Victorian Spiritualism part 1

We’re back and we’re rapping. While we’re sure we could come up with some killer rhymes, we’re letting our toes do the talking today. There’s no reason why messages from beyond can’t come with a sick beat, and creaky toes are the body’s other beatbox. Victorian Spiritualism is proving much funkier than we ever suspected. Main Topic: Victorian Spiritualism part 1 This is the first of our two-part look at the origins and evolution of Spiritualism in the gaslight era. We look at how Spiritualism grew out of Mesmerism, how it became a religion, some of the strange phenomena that mediums produced at the behest of the spirits. This will continue in the next episode, when we examine some of the key figures of the Victorian Spiritualism movement and how many of them were exposed as frauds. Yes, frauds. It shouldn’t be controversial to talk about how Spiritualism is rooted in lies, but its growth into a religion might make this a touchy subject. As ever, we don’t aim to denigrate people’s deeply held beliefs, but we can’t shy away from the fact that the originators of Spiritualism were admitted hoaxsters who denounced their creation later in life. These episodes also gloss over the details of séances. We aim to cover those in more detail in a later episode. Links Things we mention in this episode include: * Calling the Spirits: A History of Seances by Lisa Morton * The Table-Rappers: The Victorians and the Occult by Ronald Pearsall * Medical Meddlers, Mediums and Magicians: The Victorian Age of Credulity by Dr Keith Souter * Spiritualism * QAnon and Conspiracy Theories * London Fortean Society * Mediumship * Spirit trumpet * The Changeling (1980) * Automatic writing * Henry Slade * Nevil Maskelyne * Harry Houdini * James Randi * Derren Brown * Table-turning * Ouija: Origin of...