36, believed that her relief finally came at the hands of a Spiritualist healer named Sri Deva Ram Suku. A collection of West's papers from 1928 through 1984 housed in Harvard University's Schlesinger Library contains clippings, correspondence and pamphlets related to her involvement with Spiritualism, including Thomas John "Jack" Kelly, a well-known medium who became West's spiritual advisor and friend.

The archive also features papers documenting West's multiple trips to Lily Dale, a Spiritualist camp outside Buffalo, New York where she would visit Kelly for readings and healing. This included a stay in the summer of 1955, when West was on hand for the July 3 dedication of a new healing temple in the community.

3. Queen Victoria

Though modern Spiritualism had been around since the 1840s, it gained substantial traction in the United Kingdom once Queen Victoria became interested in the practice. Distraught over the 1861 death of her husband, Prince Albert, Victoria entered her "mourning period," which lasted until the end of her life in 1901, and involved wearing all-black as well as mourning jewelry, which contained photos of Albert and locks of his hair. It also included attempts to get in touch with Albert in the afterlife.

Not long after Albert's death, a 13-year-old medium named Robert James Lees claimed that the prince had gotten in touch during one of his séances saying that he had a message for the queen. Upon hearing this, Victoria arranged a séance with Lees, during which he referred to information no one else would know; most notably, a pet name he had for her, according to Hartzman.

"The teen performed numerous séances for the Queen at Buckingham Palace before turning over his mediumistic duties to another medium," he explains. "Victoria continued holding séances at the palace and was known to seek her dead husband's advice in political matters."

4. Arthur Conan Doyle

Although Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is best known today as the creator of Sherlock Holmes, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries he was also one of the best-known Spiritualists. "The credulous writer believed firmly in the powers of many mediums, and was even convinced in the existence of fairies after a couple of teenage girls faked some photos," Hartzman says.

It all started when Doyle joined a séance in 1880. Though he was initially a skeptic, he gradually became convinced that it was possible to communicate with the dead. In an 1887 letter to the weekly Spiritualist periodical Light, Doyle wrote that "it was absolutely certain that intelligence could exist apart from the body," and that "after weighing the evidence, I could no more doubt the existence of the phenomena than I could doubt the existence of lions in Africa."

"His interest grew much stronger after he believed he heard a personal message from his son," Hartzman explains. Holmes' son Kingsley died from pneumonia contracted after being seriously wounded in the 1916 Battle of the Somme. Doyle ended up touring Europe and America to preach the wonders of Spiritualism and the afterlife.

Doyle's fervent beliefs eventually strained his friendship with famed escape artist and illusionist Harry Houdini, who saw Spiritualism as a con, and spent years debunking the alleged communication that occurred during séances, and exposing mediums as frauds. According to Hartzman, their relationship took a substantial hit after Lady Doyle claimed to have received a long-winded message from Houdini's mother, and Houdini refused to believe it.

"Despite Houdini's efforts to expose frauds, Doyle's beliefs never wavered," Hartzman says. "In fact, he even claimed a spirit named Pheneas—who was thousands of years old—was in regular contact with him and his wife and advised them on such things as travel and real estate."

5. Mary Todd Lincoln

Though Mary Todd Lincoln famously attempted to get in touch with her husband, President Abraham Lincoln, following his 1865 assassination, her involvement with Spiritualism began three years earlier, when their son Willie died from typhoid fever at the age of 11. Mary Todd initially attended seances as a way to cope with her grief, but found them to be so comforting that she started hosting her own.

According to the White House Historical Association, there is evidence that Mary Todd held as many as eight seances in the White House (specifically, the Red Room) following Willie's death, and that the president attended a few of them.

But what may seem odd today was quite common at the time, says Lucile Scott, journalist and author of An American Covenant: A Story of Women, Mysticism and the Making of Modern America. "Mary Todd Lincoln joined the vast wave of Americans turning to Spiritualism during the Civil War, as the ghosts of fallen soldiers and both literal and spiritual ruin proliferated across the country," she says. "In the late 1850s, approximately 10 percent of the American free adult populace allied itself with Spiritualism in some form or fashion, a trend that continued into the 1860s."

However, the movement's popularity and widespread acceptance wouldn't last, and soon faced backlash, including from the medical establishment. "Doctors coined the term 'mediomania,' linking insanity to Spiritualism, and then redefined insanity's symptoms as the most common side effects of entrancement—rigidity, seizure, ecstasy," Scott explains.

But Mary Todd, by this time mourning both her son and husband, continued to attempt to communicate with the deceased members of her family. This, along with what was deemed "improper" and "unladylike" displays of grief after the president's assassination, made Mary Todd the object of public ridicule.

"In 1872, both the Boston Herald and the New York Times mocked Mary for attending a séance to contact her late husband's spirit," Scott says. "Then, in 1875, Mary's son Robert had her briefly committed to a sanitarium for her Spiritualist practices."
6. Victoria Woodhull

Perhaps best known for her 1872 run for the presidency of the United States as the first woman to do so, Victoria Woodhull spent her lifetime blazing trails across multiple disciplines. From an early age, it's thought she believed that she received special guidance and protection from spirits of the deceased, which empowered her to take actions unusual for a woman at the time.

In addition to her candidacy for president, Woodhull was also the first woman to own a Wall Street investment firm, found her own newspaper, and speak before Congress demanding that women be granted the right to vote. And while her run for political office didn't end with her moving into the White House, Woodhull was elected ​​president of the American Association of Spiritualists in 1871, calling it "the chief honor" of her life.

7. Dan Akyroyd

In addition to being a member of the original cast of Saturday Night Live when the show premiered in 1975, Dan Akyroyd is closely associated with his starring role in the Ghostbusters movie franchise. In fact, not only did he co-write the script, but the idea for the 1984 film was his own. And Akroyd didn't have to look far for inspiration: His great-grandfather, Sam Aykroyd, was part of a Spiritualist community in Canada, where he regularly hosted seances in the family's farmhouse throughout the 1920 and 1930s.

