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THE SPIRITUALISTS Gnosis and Ideology Paul Gillen, BA (Sydney)

THE SPIRITUALISTS Gnosis and Ideology Paul Gillen, BA (Sydney)

THE SPIRITUALISTS Gnosis and ideology

Paul Gillen, B.A. (Sydney) School of Behavioural Sciences Macquarie University

Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Hoveaber 1981 CONTESTS

Chapter 1. Mortfield Church 1

Chapter 2. Spiritualist history 10

Chapter 3. Spiritualist beliefs 24

Chapter 4. Circles 53 Chapter 5. Mortfield politics 66

Chapter 6. The backgrounds of Mortfield Spiritualists Chapter 7. The Spiritualist ■ove*ent 96

Chapter 8. Discourse, code and text 123

Chapter 9. The codes of Spiritualis* 133 Chapter 10. The delphic voice 183

Chapter 11. The bardic voice 192

Chapter 12. Gnosis, ideology and 201

References 211 iii

SYNOPSIS

Spiritualism originated in the U.S.A. in the mid nineteenth century. Its Australian heyday in the late 1870’s has been followed by a lingering decline. Ostensibly centred on the idea that the personality survives physical death and can be contacted by mediums, in fact this aspect is less elaborated than beliefs in "phenomena" such as healing „by touch, astral travel and various kinds of and . The main Spiritualist ritual, while having the outward form of a Christian church service, centres on a demonstration of . Spiritualists also participate

in seances. Their organisations are fragile, and in spite of prevailing norms of tolerance and egalitarianism, mediums are competitive and often quarrelsome. Spiritualists tend to be "seekers" from religious backgrounds, but there is little evidence that social or economic "deprivation1’is a very significant factor in attraction to the movement.

Spiritualism is directed to the attainment of "ultimate knowledge" - gnosis. It is "", in that it searches

for signs of gnosis in anomalous events, and pluralistic in

allowing that there may be many paths to gnosis. I interpret

Spiritualism as a marginalised ideology, constituted by a

group of codes which are closely related to the codes of

dominant ideologies. Six Spiritualist codes are discussed

in some detail. They are concerned with (a) information

exchanges, especially those between mediums and ;

(b) the nature and location of the person; (c) love of Spirit,

other humans and self; (d) progress to higher states of iv being; (e) the scientific validation of Spiritualist claims;

and (f) the elaboration of experience as a realm of metaphorical

correspondences. These codes display the contradictoriness

and incompleteness characteristic of ideology. Their "bardic* enunciation by "messages from Spirit" and other Spiritualist

texts is analysed, and it is also shown how these texts work % as "delphic" entertainments. I argue that fundamentally

Spiritualism is caught between an ideological distortion of , and a gnosis that cannot be realised.

The study is based upon participant observation of a group

of Spiritualists in Sydney, and a range of written sources. DECLARATION

This work has not been submitted for a higher degree to any university or institution other than Macquarie

University.

Paul Gillen ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I pay sad homage to my doctoral supervisor, the late

Professor Chandra Jayawardena, for his wide scholarship and the sympathetic and critical interest he took in my project. For advice and encouragement, I especially thank Marie Curnick, Ann Curthoys, John Docker, Kate

Gillen, Margaret Jolly, Katrina Prokhovnik, Noel Sanders,%

Pamela Gregory, who did most of the typing, and Shirley Deane. It is to the Spiritualists of Mortfield Church that I am most grateful, not only for their kind acceptance of* me, but also for the complicated challenge their movement presented to my preconceptions.

This study is dedicated to Joyce Mazengarb. Thou waitest for the spark from : and we Vague half-believers of our casual creeds, Who never deeply felt, nor clearly willed, Whose insight never has borne fruit in deeds, Whose weak resolves never have been fulfilled; For whom each year we see Ereeds new beginnings, disappointments new; Who hesitate and falter life away, And lose to-morrow the ground won to-day - Ah, do not we, Wanderer, await it too?

- Matthew Arnold, The Scholar Gypsy CHAPTER 1

MORTFIEir CHURCH Every week advertisments like the following appear in

Sydney :

Huntdown Spiritual Church welcomes Med. William Veldt. James Rd. 2 p.m. Healing

Karawa Research Sanctuary, Scouts Hall, Thompson St. Sun. 2.30 p.m. Mary Jay and Elaine Harvey. Mortfield , at 26 Bristol Road. Flower service Sunday 2.30 Mrs Miller, 7 p.m. Andy Johnson. Tuesday 7.15 Development class. Wednesday 10 a.m. healing-. All welcome.

If someone sufficiently intrigued to investigate these

cryptic messages should turn up at the Mortfield Spiritualist -1 Church , he would find himself in a typical inner suburban street

outside a modest brick cottage, externally distinguished only "by an illuminated sign over the entrance displaying the words,

blue on a white ground, "Spiritual Church”. Inside he would

find that some dividing walls in the front of the building

have been removed to create a room with seating arrangements

for about fifty people. Around the walls are a number of

photographic portraits which inspection reveals to be past

presidents of Mortfield Church, and some reproductions of

religious paintings, including one of the Buddha and another

of . At one end of the room is a raised platform decorated

with flowers, on which is a large lectern with a bible, a table with a tray containing a number of paper bags, and, to one

side, a pedal organ, upon which a woman is playing strains evocative of reposeful .

Much of this scene, and of what follows, may remind our observer

of a Christian Church service. But there are jarring notes.

The image of Jesus seems predictable, but what is Lord Buddha

doing here? What is the meaning of the paper bags? And

why is it that, on a carved and polished wooden scroll behind the platform, the words "There is no Higher than Truth- 3 are emblazoned in gold? Does this mean that there is no

Religion, only Truth;or that Truth is the Highest Religion?

In the preponderance of women and the under-representation of the young, the gathering seems typical of the congregation of an established denomination, but it is usually not as formally dressed nor as reverent in its demeanour. The source of the paper bags in the tray is soon learnt: as % each person enters, he or she places one there.

Two or more officiants step onto the platform, and the 2 service begins. One of them greets those present, extends a welcome to the person beside her, the presiding medium, who "will do the flowers for us today”, and announces the singing of a hymn.

Four or more hymns will be sung in the course of the service, always to well-known tunes, sometimes to words taken from

"The British Spiritualist's Propaganda Hymnbook*, copies of the 1922 edition of which are made available to the gathering.

These rewritten words affirm a distinctive cluster of assumptions and values:

V/e all shall live for ever, In realms so pure and bright, 0 aid us, then, our Father, To think and act aright. To cheer the broken - hearted, To aid the suffering one, And through life*s various changes To say "Thy will be done”. (#26)

Friends never leave us, those we call The “dear departed” never do; They are around us, though the pall uf earth conceals them from our view. (#107) 4 There's a beautiful shore where the loved ones are gone Mid the flowers decked in evergreen bloom, And we know they have crossed o'er the dark-death wave And they dwell in that bright angel home,

Usually a follows, often spoken by the medium. Fere is an example of the beginning of one:

I want you to unite with me as we pray and we each pray in our own way to I can't pray for you I can only pray with you and so we stand at this at this moment in the presence of our Father God Almighty * that great force from which we draw our very life- * on this day and through all and we stand together as brothers and sisters united one to another and though many times we forget this wonderful realisation that in our communication with Thee honest communication we begin to realise that we ask for many things and oft-times the things we ask for are not the things we need for the thing we need more than anything else is thp love of our fellow man the love of our loved ones the ability to give out love and many times we forget within that heart of ours that as we expend . so shall we receive...

This kind of delivery is typical of oral sermonising.5

Conventional imagery, repetition and the linking of clauses by simple "adding" combine to produce an effect well captured by the following comment on a book of Madame Blavatsky: ^

Its verses ripple on in a rhythmic cadence aptly suited to assist the feeling of mystical devotion... 5

it consists of ethico-spiritual maxims, which hardly so much attempt to give a systematic exposition of moral principles, as to reduce the spiritual essence of these principles to a mantric form...'

Very often the prayer concludes with a chorus of the lord's

Prayer, the prayer, it may be explained, which M we are taught to say on the Earth **.

At this point a list of the names of people known to be* ill may be read, together with a “healing prayer**, eg:

At this time may we also send forth a prayer • • of love a vibration of upliftment to all thone who are sick in mind and body and spirit to all those who are in need of that succour and that strength and that life.8

Cne of the officiants now reads from a written text.

Biblical passages which refer to the Holy Spirit or to , and non-Scriptural works which the medium considers

"edifying", are heard in approximately equal proportions.

Next, an officiant, usually the presiding medium, delivers

an address. The style is like that of the , or only

a little more "down to earth", so it is difficult to render a just impression by alluding to themes or arguments. Praise

of Spiritualism is, however, the touchstone of them all:

Personally I feel that this is a religion that can never be stifled out it is not a new religion it is a very old religion very very old and has run through all civilisations and will run through all civilisations 6

and our voice must go with the times and not too fast for the times for as we look into history we find as our moral code demolishes so does civilisation die away we have to look for something within to give us and we have to find more than faith in Spiritualism faith alone is not enough we are expected to ask scientific questions and we are to expect that scientific questions will be answered for there are many scientists on the other side of the veil who are willing and over-anxious in many instances . . to give to us the knowledge that they had upon earth and that advanced knowledge that they have gained from Spiritualism..

After the sermon a "voluntary offering11 of cash donations is collected and while another hymn is sung, the service moves to its climax, the "demonstration" by the presiding medium. In Sydney the usual form of demonstration involves "reading flowers".

The medium chooses one of the bags that have been brought by those present, opens it, and takes out the piece of vegetation inside - normally,though not always, a flower.

Holding the flower, the medium delivers a "message" or

"reading” for the person who brought it. This is an example of a very short reading:

It would seem there's a forest and trees the forest can hide the trees trees are of wood and wood builds houses so it would appear you're prepared to go on building but that's not literal it means go on developing yes that's spot on go on developing but you haven't found peace. 7

Who am I with? (At this point, the bringer of the flower the medium is holding makes herself known) It would be beaut if things were easy 10 but one day you’ll say hey the forest's made of trees.

This procedure continues until everyone who brought a flower has been given a message. It is not expected that the medium

should be able to name who brought each flower. At some % point, as above, the medium usually asks the recipients to

identify themselves. What is expected is that he or she

deliver messages which the bringers can relate to their

personal concerns.

After the service the flowers are generally thrown away,

although sometimes the more attractive are kept by members

of the meeting to decorate their houses. Some say that the

flowers last a long time as a result of being touched by

the medium, because of the spiritual power with which the medium makes contact imparts itself to them.

After the demonstration, the service concludes with a final

hymn and a short "benediction**. The medium

may rise, and suddenly breaking into - for example- a

heavily Scottish accent, 11 intone:

And may the light of His countenance shine upon ye and may the peace be in y ’r heart and may the good fellowship and the love and the rapport that ye have found by bein' here this afternoon keep ye warm and keep ye safe and may the peace that passeth human understanding abide with ye each and every one while we are parted. God bless.

If the curious observer I have imagined attends Mortfield

services regularly, he will notice that most weeks a different

medium presides. Arrangements are made whereby the dozen or so churches in Sydney invite mediums to their services from a (more or less) common pool of mediums, who therefore over a period of weeks or months do a "circuit** of several churches. 12

It is also likely that he will find himself drawn into the social circle of the church. After every service, many of the audience retire to the kitchen of the house, where they partake of tea, ‘biscuits and chatter. These gatherings, despite their informality, are an important aspect of

Spiritualist practice. The main items of conversation, apart from pleasantries and gossip, are the success or failure of the medium's readings, news of Spiritualist doings, and discussion of occult, religious, scientific and historical ideas that bear on Spiritualism. It becomes clear that there is a group of Spiritual enthusiasts, most of whom are or wish to become mediums, who take it on themselves to Hget newcomers interested in the work*'.

I attended services regularly at Mortfield, and occasionally at other churches, for nearly a year in the second half of the 1970's. I formed friendships with many of the participants, visited them in their homes, interviewed them,and observed and made tape recordings of their activities. The bulk of what follows is an attempt to describe and interpret their sayings and doings. But before resuming this task, a brief outline of Spiritualism’s history is in order. 9

1. This name, and all other names of people and places in this study, is fictitious.

2. Other descriptions of Spiritualist services in Britain, California, Indiana and New England may be found in Kelson (1969:213-214), Martin (1971), Zaretsky (l974:197f) and Macklin (l974:402f)

3. I have heard spiritualists address the in a striking variety of ways, eg "learly beloved heavenly father” , "Dearly beloved father mother god*, "Great divine spirit of life", "Almighty god source of life, energv end intelligence*1, and "God, wno does not care how we address you, as long as we do it reverently". *

4. Mrs Campbell. In this and other vocal texts I have pointed the speaking by indentation.

5. cf Rosenberg (1974) . .

6. Blavatsky, the co-founder of , was closely associated with Spiritualism ana there is a close relationship between the two movements.

