Speaker 1: Welcomed Unobscured, a production of I Heart Radio and Aaron Minkey.
Speaker 1: We end our series of interviews today with historian Molly McGary,
Speaker 1: Associate Professor of History at the University of California Riverside.
Speaker 1: Dr McGary has never been shy about sharing her research.
Speaker 1: In fact, she has curated museum exhibits at the New
Speaker 1: York Public Library, the Jewish Museum, and the University of
Speaker 1: California's Museum of Photography. Dr McGarry has been honored by
Speaker 1: the Smithsonian, the American Association of Museums, and the Society
Speaker 1: of American Archivists, among others. So we were delighted when
Speaker 1: she agreed to sit down with researcher Carl Nellis to
Speaker 1: discuss her book, Ghosts of Futures Past and the power
Speaker 1: of Spiritualism in America. I think that you'll find Dr
Speaker 1: McGarry's incredible insight into spiritualism and her consideration for what
Speaker 1: it still means today make this conversation the perfect place
Speaker 1: to wrap up our series. Thanks so much for listening.
Speaker 1: Without further ado, here's our interview with Dr Molly McGarry.
Speaker 1: This is the Unobscured Interview series for season two. I'm
Speaker 1: Aaron Mankey. To be a spiritualist was never one thing.
Speaker 1: There were always many spiritualisms, both in the nineteenth century
Speaker 1: and beyond. So some people came to the science tables
Speaker 1: seeking answers, wanting deeply to commune with lost loved ones. Um.
Speaker 1: Others were curious investigators, looking to see for themselves with
Speaker 1: this new technology could materialize. UM. But what I found
Speaker 1: in what I've been most struck by is that many
Speaker 1: spiritualists took seriously the possibility of channeling of voices of
Speaker 1: the dead as a means of both connecting with the
Speaker 1: past and imagining both worldly and otherworldly futures. Mhm. Let's
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about the world where that kind
Speaker 1: of mindset and that kind of perspective and belief could
Speaker 1: come into being. There are religious threads and technological, scientific, historical. Um.
Speaker 1: Maybe let's start kind of on the political side and say, UM,
Speaker 1: dig into what historians mean when they would talk about
Speaker 1: something like Jacksonian democracy in American life in the decades
Speaker 1: before spiritualism alived arrived on the scene. What do we
Speaker 1: mean by that and what influence did something like a
Speaker 1: democratic spirit or a Jacksonian democracy have on American religion well.
Speaker 1: Jacksonian democracy, of course, refers to a series of political
Speaker 1: movements around the term two term presidency of Andrew Jackson seven,
Speaker 1: and the most significant change affected by Jacksonian democracy was
Speaker 1: the extension of the franchise of the vote to white
Speaker 1: men over the age of twenty one who did not
Speaker 1: own property, so that that was new um. At the
Speaker 1: same time, those same white men who had been granted
Speaker 1: the vote became a key constituency in keeping others from
Speaker 1: getting the vote. So the democracy of Jacksonian is um
Speaker 1: was always severely limited. UM. I should probably also add
Speaker 1: that Jacksonian democracy is also intimately tied with settled colonialism,
Speaker 1: with Indian genocide, empire building, clearing the West for a
Speaker 1: new manifest destiny. That said, there were real changes and
Speaker 1: forms of democratization, but maybe to cast the lens a
Speaker 1: little bit wider um. Spiritualism was born of an era
Speaker 1: of enormous social change and fervent anti authoritian impulses. So
Speaker 1: for many spiritualists, small group communalism took the place of
Speaker 1: institutionalized religion. Alternative healing placed male dominated medicine UM, and
Speaker 1: the voices of priests and ministers were drowned out by
Speaker 1: the spirits themselves. So this is a very different imagination
Speaker 1: and formation of antebellum democracy. And I would also add
Speaker 1: that actually in terms of Democrats versus Republicans, that that
Speaker 1: in many ways that what became the Republican Party UM
Speaker 1: was much more important for sort of fueling the and
Speaker 1: peopling spiritualism itself. So I could say more about that,
Speaker 1: but I think it's it's interesting that spiritualists were actually
Speaker 1: crucial to the Free Democratic Party and then present at
Speaker 1: the eight fifty four birth of the Republican Party, and
Speaker 1: spiritualism actually functions as a kind of political theology which
Speaker 1: provided the third party insurgency that became the Republican Party
Speaker 1: UM with a deeper, open ended theology of free labor
Speaker 1: and a deep faith in the national rebirth the kind
Speaker 1: of millennial Second American revolution him in that context where
Speaker 1: it is a movement that's so um that that's breaking
Speaker 1: down or cutting against so many of these hierarchies. It's
Speaker 1: interesting that early on spirits like Benjamin Franklin and George
Speaker 1: Washington William Penn, white male authority figures statesmen appear to
Speaker 1: various sound circles and translactors. Uh. Sometimes they're addressing just
Speaker 1: one or two people through the Fox Sisters, especially the
Speaker 1: Post Household early on records. You know, Benjamin Franklin showing
Speaker 1: up in Isaac Post has taken down their message. UM.
Speaker 1: But sometimes they're addressing large crowds through a translactor like
Speaker 1: Cora Scott. And you know, I'm just saying, this is
Speaker 1: Thomas Jefferson, and he says, m M, what do these
Speaker 1: kind of appearances tell us about, um, A relationship to
Speaker 1: a particular kind of past, to a history in a
Speaker 1: kind of anti authoritarian collectivist movement. Yeah, that's that's a
Speaker 1: great question. And I think I think what Spirits said
Speaker 1: reveals most about who they said it to. So following
Speaker 1: that logic, seance revelations provide a kind of unique window
Speaker 1: into what at least a segment of nineteent century Americans
Speaker 1: might have wanted to know, both from their own dead
Speaker 1: ancestors as well as from other actors who people to
Speaker 1: America has passed in its history. UM. The ghost of
Speaker 1: George Washington often offered blessings to spirit circles, presumably as
Speaker 1: a founding father, giving national foundational stature to this seemingly
Speaker 1: marginal movement. UM. William Penn. The spirit of William Penn
Speaker 1: often appeared with vaguely Quaker messages of peace and of
Speaker 1: non violence. And Benjamin Franklin was ubiquitous, the ghost of
Speaker 1: Benjamin Franklin, the Great Inventor. Um. As an inventor and
Speaker 1: as a scientist, his spirit is often called up to
Speaker 1: offer scientific impromoter for a new spiritualist media. Literally, um,
Speaker 1: the wraps and knox of mediums echo the spiritualist telegraph
Speaker 1: and spiritualist media, both in terms of mediums, but in
Speaker 1: terms of these other kind of technologies. Um, we're very
Speaker 1: much ameshed in conversations and investigations into electricity and spiritualists
Speaker 1: imagine themselves investigators who who wait Benjamin Franklin would offer
Speaker 1: blessings to I'd love to hear a little bit more
Speaker 1: about technology, because it does seem to be so significant
Speaker 1: for spiritualism. Um, the telegraph, new canals, opening up railroads. Um.
Speaker 1: Thinking about people's relationship to distance and time and communication changing,
Speaker 1: even the explosion of periodicals at the at the moment,
Speaker 1: Can you talk a little more about spiritualism and its
Speaker 1: relation to ship to technology. Yes, Um, so spiritualism this
Speaker 1: popular religious practice conducted through communication with the spirits of
Speaker 1: the dead, was born a century and popularized during a
Speaker 1: time of newly proliferating media technologies, when speaking to the
Speaker 1: dead may have seemed no less strained than communicating across
Speaker 1: cables or capturing the living on film. So spiritualism at
Speaker 1: once transformed ordinary Americans into spiritual mediums that sense of media,
Speaker 1: and transfigured new forms of information and technological media into
Speaker 1: the means of the movement's proliferation. So just to sort
Speaker 1: of set up to set up the dates um, Samuel
Speaker 1: Morris's electrical telegraph was introduced in eighteen forty four, so
Speaker 1: it predated the Fox sisters invention of spirit rapping, but
Speaker 1: their communication, that is spirit rapping, with its telegraphic typing,
Speaker 1: it's encoded sequences and subsequent inscriptions of messages from the dead,
Speaker 1: was almost immediately dubbed the spiritual telegraph, as was one
Speaker 1: of the first spiritualist newspapers, which extended the connection as
Speaker 1: it spread the news in this atmosphere of all these
Speaker 1: new technologies, communication technologies reaching places they hadn't been before.
Speaker 1: There are also other ideas about the human mind and
Speaker 1: the way that we think, uh, what's going on inside
Speaker 1: of our bodies and our relationship of our bodies to
Speaker 1: something like a mind, with mesmerism and phrenology and related
Speaker 1: practices that were kind of horizons of applied science that
Speaker 1: people were lecturing about on the circuit um. How did
Speaker 1: how did these kind of understandings and practices around what
Speaker 1: a human mind was contribute to the foundations for spiritualism. Well,
Speaker 1: there are there were a number of investigators interested in
Speaker 1: these new sciences of head reading and mind readings and
Speaker 1: chronology and mesmerism in the eighteen thirties and eighteen forties,
Speaker 1: and they later became spiritualists, So that's the most obvious connection.
Speaker 1: But like mesmerism and I think phrenology to a lesser extent,
Speaker 1: spiritualism responded to a growing interest in ecstatic experiences, so
Speaker 1: the fits, trances and visions experienced, and religious revivals. Uh.
Speaker 1: And they were interested in using scientific thinking and explanatory
Speaker 1: systems to to understand the relationship between mind and body. Um.
Speaker 1: And as you point out, mesmerism and phrenology were studies
Speaker 1: at the horizons of applied science in the early nineteenth century.
