S2 – INTERVIEW 7: Cathy Gutierrez

Scholar in Residence at the New York Public Library. She's written important works on spiritualism and edited incredibly helpful guides like The Occult in Nineteenth Century America and The Handbook of Spiritualism and Channeling that are incredible guides to the complex and fascinating stories we've discussed. Her book, Plato's Ghost, dives deep into the ideas that drove the spiritualist movement.

If you've been hoping to hear more about what spiritualists actually believed, then this interview will be a treat for you. Enjoy her conversation with researcher Carl Nellis, and be sure to pick up Kathy's book without further ado. Here's our conversation with Dr Kathy gautieris. This is the Unobscured Interview series for season two. I'm Aaron Banky in the nineteenth century. What did it mean to be a spiritualist. There's a

lot of variety that could go into that designation. It's not unlike people going to psychics today or New age clinics something like that. So there are degrees of participation. Right. You could literally go as a lark, right, something to do on a Friday evening because it was all the rage and it sounded amusing, and have no serious investment

in intellectual really or spiritually at all. You can also use it intermittently, so when people would die, for example, then a lot of people would turn to spiritualism to keep in contact with their last loved ones. Or you could go the whole chelata, if you will, which is to self identify as a spiritualist meant to have particular political connotations as well as a religious belief structure. And if you told people you are spiritualist, there are some

possible negative ramifications to that. Some people found it um well between sketchy and demonic, depending on how hardcore they were in their beliefs. And but it really to be able to self identify as a spiritualist meant buying into this world view of progress and the ultimate um you know, goodness of people. So even if the ultimate goodness of people was not currently manifesting itself. It would over time, right, it would unfold in the direction of progress. Everybody would

get better, everybody would improve unto perfection. So let's talk about some of what was going on in American life and American culture that led to the practice of spiritualism in the decades before. UM. It's part of the part of what makes the movements so fascinating is that it fed on movements in science. They fed on movements in religion. UM. Let's start with religion in American life in the thirties and forties leading up to what came to be known

as modern spiritualism. How would you describe kind of the American religious landscape booming Um, from about eighteen twenty five to eighteen fifty. You see an extraordinary expansion of different kinds of religions imported to America and different religions developed in America. So I understand you talked some about the utopian movements, UM, and those are all coming out of this period, right. So, the the Shakers are expanding wildly,

the Mormons are, you know, developing. The United Community is developing, and spiritualism is among the last gasp of that great religious fervor. So there are a lot of things that people need to take new account of. And uh, baby, religions don't start when the established ones are working. So when you have a new landscape that requires creating new meaning, that's when you see religions, you know, just go wildfire, right as the burned over district in Upstate New York

was called. And Spiritualism is among the last and certainly the most inclusive of those religions that were brought forth. So let's let's talk a little bit about one of those traditions that spiritualist very um consciously identified as one of the traditions they were inheriting. And um, I'll ask you, can you describe a little bit about the place that Emmanuel Swedenborg and the New Church played in that religious landscape.

Swedenborg's effect on American religious landscape cannot be overestimated. He really does not get enough credit for his impact on any of the movements that began during the second grade Awakening, and he's highly influential on all of them. Frankly, So what Swedenborg Swedenborg does is he creates a dynamic Protestantism so Catholicism has always been dynamic in turn ms of there are multiple saints right, there are you know as

continuing miracles. There's ongoing conversations from God. So these ideas of direct revelation, direct experience of the afterlife, and what you find in Swedenborg's afterlife is very busy. It's busy busy. It's a very Protestant this worldly. So there are three tiers in heaven, and people are getting better and farming societies and making friends and literally learning languages and moving right, there's progress, and then there are three tears in hell

and you. But but God is not judging. This is not an apocalyptic God. So if you're a bad person, you literally just throw yourself into help. You are drawn to the appropriate realm of where you belong in the afterlife, whether that's Yer or Na. So we it's removed from a sort Protestant literalism, both because it is only somewhat dependent on the Bible. He has this radically metaphorical reading of the Bible, which is you know, frankly a bit Catholic um, and it had it just moves away from

the sort of static heaven and hell um. So this idea of movement in the afterlife, this idea of a non judgmental god, this idea that you determine your own afterlife fate. But spiritualism does and that's what Marmontism does to it in a different form, is it it takes those six fears, it turns them into a platonic seven, and it projects it all into heaven. So it eliminates health completely. And early Mormonism does the same thing. There's

a little tiny hell and it's reserved for postdates. There are three tears of heaven, and you're a good person, a better person, or the best person you know, win, win win. So spiritualism does that for absolutely everyone. And the movement is continual. So rather than you get placed in the correct sphere and then you form societies there, you're always going up right, You're always going up through different echelons of spiritualism in the afterlife. You're always improving.

So that's one of the major theological influences on spiritualism. Let's talk about some of the other practices that were going on in what was considered a kind of a horizon of science with mesmerism and animal magnetism, UH and what was seen as a new science. Uh, you know, sometimes combined with with phrenology um of the human mind and the human soul. What was the influence of those kind of practices on the beginnings of spiritualism Mesmerism as it came to a marry come um, which was really

more the brainchild of the student of Anton. Mesmer is a healing science, right, And I say is because we still carry around beliefs that magnets will affect different parts of your body. So I know, you know workers for example, who you know have magnetic soles in their shoes or have magnets on their backs. That is Mesmerism still in practice.

But Mesmerism was looking for a single cause, right. So the discovery of gravity, for example, I was like, oh, well that answers nine percent of our questions, right, and it's universal, right, gravity works everywhere at all times, so people who are looking for things like that. But regarding the human body, so the idea that the cosmos is held up by magnets goes back to Aristotle, right, not magnets.

He didn't know the magnets, I don't think. But the the idea that why don't stars fall out of the sky right, why our planets predictable? It was like, well, they're held in some sort of um, you know, kinetic tension through magnetic attraction. Certainly Kepler thought those and so what Mesmer did was he applied that idea to the human body. So not only the planets, but the tides and the sea and the waning of the moon and the flow of this energy through the body could be

redirected and redistributed. And this was a a single cause theory that you know, was extremely successful. Whether one thinks that you could attribute most of that placebo effect, I personally don't even know why that matters. It was extremely successful. And the marriage of this idea of continual improvement and your sort of psychological disposition, uh went hand in hand, right, And certainly some of the earliest spiritualist mediums were a

mesmeric transhailers. And one of the ways that you describe this moment in American history, and many other historians do as well, is to call what was going on at this time with with new ideas, new literary movements, to

call it the American Renaissance. Can you talk a little bit about what you mean by that idea and how that helps to frame an understanding of spiritualism that we can use the Fairs of the American Renaissance was originally employed by scholars of literature to refer to when Americans really started having their own publishing business. So you can

place it basically at James Fenimore Cooper. So prior to that, Americans are reading things that they can get from Britain, and but from Cooper on and certainly we get to Poe and then you know, the great Emerson and friends. What you you have is this triangulation between Philadelphia, Boston

and New York that creates publishing lines. And so this sort of refers to that moment because obviously the self publication and the ability to move that uh these books into the interior via rivers was crucial for the development of basically all of these new religions, every one of

them used printing presses. But I use it specifically to also mean the American enchantment with the classics, and I mean Greeks and Romans and Egyptians classics, and I attributed to the uh discomfiting sense of newness that in America we're so pleased with ourselves. If there's a building that's three years old. You know, we slap a plaque on it and you know, put it on the National Register.