In 2009, Peter Aykroyd (Dan's father and Sam's grandson) published a book called A History of Ghosts, which documents the general history of Spiritualism, as well as the Akykroyd family's role in the community. Discussing Spiritualism in a May 2020 interview with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Dan Aykroyd noted: "We believe—and I guess it's my religion—that you can speak from the other side, [and] that the consciousness survives."

8. Hilma af Klint

Although early-20th-century artists like ​​Vasily Kandinsky and Piet Mondrian are largely credited with sparking the phenomenon of abstract Western art, a Swedish painter named Hilma af Klimt began creating similar bold, colorful and geometric pieces even earlier. Other than art, af Klimt had another major interest in her life: Spiritualism. According to Scott, it is thought that she first showed Spiritualist inclinations in 1879, at the age of 17, which was shortly before embarking on a career as an artist.

"In 1896, Hilma began to hold regular seances with four other women who called themselves The Five," Scott explains. "As part of their communications with the other side, the women began to produce automatic drawings channeled from the spirits." While Hilma more formally aligned herself with other Spiritualist movements, she continued to paint her spiritually derived subjects until her death in 1944.

Some of af Klimt's best-known works are part of a series called The Paintings for the Temple, that Scott says "sought to represent the transcendent pulsing realms we cannot observe with our senses." She began painting the series in 1906, after spirits got in touch with her and the rest of The Five urging her to take on the project, and completed it in 1915.

"The spirits told her that the paintings would one day be housed in a temple, which Hilma envisioned as consisting of multiple levels connected by a spiral path," Scott notes. "Just over 100 years after she finished the series, her work was featured in New York's Guggenheim Museum, a temple to the arts with just such a design."

Elizabeth Yuko, Ph.D., is a bioethicist and journalist, as well as an adjunct professor of ethics at Fordham University. She has written for numerous publications, including Rolling Stone, The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Atlantic.

https://www.history.com/news/spiritualism-communication-dead-figures

CultNEWS101 Articles: 8/19/2021 (China, Religious Freedom, Spiritualists, DezNats, LDS, Recovery Workshop)

China, Religious Freedom, Spiritualists, DezNats, LDS, Recovery Workshop

The Conversation: There's a religious revival going on in China - under the constant watch of the Communist Party

" ... China tends to treat religions perceived as potentially threatening to the established order harshly, especially if suspected of foreign ties or secessionist tendencies. For instance, for decades China has strictly regulated Buddhism in Tibet, as it has pursued policies aimed at suppressing the cultural and national identities of the Tibetans. That contrasts with more relaxed attitudes towards the form of Buddhism practiced by the Han majority.

The party has explained its recent, ruthless campaign to repress the Uighurs, a Muslim minority in Xinjiang – a nominally autonomous region in Northwest China – as intended to counteract terrorism and separatism. According to leaked documents, since 2014 up to a million Uighurs have been interned in "re-education camps." It's part of a hardline policy of secularization and "Sinicization," which implies assimilating the Uighurs into the majority Han culture, at a loss of their religious and ethnic identities."

JSTOR Daily: The Dressy Ghosts of Victorian Literature

" ... Victorian ghosts dressed better than their ancestors. Gone were the traditional white linen, the funeral shrouds, the clanking fetters. In the nineteenth century, according to those purportedly in the know—spiritualists, spirit photographers (yes, they claimed they could photograph ghosts), and, above all, writers of spooky stories—ghosts manifested themselves in the latest fashions.

Scholar Aviva Briefel argues that the Victorian fascination with the immaterial was also very much an obsession with the material commodities that defined the living. It all showed up in the conventions of literary realism, which depended on thick descriptions of the stuff of the material world.

"The complex interactions between intangible spectres [sic] and concrete clothing became a rich site of inquiry in the nineteenth-century ghost story, a genre that was deeply informed by realist conventions despite its supernatural subject matter," writes Briefel.

For Victorian writers, clothes made the ghost. As in the detective story, what a spirit was wearing was a clue to its identity: ghosts were recognized by their wardrobe. After all, in the words of a fictional character of 1866, a ghost is "hollow, and has no teeth, no bones, no hair… a sort of nothing without innards."

In H.G. Wells's The Invisible Man (1897), the protagonist, essentially a ghost, can only manifest himself through costume. He needs, writes Briefel, "things to conceal his vacuity." Or, as a character in the novel says, "Why! …that's not a man at all. It's just empty clothes."

In Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol (1843), Jacob Marley's translucent ghost is only given substance by his "waistcoat, tights, and boots." When this apparition starts to unwrap the bandages on his head, his jaw simply falls away. He's literally held together by fabric.

Victorians left very few bits of the body exposed, so it should not surprise that they enjoyed ghost stories in which the "spectre goes after clothes to protect its decency." A naked ghost could disrupt morals and the conventions of literary realism.

Skeptics and parodists had fun with all this, wondering if clothing itself was ghostly and made by ghost tailors and ghost cobblers. In Henry James's "The Romance of Certain Old Clothes" (1868), a ghost returns to kill her own sister to protect her wardrobe."

The Guardian: New movement of religious extremists push ultra-conservative vision in US

"A new group of religious extremists in the United States is seeking to promote and defend an ultra-conservative vision of Mormon belief and harass perceived opponents of those beliefs, which are often racist and bigoted or promote violence.

The conduct of so-called "Deseret nationalists" or "DezNats" has raised questions about how the Mormon Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) is responding to the movement, whose members direct harassment at other Mormons, including those working in church-sponsored institutions such as Brigham Young University (BYU).

Some who identify as DezNats take extreme right positions on gender, sexuality and race. Others describing themselves as Deseret nationalists have advocated for a Mormon-ruled, separatist white ethnostate, located in the Great Basin area briefly claimed by the LDS church in the mid-19th century.

