Coming To A Close

Here we are at the end of the road. Well...not really. Although this maybe my final posting to the blog, this is not the end of the story. I'll mention more about that at the end, but let us focus on the last two pieces of information I have gathered.

Around the start of the blog, I had mentioned about an article written by Judith R. Walkowitz entitled "Science and the Seance: Transgressions of Gender and Genre in Late Victorian London". I had planned on using that article back then, but honestly forgot about it until now.

(A picture of Georgina Weldon)

Walkowitz focuses her article around the spiritualist, Georgina Weldon. Mrs. Weldon was an aspiring performer who, against her parents’ wishes, married Mr. Weldon to finally live her dream. Her husband eventually became estrange from her after she decided to run an orphanage from their home to educate children. It was not a secret that she was into spiritualism and would even try to conduct séances in the house, sometimes with the children. It is because of her fascination with spiritualism that eventually, according to Walkowitz, made her “a target of lunacy confinement because a public controversy between doctors and spiritualists provided her husband with the means to further his private designs that is, to rid himself of a nuisance wife” (pgs.4-5). The professionals of the medical career felt threatened by the accelerating number of intellectual people who became interested in the spiritual phenomena. Many declared “spiritualists as crazy women and feminized men engaged in superstitious, popular, and fraudulent practices” (pg.5). A lot of these medical doctors who often bombarded spiritualists were specialists in the study of insanity within the brain. They would “denounced the trance as a form of hysteria” and "psychiatrists translated spiritualist communications into the esoteric language of materialist science, as due to local lesions of the brain or unconscious cerebrations" (pg.5). The doctor who Mr. Weldon would call to take his wife, Dr. L. Forbes Winslow, “identified spiritualism as the principal cause of the increase of insanity in England, particularly among ‘weak-minded hysterical women’” (pg.6).

(Picture of  Dr. L. Forbes Winslow)

The number of women at the time was much great than men and the ones that were married still found themselves lonely or unhappy. “The private, home like atmosphere of the séance, reinforced by the familial content of spirit communication with dead relatives, was a comfortable setting for women. The séance reversed the usual sexual hierarchy of knowledge and power: it shifted attention away from men and focused it on the female medium, the center of spiritual knowledge and insight” (pg.8). Spiritualism was seen as a source of amusement to many, but some found it slightly exotic; “dramatic sexual displays and inversions were accomplished at materializations: a medium, usually an attractive young girl, would be placed in a cabinet, bound and gagged, while a fanciful spirit would issue forth, sometimes a red Indian, sometimes a swearing buccaneer, sometimes a lovely young female spirit in a diaphanous white gown who sat on the laps of her favorite gentlemen” (pg.9). The article, also, suggest that women were destined to be mediums and connect with spirits because they were fragile and not as smart compared to men, but were pure, static, and quiet. Their natural, soft domineers made them the ideal persons to connect with the unseen world. (This kind of sounds like Owen's book)

In the case of Mrs. Weldon, she was the type of woman who would seem ideal to be a spiritualist, but she was cleaver and determined which aided her in escaping from being thrown into an asylum and fight back in court against those who tried to place her there. She convinced the court that her husband, indeed, conspired with Dr. Winslow to have her thrown into an asylum when she was, in fact, sane. While other women before her tried to have women work around men, “Mrs. Weldon showed how women could take matters into their own hands and act publicly in their own defense” (pg.22).

So that is the last of my study. I would first and foremost like to apologize for not finding much else on other European countries. Either I couldn't find any information or the information I found was suspicious, to say the least. But, in this case, I believe I have found a good about of material to rely on.  At the start of my blog, my question was "Why did Victorian Era Europe follow Spiritualism and what does Spiritualism entail?". I believe that I have answered that question to an extent. Through my research, I have found how spiritualism became a popular topic and how it could have seemed interesting for others to look into. Most of these studies either focused on England or just countries in general. So while the question is answered for England, it's a little vague for the rest of the European countries. As I said before, either there was nothing on other countries and spiritualism or the information was too suspicious. But for the few articles that mentioned no countries, it could be possible that they meant any country that had spiritualism (or women as some articles focused on). I mentioned back at the top of this post that the journey wasn't over and I truly believe that, because there could, indeed, be more information out there that either I was not able to access or just not published yet. The idea of looking at spiritualism in history is still an ongoing research for many. Books and articles on the topic are still coming out today and who knows what other pieces of information they might find. I certainly hope you enjoyed reading along with my research and thank you for your interest.

