Download or read book Explanation and History of the Mysterious Communion with Spirits written by Eliab Wilkinson Capron and published by . This book was released on 1850 with total page 112 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Secularism in Antebellum America written by John Lardas Modern and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2011-12-15 with total page 349 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ghosts, railroads, Sing Sing, sex machines - these are just a few of the phenomena that appear in this pioneering account of religion and society in 19th-century America.

Download or read book The Reluctant Spiritualist written by Nancy Rubin Stuart and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2005 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Chronicles the life of Maggie Fox, a young woman who, in 1848, claimed she and her sisters had received messages from the spiritual world, beginning the spiritualist movement that swept the country.

Download or read book Out of the Shadows written by Emily Midorikawa and published by Catapult. This book was released on 2021-05-11 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Queen Victoria's reign was an era of breathtaking social change, but it did little to create a platform for women to express themselves. But not so within the social sphere of the séance--a mysterious, lamp-lit world on both sides of the Atlantic, in which women who craved a public voice could hold their own. Out of the Shadows tells the stories of the enterprising women whose supposedly clairvoyant gifts granted them fame, fortune, and most important, influence as they crossed rigid boundaries of gender and class as easily as they passed between the realms of the living and the dead. The Fox sisters inspired some of the era’s best-known political activists and set off a transatlantic séance craze. While in the throes of a trance, Emma Hardinge Britten delivered powerful speeches to crowds of thousands. Victoria Woodhull claimed guidance from the spirit world as she took on the millionaires of Wall Street before becoming America’s first female presidential candidate. And Georgina Weldon narrowly escaped the asylum before becoming a celebrity campaigner against archaic lunacy laws. Drawing on diaries, letters, and rarely seen memoirs and texts, Emily Midorikawa illuminates a radical history of female influence that has been confined to the dark until now.

Download or read book Upstate Cauldron written by Joscelyn Godwin and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 2015-03-06 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A guide to the phenomenal crop of prophets, cults, and utopian communities that arose in Upstate New York from 1776 to 1914. From 1776 to 1914, an amazing collection of prophets, mediums, sects, cults, utopian communities, and spiritual leaders arose in Upstate New York. Along with the best known of these, such as the Shakers, Mormons, and Spiritualists, this book explores more than forty other spiritual leaders or groups, some of them virtually unknown, but all of them fascinating. The author uncovers common threads that characterize these homegrown spiritualities, including roots in Western esoteric traditions, liberation from the psychological pressures of dogmatic Christianity, a preoccupation with sex, and involvement in the radical reform movements of the day. In addition to maps and photographs of surviving buildings and monuments, the book also features a gazetteer of sites listing 150 locations connected to these groups, which may be used as a helpful travel guide to the region. “The dean of alternative spiritual history produces one of his central and most thoughtful works in Upstate Cauldron. This book is more than a cauldron: It is a melting pot into which Joscelyn Godwin blends the diffuse and complex religious movements that once converged in Upstate New York to show how we became a modern civilization indelibly stamped by the experience of spiritual outsiders. This is both splendid history and a book of wonders in uncovering lost fragments of our world. Throw away your highlighter—because you won’t know where to stop.” — Mitch Horowitz, author of Occult America: White House Séances, Ouija Circles, Masons, and the Secret Mystic History of Our Nation “What a fascinating book! Upstate Cauldron takes a refreshing and new look at the period of time when Upstate New York was the center of the Spiritualist movement in America. Joscelyn Godwin has written a book that is very difficult to put down, introducing us to the most wonderful and exotic individuals. People like Timothy Brown, who built one of the most intricate (and most photographed) homes in Central New York with his own hands and out of his own head. Can you say ‘spiritual guidance’? And we meet Kate and Maggie Fox, who may have been America’s earliest rap stars. The fabulous Fox sisters used secret rapping sounds to convince converts that they were communicating with the ‘other world.’ Anthony Damiani was a spiritual godfather to many young people in the university city of Ithaca. He doled out his visions of wisdom on Ithaca’s main street, and when done, raced fifty miles to his job as a New York State Thruway toll taker. These are just some of the sometimes incredible, sometimes bizarre, but always interesting people at the core of Upstate’s Spiritualism history. Godwin tells the story of a little-known historical chapter of the area with insight and great liveliness. As the author myself of a half dozen books about Upstate New York, I found this book irresistible and absorbing.” — Chuck D’Imperio, author of Unknown Museums of Upstate New York: A Guide to 50 Treasures “Destined to become the definitive book on eccentric religion in this geographical area, this is a fascinating account of unusual and inventive religious figures and movements. Sure-handed, even-tempered, and wry, Joscelyn Godwin is the ideal guide, and his book is one that all readers will want to have in hand as they explore this historically rich and important region. What’s more, it is an important book for understanding a vital part of American religious history.” — Arthur Versluis, author of American Gurus: From Transcendentalism to New Age Religion