Speaker 1: UM addressing the meanings and connections between the soul, brain,
Speaker 1: and psyche. Uh that these are now considered pseudosciences or
Speaker 1: debunked sciences was not inevitable. It certainly wasn't inevitable at
Speaker 1: the time. And all of these all of these investigations
Speaker 1: into that kind of nexus, that triangle between religion, science
Speaker 1: and magic were working on the same kinds of questions.
Speaker 1: Um they were imbricated and shifting during the nineteenth century
Speaker 1: and arguably to this day. But what roses science and
Speaker 1: what was designated as religion or spurned as magic or
Speaker 1: superstition was always about gate keeping about what counts as
Speaker 1: religion proper, that is, good religion, religion that stays in
Speaker 1: its place, real science, testable in a laboratory, and large
Speaker 1: questions about rationality, about modernity and how you know, seemingly
Speaker 1: marginal practices like spiritualism might fit into this. But spiritualisms
Speaker 1: spiritualists understood themselves as investigators, as popular scientists who attended
Speaker 1: sciences under test conditions. So spiritualism supplied both the language
Speaker 1: and the technology to test the unseen boundary between this
Speaker 1: world and the next. Um. So eventually, as mesmerism and
Speaker 1: phrenology faded over the course of the nineteenth century, spiritualism
Speaker 1: eventually became another site for a sophisticated struggle over some
Speaker 1: of the most vexing issues of the day. UM questions
Speaker 1: about the nature of scientific knowledge and the possibilities and
Speaker 1: I suppose also the limits of the scientific method in
Speaker 1: understanding phenomenon like mediumship. There are magnetizers traveling around putting
Speaker 1: people in chances. Um. There are uh, you know, abolitionist
Speaker 1: movements that are connected operating underground railroad to places like
Speaker 1: Rochester where the telegraph has arrived. And we come to
Speaker 1: your eighty and you do a beautiful job in your
Speaker 1: work of talking about the global context of what was
Speaker 1: going on in eight Can you can you put the
Speaker 1: Fox Sisters in the transatlantic context? For US? Eighty eight
Speaker 1: was a year like few others. Um, maybe was a
Speaker 1: year like this. There are very few years that have
Speaker 1: this almost talismanic quality where the year itself contains so
Speaker 1: much that it's it's hard to even understand the kind
Speaker 1: of revolutionary impulses that are swirling around the globe. So
Speaker 1: in the year eight alone, revolutions ignited across the world
Speaker 1: from Aunts to Brazil, but also from Sicily to the
Speaker 1: Austrian Empire, and revolutions swept the globe during that year. UM.
Speaker 1: Of course, also in Karl Marx and Frederick Engels published
Speaker 1: the Communist Manifesto, opening with the line a specter is
Speaker 1: haunting Europe, the specter of communism. Um. And in that
Speaker 1: same year, two young girls heard communications from a very
Speaker 1: different sort of specter, giving rise to a quite different revolution.
Speaker 1: But the revolutionary impulses that fueled these very different international
Speaker 1: global revolutions were a kind of world spirit. Um. Each
Speaker 1: each of them had a different specific history that um,
Speaker 1: you know, that explains why things broke out in different
Speaker 1: places at different times. But the year itself was one
Speaker 1: that if reading writings from those times, the sense of
Speaker 1: revolutionary possibility was in the air, and it was in
Speaker 1: and it was in the air across the globe. One
Speaker 1: of the people who is expressing that sense of revolutionary
Speaker 1: possibility through a new publication was Frederick Douglas. He and WILLIAMS.
Speaker 1: C Nell moved to Rochester and they launched The North Star,
Speaker 1: the paper that would be connected with with Douglas for
Speaker 1: the rest of his life. UM. How did they imagine
Speaker 1: their new publication in the context of a local community
Speaker 1: but also a global liberation movement Rochester, New York was
Speaker 1: an interesting place in the nineteenth century, so for Frederick
Speaker 1: Douglas and others it became a center of abolitionist organizing.
Speaker 1: It's there where they published the abolitionist newspaper The North
Speaker 1: Star and the celestial north Star, of course, is the
Speaker 1: marker and the night sky, pointing the way towards freedom
Speaker 1: from the south to the north. And not coincidentally, Rochester
Speaker 1: is bordered on its north shore by Lake Ontario, the
Speaker 1: waterway that separates the US from Canada, so flight to
Speaker 1: Canada was possible at that almost visible border. Um Douglas's
Speaker 1: North Star Circle in Rochester was a key center in
Speaker 1: a global movement for freedom, and Douglas and Nell obviously
Speaker 1: launched The North Star in that newspaper is crucially important.
Speaker 1: Douglas Is organizing was important. But there are also figures
Speaker 1: like Harriet Jacobs, who went on to write Incidents in
Speaker 1: the Life of a Slave Girl, who landed in Rochester
Speaker 1: at the same time and not coincidentally um In Harry
Speaker 1: Jacobs moved to Rochester to help her brother John run
Speaker 1: the anti slavery Reading Room, which was located above the
Speaker 1: offices where Frederick Douglas published the North Star, and at
Speaker 1: that time and probably in that place, Jacobs also began
Speaker 1: a lifelong friendship with Amy Post, who was a radical Quaker,
Speaker 1: a long standing abolitionist, and early activists in in the
Speaker 1: cause of women's rights, and not coincidentally, one of the
Speaker 1: earliest proponents of spiritualism. UM And there's whole lots more
Speaker 1: to say about about Amy Post, But as scholars have documented,
Speaker 1: Jacobs told her story to Post in eighty nine, and
Speaker 1: between that time and the time that Incidents in the
Speaker 1: Life of Slave Girl was published in eighteen sixty one,
Speaker 1: it's precisely those circles of abolitionists that make possible speaking
Speaker 1: tours and um and and eventually the publication of that work.
Speaker 1: And it's also it's also the Posts who host the
Speaker 1: Foxes family when they arrived in Rochester and eventually send
Speaker 1: them off to a hamlet called Hydesville. Um who were
Speaker 1: the fox family And what was the relationship like with
Speaker 1: the Posts in in those years, Well, I should say
Speaker 1: a by Post was um Again, She's she's sort of deeply,
Speaker 1: deeply involved in a series of movements. She's also the cousin.
Speaker 1: We're gonna get into the family tree on this She
Speaker 1: was the cousin of a man named Elias Hicks, who
Speaker 1: had organized the Hicksite separation. But the fact was that
Speaker 1: she came from a family of religious radicals who had
Speaker 1: thought that the Quaker establishment had grown to orthodox, too
Speaker 1: comfortable with the material institutions of the world, including slavery.
Speaker 1: So it's um, it is the power of of the
Speaker 1: posts in many ways that both radicalize the movement but
Speaker 1: also provide a home for the Fox sisters. So as
Speaker 1: the story goes, as you know, UM, in March of
Speaker 1: of ety eight, Maggie Fox Margaret Fox usually called Maggie,
Speaker 1: aged thirteen, and Kate, her younger sister, who twelve at
Speaker 1: the time, heard the knox of a spirit of supposedly
Speaker 1: a murdered peddler. Um. They determined that the raps were
Speaker 1: coming from this ghost who communicated by making a knocking
Speaker 1: sound and answer to a yes no question, or by
Speaker 1: wrapping out letters of the alphabet. And again you see
Speaker 1: that you see the connection with Morris's telegraph and the
Speaker 1: particular kind of telegraphic type being in coding sequences and
Speaker 1: subsequent inscriptions from the dead. And and and why um,
Speaker 1: the term the spiritual telegraph would have been used so quickly,
Speaker 1: but anyway, as soon as the raps were heard in
Speaker 1: this little town called Hydesville, which is not far from
Speaker 1: Rochester in central New York, um yet people came to
Speaker 1: hear the knocks and raps from all around, and soon
Speaker 1: they be began receiving messages from the Fox sisters about
Speaker 1: dead relatives, about things that presumably the sisters would have
Speaker 1: no other knowledge of. And the news of this unquiet
Speaker 1: household spread. So the family, that is the Fox family
Speaker 1: DeCamp to Rochester, left Hindsville to to leave the throngs
Speaker 1: and crowds, and went to Rochester to the home of
Speaker 1: the third Fox sister, the older sister of of Maggie
Speaker 1: and Kate, whose name is Leah Fox fish Um later
Speaker 1: under Hill. She was an old family friend of Isaac
Speaker 1: and Amy Post, who later became a medium as well.
Speaker 1: So the Posts took an early, if initially skeptical interest
Speaker 1: in the two local celebrities in the Fox sisters, but
Speaker 1: their interests soon grew as the girls seemed able to
Speaker 1: communicate with recently deceased friends and loved ones, and while
Speaker 1: some of the messages they brought from the dead were
Speaker 1: banal or just wrong, Um, there was enough that was
Speaker 1: right and that that it fit. And it also fit
Speaker 1: in the context in which um, the splits and schisms
Speaker 1: of the Quakers were all of a sudden receiving UM,
Speaker 1: you know, messages from beyond that they were doing the
Speaker 1: good work in the world. And word spreads pretty quickly.
Speaker 1: It brought. It brought seekers to Hydesville first, but then
Speaker 1: also to Rochester, and then out from Rochester the practice
Speaker 1: of table wrappings spreads. UM. Within three years after those rapping,
Speaker 1: spiritualism traveled to England. Um, how is it received when
Speaker 1: it got outside of it's you know, it's the context
Speaker 1: of its origin and in these Quakers and the religious
Speaker 1: impulses in the burned Over district. Once spiritualism spreads outside
Speaker 1: of that cradle, what's the response. Well, in many ways
Speaker 1: you could argue that spiritualism in America predates the eighteen
Speaker 1: forty eight knockings. UM. Belief in spirit communication has long
Speaker 1: even ancient roots across cultures. Regular communication with the spirit
Speaker 1: world features prominently in Native American cosmologies, and Europeans and
Speaker 1: Africans brought forms of spiritism with them to American shores.