But that that had to have been extremely uncomfortable, particularly everybody's grandpa was, you know, on the other side of the war, right, I mean, how uncomfortable was that. So this idea that we needed a legitimating grounding story that comes through, I think, in all of the new religions during that movement, and they all seek to place America in a much longer tradition of what everyone considered to

be venerable. UM. And one of the things that we see in early spiritualism, UH, is that there are spirits like Benjamin Franklin and George Washington, William Penn, other statesmen appearing in various sound circles and translectors and UM, sometimes just addressing one or two people, sometimes addressing large crowds. UM. Can you talk a little bit about what these kinds of appearances tell us about spiritual relation to history and

this kind of bigger story that you're talking about. Absolutely, spiritualism allowed, through its construction, UH, to do two things. Number One, you always had the greats of history to hand. They might not want to talk to you today, But Ben Franklin, we'll talk to you tomorrow, as will Swedenburg, as will Shakespeare, as will Francis Bacon. So you you have access to these great luminaries in unprecedented ways sa sultaneously. However,

a lot of them changed their mind after death. So if you said something, you know what was considered immoral according to eighteen fifty two Culture of Progressive Spiritualists, you could learn after death that you were wrong. So Plato becomes an abolitionist. Franklin, of course, is a great American hero, and the whole idea of spiritualism is predicated on the idea of the telegraph. If you can have invisible communication across time and space, why can't you have an invisible

communication between life and death, right instantaneous communication. So the trope of electricity was extremely important, but frankly nobody understood it. So they relied a lot on Franklin to sort of explain how electricity worked and how this affected me unship, and how to you know and what the you know?

The great plans for the future are certainly the same thing with Washington and this uh again, this building of a legitimate, solid history that could simultaneously evoke you know, American and exceptionalism is too strong a word, but American importance,

and also give people a space to learn posthumously. And you've written about the ways that in your view, spiritualism and what spiritualists were doing and practicing and teaching, UM presents a picture of of people, UM, uncomfortable with time. You say, spiritualism represents a discomfort with time, and so we've mentioned a little bit about what this means for how spiritualist view the past. Can you also talk about what you mean when you say that spiritualists, UM, we're

kind of in love with futurity. That's nicely put. Yes, indeed in love with futurity. The prevailing belief has had some hiccups obviously, but that you know, everything was progressing right, Everything was on this path to perfection. The world is getting better, We're going to conquer the social crimes, and you know, when you die, you continually get better. So the future was utopian but not set, if that makes

any sense. So, like a lot of people said, um, if you're in a traditional sort of Christian apocalyptic worldview, you know the apocalypse is going to come at point X and then the good people are gonna, you know, have a grand time for a thousand years and then go up to the new Jerusalem. The bad people are going to fry Um and that you know, has a very specific goal. And people make the mistake of setting dates.

And I tell all my students, if you're going to start a baby religion, never set a date because on verification becomes a problem when the date rolls around in the world is still here. So the spiritualist never set a date, right. They had a slow, gradual improvement plan and they need only look around to see things that were not working. They very clearly. Victorian America had all sorts of problems with even post Civil War. You know, reconstruction was a disaster, the state of women and children

was awful. Factories, you know, the White Plague, tenement houses, etcetera. So they were projects on earth. But everything was marching towards this utopian future which would have as handmaids medicine, technology, science, that all of these conceptual systems were going to work

together to usher in this future perfection. That's great. So with these kind of some of the big picture beliefs and historical context, even I'm glad you mentioned technology with the telegraph and and the canals and being able to move information. UM. Let's jump into some of the lives of the people who who developed and UH and dispersed the movement. And let's start where so many historians do,

with Andrew Jackson Davis. Who was Andrew Jackson Davis and what was significant about him in the context of some of these things like mesmerism and the burned over District. Andrew Jackson Davis was a guy from Poughkeepsie, New York who was called the Poughkeepsie Sayre Fabulous title, and he was a mesmeric trance healer. He was also a wildly prolific author, and he wrote dozens of books that would go into many many editions over the course of his lifetime.

On UM basically was sweden Borgian take on the future of you know, dead people and the most merrick take on the future of life people. And he put these things together in what he called the Harmonial philosophy. And the Harmonial philosophy was very palatable. You're talking a world in which you know, blood letting still happened, and you know, people did not yet understand that clean linens would cut

down on you know, the spread of disease. So the the idea that you could have been magnetized and have a conversation one on one with this person who was listening to you and who was sincerely trying to make your life better and that your disposition would improve. This was all extremely palatable given the medical landscape of the time. So he's trooping around publishing books on the harmonial philosophy

at the time. He appreciates the Fox Sisters by many years, and so when he hears about the Fox Sisters and the so called mysterious wrappings, he melds his worldview with their experiential ritual, if you will, and that was the marriage that needed happening. Can you describe he gave theology to their ritual and they brought ritual to his philosophy beautifully.

But oh, that's great, I'm glad you said that. Um, can you describe a little bit about how responsible he was for what you described earlier where you say in general, spiritualist theology of the afterlife was taking Swedenborgie in heaven and hell and plopping it all into heaven. How responsible for that idea was Andrew Jackson Davis And how did he kind of frame it? How did he talk about it in his writing? Oh? He was very very much

responsible for that in so many important ways. Obviously, other people had to have the experiential when you're talking to a dead person, if they're like, oh, I I'm on the second run, but I think I'm going to make it to the third round pretty soon because I've done this in this and then you know, you needed that sort of reinforcement for his you know what I call theological backbone to have worked. However, he was very like like most mystics. He was infuriating, and that he claimed

to never have read anything, including Swedenborg. Nobody believes this, but you know, the the idea that, well, if I made this all of myself, I'm clothing not smart enough to do that. So it must come from the spirits, right. Um.

So what he does he casts the whole afterlife. He calls it the Summerland, and he himself makes many Swedenborgian style trips to the afterlife, where he hangs out with famous dead people with literary figures, people prognosticate on things like the future of Prussia, the coming of the American Civil War, and what he finds in the afterlife is

complete gender equality. He finds religious equality sort of let me expand on that in just sec So everyone goes to heaven and but they're segregated weirdly, uh, Andre tex and Davis is writing, so they're like, you know, little towns of twos and little towns of Hindus and little towns of you know, Catholics and um. But because everybody is improving, right, there's only one perfection, so everybody is

moving toward the same ultimate goal. So again, you're simultaneously radically progressive in thinking that everyone in the entire universe,

across time and space goes to heaven. Super progressive. On the other hand, you do then get to say, and I am quoting and I'm physically making little bunny fingers right now, the lower tribes and races unquote, um are you know on the baby step rungs, right, So you include them, but it's not untouched by its own historical moment, right, which just rampant with colonialism and yeah, racism, and so

it's a step forward. I'm yeah, they are fantastic in terms of that step forward, but it's not completely what we would consider to be you know morally equivalence, and that's something that we really are able to explore when we see spiritualism through Sojourner Truth size And um, I'm really loving I didn't you know understand before I started this project to what extent Sojourner Truth was involved with spiritualism.