Download or read book Singular Revelations written by Eliab Wilkinson Capron and published by . This book was released on 1850 with total page 92 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Supernatural Entertainments written by Simone Natale and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2016-03-31 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book The Knockings Exposed written by Doctor Diotrephes (pseud.) and published by . This book was released on 1860 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Calling the Spirits written by Lisa Morton and published by Reaktion Books. This book was released on 2022-10-10 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Halloween expert Morton, a level-headed and entertaining history of our desire and attempts to hold conversations with the dead. Calling the Spirits investigates the eerie history of our conversations with the dead, from necromancy in Homer’s Odyssey to the emergence of Spiritualism—when Victorians were entranced by mediums and the seance was born. Among our cast are the Fox sisters, teenagers surrounded by “spirit rappings”; Daniel Dunglas Home, the “greatest medium of all time”; Houdini and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, whose unlikely friendship was forged, then riven, by the afterlife; and Helen Duncan, the medium whose trial in 1944 for witchcraft proved more popular to the public than news about the war. The book also considers Ouija boards, modern psychics, and paranormal investigations, and is illustrated with engravings, fine art (from beyond), and photographs. Hugely entertaining, it begs the question: is anybody there . . . ?

Download or read book Spiritualism Mesmerism and the Occult 1800 1920 Vol 3 written by Shane McCorristine and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-12-17 with total page 1950 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This edition provides an insight into the dark areas between Victorian science, medicine and religion. The rare reset source material in this collection is organized thematically and spans the period from initial mesmeric experiments at the beginning of the nineteenth century to the decline of the Society for Psychical Research in the 1920s.

Download or read book The Crusade Against Slavery written by Louis Filler and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-07-05 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Perhaps no other crusade in the history of the U.S. provoked so much passion and fury as the struggle over slavery. Many of the problems that were a part of that great debate are still with us. Louis Filler has brought together much information both known and new on those who organized to defeat slavery. He has also re-examined the anti-slavery movement's ideals, heroes, and martyrs with historical perspective and precision. Contrary to popular belief, the anti-slavery movement was far from united. It included abolitionists as well as a variety of reformers whose activities place them among the anti-slavery forces. These included men as different in background and temperament as William Lloyd Garrison and John Quincy Adams. Portraits of the many protagonists, their hardships, and their quarrels with Southerners and Northerners alike, bring to life this exciting and tumultuous period. Filler also examines the many related reform movements that characterized the period: feminism, spiritualism, utopian societies, and educational reform. The volume traces the relationship of the antislavery movement to abolition and probes their connection with the several reforms that dominated the period. He brilliantly recaptures a sense of the contemporary consequences of the reformers efforts. This is an absorbing and important survey of the problems--political, social, and economic--that made this period so crucial in the history of the U.S.