Speaker 1: So I don't want to collapse important differences here. Um
Speaker 1: that said, in many ways, you could argue that spiritualism
Speaker 1: in America predates the eighteen forty eight knockings. So when
Speaker 1: spiritualism becomes a global movement, it becomes one for the
Speaker 1: same reasons that it had power in the United States.
Speaker 1: So these religious reform movements, very specific ones that are
Speaker 1: coming out of the burned over district, but others across
Speaker 1: the world differently, but in some ways similarly, are drawing
Speaker 1: on a kind of the twin reservoirs of elite and
Speaker 1: folk discourse that had a sense of a form of spiritualism.
Speaker 1: So in some cases and internationally, it's about Unitarians and universalists,
Speaker 1: about Freemasons and free lovers, about Shakers and Quakers, and
Speaker 1: Mormons and Millerites. But all of that rich soil that
Speaker 1: became the kind of spiritual hotbed that that birtht American
Speaker 1: spiritualism had enough that connected it to distinctive but older
Speaker 1: folk traditions and you know, maybe even just older desires
Speaker 1: for spiritual contact and connection that translated and spread m
Speaker 1: You write that in your book that spiritualism was similar
Speaker 1: to many of the other kind of radical anti clerical
Speaker 1: strains of Protestantism at the time, pardon me, and and
Speaker 1: that it sought to make religious hierarchy, and you said
Speaker 1: this at the beginning to and kind of the control
Speaker 1: of expertise by white men, and they're kind of the
Speaker 1: boundaries around authority obsolete. And it wasn't that that it
Speaker 1: eliminated the idea of revelation through a medium or that
Speaker 1: it was mediated by someone in particular, but it changed
Speaker 1: the rules of who could be the go between. Can
Speaker 1: you talk a little bit about the consequence of these changes,
Speaker 1: maybe in the context of the Seneca False Convention, which
Speaker 1: was also part of that revolutionary spirit and they were
Speaker 1: all connected. I mean, the most obvious and unique thing
Speaker 1: about spiritualism is that women and sometimes young girls like
Speaker 1: the Fox sisters, were placed at the center of spirit circles.
Speaker 1: So at a time in the middle of the nineteenth
Speaker 1: century where the idea of women speaking in public was anathema,
Speaker 1: all of the sudden there were these women and children
Speaker 1: speaking in voices that presumably were not their own, but
Speaker 1: in doing so, they were taking center stage in a
Speaker 1: way that had not been seen before. And actually, and
Speaker 1: Browdie argues that that of the women speaking in public
Speaker 1: at that time of the nineteenth century, spiritualist outnumber all
Speaker 1: other public speakers, so it becomes a way for women
Speaker 1: to find women and girls to find a different voice.
Speaker 1: Although this gets really tricky because their vessels of a sort,
Speaker 1: they're not presumably speaking in their own words, they're they're
Speaker 1: channeling messages from beyond. So what spiritualism allows for is
Speaker 1: a kind of remaking of women, middle class white women,
Speaker 1: I should say, as as pure, as receptive, as passive.
Speaker 1: All of those qualities that seemingly them unfit for public
Speaker 1: life made them perfectly fit as the empty vessels who
Speaker 1: could channel the spirits and the words of others from beyond.
Speaker 1: You write that the roots of spiritualism and radical communities
Speaker 1: and including the women's rights movement at the time, meant
Speaker 1: that spiritualists when they went to England, spiritualists like Maria
Speaker 1: hayden Um had access to some well known reformers and
Speaker 1: and uh utopians like Robert Owen and other European radicals.
Speaker 1: Can you briefly describe the political situation in England uh
Speaker 1: kind of at the time that would have opened space
Speaker 1: for people like Robert Owen and for spiritualists who had
Speaker 1: connections to him again, this goes beyond on the scope
Speaker 1: of my knowledge, and I'm taking this up in the
Speaker 1: morn No. But it's super but it's but it's super fascinating.
Speaker 1: And that that the kind of Anglo American movement, the
Speaker 1: movement back and forth across the Atlantic, is absolutely crucial
Speaker 1: to the to the structuring practice of spiritualism. And it's
Speaker 1: not just that that mediums moved back and forth, or
Speaker 1: that there were speakers who you know, went on circuits
Speaker 1: and traveled. But you know, as you point out, that
Speaker 1: there were there were these connections of of of folks
Speaker 1: and what it meant is that it opened very powerful
Speaker 1: doors very quickly. So what I know about that particular
Speaker 1: case is that medium um was very well connected and
Speaker 1: and you know, someone who can who knows more can
Speaker 1: tell you about it. But that combination of mediumship media,
Speaker 1: which is to say a lot of people who had
Speaker 1: relationships with the press, that was that was that enabled
Speaker 1: to kind of mediation of these um, of these experiences
Speaker 1: and of this movement meant that door swung open in
Speaker 1: ways that they that seems really surprising from our vantage.
Speaker 1: Let's jump to uh spiritualism and the institution of marriage.
Speaker 1: We've been talking about kind of the instant, the anti
Speaker 1: institutional impulse, uh, and its relationship to spiritualism. UH. Marriages
Speaker 1: like Cora Hatch's marriage to Benjamin Hatch or Victoria Woodhall's
Speaker 1: early marriage to Kenning. Um, what did they tell us
Speaker 1: about marriage and gendered power more broadly in American life
Speaker 1: in the eighteen forties, fifties, sixties, in eighteen seventies, where
Speaker 1: people like Victoria would Hall really challenge the well, I
Speaker 1: get a Victoria Woodhall. But to begin with the question
Speaker 1: that you asked in the eighteen forties and fifties, it's
Speaker 1: probably worth saying that coverture, which is the legal doctrine
Speaker 1: in which the married woman is literally covered politically, socially,
Speaker 1: and economically by her husband, meant that marriage was an
Speaker 1: institution which women gave up their power figuratively and literally. Uh.
Speaker 1: So spiritual is become among the group of folks, and
Speaker 1: really starting in the eighteen fifties, they allie um in
Speaker 1: some ways with also free love advocates. And I should say, um,
Speaker 1: from our vandam point, free love sounds very sixties or seventies, UM,
Speaker 1: And it's you know, it sounds like a kind of
Speaker 1: untrammeled sexual license, which it really wasn't um. Free love advocates,
Speaker 1: who often had ties to the abolition movement, frequently invoked
Speaker 1: comparisons between marriage and chattel slavery. However deeply problematic that is,
Speaker 1: for you know, these these white free love advocates to
Speaker 1: do UM. But nonetheless, spiritualism and free love, with its
Speaker 1: idea of elected affinities, directly attacked the often coercive bodily
Speaker 1: bonds of marriage. So the idea was is that UM
Speaker 1: gets complicated, but the notion of spiritual affinities is such
Speaker 1: that UM, in some versions, everyone has a spiritual affinity,
Speaker 1: a spiritual mate that they might find in this world
Speaker 1: or perhaps the next. But free love advocates dissolved their
Speaker 1: marriages with much more frequency than did many of their contemporaries.
Speaker 1: And then i teenth century, and the idea was is,
Speaker 1: if there was a spiritual affinity that would override the
Speaker 1: earthly bonds of marriage, then that earthly legal marriage should
Speaker 1: be dissolved for the more UM spiritually affinitive that's not
Speaker 1: a word or a different kind of spiritual affinity. That
Speaker 1: would be the you know, the real, the real, the
Speaker 1: real love UM so that's that, and Um, Cora Hatch
Speaker 1: is married for five times Andrew Jackson Davis, who is
Speaker 1: a male medium at the time, again, who who actually
Speaker 1: uses a lot of those same Victorian ideas, at least
Speaker 1: when he's young, about being susceptible, impressionable, virtuous, pious um,
Speaker 1: and and is able to kind of to to use
Speaker 1: those those characteristics that would not be fitting for a
Speaker 1: different kind of active man. Um becomes a way for
Speaker 1: him to also create a kind of uh unconventional notion
Speaker 1: of of masculinity. But but most significantly, he dissolves his
Speaker 1: marriage is over and over in this kind of free love.
Speaker 1: So so that connection between free love and spiritualism is real. Um.
Speaker 1: It is also true that many spiritualists at the time
Speaker 1: decried free love and refuse the connection and saw free
Speaker 1: love is really tarnishing the especially religious impulses of spiritualism.
Speaker 1: So there there is many There are many as many
Speaker 1: detractors of free love within the worlds of spiritualism as
Speaker 1: there are spiritualists to become free lovers. Um. But when
Speaker 1: you think of someone like like Cora Hatch, but really
Speaker 1: Victoria Woodhall and Tennessee Claflin and Tennessee. Claflin is Victoria
Speaker 1: woodhall sister. And they attacked the double standard, the sexual
Speaker 1: double standard, as well as the sort of hypocrisies of marriage,
Speaker 1: and they attacked them in print, and they attacked powerful man.
Speaker 1: And um, it's it's kind of amazing looking back on
Speaker 1: it in this moment, because so Cleveland described, i would say,
Speaker 1: modestly explained her incredibly radical project that she and her sister,
Speaker 1: Victoria Woodhold took up. And she she wrote, we've we've tried,
Speaker 1: and this was a kind of attack on the rights
Speaker 1: that the Rakish man had and that that the woman
Speaker 1: was made to bear the blame of this, the sexual
Speaker 1: double standard. So Cleveland rights, we've tried to make rake
Speaker 1: as disgraceful as horror. We can't do it. And now
Speaker 1: we are determined to take the disgrace out of horror.