But some of the things that she notices and comments on over the course of her life really really do bring that to the four where she says, this is great, but here are the limitations here? How far we here, so, how far we've come here, so how far we still

have to go? Um? Absolutely, there were really a number of African Americans who made it as mediums in part because of the frankly racist belief that you know their people, if you will, are are closer to a spiritual naivete and therefore, you know, more easily able to access the afterlife. So there were people in the underground Railroad, for example,

who were mediums in Quaker homes in New York. And these women knew that they were sort of playing the white people right, So simultaneously they were able to really carbo an important niche for themselves and be appreciated. But they also knew that this was the as the sort

of flip side of romanticizing. You know, their their own hair, and you see the same thing so often, uh from the beginning, but especially into the seventies with spiritualists channeling Native spirit guides or mediums having spirit controls where it's a romanticized Native nation, you know, a chief or a young girl that kind of presents Native nations and and you know, the Indian Wars in a kind of romanticized and sentimentalized light through through those seances where it's usually

almost always a white medium who is playing Indian in that way. Absolutely, and that still continues there, it is, it remains extraordinarily popular for current spiritualists have Native American um, you know, spirit guides. Well, let's jump back to the beginning. I loved what you said about the way that Andrew Jackson Davis picked up and and uh and used what

the fox dishes were doing. But let's talk. Let's talk a little bit about about Hydesville and what happened there in um, not so much the details, but what what was it about that particular experience, because you know, as we've mentioned before, there were other kinds of trances and mediumship that were happening before this, But what made what happened in Hindsville explode and become a movement, you know, go from kind of a neighbor neighborhood hullabaloo into uh

into this huge movement that grows into something global within a couple of years. That is an excellent question. And scholars do like to throw down about dating spiritualism to the Fox sisters because phenomenologically there are multiple and they're they're always women in trances, right, that is one of the few cross cultural truisms, and that is clearly a way for women to um, you know, find a way

to speak powerfully from the margins. So what you know, what makes Hindsville important, right, It's it's a haunting, it's a politic well, to be perfectly frank, it's their older sister, Leah. She understands, she sees exactly the monetary value in this

from the minute it starts. She rewrites the script to put her baby sisters at the center, which is really not historically true or not provable at least, And she takes them in and she puts them in the Rochester shows and their wraps on in these these halls and this concatenation of again a telegraphy. Right, so the Fox sister did this very clunky um. The rap system was like one for A, two for B took forever. And but that's like a a thirteen year old version of

Morse code. And that's exactly what it was, was the thirteen year old version of Marse's code. So this idea of a telegraph to the dead with this combination of a ongoing revelation, but not in a way that was going to truly upset the you know, the Bible crowd to set some of them. But you know, by and large, there should be no particular conflict with being a Christian and thinking that you can talk to you know, you're deceased Uncle George right there. That's not you know, a

major logical hazard. So but Leah really saw the potential in this and she just she put those girls on the road immediately, she basically yeah, no, what's the nicer word for this, as she hooked them up with P. T. Barnum. Immediately they were putting a train to New York. She was an organizer and she died a very very wealthy woman, whereas both of her younger sisters were extremely miserable their entire lives, and I had these really tragic, lonely deaths.

So there was this, you know, a perfect storm, if you will, of these historical movements and then this really smart woman who saw how to capitalize. And there are so many people who saw spiritualism that way from the get go, where they see what's going on with promoting and organizing big lectures and halls and demonstrations, and they

come on the scene doing the same thing. Not so much from Andrew Jackson Davis's side with the theology and the mysticism, but very much from the performance side and the spectacle side. And Daniel Douglas Hume is maybe the most successful of those. Can you talk about who he was and what he did with the spectacle of spiritualism. He is a very interesting man at He had a somewhat difficult childhood and some of it is obscured to us.

So it appears that his mom did a disappearing act when he was young, and he was imported from Edinburgh to the United States where he was raised by an aunt. And he had the good fortune, as did many successful mediums, of being not only charismatic but extremely good looking and the idea of these sort of spectacles or what's now

called physical mediumship that were then yeah, sometimes called materializations. Right. Uh, that we're shows, right, rather than I'm just going to sit here with you and tell you what you're you know, your child who died of influenza is doing in the afterlife. These were you know, as you know, full blown shows with trumpets, things called the ports, which were gifts from the afterworld, generally things like gloves and flowers that have

been PHOSPHORESQ. But m was unique in that he levitated and I don't mean tables, and I don't mean trumpets, I mean him. So he would somehow fully bodily rise up off the ground and in what was indisputably his most astonishing act. In I believe it was London, he once flew out of one window across a street and into another window. Fantastic and he attributed this to the spirit. Uh. Naturally, this is the sort of shenanigans that's going to get

Houdini's attention. But I'm sort of pleased to say Hudini couldn't replicate it. He could never figure out how he did it. And along the way, uh, he makes a lot of friends in high places that get him through the doors that you might never expect someone from his background to. Uh places, you would never expect someone like him to go. Do you do you remember any of those connections or our demonstrations some of the people that

he met. Oh. Yes, he is investigated by an earl who is assigned his case essentially to see if you can disprove it, and he cannot, so he ends up sort of hobnopping with the Scottish and British upper crust. The biography is tricky because a lot of it relies on the the writings of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and Doyle was such an avid spiritualist that he is thoroughly

blinded to any anything that might undercut its voracity. So, according to Doyle, uh did he Holme never took a penny in his life for his spiritualist Yeah, inquiries Doele does say rather charmingly that of course he had to take gifts, but it would have been ghost to refuse them,

so that should not be confused with money. But he did end up in you know, these these upper circles that actually enabled him to marry not one but two Russian you know, sort of sub royalty people, and that you know that that kept him more in the style to which he wanted to become a past I love that, thank you. Um, there was there was a before before him gets back to the UK though, Um, there were other American mediums that were taking the American style of

spiritualism to England. Um in the early eighteen fifties. Can you talk about before human and and others like him were you know, had the chance to hob nob with the uppercrust. Can you talk about the general reception of spiritualism in its American mode in the UK? That make up a question? Um, Spiritualism was embraced in a great Britain. Uh, and it was obviously again very much a class and

race disruptor. So you would have these One of the pretenses of spiritualism is if you have a young woman or a girl who can you know, expound on, you know, these great points of philosophy and theology and science. That she's obviously not smart enough to be able to make this up. So therefore it is an indication of the truth right that she is being embodied by you know, Benjamin Franklin or Francis Baker or whomever. So that had

a great appeal to sort of Victorian polar life. But you would end up in these weird situations where you're employing, you know, a woman who is not as um posh right as the people for whom she is doing these readings, and these women would, you know, sometimes live with these folks for months on end, and it was it was very popular as a well as entertainment in many ways. In in England. Spiritualism actually really took off after the

First World War. So America, the Civil War too catalyze, if you will, this need to talk to the dead, and that simply didn't happen in Europe for another, yeah, forty years, so it existed. But it's actual religiosity as a very sort of strong base um that really is an American phenomenon that, to the best of my knowledge, did not translate well until they had had their own catastrophic cultural experience to try to work their way through. Can you talk about Emma Harding? Who was she and

what brought her to become a prominent medium? Emma Harding is one of my favorite mediums. In fact, she's she's buried in Manchester, England, and I have been several hours trooping around looking for her grave. I fear it's one of the ones that has collapsed. But Emma, Yeah, came to America. She was a musician, and she h became a spiritualist medium, and then later she got involved with theosophy.

