Speaker 1: Welcomed Unobscured, a production of I Heart Radio and Aaron Minky.
Speaker 1: Our guest today is Kathy gautieris a widely respected and
Speaker 1: widely published historian of spiritualism and the occult. She taught
Speaker 1: at Sweet Briar College for eighteen years before serving as
Speaker 1: Scholar in Residence at the New York Public Library. She's
Speaker 1: written important works on spiritualism and edited incredibly helpful guides
Speaker 1: like The Occult in Nineteenth Century America and The Handbook
Speaker 1: of Spiritualism and Channeling that are incredible guides to the
Speaker 1: complex and fascinating stories we've discussed. Her book, Plato's Ghost,
Speaker 1: dives deep into the ideas that drove the spiritualist movement.
Speaker 1: If you've been hoping to hear more about what spiritualists
Speaker 1: actually believed, then this interview will be a treat for you.
Speaker 1: Enjoy her conversation with researcher Carl Nellis, and be sure
Speaker 1: to pick up Kathy's book without further ado. Here's our
Speaker 1: conversation with Dr Kathy gautieris. This is the Unobscured Interview
Speaker 1: series for season two. I'm Aaron Banky in the nineteenth century.
Speaker 1: What did it mean to be a spiritualist. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of variety that could go into that designation. It's
Speaker 1: not unlike people going to psychics today or New age
Speaker 1: clinics something like that. So there are degrees of participation. Right.
Speaker 1: You could literally go as a lark, right, something to
Speaker 1: do on a Friday evening because it was all the
Speaker 1: rage and it sounded amusing, and have no serious investment
Speaker 1: in intellectual really or spiritually at all. You can also
Speaker 1: use it intermittently, so when people would die, for example,
Speaker 1: then a lot of people would turn to spiritualism to
Speaker 1: keep in contact with their last loved ones. Or you
Speaker 1: could go the whole chelata, if you will, which is
Speaker 1: to self identify as a spiritualist meant to have particular
Speaker 1: political connotations as well as a religious belief structure. And
Speaker 1: if you told people you are spiritualist, there are some
Speaker 1: possible negative ramifications to that. Some people found it um
Speaker 1: well between sketchy and demonic, depending on how hardcore they
Speaker 1: were in their beliefs. And but it really to be
Speaker 1: able to self identify as a spiritualist meant buying into
Speaker 1: this world view of progress and the ultimate um you know,
Speaker 1: goodness of people. So even if the ultimate goodness of
Speaker 1: people was not currently manifesting itself. It would over time, right,
Speaker 1: it would unfold in the direction of progress. Everybody would
Speaker 1: get better, everybody would improve unto perfection. So let's talk
Speaker 1: about some of what was going on in American life
Speaker 1: and American culture that led to the practice of spiritualism
Speaker 1: in the decades before. UM. It's part of the part
Speaker 1: of what makes the movements so fascinating is that it
Speaker 1: fed on movements in science. They fed on movements in religion. UM.
Speaker 1: Let's start with religion in American life in the thirties
Speaker 1: and forties leading up to what came to be known
Speaker 1: as modern spiritualism. How would you describe kind of the
Speaker 1: American religious landscape booming Um, from about eighteen twenty five
Speaker 1: to eighteen fifty. You see an extraordinary expansion of different
Speaker 1: kinds of religions imported to America and different religions developed
Speaker 1: in America. So I understand you talked some about the
Speaker 1: utopian movements, UM, and those are all coming out of
Speaker 1: this period, right. So, the the Shakers are expanding wildly,
Speaker 1: the Mormons are, you know, developing. The United Community is developing,
Speaker 1: and spiritualism is among the last gasp of that great
Speaker 1: religious fervor. So there are a lot of things that
Speaker 1: people need to take new account of. And uh, baby,
Speaker 1: religions don't start when the established ones are working. So
Speaker 1: when you have a new landscape that requires creating new meaning,
Speaker 1: that's when you see religions, you know, just go wildfire,
Speaker 1: right as the burned over district in Upstate New York
Speaker 1: was called. And Spiritualism is among the last and certainly
Speaker 1: the most inclusive of those religions that were brought forth.
Speaker 1: So let's let's talk a little bit about one of
Speaker 1: those traditions that spiritualist very um consciously identified as one
Speaker 1: of the traditions they were inheriting. And um, I'll ask you,
Speaker 1: can you describe a little bit about the place that
Speaker 1: Emmanuel Swedenborg and the New Church played in that religious landscape.
Speaker 1: Swedenborg's effect on American religious landscape cannot be overestimated. He
Speaker 1: really does not get enough credit for his impact on
Speaker 1: any of the movements that began during the second grade Awakening,
Speaker 1: and he's highly influential on all of them. Frankly, So
Speaker 1: what Swedenborg Swedenborg does is he creates a dynamic Protestantism
Speaker 1: so Catholicism has always been dynamic in turn ms of
Speaker 1: there are multiple saints right, there are you know as
Speaker 1: continuing miracles. There's ongoing conversations from God. So these ideas
Speaker 1: of direct revelation, direct experience of the afterlife, and what
Speaker 1: you find in Swedenborg's afterlife is very busy. It's busy busy.
Speaker 1: It's a very Protestant this worldly. So there are three
Speaker 1: tiers in heaven, and people are getting better and farming
Speaker 1: societies and making friends and literally learning languages and moving right,
Speaker 1: there's progress, and then there are three tears in hell
Speaker 1: and you. But but God is not judging. This is
Speaker 1: not an apocalyptic God. So if you're a bad person,
Speaker 1: you literally just throw yourself into help. You are drawn
Speaker 1: to the appropriate realm of where you belong in the afterlife,
Speaker 1: whether that's Yer or Na. So we it's removed from
Speaker 1: a sort Protestant literalism, both because it is only somewhat
Speaker 1: dependent on the Bible. He has this radically metaphorical reading
Speaker 1: of the Bible, which is you know, frankly a bit
Speaker 1: Catholic um, and it had it just moves away from
Speaker 1: the sort of static heaven and hell um. So this
Speaker 1: idea of movement in the afterlife, this idea of a
Speaker 1: non judgmental god, this idea that you determine your own
Speaker 1: afterlife fate. But spiritualism does and that's what Marmontism does
Speaker 1: to it in a different form, is it it takes
Speaker 1: those six fears, it turns them into a platonic seven,
Speaker 1: and it projects it all into heaven. So it eliminates
Speaker 1: health completely. And early Mormonism does the same thing. There's
Speaker 1: a little tiny hell and it's reserved for postdates. There
Speaker 1: are three tears of heaven, and you're a good person,
Speaker 1: a better person, or the best person you know, win,
Speaker 1: win win. So spiritualism does that for absolutely everyone. And
Speaker 1: the movement is continual. So rather than you get placed
Speaker 1: in the correct sphere and then you form societies there,
Speaker 1: you're always going up right, You're always going up through
Speaker 1: different echelons of spiritualism in the afterlife. You're always improving.
Speaker 1: So that's one of the major theological influences on spiritualism.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about some of the other practices that were
Speaker 1: going on in what was considered a kind of a
Speaker 1: horizon of science with mesmerism and animal magnetism, UH and
Speaker 1: what was seen as a new science. Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: sometimes combined with with phrenology um of the human mind
Speaker 1: and the human soul. What was the influence of those
Speaker 1: kind of practices on the beginnings of spiritualism Mesmerism as
Speaker 1: it came to a marry come um, which was really
Speaker 1: more the brainchild of the student of Anton. Mesmer is
Speaker 1: a healing science, right, And I say is because we
Speaker 1: still carry around beliefs that magnets will affect different parts
Speaker 1: of your body. So I know, you know workers for example,
Speaker 1: who you know have magnetic soles in their shoes or
Speaker 1: have magnets on their backs. That is Mesmerism still in practice.
Speaker 1: But Mesmerism was looking for a single cause, right. So
Speaker 1: the discovery of gravity, for example, I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: well that answers nine percent of our questions, right, and
Speaker 1: it's universal, right, gravity works everywhere at all times, so
Speaker 1: people who are looking for things like that. But regarding
Speaker 1: the human body, so the idea that the cosmos is
Speaker 1: held up by magnets goes back to Aristotle, right, not magnets.
Speaker 1: He didn't know the magnets, I don't think. But the
Speaker 1: the idea that why don't stars fall out of the
Speaker 1: sky right, why our planets predictable? It was like, well,
Speaker 1: they're held in some sort of um, you know, kinetic
Speaker 1: tension through magnetic attraction. Certainly Kepler thought those and so
Speaker 1: what Mesmer did was he applied that idea to the
Speaker 1: human body. So not only the planets, but the tides
Speaker 1: and the sea and the waning of the moon and
Speaker 1: the flow of this energy through the body could be
Speaker 1: redirected and redistributed. And this was a a single cause
Speaker 1: theory that you know, was extremely successful. Whether one thinks
Speaker 1: that you could attribute most of that placebo effect, I
Speaker 1: personally don't even know why that matters. It was extremely successful.
Speaker 1: And the marriage of this idea of continual improvement and
Speaker 1: your sort of psychological disposition, uh went hand in hand, right,
Speaker 1: And certainly some of the earliest spiritualist mediums were a
Speaker 1: mesmeric transhailers. And one of the ways that you describe
Speaker 1: this moment in American history, and many other historians do
Speaker 1: as well, is to call what was going on at
Speaker 1: this time with with new ideas, new literary movements, to
Speaker 1: call it the American Renaissance. Can you talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about what you mean by that idea and how
Speaker 1: that helps to frame an understanding of spiritualism that we
Speaker 1: can use the Fairs of the American Renaissance was originally
Speaker 1: employed by scholars of literature to refer to when Americans
Speaker 1: really started having their own publishing business. So you can
Speaker 1: place it basically at James Fenimore Cooper. So prior to that,
Speaker 1: Americans are reading things that they can get from Britain,
Speaker 1: and but from Cooper on and certainly we get to
Speaker 1: Poe and then you know, the great Emerson and friends.