The Guardian's recent exposure of an assistant attorney general in Alaska – who had posted racist and violent tweets on a DezNat Twitter account – led to that official stepping down from his job. But it also prompted concern about how many DezNat supporters occupy positions of authority across the US.

Last weekend, an anonymous antifascist collective called "DezNat Exposed" published a blogpost alleging that a prominent DezNat account, @extradeadjcb, an associated Substack newsletter and a previous, suspended account, @jcbonthedl, was under the control of Kevin Dolan.

Dolan, who claims on his LinkedIn profile to have US government security clearance, was employed since January by consultancy firm Booz Allen Hamilton as a enior data scientist. The company has extensive contracts with US military and intelligence agencies and has been labeled "the world's most profitable spy organization".

The blogpost identifying Dolan details not only racist, anti-Semitic and homophobic posts made from the Twitter accounts, but the links between him and the accounts, which include archived posts from previous incarnations of his blogs and Twitter accounts, which point to his personal Facebook and Twitter pages.

Workshop: Take Back Your Life Recovery

The  Take Back Your Life Recovery learning series is hosted and led by none other than Janja Lalich, Beth Matenaer and Sally Martin, LCSW.

A psychoeducational learning series that gives you knowledge and practical tools for your recovery from cults, high-control groups, and coercive relationships.

This a 5-week interview style program will meet weekly for 2 hours each session to provide participants with:

• Information about these situations and what draws us to them
• Practical guidelines on how to "take back your life" in your own recovery
• A small group setting that allows for personalized Q&A opportunity in each meeting

The dates for each session are: Aug 21st & 28th, Sept 11th, 18th, & 25th
Cost to attend will be $250 (all five sessions)
To learn more or sign up please email: takebackyourliferecovery@gmail.com

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The Dressy Ghosts of Victorian Literature

Realism was exceptionally well suited (heh) for elaborate descriptions of spectral clothing.

Matthew Wills
JSTOR Daily
via Wikimedia Commons
July 30, 2021

Victorian ghosts dressed better than their ancestors. Gone were the traditional white linen, the funeral shrouds, the clanking fetters. In the nineteenth century, according to those purportedly in the know—spiritualists, spirit photographers (yes, they claimed they could photograph ghosts), and, above all, writers of spooky stories—ghosts manifested themselves in the latest fashions.

Scholar Aviva Briefel argues that the Victorian fascination with the immaterial was also very much an obsession with the material commodities that defined the living. It all showed up in the conventions of literary realism, which depended on thick descriptions of the stuff of the material world.

“The complex interactions between intangible spectres [sic] and concrete clothing became a rich site of inquiry in the nineteenth-century ghost story, a genre that was deeply informed by realist conventions despite its supernatural subject matter,” writes Briefel.

For Victorian writers, clothes made the ghost. As in the detective story, what a spirit was wearing was a clue to its identity: ghosts were recognized by their wardrobe. After all, in the words of a fictional character of 1866, a ghost is “hollow, and got no teeth, no bones, no hair… a sort of nothing without innards.”

In H.G. Wells’s The Invisible Man (1897), the protagonist, essentially a ghost, can only manifest himself through costume. He needs, writes Briefel, “things to conceal his vacuity.” Or, as a character in the novel says, “Why! …that’s not a man at all. It’s just empty clothes.”

In Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol (1843), Jacob Marley’s translucent ghost is only given substance by his “waistcoat, tights, and boots.” When this apparition starts to unwrap the bandages on his head, his jaw simply falls away. He’s literally held together by fabric.

Victorians left very few bits of the body exposed, so it should not surprise that they enjoyed ghost stories in which the “spectre goes after clothes to protect its decency.” A naked ghost could disrupt morals and the conventions of literary realism.

Skeptics and parodists had fun with all this, wondering if clothing itself was ghostly and made by ghost tailors and ghost cobblers. In Henry James’s “The Romance of Certain Old Clothes” (1868), a ghost returns to kill her own sister to protect her wardrobe.

Briefel argues that Victorian ghost stories ended up prioritizing clothing and ornaments over the ghosts. The ghosts themselves were literary laborers, working hard to make objects appear real. “Once they have performed this function, spectres are dismissed and fade into (greater) invisibility, leaving the descriptive objects they have helped to make behind them,” writes Briefel.

Other Victorians were even more direct. They suggested that clothing itself was haunted by the slaves and colonial subjects who produced the raw material, by the child laborers in the mills, and by the seamstresses sewing fashionable garments they themselves could not afford. And one notable, if not respectable, Victorian, Karl Marx, described the nature of commodities: “phantom-like.”

https://daily.jstor.org/the-dressy-ghosts-of-victorian-literature/

Pagan 'metaphysical' shops navigate threats from Christian critics

Selling herbs, crystals and spiritual guides, metaphysical shops are often perceived, especially by conservative Christians, as exotic, devoted to the so-called dark arts and, often, a threat. It's frequently those Christians who threaten them.

Heather Greene

Religion News Service
May 7, 2021

(RNS) — Uptown Greenville, North Carolina, hosted its first evening street festival on the last day of April, hoping to bring the community together in the wake of COVID-19 lockdowns. As the “Snack, Shop, Sip” event began, local metaphysical shop owner Heron Michelle set up a tarot reading table in front of her store, The Sojourner Whole Earth Provisions, where she sells healing herbs, crystals, candles, jewelry and books on spiritual, mostly pagan, subjects.

After only a few readings, Michelle was approached by two young adults wearing identical green T-shirts offering to share the gospel of Jesus.

“Why do they always assume that I haven’t heard of Jesus?” Michelle asked in a phone interview.

Metaphysical stores are not only retail shops. They are also spiritual centers that offer classes and lectures, ritual space and spiritual counseling, even lending libraries. For those in marginalized religions, metaphysical stores often stand in as community centers, similar to a church or temple.

They are also perceived, especially by conservative Christians, as exotic, devoted to the so-called dark arts and, often, a threat.