She married a publisher and avid spiritualist, and she was well respected by basically everyone, which is rare in in these this world. So Emma started off with doing trance lectors, and she was very erudite and very articulate, and she over time became what I consider to be probably still

the most important historian of spiritualism. And she wrote this massive compendium using primary sources, which how she collected all of that in you know, the nineteenth century, I have no idea, uh, and put it together in what sort

of created a coherent narrative of spiritualism. So while it is possible right very early on to say yes, I thoroughly believe that everyone goes to heaven, and I thoroughly believe that humanity is improving, and I thoroughly believe that some day everybody will be perfect, it is not yet possible to talk about an evolution of spiritualism, and Emma

made that happen. She also was not afraid too a seed some points, right, So like Doyle never wants a satord point if you you know, very clearly said look, you know that fairy is made of cardboard. He was like, no, it wasn't. It was a real fairy as a picture of it, right, whereas Emma was like, yeah, you know that was that was a little untoward that moment. And but you know, you can't always rely on the spirits to show up on any given day, so some people

change what you're gonna do. Yeah, that's great. Um. You mentioned her her eighteen seventy book with the History of the Original Documents, which is so key. But you also write a little bit about what she wrote in eighteen sixty. She she had been a medium on the New York scene right in the eighteen fifties and done some circuit lecturing across the United States. Can you talk about how her writing in eighteen sixty with the Theology of Spiritualism

helped to synthesize the beliefs in the movement at that point. Yes, So again this there's paradox at at the heart of having a movement run by women who are not credentialed. Uh, and that is that to some extent, what they have to say is gauged by how it is not believable that they could have constructed it. So um in six lectures on theology. She has a collective group of spirits that speak to her about you know, big picture. So it's not, uh, you know, a particular question about a

particular person. It's really more of a synthesized worldview. And that was not generally thought of as something that she was better educated than a lot of spiritualist mediums, but that you know, she could have just produced on her own. So that was really a landmark moment. And as I say, she was not afraid to call out, you know, people who were cheating, and that really helped her reputation to be perfectly frank. So she was broadly, broadly respected and

crossed several divisions that other people could not. So when people trying to smear her for you know, hanging out with Pascal Beverly Randolph, who was a African American sex magician, it didn't stick because her reputation was basically too strong to you know, be besmirched. By these little whispers of

the same propriety or that impropriety. That said, there are a couple of books that she published but she claims not to be the author of that are still contested as to whether or not she is the author, and people I truly respect will throw down on both sides of this question. So uh, yes, so I I just I don't you know, the jury is still out on that as far as I'm concerned. So why would she write something and not put her name on it? Right? She said a lot of shocking things. Why would she

back away from this particular shocking thing? Um? But other people think now absolutely she she did not write it. And you know there are these anonymous you know, and some pseudonyms like Louis. Uh you know, so who was Louis is still alive question in some circles. Yeah. Um, you mentioned the whispers about her relationship with Randolph Um. But spiritually like opposition to spiritualism and mediumship and some

of the doctrines and things. Um, it could be as as focused as that, but there were also some some really big, kind of culture wide forces opposing spiritualism. Can you talk a little bit about what some of those kind of fights looked like. What were some of spiritualisms antagonists and what kind of form did the opposition often change of spiritualisms major antagonists was the New York Times, and it had decades long fun of poking, uh, you know, spiritualism.

And they would send reporters like this the Herald, right. Uh, they would send reporters to spiritualists summer camps, and the reporters would you know, send back these missives that they were a little disappointed that the people were nice and they weren't like overtly kookie, but you know, it was

it was a you know, a punching bag, right. So there are certain tone issues with the more sort of learned Americans, if you will, But they were also uh, certainly some hardcore Christians who thought that this looked demonic, right that if you are if you have you know, a a poor uh man. And most of the successful mediums were lower class or a young woman who has different voices speaking, you know, out of them, that looks like demon possession. So there was some pushback from more

sort of hardcore Christian groups, but mostly it was dismissed. Right, It was sort of embarrassing rather than dangerous, and there were there were events, and there were reasons why some

might dismiss spiritualism. Um, can you talk about how the Fox sisters reacted when their relative Mrs Culver published an account of Maggie admitting to her that the raps were staged or um the February investigation by the University of Buffalo faculty, after which the professors, you know, they say that the girls were making sounds with popping joints and kind of the same kind of thing that their relative accused them of. Um, what effected did that kind of

early negative press have on spiritualism? Because this was an one so the movement continues on. But what was the response to that among spiritualists? Response to that was largely what you see today in terms of what you truly wish to believe. You're really not going to hear anything that opposes it. So the there are certain can undra like you know again, and you still hear this today.

I was, I was just in lily Dale a couple of weeks ago, and this is remains a mantra for people who are caught cheating if you will that the you know, the spirits don't always show up so you've got to have something in your back pocket. Uh, and that Alan Cardick once said that the existence of fake

flowers does not disprove the existence of real ones. So the idea that because there are occasional cheaters, or that an actual medium occasionally cheats, is sort of easily incorporated into the world view and does very little for one's confirmation biased to be perfectly frank of what So, if you thought they were ridiculous to begin with, you continue to think they were ridiculous after the Buffalo investigations, and if you thought they were the real deal, but you know,

they were just kids putting this awkward position, so you know, sometimes it got slippery. Then that's what you thought. It was much clearer when later in life, you know, they said themselves, you know, I've been faking, but absolutely nobody cared. It was absolutely astonishing. Nobody cared. They're like, yeah, I

don't really believe you. You're you're a poor thing. You're like Maggie died terribly, so was all by herself, and she was a ridge and alcoholic, and she had this very miserable life of being put on the road and you know, potential marriage that may or may not have happened, and her in laws disavowing her, and you know, she she drank. The woman drank and they was like, well, she just needs money. Yeah, and then when she came back, she's like, no, no, I faked the faking it was

again she needs money. So it just got eaten into the system as an anomaly. And if you have a world view that says that the spirits can make mistakes, then people can make mistakes and they're not permanent, right, We're it's it's a it's a flexible, forgiving world view in many ways. One of the people who so interestingly looks at the way that both people and spirits make

mistakes UM is John Edmonds UM. Judge John Edmonds, who was on the New York State Supreme Court UH, and because of that position, was sometimes a punching bag, sometimes a celebrity among spiritualists. Can you talk a little bit about who he was and especially his you've written about his sustained interest in exploring the primary theological conundrum of spiritualism as you addressed it through his inquiry into the