7. Kuhn (19 :272) 8. Mrs Miller.

9. Mrs Campbell.

10. Andy Johnson. This reading is analyzed in Chapter 9.

11. This is a spirit, probably the medium's * guide” , "taking control”, a phenomenon discussed in Chapter 3. Mrs Miller.

12. I doubt if any medium has demonstrated at all churches, or that any church has had services presided over by all mediums: the "pool" is really a continually shifting set of overlapping circles. CHAPTER 2

SPIRITUALIST HISTORY 11 Spiritualists and their history

Though only dimly aware of the movement’s history, Spiritualists place considerable emphasis upon its historicality, or rather, to be precise, its alleged lack of historicality. The American medium explains why. He writes that he explored ancient literature in search of

corroboration of my own experience and observation * in the total history of mankind...if the psychic phenomena with which I was daily becoming more had been going on continuously since the very earliest records of man's life on earth, I was indeed on to something that had to do with the very, structure and purpose of the universe itself.

He discovers what he seeks: according to him, the Spiritualist lineage stretches in a tortuous but unbroken line from ’'early man”, through Homer, the Ancient Egyptians, , Confucius, the Persian and Hebrew , Jesus, Paul of Tarsus, Lamaism,

Dante and Swedenborg. It has always been true,therefore it is 2 true: a time-honoured proof. In its contemporary form, however, Spiritualism is not "eternal", but historically specific.

Origins

In 1848, while revolutionary movements swept ?Jurope, the family of John Fox, farmer, of Hydesville, New York State, was disturbed by mysterious bangs and raps in their house. The daughters,

Margaretta and Kate, attributed these noises to a spirit, with whom they claimed to be able to communicate. The phenomena became the talk of the neighborhood; hundreds came to appraise them; clergymen censured, scoffed or became interested. The

Foxes moved to Rochester in 1849, but the spirits followed their daughters, who quickly found themselves the centre of a controversial cult. Fanned by publicity, it grew rapidly. Many other “mediums'', claiming to be able to communicate with spirits and to produce anomalies like the Pox sisters, appeared all over the country, together with

"circles" of people interested in "investigating” their claims.

By the mid 1850’s, the Spiritualist " system had been synthesised into an approximation of its modern form. The main tenets of this system were:

1) The immortality of the can be scientifically demonstrated

(satisfying the rationalist's need for "proof” and the religious hankering for eternity, but opposing religious "faith" and the materialist view of mind).

2) Existing religious beliefs are distorted perspectives- of the one Truth (this appealed to freethinkers and Deists, without condemning outright more orthodox beliefs).

3) Man's destiny is "Progress, onward, upward, from his birth to eternity'^^Linking the movement with a "progressive" outlook in politics and ; since "eternity" was the timespan, however, it was not millenial or revolutionary).

4) Certain people, mediums, have access to a spiritual "power", a quasi-physical "subtle fluid", which enabled spirit communicat- ion to take place, as well as clairvoyance and apparent suspensions of the "laws of nature"(this element of Spiritualism supplied the drama and mystery).

In 1855 Spiritualism in the was as strong as it would ever be, with, according to one historian "over a million 4 and a half believers and 150 practising mediums".

Evidently the doings of the Pox sisters, which at another time and place might have provoked only priests, psychiatrists or boredom, sounded a deep contemporary resonance: whether they believed in them or not, many people debated the purported spirits with furious . The historical roots of this resonance were complex. There were "folk" traditions of , curing and fortunetelling

There was a European occult tradition, whose origins went back to Greek mystery cults and beyond to Ancient Persia and Egypt,

and which surfaced in and , medieval heresies,

Renaissance neo-Platonism, eighteenth century Freemasonry and

Rosicurucianism, and the magical cults of the French Revolution

No doubt much of this tradition was mythical; but the myfhs

fed reality.

By the 1840's these tendencies were represented in English

speaking countries especially by a group of curative and

diagnostic systems (for examples, Mesmerism, hydrotherapy and phrenology), which contended with and made attempts to be

assimilated by orthodox science and ,but generally

remained on the fringes; and also by the intellectual religious

philosophy based on the writings of , which

had a small but energetic following among intellectuals in Britain and the U.S.A.

Swedenborgianism, like Spiritualism, was a synthesis of aspects

of , , rationalism and the ideal of "freedom

of conscience” associated with Puritan sectarianism. Its

founder had claimed to have clairvoyant powers and to be in

regular contact with spirits. It was politically progressive, had a tendency to sexual libertarianism, and alluded to

"universal laws”. Its practices included "".

All of these elements found their way into the complex stew 7 of Spiritualism.

Why these elements suddenly came together in a popular

movement remains one of those mysteries of culture which it might "be necessary to consult a medium about. But it seems that "the time was ripe". Spiritualism was only the most popular and “plebeian" of a number of occult “revivals" of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries which included the O groups around Eliphas Levi in France, Anthroposophy in

Germany, and Theosophy and the Hermetic Crder of the Golden Q Dawn in Britain.

By the 1860*^, Spiritualism as a "fad" was already in decline in America. But on the pattern of crazes which have originated in the central metropolis of capitalism ever since, it flowed outward like a wave, successively peaking in England, Europe,

Australia and South America. Except for a period in , it was never able to establish a strong institutional base, and ended up dissipating most of its energy, leaving behind diminishing bands of followers who remained attached to the core doctrines.

Perhaps the upheavals of 1848 had created in the wealthier

classes of Europe a desire to be distracted by spectres less threatening than the one which Marx and

Engels in their celebrated tract proclaimed to be “haunting

Europe". In any case, Spiritualism was to follow in England the trail it had already blazed in the U.S., from fashionable craze and topic of debate to popular movement. Cn the continent it was destined to remain in the first phase - although it was from France, via Alain Karc’ec, that Spiritualism diffused to , where it helped inspire a Spiritualist variant usually distinguished by the name of .10

Introduced to England in 1852, Spiritualism quickly made convert

of a number of influential people, including the utopian socialist Owen, the poet Elizabeth Browning, and the biologist Alfred Wallace.11 Other intellectuals, including the classicist Frederick Myers and the physicist , 12 followed later in the century.

It has been suggested that in Britain there were two Spiritual- isms, one the intellectual movement wnich spawned the Society of Psychical Research ^ and esoteric philosphies like Theosophy the other a "plebeian" Spiritualism of the working and lower middle classes, based largely on the charismatic followings built up by mediums.1^

This division may be a useful conceptual tool, but there was never a clear line between these two aspects of Spiritualism,

Both relied on the medium as the focal point of their practices and both were associated with secularism and freethought, though the plebeian side had more to do with socialism and the labour movement.

Spiritualism in Australia

Although it did not begin to grow until the late 1860's, much of the inquiring restlessness in which Spiritualism took root must have come to Australia with these who came in the 1850's 15 to make their fortunes on the gold fields. One such seeker was William Dixon Campbell Denoven, onetime spokesman for the miners' anti-licence movement, subsequently journalist, gold- buyer, member of parliament, founder of the Bendigo stock exchange and finally Bendigo town clerk. Denoven became a believer in Spiritualism about 1860, and formed the "Bendigo

Energetic Circle of Freethinkers'4 in order to investigate psychic phenomena. A book of his published in 1882 is a

692 page compilation of reports of such phenomena from all over the world, including the findings of the Bendigo group, interlaced with opinions on freethought, morality, primitive

Christianity and immortality.1^

Denoven's publisher was William Terry, the central figure in

Australian Spiritualism from 1870 till his death in 1903.

He also "belonged to the immigrants of the 1850's. After come years in various Melbourne retailing businesses, he established' himself in 1870 as a "spiritualist bookseller, medium, and magnetic healer, and clairvoyant herbalist.” In 1874 he launched the spiritualist monthly The Harbinger of Light, which he edited and wrote much of for thirty years, and was also a co-founder of the Victorian Association of Progressive

Spiritualists.

Two kinds of Spiritualist activity of little significance today were important at this time: the public lecture and the

"lyceum” or Sunday School.

In a period where mass media were undeveloped, few had access to education beyond primary school and availability of books was more restricted than today, public addresses and debates

combined many of the functions of contemporary current affairs

programs, libraries and dramatic entertainment. In Melbourne

in the 1870’s, the Spiritualists began to put on guest lecturers,

many from overseas, whom people paid to hear on Sunday afternoons. The most prominent was Emma Britten-Hardinge, who wrote what

is still the official creed of British Spiritualist National

Union. She lectured in most large Australian cities in 1878

and 1879. So, at the same time or a little later, did Dr

James Martin Peebles, American physician and Spiritualist •

, later to defect to Theosophy; a Professor Denton,

who spoke on Spiritualism and Geology;and Mrs Ada Foye, "one

of the best test-writing, rapping and seeing mediums who has ever appeared in the ranks of Spiritualism", as she was billed.17

The giving forth of what the churches regarded as blasphemous doctrines on Sundays, and charging for them, was too much for Christian sensibilities, and in the 1880’s the governments of both Victoria and N.S.W. moved to suppress the lectures by making commercial entertainments on Sundays illegal. Although the law was almost impossible to enforce strictly, it seems to have worked; at least, after this time the era of the great public lectures slowly waned.

In 1872 Terry had founded the Melbourne Progressive Lyceum, on the model of American Spiritualist "Sunday Schools", a model which was also adopted by the Temperance Movement and later by the Secularists. The experiment, which in Melbourne was shortlived, aimed to counter the influence of the wider society by inculcating "high moral precepts** and a liberal, rationalistic world view. One of those involved was the young Alfred Deakin.

Leakin, supposedly under the “control** of the spirit of John

Bunyan, had written uautomatically'* a book called A New iq Pilgrim's Progress which was published in 1877. Its theme is the religious quest of a ycung man called Restless.

In 1878 Deakin became president of the Victorian Association of Progressive Spiritualists, and although he abandoned his public advocacy of Spiritualism after he began his political career in 1880, it is reasonably certain that the future

Victorian premier and co-architect of Australian federation 20 remained a believer for many years afterwards.

Although not as well organised as in Melbourne, Spiritualism in Sydney also possessed devotees among the more “progressive** members of the ruling classes, among them John Bowie Wilson, sometime Minister for lands; the widow of John Woolley, the first principal of the University of Sydney; and William

Charles Windeyer, a judge and Member of Parliament, who for brief periods was Solicitor-General and Attorney-General. There was also Annie Pillars, the widow of a minister of the pi Sydney Unitarian Church, who after the death of her husband had founded an elite girl's college. She became a Spiritualist, married Charles Bright, a lecturer for the Victorian Association of Irogrespive Spiritualists, and became editor of the Harbinger after the death of Terry.^

Australian spiritualism in the twentieth century

Ey 1900, although no longer a fashionable cause celebre,

Spiritualism was established as a reference point in popular

, as the abundant use of it in the press and in 23 popular novels shows. In this period the movement assumed its modern organisational form: a network of loosely affiliated

"churches", in which the main ritual was the "reading of flowers”.

Mortfield Church was founded at this time by a medium and her

husband.

The last Spiritualist event to gain widespread public attention 25 in Australia was the visit of . ^ Doyle

had converted to Spiritualism in 1915, and in 1920 embarked

on a lecture tour of the colonies accompanied by the kind of

promotional activity that was lateis to. become associated with

the visits of rock and roll musicians. His tour was a great

financial success. Cn 28 November 1920, 3,500 people filled

the Sydney Town Hall to hear him. But many of the audience

must have merely been curious to see the creator of Sherlock

Holmes in the flesh, and no significant wave of recruits seems

to have ensued. Occult seekers would in any case soon have

their attention diverted by the visit of Krishnamurti. Pour months after the visit, a leader in the Harbinger of Light asked with an air of resignation:

When the people who have been influenced by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle come to Spiritualist meetings, will they find what they are seeking - a better expression of religious feeling - or will they find these Spiritualist Societies ?7 full of jealousy and so be driven out of them once more?

The decline, however, was slow, and numbers attending meetings may even have picked up during the depression: they were, after all, cheaper than the cinema and more exciting than church. Spiritualism continued to be more than the faith* of a tiny minority. During the two decades following Doyle's visit, more thsn thirty Spiritualist churches were operating in Sydney, twice as many as today, in a city one quarter of its present size.

About a quarter of the churches called themselves "United

Spiritualist Churches", just as they do today, but the movement was anything but united. Attempts to set up state or national organisations have always come to grief on personal rivalries.

In the 1920's doctrinal disputes were also prominent: in

Britain, Christian Spiritualists, who claimed Spiritualism to be fully compatible with Christianity, broke with the

Spiritualist National Union.