Download or read book Through a Glass Darkly written by Stefan Bechtel and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2017-06-13 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 2018 ASJA Award-Winner in the Biography/History Category Is it possible to make direct contact with the dead? Do the departed seek to make contact with us? The conviction that both things are true was the cornerstone of spiritualism, a kind of do-it-yourself religion that swept the Western world from the 1850s to the 1930s. Prominent artists and poets, prime ministers and scientists, all joined hands around the séance table. But the movement's most famous spokesman by far was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, whose public quarrels with Houdini over the truth of spiritualism made headlines across the country. Known to the world as the creator of Sherlock Holmes, Conan Doyle had undergone what many considered an enigmatic transformation, turning his back on the hyper-rational Holmes and plunging into the supernatural. What was it that convinced a brilliant man, the creator of the great exemplar of cold, objective thought, that there was a reality beyond reality? Though most modern sources make Conan Doyle out to be a kindly but credulous old fool, and though the spiritualist era was rife with fraud, Stefan Bechtel and Laurence Roy Stains take a closer look. They reexamine the old records of trance mediums and séances, and they discover that what Conan Doyle and his colleagues uncovered is as difficult to dismiss now as it was then.

Download or read book The Specter of the Indian written by Kathryn Troy and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 2017-08-23 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores the significance of Indian control spirits as a dominating force in nineteenth-century American Spiritualism. The Specter of the Indian unveils the centrality of Native American spirit guides during the emergent years of American Spiritualism. By pulling together cultural and political history; the studies of religion, race, and gender; and the ghostly, Kathryn Troy offers a new layer of understanding to the prevalence of mystically styled Indians in American visual and popular culture. The connections between Spiritualist print and contemporary Indian policy provide fresh insight into the racial dimensions of social reform among nineteenth-century Spiritualists. Troy draws fascinating parallels between the contested belief of Indians as fading from the world, claims of returned apparitions, and the social impetus to provide American Indians with a means of existence in white America. Rather than vanishing from national sight and memory, Indians and their ghosts are shown to be ever present. This book transports the readers into dimly lit parlor rooms and darkened cabinets and lavishes them with detailed séance accounts in the words of those who witnessed them. Scrutinizing the otherworldly whisperings heard therein highlights the voices of mediums and those they sought to channel, allowing the author to dig deep into Spiritualist belief and practice. The influential presence of Indian ghosts is made clear and undeniable.

Download or read book A New Companion to Herman Melville written by Wyn Kelley and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2022-08-16 with total page 596 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Discover a fascinating new set of perspectives on the life and work of Herman Melville A New Companion to Herman Melville delivers an insightful examination of Melville for the twenty-first century. Building on the success of the first Blackwell Companion to Herman Melville, and offering a variety of tools for reading, writing, and teaching Melville and other authors, this New Companion offers critical, technological, and aesthetic practices that can be employed to read Melville in exciting and revelatory ways. Editors Wyn Kelley and Christopher Ohge create a framework that reflects a pluralistic model for humanities teaching and research. In doing so, the contributing authors highlight the ways in which Melville himself was concerned with the utility of tools within fluid circuits of meaning, and how those ideas are embodied, enacted, and mediated. In addition to considering critical theories of race, gender, sexuality, religion, transatlantic and hemispheric studies, digital humanities, book history, neurodiversity, and new biography and reception studies, this book offers: A thorough introduction to the life of Melville, as well as the twentieth- and twenty-first-century revivals of his work Comprehensive explorations of Melville’s works, including Moby-Dick, Pierre, Piazza Tales, and Israel Potter, as well as his poems and poetic masterpiece Clarel Practical discussions of material books, print culture, and digital technologies as applied to Melville In-depth examinations of Melville's treatment of the natural world Two symposium sections with concise reflections on art and adaptation, and on teaching and public engagement A New Companion to Herman Melville provides essential reading for scholars and students ranging from undergraduate and graduate students to more advanced scholars and specialists in the field.