bottom rung of heaven. Um. Who was he and what was the significance of that intellectual theological work that he was doing well. Judge Edmonds had a very fancy circle of spiritualists in Manhattan, and he and George T. Dexter produced a two volume book on spiritualism that was first

came out in eighteen fifty two. It went through numerous numerous printings, and it's a very singular source of being able to track what a circle does over many many years because he would actually add footnotes to a particular seances, so here he was talking to you know, this person and then they would you know, contact that person again in these ensuing years, and then this material would accrete in the footnotes. So you can really get this, uh, this narrative arc in a way that you can't with

more sort of static publications. S Edmonds was very important not only in New York, but he is also partly the reason that science has ever happened in the White House under the Lincoln administration. And he was good friends with you know, Senator Talmud, so he was central in bringing spiritualism to the political stage. Now as a person, he was you know, a judge of actual criminal cases and he was also in charge of he was administrator

for New York State prisons which were abhorrent. So she has a sort of okay sational interest in what happens to criminals in the afterlife. And when I talk about the central conundrum of spiritualism, the idea that everybody is heading for heaven is very lovely and multicultural, but you do end up with this this question of what happens to bad people, and what happens to bad people is generally a very redemptive story, and these are the folks

that Edmonds is interested in talking to. So when he meets a criminal in the afterlife through his medium, then the one of the first questions he actually has to ask is whether he is responsible for that person being hanged. So the psychological effects right of being uh in this

position of adjudicating life and death. I think of Bill Over into his you know, his his evenings right and his spirit circles, and he tracks several of these criminals over many years and many seances, and they're they're generally, not always, but generally fairly uplifting stories of redemption. So the bottom rung of heaven really resembles health, but it is one in which there's no administration. So the nasty character of the denizens of the lowest rung make this

a hellscape. They're awful to each other, They're physically awful to each other. They they torture animals, They repeatedly try to kill each other, but they're already dead. So it's just this protracted dying scenes that are going on constantly, and he hons in on those who want to be better, and he, oddly, in some senses, is in a position to help them because he actually knows more about the afterlife than many of them do. So a crime in

heaven is heavily heavily gendered. So women are you know, salacious, they cheat on their husbands and um the worst of all, and this this charge is so rampant that really makes me wonder what was going on. Uh. They murdered children, their own children in particular. And men have you know, yeah, I have you well, you know much butcher crimes. So they're you know, murderers and brigands and rapists and you know,

generally thieves and scoundrels. So uh, the women are generally more um sympathetic, and he Uh so there's just one particular woman that he connects with, and she, you know, had the terrible, terrible taste to leave her husband to go off with her lover, who of course turned out to be a scoundrel, and he left her and she killed herself. So she is, you know, on the bottom rung of heaven. But she's obviously, you know, not a menace to society in any way, so she is able

to be reformed. And the the story that this shapes into is that she finds a kid, a little girl seven ish. It's entirely unclear whether the child is doing in this nasty, you know, apocalyptic heaven, but she rescues this kid. She gets this kid away from these terrible bullies and horrible men and runs runs away from the

society of evil. And over time, and you can track this through the footnotes, the woman repeatedly starts seeing signs that say, you know, go in this direction right, um, sometimes their actual signs, and sometimes they're flames, right like

Moses in the desert. And she takes this kid and they have this arduous journey over this mountain, but so they're not being you know, in this mutual punishment any longer, but it's still difficult, and they eventually get to the second round and she reports back that they're much happier and they're going to keep going, right, And so this he is able to counsel these the dead and say, you know, look around, where can you get away from

this chaos? Do you see anything that's beckoning you in a particular direction, follow it, and you know, get back in touch with me, telling me what happens. On the other hand, you have less sympathetic people, generally men who are punished by the memories of their crimes. So this is very swedenborgian um. And what happens in Swedenborg right, there's no judging God, so God would not condemn you to evil because God is good. So you condemn yourself.

And you have these two memories, and one is the normal memory that you think you have, right mind gets worse all the time, all right. And then there's an actually perfect memory that well, when you die, gets stripped off of you, and you and an angel watch it like a future film. And after you see your entire ethical disposition throughout the course of your life, you then know where you belong, and you will cast yourself into

hell as appropriate if you've been a bad person. And how again, very much resembles the first round of heaven. You know, there's no Catholic devil, you know, with a you know, tail and a trident hanging out in Swedenborg's hell, people are just dreadful and they're dreadful to each other,

and you're in this dreadful position for eternity. So but in this sort of reformed Swedenborgian, more progressive spiritualist cast, the these men are haunted by these memories of the people that they have wronged, and they generally have to make amends. So and I'm getting this from an amalgamation of suiting of judgements and a couple of other places.

But this would go along the lines of showing up science and telling people that I stole your stuff, but I buried it here and I'm terribly sorry, and this is how you can find it. Um Or. There's a very clear case with Florence Marriott, who was a quite

popular British novelist. Her her daughter had died young, and her daughter had gotten an abortion, and she was carrying the memory of this child around for years and years and years, and she makes amends by coming to a seance and telling a young friend of hers not to get an abortion and this rectifies her position, and then she's able to let go of this memory and move on.

You mentioned in passing that one of the things that Edmund's witnesses at this lowest ring of heaven is people torturing animals, and I find that so interesting because one of the stories that Edmunds tells about himself, I believe, UH, and what what brought him to become a spiritualist is that when he was a kid, the spirit of Benjamin Franklin I think, if I'm remembering this right, watches him stone and kill a cat and then decides that he's

going to guide Edmunds out of cruelty and into right living. So it sounds like what he ends up doing in these later seances is trying to offer to the spirits what the spirit of Benjamin Franklin and his telling offered to him in his life on earth. That's fascinating. Oh, that is fascinating. That's a very interesting take on that. The role of pets in spiritualism continues to be fascinating. I was just at lily Dale a couple of weeks ago.

It's the oldest running spiritual community in the world, and UH. Their emphasis on UH they have pet seances and a very extensive pet cemetery, which so the the idea that your beloved animals continue with you through eternity. Personally, I can think of no stronger argument, you know, for belief in spiritualism than you know, to have my dog with me forever. So the but that's not an early spiritualist moment. But the idea that bad people torture animals is there

right at the beginning. Um, so you did mention that Edmonds is one of the people who brings spiritualism to the political stage. By eighteen fifty four, there's so much interest in spiritualism. It's it's grown to the point where there are fifteen thousand people who sign a petition to the United States Senate to fund US Scientific Commission to Investigate Spiritualism. Can you talk about how that came about

and what the result was. So at that point you actually have politicians worrying about the spiritualist vote, and so this is clearly a matter of some concern for a lot of people. There are a number of commissions, you know, the Saber Commission, uh different university commissions, but the Commission to Study Spiritualism as a government project is really quite extensive and you end up right. So there there are

a couple of forms that this this takes. So one is a series of councils where they would bring in a popular medium. So um Cora Hatch, for example, was yeah, allowed herself to be so objected to one of these, and they would ask these questions trying to trick her, right, And so there's this one commission where they asked your questions like how do you parse the divinity of Jesus Christ,

both human and divine? And how did gyroscopes work? And she answered these questions in a trance state to such effect that the commission, which was you know, literally comprised of like stodgy old military men, I was like, that was impressive and in fact, and I am quoting one of them said I expected to be humbugged and was not so. Uh. In in this manner, right would they

would test individual mediums. And then there was a rather embarrassing moment in which well the Fox sisters Maggie and Kate were put on a ship with a bunch of spiritualists.