Spiritualism was recruiting fewer people than it lost, and its membership by the 1940's was ageing and- dwindling. The

Harbinger, by then the oldest Spiritualist periodical in the world, was deeply in debt and virtually reduced to reprinting articles from overseas Spiritualist literature; it ceased publication in 1948. World War II brought no revival, and the decline continued during the 1950’s and 1960's, until arrested by an influx of representatives of the "occult revival** of the late 1960's and 1970’s,who came into the movement to "check it out,*'. But few committed themselves, and by the beginning cf the 1980's there were one or two fewer churches in Sydney than there had been a decade earlier. In the long term, % there seems little doubt that the movement is doomed to a lingering extinction. What is surprising is not that it dying, but that it is taking so long. . . 21 1. Ford (1974:47-8) The writers of Spiritualist history (distinct from hut inextricably tangled with the history of Spiritualism) take a similar view. Barbanell says of Socrates that "in one sense he can be called a Spiritualist, for he had his daemon, the equivalent of the modern " (1969:121) and avers, that "Christianity owes its inception ■ to the psychic phenomena for which Jesus was responsible" (ibid 162). An article on the in (12/4/75:5) emphasises their affinities and connections with Spiritualism, which Spence discerns c*tso in "witchcraft, , poltergeistic disturbances and " (1960:380).

In recent years, "occult histories", have achieved considerable popularity (Pauwels & Bergier, 1971; Brennan 1976). These books, alleging an "occult influence1* oh the course of human history, exemplify the same logic.

2. George Woodcock (1975:35) notes that"anarchists are very much concerned with the ancestry of their doctrine. This concern springs from the belief that anarchism is a mani- festation of natural human urges. If one accepts this view, then anarchism cannot merely be a phenomenon of the present; the aspect of it we perceive in history is merely one metamorphosis of an element constant in society'.'

3. Edmonds (1860:59).

4. Pritchard (1976:319).

5. Thomas (1971).

6. Roberts (1974). On occultims in Europe before the nineteeth century, see Yates (1972;1979)

7. Note that Spiritualism was probably the first popular religion to accord female officiants the same status as male ones.

After the rise of Spiritualism, Swedenborg’s philosophy declined in importance, but aspects of it found their way into latermovements, especially and Anthroposophy.

8. Me Intosh (1975).

9. Howe (1972).

10. Willems (1969).

11. Porter (1958).

12. , although remaining uncommitted, accorded Spiritualist beliefs considerable plausibility (James, 1917)

13. See eg 6iauld (1968)

14. Barrow (1980) 22

15. Gold and Spirit are, perhaps, not so different, The prolific freethinking writer William Howitt, author of A Popular History of Priestcraft (1834) and translator Ennemoser’s ETstorv of , came with his sons to Victoria to make his fortune in 1852. He returned to Britain in 1854, "but one of his sons, Alfred, remained to become an eminent explorer and anthropologist. The Howitts knew the Brownings and some of their circle; they also knew James Smith, who had :migrated to Melbourne in 1854, where he became a journalist and later the Victorian Parliamentary librarian. Smith became converted to Spiritualism in the 1860’s, and advanced the cause in the pages of the Age and the Argus: he also wrote a Spiritualist book (Smith, 1875).

16. Denoven (1882)

17. Spence (1960:55) Probably the most spectacular of the lecturers was Thomas Walker, whose career, apart from what it reveals of the cultural significance of Spiritualism at this time, is worth retelling for its own sake. Born in 1858, he migrated with his working class family to Canada, at the age of 16, set up there as a mediu, A fatal accident which occurred in the course of one of his "demonstrations** led to his being found guilty of manslaughter. He fled to England, where for a time he worked as a journalist. By 1876 he had teamed up with Dr Peebles, and when the latter accepted Terry's invitation to visit Australia, the nineteen year old Walker accompanied him. He especially impressed Melbourne Spiritualists when, at a meeting chaired by the twenty one year old Alfred Deakin, he delivered a trance lecture under the “control" of the spirit of Giordano Bruno. By the end of 1881, after travels in Britain and South Africa, he was back in Melbourne at the invitation of the Victorian Spiritualists, but dramatically broke with the movement, which he denounced as a fraud. In revenge, the spiritualists released details of the Toronto incident, and he removed himself to Sydney. Subsequently he published poetry, wrote and acted in a successful play, and established himself as a "secularist spokesman and larrikin populist campaigner”, as the Australian Dictionary of Biography (1966) has it. He advocated birth control, easier divorce, rent control, abolition of capital punishment and the establishment of a national bank. His election to the N.S.W. parliament in 1887 culminated in his shooting and wounding a clergyman in a drunken brawl. After a period in New Zealand as a temperance lecturer and elocution teacher, he settled in Perth, at first as a journalist. He became a state Labour M.P. in 1905, Attorney General from 1911 to 1916, and Speaker of the Legislative Assembly from 1924 to 1930.

18. F.B. Smith (1963:28) 23 19. Deakin (1877)

20. See Murdock (1923), la Nauze (1965). Deakin married the daughter of Hugh Tunor Browne. Browne another gold seeker, had become the wealthy owner of a distillery, and was a friend of John Bow Wilson, mentioned below. He became a Spiritualist in the early 1870's, and wrote long and repetitious works with titles like The Holy Truth or the Coining Reformation (1876), Rational Christianity (1879) The Religion of the Future: or The Higher law of Truth and Right (1883) and The Grand Reality (1888)^ which combine reports of mediumistic phenomena with theological and historical speculation. % 21. The Unitarian Church in Sydney continued to h;ve Spiritualist mediums on its platform at least until the 1920' f .

22. Bright (1907) • •

23. For examples, see Praed (J90i_)? Hume (1890,1924), Pratt (1910) and Marlowe (1918).

24. However, the practice of "circulating'1 mediums by rotating invitations does not seem to have became established till later on in the century.

25. Doyle (1922) 26. Roe (1978).

27. Harbinger of light, March 21, 1921:270. CHAPTER 3

SPIRITUALIST BELIEFS The denial of death

Spiritualism purports to be based on the conviction that the personality, or some aspect of itf survives after death as a * spirit* which may be contacted by the living.1

The general decline of interest in death and survival in industrial countries since the eighteenth century has been 2 commented on by a number of authors. Blauner regards it as a consequence of increasing longevity, which has meant that fewer deaths are highly disruptive of social relationships.

Aries, on the other hand, links it with the increasing importance of the nuclear family and the allegedly decreasing significance of the individual. However this might bey from the perspective of these conceptions, Spiritualism would appear to be survival of or reversion to an archaic conception of death.

But this archaism, while undeniably present, is superficial.

Most Spiritualists do not involve themselves in the movement primarily because they desire contact with the dead, although bereavement is sometimes the stimulus of their initial encounter.

Furthermore, Spiritualists are not particularly interested in what happens to the soul after death. The normal response to questions about it is that they are "happy to wait until the times comes" when "all will be revealed". Their ideas about the are confused and inconsistent.*

These days little is heard of Summerland, a locality which typifies a sentimental image of the world beyond the grave,^ although many of the "regulars" hold to a simple dualism of

"this side" and the "other side". Most mediums have constructed for themselves a more elaborate theory, sometimes claiming that it has been communicated to them from the Spirit world. The 26 materials utilized in such constructions are mainly literary,^ and usually contain some reference to "levels” or "planes" of increasing "height", through which pass as they “progress*1.

The most commonly mentioned such level is the "Astral*1. In

Theosophy, the Astral is a world formed by the non-material

"realisations" of affects; it is a "desire world*1, compared 8 by some to the Christian purgatory. It is supposed to'be inhabited not only by spirits of the dead, but by so-called

"elementals'^ a term which has entered Spiritualist parlance, and refers to "low” spirits such as fairies, , old , and even legendary and fictional characters like Robin Hood and , endowed by human interest with a kind of

life. 9

Spiritualists’ ideas about the Astral are, however usually much less precise than this. For example, this is what the young medium Ray Ferguson replied when asked to describe the spirit world:

Spiritualists desire to communicate on three levels. There’s the Astral Plane, which most people have travelled on, either while asleep or during a daydream. The etheric level is-j^Ij would say where moat spirits seem to be con- tained. That's the level we must go to when we die. The third level is the extra-terrestial, which requires superpowers to be able to operate on ...But there does seem to be another layer beyond the extra-terrestial. Spirits contacted in the extra-terrestial appear to refer to still higher levels for their knowledge... Spiritualists don't worry about it too much, because they know all will be revealed in time.

Common to all Spiritualist accounts of the afterlife is

an ambiguity: it is difficult to say whether they refer to

a space, a form of consciousness, or the possession of

certain powers and abilities. ^ they share a pattern

of the soul immediately after death being on a Plane “close * 27 to the Physical, usually in a disoriented state, and then, as it acquires "wisdom,” moving away into "higher" and more abstract realms. This pattern mirrors the sentiments of the living towards deceased intimates. At first the loss is felt keenly in everyday life (the dead one seems near); later memory recedes. There is another correlation: if a medium fails to communicate with the spirit of someone who% has died recently, this can "be ascribed to the spirit’s confusion; a failure with a less recently "passed on** spirit can be accounted for by the spirit's removal from

"mundane" concerns.

-

Many of the "regulars" at Mortfield Church, and a majority of the mediums, believed that souls may return to earth several times in different bodies.

Feincamation is appealing to Spiritualist* for two reasons.

In the first place, it is an idea vith a long and prestigious historv, being s central tenet of and Buddhism and propounded by Pythagoras and Plato. ^ Some Spiritualists also claim it to have been a secret teaching of Christianity, and attempt to back this claim with Scripture. ^ Reincarnation remains a live issue in the popular consciousness, as disseminat- ors of "popular culture” are well aware: the most noteworthy example is the publicity given the "Bridey Murphy case”. ^

Secondly, the idea fits well with the Spiritualist insistence on the importance of "individual responsibiltyw, and provides ample time for each soul to fulfill its supposed destiny of limitless spiritual progress. As Water remarked of the doctrine of , towards which this "belief of some Spiritualists tends, it constitutes the most complete formal solution of the problem of theodicy :..The world is viewed as a completely connected and self-contained cosmos of ethical re- tribution. Each individual forges his own destiny exclusively and in the strictest sense of the word.

Of those associated with Mortfield, the medium Elaine Harvey gave the most elaborate description of a Spiritualist karmic . She claimed that everyone has seven souls, some of which rtfall away** at death. A “ special soul” the

“true self", is eventually reborn, the time, place and physical incarnation being "on the decision of up there” . Elaine said that delays, which keep the soul "in limbo up to a thousand years**, were a punishment for errors committed in previous lives.

As a general rule, each reincarnation is a stage in the progress ive development of the soul, although it is possible for souls to "slip back” 9

Eventually the soul acquired ultimate wisdom and power and 2.0 love, and no longer needs to be reborn. Such MBodisat.vas" may, however, decide to return to earth, in order to “benefit humanity and further the law of progress" .

According to Elaine, the memory of past lives is held in the subconscious, and can be elicited with the aid of a psychically 21 gifted person.

Some Spiritualists reject metempsychosis, either because it is ’’un-Christian" , or because they think the evidence for it veak. In Australia differences of opinion on the issue co-exist within the various churches. In the US and Britain however, disagreement is reflected in the existence of rival organisation It is true that in some respects reincarnation is out of key with Spiritualist practices and beliefs. An article in the

British Spiritualist newspaper Psychic News 22 raised several objections to the concept from this viewpoint. Human history does not show much evidence of moral and spiritual growth in this world, which might be expected if "higher spirits11 were being recirculated into it. Rebirth is “earth-centred1*: why should souls keep returning to this existence? Last, although some people under or other abnormal states of consciousness appear to be able to recall past lives

accurately, they cannot recall anything between incarnations.

In the opinion of the author of the article, this lends

strength to the hypothesis that these cases are really due 23 to ESP or .

With many others, Colin Wilson has pointed to the conservative implications of karmic rebirth: if our present state is a result of past deeds and misdeeds, both the rich and powerful

and the poor and suffering deserve their fate. Few Spiritualists would find this conclusion acceptable. It implies that it is wrong to attempt to alleviate earthly misery, a "work" which most Spiritualists regard as central to their movement.

It is interesting that the past of spirits

are scarcely if ever discussed; as a general rule, past lives belong only to the living.

Spirits

Most spirits do little but "make their presence known” through

a medium by imparting information or manifesting particular 30 characteristics which supposedly serve as identifying signs.

In addition, they may tender advice, usually of a moralizing kind, which the medium passes on. However, there are special sorts of spirits which require further discussion.

Prom the beginning of the Spiritualist movement it has been a thought that the living may be accompanied by a MbandM of 26 guardian spirits or “guides**. Guides attempt to protect and 27 assist their charges in their dealings with "life".

Although guides are nearly always spirits of the dead, it is only occasionally that the person they attach themselves to has known them in the flesh. Most frequently they have an OO -exotic" origin - Egyptians, Africans, Chinese, American Indians abound, and one Mortfielder had a guide who was

(or had been?) an "extraterrestial".

Guides are not believed to be infallible, and less “elevated** ones can be quite misleading. The British medium warns against "guide-worshipM in the following terms:

Guides are noble personalities of good intent... loveable and patient people, though at times they may be rather eager to influence their human charge...we should not impose upon the guide responsibilities beyond his power to perform. No guide is omnipotent...let us see them as they really are. Fine personalities, more advanced in wisdom than ourselves, but who have limitations as we have. y

In keeping with their ethos of , Spiritualists believe that as people progress in wisdom and spiritual sensitivity, new, more advanced guides may replace old ones; in spirit, as in life, friends can be outgrown.