Speaker 1: That's in the eighteen seventies. I still find that incredibly.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's it's amazing that that. It's just
Speaker 1: it's so ahead of its time and in so many ways,
Speaker 1: so so folks like Cleveland and Woodhall are are at
Speaker 1: theater edges of spiritualism. That said, the movement made room
Speaker 1: for a kind of range of ways of being the
Speaker 1: world that would not have, um, that would not have
Speaker 1: fit in many, certainly religious communities in the United States
Speaker 1: at the time, um, but also political communities. Let's let's
Speaker 1: talk a little bit more about that, because, um, you
Speaker 1: have mediums like the Fox sisters and Cora and Emma
Speaker 1: Britain who were closer towards the center of spiritualism. You
Speaker 1: have the wood Halls who well, well, Victoria Woodhall and
Speaker 1: Tenny who who restore up trouble for spiritualism when they
Speaker 1: you know, with those attachments. But you also have male
Speaker 1: mediums like you mentioned Andrew Jackson Davis, and we're talking
Speaker 1: a bit about Daniel Douglas whom as well. UM, can
Speaker 1: you say a little bit more about masculinity and femininity
Speaker 1: and gender and power in spiritualism and how maybe by
Speaker 1: contrasting these these figures, um, how they they challenged or
Speaker 1: adapted or remixed some of these ideas about what a
Speaker 1: man or a woman should do or be. Spiritualism provided
Speaker 1: a different kind of home for a range of gendered
Speaker 1: masculinities and femininities that would not have fit comfortably into
Speaker 1: every Victorian community. And part of that was about embracing
Speaker 1: a notion of receptivity, so you know, mediums open themselves
Speaker 1: to other spirits. There they take up nineteenth century Victorian
Speaker 1: notions of the virtues of white female womanhood that allow
Speaker 1: certain kinds of power for women and girls to speak
Speaker 1: in public, as we talked about before, but also a
Speaker 1: range of masculinities for men who might have sat you know,
Speaker 1: outside that the strictures or boundaries of what was possible
Speaker 1: for Victorian men. So um Andrew Jackson Davis, who starts
Speaker 1: his career very young, and he then goes on to
Speaker 1: become one of the major writers and figures of nineteenth
Speaker 1: century spiritualism. But when he begins, he's he's very young,
Speaker 1: and he is developed by a mesmerist um. And and
Speaker 1: that even the term developed, the idea of being developed
Speaker 1: as a medium is passive. It it happens to the
Speaker 1: medium developed like film, I mean these kind of media technology.
Speaker 1: It's it's more than analogy, but it's everywhere as analogy
Speaker 1: and metaphor. So once a medium like Andrew Jackson Davis
Speaker 1: is developed as a medium, he was then he then
Speaker 1: followed this stronger control who was also a man um
Speaker 1: later in his life Andrew Jackson Davis marries a much
Speaker 1: older woman. The idea of her strength and age was
Speaker 1: that she would also be a more powerful control. So
Speaker 1: you have this kind of shifting notions of of gender
Speaker 1: and power that again exceed what was possible in in
Speaker 1: many Victorian communities at the time. Um. As spiritualism grew,
Speaker 1: and it grew pretty fast. Um, how did the various
Speaker 1: church traditions or some of these can unities that were
Speaker 1: really centered around institutions that are being challenged, Uh, how
Speaker 1: did they respond to spiritualism and the challenges opposed to
Speaker 1: hierarchy across these various avalances. The most honest answer is
Speaker 1: it worked differently, and it worked differently across different traditions.
Speaker 1: So you have Quakers, especially Hicksite Quakers, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: creating the foundation for spiritualism to grow in a place
Speaker 1: like Rochester at on. You know, on the other end,
Speaker 1: you have someone like Orestes Brownson writing um publicly that
Speaker 1: he was converting to Catholicism because the feminized, you know,
Speaker 1: weak kinds of movements that are coming out of this
Speaker 1: feminization of American Protestantism, UM made him yearn for the
Speaker 1: strictures and hierarchies of the Catholic Church. So both on
Speaker 1: the individual level and on the collective community level, they're
Speaker 1: they're real. There's a real range of response. I don't
Speaker 1: know if churches actually came out against spiritualists or how that,
Speaker 1: how that might have worked. I think a lot of
Speaker 1: the major denominations refer to ignore spiritualism and hope it
Speaker 1: would go away, like how is this possibly going to last? Um?
Speaker 1: But within the movement and within the press, which you know,
Speaker 1: spent a lot of time reading, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: UM correspondence discussing, you know, what what some pastor has said,
Speaker 1: or the attacks coming from someone who was leaving, you know,
Speaker 1: to to to find a more proper good religion, and
Speaker 1: and spiritualism then becomes that the foil against which these
Speaker 1: you know, properly ministered and institutional churches can define themselves against.
Speaker 1: Spiritualism was also often positioned sometimes in the press, sometimes
Speaker 1: by spiritualists themselves in their own press vehicles. UM kind
Speaker 1: of at an interesting midpoint between what we could crudely
Speaker 1: call like faith and science. Uh. For believers, it was
Speaker 1: sometimes you know, a field of empirical proofs for a
Speaker 1: belief in the spirit world. Um. While for materialists or dissenters,
Speaker 1: it was uh kind of a horizon of knowledge in
Speaker 1: the natural world. Um. Was this kind of liminal zone?
Speaker 1: Was it more of an asset or a liability? For
Speaker 1: spiritualists in the eighteen fifties, I would say it was
Speaker 1: absolutely an assets. That idea of a little zone I
Speaker 1: think is exactly right. Spiritualists refused the distinction between religion
Speaker 1: and science. They denied that a warfare or even that
Speaker 1: a divide exists between religion and science, and instead offered
Speaker 1: up and al chemical combination of religion and science wrapped
Speaker 1: in popular positivism. So spiritualism was a vernacular science, and
Speaker 1: spiritualists saw I should say most spiritualists saw themselves as
Speaker 1: vernacular scientists, as investigators. Um. It was also a religious
Speaker 1: practice and sometimes just excellent theater. But the language around
Speaker 1: spiritualism was all about that relationship between faith and science.
Speaker 1: So a very um well known book from the time
Speaker 1: was called proof Palpable, the idea that that the manifestations
Speaker 1: of spiritual spiritualists provide proof palpable that could be studied
Speaker 1: in the lab, that can be shown by investigators UM
Speaker 1: of the existence of the spirit world. So from the
Speaker 1: very beginning, the connections to technology, to science, all of
Speaker 1: that was was born into the movement. You mentioned the
Speaker 1: spiritualist press. What were the banner of light in the
Speaker 1: Herald of progress and why we're periodicals like these important
Speaker 1: for the history of spiritualism. Spiritual is published voluminously throughout
Speaker 1: the especially throughout the second half of the of the
Speaker 1: nineteenth century, and it is what has made the research
Speaker 1: possible that many of us have done. So there's there's
Speaker 1: there's voluminous writings by spirituals in the nineteenth century. There's
Speaker 1: now an almost equally extensive historiography on the subject UM.
Speaker 1: But it was incredibly important for the movement for spreading
Speaker 1: the word UM. Spiritualists in many ways were UM organized
Speaker 1: in their home circles and their science circles in small
Speaker 1: group communalism. But the community of print of readers who
Speaker 1: met in camp meetings and in lecture and lecture circuit
Speaker 1: was only one part of the spiritualist community. I mean,
Speaker 1: when you think of all of the readers UM, this
Speaker 1: kind of imagined community that was made possible by the
Speaker 1: hugely burgeoning, incredibly diverse nationalist spiritualist press UM, then you
Speaker 1: get a sense of um, of the kind of power
Speaker 1: of the spreading of this word, and spiritualism has. One
Speaker 1: of one of the difficulties of studying spiritualism is that
Speaker 1: it doesn't it doesn't provide the same kind of obvious
Speaker 1: means of either counting or accounting for spiritualism. So there
Speaker 1: are no membership roles UM, there are no churches. You
Speaker 1: can't count you know, adherents in the same way that
Speaker 1: you could with a more traditional religious study UM. And
Speaker 1: it isn't until really late in the waning days of
Speaker 1: spiritualism that they become interested. Well, there there's interest earlier,
Speaker 1: but it's only in the waning days at the end
Speaker 1: of the nineteenth century that spiritualist institutions really start going.
Speaker 1: So the press for much of the nineteenth century is
Speaker 1: that institution. It's the it's the network, it's the the
Speaker 1: the interweaving of um, of people in places that were um,
Speaker 1: that were brought together in this um, in this kind
Speaker 1: of well, in this imagined community, and of the net
Speaker 1: I mean you also probably say like networks also played
Speaker 1: a vital role within spiritualist circles, whether it's networks of
Speaker 1: rope held by participants in some say, once circles to
Speaker 1: connect them like the you know, like like the ectromagnetic
Speaker 1: flows in a battery. Um. They created a vast network
Speaker 1: of communications between heaven and earth. Um networks of transportation.
Speaker 1: Obviously that these knew what networks of transportation from the
Speaker 1: railroad to the Erie Canal, which where was Rochester is
Speaker 1: connected right in the call that as well as networks
Speaker 1: of subtle energies that were connecting that we're connecting people
Speaker 1: in science circles. When it comes to some of the
Speaker 1: early tallies, there is that interesting point in four when
Speaker 1: interest in spiritualism had grown so much that although we
Speaker 1: don't have kind of a a sum total number of
Speaker 1: the movement, there's that one expression of a swell of
Speaker 1: interest in the fifteen thousand people petition the United States
Speaker 1: Senate to fund a scientific commission to investigate spiritualism. UM.