It’s frequently those Christians who threaten the stores. A practicing witch and pagan priestess, Michelle was raised in Southern Baptist and other evangelical churches. “Oh honey,” she told the teens, “I was baptized in three different Christian faiths and none of them took.”

As the pair talked, Michelle became increasingly frustrated. She was used to being approached by Christians wanting to proselytize or simply object to her practice, but they were usually older, and predominantly male. These two were “sweet young kids,” she said, who reminded her of herself at that age. She knew the language they were speaking.

She explained that she had found “the divine love that Jesus Christ was trying to bring to the world” outside of Christianity. In the faith she subscribed to now, she explained, “proselytizing was a cardinal sin.” The two left, but Michelle closed up her table and didn’t offer any more readings.

But the Christian evangelists, it turned out, were part of a larger mission group that had spread through the festival, talking to shop owners and festivalgoers. Later that evening, the entire group gathered in front of Michelle’s store, blocking the entrance and staring.

Michelle had been here before. When she opened The Sojourner in 2008, local church organizations organized a boycott, and, shortly after, a group of women drew crosses on the store’s windows with oil. The manager heard them chanting outside, “shouting out demons,” Michelle said.

In 2017, Philip Brown, known as EC Street Preacher, who has also harassed another North Carolina metaphysical store, positioned himself outside The Sojourner. Brown travels mostly around the South sharing his form of the gospel with a bullhorn and large signs. He typically records his street sermons, and, in one video, Michelle can be heard engaging him in conversation.

“I think he was surprised that I knew Scripture better than him,” she said.

Vandalism, protests, harassment and regular proselytizing are not uncommon for metaphysical shops. In 2010, Rondell Gonzalez, the owner of Pye’Wackets, south of Anchorage, Alaska, found a 7-foot cross attached to her store’s sign. In 2015, someone tossed a gasoline bomb through the storefront window at Shooting for the Moon Spiritual Development Center, in Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania. (It failed to explode, and the attackers were never identified.)

In Minnesota in 2016, metaphysical shop owner Bonnie Gurney filed a cease-and-desist order to stop a local woman from posting protests on her store’s social media page, publicly burning store fliers, blocking the shop entrance and harassing patrons, telling them to “repent.” In 2019, a newly opened metaphysical shop in Staunton, Virginia, was shut down, reportedly after the property owner belatedly realized his renter was a metaphysical shop.

For the most part the owners answer casual protests with tolerance. Kathy Agate Brown, the owner of the Pennsylvania store attacked with a gasoline bomb, displays her motto: “We are all one.” When visitors confront her with religious messages, she said, she listens. “Everyone just wants to express their opinion,” Brown said.

Lucky Cabral, who runs Sanctum Folklorica in New Bedford, Massachusetts, said she has fired past employees for using anti-Christian and anti-religious rhetoric. “I don’t tolerate hate of any kind. All are welcome here.”

The attacks on metaphysical stores aren’t always motivated entirely by faith. In March of this year, a local woman showed up to “douse the storefront with holy water,” said Cabral. On Good Friday, the woman returned to burn a pile of sage (a traditional Native American spiritual purgative) near the front door. On Easter, she set fire to display shelves outside the store.

Cabral, a practicing witch, minister and life coach, said that in the three years since she opened, her store has been vandalized four times. This latest attacker, Cabral learned, was struggling with mental issues.

In 2015, in the Denver suburb of Englewood, vandals destroyed a sign at ISIS Books & Gifts, named for the Egyptian goddess, because they believed the shop was affiliated with the Middle Eastern terrorist organization. After the incident, the store was renamed Goddess Isis Books & Gifts.

Since then, owner Karen Charboneau-Harrison has only seen the “typical proselytizers.” They often leave “pamphlets in books that they find offensive,” she said. On occasion, the store has a visitor who attempts to “harass staff and customers.”

“We gently show them the door,” Harrison said. “In Denver, folks are pretty open minded … I would bet that smaller towns might have this problem happening.”

Location does seem to be a key to how metaphysical shops are received. In Antioch, California, the owners of The Mystic Dream report no problems, as do the folks who run The Awareness Shop in New Paltz, New York.

Cabral describes New Bedford as pagan-friendly. However, the town has a deeply rooted Catholic community, including a priest who reportedly sent store employees a letter calling Cabral evil and urging them to quit. Cabral said that she has seen attacks and harassment happen to other store owners, but “this was me,” she said. “It was shocking.”

While problems do persist for some stores, such attitudes seem to be a relic of a past America, however, when the religious landscape was more distinct and people did not mix their belief systems. During the 2008 boycott in Greenville, one woman stopped by The Sojourner, Michelle said, because she “heard in Bible study” that the store sold the best crystals.

https://religionnews.com/2021/05/07/pagan-metaphysical-shops-navigate-threats-from-christian-critics/

Immortality: Beliefs and Practices

Immortality: Beliefs and Practices

WHEN: Saturday 1st February 2020, 10am-5pm (registration at 9.30).
WHERE: Bush House Lecture Theatre 1, King’s College, London, 30 Aldwych, London, WC2B 4BG.

The lure of immortality has been an inspiration for many people in both religious and secular contexts. But what does immortality mean? This seminar will explore some of the range of beliefs and practices which are closely associated with immortality in comparative context. We will investigate the idea of immortality by looking more closely at how it is directly applied in people’s lives. What happens when immortality is understood as a possibility – or even a reality?  We will be considering beliefs and practices relating to immortality in the context of AI, near-death experiences, Christianity, Buddhism, Freezone Scientology, spiritualist mediums and contemporary yoga movements.

This project is partially funded through the ERC Horizon 2020 Project AYURYOG Grant No.  639363 which is exploring the entanglements of yoga, ayurveda and rasaśastra (alchemical and longevity practices) in South Asia.

It is held in association with the Department of Theology and Religious Studies, King’s College, London.