Speaker 1: What you you have is this triangulation between Philadelphia, Boston
Speaker 1: and New York that creates publishing lines. And so this
Speaker 1: sort of refers to that moment because obviously the self
Speaker 1: publication and the ability to move that uh these books
Speaker 1: into the interior via rivers was crucial for the development
Speaker 1: of basically all of these new religions, every one of
Speaker 1: them used printing presses. But I use it specifically to
Speaker 1: also mean the American enchantment with the classics, and I
Speaker 1: mean Greeks and Romans and Egyptians classics, and I attributed
Speaker 1: to the uh discomfiting sense of newness that in America
Speaker 1: we're so pleased with ourselves. If there's a building that's
Speaker 1: three years old. You know, we slap a plaque on
Speaker 1: it and you know, put it on the National Register.
Speaker 1: But that that had to have been extremely uncomfortable, particularly
Speaker 1: everybody's grandpa was, you know, on the other side of
Speaker 1: the war, right, I mean, how uncomfortable was that. So
Speaker 1: this idea that we needed a legitimating grounding story that
Speaker 1: comes through, I think, in all of the new religions
Speaker 1: during that movement, and they all seek to place America
Speaker 1: in a much longer tradition of what everyone considered to
Speaker 1: be venerable. UM. And one of the things that we
Speaker 1: see in early spiritualism, UH, is that there are spirits
Speaker 1: like Benjamin Franklin and George Washington, William Penn, other statesmen
Speaker 1: appearing in various sound circles and translectors and UM, sometimes
Speaker 1: just addressing one or two people, sometimes addressing large crowds. UM.
Speaker 1: Can you talk a little bit about what these kinds
Speaker 1: of appearances tell us about spiritual relation to history and
Speaker 1: this kind of bigger story that you're talking about. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: spiritualism allowed, through its construction, UH, to do two things.
Speaker 1: Number One, you always had the greats of history to hand.
Speaker 1: They might not want to talk to you today, But
Speaker 1: Ben Franklin, we'll talk to you tomorrow, as will Swedenburg,
Speaker 1: as will Shakespeare, as will Francis Bacon. So you you
Speaker 1: have access to these great luminaries in unprecedented ways sa sultaneously. However,
Speaker 1: a lot of them changed their mind after death. So
Speaker 1: if you said something, you know what was considered immoral
Speaker 1: according to eighteen fifty two Culture of Progressive Spiritualists, you
Speaker 1: could learn after death that you were wrong. So Plato
Speaker 1: becomes an abolitionist. Franklin, of course, is a great American hero,
Speaker 1: and the whole idea of spiritualism is predicated on the
Speaker 1: idea of the telegraph. If you can have invisible communication
Speaker 1: across time and space, why can't you have an invisible
Speaker 1: communication between life and death, right instantaneous communication. So the
Speaker 1: trope of electricity was extremely important, but frankly nobody understood it.
Speaker 1: So they relied a lot on Franklin to sort of
Speaker 1: explain how electricity worked and how this affected me unship,
Speaker 1: and how to you know and what the you know?
Speaker 1: The great plans for the future are certainly the same
Speaker 1: thing with Washington and this uh again, this building of
Speaker 1: a legitimate, solid history that could simultaneously evoke you know,
Speaker 1: American and exceptionalism is too strong a word, but American importance,
Speaker 1: and also give people a space to learn posthumously. And
Speaker 1: you've written about the ways that in your view, spiritualism
Speaker 1: and what spiritualists were doing and practicing and teaching, UM
Speaker 1: presents a picture of of people, UM, uncomfortable with time.
Speaker 1: You say, spiritualism represents a discomfort with time, and so
Speaker 1: we've mentioned a little bit about what this means for
Speaker 1: how spiritualist view the past. Can you also talk about
Speaker 1: what you mean when you say that spiritualists, UM, we're
Speaker 1: kind of in love with futurity. That's nicely put. Yes,
Speaker 1: indeed in love with futurity. The prevailing belief has had
Speaker 1: some hiccups obviously, but that you know, everything was progressing right,
Speaker 1: Everything was on this path to perfection. The world is
Speaker 1: getting better, We're going to conquer the social crimes, and
Speaker 1: you know, when you die, you continually get better. So
Speaker 1: the future was utopian but not set, if that makes
Speaker 1: any sense. So, like a lot of people said, um,
Speaker 1: if you're in a traditional sort of Christian apocalyptic worldview,
Speaker 1: you know the apocalypse is going to come at point
Speaker 1: X and then the good people are gonna, you know,
Speaker 1: have a grand time for a thousand years and then
Speaker 1: go up to the new Jerusalem. The bad people are
Speaker 1: going to fry Um and that you know, has a
Speaker 1: very specific goal. And people make the mistake of setting dates.
Speaker 1: And I tell all my students, if you're going to
Speaker 1: start a baby religion, never set a date because on
Speaker 1: verification becomes a problem when the date rolls around in
Speaker 1: the world is still here. So the spiritualist never set
Speaker 1: a date, right. They had a slow, gradual improvement plan
Speaker 1: and they need only look around to see things that
Speaker 1: were not working. They very clearly. Victorian America had all
Speaker 1: sorts of problems with even post Civil War. You know,
Speaker 1: reconstruction was a disaster, the state of women and children
Speaker 1: was awful. Factories, you know, the White Plague, tenement houses, etcetera.
Speaker 1: So they were projects on earth. But everything was marching
Speaker 1: towards this utopian future which would have as handmaids medicine, technology, science,
Speaker 1: that all of these conceptual systems were going to work
Speaker 1: together to usher in this future perfection. That's great. So
Speaker 1: with these kind of some of the big picture beliefs
Speaker 1: and historical context, even I'm glad you mentioned technology with
Speaker 1: the telegraph and and the canals and being able to
Speaker 1: move information. UM. Let's jump into some of the lives
Speaker 1: of the people who who developed and UH and dispersed
Speaker 1: the movement. And let's start where so many historians do,
Speaker 1: with Andrew Jackson Davis. Who was Andrew Jackson Davis and
Speaker 1: what was significant about him in the context of some
Speaker 1: of these things like mesmerism and the burned over District.
Speaker 1: Andrew Jackson Davis was a guy from Poughkeepsie, New York
Speaker 1: who was called the Poughkeepsie Sayre Fabulous title, and he
Speaker 1: was a mesmeric trance healer. He was also a wildly
Speaker 1: prolific author, and he wrote dozens of books that would
Speaker 1: go into many many editions over the course of his lifetime.
Speaker 1: On UM basically was sweden Borgian take on the future
Speaker 1: of you know, dead people and the most merrick take
Speaker 1: on the future of life people. And he put these
Speaker 1: things together in what he called the Harmonial philosophy. And
Speaker 1: the Harmonial philosophy was very palatable. You're talking a world
Speaker 1: in which you know, blood letting still happened, and you know,
Speaker 1: people did not yet understand that clean linens would cut
Speaker 1: down on you know, the spread of disease. So the
Speaker 1: the idea that you could have been magnetized and have
Speaker 1: a conversation one on one with this person who was
Speaker 1: listening to you and who was sincerely trying to make
Speaker 1: your life better and that your disposition would improve. This
Speaker 1: was all extremely palatable given the medical landscape of the time.
Speaker 1: So he's trooping around publishing books on the harmonial philosophy
Speaker 1: at the time. He appreciates the Fox Sisters by many years,
Speaker 1: and so when he hears about the Fox Sisters and
Speaker 1: the so called mysterious wrappings, he melds his worldview with
Speaker 1: their experiential ritual, if you will, and that was the
Speaker 1: marriage that needed happening. Can you describe he gave theology
Speaker 1: to their ritual and they brought ritual to his philosophy beautifully.
Speaker 1: But oh, that's great, I'm glad you said that. Um,
Speaker 1: can you describe a little bit about how responsible he
Speaker 1: was for what you described earlier where you say in general,
Speaker 1: spiritualist theology of the afterlife was taking Swedenborgie in heaven
Speaker 1: and hell and plopping it all into heaven. How responsible
Speaker 1: for that idea was Andrew Jackson Davis And how did
Speaker 1: he kind of frame it? How did he talk about
Speaker 1: it in his writing? Oh? He was very very much
Speaker 1: responsible for that in so many important ways. Obviously, other
Speaker 1: people had to have the experiential when you're talking to
Speaker 1: a dead person, if they're like, oh, I I'm on
Speaker 1: the second run, but I think I'm going to make
Speaker 1: it to the third round pretty soon because I've done
Speaker 1: this in this and then you know, you needed that
Speaker 1: sort of reinforcement for his you know what I call
Speaker 1: theological backbone to have worked. However, he was very like
Speaker 1: like most mystics. He was infuriating, and that he claimed
Speaker 1: to never have read anything, including Swedenborg. Nobody believes this,
Speaker 1: but you know, the the idea that, well, if I
Speaker 1: made this all of myself, I'm clothing not smart enough
Speaker 1: to do that. So it must come from the spirits, right. Um.
Speaker 1: So what he does he casts the whole afterlife. He
Speaker 1: calls it the Summerland, and he himself makes many Swedenborgian
Speaker 1: style trips to the afterlife, where he hangs out with
Speaker 1: famous dead people with literary figures, people prognosticate on things
Speaker 1: like the future of Prussia, the coming of the American
Speaker 1: Civil War, and what he finds in the afterlife is
Speaker 1: complete gender equality. He finds religious equality sort of let
Speaker 1: me expand on that in just sec So everyone goes
Speaker 1: to heaven and but they're segregated weirdly, uh, Andre tex
Speaker 1: and Davis is writing, so they're like, you know, little
Speaker 1: towns of twos and little towns of Hindus and little
Speaker 1: towns of you know, Catholics and um. But because everybody
Speaker 1: is improving, right, there's only one perfection, so everybody is
Speaker 1: moving toward the same ultimate goal. So again, you're simultaneously
Speaker 1: radically progressive in thinking that everyone in the entire universe,
Speaker 1: across time and space goes to heaven. Super progressive. On
Speaker 1: the other hand, you do then get to say, and
Speaker 1: I am quoting and I'm physically making little bunny fingers
Speaker 1: right now, the lower tribes and races unquote, um are
Speaker 1: you know on the baby step rungs, right, So you
Speaker 1: include them, but it's not untouched by its own historical moment, right,
Speaker 1: which just rampant with colonialism and yeah, racism, and so
Speaker 1: it's a step forward. I'm yeah, they are fantastic in
Speaker 1: terms of that step forward, but it's not completely what
Speaker 1: we would consider to be you know morally equivalence, and
Speaker 1: that's something that we really are able to explore when
Speaker 1: we see spiritualism through Sojourner Truth size And um, I'm
Speaker 1: really loving I didn't you know understand before I started
Speaker 1: this project to what extent Sojourner Truth was involved with spiritualism.