There was there was an island in the New York Sound where they hanged criminals and there was a pirate, John Hicks, who was about to be hanged and the so there's this floating seance basically that is surrounding this island with the expectation that at the moment of this this guy's death, that they would be able to communicate

with him. Well, embarrassingly enough, the spiritualists, much like graduate students, Um, we're so excited about the free food and drink that they completely missed the hanging and we're like busily chowing down on the cucumber sandwiches and no communication whatsoever took place. That's fantastic. Um. You mentioned Cora Hatch, and she's someone I want to talk about a little bit more. She

was born course Scott. Can you talk about who she was and what some of her early experiences with spirituals and were like, and then how she became so popular and why so. Cora was arguably the most famous medium of her day. And once again, there there is a particular voyeurism with stage medium show that is absent in

sort of domestic seances. And Coral was very young, fifteen when she started, and she was very beautiful, and every single newspaper account of her just fulminates over her long blonde curls, and she was always, um, you know, decked out in a slightly racy outfit. And so what would happen is you would you would have this you know, blossom of youth and fragility who would then sort of faint, right, So it was a real you know, verririistic aspect to this.

But then she would stand up and start expounding on um, slavery and philosophy and theology and uh. And she would command you know, these audiences of thousands and tell them what they should be thinking about politics, what they should be thinking about abolition, what they should be thinking about women's rights. So this too is obviously very paradoxical, right, that these these women had this astonishing effect on the condition that it was understood that they were not the

ones speaking. So Cora, as I say, it was lovely and um. She was able to you know, answer these these very specific questions to the satisfaction of all in very uncomfortable circumstances. So she was extremely popular. She did close out. There was some she would say things that were you know, so scandalous at times that people are like flee the lecture hall. Mostly about women's rights and how everything's equal in the afterlife and how they should be here. Uh so, yes she was. She was absolutely

magnificently popular. Corea too had a hard life though, and she ended up marrying several times, to the point where like tracking her name in different publications is tricky, And the most famous one was to her first husband, a BF Hatch, and she was sixteen and he was, not to put too fine a point on it, they a bit of a bit of charlatan and something of a pampa.

So she divorced him and it was made a huge media splash, enormous media splash that I have no doubt whatsoever that he was physically abusive to her, that everything seems to agree on this point. However, it became a bit of a bally food so Emma Harding Britain reported on this in a very you know, this pernicious. He was forty, she was sixteen, right, a little little sketchy um in this. You know, he was a predator and he married her to exploit her and you know, take

her money. And it was you know, he was not a good guy. I'm not excusing him in any way, shape or form, but some of that is actually not true, Like she kept all of her money. She had six thousand dollars, which is an astonishing amount of money in those days, and she kept three thousand of it in the divorce and it was basically, you know, she divorced

him for maltreating her. But it got sort of played out in the press as you know, Charlatan's among us and the uh, you know, predatory men who will take advantage of young talented mediums. Can you talk about what the dynamics were of that moment in invest s gating spiritualism. Investigating spiritualism was actually a bit of a signline for a lot of people, and both sides had undercover investigators.

So you had a an entire series of doubters as is you know, certainly the case with most of the academic inquiries, and then you actually had the pro spiritualist folks. So the American Society for Cyclical Research had private investigators for years followed mediums around to see if they were legit,

and they were very invasive. So not only would they show up as you know, sitters in your seance, but they would like stock your home and make sure you weren't stepping out on your husband or I mean they were they were really invasive, and so both sides had this real investment in seeing whose reputation would last. So

they're the debunkers, you know. Found Yeah difference. Uh, you know that this was of wilful trickery and people in mourning and that they're you know, psychological, you know, they're grieving, made them vulnerable, and that these um, these people were hucksters taking advantage of them. But on the other side, there are actually people investigating because they wanted to protect the reputation of spiritualism and they wanted to get out ahead of any sort of saucy story that might come

out about one of their star mediums. So like William James knew abounch of the paranormal Investigators, and he would, um, you know, say you need to go check out, you know, this person in Boston and make sure that you know everything's on the up and up, because I'm going to you know, put my reputation you know, behind her and say I think she's the real deal and I need to make sure that I'm not going to embarrass myself

down the line. M Yeah, that's great. Um. You also write that in the years following the Civil War, after Andrew Jackson Davis published I mean one of his many, his many books, but after he publishes The Harbinger of Health. Um, and and there are other developments as well, but that there's a new and voracious interest in the embodied experience of living. And H. Davis and other mediums like Victoria Woodhull and Cora hatch Uh who had been healing mediums

in the eighteen fifties, see that really grow. Um, what was new about the interest in spiritualist healing in the eight sixties and seventies. You have a physically wounded nation, and there the American landscape is bizarrely conflicted about what to do with these wounded soldiers. So, for example, you could not become a freemason if you have had any amputations. This is after the Civil War. It's like how many

people have amputations after the Civil War? Right? So, the the idea that you would actually exclude these people, you know, who are heroes wherever it is they come from because of of some as was understood, physical defect was a straordinary slap in the face. So this idea of what

constitutes wholeness and what constitutes health um. And you should throw in Mary Baker Eddie into this picture, right, So she's publishing during this time, and so really you're starting to see this um argument right over whether the locus of the body properly belongs to the medical establishment or whether it properly belongs to religious claims. And the medical establishment is by and large white male um degreed, but

gold impersonal and busy filling out forms. Whereas like so A. J. Davis is a country doctor, right, he walks around and he attends to children with chicken pow us and you know, older people with arthritis, and he has a you just much kinder rigment than a lot of the people who

are more pedigrade. So the whole idea that your health is dependent on your spiritual well being certainly has been around, you know, since the earth cold, but it became very it came into focus and prominence and was published about and the it becomes works into the sort of new thought movement and the you know, the the power of mind over matter and that you have it within yourself to to heal, and that your physical well being is

completely tied to your spiritual well being. You know, really coalesces after the Civil War, and yeah, it needs to right that the country needed that at that time. Can you say more this? This is fantastic because one of the things you see is conflict between spiritualism and the new discipline of neurology. We talked at the beginning about mesmerism and animal magnetism and some spirit and soul and

mind stuff that was going on there with the human body. Um, what's this new discipline of neurology and and Hammond who is kind of leading that, Um, how does that come into conflict with spiritualism over these questions? Well, from time immemorial, right, the position of the interpreter is going to determine the