Mediums are able to perceive and communicate with their own

guides, and sometimes with the guides of others. It is usually believed that her guides help the medium "get in touch" with spirits, and generally assist her paranormal powers. However, some mediums say that all the information they "give out” is supplied by their guides, while others scarcely mention them, or even question their existence.

“Controls" are spirits who "take over” the body of a living person, usually a medium. Controls are often guides, but need not be. ^

"Doorkeepers" are special guides who are responsible for permitting or refusing “entry" to spirits who wish to present themselves to a medium. The doorkeeper is often the leading guide. Some say that while the other members of the band may change through life, the doorkeeper does not, being in 31 the mould of "faithful old retainer'*.

While most spirits are believed to be benevolent and wise, there are also confused, unhappy and malevolent spirits, who seek “control” over the living in order to express their selfish “negative conditions'* rather than to "benefit humanity".

They are generally "trickster spirits" who make a nuisance of themselves by causing accidents, disturbing material objects, *Xp making noises and generally “seeking to gain attention".

Most Spiritualists believe that these spirits have failed to

"move on" to "higher levels" after death, but have remained

"earthbound". This may have been because of the shock of a 33 sudden death , a deep attachment to some person or place on the Earth Plane^, or because they lack sufficient moral or spiritual merit. Earthbound entities may cause obsessions by haunting a living person, causing the latter to acquire

some of their dominant traits or habits, or even "take over"

(possess) the personality entirely. The initial symptoms of such an invasion include depression, pressure on the head 35 and unaccountable pains in the body.

Earthbound entities are subject to the Law of Progress; they will eventually "come round**, and then move on to a level less

bothersome for the living. Spiritualists try to assist this process by "rescuing" them, a practice which is discussed in more detail in the following chapter.

Spirit

Emphasis on the claim that souls survive death and can be

contacted by the living is one of the features which sets

Spiritualism apart from other contemporary occultisms. But more significant to Spiritualists themselves are beliefs which are shared with other occultisms: in paranormal

powers of perception and will, and in the existence of

laws which, applying to realms beyond earthly existence, may give rise to apparent transgressions of the ones so

far established by science. The anomalies believed in by

Spiritualists and evoked by mediums are seen as evidence

for, and in themselves partly constitute, the realm of

Spirit.

In the absence of a corpus of Spiritualist dogma^, the

nature of the spirit realm is largely left to personal

conjecture. The term "Spirit", however, tends to be used

in two fairly distinct senses.

It is, firstly, the place where most spirits "dwell", or the

state of being which characterises them. This is the "other 33 side" which has already been mentioned in connection with survival beliefs.

In the second way it is used, Spirit is not a place or state, but an agent or power which acts upon things. This “super- natural*1 force, encountered in many occultisms and systems of magic, in this case resembles and to some degree is likely to be derived from the hermetic concept of Spiritus, a central% 37 component of IIeo-Platonism" in the Henaissance.

A fifteenth century author in this tradition explained the concept as follows: ...Between the anima and the tangible world...the medium of communication is spirit, as between our souls and bodies...The spirit is...a body so fine that it is almost a soul...It is bright, warm, moist, life-giving, and the source of higher endowments in the soul.

In this passage, the essential features of the Spiritualist

Spirit are mentioned: it is high, animating, and a mediating element between mind and matter, since it interacts with both.

However, in Spiritualism, Spirit is less clearly different- iated from the mental, so that as well as being an aspect of, it can also stand in opposition to matter.

In the hermetic tradition, Spirit

traversed the universe and penetrated all things and being itself intermediary between matter and soul, carried the powers of the superior world to the inferior one. Ficino had revived the idea of the spiritus as a basis for magical operations...Man could use his spiritus to work on the cosmic spiritus and attract beneficial celestial influences.

These ideas were taken up by the seventeenth century English

/(osicrucian and alchemist Robert Fludd^0 , and later formed the basis of Kesmer’s theory of animal magnetism.^ The existence of "a supposed physical force emanating from the person of the medium, and directed by his will, by means of which objects may be moved without contact in apparent defiance of natural laws"^was postulated by early psychic investigators, at the same time as science formed the hypothesis of the ether as a medium for the transmission of electromagnetic radiation. The ether was an lint enable concept, abandoned after Einstein formulated the theory of relativity^, but for a time it provided a "scientific" underwriting for speculations about a substance that "traversed the universe and penetrated "all things...*

Mortfield Spiritualists often conceptualize Spirit (which in this sense is synonymous with spiritual or psychic power) as vibrations in a paraphysical mpdium, emanating from

significant objects (charms, for instance, or the flowers presented at the flower service) and from people, especially mediums.

In its first sense, Spirit is ambiguously place or state, in the second sense it embodies a greater tangle of contradict- ions, being partly mental and partly physical, and, like the mathematical abstractions which contemporary physics takes to be the basic constituents of the world, partaking of

apparently incongruous qualities: it is simultaneously substance, force and vibration. Powers

Spiritualists believe that some people possess powers to produce anomalies which signify the existence of Spirit.

Spiritualists call these anomalies ’’phenomena*. Phenomena are put into two categories: physical phenomena, which are disruptions to the normal expectation of material events, and ‘'mental*' phenomena, which contravene expectations of knowledge or volition. These categories, it must be said, are arbitrary; it will become apparent that some phenomena are on the borderline 01 physical and mental, while it is also true that mental phenomena shade into hypnotic phenomena

(which also contravene expectations of knowledge and will), and that physical phenomena may at some point within the

Spiritualist milieu be exposed as “trickery*.

Physical Phenomena

This group includes rapping and table-turning (the "original14 Spiritualist effects), spirit writing, "direct voice*1, , apports, , the production of , materialization,spiritual healing, and some other phenomena which most Spiritualists would find credible, although they

do not have an established place within the Spiritualist

tradition, such as "thoughtography1* (mentally projecting an \ 4 4 image onto a photographic emulsion; , bending metal, water- 45 divining, eyeless sight , etc.

Spirit writing, (which must be clearly distinguished from , where the medium's hand provides the

motor force) allegedly occurs when a spirit writes a message

on a slate or sheet of paper. Direct voice is the phenomenon of spirit voices issuing from matter, usually trumpets provided "by the medium. It stands in the same relation to the "indirect voice” of speaking

“under control11 (discussed below) as spirit -writing stands to automatic writing.

In spirit photography, spirits allegedly appear on a photographic emulsion.^ As distinct from , the shutter is usually operated in the normal way, although the two phenomena may coincide.

Apports are objects supposedly transported through solid matter. A *7 They are usually small, flowers and jewellery pieces being preferred.

Ectoplasm is “a vaporous, luminescent substance supposed to

emanate from the body of the medium during a / O trance." Its production is a form of materialization, which refers to any conversion of a ”spiritual” substance into one that is perceivable by normal perception. The production of ectoplasm,(which preoccupied some early invest- igators of Spiritualism^jjlevitation (associated with the 50\ noteworthy D.P. Hume j, and spirit writing and photography, are virtually forgotten today, but apports are still discussed, although I heard of no Australian mediums.^ There was a direct voice medium working in Sydney until the mid 1970's.

Such phenomena have repeatedly been exposed as fraudulent, and as a result contemporary Spiritualists are ambivalent about them. There is a view that, if genuine, they are “highly advanced", but they are also denounced as a "childish", "materialistic" and therefore "low" form of mediumship.

Spiritualists say that they are practised less today than in the past because of the threat of legal action for fraud, but this threat seems to have declined rather than increased over the last thirty years. Perhaps these displays seem more tawdry to audiences familiar with space flight, colour television computers and science fiction than they did in the last century. spiritual healing is the most important form of physical mediumship, and the only one regularly practised today in

Australia.

Healing

Several of the mediums who worked at Mortfield church claimed a "healing gift", and a few specialiped in it. The technique used were those of "Spiritual" or "mental" healing, also called "healing by touch", which Spiritualists are usually 5? at pains to distinguish from "faith healing". The technique vary, but all consist of uouchings, strokings, manipulations and "passings" (movements of the hands in the vicinity of those parts which are afflicted, or said to be by the medium) 54. Homeopathic and folkloric remedies are also given , sometime 55 on the instruction of a guide . The healer often prays, usually silently.

Diagnosis is believed to occur in a variety of ways. Most commonly, the healer "takes onw the symptoms of the patient, that is experiences the patient’s pains and discomforts as if they were her own. Many healers diagnose through thf

”health ", discussed below, while others perceive the patient's physical condition “clairvoyantly“. The kind of healing which spiritual healing exemplifies has a long history and widespread cultural distribution; often it incorporates other practices, such as blowing breath onto the sick person, the recital of spells and the use of 56 and .

In the eighteenth century Mesmer used some of these methods in conjunction with his main technique, which consisted* of seating his patients around a "magnetised” vat, grasping pieces of iron which protruded from it. He attributed the cures that were claimed, as well as the trance states and convulsions, to the action of a "magnetic fluid” which all 57 animals emitted.

Cne of the commissions set up by the French government to investigate Kesmer^® in 1784 rejected the idea of a magnetic fluid, but “admitted that favourable results might 59 accure, howpverj from imagination". This line of explanation, which led to Charcot's investigations of hypnotic phenomena, is basically that taken by the medical profession on whatever efficacy Spiritual healing might be deemed to possess.^

Healing occupies an important place in Spiritualist practice.

At Mortfield a husband and wife medium team ran a weekly healing circle, and healing sometimes occurred after other services. At the Sunday services an "absent healing list** of the names of people known to be unwell was read by the medium, as a kind of blessing.

However, healinf. does not appear to loom as large in the thinking of Sydney Spiritualists as it does in some other pi ace a. ^ Skultans interprets healing as engendering acceptance by women of the tensions and conflicts associated with the

feminine role. She makes the point that in the group she

studied nearly all the healers were male, and that "healing

is a very erotic episode" , involving the touching of females by males and "deep breathing".^

Neither this eroticism nor the oppression of most of the" women who attend healing circles is in dispute, and it is

also true that mediums often encourage an accepting attitude

towards “fate”. However, at Mortfield there were as many

female healing mediums as male ones. The clientele of the regular healing circle was overwhelmingly female, but on

the other hand the wife played a more active role and

practised more healing than her husband. Although Spiritualist healing undoubtedly helps people to adjust to their situation

rather than challenge it, and helps more women than men, the

specific kind of expression of sex roles and sexism which

Skultans perceived among the Welsh Spiritualists studied

by her is not as clear at Mortfield.

Spiritualism bears from its origins some of the populist

feeling against orthodox medicine so much in evidence among

the alternative medicine movements. In the nineteenth century Spiritualism was almost as opposed to ’’doctorcraft*' as to 65 "priestcraft”. Put today criticisms of the medical profession are fairly muted.

Mental Phenomena

Mental phenomena are of two kinds, clairvoyance and control. Clairvoyance involves the medium displaying access "to "truths which would normally be unknowable. Control is when a spirit takes over and uses the medium's body to communicate with

the living.

Clairvoyance

Clairvoyance (clear-seeing) in general denotes the capacity % to have experience either of, or as a result of the mediation of, Spirit. It is also used in a number of narrower senses.

In psychical research, the term can be a synonym for t&l- esthesia, that is, ESP which is not telepathic, the "extra- 66 sensory perception of objects or objective events'* as opposed to the perception of the content of other minds. For theorists who explain ESP by the transmission and

reception of some kind of "mental energy", this remains an anomalous category, since there appears to be no mental transmitter. This meaning of clairvoyance is not common

among Spiritualists.

Secondly, it may refer not to perception either of other minds or of objects or objective events, but to the direct

perception of Spirit.

lastly and most specifically, clairvoyance may denote a quasi-visual ESP. Thus clairvoyance can be opposed to clairaudience, the "hearing" of voices too far away to be

heard by normal means, or from Spirit, and to "clairsentience which usually refers to "sensing the presence" of Spirit

in the absence of either visual or auditory imagery.^ 41 As well as these modes, clairvoyance in the general sense may concern the present, the past (retrocognition) or the future Vprecognition). Clairvoyant imagery may also differ in vividness and in the degree to which it is perceived as paranormal. At one end of the scale, there are Hintuitions" of a. diffuse and fragmentary character: ideas which, having intruded themselves into consciousness, only later acquire % an "eerie” significance. The most memorable of this sort are undoubtedly disturbing dreams of people faraway 68 who happen to be dying or in some other crisis. The mere presence of insistent imagery even without subsequent confirm- ation may be taken as clairvoyant by Spiritualists if the person who experiences this imagery is thought to have mediumistic powers: "it must mean something", it is said.

When a precognitive is accompanied by a. conviction of its paranormal character, it is a premonition. Particularly vivid intuitions nay be called visions, and particularly grand premonitions called .

The Aura

A special kind of clairvoyance is the ability to perceive the "auras” of people.

In her study of Welsh Spiritualism, Yieda Skultans writes Everyone is thought tu have an aura. It is half-physical, half-spiritual, like a rainbow surrounding the body. Although not visible to the uninitiated it can be seen by ‘‘sensitives" or those who are spiritually developed.