Speaker 1: What was the result of that attempt? It was tabled,
Speaker 1: but it created more publicity for the movement. So that
Speaker 1: moment in eighteen fifty four, when Senator James Shields, then
Speaker 1: of Illinois he went on to be a senator in
Speaker 1: two other states as well, when he takes these fifteen
Speaker 1: thousand signatures to Congress. He's at once met with some derision,
Speaker 1: but the argument was that Congress was funding investigations into electricity,
Speaker 1: so why not spiritualism, And that they're seen as similar
Speaker 1: at that time is so extraordinary to me. But um,
Speaker 1: nothing happened with that particular petition, but the fact of
Speaker 1: fifteen thousand people signing it um was huge. And again
Speaker 1: even though it was tabled, the investigation didn't happen. Congress
Speaker 1: didn't move forward, the Senate didn't move forward. Um, the
Speaker 1: publicity around it increased interest for the movement, without question.
Speaker 1: So that's a kind of key moment in a lot
Speaker 1: of ways. I think let's shuffle a little even a
Speaker 1: little more into political history of the era, because this
Speaker 1: is the decade after the the American invasion of Mexico
Speaker 1: and the gold Rush, the Compromise of eighteen fifty the
Speaker 1: Kansas Nebratas Nebraska Acts eighteen fifty four, um. So at
Speaker 1: this point, how were Americans in the East thinking about
Speaker 1: the West? What was what was the presence of the
Speaker 1: West in the imagination of some of these groups in
Speaker 1: New York that were if there's a center to spiritualism,
Speaker 1: which is a really dispersed movement. Um. How is the
Speaker 1: West featuring in the imagination of spiritualism at the time. Well,
Speaker 1: I think in multiple ways. UM. On the one hand,
Speaker 1: that this, especially before the Civil War, the West was
Speaker 1: seen by many Americans on the East coast is what
Speaker 1: was called the Great Desert that there that it was
Speaker 1: this you know, open open plain and waiting to be
Speaker 1: conquered with the spirit of manifest destiny. On the other hand,
Speaker 1: spiritualist moved to the West coast. So there's spiritualists encampments
Speaker 1: that can be traced throughout the West. So that I
Speaker 1: mean just as one example or a Hatch's father goes
Speaker 1: to Wisconsin to um to form a kind of version
Speaker 1: of Hopedale there. So there are these movements west forming
Speaker 1: um forming communities in the West. UM. California yesterday is
Speaker 1: today has become a kind of spiritual hotbed. So eventually
Speaker 1: spiritualist moved to San Diego and Madame Tingley's Loma Land. Um.
Speaker 1: Spiritualism comes west to just a place near Santa Barbara
Speaker 1: that is still called Summerland, named after the spiritualist idea
Speaker 1: of the afterlife, not justification spot. UM. So these on
Speaker 1: the one hand, there is this imagination of the West
Speaker 1: as this, at least among you know, certain certain kind
Speaker 1: of theological conception of the West is wide open for
Speaker 1: the taking. They're also real spiritualists who are looking at that,
Speaker 1: especially the West coast, as a place that would become
Speaker 1: the kind of UM next movement forward, the next the
Speaker 1: next place for UM for building a spiritualist community, and
Speaker 1: they do from from very early on, and you've also
Speaker 1: written a lot about this um spiritualisms. Spiritualists claimed to
Speaker 1: be under the control of Native American spirit guides. Indian
Speaker 1: spirit guides controls UM. What does this tell us about
Speaker 1: what spiritualists thought about Native nations, native peoples. It's complicated.
Speaker 1: Um Spiritualists relied on a Anglo American cultural understanding of
Speaker 1: Native Americans as highly spiritual and mapped onto the spirit
Speaker 1: world the colonial relationship of the Indian as a figure
Speaker 1: as a guide for the white man. So spiritualist positioned
Speaker 1: Native Americans as spirit guides as vital links between this
Speaker 1: world in the next um. It was Indian guide who
Speaker 1: could bring spiritualists through the veil, tracing the invisible footprints
Speaker 1: beyond UM. That said, these performances were a way of
Speaker 1: staging Indians vanishing their disappearance right their Indian ghosts. So,
Speaker 1: on the one hand, spiritualists are interested in um in
Speaker 1: spectral Indians, which is to say, dead Indians UM, and
Speaker 1: as such they're they're part of um of a larger
Speaker 1: kind of national engagement with um uh notion of the
Speaker 1: vanishing Indian and vanishing tribes. There's a huge literature in
Speaker 1: the nineteenth century, the Last of the Mohicans being the
Speaker 1: most famous among them. But from these nostalgic, nostalgic portrayals
Speaker 1: of dying warriors and lost tribes um to an idea
Speaker 1: of playing Indian, as Philip Gloria has termed it um.
Speaker 1: Nineteent century subjects produced themselves as Americans through an engagement
Speaker 1: with national fantasies of a white man's Indian, which is
Speaker 1: to say, an appropriated um version as opposed to actual
Speaker 1: Native Americans. So while native actual native nations are being
Speaker 1: literally absented from the national landscape through ongoing dispossession, removal acts,
Speaker 1: acts of war, acts of genocide, the figure, the literary figure,
Speaker 1: especially of the vanishing Indian, often took on um an apparitional,
Speaker 1: if metaphorical form, and the figure, the figure of the
Speaker 1: Indian ghost is profoundly ambiguous. And the figure of the
Speaker 1: of the Indian ghost appears in antebellty fiction, in plays, again, poetry.
Speaker 1: It's everywhere, um, but it's it's very it's a very
Speaker 1: ambiguous figure. Often the Indians, whether it's its spiritual sciences
Speaker 1: or in other literary manifestations, register your dissatisfaction with the
Speaker 1: European conquest of the Americans. But the fact that they
Speaker 1: are ghosts testifies seemingly contradictorily to the success of that
Speaker 1: very conquest. Um. It's a complicated logic of absension, of abstraction,
Speaker 1: and and of appropriation of a kind of love and theft.
Speaker 1: So Indians appear, and they begin to appear really early, um,
Speaker 1: very very early after the forty eight knockings, and is
Speaker 1: the first one that I found. Um. Indians spirits begin
Speaker 1: to appear as guides to the afterworld, as healers, often
Speaker 1: as kind of disembodied envoys of American historiography, and all
Speaker 1: of this relies on a cultural understanding of Native Americans
Speaker 1: again as highly spiritual that would map onto the spirit world.
Speaker 1: This colonial relationship as Indians as guides, um, whether as
Speaker 1: spirit guides in the seance or the you know, the
Speaker 1: kind of older portrayal of the Indian's role as guiding
Speaker 1: the white man, as helpers in this in this manifest destiny. UM.
Speaker 1: So that said, spiritual what what I found in like that?
Speaker 1: We know right that that that ninete century Anglo Americans
Speaker 1: have this, this this notion of the vanished Indian. It
Speaker 1: becomes an easy way to see themselves as not um
Speaker 1: implicated in Indian genocide. They can weep sentimental tears over
Speaker 1: po Hotton Um or you know, the figure of the vanishing,
Speaker 1: the vanishing Mohican, the last Mohican. But the strange thing
Speaker 1: happened because it turns out that when spirits show up
Speaker 1: as a science, they don't always say what you want
Speaker 1: them to. So spirit guides, Indian guides came to spiritualist
Speaker 1: science demanding justice in this material world, and some spiritualists,
Speaker 1: many more than other nineteenth century Anglo Americans, begin to
Speaker 1: work for the cause of Native Americans. So Um, using
Speaker 1: the publications of the spiritualist pressed to speak out against
Speaker 1: particular particular outrages. UM eventually to work against the DAWs Act,
Speaker 1: which is a um the idea putting breaking up tribes
Speaker 1: and putting them on reservations. So there is again it's ambiguous,
Speaker 1: it's complicated, it's at once appropriation. But also these at
Speaker 1: least some spiritualists took seriously the messages that they were
Speaker 1: being given from these spiritual Indian guides and used them
Speaker 1: as a way to create relationships with the act actually
Speaker 1: ongoing disappearance, genocidal vanishing of um of native nations in
Speaker 1: that nineteenth century present. So let's jump back into the
Speaker 1: late eighteen fifties. Um, there's a big crash in seven
Speaker 1: market crash, How did it affect the American mood in
Speaker 1: the years before the Civil War? And did that have
Speaker 1: any influence on spiritualists? Seven crash? The panic of eighteen
Speaker 1: seventy eight seven was the again like overexpansion of whatever
Speaker 1: they declining international economy blah blah blah blah blah. But um,
Speaker 1: the panic of eighteen fifty seven becomes the financial crisis
Speaker 1: that was really the first worldwide economic crisis. So because
Speaker 1: and across the across the nineteenth century, there will be
Speaker 1: panics there, and they get worse as the nineteenth century
Speaker 1: goes on. And part of the reason why they get
Speaker 1: worse is because people for the first time were m
Speaker 1: imbricated in the cash economy, they were paid wages, they
Speaker 1: were often renters, They didn't own their own property. UM,
Speaker 1: they were increasingly urbanized, that they didn't have that little
Speaker 1: plot of land and you know, a way to grow food.
