Pioneers of Spiritualism
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Pioneers of Spiritualism
Swedenborg was a fore runner of Spiritualism, the basis of his teachings in his new church was everything he had seen and heard in the spirit world. His followers, however, distanced themselves from the later Spiritualist Movement.
Information gained likewise from the Spirit world was the basis of the education in the Lyceums founded by Andrew Jackson Davis. Davis had foretold the activities of the Fox Sisters who were to demonstrate that communication with spirit was possible, proving survival. Emma Hardinge-Britten continued the same message through mediumship and speaking in deep trance. She gave structure as well as philosophy to the Spiritualist Movement, working tirelessly to achieve the formation of the National Spiritualist Federation. Respectability was given to the Movement, allowing greater acceptance by the public by the two friends Arthur Conanan Doyle and Oliver Lodge who both accepted Spiritualist ideas and made their views known. Helen Duncan became a Martyr for Spiritualism in1955 despite the Fraudulent Mediums Act which was supposed to protect genuine mediums. Spiritualism had been recognized as a religion by Act of Parliament the same year as that Act.
Andrew Jackson Davis (1826- 1910)
Andrew Jackson Davis (1826-1910) known to contemporaries as ‘the poughkeepie seer’ and later referred to as the ‘John the Baptist of Modern Spiritualism’ because he ‘definitively proclaimed the coming revelation of Spirit communion’ when he foretold the activity of the Fox Sisters.
As a child Andrew was sickly as a result of being run over by a cart. His father thought he would never amount to anything because of the weakness this had caused, although his mother was more supportive. The family had financial difficulties and moved home several times, adding to his difficulties.
Andrew from an early age had heard voices but it was not until he had been exposed to mesmerism that his clairvoyant and spiritual abilities manifested fully. He was able to work with doctors as a medical clairvoyant, although later in life hewent to a medical school to authenticate his gifts.
His greatest gift, however, was that of trance speaking, although for a while he had to be mesmerised to go into trance state. in trance, though, he could discuss intellectual concepts as an equal with the eminent scientists and philosophers of the day. At the age of 19 he dictated ‘The Principles of Nature, Her Divine Revelations’ while in trance. It was the first book of Spiritualist philosophy, an amalgam of science and spirituality. Among over 30 books he produced were an auto biography, ‘The Magic Staff’ and books about the afterlife, medicine and cosmology.
Despite his father’s poor opinion of his prospects, Andrew was an important medium in the eyes of President Lincoln, who was known to attend seances. The two had the same ideas about society, liberty and justice and some civil war documents suggest that Davis may have had some influence with Lincoln.
In 1865 Davis opened the first Spiritualists’ Lyceum, educating children in the way he had learned children were taught in the Spirit world. Lyceums were opened in America and England and played a big part in the development of the Movement, although, regrettably the Lyceum movement in Britain has declined.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle,1859- 1930
Arthur Conan Doyle, had been born to the poor relations in a prosperous Irish Catholic family in Edinburgh. He was sent to a Jesuit school and studied medicine at Edinburgh University, courtesy of the richer members of the family. He worked as a Surgeon on a whaling ship for a year before graduating as a physician and surgeon in 1881. He took on the role of army surgeon after being rejected as a soldier in the Boer war at the age of 40 and was rejected again at the age of 55 for the First World War.
Arthur worked and played hard, and as a result suffered from ill health on occasions While doctoring in the Boer War he was writing a ‘Pamphlet’, published in 1890, of 500 pages justifying involvement in the war, which earned him his knighthood.
At first Doyle combined writing with his medical career, but he found he could give up medicine when his creation of Sherlock Holmes became popular. He did try to ’kill off’ Holmes to concentrate on other writing but was forced to bring him back by popular demand. Altogether he wrote over 200 novels, plus short stories, poems and nonfiction books and pamphlets. Doyle wrote a number of books on Spiritualism, including ‘The History of Spiritualism’ which records the beginning of the movement and the work of all the great mediums of the 19th Century.
Doyle joined the Society for Psychical Research, having witnessed some table tilting and other physical phenomena while sitting in a group. He was privileged to sit with several of the most gifted mental and physical mediums of the day and was convinced of spirit communication and survival.
In 1918 he publicly proclaimed his belief in Spiritualism, but was ridiculed in the press a few years later when he accepted a fake photograph of ‘fairies’ as a true picture.
In his later years Doyle toured the country promoting Spiritualism to large audiences everywhere. When he passed in 1930, the movement lost a great champion. In appreciation, the SNU made him their Honorary President in Spirit.
Emma Hardinge -Britten (1823-99)
Born in London, the daughter of a ‘seafarer’, Captain Floyd Hardinge, Emma was a child with prodigious talents in music, singing and speaking. At the age of 11 she was earning a living as a music teacher. In 1856 she went to America as part of a theatrical company where the mediumistic abilities she had shown as a child became more apparent. In that year, she gave a message from a sailor who had drowned when the Pacific, a mail steamer went down. She avoided court proceedings when a few weeks later she was proven to have been accurate.
Emma built upon the work of the Fox sisters, who were promulgating the message of spirit survival through demonstrations of phenomena. Emma became a deep trance speaker touring and campaigning in America, Australia, New Zealand and England spreading the same message through mediumship and speaking.
After the assassination of President Lincoln she gave the ‘Great Funeral Oration on Abraham Lincoln’ in 1865 which earned her a lot of respect.
In 1870 she wrote the book ‘Modern American Spiritualism, considered the classic history of the Movement in America and married Dr Britten a fellow worker for Spiritualism the same year
Back home she turned her attention to the work of the Lyceums and with others she compiled the first Lyceum Manual which was published in 1887. She had already written three books and in 1887 she started ‘The Two Worlds’ which she edited for the first five years.
