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.