This description fits the ideas of Sydney Spiritualists. It is widely thought that the seeing of auras is a very "high” or 42

“deep*’ form of mediumship, indicating great psychic sensitivity.

Almost anything that can "be known about a person can be revealed by the aura if the clairvoyant has the ability tu interpret i+: personal history, inmost thoughts, character, 70 temperament and destiny.

Fsychometry

Psychometry is a kind of clairvoyance, for which it

is necessary to have some object such as a letter, a lock of hair, a glove, belonging to the person concerning whom the inquiry is being made...If the Passive is sufficiently sensitive to get en rapport with the subject, there will arise in the mind's eye, a series of pictures or scenes, or yet only vague appe^jeptions of form, colour distance, locality, time etc.

Control

“Control'* occurs when the medium allows a spirit to

"take over" her body in order to "communicate". The spirit may "speak through" the medium (the phenomenon of "automatic

speaking11), in which case the medium's voice often takes on accent and intonation patterns supposedly characteristic of

the controlling spirit, or may use the medium's hand for

"automatic writing".

Control involves some kind of trance state, although this is

usually mild: autonomic phenomena like glossolalia occur, 72 but very rarely.

lewis Ppence declares that the trance state is under the

"ultimate control" of the medium, but the trance medium studied by Macklin claimed to be quite unconscious of what occurred and what she said when "under control", leaving 73 everything to her gatekeeper-guide. My observation of mediums at Mortfield did not resolve this issue. Mediums often claimed to be unconscious of what was happening when under control, but I never observed one unable to "get back1* to normal consciousness. As in several other aspects of mediumistic behaviour which abut on trance and hypnotic states, the issue of voluntary control seems incapable of a clear resolution because it is premissed upon the dubious hypothesis of a unitary, willing subject.

The speech or writing of mediums under control, although it varies with the "control1', does have some distinguishing linguistic features. It is repetitious,prone to transpose normal phrase order, and heavily laced with the tropes of classical rhetoric, especially hyperbole and oxymoron, the result being a style described by Spence as "involved, obscure, inflated, yet possessing a superficial smoothness and a suggestion of flowing periods and musical cadences. The ideas rj a are...all but lost in a multitude of words”. In other words, controlled discourse displays the same traits as the typical 75 Spiritualist prayer or sermon.

Sometimes controlling entities are not "spirits” but character traits or experiential states. Thus, someone may ‘‘take on" or ’’pick up" the kleptomania of a deceased friend, for example.^ I have already mentioned how healing mediums may experience the pains of their patients. This mild form of control, sometimes called "getting impressions’*, shades into clairvoyant "intuition", and shows that clairvoyance and control are not really distinct kinds of phenomena.

A control is a benevolent spirit or "entity" whose access is 44 permitted by the "gatekeeper*' of the medium. When an unwanted or harmful "earthbound* entity gain? influence over someone, the result is possession or , more commonly called

"attachment". In the first case the personality of the possessed individual is completely "taken over". More usual is a situation in which the intruder "attaches" itself

(often conceited as a literal attachment to the aura) ^nd now and again "breaks through" - that is, the individual involuntarily acts and speaks in a way which is interpreted as the spirit "taking control”. The crucial distinction between this pathological state and trance mediumship rests on the intactness of the controlled person’s personality as perceived by his or her peers. This in turn is shaped by her reputation as a medium, by her ability to "come back to reality", and by the degree of evident distress she experiences 77 under control.

All such phenomena would be interpreted by many non-Spiritualists as symptoms of mental abnormality, and there is an undeniable resemblance to the delusional condition known loosely as IP, "split personality".

Astral travelling

A phenomenon not easily classified as either mental or physical is astral travelling or , a hypothesis which links together three distinct kinds of alleged experience:

(a) "Cut of the body experiences" (OCBE’s) in which there is a sensation of displacement from the physical body, sometimes to the point where the subject "looks back" and 79 perceives his own 'oo4y. (b) I'he experience of travelling great distances in a "phantom ‘body" and thereby coming to know of things beyond the range of normal perception. ’his pheonomenon may be ftO identified with the flights of shamans, and has been used 81 as an expl anation for clairvoyance ’ and even for vampirism 82 and .

(c) Apparitions of living people a^r sometime.0 seen by'

people distant from then, usually as a cataleptic imafe of 8 the phsycial body''. V

of the conscious intention of the person to "project”

themselves elsewhere, it is sometimes distinguished from (a) and (b) as "astral projection’’.

Astral projection may occur consciously, or as a result of

"subconscious desire", or "accidentally*. Many of the

mediums at Mortfield and a few others claimed to ft A have experienced it, though none as a regular event.

True to shamanic traditions, it was typically associated with

times of medical or emotional crisis, and was often connected 85 with the acquisition of psychic powers.

Conclusion

Some of their complexity and contracictoriness will be explored further in later chapters, but it should be clear already from this summary that Spiritualist beliefs are a

thicket of cosmologies, mythologies, rationalisations,

explanations and mysteries. Before attempting to discern

a structure underlying this confusion, it is necessary to

provide further details of Spiritualist practices and

organisation, the task of the following two chaptex's. 46 1. This denial of the reality of death has linguistic conseauences; when they die, people "pass on” , are "promoted",”go to the other side" or "join the people upstairs” .

2. Blauner (1966).

3. Aries (1974)* 4. Firth (1955:6) makes the point that this vagueness is typical of "primitive societies". Brandon (I967:98ff) shows that Christian , while sometimes vivid, are not without contradictions. It remains curious that Spiritualists should be so unspecific ^bout a supposedly central article of faith. 5. The Summerland idea originated with the 19th century American healer and spiritualist (Macklin;1977:77). Zelinsky (1976:191) has pieced together the cultural stereotype of the afterlife from the most common names given to U.S. burial sites: It is an elliptical tract of rolling hills and indeterminate size, one that stretches far towards the west and east, but is quite narrow on its north- south axis, and is surrounded at some distance by water and high mountains. It is monochromatic, green featuristic land of perpetual...morning or evening lying under a cloudless, windless, sunny sky, but where brooks and fountains flow nonetheless, and trees, flowering shrubs and grassy lawns thrive in a park-*-like ensemble, yet without any animal life. It is a rural place of intense tranouillity and silence, where nothing goes on except the enjoyment of the view and reposeful recollection (Zelinsky, 1976:191). 6. Theosophy, and spiritualist books like these of Cummins (1932), Crookall (1961) and Ford (1974), are examples of important literary influences.

7. n'his is one of many examples of the deep effect on Spiritualism of the pedagogical situation. Vhe "levels** of spirit are like the grades of school.

B. Cavendish (1975 :41f). 9. The Astral plane is itself subdivided into seven levels, the third of which Spence identifies with Summerland, "where spirits live in a world created by their own thoughtp" (1960:41) 10. There appears to be no settled relationship between Etheric and Astral. Ashby (l972;144) and Wilson (1973:146) identify them. Cavendish says the "etheric body* is the "animating principle of the physical body" (1975:44)- Others relate it to European folk beliefs in a wdouble" (Krappe, 1930:225-6; Encyclopedia of Magic and , 1974:166) Both ideas, leavened with the ,Tether” of 47 nineteenth century electromagnetics, Findlay (1931:8) were combined to form the "etheric double" of Theosophy, which is conceived of as a "bridge" between the Physical and Astral Planes, and forms part of the aura, discussed below (Spence, 1960:150) 11. The "extra-terrestial" was a concept held only by Ray and Jimmy Green. 12. Of course, this is true of the afterlife in many other belief systems, including Christianity.

13. Although Kardecian Spiritualism, which affirms metem- psychosis, was pre-Theosophical, dating from the 18!?0*s, it is possible that the idea of reincarnation has also re-entered Spiritualism from Theosophy.

14. Burnet (1962:43) The Platonic dialogues Timaeus and Critias assume a karmic eschatology; they also exhfbit many other ideas associated with contemporary occultisms, including "number '4, a creator Craftsman, the idea of a -world soul", the lost continent of Atlantis, and a dogmatic "mythic“style (Plato, 1970)

15. The best support the New Testament can offer, however, is Matthew 17:12-13. Evidently the claim refers to Qrpheo-Gnostic cults associated with early Christianity (Brandon, 1967:194) 16. Wilson (1973:672ff) 17. That is, the issue of punishment for evil deeds and. rewards for good. ones.

18. Weber (1965:145) 19. Elaine once crushed an ant with the comment "happy reincarnationI" 20. The word comes from Buddhism. In Theosophy, Bodisattvas are an elevated order of spirits responsible for the inauguration of new and philosophical systems (Spence, 1960:73) 21. One spiritualist said of another: "I think we knew each other a long time ago". The innocent ethnographer made some observation about the resumption of old friendships. "Oh,w she said, "it was a very long time ago. In Egypt at the time of the Pharaohs'1. 22. 26, April, 1975:2

23. This is only the first example of an anomalous phenomena being open to competing explanations. Hobbie Robinson tackled the problem as follows: "We are, before our departure from above, dipped in the lake known as the waters of Lethe. This final preparation for our return entirely wipes out and erases t- e memory of our heavenly experiences. We could not be expected to remain content and satisfied here if we retained the picture of above, now could we?" 48 24. 1973:672 25. True to his reactionary politics, Robbie saw in this fatalism an advantage of the doctrine: In the East man is less envious of his fellow man, because he accepts his position as the outcome of his conduct in a former life. At the same time he appreciates that the other is being rewarded for his former deeds. 26. Sometimes the word "guide** is reserved for the leader of each person's spirit band.

27. Nelson (1969:56) suggests the belief is derived from Amerindian , but ideas of this sort are so” widespread that it would be difficult to pinpoint such a particular influence.

28. The exotic is a form of anomaly. This bears on the discussion in chapter 7.

29. Edwards (n.d: 19-20) Mediums often blame their guides for poor or misleading messages, as lauer (1974:35) mentions. 30. Gaynor (1973:73) says that "control11 and "guide" are synonymous, but this is not true at Mortfield.

31. In the U.S.A., doorkeepers are more commonly called "gatekeepers".

32. Trickster spirits of this sort are commonly believed in across a wide range of cultures. The modern literature often calls them by the German word •. Gauld and Connell (1979)» in a highly documented study of the alleged phenomena allegedly produced by , rejected all the numerous speculations which would explain them on the premisses of "natural science'".

33. In De occulta Philosophica. (1531) Cornelius Agrippa wrote that ,rafter death man's soul remains near his body if it loves the body beyond the grave, or if the corpse is unburied, or if death has come by violence" (Schumaker, 1972:154). Cavendish (1975:41) notes that the souls of those who have died suddenly may be dangerous, and the British medium f*ia Twigg adds that a state of confusion may persist for several days, until they have managed to shake off their "ectoplasmic vehicles" (Twigg, 1973:164) In a"case" which became an international media event of the 60's the son of Episcopalian bishop committed suicide, allegedly while under the influence of L.S.D. "Cn discovering his plight, he was desperate. He produced every kind of poltergeist effect within his power - smashing things, disarraying clothing, moving objects, bending and distributing safety pins, moving books that would call attention to his memory - all to attract help in his plight" Pike enlisted the services of Twigg (ibid, 120-130) and the veteran Californian Arthur Ford, from whose book this quotation comes (Ford, 1974:112) He became a vigorous propagandist for Spiritualism (Pike 1969) before his own death in the Judean desert in 1969 (Twigg, 1973:152-174). 49 34. This motif quite often refers to the cultural myth of "a criminal returns to the scene of his crime’'.

35. The terminal symptoms of possession are the symptoms of psychotic delusion. Sometimes earthbound entities are identified as ’’", but ghosts may also be believed to be ’’vivid impressions” on the “astral field”. Such impressions are most likely to be made at times of crisis, and become visible under certain conditions and/or to "sensitive" observers. Another idea is the ghosts are the "astral corpses" of souls who have ”died“ in the Astral and gone to higher levels. (Cavendish, 1975:43). These theories are meant to account for the recurrence of most x'cported ghosts in the same building or place, ,and also for the catalepsy generally attributed to ‘them. (They also provide a good explanation for a medium not being able to communicate with a ).

