People from the Other Side

People from the Other Side PDF

Author: Maurice Leonard

Publisher: The History Press

Published: 2011-10-21

Total Pages: 292

ISBN-13: 0752472380

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Kate, Leah, and Margaret Fox were three young sisters living in upstate New York in the middle of the 19th century who discovered an apparent ability to communicate with spirits. When this became known, they quickly found themselves at the core of an emerging spiritualist movement, and their public séances in New York City were attended by many. The movement gained considerable popularity, although Margaret would later admit to producing rapping noises by cracking her toe joints and both she and Kate eventually died in poverty. Spiritualism nonetheless became something of a Victorian phenomenon, both in the United States and Britain, with figures such as James Fenimore Cooper and Arthur Conan Doyle amongst its adherents. This account of the lives of the Foxes is a fascinating and informative look at the birth and early days of spiritualism, a belief that remains popular to this day.

Talking to the Other Side

Talking to the Other Side PDF

Author: Todd Jay Leonard

Publisher: iUniverse

Published: 2005

Total Pages: 350

ISBN-13: 0595363539

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Since its birth in 1848, Spiritualism as a religion, science, and philosophy has experienced great highs and lows. At the center of this purely American-made modern-religious movement are "mediums"--the people who are able to communicate, in some way, with spirit entities that are no longer on the earth plane. Based on three years of on-site investigation, and a plethora of data and research collected on the modern Spiritualist movement in America, Talking to the Other Side focuses upon the ethno-religious aspects of the religion, mediumship, and the mediums themselves. The first four chapters offer an expansive review of the history of religion in America, mediumship, and the Spiritualist movement. Chapters 5-7 comprise the research and data that were compiled and analyzed based on fieldwork analysis, a comprehensive questionnaire, personal interviews, and published literature on the topic of Spiritualism and mediumship. According to Spiritualist mediums, "people don't die, bodies do." Talking to the Other Side offers a contemporary look into the lives and backgrounds of the mediums who bridge this world and the Spirit world, connecting those who have passed over with those they left behind.

The History of Spiritualism, Vol. I

The History of Spiritualism, Vol. I PDF

Author: Arthur Conan Doyle

Publisher: DigiCat

Published: 2022-09-15

Total Pages: 272

ISBN-13:

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"The History of Spiritualism, Vol. I" is a book by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, most famous for stories about the brilliant detective Sherlock Holmes. Doyle had a wide sphere of interests, including spiritual phenomena and life after death. This book is a detailed account of how spiritualism developed historically until the beginning of the 20th century.

Supernatural Entertainments

Supernatural Entertainments PDF

Author: Simone Natale

Publisher: Penn State Press

Published: 2016-03-31

Total Pages: 240

ISBN-13: 0271077379

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In Supernatural Entertainments, Simone Natale vividly depicts spiritualism’s rise as a religious and cultural phenomenon and explores its strong connection to the growth of the media entertainment industry in the nineteenth century. He frames the spiritualist movement as part of a new commodity culture that changed how public entertainments were produced and consumed. Starting with the story of the Fox sisters, considered the first spiritualist mediums in history, Natale follows the trajectory of spiritualism in Great Britain and the United States from its foundation in 1848 to the beginning of the twentieth century. He demonstrates that spiritualist mediums and leaders adopted many of the promotional strategies and spectacular techniques that were being developed for the broader entertainment industry. Spiritualist mediums were indistinguishable from other professional performers, as they had managers and agents, advertised in the press, and used spectacularism to draw audiences. Addressing the overlap between spiritualism’s explosion and nineteenth-century show business, Natale provides an archaeology of how the supernatural became a powerful force in the media and popular culture of today.

The History of Spiritualism (Vols. 1 And 2)

The History of Spiritualism (Vols. 1 And 2) PDF

Author: Arthur Conan Doyle

Publisher:

Published: 2022-12

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13:

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Sir Arthur Conan Doyle published The History of Spiritualism in 1926, offering a thorough account of the movement which began in 1848 with the Fox Sisters, but had been brewing since long before. Doyle was one of the loudest and best-known evangelists for the religion in the early twentieth century. He, and its millions of followers, believed that we never die-we merely move on to another plane. Doyle's evidence, and the Spiritualist mediums who led the way, are all to be found within these pages. This hardcover re-publication is unabridged and maintains all of the author's British English spellings.