Speaker 1: But some of the things that she notices and comments
Speaker 1: on over the course of her life really really do
Speaker 1: bring that to the four where she says, this is great,
Speaker 1: but here are the limitations here? How far we here, so,
Speaker 1: how far we've come here, so how far we still
Speaker 1: have to go? Um? Absolutely, there were really a number
Speaker 1: of African Americans who made it as mediums in part
Speaker 1: because of the frankly racist belief that you know their people,
Speaker 1: if you will, are are closer to a spiritual naivete
Speaker 1: and therefore, you know, more easily able to access the afterlife.
Speaker 1: So there were people in the underground Railroad, for example,
Speaker 1: who were mediums in Quaker homes in New York. And
Speaker 1: these women knew that they were sort of playing the
Speaker 1: white people right, So simultaneously they were able to really
Speaker 1: carbo an important niche for themselves and be appreciated. But
Speaker 1: they also knew that this was the as the sort
Speaker 1: of flip side of romanticizing. You know, their their own hair,
Speaker 1: and you see the same thing so often, uh from
Speaker 1: the beginning, but especially into the seventies with spiritualists channeling
Speaker 1: Native spirit guides or mediums having spirit controls where it's
Speaker 1: a romanticized Native nation, you know, a chief or a
Speaker 1: young girl that kind of presents Native nations and and
Speaker 1: you know, the Indian Wars in a kind of romanticized
Speaker 1: and sentimentalized light through through those seances where it's usually
Speaker 1: almost always a white medium who is playing Indian in
Speaker 1: that way. Absolutely, and that still continues there, it is,
Speaker 1: it remains extraordinarily popular for current spiritualists have Native American um,
Speaker 1: you know, spirit guides. Well, let's jump back to the beginning.
Speaker 1: I loved what you said about the way that Andrew
Speaker 1: Jackson Davis picked up and and uh and used what
Speaker 1: the fox dishes were doing. But let's talk. Let's talk
Speaker 1: a little bit about about Hydesville and what happened there
Speaker 1: in um, not so much the details, but what what
Speaker 1: was it about that particular experience, because you know, as
Speaker 1: we've mentioned before, there were other kinds of trances and
Speaker 1: mediumship that were happening before this, But what made what
Speaker 1: happened in Hindsville explode and become a movement, you know,
Speaker 1: go from kind of a neighbor neighborhood hullabaloo into uh
Speaker 1: into this huge movement that grows into something global within
Speaker 1: a couple of years. That is an excellent question. And
Speaker 1: scholars do like to throw down about dating spiritualism to
Speaker 1: the Fox sisters because phenomenologically there are multiple and they're
Speaker 1: they're always women in trances, right, that is one of
Speaker 1: the few cross cultural truisms, and that is clearly a
Speaker 1: way for women to um, you know, find a way
Speaker 1: to speak powerfully from the margins. So what you know,
Speaker 1: what makes Hindsville important, right, It's it's a haunting, it's
Speaker 1: a politic well, to be perfectly frank, it's their older sister, Leah.
Speaker 1: She understands, she sees exactly the monetary value in this
Speaker 1: from the minute it starts. She rewrites the script to
Speaker 1: put her baby sisters at the center, which is really
Speaker 1: not historically true or not provable at least, And she
Speaker 1: takes them in and she puts them in the Rochester
Speaker 1: shows and their wraps on in these these halls and
Speaker 1: this concatenation of again a telegraphy. Right, so the Fox
Speaker 1: sister did this very clunky um. The rap system was
Speaker 1: like one for A, two for B took forever. And
Speaker 1: but that's like a a thirteen year old version of
Speaker 1: Morse code. And that's exactly what it was, was the
Speaker 1: thirteen year old version of Marse's code. So this idea
Speaker 1: of a telegraph to the dead with this combination of
Speaker 1: a ongoing revelation, but not in a way that was
Speaker 1: going to truly upset the you know, the Bible crowd
Speaker 1: to set some of them. But you know, by and large,
Speaker 1: there should be no particular conflict with being a Christian
Speaker 1: and thinking that you can talk to you know, you're
Speaker 1: deceased Uncle George right there. That's not you know, a
Speaker 1: major logical hazard. So but Leah really saw the potential
Speaker 1: in this and she just she put those girls on
Speaker 1: the road immediately, she basically yeah, no, what's the nicer
Speaker 1: word for this, as she hooked them up with P. T. Barnum.
Speaker 1: Immediately they were putting a train to New York. She
Speaker 1: was an organizer and she died a very very wealthy woman,
Speaker 1: whereas both of her younger sisters were extremely miserable their
Speaker 1: entire lives, and I had these really tragic, lonely deaths.
Speaker 1: So there was this, you know, a perfect storm, if
Speaker 1: you will, of these historical movements and then this really
Speaker 1: smart woman who saw how to capitalize. And there are
Speaker 1: so many people who saw spiritualism that way from the
Speaker 1: get go, where they see what's going on with promoting
Speaker 1: and organizing big lectures and halls and demonstrations, and they
Speaker 1: come on the scene doing the same thing. Not so
Speaker 1: much from Andrew Jackson Davis's side with the theology and
Speaker 1: the mysticism, but very much from the performance side and
Speaker 1: the spectacle side. And Daniel Douglas Hume is maybe the
Speaker 1: most successful of those. Can you talk about who he
Speaker 1: was and what he did with the spectacle of spiritualism.
Speaker 1: He is a very interesting man at He had a
Speaker 1: somewhat difficult childhood and some of it is obscured to us.
Speaker 1: So it appears that his mom did a disappearing act
Speaker 1: when he was young, and he was imported from Edinburgh
Speaker 1: to the United States where he was raised by an aunt.
Speaker 1: And he had the good fortune, as did many successful mediums,
Speaker 1: of being not only charismatic but extremely good looking and
Speaker 1: the idea of these sort of spectacles or what's now
Speaker 1: called physical mediumship that were then yeah, sometimes called materializations. Right. Uh,
Speaker 1: that we're shows, right, rather than I'm just going to
Speaker 1: sit here with you and tell you what you're you know,
Speaker 1: your child who died of influenza is doing in the afterlife.
Speaker 1: These were you know, as you know, full blown shows
Speaker 1: with trumpets, things called the ports, which were gifts from
Speaker 1: the afterworld, generally things like gloves and flowers that have
Speaker 1: been PHOSPHORESQ. But m was unique in that he levitated
Speaker 1: and I don't mean tables, and I don't mean trumpets,
Speaker 1: I mean him. So he would somehow fully bodily rise
Speaker 1: up off the ground and in what was indisputably his
Speaker 1: most astonishing act. In I believe it was London, he
Speaker 1: once flew out of one window across a street and
Speaker 1: into another window. Fantastic and he attributed this to the spirit. Uh. Naturally,
Speaker 1: this is the sort of shenanigans that's going to get
Speaker 1: Houdini's attention. But I'm sort of pleased to say Hudini
Speaker 1: couldn't replicate it. He could never figure out how he
Speaker 1: did it. And along the way, uh, he makes a
Speaker 1: lot of friends in high places that get him through
Speaker 1: the doors that you might never expect someone from his
Speaker 1: background to. Uh places, you would never expect someone like
Speaker 1: him to go. Do you do you remember any of
Speaker 1: those connections or our demonstrations some of the people that
Speaker 1: he met. Oh. Yes, he is investigated by an earl
Speaker 1: who is assigned his case essentially to see if you
Speaker 1: can disprove it, and he cannot, so he ends up
Speaker 1: sort of hobnopping with the Scottish and British upper crust.
Speaker 1: The biography is tricky because a lot of it relies
Speaker 1: on the the writings of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and
Speaker 1: Doyle was such an avid spiritualist that he is thoroughly
Speaker 1: blinded to any anything that might undercut its voracity. So,
Speaker 1: according to Doyle, uh did he Holme never took a
Speaker 1: penny in his life for his spiritualist Yeah, inquiries Doele
Speaker 1: does say rather charmingly that of course he had to
Speaker 1: take gifts, but it would have been ghost to refuse them,
Speaker 1: so that should not be confused with money. But he
Speaker 1: did end up in you know, these these upper circles
Speaker 1: that actually enabled him to marry not one but two
Speaker 1: Russian you know, sort of sub royalty people, and that
Speaker 1: you know that that kept him more in the style
Speaker 1: to which he wanted to become a past I love that,
Speaker 1: thank you. Um, there was there was a before before
Speaker 1: him gets back to the UK though, Um, there were
Speaker 1: other American mediums that were taking the American style of
Speaker 1: spiritualism to England. Um in the early eighteen fifties. Can
Speaker 1: you talk about before human and and others like him
Speaker 1: were you know, had the chance to hob nob with
Speaker 1: the uppercrust. Can you talk about the general reception of
Speaker 1: spiritualism in its American mode in the UK? That make
Speaker 1: up a question? Um, Spiritualism was embraced in a great Britain. Uh,
Speaker 1: and it was obviously again very much a class and
Speaker 1: race disruptor. So you would have these One of the
Speaker 1: pretenses of spiritualism is if you have a young woman
Speaker 1: or a girl who can you know, expound on, you know,
Speaker 1: these great points of philosophy and theology and science. That
Speaker 1: she's obviously not smart enough to be able to make
Speaker 1: this up. So therefore it is an indication of the
Speaker 1: truth right that she is being embodied by you know,
Speaker 1: Benjamin Franklin or Francis Baker or whomever. So that had
Speaker 1: a great appeal to sort of Victorian polar life. But
Speaker 1: you would end up in these weird situations where you're employing,
Speaker 1: you know, a woman who is not as um posh
Speaker 1: right as the people for whom she is doing these readings,
Speaker 1: and these women would, you know, sometimes live with these
Speaker 1: folks for months on end, and it was it was
Speaker 1: very popular as a well as entertainment in many ways.