Confirmed speakers include:

• Mikel Burley, University of Leeds
• Susannah Crockford, Ghent University
• Peter Fenwick, King’s College London
• Tobi Olujinmi, The W-Talk
• Mark Singleton, SOAS, The University of London
• Aled Thomas, The Open University

Seminar Ticket

Crystals, potions and tarot cards: the mystical rise of new age businesses

Consumer appetite for spiritualism has sparked a rise in companies offering everything from AI-powered astrology apps to subscription boxes for white witches

Emma Featherstone
The Guardian
January 8, 2018

Ruby Warrington and Alexandra Roxo co-founders of The Numinous with members of the company’s Moon Club in New York.

Harmony Nice is a 20-year old vlogger from Norwich. While she covers beauty on her YouTube channel, and her goth-inspired look is a hit on Instagram, it’s her potions, crystals and tarot cards that set her apart from your average YouTuber.

Nice has been practising the Wicca religion for about four years and has been sharing her beliefs with her 300,000-plus subscribers for just over a year. “Wicca is a nature- and pagan-based religion, with elements of witchcraft in it,” she says.

In one video, Nice explains how she uses tarot cards. In another she presents samples from her crystal collection. She’s also covered Wiccan altars, rune stones and the paranormal. Nice makes a living through the royalties YouTube pays for the content. “I don’t think it’s the videos about Wicca that have grown my channel, but it’s what gets people to stay,” she says.

This interest in witchcraft is part of a revival of new age spirituality. Big business has caught on: publications aimed at 20 and 30-somethings, such as Broadly, Refinery29 and The Cut frequently cover crystal grids, tarot and astrology. The fashion and beauty industries have latched on to the trend. In June, a Dior collection was adorned with images from the Motherpeace feminist tarot deck and beauty brands including Sisley and Aveda are adding gemstones and crystals to products.

Fashion’s interest in the spiritual might prove short-lived, but there is a significant audience with a deeper interest who could offer a sustainable customer base to mystical practitioners.

According to the latest census, over 53,000 people in the UK are Pagan. Paganism can be described as an amalgamation of religions and spiritual traditions, which can include Wicca. Meanwhile, the latest generation of adult consumers – 18-24-year-olds – are open-minded. A study by the US-based National Science Foundation found this demographic the least likely to consider astrology unscientific.

A growing public curiosity about the mystical is something Ruby Warrington noted before launching her business, The Numinous. In 2012, Warrington moved from London, where she’d worked as a features editor, to New York. She says: “Already there was a real scene here of people who you wouldn’t necessarily associate being into this kind of stuff, from practitioners to boutiques. I’ve definitely seen that pick up pace over the last four or five years.

“[It] reflects a shift away from materialism and mass consumerism. This was sparked by the financial crash of 2008, when we were reminded that material markers of success can, literally, vanish overnight.”

The Numinous has a few facets: an online magazine, an events schedule, including workshops and talks, and the Moon Club, a members’ club.

While they may be adapting to the online age, mystical practitioners have a long history, as does the controversy they can attract. One critic is Jon Donnis, who writes the blog BadPsychics.com which, he says, aims to educate people and expose the methods of psychics and practitioners of tarot, reiki and witchcraft. “To be put on the BadPsychics list, I would first have to investigate the psychic and expose how they performed their tricks. If I’m lying, I get sued – so far I have never been sued,” he says.

Mystics’ clients can range from fervent believers to those who dabble for fun. But they can also attract more vulnerable people. It is for this reason that, since 2008, consumer protection laws have required fortune-tellers, astrologers and mediums to say their services are for “entertainment only”.

For Michele Knight, founder of MicheleKnight.com, which offers live psychic readings, it is important there are set guidelines for employees. “We have a long list in our contract, including that you cannot make people dependent [on the service].” She adds: “If we feel somebody is overusing the service, then a manager will ring them up and talk to them about that.”

Knight’s spiritual interest started early: she began dabbling in the psychic when she was around 16, with tarot readings. She says that there has always been a strong connection between feminism and the spiritual. “It’s to do with the matriarch, the wise woman, a different way to be powerful.” She says of the current interest in mysticism: “I think women are waking up and gathering again.”

Holly Cassell, a 26-year-old blogger and witch from Cardiff, agrees. “[Witchcraft] not only acknowledges, but honours and celebrates the idea of the divine feminine, rather than only glorifying masculine qualities, like much of western society.” She adds: “I buy my witchcraft tools almost exclusively from women and non-binary people, and usually small online business owners.”

To compete, many businesses are also merging a mystical service or product with technology, such as Co–Star Personalised Astrology, which is billed as an AI-powered astrology app and the online subscription company White Witch Box, which, for £27 a month, delivers its customers boxes filled with witch-related accessories and trinkets, such as incense, jewellery and altar cloths.

While some promote mysticism as a reaction against materialism, and for others it offers comfort in our technical age, the renewed appetite for the mystical is clearly inspiring an entrepreneurial mindset. Nice says: “I am quite picky about the brands that I work with. Once I feel I’ve done my time on YouTube, which hopefully won’t be for ages yet, I’d like to set up a [Wicca] shop.”

https://www.theguardian.com/small-business-network/2018/jan/18/crystals-potions-and-tarot-cards-the-mystical-rise-of-new-age-businesses

In the Joints of Their Toes

Paris Review

By Edward White
November 4, 2016

THE LIVES OF OTHERS

The ruse that gave rise to the spiritualist movement.

Edward White's The Lives of Others is a monthly series about unusual, largely forgotten figures from history.

On July 13, 1930, Arthur Conan Doyle made an appearance at London's Royal Albert Hall in the middle of his own memorial service, six days after his death. Nobody saw him, but the spirit medium Estelle Roberts assured those present that Doyle had kept his deathbed promise: he'd returned to deliver proof that talking to the dead really is possible. In life the creator of the arch logician Sherlock Holmes had been as suggestible as those ten thousand paying guests in South Kensington: he was the world's best-known proponent of spiritualism—the discipline of talking to the dead—and an adherent of just about any wad of mumbo-jumbo going. Doyle believed not only in clairvoyance, but telepathy, telekinesis, and, quite literally, fairies at the bottom of the garden.

