The First Step Into the Unknown...

Today we step into the mystical topic of Spiritualism. Many people today know about Spiritualism in the Victorian days within the United States, but not much is heard about Spiritualism in Victorian Europe. My question is: Why did Victorian Era Europe follow Spiritualism and what does Spiritualism entail? My goal is to discover what Spiritualism was like within Europe during the Victorian Era, mostly covering the 18th century. I might span my research into the early 19th century depending on the progress of my resources. There is much to be discovered and plenty of subtopics, I'm sure, to arise from this adventure.

I started off with light searching on a site called Jstor.com. This site offers a lot of scholarly research material, but I'm focusing more on the scholarly journals and books. I found a few possible journals to use, if not simply for the context, but their sources as well. One journal I found was called "Science and the Seance: Transgressions of Gender and Genre in Late Victorian London" by Judith R. Walkowitz which goes into detail about a spiritualist woman during the 1800s. It is rather interesting, viewing her lifestyle and personality, to see how she grows into a spiritualist. She even tries to help with the Jack the Ripper case! Here is a link to the site: http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/2928407?uid=3739256&uid=2&uid=4&sid=21102696048677. This article should help me with seeing how spiritualists would work in their field and what evidence would be found to prove their work. Most of the articles or journals I run across now focus solely on the United States or span into the late 19th century. I hope to find more material that is to my liking within the next week and hopefully shine some light on this unique subject.