Speaker 1: In in England. Spiritualism actually really took off after the
Speaker 1: First World War. So America, the Civil War too catalyze,
Speaker 1: if you will, this need to talk to the dead,
Speaker 1: and that simply didn't happen in Europe for another, yeah,
Speaker 1: forty years, so it existed. But it's actual religiosity as
Speaker 1: a very sort of strong base um that really is
Speaker 1: an American phenomenon that, to the best of my knowledge,
Speaker 1: did not translate well until they had had their own
Speaker 1: catastrophic cultural experience to try to work their way through.
Speaker 1: Can you talk about Emma Harding? Who was she and
Speaker 1: what brought her to become a prominent medium? Emma Harding
Speaker 1: is one of my favorite mediums. In fact, she's she's
Speaker 1: buried in Manchester, England, and I have been several hours
Speaker 1: trooping around looking for her grave. I fear it's one
Speaker 1: of the ones that has collapsed. But Emma, Yeah, came
Speaker 1: to America. She was a musician, and she h became
Speaker 1: a spiritualist medium, and then later she got involved with theosophy.
Speaker 1: She married a publisher and avid spiritualist, and she was
Speaker 1: well respected by basically everyone, which is rare in in
Speaker 1: these this world. So Emma started off with doing trance lectors,
Speaker 1: and she was very erudite and very articulate, and she
Speaker 1: over time became what I consider to be probably still
Speaker 1: the most important historian of spiritualism. And she wrote this
Speaker 1: massive compendium using primary sources, which how she collected all
Speaker 1: of that in you know, the nineteenth century, I have
Speaker 1: no idea, uh, and put it together in what sort
Speaker 1: of created a coherent narrative of spiritualism. So while it
Speaker 1: is possible right very early on to say yes, I
Speaker 1: thoroughly believe that everyone goes to heaven, and I thoroughly
Speaker 1: believe that humanity is improving, and I thoroughly believe that
Speaker 1: some day everybody will be perfect, it is not yet
Speaker 1: possible to talk about an evolution of spiritualism, and Emma
Speaker 1: made that happen. She also was not afraid too a
Speaker 1: seed some points, right, So like Doyle never wants a
Speaker 1: satord point if you you know, very clearly said look,
Speaker 1: you know that fairy is made of cardboard. He was like, no,
Speaker 1: it wasn't. It was a real fairy as a picture
Speaker 1: of it, right, whereas Emma was like, yeah, you know
Speaker 1: that was that was a little untoward that moment. And
Speaker 1: but you know, you can't always rely on the spirits
Speaker 1: to show up on any given day, so some people
Speaker 1: change what you're gonna do. Yeah, that's great. Um. You
Speaker 1: mentioned her her eighteen seventy book with the History of
Speaker 1: the Original Documents, which is so key. But you also
Speaker 1: write a little bit about what she wrote in eighteen sixty.
Speaker 1: She she had been a medium on the New York
Speaker 1: scene right in the eighteen fifties and done some circuit
Speaker 1: lecturing across the United States. Can you talk about how
Speaker 1: her writing in eighteen sixty with the Theology of Spiritualism
Speaker 1: helped to synthesize the beliefs in the movement at that point. Yes,
Speaker 1: So again this there's paradox at at the heart of
Speaker 1: having a movement run by women who are not credentialed. Uh,
Speaker 1: and that is that to some extent, what they have
Speaker 1: to say is gauged by how it is not believable
Speaker 1: that they could have constructed it. So um in six
Speaker 1: lectures on theology. She has a collective group of spirits
Speaker 1: that speak to her about you know, big picture. So
Speaker 1: it's not, uh, you know, a particular question about a
Speaker 1: particular person. It's really more of a synthesized worldview. And
Speaker 1: that was not generally thought of as something that she
Speaker 1: was better educated than a lot of spiritualist mediums, but
Speaker 1: that you know, she could have just produced on her own.
Speaker 1: So that was really a landmark moment. And as I say,
Speaker 1: she was not afraid to call out, you know, people
Speaker 1: who were cheating, and that really helped her reputation to
Speaker 1: be perfectly frank. So she was broadly, broadly respected and
Speaker 1: crossed several divisions that other people could not. So when
Speaker 1: people trying to smear her for you know, hanging out
Speaker 1: with Pascal Beverly Randolph, who was a African American sex magician,
Speaker 1: it didn't stick because her reputation was basically too strong
Speaker 1: to you know, be besmirched. By these little whispers of
Speaker 1: the same propriety or that impropriety. That said, there are
Speaker 1: a couple of books that she published but she claims
Speaker 1: not to be the author of that are still contested
Speaker 1: as to whether or not she is the author, and
Speaker 1: people I truly respect will throw down on both sides
Speaker 1: of this question. So uh, yes, so I I just
Speaker 1: I don't you know, the jury is still out on
Speaker 1: that as far as I'm concerned. So why would she
Speaker 1: write something and not put her name on it? Right?
Speaker 1: She said a lot of shocking things. Why would she
Speaker 1: back away from this particular shocking thing? Um? But other
Speaker 1: people think now absolutely she she did not write it.
Speaker 1: And you know there are these anonymous you know, and
Speaker 1: some pseudonyms like Louis. Uh you know, so who was
Speaker 1: Louis is still alive question in some circles. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: you mentioned the whispers about her relationship with Randolph Um.
Speaker 1: But spiritually like opposition to spiritualism and mediumship and some
Speaker 1: of the doctrines and things. Um, it could be as
Speaker 1: as focused as that, but there were also some some
Speaker 1: really big, kind of culture wide forces opposing spiritualism. Can
Speaker 1: you talk a little bit about what some of those
Speaker 1: kind of fights looked like. What were some of spiritualisms
Speaker 1: antagonists and what kind of form did the opposition often
Speaker 1: change of spiritualisms major antagonists was the New York Times,
Speaker 1: and it had decades long fun of poking, uh, you know, spiritualism.
Speaker 1: And they would send reporters like this the Herald, right. Uh,
Speaker 1: they would send reporters to spiritualists summer camps, and the
Speaker 1: reporters would you know, send back these missives that they
Speaker 1: were a little disappointed that the people were nice and
Speaker 1: they weren't like overtly kookie, but you know, it was
Speaker 1: it was a you know, a punching bag, right. So
Speaker 1: there are certain tone issues with the more sort of
Speaker 1: learned Americans, if you will, But they were also uh,
Speaker 1: certainly some hardcore Christians who thought that this looked demonic,
Speaker 1: right that if you are if you have you know,
Speaker 1: a a poor uh man. And most of the successful
Speaker 1: mediums were lower class or a young woman who has
Speaker 1: different voices speaking, you know, out of them, that looks
Speaker 1: like demon possession. So there was some pushback from more
Speaker 1: sort of hardcore Christian groups, but mostly it was dismissed. Right,
Speaker 1: It was sort of embarrassing rather than dangerous, and there
Speaker 1: were there were events, and there were reasons why some
Speaker 1: might dismiss spiritualism. Um, can you talk about how the
Speaker 1: Fox sisters reacted when their relative Mrs Culver published an
Speaker 1: account of Maggie admitting to her that the raps were
Speaker 1: staged or um the February investigation by the University of
Speaker 1: Buffalo faculty, after which the professors, you know, they say
Speaker 1: that the girls were making sounds with popping joints and
Speaker 1: kind of the same kind of thing that their relative
Speaker 1: accused them of. Um, what effected did that kind of
Speaker 1: early negative press have on spiritualism? Because this was an
Speaker 1: one so the movement continues on. But what was the
Speaker 1: response to that among spiritualists? Response to that was largely
Speaker 1: what you see today in terms of what you truly
Speaker 1: wish to believe. You're really not going to hear anything
Speaker 1: that opposes it. So the there are certain can undra
Speaker 1: like you know again, and you still hear this today.
Speaker 1: I was, I was just in lily Dale a couple
Speaker 1: of weeks ago, and this is remains a mantra for
Speaker 1: people who are caught cheating if you will that the
Speaker 1: you know, the spirits don't always show up so you've
Speaker 1: got to have something in your back pocket. Uh, and
Speaker 1: that Alan Cardick once said that the existence of fake
Speaker 1: flowers does not disprove the existence of real ones. So
Speaker 1: the idea that because there are occasional cheaters, or that
Speaker 1: an actual medium occasionally cheats, is sort of easily incorporated
Speaker 1: into the world view and does very little for one's
Speaker 1: confirmation biased to be perfectly frank of what So, if
Speaker 1: you thought they were ridiculous to begin with, you continue
Speaker 1: to think they were ridiculous after the Buffalo investigations, and
Speaker 1: if you thought they were the real deal, but you know,
Speaker 1: they were just kids putting this awkward position, so you know,
Speaker 1: sometimes it got slippery. Then that's what you thought. It
Speaker 1: was much clearer when later in life, you know, they
Speaker 1: said themselves, you know, I've been faking, but absolutely nobody cared.