Speaker 1: They were out of work. So with each of those crashes,
Speaker 1: with each of those panics, m things get worse. I'm
Speaker 1: not sure that the crash had that much or or
Speaker 1: I have not found that the crash really affected the
Speaker 1: mood um of spiritualists in the way that it um,
Speaker 1: the way that it's you know, something obviously, something like
Speaker 1: the Civil War, that that, at least in what I
Speaker 1: was reading UM this sense and of course they're lad,
Speaker 1: but the sense of personal loss, of of of death UM,
Speaker 1: whether it was on a global skill or in you know,
Speaker 1: in the familiar situation, seemed to be much more important
Speaker 1: in UM in bringing people to the seance table than
Speaker 1: the kind of anxieties caused by a panic. And and interestingly,
Speaker 1: they're you know, they're they're called panics of the nineteenth century.
Speaker 1: And I think, as the story goes, it's it's Herbert,
Speaker 1: one of Herbert Hoober's advisors, who says, don't call it
Speaker 1: a panic. People panic. If you call it a panic,
Speaker 1: call it a depression, UM, and then it's called a
Speaker 1: depression is starting with the great compression UM. But the
Speaker 1: question of why these are already always named after moods
Speaker 1: is no psychic states and not psychological states has yet
Speaker 1: another issue. But to the best of my knowledge, of
Speaker 1: the seven PANICCK did not have a great deal of
Speaker 1: connection to UM, to the growth or or UM really
Speaker 1: affect the spiritual's movement. To the best of my knowledge,
Speaker 1: that said, UM, the nineteenth century was a time of
Speaker 1: tremendous loss. Women died in childbirth, epidemics, decimated communities. Cholera
Speaker 1: was the epidemic disease of the nineteenth century. It was
Speaker 1: to the nineteenth century what the plague was to the
Speaker 1: fourteen UM. And there were deadly upbreaks in the United
Speaker 1: States and in eighteen forty nine. I mean, in some
Speaker 1: ways I hate of those kind of cause explanations, but
Speaker 1: you know, you could argue that eighteen forty eighteen forty
Speaker 1: nine UM, massive death plus this new technology would bring
Speaker 1: people to spiritualism. And then obviously the American Civil War
Speaker 1: had devastating death tolls on both sides, which is kind
Speaker 1: of hard to wrap one's head around. Just in terms
Speaker 1: of pure numbers, right, So on the two sides, at
Speaker 1: least six and twenty thousand soldiers died from diseases and wounds.
Speaker 1: That number is equivalent to two of the entire population
Speaker 1: the US population at the time. Two percent of Americans
Speaker 1: today equals six million people. So thinking about the equivalent
Speaker 1: of a war in four years in which six million
Speaker 1: people died, it's just it's so massive, and it just
Speaker 1: was not a war that people got over. Um. That said,
Speaker 1: spiritualism begins before the Civil War, So all of these things,
Speaker 1: all of these things are linked. And um, you know,
Speaker 1: commuting understanding those those forms of massive loss is something
Speaker 1: that you know, no, no technology really provides us needs
Speaker 1: to do. Well, let's let's point towards the Civil War
Speaker 1: a little it, um, maybe starting with another kind of
Speaker 1: big picture question. Um, with spiritualism's background in all of
Speaker 1: these Eutopean radical Northern reformist movements, how was spiritualism received
Speaker 1: across the South? Really differently, Spiritualism is most popular in
Speaker 1: areas of the Northeast, sometimes the Midwest. Eventually California with
Speaker 1: the largest grouping of those post Calvinist Protestant Anglo Americans,
Speaker 1: again the northeast the west, but there were also small
Speaker 1: groupings in the South. So New Orleans, with its French, Creole,
Speaker 1: Afro Caribbean and Catholic syncretic mixture, became a kind of
Speaker 1: hotbed of spiritualism, and there are relatively smaller numbers of
Speaker 1: spiritualists across the South. There are many fewer, But I
Speaker 1: just learned that before the Civil War, the states of Alabama,
Speaker 1: that is, the Alabama and South carol line of legislatures,
Speaker 1: prohibited sciences and other gatherings in their states, which I
Speaker 1: found particularly interesting because we we know the way that
Speaker 1: religion was prohibited and was seen um for enslaved people
Speaker 1: as a way to organize. So some religious gatherings at
Speaker 1: certain times in different states across the South were made illegal.
Speaker 1: But the fact that Alabama and South Carolina bother to
Speaker 1: put this newly into their laws suggest that perhaps there
Speaker 1: was there was something going on, and that the spread
Speaker 1: of spiritualism, like the spread of the abolitionist publications that
Speaker 1: were making their way south from the North um was
Speaker 1: seen as particularly dangerous. When when the Civil War begins,
Speaker 1: how do spiritualists respond? There? They're almost universally pro union,
Speaker 1: but they're also kind of amazing ways that the spiritualist
Speaker 1: press positions itself. So various spiritualist newspapers UH talk about
Speaker 1: the importance of spirit helpers in getting the numbers and
Speaker 1: the news of the war quicker, faster, and arguably more
Speaker 1: accurate than could other forms of news distribution. UM. And
Speaker 1: I mean the thing again, so that the amazing thing,
Speaker 1: the sort of a hard thing that I can never
Speaker 1: quite wrap my head around about the Civil War is
Speaker 1: that most soldiers died as unknown soldiers. There were no
Speaker 1: dog tags in the nineteenth century. Often UM soldiers would
Speaker 1: place letters in their pockets UM with the hope that
Speaker 1: if their body was found, the letter would be sent
Speaker 1: to their loved ones. But there was no system for
Speaker 1: identifying the dead, identifying the wounded, knowing where people could be.
Speaker 1: I mean, eventually there was, but because of that that
Speaker 1: huge lack of of knowing where people were, the spiritualist
Speaker 1: press takes on this kind of metaphysical quality where people
Speaker 1: are turning to it to provide and to and to
Speaker 1: get news of the war and presumably news of their
Speaker 1: loved ones, whether that or alive. Can you talk a
Speaker 1: little about the letters of mourning that we're published in
Speaker 1: spiritualist periodicals. Yeah, these are so amazing to me. And like,
Speaker 1: after my book is published, actually got an email from
Speaker 1: someone who had just lost just lost a child and
Speaker 1: she was reading this book and talking about it in
Speaker 1: with a group of women who had also lost children.
Speaker 1: But that idea that the only the only people who
Speaker 1: understand mourning are those who have experienced lost themselves and
Speaker 1: the spiritualist press um. I think that the Schekna is
Speaker 1: one of the first spirituals publications to include pages of
Speaker 1: letters from readers to the editor man in Samuel Britten,
Speaker 1: asking for comfort, asking for consolation, and sometimes asking for
Speaker 1: assistant in contacting dead loved ones. So their letters of mourning,
Speaker 1: their letters of loss, and there's sometimes letters asking for
Speaker 1: help and making the connections. So thinking about again multiplying
Speaker 1: the idea of media and mediation that the mediums often
Speaker 1: worked for the media, that is the spiritualist news newspapers.
Speaker 1: So UM. The Banner of Light, which is one of
Speaker 1: the largest and most widely read spiritualist publications at mid century,
Speaker 1: regularly published a column called The Messenger, which included communications
Speaker 1: to readers from spirits of the dead and they had
Speaker 1: a medium exclusively for the banner of light. So again
Speaker 1: you have this community in print that's bringing people together
Speaker 1: beyond the science circle. And those those letters of mourning
Speaker 1: um I were so different than the kind of elaborate
Speaker 1: morning cultures that um have been um so well documented
Speaker 1: in middle class morning cultures with you know, elaborate dress
Speaker 1: rituals and clothing and the shifting of colors and crape
Speaker 1: covered houses and like the kind of etiquette around those
Speaker 1: Victorian morning cultures are so different than reading these letters,
Speaker 1: which are just so raw and and and and and
Speaker 1: a really different kind of archive into the nineteenth century
Speaker 1: history of loss mm hm. When we're talking about kind
Speaker 1: of the middle class expectations, especially around something like mourning
Speaker 1: that was often coded feminine um. And we're looking at
Speaker 1: the seventies, what can we say about the connections between
Speaker 1: the women's rights movement and spiritualists and maybe women in
Speaker 1: class kind of between all those points. How was spiritualism
Speaker 1: operating in that space in the seventies mhm isous question? No,
Speaker 1: I like it. I like it, um Yeah. I mean
Speaker 1: as the story goes, spiritualism rises and falls in the
Speaker 1: eighteen seventies, is a kind of you know, death rattle.
Speaker 1: I don't think that's true, but many historians do. But
Speaker 1: in the in the eighteen seventies, you have you have
Speaker 1: people like Victoria Woodhall who on the one hand are
Speaker 1: galvanizing a national stage UM and on the other are
Speaker 1: seen as pushing the edges, pushing spiritualism beyond beyond a
Speaker 1: kind of fringe. But in terms of class, I mean,
Speaker 1: one of the earliest writings on um on spiritualism came
Speaker 1: was written by Lawrence Moore about the medium as a
Speaker 1: new profession in the nineteenth century. So mediumship very early
Speaker 1: on became way for women to work and get paid
Speaker 1: for what they do. And there's a lot of discussion
Speaker 1: in this spiritual espress about weather not mediums should be
Speaker 1: paid and but but it becomes his way, it becomes
Speaker 1: a form of wage work. Um. By the eighteen seventies,
Speaker 1: that's not so shocking, and those discussions disappear. But um
Speaker 1: that I don't know if there's actually a shift in
Speaker 1: adherence and how that shifts around class. I mean. The
Speaker 1: criticue of the women sufrage movement, of course is that
Speaker 1: it was mainly peopled are largely peopled by um more
Speaker 1: affluent elite women, white women women. But Ambrodi can run
Speaker 1: that that history beautifully again. Um. But speaking of white
Speaker 1: women in positions in these movements, UM, sojourn or truth,
Speaker 1: Harriet Jacobs other black spiritualist women like Harriet Wilson UM
Speaker 1: often faced bigotry even in ambolitionists and equal rights circles,
Speaker 1: as well as utopian and reformist movements. Um. Can you
Speaker 1: describe some of the forces at work in these movements
Speaker 1: that maintained race attitudes and relationships even as these groups
Speaker 1: lobbied for social reform, for abolition before the war, that
Speaker 1: kind of thing. Yeah, I think the spiritualists were often reformers,
Speaker 1: some were radicals. But abolitionism is not equivalent to anti racism.