fate of the interpreted. Right. So if you have a woman who is speaking in multiple voices, she if she's you know, in control of it and is using that to travel and make some money and literally how her voice heard, then you know she's a successful medium, right. But if she's not in control of it, then she's possessed, right and should be you know, hanged as a witch, or she is mentally ill. So in the eighties, when you really see the rise of neurology and psychology as

medical disciplines. Then they start, um, you know, edging into what has traditionally been religion's per view. And so when you have women speaking in multiple voices, then you know, traditionally you know, okay, are you a saint? Are you a witch? Or are you mad? And spiritualism provided, you know,

sort of a subset of of the saint. Right, it provided a way to look at these women who were in control of this multiple personality and who were making a living doing it, who were seeing a lot of them saw the world right in a way that was unthinkable thirty years before. So and you know, so then science and medicine starts creeping into this territory and it pathologizes this behavior. And so you start seeing diagnoses of schizophrenia, and here I mean schizophrenia as in, um, you know,

a personality disorder with multiple speaking subjects. Now, admittedly, not every person was in control of the speaking subjects. And if you look at the just the rosters of insane asylums in the night eighteenth century, the number of women who are in there for being spiritualists or shakers are extremely high. So the belief itself is pathologized, and then the actions are understood as evidence of these women being disordered.

So this becomes a bit of an argument between these two camps, and the spiritualists do take on these these new pathologies, by which I mean they fight against them. And you know, so there are discussions of the idea of an unconscious, right, So in eighteen eighty it was not clear to everyone that you had an unconscious. That's that's a later construct that we all now think we have an unconscious in the way that I think I

have a foot, right. So the whole idea that you could have this controlling subterranean force was spiritual were just against this. They were aghast at this as a concept that you know, so when you went into a trans state, you were reaching a higher venue, right, you were. You know, the dead aren't perfect, but they are elevated, right, So the directionality of a trans state is superior, right, it's upper, whereas you know, certainly the directionality of Freudian universe, right

is always negative. Right. Your unconscious is where you know, you keep your monsters under the bed. And they saw this coming and they tried very hard to get out in front of it, and eventually they were not successful, but they did launch an actual campaign against the pathologizing of multiple people speaking m M. One of the other things we see starting in the eighteen seventies is UH, you know, is with Henry Steel Alcott and Emma Harding Britain and UH and Madame Blovotski and the founding of

the Theosophical Society. Thinking about it from Emma's perspective, maybe you know she had been such a chronicle or and synthesizer of spiritualism. Um, what attracted her to this new tradition or discipline and what influenced did the founding of the Theosophical Society have on spiritualism within the American religious landscape. Well, Emma was at the initial eighteen seventy two party in

New York that founded the Theosophical Society. And what the Theosophical Society and Madame Blevowski in particular proposed is that spiritualism was this is my phrasing obviously but too exoteric a right, That actual call to work requires initiation, it requires adepts, and it requires secrecy. So if you could, you know, talk to the dead, you were approaching something important,

but you weren't there yet. So they actually set out to create a much more um esoteric as an actively secret and requiring gradations of initiation at that sort of spun off of some of the primary principles of spiritualism. So felling a Petro Noblatsky had started off, well, she was from Odessa, and she came by way of Egypt and Paris and all these interesting places to show up in New York. And she christened herself a countess, which

is probably complete hogwash. And you know, I had people call her madam, and she initially she was a She was a character, My gracious she was. She was short and had blue blue blue eyes and kind of looked like a refrigerator and had a she smoked a hundred cigarettes today, so you can imagine what a fabulous voice she must have had. Um. And she had you know,

gun undercover and drag with the Sufis in Egypt. And somehow she knew more about Parisian Front, you know, freemasonry than she should have been able to as a woman. And so she had all this this fascinating knowledge, and so she took the sort of basics of spirit communication and turning them on their heads. So she said, when you were talking to a spirit, you're not actually talking

to a consciousness, You're talking to a energy residue. Right, So if so and so dies, then so and So's energy residue will linger on earth for a while, and when you contact them in a seance, you're only getting the appearance of actual communication. So she doesn't then a great spiritualism per se um. But she does try to flip the valance of talking with the dead. All right, it's too easy and it is um not the real deal for her. So this is appealing obviously, right. The

secret societies are always appealing. You want to have some sort of knowledge that other people don't have, if it's you know, the whole point of having a secret is that you've got some sort of power, if only momentarily, you know, until that bubble bursts and then nobody cares. Right. So, so al was was interested in this more occult, esoteric initiatory practice. But she now, as one might say about Podenci,

she worshiped with both hands. Right, So she never stopped believing that spiritualism actually contacted the dead in a very meaningful way. Um. But she didn't think that that was exclusive, you know. So she thought you could simultaneously be a theosophist and a spiritualist, and she was successful at that. Um. But it was it was quite the movement, right, Um. And it was also unlike spiritualism were you know, as we've discussed, it's very optimistic in so many ways. Uh,

theosophy is paranoid. It's a massive conspiracy theory. So according to Blovotsky in her first iteration, she has these two periods. There's the so called Egyptian period and then the so called Buddhist period. But in the Egyptian period, which is when Emma was involved, and this was taking place in New York, she she writes ISOs n Veils, which is this massive two volume tome on how everybody in the world has always had access to some obscured truth. Again friendly, multicultural,

clearly childless, spiritualism in so many ways. But then the forces of power have spent all millennia trying to keep you from it. So quite right, and so this is an enormous conspiracy theory. Um, I think still the greatest that America that's ever produced. And I include the Lizardman in that list. So uh, it has a different trajectory, right. It is not progressive or kind or healing at the core of it. It's it's much more about self transformation.

It's much more about uh, secrecy and inner sanctum. M hm hmm. That's great. Um, we're headed towards our wrap up, but before we get there, could you say a little bit more about the American Society a Psychical Research, Uh, and it's founding in five and how it went on to relate to spiritualism and spiritualists as we're headed towards

the end of the nineteenth century. Sure, so, the Society for Psychical Research was actually started in Cambridge, and it included on its roster every serious intellectual of eighty And it actually had a bunch of classics professors and Kind and Doyle and the founder of modern criminology, Jase R. Lombroso, and the guy who created underwater telegraphy are all over Lodge. I mean, it was it was just a roster of

who's who in the academic community. And it set out to question things like the existence of telepathy and the claims of spiritualism and things like um, uncanny dreams, right, and hauntings. So these were its main fous i and it walked into it with a pretty open attitude to be honest. So it would you have a case of somebody waking up in England knowing for some reason that there husband died overnight, right, and then two weeks later it shows up in the newspaper that this ship sank

off of the coast of Australia. Right, So they would approach this it's like, okay, well you know one answer is that just is clear point, right. Another answer is that thought transference is possible. So the the idea that we have a physical, grounded material uh possibility of exchanging thoughts across distance. So it was not super natural, right, it was just not yet understood. So this kind of conversation went on for a very long time and Mark

Twain participated. It was it was really quite the whole. Yeah, it was all star. They even got Darwin involved try and Darwin had no interest in any of this, but

you know he went for a little while. Um, so there's an American offshoot that begins, and William James is you know, it's most famous, yeah, investigator, believer and James if you just read his psychology, right, so if you just take you know, say, his lectures on religion, he does not agree with what will become right, Certainly, the nature of the psyche is still at stake, right, And some people believe, like William James, that the psyche naturally

points towards the good, and that humans you know, will not you know, morally good necessarily, that human nature points toward something greater than themselves, right, Whereas Freud is obviously going to say that everything refers to your interior life and that a lot of it is selfish. So the

nature of human nature is at stake here. And James does not buy into spiritualism wholesale at all, but he does think that the unconscious can communicate with with spirits greater than they, and it's he finds, you know, his this one woman who you know, he sicks this detective on for years and she's just infallible. She's a perfect little middle class lady who you know, is you know, a good wife and lives in a cute little house and wears gloves and it is proper all the time.