Speaker 1: It was absolutely astonishing. Nobody cared. They're like, yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't really believe you. You're you're a poor thing. You're
Speaker 1: like Maggie died terribly, so was all by herself, and
Speaker 1: she was a ridge and alcoholic, and she had this
Speaker 1: very miserable life of being put on the road and
Speaker 1: you know, potential marriage that may or may not have happened,
Speaker 1: and her in laws disavowing her, and you know, she
Speaker 1: she drank. The woman drank and they was like, well,
Speaker 1: she just needs money. Yeah, and then when she came back,
Speaker 1: she's like, no, no, I faked the faking it was
Speaker 1: again she needs money. So it just got eaten into
Speaker 1: the system as an anomaly. And if you have a
Speaker 1: world view that says that the spirits can make mistakes,
Speaker 1: then people can make mistakes and they're not permanent, right,
Speaker 1: We're it's it's a it's a flexible, forgiving world view
Speaker 1: in many ways. One of the people who so interestingly
Speaker 1: looks at the way that both people and spirits make
Speaker 1: mistakes UM is John Edmonds UM. Judge John Edmonds, who
Speaker 1: was on the New York State Supreme Court UH, and
Speaker 1: because of that position, was sometimes a punching bag, sometimes
Speaker 1: a celebrity among spiritualists. Can you talk a little bit
Speaker 1: about who he was and especially his you've written about
Speaker 1: his sustained interest in exploring the primary theological conundrum of
Speaker 1: spiritualism as you addressed it through his inquiry into the
Speaker 1: bottom rung of heaven. Um. Who was he and what
Speaker 1: was the significance of that intellectual theological work that he
Speaker 1: was doing well. Judge Edmonds had a very fancy circle
Speaker 1: of spiritualists in Manhattan, and he and George T. Dexter
Speaker 1: produced a two volume book on spiritualism that was first
Speaker 1: came out in eighteen fifty two. It went through numerous
Speaker 1: numerous printings, and it's a very singular source of being
Speaker 1: able to track what a circle does over many many
Speaker 1: years because he would actually add footnotes to a particular seances,
Speaker 1: so here he was talking to you know, this person
Speaker 1: and then they would you know, contact that person again
Speaker 1: in these ensuing years, and then this material would accrete
Speaker 1: in the footnotes. So you can really get this, uh,
Speaker 1: this narrative arc in a way that you can't with
Speaker 1: more sort of static publications. S Edmonds was very important
Speaker 1: not only in New York, but he is also partly
Speaker 1: the reason that science has ever happened in the White
Speaker 1: House under the Lincoln administration. And he was good friends
Speaker 1: with you know, Senator Talmud, so he was central in
Speaker 1: bringing spiritualism to the political stage. Now as a person,
Speaker 1: he was you know, a judge of actual criminal cases
Speaker 1: and he was also in charge of he was administrator
Speaker 1: for New York State prisons which were abhorrent. So she
Speaker 1: has a sort of okay sational interest in what happens
Speaker 1: to criminals in the afterlife. And when I talk about
Speaker 1: the central conundrum of spiritualism, the idea that everybody is
Speaker 1: heading for heaven is very lovely and multicultural, but you
Speaker 1: do end up with this this question of what happens
Speaker 1: to bad people, and what happens to bad people is
Speaker 1: generally a very redemptive story, and these are the folks
Speaker 1: that Edmonds is interested in talking to. So when he
Speaker 1: meets a criminal in the afterlife through his medium, then
Speaker 1: the one of the first questions he actually has to
Speaker 1: ask is whether he is responsible for that person being hanged.
Speaker 1: So the psychological effects right of being uh in this
Speaker 1: position of adjudicating life and death. I think of Bill
Speaker 1: Over into his you know, his his evenings right and
Speaker 1: his spirit circles, and he tracks several of these criminals
Speaker 1: over many years and many seances, and they're they're generally,
Speaker 1: not always, but generally fairly uplifting stories of redemption. So
Speaker 1: the bottom rung of heaven really resembles health, but it
Speaker 1: is one in which there's no administration. So the nasty
Speaker 1: character of the denizens of the lowest rung make this
Speaker 1: a hellscape. They're awful to each other, They're physically awful
Speaker 1: to each other. They they torture animals, They repeatedly try
Speaker 1: to kill each other, but they're already dead. So it's
Speaker 1: just this protracted dying scenes that are going on constantly,
Speaker 1: and he hons in on those who want to be better,
Speaker 1: and he, oddly, in some senses, is in a position
Speaker 1: to help them because he actually knows more about the
Speaker 1: afterlife than many of them do. So a crime in
Speaker 1: heaven is heavily heavily gendered. So women are you know, salacious,
Speaker 1: they cheat on their husbands and um the worst of all,
Speaker 1: and this this charge is so rampant that really makes
Speaker 1: me wonder what was going on. Uh. They murdered children,
Speaker 1: their own children in particular. And men have you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: I have you well, you know much butcher crimes. So
Speaker 1: they're you know, murderers and brigands and rapists and you know,
Speaker 1: generally thieves and scoundrels. So uh, the women are generally
Speaker 1: more um sympathetic, and he Uh so there's just one
Speaker 1: particular woman that he connects with, and she, you know,
Speaker 1: had the terrible, terrible taste to leave her husband to
Speaker 1: go off with her lover, who of course turned out
Speaker 1: to be a scoundrel, and he left her and she
Speaker 1: killed herself. So she is, you know, on the bottom
Speaker 1: rung of heaven. But she's obviously, you know, not a
Speaker 1: menace to society in any way, so she is able
Speaker 1: to be reformed. And the the story that this shapes
Speaker 1: into is that she finds a kid, a little girl
Speaker 1: seven ish. It's entirely unclear whether the child is doing
Speaker 1: in this nasty, you know, apocalyptic heaven, but she rescues
Speaker 1: this kid. She gets this kid away from these terrible
Speaker 1: bullies and horrible men and runs runs away from the
Speaker 1: society of evil. And over time, and you can track
Speaker 1: this through the footnotes, the woman repeatedly starts seeing signs
Speaker 1: that say, you know, go in this direction right, um,
Speaker 1: sometimes their actual signs, and sometimes they're flames, right like
Speaker 1: Moses in the desert. And she takes this kid and
Speaker 1: they have this arduous journey over this mountain, but so
Speaker 1: they're not being you know, in this mutual punishment any longer,
Speaker 1: but it's still difficult, and they eventually get to the
Speaker 1: second round and she reports back that they're much happier
Speaker 1: and they're going to keep going, right, And so this
Speaker 1: he is able to counsel these the dead and say,
Speaker 1: you know, look around, where can you get away from
Speaker 1: this chaos? Do you see anything that's beckoning you in
Speaker 1: a particular direction, follow it, and you know, get back
Speaker 1: in touch with me, telling me what happens. On the
Speaker 1: other hand, you have less sympathetic people, generally men who
Speaker 1: are punished by the memories of their crimes. So this
Speaker 1: is very swedenborgian um. And what happens in Swedenborg right,
Speaker 1: there's no judging God, so God would not condemn you
Speaker 1: to evil because God is good. So you condemn yourself.
Speaker 1: And you have these two memories, and one is the
Speaker 1: normal memory that you think you have, right mind gets
Speaker 1: worse all the time, all right. And then there's an
Speaker 1: actually perfect memory that well, when you die, gets stripped
Speaker 1: off of you, and you and an angel watch it
Speaker 1: like a future film. And after you see your entire
Speaker 1: ethical disposition throughout the course of your life, you then
Speaker 1: know where you belong, and you will cast yourself into
Speaker 1: hell as appropriate if you've been a bad person. And
Speaker 1: how again, very much resembles the first round of heaven.
Speaker 1: You know, there's no Catholic devil, you know, with a
Speaker 1: you know, tail and a trident hanging out in Swedenborg's hell,
Speaker 1: people are just dreadful and they're dreadful to each other,
Speaker 1: and you're in this dreadful position for eternity. So but
Speaker 1: in this sort of reformed Swedenborgian, more progressive spiritualist cast,
Speaker 1: the these men are haunted by these memories of the
Speaker 1: people that they have wronged, and they generally have to
Speaker 1: make amends. So and I'm getting this from an amalgamation
Speaker 1: of suiting of judgements and a couple of other places.
Speaker 1: But this would go along the lines of showing up
Speaker 1: science and telling people that I stole your stuff, but
Speaker 1: I buried it here and I'm terribly sorry, and this
Speaker 1: is how you can find it. Um Or. There's a
Speaker 1: very clear case with Florence Marriott, who was a quite
Speaker 1: popular British novelist. Her her daughter had died young, and
Speaker 1: her daughter had gotten an abortion, and she was carrying
Speaker 1: the memory of this child around for years and years
Speaker 1: and years, and she makes amends by coming to a
Speaker 1: seance and telling a young friend of hers not to
Speaker 1: get an abortion and this rectifies her position, and then
Speaker 1: she's able to let go of this memory and move on.
Speaker 1: You mentioned in passing that one of the things that
Speaker 1: Edmund's witnesses at this lowest ring of heaven is people
Speaker 1: torturing animals, and I find that so interesting because one
Speaker 1: of the stories that Edmunds tells about himself, I believe, UH,
Speaker 1: and what what brought him to become a spiritualist is
Speaker 1: that when he was a kid, the spirit of Benjamin
Speaker 1: Franklin I think, if I'm remembering this right, watches him
Speaker 1: stone and kill a cat and then decides that he's
Speaker 1: going to guide Edmunds out of cruelty and into right living.
Speaker 1: So it sounds like what he ends up doing in
Speaker 1: these later seances is trying to offer to the spirits
Speaker 1: what the spirit of Benjamin Franklin and his telling offered
Speaker 1: to him in his life on earth. That's fascinating. Oh,
Speaker 1: that is fascinating. That's a very interesting take on that.
Speaker 1: The role of pets in spiritualism continues to be fascinating.
Speaker 1: I was just at lily Dale a couple of weeks ago.
Speaker 1: It's the oldest running spiritual community in the world, and UH.
Speaker 1: Their emphasis on UH they have pet seances and a
Speaker 1: very extensive pet cemetery, which so the the idea that
Speaker 1: your beloved animals continue with you through eternity. Personally, I
Speaker 1: can think of no stronger argument, you know, for belief
Speaker 1: in spiritualism than you know, to have my dog with
Speaker 1: me forever. So the but that's not an early spiritualist moment.
Speaker 1: But the idea that bad people torture animals is there
Speaker 1: right at the beginning. Um, so you did mention that
Speaker 1: Edmonds is one of the people who brings spiritualism to
Speaker 1: the political stage. By eighteen fifty four, there's so much
Speaker 1: interest in spiritualism. It's it's grown to the point where
Speaker 1: there are fifteen thousand people who sign a petition to
Speaker 1: the United States Senate to fund US Scientific Commission to
Speaker 1: Investigate Spiritualism. Can you talk about how that came about
Speaker 1: and what the result was. So at that point you
Speaker 1: actually have politicians worrying about the spiritualist vote, and so
Speaker 1: this is clearly a matter of some concern for a
Speaker 1: lot of people. There are a number of commissions, you know,
Speaker 1: the Saber Commission, uh different university commissions, but the Commission
Speaker 1: to Study Spiritualism as a government project is really quite
Speaker 1: extensive and you end up right. So there there are
Speaker 1: a couple of forms that this this takes. So one
Speaker 1: is a series of councils where they would bring in
Speaker 1: a popular medium. So um Cora Hatch, for example, was yeah,
Speaker 1: allowed herself to be so objected to one of these,
Speaker 1: and they would ask these questions trying to trick her, right,
Speaker 1: And so there's this one commission where they asked your
Speaker 1: questions like how do you parse the divinity of Jesus Christ,
Speaker 1: both human and divine? And how did gyroscopes work? And
Speaker 1: she answered these questions in a trance state to such
Speaker 1: effect that the commission, which was you know, literally comprised
Speaker 1: of like stodgy old military men, I was like, that
Speaker 1: was impressive and in fact, and I am quoting one
Speaker 1: of them said I expected to be humbugged and was
Speaker 1: not so. Uh. In in this manner, right would they
Speaker 1: would test individual mediums. And then there was a rather
Speaker 1: embarrassing moment in which well the Fox sisters Maggie and
Speaker 1: Kate were put on a ship with a bunch of spiritualists.