Throughout the 1910s and '20s Doyle's books, articles, and talks on these subjects helped to furnish spiritualism with mainstream credibility. But the roots of the movement were planted decades earlier in a tiny one-bedroom cottage in the hamlet of Hydesville, New York, the family home of Margaret and John Fox and their daughters Maggie, fourteen, and Kate, eleven.

March 1848 was a troubling time for the Foxes. All month long they'd been plagued by thuds and cracks loud enough to awaken them in the predawn silence. By the evening of March 31, John and Margaret were at the end of their tethers. The girls were sent to bed early at six o'clock to catch up on lost sleep and allow their parents an evening of quiet to still their nerves. No sooner had Maggie and Kate slid beneath the sheets than the noises started reverberating through the cottage. From floorboards, ceilings, bedsteads, and doorframes came louder and more frenetic knocking than ever before. It seemed that wherever in the cottage the girls went these mysterious sounds followed, as though they were being pursued by some invisible force. Margaret was convinced that something demonic was afoot and sent her husband to rouse the neighbors for help.

That evening the Foxes' bedroom was crowded with people who stood awestruck in the candlelight as the cracking sounds echoed around them. William Duesler, a neighbor, spoke aloud into thin air, asking questions and receiving in reply knocking sounds, "raps," as he termed them. Slowly, it emerged that this disembodied spirit had an earthly identity: a thirty-one-year-old peddler who had been murdered for the sum of five hundred dollars and then buried beneath the Foxes' house by a previous tenant. At the time, nobody in the room had any idea who the victim might have been, and even though the Foxes' adult son David had hit upon the idea of running through the letters of the alphabet to allow the spirit to spell out words, nobody seems to have asked the spirit to give its name. In later weeks, locals began to recall that perhaps a young peddler had indeed passed through one day some years earlier. Exactly when, they couldn't say. Others would later swear that David, digging beneath the house one summer, had discovered bones and a set of human teeth. Very quickly fabulous tales and half-remembered anecdotes congealed into a dense tissue of myth that made for an alluring alternative to empirical truth.

In many parts of the world, the spring and summer of that year was a momentous time. There were revolutions across western Europe; the Mexican-American War came to an end; the gold rush was underway in California. In rural New York, things were evidently a little slower. Within a few weeks, the story of the Hydesville haunting scrabbled its way across the state. Leah Fish—the Foxes' eldest daughter, a music teacher in nearby Rochester—first heard about it when an excited pupil read aloud from a newspaper report about the case. By the time a perplexed Leah arrived at the family home, the Foxes had all decamped to David's house in a neighboring village to escape the crowds of locals hoping to meet the little girls who had made contact with the dead.

*

The precise run of proceeding events is contested, but it's clear that Leah, whose worldliness was in direct proportion to her parents' naivety, quickly sussed that her siblings were pulling a fast one. Maggie and Kate admitted to her that they had perfected the art of cracking their toes with no perceptible movement. When performed in contact with wooden surfaces to amplify the noise, the raps sounded as if from the ether. Leah should have been furious at their deception; perhaps she was. But she also realized that Maggie and Kate had, in the joints of their toes, the potential to change the fortunes of the Fox family forever.

With entrepreneurial sharpness, Leah moved herself, Maggie, and Kate into a house in Rochester where, for a dollar each, visitors could attend a séance with them. It was an instant hit. The Fox sisters' fame as spirit mediums spread so quickly that they soon performed to packed theaters in New York, New England, and beyond. It marked a shift in popular attitudes toward the paranormal. Two hundred years earlier, a couple of adolescent females who claimed to be in conversation with the dead may well have been burned alive as witches; in the mid-nineteenth century they became show-business celebrities. Most who came to see them were happy to believe the Fox girls were the real deal, though Maggie in particular was subject to some terrifying abuse from those who thought her either a fraud or a heretic. In Troy, New York, she was even the victim of an attempted kidnapping by a group of men who seemed offended by the sisters' show. For Maggie and Kate, children who had started this as a prank to enliven the dullness of their daily routine, it was too much. As early as November 1849 they tried to bring the circus to an end, spelling out "we will now bid you farewell" with their toe joints during a séance. For two weeks the spirits remained silent; their reappearance was testament to Leah's unshakable belief that the show must go on, and her formidable skill at ensuring that it would.

Even had they stopped, it wouldn't have slowed the juggernaut they had set in motion. By 1850, "rapping" had become a nationwide craze. That October, the New Haven Journal reported that there were forty families in upstate New York who claimed to have the same gifts as the Foxes, and hundreds more ranging from Virginia to Ohio. In 1851, a writer at the Spiritual World tallied more than one hundred spirit mediums in New York City alone. From the Fox sisters, the phenomenon of spiritualism emerged not as some shadowy occult practice or roadside attraction but as an exciting way of reconciling the ineffable mysteries of the soul with the complex realities of a modern, rapidly industrializing nation; newly respectable, it could count among its proponents Thomas Edison, the antislavery leader William Lloyd Garrison, and many prominent women's rights advocates based in Rochester, the Foxes' adopted hometown. A conspicuous number of the new adherents were from scientific backgrounds. A physician from New England named Dr. Phelps reported that his windows had shattered spontaneously, his clothes had been torn without human interference, inanimate objects had danced together on his floor, and, weirdest of all, turnips inscribed with mysterious hieroglyphs had surged forth from the living room carpet.