Citation: Walkowitz, Judith R. "Science and the Séance: Transgressions of Gender and Genre in Late Victorian London". Representations. University of California Press. No. 22 (Spring, 1988), pgs. 3-29 <http://www.jstor.org/stable/2928407>

Space of Illusion?

Today I'm going to discuss an article I read on spiritualism. The article is called "Enchanted Spaces: The Séance, Affect, and Geographies of Religion" by  Julian Holloway. It's a very interesting article that looks at the space spiritualists would use more so than the spiritualist themselves. I hope you enjoy my little interpretation of the article...

In this informative article by Julian Holloway, she offers a unique insight on how designated locations deemed holy or “sacred” are made and what its atmosphere radiates onto the given audience. She argues that “sacred spaces” and their settings influence how people feel within the area and, in turn, makes the location more sacred. Instead of using any major religion to analyze for her idea, she uses spiritualism as it was seen in the nineteenth century, mostly focusing around a spiritualist’s space; the séance. Her arguments spread across three main topics: the effect of spiritualism in the Victorian Era, the effect séances would have over their audience, and a nonreductionist as well as a nonteleological approach to these phenomena.
            During the Victorian era, spiritualism was a growing interest between the 1840s and the 1890s. Holloway argues that spiritualism and the séance helped imitate and even change some social and cultural discussions during that time frame. She says "One cannot deny how the séance both transgressed and reproduced wider sociocultural discourses, norms, and practices of Christian belief, science, gender, and sexuality" (pg. 183). Through Christian belief, spiritualism was viewed with mixed ideas. Holloway uses information from G.K. Nelson and A. Owen, saying that “spiritualism represented a sort of halfway house between the increasingly separate or separated God (and thus by implication the Church) of "hellfire" religious doctrine and the bare materialism of secularism or atheist” (pg. 183). Through science, spiritualism caused a genuine curiosity in the Victorian era, generating new ideas, ways of analysis, experiments, and even creating facilities to observe these phenomena. Finally, through gender and sexuality, spiritualism opened unique doors for both the spiritualists and the audience. Most leading spiritualists were women and Holloway explains that this allowed women to do something they normally would never do. They could go to several locations and get to talk about ideas without making a disturbance in the community. As for the audience, they would have to physically participate in the séance, usually holding hands with one another, which would be looked down upon in other circumstances (pg. 183).
            From this point of sexuality, the physical touching involved with séances opens the door to Holloway’s next argument. The effects that séances themselves would cause different and unique sensitivity, not just physically, but also internally.  These séances would cause shivering sensations, exhilarating fears, and internal excitement (pg. 184). The lack of light in the room, which was required during a séance, would help heighten these senses and feelings (pg. 185).
            In her final argument, Holloway expresses the need to look at séances, spiritual places or areas, and the feeling within these locations through a nonreductionist and nonteleological way. The nonreductionist will avoid analyzing a complicated topic to make it simpler and will rather let the topic’s evidence speak for itself. She calls A.J. Ivakhiv’s view a nonreductionist approach, quoting him while saying "leave questions as to the cause of these affects 'open, not close them off by way of a reification to some pregiven essence, or of a reduction to ideology, social relations, or some other explanatory principle.'" (pg.186). A nonteleological view is that phenomena has a purpose in life and is best explained through this purpose instead of scientific proof. Through these two approaches, Holloway explains that it is better to leave the question if spiritual areas are, indeed, spiritual alone and let the affects of its practices speak for itself.
            Through her intriguing article, Holloway gives her readers a deep insight on the experiences of being within a spiritual area.  The perspectives she leaves in her article are thorough and enlightening, giving a logical and intuitive view on spiritual areas and locations. The effect and affect of spiritualism and its séances helps her readers to see what all spiritual practices and locations can do to their audiences and how they can define it as being spiritual. Seeing the nonreductionist and nonteleological way of viewing these feelings and phenomena is interesting for Holloway to use as a support of her ideas, leaving her topic open for discussion.  Her article could leave many skeptics unsatisfied, but it could seem plausible to many others. The way she ends her article makes an excellent statement to her own views and why she might believe others need to feel the same; "The cultural politics of belief and religiosity, as well as the sensations that affirm and reiterate them, are for millions of people life-giving, life- fulfilling, and life-affirming-something we must respect and seek to understand" (pg.186).