Speaker 1: There was there was an island in the New York
Speaker 1: Sound where they hanged criminals and there was a pirate,
Speaker 1: John Hicks, who was about to be hanged and the
Speaker 1: so there's this floating seance basically that is surrounding this
Speaker 1: island with the expectation that at the moment of this
Speaker 1: this guy's death, that they would be able to communicate
Speaker 1: with him. Well, embarrassingly enough, the spiritualists, much like graduate students, Um,
Speaker 1: we're so excited about the free food and drink that
Speaker 1: they completely missed the hanging and we're like busily chowing
Speaker 1: down on the cucumber sandwiches and no communication whatsoever took place.
Speaker 1: That's fantastic. Um. You mentioned Cora Hatch, and she's someone
Speaker 1: I want to talk about a little bit more. She
Speaker 1: was born course Scott. Can you talk about who she
Speaker 1: was and what some of her early experiences with spirituals
Speaker 1: and were like, and then how she became so popular
Speaker 1: and why so. Cora was arguably the most famous medium
Speaker 1: of her day. And once again, there there is a
Speaker 1: particular voyeurism with stage medium show that is absent in
Speaker 1: sort of domestic seances. And Coral was very young, fifteen
Speaker 1: when she started, and she was very beautiful, and every
Speaker 1: single newspaper account of her just fulminates over her long
Speaker 1: blonde curls, and she was always, um, you know, decked
Speaker 1: out in a slightly racy outfit. And so what would
Speaker 1: happen is you would you would have this you know,
Speaker 1: blossom of youth and fragility who would then sort of faint, right,
Speaker 1: So it was a real you know, verririistic aspect to this.
Speaker 1: But then she would stand up and start expounding on um,
Speaker 1: slavery and philosophy and theology and uh. And she would
Speaker 1: command you know, these audiences of thousands and tell them
Speaker 1: what they should be thinking about politics, what they should
Speaker 1: be thinking about abolition, what they should be thinking about
Speaker 1: women's rights. So this too is obviously very paradoxical, right,
Speaker 1: that these these women had this astonishing effect on the
Speaker 1: condition that it was understood that they were not the
Speaker 1: ones speaking. So Cora, as I say, it was lovely
Speaker 1: and um. She was able to you know, answer these
Speaker 1: these very specific questions to the satisfaction of all in
Speaker 1: very uncomfortable circumstances. So she was extremely popular. She did
Speaker 1: close out. There was some she would say things that
Speaker 1: were you know, so scandalous at times that people are
Speaker 1: like flee the lecture hall. Mostly about women's rights and
Speaker 1: how everything's equal in the afterlife and how they should
Speaker 1: be here. Uh so, yes she was. She was absolutely
Speaker 1: magnificently popular. Corea too had a hard life though, and
Speaker 1: she ended up marrying several times, to the point where
Speaker 1: like tracking her name in different publications is tricky, And
Speaker 1: the most famous one was to her first husband, a
Speaker 1: BF Hatch, and she was sixteen and he was, not
Speaker 1: to put too fine a point on it, they a
Speaker 1: bit of a bit of charlatan and something of a pampa.
Speaker 1: So she divorced him and it was made a huge
Speaker 1: media splash, enormous media splash that I have no doubt
Speaker 1: whatsoever that he was physically abusive to her, that everything
Speaker 1: seems to agree on this point. However, it became a
Speaker 1: bit of a bally food so Emma Harding Britain reported
Speaker 1: on this in a very you know, this pernicious. He
Speaker 1: was forty, she was sixteen, right, a little little sketchy
Speaker 1: um in this. You know, he was a predator and
Speaker 1: he married her to exploit her and you know, take
Speaker 1: her money. And it was you know, he was not
Speaker 1: a good guy. I'm not excusing him in any way,
Speaker 1: shape or form, but some of that is actually not true,
Speaker 1: Like she kept all of her money. She had six
Speaker 1: thousand dollars, which is an astonishing amount of money in
Speaker 1: those days, and she kept three thousand of it in
Speaker 1: the divorce and it was basically, you know, she divorced
Speaker 1: him for maltreating her. But it got sort of played
Speaker 1: out in the press as you know, Charlatan's among us
Speaker 1: and the uh, you know, predatory men who will take
Speaker 1: advantage of young talented mediums. Can you talk about what
Speaker 1: the dynamics were of that moment in invest s gating spiritualism.
Speaker 1: Investigating spiritualism was actually a bit of a signline for
Speaker 1: a lot of people, and both sides had undercover investigators.
Speaker 1: So you had a an entire series of doubters as
Speaker 1: is you know, certainly the case with most of the
Speaker 1: academic inquiries, and then you actually had the pro spiritualist folks.
Speaker 1: So the American Society for Cyclical Research had private investigators
Speaker 1: for years followed mediums around to see if they were legit,
Speaker 1: and they were very invasive. So not only would they
Speaker 1: show up as you know, sitters in your seance, but
Speaker 1: they would like stock your home and make sure you
Speaker 1: weren't stepping out on your husband or I mean they
Speaker 1: were they were really invasive, and so both sides had
Speaker 1: this real investment in seeing whose reputation would last. So
Speaker 1: they're the debunkers, you know. Found Yeah difference. Uh, you
Speaker 1: know that this was of wilful trickery and people in
Speaker 1: mourning and that they're you know, psychological, you know, they're grieving,
Speaker 1: made them vulnerable, and that these um, these people were
Speaker 1: hucksters taking advantage of them. But on the other side,
Speaker 1: there are actually people investigating because they wanted to protect
Speaker 1: the reputation of spiritualism and they wanted to get out
Speaker 1: ahead of any sort of saucy story that might come
Speaker 1: out about one of their star mediums. So like William
Speaker 1: James knew abounch of the paranormal Investigators, and he would, um,
Speaker 1: you know, say you need to go check out, you know,
Speaker 1: this person in Boston and make sure that you know
Speaker 1: everything's on the up and up, because I'm going to
Speaker 1: you know, put my reputation you know, behind her and
Speaker 1: say I think she's the real deal and I need
Speaker 1: to make sure that I'm not going to embarrass myself
Speaker 1: down the line. M Yeah, that's great. Um. You also
Speaker 1: write that in the years following the Civil War, after
Speaker 1: Andrew Jackson Davis published I mean one of his many,
Speaker 1: his many books, but after he publishes The Harbinger of Health. Um,
Speaker 1: and and there are other developments as well, but that
Speaker 1: there's a new and voracious interest in the embodied experience
Speaker 1: of living. And H. Davis and other mediums like Victoria
Speaker 1: Woodhull and Cora hatch Uh who had been healing mediums
Speaker 1: in the eighteen fifties, see that really grow. Um, what
Speaker 1: was new about the interest in spiritualist healing in the
Speaker 1: eight sixties and seventies. You have a physically wounded nation,
Speaker 1: and there the American landscape is bizarrely conflicted about what
Speaker 1: to do with these wounded soldiers. So, for example, you
Speaker 1: could not become a freemason if you have had any amputations.
Speaker 1: This is after the Civil War. It's like how many
Speaker 1: people have amputations after the Civil War? Right? So, the
Speaker 1: the idea that you would actually exclude these people, you know,
Speaker 1: who are heroes wherever it is they come from because
Speaker 1: of of some as was understood, physical defect was a
Speaker 1: straordinary slap in the face. So this idea of what
Speaker 1: constitutes wholeness and what constitutes health um. And you should
Speaker 1: throw in Mary Baker Eddie into this picture, right, So
Speaker 1: she's publishing during this time, and so really you're starting
Speaker 1: to see this um argument right over whether the locus
Speaker 1: of the body properly belongs to the medical establishment or
Speaker 1: whether it properly belongs to religious claims. And the medical
Speaker 1: establishment is by and large white male um degreed, but
Speaker 1: gold impersonal and busy filling out forms. Whereas like so A. J.
Speaker 1: Davis is a country doctor, right, he walks around and
Speaker 1: he attends to children with chicken pow us and you know,
Speaker 1: older people with arthritis, and he has a you just
Speaker 1: much kinder rigment than a lot of the people who
Speaker 1: are more pedigrade. So the whole idea that your health
Speaker 1: is dependent on your spiritual well being certainly has been around,
Speaker 1: you know, since the earth cold, but it became very
Speaker 1: it came into focus and prominence and was published about
Speaker 1: and the it becomes works into the sort of new
Speaker 1: thought movement and the you know, the the power of
Speaker 1: mind over matter and that you have it within yourself
Speaker 1: to to heal, and that your physical well being is
Speaker 1: completely tied to your spiritual well being. You know, really
Speaker 1: coalesces after the Civil War, and yeah, it needs to
Speaker 1: right that the country needed that at that time. Can
Speaker 1: you say more this? This is fantastic because one of
Speaker 1: the things you see is conflict between spiritualism and the
Speaker 1: new discipline of neurology. We talked at the beginning about
Speaker 1: mesmerism and animal magnetism and some spirit and soul and
Speaker 1: mind stuff that was going on there with the human body. Um,
Speaker 1: what's this new discipline of neurology and and Hammond who
Speaker 1: is kind of leading that, Um, how does that come
Speaker 1: into conflict with spiritualism over these questions? Well, from time immemorial, right,
Speaker 1: the position of the interpreter is going to determine the
Speaker 1: fate of the interpreted. Right. So if you have a
Speaker 1: woman who is speaking in multiple voices, she if she's
Speaker 1: you know, in control of it and is using that
Speaker 1: to travel and make some money and literally how her
Speaker 1: voice heard, then you know she's a successful medium, right.