And he um, he calls her, you know, his his black Swan. Right, No, I'm sorry, not um anyway, Mrs Piper. So Mrs Piper is just perfect forever, and so he clearly believes in the powers of Mrs Piper, but he does not wholesale buy into, you know, everybody who claims to have these sort of supernatural powers. And so he thinks it's possible, but he also concedes that there's a

lot of chicken ry going on. And but right, he's this amazing name and he uh, his his dad was the Swedenborgian mystic and obviously his his brother, you know, wrote The Bostonians, which makes fun of the spiritualists, you know, with great frequency. So he uh, they clearly come from this very religious family to which they reacted quite differently. Uh. But yees. So he gives a real intellectual impromoter to

the the entire spiritualist cause. That's great. Um. As we head into that end of this century, you mentioned that theosophy has a much more paranoid attitude or mood to it. Um As spiritualism, especially in the United States, builds some institutions, tries to put together some organizations that will last, you know, after all the annual conventions, conventions, conventions, but no church. There are some groups that are that are formed. You

mentioned the Dale earlier. There are some communities that are that are founded to last. Um to spiritualism maintain it's kind of optimism and spirit of progress at the end of the century. With the kind of organizations you're talking about, I would say absolutely, and I would say as it continues through today, Uh what you have? However, after World War One, first of all, the whole edifice is crumbling

when everyone starts relying on materializations. Right, so when you're talking about, you know, a trumpet playing in eighteen fifty two, okay, that's fine. But when you're talking about manifesting multiple ghosts and full body while they run around and you know, do embarrassing colonialists things, um, then you were really you know,

inviting Charlatan's into your home. And as people got sort of inured to spiritualism as a domestic form of aid with grieving, right, then they start demanding more and more showmanship. And this cycle of demand and showmanship, you know, just aid away. At the core of this is a religious belief and so it it morphs into things as various stage magic and obviously the advent of photography is very

important spiritualism. And you know, then you start getting into the production of ectoplasm, and so it gets um more morphous and less. I disliked the word authentic, but heartfelt. However, the groups you're talking about, um, yes, absolutely, the Cassadaica community, the Lilydale community. Um. These these folks understood perhaps the single most important thing about spiritualism, and that is the

vanguard of multiculturalism. Right. So the fact that diversity is one of the first words that comes out of my mouth in a class, I really do think is related

directly to spiritualism. And so, of course what happens there as Americans learn more about Asian religions over the course of the century, particularly going to two wars with Buddhist countries and you know, bringing home war brides, and then you know, the hippies and the beats, you know, love Buddhism, and people start getting interested in karma and reincarnation that these get sort of melted. So new Age, if you will,

is a concatination of these sorts of interests. Right, that things are improving, but it might be over multiple lifetimes, and there are ethical checks and balances like karma in ways that something did not exist in early spiritualism. And you know, how do you account for improvement across reincarnated lives? And you know, do you come back with a certain you know, squad of people. Right? Is there such a thing as true love? How does it manifest over multiple lifetimes?

So these all kind of work together over the course of the twentieth century to create a modern spiritualism which is still very very invested in multiculturalism and in the idea that there is no hell and that God does not divide part of the world and condemn them, but rather that everyone is on the same path, and that progress might not be evidence in this particular moment, but

that it is inevitable. Mm hm m hm. Can you extend that thought just a bit, because at the end of your book you write that spiritualism's main contribution is in the field of ethics, and some of what you just said really addresses that. Um. But how do you describe that contribution of spiritualism to ethics? Um? And is what you just said the main way we can see it's influence today? Are there any other places where spiritualism's

contribution to ethics really still appears in American life? I completely think that spiritualism's primary contribution is to ethics, and it is to the dismantling of a duality of heaven and health, and to the relegating of all of your

neighbors who are not exactly like you to hell. So I tea to a class and world religions we just met yesterday, and they said, you know, I presume that there is no one in this room who would look around at your fellow students to say, I'm sorry, dude, you're really you know, you're a nice, interesting person, but you're going to hell, right, And that of course there are people who still believe that, and there are many hardcore people still believe that, but it is not the norm, right,

and it certainly was before Spiritualist came Spiritualism came on stage. There were obviously there were other people, um who you know, didn't actively believe in a hell, the Unitarians, the universalists, right, everyone was going you know, to heaven want universalist smith um. But as a mainstream, loud, splashy movement, Spiritualism really was a driving force behind nascent multiculturalism. And I think that

that is its lasting contribution. And when you take things like you know, exclusivity of salvation, right, it's like, well, you know, my team is right and your team is wrong. And then we're gonna, you know, have this you know, ghastly battle, and then you're all going to lose. Right that that that apocalyptic sort of thinking, that binary sort of thinking accounts for so much of you know, historical world ills and for people feeling that they are righteous

right in their belief in their exclusive truth claim. And spiritualist just takes that and dismantles it right, just snaps that apocalyptic binary and so gradual improvement with no judgment and no losers, uh is how I would characterize you know, vast majority of college students. I'm happy to say, Hey, folks, it's Aaron here. I hope today's interview helped you deepen your understanding of everything involved in the world of spiritualism.

But we're not done yet. We have more interviews to share with you, so stick around after this brief sponsor break to hear a preview of next week's interview. Next time on obscured. Obviously, comparing the eighteen fifties or the eighteen seventies with the nine twenties. So much it changed across the turn of that long nineteenth century, but so

much hadn't changed. World War One decimated Europe with a kind of violence and carnage never seen before the new twentieth century had invented new weapons of war, but offered a little new to help survivors rapple or cope with the aftermath. People were and are still asking, how kind of dead speak to the living as something other than the haunting, seating presence of absence. The resurgence is real.

I mean it's a different resurgence, but I mean I'm now, I'm now in thees and Thomas Edison hits the press with the news that he is building an apparatus to contact the dead, and all of the press is framing it at the time in New York Times to Scientific America as a new resurgence and spiritualism after the war. A Lot Obscured was created by me Aaron Manky and produce by Matt Frederick, Alex Williams, and Josh Thane in

partnership with I Heart Radio. Research and writing for this season is all the work of my right hand man, Carl Nellis, and the brilliant Chad Lawson composed the brand new soundtrack. Learn more about our contributing historians, source material and links to our other shows over at History unobscured dot com and until next time. Thanks for listening. Unobscured as a production of I Heart Radio and Aaron Minkey.

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