Download or read book Mysteries and Secrets Revealed written by Loren Pankratz and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2021-04-01 with total page 481 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mysteries and Secrets Revealed uncovers the reality behind mysteries of nature and secrets of frauds that eluded common understanding. The journey begins in the ancient Greek city of Delphi, where priests claimed the gift of a priceless gold lion was an acknowledgement of their clairvoyant powers. But their concocted story concealed an embarrassing blunder. Those sufficiently savvy to catch the lie became aware of even deeper problems. Author Loren Pankratz then guides us through the conflicts of Renaissance scholars, including Galileo who explained things in ways that enraged philosophers and infuriated priests. Galileo's methods of investigation were perpetuated by the meticulous work of the Academy of Experiment, and Bernard Fontenelle's enthralling dialogue enabled common people to accept life in the rearranged sun-centered universe. Clairvoyants in a mesmeric trance claimed they could visit distant planets and endure brutal surgical procedures. If any of this was real, how was it possible? One nineteenth century mesmeric savant, Alexis Didier, was so convincing that someone claimed no case of clairvoyance could be made for anyone if his accomplishments were not real. This unchallenged declaration is now unraveled here for the first time through information gleaned from uncommon documents and rare antiquarian pamphlets. The surprising manifestations of modern spiritualism quickly escalated into a psychic arms race that included mysterious tipping and turning of tables. Scientist Michael Faraday devised ingenious experiments to show how subtle muscle reactions outside of awareness created these manifestations. On the other hand, explanations for table levitations and mysterious writing on slates could only be solved by individuals with acute observational skills and acquainted with the methods of trickery. Each story in Mysteries and SecretsRevealed captures the tension of conflict, the thrill of discovery, and the strategies of science that unmasked frauds, fakes, false belief, and the enigmas of our natural world.

Download or read book Talking to the Dead written by Barbara Weisberg and published by Zondervan. This book was released on 2009-10-13 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Barbara Weisberg’s Talking to the Dead blends biography and social history in this revelatory story of the family responsible for the rise of Spiritualism. A fascinating story of spirits and conjurors, skeptics and converts in the second half of nineteenth century America viewed through the lives of Kate and Maggie Fox, the sisters whose purported communication with the dead gave rise to the Spiritualism movement—and whose recanting forty years later is still shrouded in mystery. In March of 1848, Kate and Maggie Fox—sisters aged eleven and fourteen—anxiously reported to a neighbor that they had been hearing strange, unidentified sounds in their house. From a sequence of knocks and rattles translated by the young girls as a "voice from beyond," the Modern Spiritualism movement was born. Talking to the Dead follows the fascinating story of the two girls who were catapulted into an odd limelight after communicating with spirits that March night. Within a few years, tens of thousands of Americans were flocking to séances. An international movement followed. Yet thirty years after those first knocks, the sisters shocked the country by denying they had ever contacted spirits. Shortly after, the sisters once again changed their story and reaffirmed their belief in the spirit world. Weisberg traces not only the lives of the Fox sisters and their family (including their mysterious Svengali–like sister Leah) but also the social, religious, economic and political climates that provided the breeding ground for the movement. While this is a thorough, compelling overview of a potent time in US history, it is also an incredible ghost story.

Download or read book Spiritualism in Antebellum America written by Bret E. Carroll and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 1997-10-22 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "At a time when the New Age movement is starting to make good on the Spiritualists' vision of America as a 'grand clairvoyant nation', Carroll's work raises provocative questions about the tension betwen freedom and authority in the harmonial religions of today." -- Church History "... offers the most comprehensive, sane examination of its topic yet available, no mean achievement for a subject long afflicted by religious partisanship and now perhaps in danger of sympathetic attraction." -- Journal of American History "... fascinating reading it will be for those with a taste for good scholarly writing and a love of the American past and the manifold varieties of the spiritual quest." -- The Quest "In addition to being an excellent introduction to mid-19th-century Spiritualism, Carroll's work also offers scholars a new vantage point from which to view the religious creativity that was so prominent in antebellum America in general." -- Choice During the decade before the Civil War, a growing number of Americans gathered around tables in dimly lit rooms, joined hands, and sought enlightening contact with spirits. The result was Spiritualism, a distinctly colorful religious ideology centered on spirit communication and spirit activity. Spiritualism in Antebellum America analyzes the attempt by spiritually restless Americans of the 1840s and 1850s to negotiate a satisfying combination of freedom and authority as they sought a sense of harmony with the universe.