36. For "there is no religion higher than truth”. 37. Newton invoked the concept to explain action which did not come within the scope of his mechanics: gravity, capillarity, cohesion, combustion, fermentation, electricity and mind/body interaction (Rattansi, 1973:160) 38. Marsilio Ficino's Ie Vita Coelitus Comparanda (1489), in Schumaker (1972:127). See also Seligmann (1975:85ff, H6f). 39. Schumaker (1972:161) 40. In his Fhilosophia .ysaica (1637) See Podmore (l963:26ff). 41. Crow (1973:303) 42. Spence's definition of ecteric force (1960:133) 43. d'Abro (l950:116f) 44. Grattan-Guiness (1976:250) 45. Ostrander & Schroeder (I971:170f) 46. Depending on interpretation, (qv) might be considered a type of spirit photography. 47. "t'asy to conceal**, the skeptic would intrude. 48. Chambers (1966:55)- 49. eg Schrenk-Notzing (1920). 50. Spence notes that levitation was commonly attributed to early Christian saints, and also to Savonarola. Hindu yogis were also said to possess this power (1960:250). Wilson discusses the renowned case of St. Joseph of Copertino (1973:280ff). Levitation has not lost its interest for contemporary propagandists of “popular science"(see Taylor, 1976:109-111; Ostrander and Schroeder, 1971:291-2) 51. Psychic News (May 10,1975:1) reports a case of apport mediumship in Britain. 52. Spiritual healing occurs as a result of the powers exercised by the medium; faith-healing - according to Spiritualists - occurs as a result of the attitude of the patient, and therefore does not constitute evidence of Spirit. 53. Boddington (1947:128) 50

54. I was once recommended a daily dose of port and olive oil for my back. 55. Healing mediums often have guides who were doctors in their life on earth. Spiritual healing is not considered incompatible with other treatments, including orthodox medicine. One of the circuit mediums in Sydney is an ex-acupuncturist, and at the time of fieldwork was involved in zonal therapy, a based on correspondences between the body's organs and parts of the feet. 56. Kiev (1964) ; Maclean (1974)* 57. Both Wilson (l973:364f) and Parsinnen (1979:114) draw attention to the sexual component of Mesmer's treatments. Spence (1960:315) claims Paracelsus to be the first to connect occult influence with the magnet. Karl von rieichenback also claimed unusual interactions between his patients and magnetised objects (1977)* ' ‘ 58. This illustrious body included Benjamin Franklin; astronomer Bailly and the chemist Lavoisier, who died in the Terror, and Dr Guillotin, whose humane invention was the instrument of their death. 59. Grow (1973:305) Also Podmore (1963:55f), Douglas (1976: 38-47)* 60. Frank (1961:65-74); Levi-Strauss (1963:167-205); Neu (1975), 61. I have already mentioned Skultans1 study (1974). The British Spiritualist weekly Psychic News de otes about 25% of its columns to stories related to health and healing. The Californian groups studied by Zaretsky (1974:173) performed healing after every meeting. Mac lin (1974:405; reports that healing is less important for New England Spiritualists than Mexican Spiritists, a fact which it is plausible to explain in terms of differences in medical access, family structures and attitudes to illness. 62. Skultans (1974:45). This theory is commonly met with in the anthropological literature - see, for example, lewis (1970. 63. Skultans (1974:50). 64. Controlled breathing is commonly practised by both healer and patient, ostensibly as a way of achieving a steady and concentrated consciousness. 65. the medical profession responded in kind, but mental healing seems never to have posen to it anything like the challenge to its legitimacy represented by lay healers in the medieval period (Hughes, 1968), Astrology in the seventeenth century (Wright. 1979) or Mesmerism in the nineteenth (Parssinen, 1979). 66. Ashby (1972:145); also Heywood (1948:16), "Telaesthes/a » was coined by F.W.H. Myers (1954: xv). 67. Wo elf (1976:27). 68. Freud (I973:60f) discusses some cases of this sort. 69. Skultans (1974:30) 51 70. Mrs. Miller claimed to be able to detect kinship relationships by comparing auras. There are reports from Perth (Drury and Tillett, 1980:38) and Britain (Psychic News, 5/4/75:2) of clairvoyants drawing up Mauric diagrams’* or ** auraschopes" (on the model of "horoscope"), but this was not done in Sydney. 71. Sepharial (1973:310,312) 72. Like the hypnotic state, which it is correlative with, if not identical to, Spiritualist trance may be manifested by "alterations in memory and consciousness, increased suscept- ibility to suffestion, anaesthesia, paralysis, muscle rigidity, vasomotor changes etc, but need not be characterised by any of these.'* (.tosen, 1963:800). The author of this passage notes that "almost every aspect of the subject is controversial" 73. Spence (1960:415) Mackiin (1977:53). 74. Spence (1960:56). 75. A short passage from what is probably the moat famous example of automatic writing (Cummins, 1970:49) will’ suffice to illustrate these characteristics: Human personality does not survive death, but the soul or real mind survives, however changing the mastc of human personality, whatever have been the misunderstandings between the son's and mother's personalities, there is a unity deep down and behind their masks. Memories persist like the leaves of the tree, from the consciousness the living self or person discards them. But all that is deepest and best or worst continues after and before death. In this other state the human soul continues living, expanding or contracting. Describe the soul, and say. It is something essential, rately recognizably expressed, save in the highly developed, through the outer trappings during the span of existence on earth. 76. The hypothesis of spirit provides ready made explanations for all the ’'irrational" behaviour which psychoanalysis would like to explain. 77. It is because of the danger of possession and attachment that mediums often advise people seeking spiritual “development’’ never to “ sit** - ie attempt to invoke spirits - alone, but always in a properly constituted "circle" (Skultans, 1974:47). 78. Wilson (l973:581f), Schreiber (1975) This point is dis- cussed in more detail by Skultans (1974:81). 79. Ashby (1972:151), Lauer (1974:341), Douglas (1976:323- 33?), Drury and Tillett (1978:95-98), Drury and Tillett (1980:160). Some say that there is a "cord" or "cable” attaching the phantom body to the physical body while it is alive. (Kuldoon and Carrington, 1974:76ff). Some authors (eg Cavendish, 1975:44-) refer for confirmation of this to Fcclesiastes 12:6: “Remember him before the silver cord is snapped and the golden bowl is broken''. If the body of someone i<=. disturbed while their "astral body” is travelling, the cord may be damaged or even 5? broken (Macklin, 1974:405). 80. Halifax (1979:l6f), Castaneda (1970:125f), .Elkin (1946: 52-67; 81. Ashby (1972:156; says "travelling clairvoyance" is “often confused with Astral Travel”. This is not surprising, since by the first he means the Astral Body moves about and as a result the percipient experiences things beyond the reach of the senses, while in the second the percipient merely seems to move about. 82. Wilson (l973:592f) 83. Chambers (1966:19). This phenomenon, resembling levitation insofar as it involves the incogruous placement of &n (apparent) body (Wilson; 1973:280f) might account for ghosts, and related entities like the ominous "double" or ’’fetch” of European folklore (Anon, 1974:66). Wilson illustrates astral projection with a story about the writers John Cowper Powys and Theodore Dreiser. 84. Some said it was habitual for the Astral Body to go wandering in sleep, but people are not normally conscious of this. 85. Cf Macfclin (1977:45) CHAP?FA 4

CIKCI.ES In Chapter 2 I described a typical Spiritualist ’’service”, the main vehicle for mediums who give public "demonstrations”

As in all Spiritualist practice, it centres on the figure of the medium, who evokes, concentrates, channels and communicates spiritual power, and thus draws her audience nearer to the Spirit which this power both is, and is a sign of.

The other main Spiritual ritual arena is the seance or

"circle". Circles are gatherings, usually '’private" in nature, of people who have come together to contact Spirit or raise Spiritual Power. There are several named varieties of Spiritual circle, which are distinguished as much by context (who organises them, where they are held etc) as by the activities that occur.

The home circle

The following instructions, which date from the nineteenth century, were reprinted in the Mortfield Church magazine;

Spiritualism: How to Begin Investigations

If there is an earnest desire to gain knowledge of the truth of Spiritualism, it is by no means necessary to go to some far off public medium. The family in which there is not at least one member possessing this gift is the exception.

The investigation of psychic phenomena is best conducted in the home circle. It is there that loved ones return. Anxiety to receive on our part is met by even greater desire to communicate on theirs. Sensit- iveness, or the mediumistic faculty, is possessed by all in varying degrees and is capable of cultivation. There is nothing miraculous or mysterious about it. Sometimes a member of a circle that gathers around a table for the first time is found to be mediumistic, and communications are at once received. This is not often the case, however, and several attempts may have to be made before results are obtained. 55

Although there is nothing arbitrarily fixed in the matter 01' forming a circle, as is generally supposed, there are rules the observance of which will facilitate development. The number in a circle should not be less than four nor more than twelve, '''he members should be so selected that, as a whole, there will be perfect sympathy and harmony, i'he date of thf meeting should be fixcrt and unchanged, and every member should attend regularly. The seances shouio be held at least once a week, but no more than twice. It is best, where practical, to have a room set apart for the circle, and invariably, meet there. The members should always occupy the same place round the table, except when requested by the communicators to make a change.

The sensitive, or known medium, should form part of this circle. At the beginning joining hands has advantages, but afterwards the hands can be placed on the table, palms downward. No one should be allowed in the room who does not sit in the circle. Pure air and convenient seats, ensuring perfect ease and physical comfort, are essential to success. Even more necessary is freedom from mental excitement, dogmatism and self- assertion. Vicious and ignorantly credulous persons - also triflers and arrogant sceptics - should be rigidly excluded.

When manifestations are received through such a circle, tests may be applied and the means are at hand for a thorough study of the subject. What is more, we furnish communicators with the means whereby to approach us, and make known to us not only their identity but their undying affection. We catch a gleam through the parting curtains of life beyond, and become conscious that the real life is Over There.

As well as the rules mentioned in this text, circles often forbid the crossing of arms or legs, which may "stop the Power”,^ and efforts are sometimes made to insure that the seating arrangements, which are supposed to be circular,

conform as closely as the sex ratio will allow to the ideal of males and females alternating.

As a typical example of a home circle , there follows an account of

the proceedings at one of a series of seances I attended at Nary Jay's house. Present on this occasion were Mary and 56 and Elaine Harvey, "both mediums who frequently attended Mortfield; Margaret Sendelbeck and myself, likewise regular Mortfield goers; three women who attended Mary's circile most weeks but were seldom seen at Mortfield; and two young men whc were casual invitees.

-he lights were turned off and the lord's Prayer recite^ by Mary. There was no touching of hands. We sat in silence for some fifteen minutes. The effect of concentration in these circumstances is psychotropic, and many people will experience odd sensations, and perhaps distortions of thought and perception. Finally Mary began to speak in a way atypical of her. This was a spirit "coming through". Whoever it was delivered an harangue on the infant Jesus:

There was a boy he came to die for us but also the live to show us that there is life hereafter...

I-'ary stopped talking, and Elaine said "Thank you" to the spirit who had spoken through her. After more silence, a second control spoke through Mary, a sharpspoken woman who gave advice on how to conduct the circle, mainly emphasising that the sitters should have the right attitude of reverence and enthusiasm. She informed the participants that they were not to "get discourage d", as "very evidential phenomena" would soon be received. As usual the traffic noise was very loud at Mary's, and it was difficult to concentrate. Commenting on this, the control said not to mind, she had sat in a circle during the blitz.

laine, apparently under the control of a guide, concluded the seance, giving thanks to "the eternal Power of Spirit" for enabling the participants to receive this "evidence". Later, over cups of tea, there was discussion of these events. Elaine gave a physical description of Mary's sharpspoken control, whom she had perceived clairvoyantly. She said that the only person to survive the war who had belonged to the circle referred to had been the famous 5 medium Ena Twigg.

Mary informed us that Elaine*s deceased husband Eric had been trying to "come through**, although Elaine had not perceived this. He "looked like a film star” and had curly hair. Elaine confirmed these evidential details. Mary said that Eric had “brought his material conditions with him'*, and a few other people agreed they had felt the presence of “negative vibrations". Elaine scowled. MHe knows not to do that", she said.^

The home circle is more informal and intimate than the service. Much of the time may be spent in silence and darkness. What "action" there is, in the sense analysed in 7 Goffman's essay , is usually initiated by the medium who is the recognised circle leader, and others often take only a minor role.

Pour types of speaking normally take place at a seance.

Firstly, there axe invocations, prayers and expressions of gratitude to the spirits, which are particularly prominent at the beginning and end.

Secondly, sitters may describe their perception of the

"conditions” and "vibrations" in the circle. The voice is that of the speaker although he or she may be relaying information from the Spirit. This type of speaking resembles that of the “messages" given to the audience of a service. Thirdly, the medium may "go under control" and a spirit

"speak" with his or her vocal cords. This is the hallmark of a successful seance.

Finally, asides on the action occur, although they aay be thought inappropriate at solemn or exciting moments.

Open Circles

Home circles are held in private homes, and admission is by invitation only. An "open circle* is held at a church or other "public" meeting place and can in theory be attended by anyone who is interested. However, since only those who are welcome would normally be told of a circle's existence the last feature is only real for large and regularly held circles. The term dates from the heyday of "physical" mediumship, when an "open circle" usually meant a gathering of people who paid for admission to witness direct voice, apportage or the "materialization" of spirits. There are very few of these today, and "open circle" has come to mean Q in practice a circle not held in a private home. Thus both the Godwin's healing circle and Peter Siman's development clasg, discussed below, were referred to as "open circles".