Speaker 1: And it's well known that especially white suffrages were very
Speaker 1: clear that they deserve the vote and black men didn't,
Speaker 1: and black women were, you know, another another thing altogether.
Speaker 1: So white supremacy structured these reform movements even as many
Speaker 1: of of the people involved and abolished the white you know,
Speaker 1: the white women, the white people involved in abolitionism, involved
Speaker 1: in in suffragism and spiritualism, were on some ways outside
Speaker 1: of their time in other ways those movements were as
Speaker 1: structured by um anti black racism as the rest of
Speaker 1: the culture. And I say that not as an apologia,
Speaker 1: but just as an explanation, because I think the fantasy
Speaker 1: is that, you know, here were these incredible interracial groups,
Speaker 1: but in a place like Rochester was actually very unique
Speaker 1: in that it did provide for um for interracial organizing
Speaker 1: around abolition. But Isaac and Amy Posts were actually thrown
Speaker 1: out of their of their Genesee Quakers group for as
Speaker 1: the story goes, having hosted a wedding of two African
Speaker 1: American friends of theirs. So they're at the sort of
Speaker 1: center of what one would imagine would be the most freethinking,
Speaker 1: most anti racists, you know, communities in the country. You know,
Speaker 1: it's still it's it's still there. What kind of pressures
Speaker 1: on the spiritualist movement created a space for materialization mediums?
Speaker 1: And then what did those materialization mediums mean for people
Speaker 1: who had been in the movement for a long time
Speaker 1: that were maybe translectors or spirit burst I suppose you
Speaker 1: could see this as a kind of development of relationship
Speaker 1: to to sound and media. So if those those first
Speaker 1: raps and knocks American spirituals was always a sonic experience,
Speaker 1: and those first raps and knocks that were heard were, um,
Speaker 1: we're a kind of acoustic connection to the to the
Speaker 1: to the world of the dead. It was only later
Speaker 1: that spiritualists began to materialize spiritualist materialized spirits um and
Speaker 1: then eventually ectoplasm and all sorts of other things. You know,
Speaker 1: guitars would play, pianos would float, you know, disembodied hands
Speaker 1: would appear in seances. But it does. The materialization sciences
Speaker 1: were critiqued from some areas of the movement as overly
Speaker 1: showy as just theater. That said, they also convinced investigators
Speaker 1: and way that the earlier raps and knox or they
Speaker 1: you know, they convinced some investigators so famously in the
Speaker 1: again in the eighteen seventies, William Crooks Um, who was
Speaker 1: one of the one of the scientists who became devoted
Speaker 1: devoted spiritualists, kind of falls in love with a spirit
Speaker 1: named Katie King who appeared at it at a science. Um.
Speaker 1: She's she's manifested by another medium, a woman named Florence Cook.
Speaker 1: And it's precisely the materialization of those figures that at
Speaker 1: least for Crooks, and presumably for many others, that was
Speaker 1: the proof palpable. So it's as if spiritualism had um
Speaker 1: had sort of up to its game, moving from the
Speaker 1: sounds of the raps and the knox of the telegraph
Speaker 1: to the development of these new manifestations, paralleling the new
Speaker 1: developments in photography and then eventually spirit photography. M hm, UM,
Speaker 1: let's talk a little bit more about some of those investigators. UM.
Speaker 1: Can you describe the Societies for Psychical Research that formed
Speaker 1: first in London and then in the United States and
Speaker 1: their approach to spiritualism that happens later And here I
Speaker 1: would say, debor Blum is your person. And it's so
Speaker 1: interesting to me the way that people scholars of William
Speaker 1: James and Henry James for that matter, UM, really do
Speaker 1: very little around his work around abnormal psychology and and
Speaker 1: and the founding of the Society's for Psychical Research. But
Speaker 1: but James later in the century sort of turns and
Speaker 1: there's there's probably more to me said about the relationship
Speaker 1: between elite science and spiritualism. So very early on, UM,
Speaker 1: I think it's it's really is like eighteen fifty eighteen
Speaker 1: fifty two, a scientist named Robert Hare, respected chemists at
Speaker 1: the University of Pennsylvania, becomes a devoted spiritualist, and there
Speaker 1: are a number of very prominent scientists, so Hair Crooks,
Speaker 1: Michael Faraday, Beacons experimenting the kind of elite scientists start
Speaker 1: looking at spiritualism and and seeing if there's anything there.
Speaker 1: Once James takes it on, you know, going towards the
Speaker 1: turn of the century. He's very clear and addresses the
Speaker 1: American UM Society for Psychical Research, and I guess it's
Speaker 1: the first or second here that he's president about how
Speaker 1: how important it is that that that spiritualism and the
Speaker 1: psychic states have been taken out of the darkened rooms
Speaker 1: and rat hole sellers that's a quote UM and into
Speaker 1: the you know, the bright light of the laboratory. So
Speaker 1: James is one of the many men at that time
Speaker 1: who are who are deeply interested in the same thing
Speaker 1: that spiritualism, are interested in the in the relationship between
Speaker 1: the brain, soul and psyche, of psychic states, of abnormal psychology.
Speaker 1: And you know, many of those investigators went on to
Speaker 1: to bring that work into academic institutions. So UM psychical
Speaker 1: research goes to Duke University, the first parapsychology lab is
Speaker 1: has started there. So there are these connections and it's James,
Speaker 1: but it's a number of other people as well, and
Speaker 1: it's a whole fascinating world. That's great. So let's talk
Speaker 1: a little more about new thinking about kind of abnormal
Speaker 1: psychology towards the end of the century of the nineteenth century. Um,
Speaker 1: how did new ways of thinking about the human mind
Speaker 1: either relate to interest in spiritualism? Where did they? Did
Speaker 1: they draw interest away or did they push interests towards spiritualism? Um?
Speaker 1: How did how did this kind of new thinking that
Speaker 1: was displacing some of the discrediting some of the older
Speaker 1: sciences of mesmerism and or magnetism, that kind of stuff
Speaker 1: we talked about before? How did new thinking about the mind? Uh?
Speaker 1: Change the way that people related to spiritualism. The amazing
Speaker 1: thing about the eighteen seventies is that during that time,
Speaker 1: over the course of about fifteen years, a group of
Speaker 1: the most prominent Anglo American medical men took up the
Speaker 1: question of spiritualism. So, in in answer to your question,
Speaker 1: how did you thinking about a normal psychology in new
Speaker 1: ways of thinking about the mind? Sap interest in spiritualism,
Speaker 1: it actually increased it, um, but increased it in a
Speaker 1: way that was pathologizing. So in the eighteen seventies, a
Speaker 1: doctor named Frederick Marvin, who is in New York, coins
Speaker 1: the term medio mania, the notion that spiritualism was causing
Speaker 1: this kind of mass mania, both in individual psyches but
Speaker 1: also in the collective mania and madness. But there were
Speaker 1: doctors at that time who were neurologists and UM. In
Speaker 1: the nineteenth century there's there's basically a split between neurologists
Speaker 1: who were studying the mind, the brain, the psyche through
Speaker 1: the nerves, and alienists who were the asylum keepers. So
Speaker 1: so so during this time, neurologists are really looking to
Speaker 1: professionalize their you know, their their own little turf, and
Speaker 1: they do it in many ways, but but you know,
Speaker 1: not in a small way over the bodies of female mediums.
Speaker 1: So neurologists like William Hammond, Silas Ware Mitchell, George Beard
Speaker 1: Um and then also prominent alienis in um in London
Speaker 1: as well, all launch a polemical attack on spiritualism, and
Speaker 1: reading this medical barrage, um well suggest that doctors were
Speaker 1: concerned with both clinical and epistemological issues But all of
Speaker 1: it is about much of it is about medical professionalization.
Speaker 1: They become, they become the experts um in in the
Speaker 1: new worlds of the soul, in the psyche. Did this
Speaker 1: kind of formation of these disciplines as fields, neurology, alienists
Speaker 1: distinguished from each other, distinct from each other? Um, this
Speaker 1: interesting professionalization, did it express anything more all the about
Speaker 1: changes in American culture? Well? Yeah, um. In the late
Speaker 1: nineteenth century, medical doctors were in the process of forming
Speaker 1: a profession around the caretaking of the diseased spirit or psyche,
Speaker 1: which would have been a duty traditionally left to religion.
Speaker 1: So that warfare between science and religion that that spiritualist
Speaker 1: refused was one that doctors were taking on and not
Speaker 1: you know, not all And certainly William James is really
Speaker 1: beautiful about his his insistence in in not um pathologizing
Speaker 1: mystical experience in the ways that some of them do.
Speaker 1: But medical doctors claimed to jurisdiction over insanity rested upon um.
Speaker 1: All they could do to minister was to ministered to
Speaker 1: the body right, and they did so with blood letting
Speaker 1: in all of these forms of quote unquote heroic medicine,
Speaker 1: which were actually really pretty savage, and the mind was
Speaker 1: a new terrain. UM. So spiritualists laid claim and doctors
Speaker 1: late counterclaim, and they began to study female mediums, sometimes
Speaker 1: against their will, sometimes with the you know, full collaboration.