Well that is it for today! I hope the article was interesting. I found it helpful to look at another side of a seance than just through the people. I have to admit that I'm afriad my quest is coming to a short end. I haven't been able to find much on most of Europe like I wanted to since most of the research done focuses on the US or England, but I have found some, if not most, of my answers and I'm content with that much. If I should find some extra information, I'll be sure to add it soon! If this is one of the last things I give you all, I hope it was worth it all. Thank you for following with me this far!

Holloway, Julian. "Enchanted Spaces: The Séance, Affect, and Geographies of Religion". Annals of the Association of American Geographers. Taylor & Francis, Ltd. Vol. 96, No. 1 (Mar, 2006) pp.182-187. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3694153

Spirtualism and Women

I know what you are thinking, "She hasn't posted in a week when she said she would!" Well I had a little bit of writer's block and I decided to present an entire book at once instead of in small chapters. So I make it up to you all with an incredible book full of information. I just read a book by Alex Owen entitled The Darkened Room: Women, Power, and Spiritualism in Late Victorian England. If you have never read this book and are very interested in spiritualism tied in with aspects of femininity, then you really need to read this book. From the introduction, through the chapters, all the way to the epilogue this book is filled with information and interesting views/notions.

The book starts out by explaining the role of women at the time. They mostly had little power and "no separate legal identity" when married in which "the husband became the legal representative of his wife and assumed legal possession and control of her property" (pg.3). With the introduction of spiritualism, women were seen to be the most natural and suitable candidates for meduimship. Women, according the Owen, were viewed as the more nurturing, gentle beings "whilst embodying the highest moral and domestic virtues" (pg.8). This common thought gave women "an active professional and spiritual role [that was] largely denied...elsewhere" (pg.6).
                     "And it is no accident that spiritualism, a movement which privileged women and took them seriously, attracted so many female believers during a period of gender disjunction and disparity between aspiration and reality." (pg.4).

With the spread of spiritualism, Owen mentions several mediums and spiritualists and their beginnings of connecting with spirits. She mentions a raising medium named Florence Cook who would usually connect with a spirit called Katie King. Cook became well known and well liked, mostly through her seances. She would ask her sitters to laugh and sing so that the spirit would become animated and be able to communicate. Owen says, that "this humorous, playful note was a constant aspect of Florence Cook's seances, and one which made them popular entertainment" (pg. 46). This fun and exciting type of seance would be a great enticement for others to be interested in spiritualism and view more for entertainment values rather than a questionable, religious act. Other women would find their own way to stardom and hence making spiritualism more popular.

Women with this new sense of empowerment could now get away with outlandish things like doing or saying what would usually be considered inappropriate or just out right insanity. Many women would allow themselves to be possessed by spirits so that they could speak and move using the spiritualist medium's body and whatever the spirit would do would later be unable to recall by the medium. So anything that would normally be inappropriate for the medium to do, would be excused because it was not her who was in control. Some mediums would try to actually manifest spirit entities, who would go around the sitters, speaking and touching them. Toward the end of the book, Owen says that some entities were a little more "friendly" than others. Some things that the spirits would do were very teasing and sexual; some would even kiss the sitters. This type of manifestation was very risque and borderline pornographic to some; visuals of these usually female spirits would show off their "bare feet, arms, and throat [which] gave the suggestion of alluring nakedness" (pg.227). All throughout these entities were very "alluring", "the spirit form hinted, tempted, but finally disclosed nothing" (pg. 227). It is said that these entities were manifestations of psychic works and were considered "safely beyond the realm of flesh-and-blood sexuality" (pg. 221).

Owen talks about a lot of change for the classes of female society. She says that middle class women were the ones to first become interested in spiritualism and became some of the first mediums. Later, the higher class and working class would show interest and get involve themselves. Working as a medium resulted not only in notoriety, but even a class change for some. Mediums were often paid with money or gifts and would have a chance to mingle with the higher class society, even some of respectable titles (like dukes and even Queen Victoria!). Florence Cook was one of these mediums that changed her class status. She was originally a working class woman and would be considered middle class with her work as a medium and the pay she would get. A great example of class change that Owen presents resides with the Theobald Family. Owen actually dedicates a whole chapter to the family and the phenomena that they experienced. The Theobald family was very interested in spiritualism and had a very residing mediums within their kin. The family would conduct their own seances, convinced they were all had spiritual abilities. When they notice that one of their servants was showing signs of medium abilities, they slowly brought her into their circle and even made her a close friend of the family. The family let her share a room with the daughter and would even pay her things. This woman went from being a servant to almost a member of the family because of spiritualism.