Development circles

Development circles are specifically intended to develop the psychic gifts of potential mediums: they are also often called "classes". Open development circles work with the egalitarian assumption that anyone who hears of the group and wants to attend is a potential medium. In other cases, development circles are set up by established mediums in an attempt to consolidate their following and "routinise their i r . v 59 Q charisma". Such a circle includes only the proteges of the medium - those who are regarded by him or her as less developed but "worthy followers", and who are willing to accept this status.

Peter Siman conducted a weekly open development class which usually attracted between twenty and thirty people. Peter was not a "platform"medium, although he sometimes attended the services at Mortfield. He was a Spiritualist "intellectual", with many contacts in an "occult milieu" which extended beyond Spiritualism. Those who came to his development circle comprised a high proportion of "psychic seekers" on the Spiritualist fringe, and were noticeably younger, more middle class, and more "counter-cultural" than those in services.

Although the proportions were often close to equal, there was no attempt to alternate sexes in seating arrangements at this circle, which I attended several times. The only light was that coming from the electric radiators and a blue light bulb (blue being a Spiritual colour ).

The meeting always opened with the Lord's prayer, after which members of the circle would read passages from Spiritualist literature - writings of spirits with names like "Silver Birch", "Pope John the twenty third" and "Demetrius", in the style of the sermons and prayers quoted in Chapter 2.

The procedure was similar to that in home circles, beginning with a long silence while the group meditated. Instead of the leading medium going under control (or "giving off" as it was usually called in this group), pressure was put on the others to do so. Usually a few would show signs of trancing, and occasionally a spirit would "come through". When a control had departed, it would be farewelled with

the words "God bless you, come again".

j-Jven for those who did not trance, there was strong pressure

to speak about what they had "seen": daydreams and mental

imagery were discussed and interpreted by the circle leader

as possible cases of clairvoyance.

The circle always ended with a test of "".

Sometimes flowers were used, as in the service, but more

often personal belongings such as jewellery and keys. Steps were taken so that people did not know the identity of the owner of the article they attempted to "read".

Healing circles

These differ from other circles in that they represent not

an "investigation" of Spirit, but a summoning of Spiritual

Power for thaumaturgical purposes. The presiding medium

or mediums undertake spiritual healing on the others.

Pealing circles begin and end with a prayer. The rest of

the action is dictated by the ailments of those present and the treatments of the medium. The healing is interspersed

with discussion in the Spiritualist jargon, the relaying of gossip, and occasionally the giving of a ’’reading" to someone, or the delivery of a trance lecture.

At Kortfielri there was little overlap between those who

attended hf aling circles and those who attended flower

services. In other churches, however, there has recently

been a tendency to precede flower services by healing sessions. The number attending the Godwin's weekly circle was about fifteen, mostly women over thirty years old. Private readings

Circles incorporate elements of "investigation", which although led by a medium is essentially a co-operative endeavour, and "display”, which is basically an assymetrical relationship between "givers” and "receivers'*, a relationship most obvious in the healing circle.

In the private reading or "consultation" this assymetrical relationship becomes dyadic. Private readings may be given free of charge, but they are also a way of making money for mediums with a high reputation. Bill Maddigan tried to set himself up as a consulting medium with little success, but

Elizabeth Johns built up a respectable "practice” in the years following my involvement with the Mortfield church.

Charging for "spiritual services" leaves a Spiritualist medium open to charges of "”, but neither Bill nor Elizabeth seemed to incur much stigma for it. The clients of "" who give private readings include a large number of people who would not consider themselves

Spiritualists, and are not in any way connected with the movement. Many "go to see a fortune teller" out of curiosity or because an acquaintance has recommended one. Nor are psychics who give readings necessarily Spiritualists: in fact most would identify more closely with witchcraft, astrology, palmistry or some other movement, or merely see themselves as "psychic" or "clairvoyant". This is one of the fronts upon which Spiritualism merges with contemporary occultism. i 6

Rescue Work

This is another area in which the activities of Spiritualists merge with other occultists. Three fairly distinct types of rescue work can be distinguished.

(a) It sometimes happens that a member of a church or circle shows what would conventionally be considered signs of mental disturbance, and these characteristics are defined as symptoms of the presence of "earthbound entities”.

In other cases there is no evident disturbance about the person in question, and the attribution of obsession or possession is a fairly clear example of "labelling behaviour”1®. As an example of this, Pat, a young woman who occasion- ally attended Mortfield church services and was a friend of

Ray Ferguson and Jimmy Green, once turned up at Mary Jay's home circle. It was not clear whether she had been invited or by whom. During the seance she went under control, and the spirit who came through, while not more coherent than usual, spoke with a great deal of authority. Mary responded by holding up a cross in front of her. Later she asked Pat if she had had any contact with ""; Pat said she had a friend who was "interested". After she had left, Mary said that Pat was in the grip of evil powers. A plausible way of interpreting this interaction is that Mary felt hostile to Pat because of the challenge implicit in the act of going under control and assuming the prerogratives of a

"developed" medium. Margaret Sendelbeck later admitted to me that she herself had not thought Pat’s behaviour "evil".

It sometimes happens that a person will be "rescued" from 63 obsessing or possessing spirits by prayers and therapeutic discussion, either in a circle or in private consultation with a medium. But this is rare, involving as it does the submission by the subject to a stigmatizing judgement. If a person labelled by a medium or group as needing "rescue” is not coping with everyday life, then he or she will most likely fall into the net of professional psychiatry; on. the other hand, if the person is coping, he or she will most likely cease to associate with those who believe that there is something wrong.

(b) But in a way characteristic of Spiritualist parlance, "rescue work" is ambiguous: it can be from or of a controlling entity, and the latter sense is by far the commonest.

In the following incident, described in the Mortfield magazine, a medium allows herself to be the instrument of an unhappy spirit's rescue:

What started out as an ordinary Sunday Service turned into a spectacular demonstration of spirit rescue. The speaker hadn’t turned up, so my husband, Joe Frazer, one of the management committee of Drabville Spiritualist Church, volunteered to do the address. When he had finished his stirring lecture on the "rescue of Barthbound Spirits', Mrs Hyde, a medium of about 50 years standing, and who, for a few years ran Drabville Church with Mrs Hill, stood up and asked to speak. But, it was NCV Mrs Hyde.

On the way to the church she had collected a earthbound spirit and she allowed him to use her as an instrument to voice his feelings. He was very upset and said he had been a drunken man and had been wandering around in the dark. He said the man on the platform was right, that it was indescribable, and had to be seen to be believed. The congregation silently prayed and my husband talked him over. It was very moving and there was hardly a dry eye in the whole congregation. We then sang the hymn "Open my eyes, that X-pay see, Glimpses of Truth, Thou hast for me!" It was a very apt tune for the occasion. ’’White leather”, who is Mrs Joy Scott's guide, said when they were doing the inspirational readings of the flowers, th&b it was not by accioent that my husband took the platform that day and gave the address. Ker guide said that hundreds were rescued with the "drunken man". Apparently Spirit had it all worked out AS USUAL. They never let us down.

I am sure that the whole congregation felt as we always do after a rescue. It is the most rewarding and uplifting feeling that one can have, you really feel as if you are "serving" and that is what this work is all about.

(c) Lastly,"rescue work" may refer to the of earthbound spirits from particular houses or places, where they have lingered, frightening people, but not necessarily obsessing or possessing them. This kind of work may involve rescue of the entity in sense (b), or merely doing or saying something that will make it go away.

* * *

Ostensibly concerned with investigating evidence for a factual hypothesis, in reality Spiritualist practices are stereotyped . The next chapter demonstrates an analogous gap between the ideal and the reality of the

Spiritualist community. Spiritualistn like to think of themselves as an harmonious band of self-effacing, tolerant and altruistic seekers of truth. In fact, They spend much energy competing among themselves for personal prestige and influence. 65

1. Like many terms in the Spiritualist parlance, "demonstration" is ambiguous, meaning birth a "display” (of the medium’s ■talents) and a "proof" (of the existence of Spirit). 2. Spence (1960:104) Ashby (1972:45). Crow (1973:245) suggests that the “circle" is a descendent of the witch's esbat or . 3. They derive from the Lyceum Manual (Britten, 1957). 4. S)rultans(l974:49) mentions this, discerning in it a sign of sexual derepression. Spiritualists with whom I discussed the practice linked it with the sign of the Christian cross. « 5. The seance ip legitimised by reference to other seances, and the mediums by allusion to famous mediums. luring the seance, Spiritualist ideas are validated by appearing in the mouths of spirits, the members of the group confirm each other's spiritual experiences, and spirits offer the prospect of future “evidence11 - and by the end of the seance this offer has itself become “evidential". All this is part of the ideological work done in the circle. 6. This interaction is a fairly amiable illustration of competition between mediums. 7. ‘‘Activities that are consequential, problematic and undertaken for what is felt to be their own sake11 (Goffman 1972:185). 8. Kelson (1969:213) 9. locke (n.d.' 5ff) 10. Becke r (19*53) 11. I do not know the source of this hymn. CHAPTER 5

MOJiTPIELD POLITICS 67

The size of Spiritualism in Sydney

At the time of fieldwork, in the mid 1970’s, there were more than 50 spiritualist churches in Australia, of which 13 were in Sydney, chiefly in older Western and Southern suburbs of the city. They were mostly in low to moderate socio-economic areas, and located where transport networks make travel easier for those without automobiles. In 1976 approximately 15 weekly

Spiritualist "services”, and another 6 healing and development

"circles", were advertised in newspapers.

Extrapolation from the attendance figures of the services and healing circles I attended yields a figure of the order of five hundred for those who attend such activities each week in Sydney.

This may overestimate the number of regular, active Spiritualists, because most services contain a proportion of people who have never come before and never will again, and because a few people regularly attend more than one function per week.

Cn the other hand, five hundred is a considerable underestimate

of the number of people in Sydney who would regard themselves

as Spiritualists. Up to half of every congregation consists

of people who attend fairly regularly but less than once a week,

and in addition there is a "hinterland*1 of believers who very

rarely participate in Spiritualist practices, or do so chiefly in private homes.^ Vhe number in this category is probably

incalculable, as it shades off into other occultisms, and

into the population at large.

Spiritualist Organisation

Mortfield is unusual in that the building is held by a trust,

the result of a beouest made decades ago. For most 68 Spiritualist churches in Sydney (and elsewhere), services take place in a hired hall. The governing body of a church is, in effect, the person or group of people who is responsible for organising the public meetings. Around this group is an 2 "urban cultic network" “ of friends and allies - who are also potential rivals. In some cases, as at Mortfield, the group is formally constituted as a Committee.

Spiritualist organisation, then,centres on the medium's

"demonstration". Without this, Spiritualism would be more like other groups within the field of the occult, such as those which "study” magic or astrology; in other words, it would be more like a ''hobby”.

The churches have little formal connection with each other, and in Australia attempts to create affiliations even along the looseknit pattern of those existing in the U.S. or Britain have been only partially successful. However, there is a dense network of informal contacts between the churches, facilitated by the system of visiting mediums, whereby most mediums visit •3 a round of churches over a number of weeks.

Decades of academic debate about the organisation of small religious groups has built upon Troeltsch's application to the development of Christianity in Europe of three ideal types of correlated organisation and belief. There is the Church,

conservative, involved with the secular order, claiming to mediate between the world and the , attempting to dominate the masses, and closely associated with the ruling

classes. Opposed to the Church there is the , essentially indifferent to the secular order as irrelevant to , fostering a direct relationship between the individual and

God, small, based on personal ties, and associated with non- ruling classes. Between the Church and the Sect, and co- existing with both, is Mysticism, a type of religiosity which emphasises inner ecperience and ecstatic forms of expression, and tends towards doctrinal tolerance and . Troeltsch saw in Mysticism an expression of bourgeois individualism.^

In terms of this model, Spiritualism conforms most closely to the Mystical type. It is typified by what Roy Wallis has felicitously dubbed "epistemological individualism”, in that no means of access to salvation, enlightenment or truth can be established as privileged over others, and no importance is accorded organisation as such over and above individuals.

These features characterise a "cult", although from the perspective of other typologies, Spiritualism could also be 6 7 called a "voluntary organisation" or even a “circle".

Spiritualist feuding

In reality Spiritualist organization chiefly functions as a domain for the exercise of personal and political intrigue.

During my association with Mortfield church personal relation- ships among its members were characterised by personal intensity and instability of alliances and enmities. It is true that the organisation of Mortfield contained anomalies which would have probably created tensions in any circumstances, and it is also true that small interest groups are prone to internal feuding.

But these factors do not explain the particular character of

Mortfield infighting, and only go some way towards accounting for its extraordinary vehemence. The property of Mortfield church was vested in a trust, the two executors of which had long been Martin Robbinson, known to all as "Robbie”, and Mrs Bragg. Both were in their late fifties or early sixties, and had been associated with the church for decades. Mrs.Bragg occasionally gave^platform” flower readings, but was not an inveterate attender of services.

Robbie, on the other hand, was very active, being present at the church for two or three services or seances per week,

Mrs Bragg was thoroughly conservative, finding reasons for opposing any suggested change. Robbie, although his politics were reactionary, was a progressive on matters affecting

Spiritualism and the church, and as a matter of principle gave support to new mediums who were "up and Cuming1*, because they were what "the work" needed.