Speaker 1: But it's a fascinating moment. And it's if historians of
Speaker 1: psychoanalysis are very clear that psychoanalysis, at least in Europe,
Speaker 1: was formed around the body and speech of the female hysteric.
Speaker 1: In the United States, you could argue that the American
Speaker 1: science of neurology was formed around the figure of the
Speaker 1: female medium. So in late eighteen eighties we have all
Speaker 1: these kinds of things going on. We also have the
Speaker 1: development of theosophy and New Thought and other kinds of
Speaker 1: new movements, new communities that are forming UH in some
Speaker 1: of the same space where spiritualism had been UM. And
Speaker 1: then Maggie Fox publishes a book that claims her sciences
Speaker 1: were a fraud. Of course there's someone else writing it
Speaker 1: for her, but apparently her testimony. What's the effect on
Speaker 1: spiritualism as a whole when Maggie Fox, one of the
Speaker 1: Fox sisters UH, publishes this kind of revelation, Well, it
Speaker 1: makes them press, as you know, But the actual effect
Speaker 1: on spiritualism as a whole was little. That's the trick
Speaker 1: throughout the history of spiritualism. There have been doubters and debunkers,
Speaker 1: and often those moments of confession actually create more publicity
Speaker 1: for the movement and have the defenders come back even stronger.
Speaker 1: Plus Maggie Fox recants, she really you know, that dissipated
Speaker 1: and broke. Maggie Fox would go on to her forty
Speaker 1: years or forty more years after the original Rochester knockings
Speaker 1: to debunk spiritualism and admit to the very manipulations of
Speaker 1: bone and joint that doctors had earlier accused her and
Speaker 1: her sisters of. Um. It not only confirms the triumph
Speaker 1: of science over the triumph of science over superstition, but
Speaker 1: it really did very little to to sort of change
Speaker 1: the dial among people who were in that said the
Speaker 1: movement was fading, so you know, she got another she
Speaker 1: got to do another tour, um, you know whatever people's
Speaker 1: last act, you know. Um. This is also the period
Speaker 1: where as spiritualism is fading. UM, there are some spiritualists
Speaker 1: like Cora now Cora Richmond, who were working to create
Speaker 1: something that would be stable and last for Spiritualists going forward.
Speaker 1: She was central to founding the National Spiritualist Association. Um.
Speaker 1: What was core ros investment in creating a lasting institutional
Speaker 1: base for spiritualism, Uh, for this movement that had been
Speaker 1: so anti institutional, anti hierarchical um. Maybe not corporate in particular,
Speaker 1: but can you describe kind of the spiritualist dedication to
Speaker 1: creating enduring institutions in the in the eighteen eighties and
Speaker 1: nineties as time kind of stretches on, Well, Core Hatch
Speaker 1: was getting old. She was an aging child star, a
Speaker 1: diva who needed to invest her faith in institutions that
Speaker 1: would outlast her. I mean, I really think that that's
Speaker 1: there's there's something to that in terms of understanding her,
Speaker 1: her her importance to this movement. But that was very
Speaker 1: much an impulse of the era, and historians have described
Speaker 1: that air is you know, an age of corporation, incorporation
Speaker 1: when Americans become you know, more likely to build institutions
Speaker 1: and you know, to to move away from the kind
Speaker 1: of anti authoritarian communal impulses of the fervent of the
Speaker 1: Antebellum years. So some of it is that. But think
Speaker 1: what's true is that that spiritualist institutions. Spiritualist national institutions
Speaker 1: never really get off the ground because spiritualists are rather
Speaker 1: anti authoritarian as a lot. Um, So even in the
Speaker 1: eighteen eighties and nineties, it's almost two it's kind of ending,
Speaker 1: you know. So it always read to me a bit
Speaker 1: like a last gasp. So I'm interested in in your
Speaker 1: your view on the pretty common comparison of spiritualism in
Speaker 1: the United States after the Civil War and in Europe
Speaker 1: after the First World War. Do you have thoughts on
Speaker 1: that comparison that's often made and used to talk about
Speaker 1: kind of national mourning after a cataclysm mcgloss at that scale, Well,
Speaker 1: there's certainly a resurgence after World War One. Obviously, comparing
Speaker 1: the eighteen fifties or the eighteen seventies with the nineteen twenties,
Speaker 1: so much it changed across the turn of that long
Speaker 1: nineteenth century, but so much hadn't changed. Um. World War
Speaker 1: One decimated Europe with a kind of violence and carnage
Speaker 1: never seen before. Um. The new twentieth century had invented
Speaker 1: new weapons of war, but offered little new to help
Speaker 1: survivors grapple or cope with the aftermath. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: people were and are still asking how can the dead
Speaker 1: speak to the living as something other than the haunting,
Speaker 1: seating presence of absence. The resurgence is real. I mean
Speaker 1: it's a different resurgence, but I mean I'm now, I'm
Speaker 1: now in the nine twenties, and Um, Thomas Edison hits
Speaker 1: the press with the news that he is building an
Speaker 1: apparatus to contact the dead. Um, and all of the
Speaker 1: press is framing it at the time, you know, from
Speaker 1: the New York Times to the Scientific America as a
Speaker 1: new resurgence and spiritualism after the war. That's great. Um.
Speaker 1: Stepping back just a bit, but kind of still in
Speaker 1: that space of the turn of the nineteenth century into
Speaker 1: the twenties. You say, in the in the eighties and nineties,
Speaker 1: spiritualism is in decline, Um, what is its status? Its position?
Speaker 1: And maybe in the American religious or social landscape at
Speaker 1: the turn of the century, but it had found its
Speaker 1: way to theosophy, which does grow during that time. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, spirituals are still meeting in camp meetings in
Speaker 1: the you know, in the eighteen eighties and beyond, they're
Speaker 1: still doing their work. I think what's true is because
Speaker 1: the newspapers become less important and the community becomes more diverse.
Speaker 1: And because many historians look at the northeast and and
Speaker 1: don't look at the west quite as much, that you know,
Speaker 1: they've missed a lot of the rebuilding that goes on
Speaker 1: in the eighteen eighties and the kind of experiments that
Speaker 1: are happening outside the northeast or the you know, central
Speaker 1: New York in that area that had worth the original movement.
Speaker 1: So I think the it's less that spiritualism declines. I mean,
Speaker 1: that would be one way to see it, but it
Speaker 1: just becomes more difficult to see for all sorts of reasons.
Speaker 1: And and it moves it you know, it moves into
Speaker 1: different different formations, but but it doesn't die. And then
Speaker 1: the fact that that in it can the resurgence can
Speaker 1: happen again so quickly despite the radical differences across that
Speaker 1: you know, long nineteenth century and into um speaks to
Speaker 1: a kind of enduring power. We're going to cover the
Speaker 1: formation of Cassadega, the Cassadega community in that's there, you go,
Speaker 1: that's it. Yeah, where it moves outside of the Northeast,
Speaker 1: but there are places where people decide to build something
Speaker 1: and what they build less yeah. Um. So as kind
Speaker 1: of maybe a final wrap up question, Um, what do
Speaker 1: you hope that listeners will take away from uh twelve
Speaker 1: hour narrative exploration of nineteenth century spiritualism? Oh my, oh,
Speaker 1: you know I've answered that question really differently over time. UM.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think part of the only reason to
Speaker 1: study history, history is what hurts. The only reason to
Speaker 1: study history is to be able to kind of think
Speaker 1: differently about our present, to write a history of the present.
Speaker 1: And um, I think it's very easy to sort of
Speaker 1: look back at the past and see irrationality and superstition
Speaker 1: and a kind of secularization narrative in which we, you know,
Speaker 1: are are no longer part of this kind of you know,
Speaker 1: community community of believers are dupes or the credulous, the
Speaker 1: credulous ones. And you know, I live in Los Angeles.
Speaker 1: I most people know their sun sign, if not their
Speaker 1: rising sign. When you know, people don't know their blood
Speaker 1: type and they know their astrology. This hasn't gone away.
Speaker 1: I mean, what can be seen as a kind of um,
Speaker 1: you know, spurious consolation or after dinner pastime is speaks
Speaker 1: to a real need for people for for contact, for connection,
Speaker 1: and it's you know, it's it's easy to see as
Speaker 1: as as superstition UM or you know, as a child's
Speaker 1: kids parlor game. But but it was really, it was
Speaker 1: really powerful, and I originally started doing this work because
Speaker 1: I was here we are again UM. The rise of
Speaker 1: the evangelical right was very, very prominent, and obviously again
Speaker 1: remained so. But the histories of UM the spiritual or
Speaker 1: religious left are harder to find. And it was amazing
Speaker 1: to me the way that the imagination, the possibility that
Speaker 1: spiritualists could could cross from this world to the next
Speaker 1: allow them to collapse distinctions between worlds, between body, between genders,
Speaker 1: between races in some cases. That that that that cosmology
Speaker 1: allowed for a remaking of things in this world, and
Speaker 1: that material connection UM, I think remains very powerful. Un
Speaker 1: Obscured was created by me Aaron Manky and produced by
Speaker 1: Matt Frederick, Alex Williams, and Josh Thane in partnership with
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio. Research and writing for this season is
Speaker 1: all the work of my right hand man Carl Nellis
Speaker 1: and the brilliant Chad Lawson composed the brand new soundtrack.
Speaker 1: Learn more about our contributing historians, source material and links
Speaker 1: to our other shows over at History unobscured dot com
Speaker 1: and until next time, thanks for listening. Unobscured is a
Speaker 1: production of I Heart Radio and Aaron Menkey. For more
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