That men and women of science should have been so captivated by spiritualism isn't as incongruous as it first appears. In the 1840s and '50s, advances in science and technology seemed to be eradicating the America of Washington, Jefferson, and Jackson in which many of the older generation had grown up. The railroads and the telegraph had opened up the country, mass production and mass immigration were transforming the character of its cities, and Darwin's theories were questioning the most basic assumptions about life and death. As science challenged all the old sureties, spiritualism offered a way of clinging to the past; far from rejecting science and rational thinking, spiritualists believed they were on the cutting edge, using scientific methods to prove the existence of God and the afterlife. Many ordinary Americans struggled to see that there was anything more outlandish in spiritualism than in the other scientific marvels that were transforming their world. The very sound of rapping echoed the sound of the new telegraph machines that, seemingly by magic, allowed people in New York to instantaneously communicate with people in Boston, Los Angeles, or even on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean.

*

In the first four years of the Foxes' fame there was ample evidence that their rapping was a fraud. Some wryly pointed out the frequency with which the ghosts of famous figures such as Benjamin Franklin appeared at the Foxes' séances; one observer couldn't help noting that the great man's command of spelling and grammar had diminished terribly since passing over. Then there were times when Franklin and the other stiffs refused to turn up at all: conditions weren't to their liking. At a performance in Buffalo, cushions were placed between the girls' feet and the wooden floorboards. Nothing but the sound of strained silence filled the air that night. Leah wheeled out her stock defense: the negative energy of cynics polluted the channel between the girls and the spirits; only those of pure heart who believed without question would be able to witness definitive proof of the girls' powers. It was the circular logic of magical thinking, and it worked beautifully.

Powered by the turbines of self-delusion, spiritualism quickly spread to Great Britain, arguably the first American cultural export to conquer the old motherland. Kate played a significant part in that, staging shows where ghosts appeared not just through rapping but in physical form. Quite how she achieved that is unclear, but apparitions were said to appear in a strange "psychic light" during her seances. The British were as enthralled by the myth of the Fox sisters as Americans had been, and Leah, in particular, capitalized on the transatlantic fame. Before the Hydesville rapping she had been a single mother, hampered by the ubiquitous social restrictions that came with being born female. In the field of spirit mediumship—a branch of the entertainment industry that she more than anyone else had helped to invent—women dominated. She acquired wealth, social clout, and opportunities that would never usually have been afforded someone of her background. Over the next decades, she became a venerable society lady and the wife of a Wall Street banker. Spiritualism had become so mainstream that she felt no need to distance herself from the movement despite her social elevation.

But for Maggie—the sister on whom the greatest burden of performing had been placed, and who had been troubled from the beginning by her deceit—the rapping phenomenon brought heartache and misery. In 1852, at seventeen, she met Elisha Kane, a famous Arctic explorer with whom she entered into a strangely fraught long-distance romance. Kane balanced genuine love with embarrassment that his beloved devoted her life to sideshow quackery. He promised Maggie that they would be married one day; for years she clung to the prospect of becoming Mrs. Elisha Kane and jettisoning her role as prophet of the spiritualist movement. But the Kane family, in the snootiest echelons of Philadelphia society, considered Maggie a backwoods purveyor of profane heresy. Fearful of the consequences of a proper marriage, Elisha compromised on a ring-exchanging ceremony before his latest foreign expedition. On his return, he promised, would follow a full wedding recognized by God and the law. That day never came: Elisha fell gravely ill during his travels and died in Cuba, aged just thirty-six. Maggie's despair was compounded by insult when Elisha's parents forbade her from attending the funeral and refused to acknowledge her as their son's betrothed and common-law wife, thereby rejecting her claim to a share of his estate.

She retaliated by publishing The Love-Life of Dr. Kane, a book of his letters to her. Her savior and soulmate ripped away, Maggie's life veered onto the wrong side of the road. She turned to drink to dampen the pain of her loss and to submerge the shame and self-loathing that spiritualism caused her. Yet the more she drank, the more unfit she became for dealing with life, and the farther she drifted from sense of purpose.

*

In 1888, forty years after the childhood prank that changed her life, Maggie collected herself sufficiently to make a public confession. There were now millions of confirmed spiritualists across the planet, including Doyle, who published the first Sherlock Holmes book that same year. It was hard for Maggie to believe that the cotton reel, once dropped, could have spun so far from her grasp. Her confession at New York's Academy of Music was fulsome and emotional, incorporating a full demonstration of how she and her sister had performed their trick. Kate, now also a widow with a drink problem, sat in the audience and dourly confirmed everything Maggie said; Leah rolled her eyes from afar, dismissing her sisters as wanton attention seekers who put their grubby material desires before truth and righteousness. The fact that Maggie had been paid $1,500 for the performance has always been cited by defenders of spiritualism as definitive, damning proof that she was lying through her teeth that evening, thinking only of the check that would pay for her next snifter. They're half right about that. No sooner had Maggie made the confession than she retracted it, realizing that her disavowal would do nothing other than deprive her of her only source of income.

Maggie died in 1895, a bitter and broken women relying on the kindness of friends and acquaintances to keep a roof over her head. She had, in a curious way, been an accidental pioneer. Twenty years before vaudeville began to give female entertainers a new standing in American popular culture, she and her sisters had trod out a path along which dozens of other female spiritualists followed, many gaining financial independence, social standing, and an outlet for their talents, personalities, and ambitions. It's unlikely that Maggie could ever have taken any pride in that. To her last day she felt tarnished by her involvement in spiritualism and shamed by her dependence on it. Her death made little impact upon the spiritualist community; there was no memorial séance for her as there would be for Doyle, and no spirit medium to receive her message from the other side. If it is possible for the dead to reach us from beyond the grave, Maggie has chosen to withhold her touch.

Edward White is the author of The Tastemaker: Carl Van Vechten and the Birth of Modern America.

https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2016/11/04/in-the-joints-of-their-toes/

The medium is the messenger: meet the new breed of American spiritualists

While many cultures have engaged in practices and rituals with the aim of communicating the dead, spiritualism is a uniquely American religion

 

The Guardian

Kim Kelly

Tuesday 8 November 2016 Last modified on Wednesday 9 November 2016 

Now that another Halloween has come and gone, most people won’t be expecting to exert any mental energy over the concept of ghosts until next year’s festivities. However, there are still some places where communiques with ghosts are an everyday presence – where the spirit world and ours are in contact regularly. The most famous is called Lily Dale, a place that is one of the centers for a thriving population of the living who speak with the dead.