Speaker 1: But if she's not in control of it, then she's possessed,
Speaker 1: right and should be you know, hanged as a witch,
Speaker 1: or she is mentally ill. So in the eighties, when
Speaker 1: you really see the rise of neurology and psychology as
Speaker 1: medical disciplines. Then they start, um, you know, edging into
Speaker 1: what has traditionally been religion's per view. And so when
Speaker 1: you have women speaking in multiple voices, then you know,
Speaker 1: traditionally you know, okay, are you a saint? Are you
Speaker 1: a witch? Or are you mad? And spiritualism provided, you know,
Speaker 1: sort of a subset of of the saint. Right, it
Speaker 1: provided a way to look at these women who were
Speaker 1: in control of this multiple personality and who were making
Speaker 1: a living doing it, who were seeing a lot of
Speaker 1: them saw the world right in a way that was
Speaker 1: unthinkable thirty years before. So and you know, so then
Speaker 1: science and medicine starts creeping into this territory and it
Speaker 1: pathologizes this behavior. And so you start seeing diagnoses of schizophrenia,
Speaker 1: and here I mean schizophrenia as in, um, you know,
Speaker 1: a personality disorder with multiple speaking subjects. Now, admittedly, not
Speaker 1: every person was in control of the speaking subjects. And
Speaker 1: if you look at the just the rosters of insane
Speaker 1: asylums in the night eighteenth century, the number of women
Speaker 1: who are in there for being spiritualists or shakers are
Speaker 1: extremely high. So the belief itself is pathologized, and then
Speaker 1: the actions are understood as evidence of these women being disordered.
Speaker 1: So this becomes a bit of an argument between these
Speaker 1: two camps, and the spiritualists do take on these these
Speaker 1: new pathologies, by which I mean they fight against them.
Speaker 1: And you know, so there are discussions of the idea
Speaker 1: of an unconscious, right, So in eighteen eighty it was
Speaker 1: not clear to everyone that you had an unconscious. That's
Speaker 1: that's a later construct that we all now think we
Speaker 1: have an unconscious in the way that I think I
Speaker 1: have a foot, right. So the whole idea that you
Speaker 1: could have this controlling subterranean force was spiritual were just
Speaker 1: against this. They were aghast at this as a concept
Speaker 1: that you know, so when you went into a trans state,
Speaker 1: you were reaching a higher venue, right, you were. You know,
Speaker 1: the dead aren't perfect, but they are elevated, right, So
Speaker 1: the directionality of a trans state is superior, right, it's upper,
Speaker 1: whereas you know, certainly the directionality of Freudian universe, right
Speaker 1: is always negative. Right. Your unconscious is where you know,
Speaker 1: you keep your monsters under the bed. And they saw
Speaker 1: this coming and they tried very hard to get out
Speaker 1: in front of it, and eventually they were not successful,
Speaker 1: but they did launch an actual campaign against the pathologizing
Speaker 1: of multiple people speaking m M. One of the other
Speaker 1: things we see starting in the eighteen seventies is UH,
Speaker 1: you know, is with Henry Steel Alcott and Emma Harding
Speaker 1: Britain and UH and Madame Blovotski and the founding of
Speaker 1: the Theosophical Society. Thinking about it from Emma's perspective, maybe
Speaker 1: you know she had been such a chronicle or and
Speaker 1: synthesizer of spiritualism. Um, what attracted her to this new
Speaker 1: tradition or discipline and what influenced did the founding of
Speaker 1: the Theosophical Society have on spiritualism within the American religious landscape. Well,
Speaker 1: Emma was at the initial eighteen seventy two party in
Speaker 1: New York that founded the Theosophical Society. And what the
Speaker 1: Theosophical Society and Madame Blevowski in particular proposed is that
Speaker 1: spiritualism was this is my phrasing obviously but too exoteric
Speaker 1: a right, That actual call to work requires initiation, it
Speaker 1: requires adepts, and it requires secrecy. So if you could,
Speaker 1: you know, talk to the dead, you were approaching something important,
Speaker 1: but you weren't there yet. So they actually set out
Speaker 1: to create a much more um esoteric as an actively
Speaker 1: secret and requiring gradations of initiation at that sort of
Speaker 1: spun off of some of the primary principles of spiritualism.
Speaker 1: So felling a Petro Noblatsky had started off, well, she
Speaker 1: was from Odessa, and she came by way of Egypt
Speaker 1: and Paris and all these interesting places to show up
Speaker 1: in New York. And she christened herself a countess, which
Speaker 1: is probably complete hogwash. And you know, I had people
Speaker 1: call her madam, and she initially she was a She
Speaker 1: was a character, My gracious she was. She was short
Speaker 1: and had blue blue blue eyes and kind of looked
Speaker 1: like a refrigerator and had a she smoked a hundred
Speaker 1: cigarettes today, so you can imagine what a fabulous voice
Speaker 1: she must have had. Um. And she had you know,
Speaker 1: gun undercover and drag with the Sufis in Egypt. And
Speaker 1: somehow she knew more about Parisian Front, you know, freemasonry
Speaker 1: than she should have been able to as a woman.
Speaker 1: And so she had all this this fascinating knowledge, and
Speaker 1: so she took the sort of basics of spirit communication
Speaker 1: and turning them on their heads. So she said, when
Speaker 1: you were talking to a spirit, you're not actually talking
Speaker 1: to a consciousness, You're talking to a energy residue. Right,
Speaker 1: So if so and so dies, then so and So's
Speaker 1: energy residue will linger on earth for a while, and
Speaker 1: when you contact them in a seance, you're only getting
Speaker 1: the appearance of actual communication. So she doesn't then a
Speaker 1: great spiritualism per se um. But she does try to
Speaker 1: flip the valance of talking with the dead. All right,
Speaker 1: it's too easy and it is um not the real
Speaker 1: deal for her. So this is appealing obviously, right. The
Speaker 1: secret societies are always appealing. You want to have some
Speaker 1: sort of knowledge that other people don't have, if it's
Speaker 1: you know, the whole point of having a secret is
Speaker 1: that you've got some sort of power, if only momentarily,
Speaker 1: you know, until that bubble bursts and then nobody cares. Right. So,
Speaker 1: so al was was interested in this more occult, esoteric
Speaker 1: initiatory practice. But she now, as one might say about Podenci,
Speaker 1: she worshiped with both hands. Right, So she never stopped
Speaker 1: believing that spiritualism actually contacted the dead in a very
Speaker 1: meaningful way. Um. But she didn't think that that was exclusive,
Speaker 1: you know. So she thought you could simultaneously be a
Speaker 1: theosophist and a spiritualist, and she was successful at that. Um.
Speaker 1: But it was it was quite the movement, right, Um.
Speaker 1: And it was also unlike spiritualism were you know, as
Speaker 1: we've discussed, it's very optimistic in so many ways. Uh,
Speaker 1: theosophy is paranoid. It's a massive conspiracy theory. So according
Speaker 1: to Blovotsky in her first iteration, she has these two periods.
Speaker 1: There's the so called Egyptian period and then the so
Speaker 1: called Buddhist period. But in the Egyptian period, which is
Speaker 1: when Emma was involved, and this was taking place in
Speaker 1: New York, she she writes ISOs n Veils, which is
Speaker 1: this massive two volume tome on how everybody in the
Speaker 1: world has always had access to some obscured truth. Again friendly, multicultural,
Speaker 1: clearly childless, spiritualism in so many ways. But then the
Speaker 1: forces of power have spent all millennia trying to keep
Speaker 1: you from it. So quite right, and so this is
Speaker 1: an enormous conspiracy theory. Um, I think still the greatest
Speaker 1: that America that's ever produced. And I include the Lizardman
Speaker 1: in that list. So uh, it has a different trajectory, right.
Speaker 1: It is not progressive or kind or healing at the
Speaker 1: core of it. It's it's much more about self transformation.
Speaker 1: It's much more about uh, secrecy and inner sanctum. M
Speaker 1: hm hmm. That's great. Um, we're headed towards our wrap up,
Speaker 1: but before we get there, could you say a little
Speaker 1: bit more about the American Society a Psychical Research, Uh,
Speaker 1: and it's founding in five and how it went on
Speaker 1: to relate to spiritualism and spiritualists as we're headed towards
Speaker 1: the end of the nineteenth century. Sure, so, the Society
Speaker 1: for Psychical Research was actually started in Cambridge, and it
Speaker 1: included on its roster every serious intellectual of eighty And
Speaker 1: it actually had a bunch of classics professors and Kind
Speaker 1: and Doyle and the founder of modern criminology, Jase R. Lombroso,
Speaker 1: and the guy who created underwater telegraphy are all over Lodge.
Speaker 1: I mean, it was it was just a roster of
Speaker 1: who's who in the academic community. And it set out
Speaker 1: to question things like the existence of telepathy and the
Speaker 1: claims of spiritualism and things like um, uncanny dreams, right,
Speaker 1: and hauntings. So these were its main fous i and
Speaker 1: it walked into it with a pretty open attitude to
Speaker 1: be honest. So it would you have a case of
Speaker 1: somebody waking up in England knowing for some reason that
Speaker 1: there husband died overnight, right, and then two weeks later
Speaker 1: it shows up in the newspaper that this ship sank
Speaker 1: off of the coast of Australia. Right, So they would
Speaker 1: approach this it's like, okay, well you know one answer
Speaker 1: is that just is clear point, right. Another answer is
Speaker 1: that thought transference is possible. So the the idea that
Speaker 1: we have a physical, grounded material uh possibility of exchanging
Speaker 1: thoughts across distance. So it was not super natural, right,
Speaker 1: it was just not yet understood. So this kind of
Speaker 1: conversation went on for a very long time and Mark
Speaker 1: Twain participated. It was it was really quite the whole. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was all star. They even got Darwin involved try
Speaker 1: and Darwin had no interest in any of this, but
Speaker 1: you know he went for a little while. Um, so
Speaker 1: there's an American offshoot that begins, and William James is
Speaker 1: you know, it's most famous, yeah, investigator, believer and James
Speaker 1: if you just read his psychology, right, so if you
Speaker 1: just take you know, say, his lectures on religion, he
Speaker 1: does not agree with what will become right, Certainly, the
Speaker 1: nature of the psyche is still at stake, right, And
Speaker 1: some people believe, like William James, that the psyche naturally
Speaker 1: points towards the good, and that humans you know, will
Speaker 1: not you know, morally good necessarily, that human nature points
Speaker 1: toward something greater than themselves, right, Whereas Freud is obviously
Speaker 1: going to say that everything refers to your interior life
Speaker 1: and that a lot of it is selfish. So the
Speaker 1: nature of human nature is at stake here. And James
Speaker 1: does not buy into spiritualism wholesale at all, but he
Speaker 1: does think that the unconscious can communicate with with spirits
Speaker 1: greater than they, and it's he finds, you know, his
Speaker 1: this one woman who you know, he sicks this detective
Speaker 1: on for years and she's just infallible. She's a perfect
Speaker 1: little middle class lady who you know, is you know,
Speaker 1: a good wife and lives in a cute little house
Speaker 1: and wears gloves and it is proper all the time.