Although she had been born into an Evangelical family, Emma was by this time strongly anti-Christian and tried to get Spiritualist societies to stress the religious side of spirit teachings. She was the channel for Robert Owen when he gave the philosophy which became the basis of the Seven Principles, the cornerstone of spiritualist beliefs.
Emma had always advocated and worked for a national body of Spiritualists, succeeding in 1890 when the National Spiritualist Federation was formed, stating that the basis of the religion of Spiritualism should be a belief in the Seven Principles, a decision repeated when the Spiritualists’ National Union Ltd succeeded the earlier Federation. Spiritualists and Modern Spiritualism owe a lot to Emma Hardinge Britten.
Helen Duncan, 1897-1956
‘Hellish Nell’ as she was known to some of her contemporaries (because of her temper, not her psychic abilities!) was born Victoria MacFarlane in Callender in 1897, she married Henry Duncan in 1916.
From an early age she showed psychic abilities. While at school she found the location of a missing person by remote viewing and was able to go into trance and produce ectoplasm from her mouth. She was, however, not a keen scholar.
Helen’s family were poor. Her husband became ill. She, herself suffered poor health throughout her life. She therefore turned to her mediumship to support her family, giving seances in private houses and spiritualist churches. She built up a good following but was plagued by accusations of fraud.
The fraud accusations culminated in 1944 in a trial on a charge under the Witchcraft Act of 1735, a trial that Winston Churchill described as ‘absolute tomfoolery’. It has been said the charge against her was to prevent the public hearing disheartening information at a time when the war effort was at a low point. (She had previously brought drowned sailors from the battleship ‘Hood’ and HMS Barham to the séance room, which the authorities hadn’t made public). Of course, there might have been a Nazi spy at her séance!
The trial was something of a setup. There was no physical evidence, the ectoplasm was alleged to have been a white sheet, but it could not be produced. Testimonial evidence only was given, and it has been said the prosecution witnesses were coached by the self-appointed psychic investigator Harry Price. Helen was found guilty and sentenced to nine months in Holloway Prison.
After her release from prison Helen continued to give seances although her abilities seemed to have waned somewhat. The harassment continued, however. Despite the Witchcraft Act being replaced by the Fraudulent Mediums Act of 1951, which was meant to protect genuine mediums and an Act recognizing Spiritualism as a religion, in 1955 the police invaded a séance she was holding in Nottingham. All the rules for the safety of a physical medium were broken; lights were switched on; there was a lot of shouting and Helen was manhandled causing the ectoplasm to return to her body quickly which resulted in internal injuries. She died five weeks later.
Oliver Lodge
Two men who became close friends after meeting at the palace where they both received knighthoods on August 9th1902 added respectability to the Spiritualist Movement. They were Oliver Lodge (1851-1940) and Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930).
Oliver Lodge was a physicist and inventor of some repute. One of his studies was in the propagation and reception of electromagnetic waves which led to his invention of a detector which could transcribe Morse code radio signals onto paper.
He was a member of the ‘Ghost Club’ and was involved with the Society for Psychical Research (he was President 1901-1903)
His first investigation for the society was the mediumship of the American Leonora Piper. Lodge reported favourably on the evidence she had given to him.
After other investigations he reported in 1898 ‘having received many evidential messages, he was now convinced of survival’.
Following the return from spirit of two old friends through the mediumship of Mrs Piper, Lodge wrote ’The Survival of Man’ in 1909. ‘Raymond or Life after Death’ the
story of how the message reporting the death of his son Raymond was validated was published in 1917. It did, however, attract the criticism that as evidence it could not be objective because of Lodge’s closeness to the subject.
Although he was not actually a proponent of Spiritualism- he remained a Christian- he strongly believed in Spiritualist concepts and risked his reputation by making his beliefs public knowledge
Count Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772)
Swedenborg has been variously described as a pioneer of Spiritualism, a Swedish Scientist and a Lutheran Theologian by modern commentators, and as a ‘sensible, pleasant and open-hearted man and scholar’ by a contemporary.
He lived at the time of the Age of Enlightenment when intellectuals were anti-dogma and preferred to trust reason and science. Among his sympathetic contemporaries were the Wesley Brothers, the founders of Methodism and William Blake.
A Scientist, Swedenborg was an authority on physics, metallurgy, zoology, astronomy, and anatomy and included books on all these subjects among his thirty plus published over his lifetime. In 1745 he had a ‘spiritual awakening’ and came to believe that God wanted him to reform Christianity. He wrote books on biblical interpretations, which were studied by at one time about 15 reading groups in England. In daily sessions with his ‘angel friends’, as he called his spirit guides, he found out about the two worlds, physical and spiritual, and was taught much of what can be accepted as Spiritualist philosophy. His book ‘Heaven and Hell’ describes possible destinations after death, with a spirit life before reaching those destinations.
Swedenborg’s scientific mind led him to keep accurate records of everything he had seen and learaned through his gifts of clairvoyance and remote viewing, and his teachings were accepted by an increasing number of churches. The Lutheran church and the state, however objected, with charges of heresy against two men who followed his teachings in 1768 and assigning cult status to the new religion.
He was the only scientist of repute who had made contact with the Spirit world and dared to speak out about it, although he knew it was a threat to his reputation. Because of him, when Spiritualism developed in the mid19th century, it became a subject worth investigating. but the Swedenborgians had distanced themselves from the Spiritualist movement.
Swedenborg was a fore runner of Spiritualism, the basis of his teachings in his new church was everything he had seen and heard in the spirit world. His followers, however, distanced themselves from the later Spiritualist Movement.
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