Radical Spirits

Radical Spirits PDF

Author: Ann Braude

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 2020-05-25

Total Pages: 308

ISBN-13: 0253056306

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“Braude has discovered a crucial link between the early feminists and the spiritualists who so captured the American imagination.” —Los Angeles Times In Radical Spirits, Ann Braude contends that the early women’s rights movement and Spiritualism went hand in hand. Her book makes a convincing argument for the importance of religion in the study of American women’s history. In this new edition, Braude discusses the impact of the book on the scholarship of the last decade and assesses the place of religion in interpretations of women’s history in general and the women’s rights movement in particular. A review of current scholarship and suggestions for further reading make it even more useful for contemporary teachers and students. “It would be hard to imagine a book that more insightfully combined gender, social, and religious history together more perfectly than Radical Spirits. Braude still speaks powerfully to unique issues of women’s creativity—spiritual as well as political—in a superb account of the controversial nineteenth-century Spiritualist movement.” —Jon Butler, Howard R. Lamar Professor Emeritus of American Studies, History, and Religious Studies at Yale University “Continually rewarding.” —The New York Times Book Review “A fascinating, well-researched, and scholarly work on a peripheral aspect of the rise of the American feminist movement.” —Library Journal “A vitally important book . . . [that] has . . . influenced a generation of young scholars.” —Marie Griffith, associate director of the Center for the Study of Religion, Princeton University “An insightful book and a delightful read.” —Journal of American History

Body and Soul

Body and Soul PDF

Author: Robert S. Cox

Publisher: University of Virginia Press

Published: 2003-09-29

Total Pages: 304

ISBN-13: 0813923905

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A product of the "spiritual hothouse" of the Second Great Awakening, Spiritualism became the fastest growing religion in the nation during the 1850s, and one of the principal responses to the widespread perception that American society was descending into atomistic particularity. In Body and Soul, Robert Cox shows how Spiritualism sought to transform sympathy into social practice, arguing that each individual, living and dead, was poised within a nexus of affect, and through the active propagation of these sympathetic bonds, a new and coherent society would emerge. Phenomena such as spontaneous somnambulism and sympathetic communion with the dead—whether through séance or "spirit photography"—were ways of transcending the barriers dissecting the American body politic, including the ultimate barrier, death. Drawing equally upon social, occult, and physiological registers, Spiritualism created a unique "social physiology" in which mind was integrated into body and body into society, leading Spiritualists into earthly social reforms, such as women’s rights and anti-slavery. From the beginning, however, Spiritualist political and social expression was far more diverse than has previously been recognized, encompassing distinctive proslavery and antiegalitarian strains, and in the wake of racial and political adjustments following the Civil War, the movement began to fracture. Cox traces the eventual dissolution of Spiritualism through the contradictions of its various regional and racial factions and through their increasingly circumscribed responses to a changing world. In the end, he concludes, the history of Spiritualism was written in the limits of sympathy, and not its limitless potential.

The History of Spiritualism, Vol. II

The History of Spiritualism, Vol. II PDF

Author: Arthur Conan Doyle

Publisher: DigiCat

Published: 2022-07-21

Total Pages: 242

ISBN-13:

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"The History of Spiritualism, Vol. II" is a book by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, most famous for stories about the brilliant detective Sherlock Holmes. Doyle had a wide sphere of interests, including spiritual phenomena and life after death. This book is a detailed account of how spiritualism developed historically until the beginning of the 20th century.

Spiritualism in Nineteenth-Century New Orleans

Spiritualism in Nineteenth-Century New Orleans PDF

Author: Melissa Daggett

Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi

Published: 2016-12-02

Total Pages: 208

ISBN-13: 1496810090

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Modern American Spiritualism blossomed in the 1850s and continued as a viable faith into the 1870s. Because of its diversity and openness to new cultures and religions, New Orleans provided fertile ground to nurture Spiritualism, and many séance circles flourished in the Creole Faubourgs of Tremé and Marigny as well as the American sector of the city. Melissa Daggett focuses on Le Cercle Harmonique, the francophone séance circle of Henry Louis Rey (1831-1894), a Creole of color who was a key civil rights activist, author, and Civil War and Reconstruction leader. His life has so far remained largely in the shadows of New Orleans history, partly due to a language barrier. Spiritualism in Nineteenth-Century New Orleans focuses on the turbulent years between the late antebellum period and the end of Reconstruction. Translating and interpreting numerous primary sources and one of the only surviving registers of séance proceedings, Daggett has opened a window into a fascinating life as well as a period of tumult and change. She provides unparalleled insights into the history of the Creoles of color and renders a better understanding of New Orleans's complex history. The author weaves an intriguing tale of the supernatural, of chaotic post-bellum politics, of transatlantic linkages, and of the personal triumphs and tragedies of Rey as a notable citizen and medium. Wonderful illustrations, reproductions of the original spiritual communications, and photographs, many of which have never before appeared in published form, accompany this study of Rey and his world.