Speaker 1: And he um, he calls her, you know, his his
Speaker 1: black Swan. Right, No, I'm sorry, not um anyway, Mrs Piper.
Speaker 1: So Mrs Piper is just perfect forever, and so he
Speaker 1: clearly believes in the powers of Mrs Piper, but he
Speaker 1: does not wholesale buy into, you know, everybody who claims
Speaker 1: to have these sort of supernatural powers. And so he
Speaker 1: thinks it's possible, but he also concedes that there's a
Speaker 1: lot of chicken ry going on. And but right, he's
Speaker 1: this amazing name and he uh, his his dad was
Speaker 1: the Swedenborgian mystic and obviously his his brother, you know,
Speaker 1: wrote The Bostonians, which makes fun of the spiritualists, you know,
Speaker 1: with great frequency. So he uh, they clearly come from
Speaker 1: this very religious family to which they reacted quite differently. Uh.
Speaker 1: But yees. So he gives a real intellectual impromoter to
Speaker 1: the the entire spiritualist cause. That's great. Um. As we
Speaker 1: head into that end of this century, you mentioned that
Speaker 1: theosophy has a much more paranoid attitude or mood to it.
Speaker 1: Um As spiritualism, especially in the United States, builds some institutions,
Speaker 1: tries to put together some organizations that will last, you know,
Speaker 1: after all the annual conventions, conventions, conventions, but no church.
Speaker 1: There are some groups that are that are formed. You
Speaker 1: mentioned the Dale earlier. There are some communities that are
Speaker 1: that are founded to last. Um to spiritualism maintain it's
Speaker 1: kind of optimism and spirit of progress at the end
Speaker 1: of the century. With the kind of organizations you're talking about,
Speaker 1: I would say absolutely, and I would say as it
Speaker 1: continues through today, Uh what you have? However, after World
Speaker 1: War One, first of all, the whole edifice is crumbling
Speaker 1: when everyone starts relying on materializations. Right, so when you're
Speaker 1: talking about, you know, a trumpet playing in eighteen fifty two, okay,
Speaker 1: that's fine. But when you're talking about manifesting multiple ghosts
Speaker 1: and full body while they run around and you know,
Speaker 1: do embarrassing colonialists things, um, then you were really you know,
Speaker 1: inviting Charlatan's into your home. And as people got sort
Speaker 1: of inured to spiritualism as a domestic form of aid
Speaker 1: with grieving, right, then they start demanding more and more showmanship.
Speaker 1: And this cycle of demand and showmanship, you know, just
Speaker 1: aid away. At the core of this is a religious
Speaker 1: belief and so it it morphs into things as various
Speaker 1: stage magic and obviously the advent of photography is very
Speaker 1: important spiritualism. And you know, then you start getting into
Speaker 1: the production of ectoplasm, and so it gets um more
Speaker 1: morphous and less. I disliked the word authentic, but heartfelt. However,
Speaker 1: the groups you're talking about, um, yes, absolutely, the Cassadaica community,
Speaker 1: the Lilydale community. Um. These these folks understood perhaps the
Speaker 1: single most important thing about spiritualism, and that is the
Speaker 1: vanguard of multiculturalism. Right. So the fact that diversity is
Speaker 1: one of the first words that comes out of my
Speaker 1: mouth in a class, I really do think is related
Speaker 1: directly to spiritualism. And so, of course what happens there
Speaker 1: as Americans learn more about Asian religions over the course
Speaker 1: of the century, particularly going to two wars with Buddhist
Speaker 1: countries and you know, bringing home war brides, and then
Speaker 1: you know, the hippies and the beats, you know, love Buddhism,
Speaker 1: and people start getting interested in karma and reincarnation that
Speaker 1: these get sort of melted. So new Age, if you will,
Speaker 1: is a concatination of these sorts of interests. Right, that
Speaker 1: things are improving, but it might be over multiple lifetimes,
Speaker 1: and there are ethical checks and balances like karma in
Speaker 1: ways that something did not exist in early spiritualism. And
Speaker 1: you know, how do you account for improvement across reincarnated lives?
Speaker 1: And you know, do you come back with a certain
Speaker 1: you know, squad of people. Right? Is there such a
Speaker 1: thing as true love? How does it manifest over multiple lifetimes?
Speaker 1: So these all kind of work together over the course
Speaker 1: of the twentieth century to create a modern spiritualism which
Speaker 1: is still very very invested in multiculturalism and in the
Speaker 1: idea that there is no hell and that God does
Speaker 1: not divide part of the world and condemn them, but
Speaker 1: rather that everyone is on the same path, and that
Speaker 1: progress might not be evidence in this particular moment, but
Speaker 1: that it is inevitable. Mm hm m hm. Can you
Speaker 1: extend that thought just a bit, because at the end
Speaker 1: of your book you write that spiritualism's main contribution is
Speaker 1: in the field of ethics, and some of what you
Speaker 1: just said really addresses that. Um. But how do you
Speaker 1: describe that contribution of spiritualism to ethics? Um? And is
Speaker 1: what you just said the main way we can see
Speaker 1: it's influence today? Are there any other places where spiritualism's
Speaker 1: contribution to ethics really still appears in American life? I
Speaker 1: completely think that spiritualism's primary contribution is to ethics, and
Speaker 1: it is to the dismantling of a duality of heaven
Speaker 1: and health, and to the relegating of all of your
Speaker 1: neighbors who are not exactly like you to hell. So
Speaker 1: I tea to a class and world religions we just
Speaker 1: met yesterday, and they said, you know, I presume that
Speaker 1: there is no one in this room who would look
Speaker 1: around at your fellow students to say, I'm sorry, dude,
Speaker 1: you're really you know, you're a nice, interesting person, but
Speaker 1: you're going to hell, right, And that of course there
Speaker 1: are people who still believe that, and there are many
Speaker 1: hardcore people still believe that, but it is not the norm, right,
Speaker 1: and it certainly was before Spiritualist came Spiritualism came on stage.
Speaker 1: There were obviously there were other people, um who you know,
Speaker 1: didn't actively believe in a hell, the Unitarians, the universalists, right,
Speaker 1: everyone was going you know, to heaven want universalist smith um.
Speaker 1: But as a mainstream, loud, splashy movement, Spiritualism really was
Speaker 1: a driving force behind nascent multiculturalism. And I think that
Speaker 1: that is its lasting contribution. And when you take things
Speaker 1: like you know, exclusivity of salvation, right, it's like, well,
Speaker 1: you know, my team is right and your team is wrong.
Speaker 1: And then we're gonna, you know, have this you know,
Speaker 1: ghastly battle, and then you're all going to lose. Right
Speaker 1: that that that apocalyptic sort of thinking, that binary sort
Speaker 1: of thinking accounts for so much of you know, historical
Speaker 1: world ills and for people feeling that they are righteous
Speaker 1: right in their belief in their exclusive truth claim. And
Speaker 1: spiritualist just takes that and dismantles it right, just snaps
Speaker 1: that apocalyptic binary and so gradual improvement with no judgment
Speaker 1: and no losers, uh is how I would characterize you know,
Speaker 1: vast majority of college students. I'm happy to say, Hey, folks,
Speaker 1: it's Aaron here. I hope today's interview helped you deepen
Speaker 1: your understanding of everything involved in the world of spiritualism.
Speaker 1: But we're not done yet. We have more interviews to
Speaker 1: share with you, so stick around after this brief sponsor
Speaker 1: break to hear a preview of next week's interview. Next
Speaker 1: time on obscured. Obviously, comparing the eighteen fifties or the
Speaker 1: eighteen seventies with the nine twenties. So much it changed
Speaker 1: across the turn of that long nineteenth century, but so
Speaker 1: much hadn't changed. World War One decimated Europe with a
Speaker 1: kind of violence and carnage never seen before the new
Speaker 1: twentieth century had invented new weapons of war, but offered
Speaker 1: a little new to help survivors rapple or cope with
Speaker 1: the aftermath. People were and are still asking, how kind
Speaker 1: of dead speak to the living as something other than
Speaker 1: the haunting, seating presence of absence. The resurgence is real.
Speaker 1: I mean it's a different resurgence, but I mean I'm now,
Speaker 1: I'm now in thees and Thomas Edison hits the press
Speaker 1: with the news that he is building an apparatus to
Speaker 1: contact the dead, and all of the press is framing
Speaker 1: it at the time in New York Times to Scientific
Speaker 1: America as a new resurgence and spiritualism after the war.
Speaker 1: A Lot Obscured was created by me Aaron Manky and
Speaker 1: produce by Matt Frederick, Alex Williams, and Josh Thane in
Speaker 1: partnership with I Heart Radio. Research and writing for this
Speaker 1: season is all the work of my right hand man,
Speaker 1: Carl Nellis, and the brilliant Chad Lawson composed the brand
Speaker 1: new soundtrack. Learn more about our contributing historians, source material
Speaker 1: and links to our other shows over at History unobscured
Speaker 1: dot com and until next time. Thanks for listening. Unobscured
Speaker 1: as a production of I Heart Radio and Aaron Minkey.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit i heeart
Speaker 1: radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
Speaker 1: favorite shows.