The possibility of fraud was higher in some cases than others. Owen makes an interesting point when discussing private seances versus public seances on how more suspicious customers or critics would evaluate mediums. Most of the public seances were conducted by working and middle class women. Most women in these classes were interested in the business side of mediumships instead of the actual experience. These women would be more open to fraud just to receive more money or publicity. Higher class women, on the other hand, were more likely to hold private seances for family or friends. The higher class would not be interested in showing off their abilities and had no great need for more money. Besides, it would seem rather odd if a more noble lady would actually embarrass herself by acting out fraud.

This thought of fraud would become greater with the involvement of science and medicine. In the spiritualist world, those capable of natural healing were "respected as one of the highest expressions of psychic power" (pg.107). Believers would hire these healers, wanting to have a natural and more spiritualistic cure rather than medicine and possible painful procedure. The actual people in medicine practice, considered these healers (and all other spiritualists) as frauds. With the growing field of those in lunacy study, some doctors found "a belief in spiritualism as symptomatic of a diseased mind" (pg. 139). Some doctors went as far as saying that mediums were simply "hysterical women" going into fits (pg. 147). Owen dedicates a chapter in the book on Louisa Lowe and her story as medium who was sent to an asylum and about her fight to get out.



In all, this is a fantastic book; even if you are just simply interested in occults, women's right, spiritualism, or the Victorian era, you need to read this book. The fact that most of the information and examples reflect in England, this does tie into my research on Spiritualism in Europe and gives possible highlights as to how it could have spread to other countries. I hope you enjoyed this post and I will be posting again soon. Thank you.

Owen, Alex. The Darkened Room: Women, Power, and Spiritualism in Late Victorian England. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 2004. Pgs. xi-242.

Continuing the Quest for Answers

Hello Everyone! I must ask that everyone forgive me of my absence, but I do have some good news! I have done some research in my absence and you will be seeing a series of posts throughout this week (Nov 17 - 23). This first one will be a rather small one, but it is a good opener for the rest of this week's research. What I am posting is a series of videos that was done by the BBC. I'm not sure about what year it was published, but it is a rather fascinating piece to knowledge on Spiritualism.  The whole documentary is broken up into four videos and each is about 15 minutes long.

The first video starts with the Fox Sisters in America, but it does open up into Europe and talks about the Spiritualism and mediums grew into such a popularity and how science was involved and perhaps even sharpened by Spiritualism. The later posts with jump back to these videos in connection the the rest of the research I have found. I will tell you that a lot of my research has revolved around England more so than the rest of the European countries, but do not despair! I believe there is more in Conan Doyle's book on these other countries and I hope to find more in the sources of my sources. I hope you enjoy the videos and hope you look forward to the posts to come.

Video 1:

Video 2:

Video 3:

Video 4:

As I said before, I hope you enjoy the videos and hope you read my later posts! Thank you for your patience!

Mrs. Hayden and D.D. Home

(I just added this photo because it was a  little creepy. It is supposedly an antique picture of a specter and I just copied it from a video on youtube. Here is the link if you want to see that video.)

In my last post, I spoke with the beginnings of Spiritualism and the supposed "fathers" of spiritualism in Europe. Today, I am shifting the focus to when spiritualism came strictly to England. I am going to, once again, use Arthur Conan Doyle's book entitled The History of Spiritualism for this post.

Mrs. Hayden (Maria Hayden - Doyle doesn't use her first name) was a spiritualist from the United States. She was rather famous and respected back in the US. Doyle says she even "graduated as a doctor of medicine and practice for fifteen years" (pg. 148). Her skills were often used for patients , asking the spirits for their guidance and help. Her arrival in England in 1952 could be considered  controversial, the press often doubting her skills. She went through London, performing séances and helping potential clients. Mrs. Hayden then left England in 1853, having left some kind of an impression behind (positive or negative). Doyle says that "Mrs. Hayden had thus planted the first seeds in London" (pg. 167).