Nestled on the banks of the jewel-toned Cassadaga Lake in south-western New York, the world’s largest spiritualist community was first established back in 1879. Since then, the tiny wooded hamlet has served as a sanctuary for those who wish to take part in the community’s stated mission to “further the science, philosophy, and religion of spiritualism”. While many cultures spanning many time periods have engaged in practices and rituals with the aim of communicating with the dead, spiritualism itself is a uniquely American religion. 

Its roots dig deep into the same New York soil that nourishes Lily Dale, and some of its leading lights lived and died along north-eastern shores. The Fox sisters – a pair of teenage girls based outside Rochester, New York – set the wheels of spiritualism in motion in 1848 when they claimed to hear spirits “rapping” on tables and on the walls of their purportedly haunted house. (They used a code of one tap for yes, two taps for no). The girls held public seances in front of captivated audiences and became famous as a bonafide spiritualist movement took hold and spread.

Despite their later admission that their “spirits” had been a hoax, it was too late to put the genie back in the bottle; spiritualism continued growing in popularity even as the Fox sisters faded from view, and the religious significance of their “rappings” became the centerpiece of the movement, as bereaved flocked to mediums across the country to assuage their grief (or their guilt). Spiritualism – with its combination of theatrical performances, eerie rituals and raw human emotions – was a certified craze during the Victorian era and onwards into the first world war, when the desperate parents of fallen soldiers sought solace from mediums.

A typical seance was a theatrical event, held in pitch darkness by a medium who sat mute in a trancelike state, and often featuring disembodied voices, flying furniture, or the appearance of ectoplasm, a diaphanous white substance that appears in many “spirit photographs”, which were purported to depict the physical manifestations of ghosts or spirits. Examining these photographs now show examples of crude paper mache masks and “floating” cheesecloth produced by charlatans with a variety of tricks up their billowing sleeves (or hidden within their “spirit cabinets,” constructed spaces used to contain the medium during her spiritual trance). It all looks so obviously fake that one wonders how our ancestors were so readily fooled, but that rather uncharitable view doesn’t take into account things like the absolute darkness required during a seance, or the role that sincere religious belief played, or even the bare fact that sometimes grieving, heartbroken people will see what they want to see.

Despite its popularity (and support from such lionized figures as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, a devout and ardent spiritualist) the religion’s cultural significance petered out as the Victorian era passed. It lives on in several different branches – some that take a more New Age “spiritual” focus that incorporate elements of Eastern religions, and others, like the residents of Lily Dale, who take a more traditional Christianity-based route. The Assembly defines a spiritualist as, “one who believes, as the basis of his or her religion, in the continuity of life and in individual responsibility,” and profess to be “dedicated to the service of God, Spirit and Mankind”. There is no mention of ectoplasm or spirit cabinets on the Lily Dale website, but it’s not exactly a Christian summer camp; the Assembly does offers a multitude of spiritualist services, and visitors are encouraged to walk along the community’s Fairy Trail or commune with its Inspiration Stump.

Photographer Shannon Taggart has been documenting life in Lily Dale since 2001, and is currently spearheading an effort to bring two of its resident mediums – Sue Barnes and Lauren Thibodeau – to Brooklyn’s Morbid Anatomy Museum (where Taggart serves as Artist and Scholar in Residence). Last week the museum hosted several spiritualist lectures (including one on early feminist firebrand, stockbroker and spiritualist Victoria Woodhull), and Barnes and Thibodeau held workshops on automatic drawing, auragraphs and spirit portraits.

I attended Sunday’s spiritualist service, and left feeling more convinced than I’d expected. The mediums has quite different styles, which they traded off as they gave readings to various members of the assemblage – Thibodeu seemed to pluck spirits from the air, channeling them as she twirled, while Barnes utilized a more complex card-based methodology that combined the spiritualist connection with psychic reading. Said readings seemed hit or miss (with far more hits), but for every muted, “Yeah, that kind of sounds like him?” response, there was someone who ended up having a deeply emotional reaction to an accurate description of someone they’d lost.

Taggart’s own experiences at Lily Dale have ranged from the mysterious to the meaningful, and occasionally, the absurd. “These events have kept me in a constant state of questioning. These range from receiving Broadway-style singing messages, having a medium’s spirit guide direct my photography, and hearing a Lily Dale medium correctly predict the birthdate of my son two years before he was born,” she says. “Just being in Lily Dale feels otherworldly, and that’s what drew me in initially – it’s unlike any place I’ve ever been. It is a space that invites contemplation on the eternal questions surrounding the line between life and death.”

I ask Taggart her thoughts on why some people still cling to that age-old desire to lift the veil and touch base with their dearly deceased, and she chalked it up to a matter of perspective. “Contact with the dead has been part of virtually every culture throughout history. Modern western culture is unique in its dismissal of the practice,” she tells me. She also sees parallels between spiritualism and ancient shamanic traditions which also relied on a potent blend of religion, medicine, psychiatry and entertainment – showing just one more way in which history (and human nature) are wont to repeat themselves.

“The roots of all magical tradition and performance lead back to the shaman – the healer/medicine man or woman of pre-modern cultures. The shaman’s mastery of spectacle lies at the heart of his power. His ritual acts blurred the line between fantasy and reality in order to heal the body and the mind.”

Now, spiritualism most turbulent days are well behind it, and its future is being kept safe by its devoted keepers in spiritualist churches and communities. For Taggart the space between the real and the fantastic is where spiritualism always explores. This use of artifice points to the paradox at the heart of all spectacle – how can something false bring about something real?” she asks. “The shaman’s magic raises questions about why deception enchants and what it means to deceive.”

https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2016/nov/08/american-spiritualists-lily-dale-seance