 

 

The next person I want to talk about is Daniel Douglas Home or D.D. Home in Doyle's book. When I was looking online for some information on Home, I got a bunch of hits about him being the first psychic. Doyle doesn't use the word "psychic" to describe Home, but he truly seems to support that Home was a real spiritualist. Home was considered to have visions of things to come from a young age. He was also well known to have levitated at his clients' homes. Like Mrs. Hayden, Home was ruthlessly attacked by the press, but he always said his skills were truthful and he never tried to take advantage of others. From the various accounts that Doyle presents in his book, Home's clients seemed to believe in his skills.



From the Beginning



From the last post, I explained just what spiritualism was, but when or who did it begin with in Europe. I'll be drawing mostly from Arthur Conan Doyle's book entitled The History of Spiritualism, but I'll use a few sites I found as well. I'll give the full citation of the book at the bottom of this post.

Doyle starts his book off by saying that "Spiritualists are in the habit of taking March 31, 1848, as the beginning of all psychic things, because their own movement dates from that day" (pg. 11). He explains that the variation of "the movement" and past "preternatural interference" is that the first was "a purposeful and organized invasion" (Doyle, pg.11). He initially says that the date for spiritualism could be hard to determine, but he mentions a Swedish man by the name of Emanuel Swedenborg, who he says "has some claim to be the father of our new knowledge of supernal matters" (Doyle, pg.11). There is a small article about Swedenborg on http://www.huffingtonpost.com by Gary Lachman called "Why You Should Know Emanuel Swedenborg". While Lachman says Swedenborg was an "18th century Swedish scientist, traveller, statesman, and religious philosopher", Doyle continues by saying he was "a military engineer", "a zoologist and an anatomist", and "a financer and political economist" (Doyle, pg.12). The man was a great many things! He was obviously intelligent and knew a little bit of almost everything. But what Lachman and Doyle both said about Swedenborg was that he was somehow connected with the a spiritual realm. Apparently, Swedenborg "observed and reported on a fire in Stockholm, 300 miles away, with perfect accuracy" while he was at a large affair with others (Doyle, pg.15).

Besides Emanuel Swedenborg, there is another man, who was French, mentioned to be the one responsible for the start of spiritism by the name of Allan Kardec. Kardec was also a scientist, philosopher, and interested in religion. In fact, many sites and books involving Spiritism revolve around Kardec. In the 1850s, Kardec would actually sit with mediums and spiritualists and would record, document, and question all that would take place. He would even question mediums who were in contact with spirits and write down the story in which the medium would dictate. He wrote many books on his findings, especially on the phenomena know as the turning table. Some of this information I got from http://www.allankardec.org/, but there are a few videos over him as well. The first video is about the 150 anniversary of spiritism back in 2007, which mentions Kardec toward the second half, and the second is a small video on Kardec himself.

 

 

I did say I would talk about Mrs. Hayden and D.D. Home, but they are a different story. I feel is it necessary to separate them from this post and I'll talk about them later.

 

Citation: Doyle, Arthur Conan. The History of Spiritualism. Arno Press, New York. Vol. 1. 1975. pgs. 11-15.



What is Spiritualism?

A Personal Note

Sorry I haven't posted in sometime, but I have a lot of information to make make up for the time lapse. I've read through some of the articles and books I found and discovered one major item that will effect my research greatly: Spiritualism, in Europe, did not openly start until the 1850s. In every article, book, website, ect. l read all mentioned Spiritualism in the 1840s-1850s, which means the likelihood of finding information in the 18th century is going to be very little to nothing. So my research may have to shift toward the 19th century, but we're still in the Victorian Era.

What is Spiritualism? 

Before I could dive into the information I uncovered, I first had to learn what spiritualism was. A website I found called "The Victorian Web" says: "spiritualism the belief that the dead communicate with the living, became a fad throughout America and Europe during the 1850s." (Here, we receive our first clue that spiritualism was indeed during the 1850s) Dictionary.com defines Spiritualism as "the belief or doctrine that the spirits of the dead, surviving after the mortal life, can and do communicate with the living, especially through a person (a medium) particularly susceptible to their influence". So from these two definitions we can conclude that Spiritualism is the knowledge of being able to connect with those who have passed on, usually through someone who is connected to those souls or to their realm. I found a small clip on Youtube that gives another definition and describes almost the same thing, but with pictures and music. It's from a group called Dorset Ghost Investigators and I thought it would be a nice little clip to watch for fun.

For next time, I'll talk about the beginnings of Spiritualism, Emanuel Swedenburg, Allan Kordec, Mrs. Hayden, and D.D. Home.