Because of the length of his association with Mortfield, his active participation in its activities, and his dominating personality, Robbie, although officially vice-president, was the leader of the committee and the church; the nominal president, a frail and absent-minded old lady, had little effective power.

In theory, decisions affecting the running of the church were vested in a committee which met monthly. Membership of this committee appeared to rest on the criterion that anyone who had ever been elected or nominated to it had a right to participate in its deliverations unless someone objected, which would have normally been considered an “un-Spiritualist11 thing to do.

At most meetings there was a hard core of about twelve, who nearly always attended, and up to another dozen who came occasionally. (fhly a handful of the hard core were often 71 seen at Mortfield services). An Annual General Meeting which was supposed to elect the committee (but did not on the occasion

I observed it) was constituted from all those who paid an annual Church membership fee of 40 cents. This membership, which overlapped but did not coincide with those who commonly attended Mortfield services, totalled about 130.

After a few months of participation in church activities, I was informed, along with Uup and coming" medium Plizabeth Johns that ’’Robbie wants you on the committee". The committee subseouently elected us to their ranks. Although I had never professed belief in Spiritualism, I was obviously interested, and according to Robbie the committee needed "new blood".

It turned out that he felt the need of supporters in a number of looming conflicts.

The meetings of the committee were often confused sessions of bickering, complaint and abuse. Complex power games in which even the protagonists seemed to lose themselves often led to uproar, but few issues endured for long, and opponents and allies changed positions frequently. Everyone deplored the incessant quarreling as "unspiritual", and many excused it as the symptom of exceptional circumstances. "In the old days", Mrs Bragg claimed, Hthere was never no friction between anybody". However, the historical and sociological evidence indicates that it has always been typical of Spiritualits organisations.

During my association with Mortfield, three issues in particular caused dissension. Cne concerned an attempt to consolidate Q a would-be National Association of Spiritualists. The other two grew out of tensions associated with the rise of mediums who saw themselves as independent of and in some ways opposed to and better than the "old guard1'. Tales of Power

Tha National Association of Spiritualists had been set up by Mrs Joan Campbell, a Sydney medium wno had persuaded a number of churches in N. S.VV. and elsewhere to endorse her position as its ‘'nominator'1. She succeeded in having the N.A.S. proclaimed a religious organisation by the Australian Federal government; in material terms, this meant for Mortfield a remission of Council rates. What else it involved was unclear.

In particular, what Mrs Campbell's position as "nominator” implied was a topic of dispute. She claimed xhat it meant - or, perhaps, should mean - the right to certify mediums as sufficiently "developed" to give "demonstrations", and to ordain "ministers of the National Association of Spiritualists".

The bitter faction fighting at Mortfield about the N.A.S. grew from the ambitious rivalry of a handful of mediums, chiefly the new "up and coming", who were in need of some formal recognition and legitimation of the mediumistic talents they claimed for themselves. It was premissed on the following dilemma: if Mrs Campbell had the legal powers which she claimed and intended to use them to confer status on one, then one should support her movement and Mortfield's continued affiliat- ion with it; but if she was not going to use her claimed powers to confer status on one, then one should do everything to undermine the legitimacy of her powers, and dissociate

Mortfield from the N.A.S.

This dilemma was acute for Kobbie. He had been close to the former president of Mortfield, Herbie Brown, who had been

"promoted" many years previously. Herbie had foretold to

Kobbie that "you'll be a reverend one day", and Kobbie had never forgotten this prediction. He supported the N.A.S. at first, at least partly because he saw in it the possibility of fulfilling the words of the old clairvoyant; however, when it became clear that Mrs Campbell regarded him with some disdain and was unlikely to make his wish come true, he turned savagely against her.

At the first committee meeting I attended, the feeling was unanimously against Mrs Campbell approving mediums for platform work, or in any way interfering with the running of the church.

A national organisation was a good idea, but "one person shouldn't be allowed to take over the movement". Bobbie explained with disarming candour that the president and he had approved the appointment of Mrs Campbell as nominator of the N.A.S. without informing the committee. The president said she didn't remember.

The next committee meeting witnessed a change of tack, nobbie informed the committee that the local Council had remitted the church property rates as a result of its affiliation with the N.A.S., and asked the committee to recommend him and

Elizabeth Johns to Joan Campbell as "officiants” of Mortfield

Church. Although the last meeting had been abuzz with derogatory gossip about the N.A.S. and its "nominator”, everyone went along with this apparent turnabout.

A few weeks later, three "new" mediums who at that time saw a lot of each other, Elizabeth Johns, Mary Jay and Elaine Harvey, visited Mrs Campbell and came away flattered and impressed. Mary later reported that Joan Campbell's spirit was developed,

"although dark in the health aura". They pushed for her to be invited to address the Mortfield church on the N.A.S. issue. In any case, she claimed the right to do so because, according to her, she had been made a T,life member” many years ago. This could not be checked, because the records were lost, but in any case Robbie agreed to extend an invitation, and moved a motion that all life memberships be reconfirmed at the impending Annual General Meeting.

Mrs Campbell never came to Mortfield. She and Robbie met some days later and had a furious argument. She said that she could come in at any time and "take over the church committee with the assistance of the coppers if necessary”, threatened him with legal action for fraud because although a trustee he audited the T-ortfield books, and claimed that Mortfield was “a place no Spiritualist would be seen dead in*'. Among other insinuations, Robbie alleged in return that she was

"after the property of Mortfield” and that her husband was a

"communist11 (because he belonged to the Australian Labour

Party).

It was about this time that Robbie had occasion to complain about a flower message he received from Elizabeth Johns that he was "too high and mighty”. He commented that “if that’s a reference to the Campbell business, she's a bitch and that's all there is to it” .

At the following committee meeting, Robbie, at his most ferocious, proposed sending a letter from the trustees to the appropriate

government minister demanding that Mrs Campbell be removed from the position of nominator of the N.A.S. The ensuing debate was wild. Although Mrs Campbell gave regular flower readings to other churches, it was alleged that she intended to abolish them as "not Spiritual enough". Mrs Bragg, who opposed the N.A.S. because she was opposed to any innovation, attacked

Elizabeth, Mary and Elaine for allowing themselves to be

"taken in”. Elizabeth responded that Joan Campbell was "a complete liar".

Robbie cajoled everybody on the committee into signing the letter, even the reluctant Peter Siman, who made the reasonable point that if Mrs Campbell had the powers she claimed, the letter might provoke her into using them, while if she didn't, sending it was a waste of time. The meeting ended by passing a motion cancelling all previous life memberships.

Although the committee went along with him, the general feeling was that Robbie was being too stubborn and irrascible. At a following meeting at which he was absent, it emerged that

Elizabeth Johns, the committee secretary, had not sent the letter. She claimed that a uchurch lawyer1' had advised against it. The government would not recognise Mortfield as a separate church. Mrs Campbell had too much support from other churches to be overthrown. If at some later time she anatagonised more

Spiritualists, she could be ousted without splitting the movement. (By this stage, everyone seemed to assume that the letter had withdrawn Mortfield from the F.A.S.) After a brief and fairly calm discussion, it was moved by Peter Siman and passed that the letter “be destroyed before the committee".

The letter was neither sent nor destroyed before the committee, and the issue slowly died. Mortfield remained nominally affiliated to the N.A.S., which included most Sydney churches and a handful from elsewhere, but Mrs Campbell never achieved any real power over it, or over any church where she did not already have direct personal influence. A few months later,

Elizabeth Johns, having passed the K.A.S. "medium's examination'*, was ordained a minister of that "religion". The Ne* Guard

The early seventies saw a influx of occult "seekers” into the

Spiritualist movement, and some members of this influx became mediums. At Mortfield the new wave was represented especially by six people: Elizabeth Johns, Mary Jay and

Elaine Harvey; Jimmy Green and Ray Ferguson; and Bill Maddigan. (There was also Andy Johnson, who after a bout of intensive activity the year previous to fieldwork, had all but withdrawn from church activities to study for exams; perhaps it was mainly because of this that he seemed well-liked, although he had only recently been the centre of raging controversy.)

Jimmy was a stevedore and Ray Ferguson an erratically employed popular singer. Both were in their twenties and dressed and spoke in conformity with contemporary styles: they were "trendy". Supported by Robbie, they actively propagandised Spiritualism in a way that disturbed some of the older church- goers, who were shy of publicity.

Jimmy Green was particularly active; he came to Spiritualism from an evangelical Christian sect, and brought with him some of the fervour of that environment. He was the driving force behind the establishment of a lending library at Mortfield, and with Robbie and Ray Ferguson and two or three others produced a roneoed magazine which was distributed for a nominal price in Spiritualist churches throughout Mew South Wales and some other states. The editors foiled the inevitable criticism with the unvarying response that no one was entitled to criticise the magazine or its contents unless they were prepared to contribute to it. This gambit resulted in a good deal of copy, and, since everything submitted was printed, a lively "house style". But like all ventures dependent on the enthusiasm of a small group, the magazine was destined for a short life, and ceased publication after about a year. Mortfield church had a substantial number of books on

Spiritualism and related matters which had been collected before and during the 1920*s, but these had been neglected for decades. Jimmy proposed setting up a lending library at the church, and augmenting the existing collection with modern books on similar topics. He argued that this would "bring people into the church" and raise the sophistication of discussions at Mortfield regarding Spiritual matters. He spent about $2000 of his own money on books, with the under- standing that the church would reimburse him in installments. A few hundred dollars of church funds were also spent on library eauipment and bookshelves. He and Robbie pressured a reluctant member of the church who was a librarian to help with the cataloguing.

Some opposed the library, particularly Mrs Bragg, who thought the money would be better spent on renovating the church building. She maintained thao some of the books Jimmy had bought were "unsuitable*', and this complaint was not without foundation, since many espoused points of view which, although within the ambit of occultism, were far removed from traditional

Spiritualismsand a few appeared to lack even a remote connect- ion. Mrs Bragg also complained of Jimmy and Aobbie spending money on purchases for the library without prior permission of the church committee ("this committee is just a farce**, she said on one occasion).

Mrs Bragg, staunchly “proper" in attitude and demeanour, did not agree on many issues with the ebullient Jimmy, who was of the type which used to be described as "wiseacre*'.

They fell out over the issue of the after-service “tea-leaf 78 readings". Mrs Bragg reckoned they were "no good - just fortune telling", and added that she didn't like the tea at

Mortfield. Jimmy thought that reading tealeaves was no different in principle to reading flowers, that they were a much needed form of “counselling" and comfort, and believed the practice an ideal way of "getting people interested". But in spite of these and other conflicts, Mrs Bragg, at Robbie’s insistence, eventually agreed to accept Jimmy as a co-trustee of Mortfield church.

Jimmy and Ray's most spectacular missionising activity was an appearance on a popular daytime television show to "- strate" mediumship. In terms of their reputation within the movement, this was a risky thing to do, since they were relatively inexperienced and could have been accused of not showing Spiritualism "at its best". As well, any medium seeking publicity is likely to be accused of being egotistical - v,I-am-ish" - and therefore ’’unspiritual". But Jimmy and Ray deflected any jealousy or disparagement which might have been felt for them onto Bill Maddigan, another "new'1 medium, with whom until this point - and even to some extent after it - they were in a kind of alliance against the "old guard” of mediums who had been ”on the circuit" for many years.

Some weeks after the event, Jimmy and Ray showed a videotape of their performance, which few of those present had seen, after a flower service. As soon as the tape was finished, Robbie led an attack on Bill Maddigan, who was present.

Exactly what had occurred remained unclear, but it emerged that

Bill had contacted Mrs Campbell about the show, and subsequently she had rung the station to dissociate the N.A.S. from Jimmy and Ray. (Actually the two had specifically mentioned that they did not represent any organisation).

Everyone present joined in the attack on Bill, though some were more vehement than others. Robbie blustered in his usual way, telling others to "shut up1* and accusing Ray at

one point of "lying like a pig in mud". Jimmy referred to

Bill Madigan’s psychiatric history, and Ray Ferguson said he was "beyond redemption". Bill kept cool and refused to

admit that he had made a mistake, responding to insults with

comments like "Thank you, Robbie", and "That’s a very

spiritual thing to say, Jimmy”.

Bill had got involved with Spiritualism about the same time as

Fay and Jimmy, and was about the same age, although his dress

and manner were noticeably more "straight“. He became

increasingly unpopular at Mortfield, although some other

churches in Sydney continued to ask him onto their platform.

He was accused of being to nI-am-ish" - but so was every

medium, by someone at some time. He also caused offence by

not "conforming" and not being ’’reverent" : he sometimes

yawned loudly or muttered things to himself in seances, and

once excused himself from one to go and buy himself a Chinese

meal. He denied the existence of spirit ’’guides”, claiming of

his clairvoyance that "he did it all himself". Most important,

his habit of "chatting up” unattached women and in various

ways alluding to sexuality was strongly deprecated; most of

the gossip about him was scurrilous.

No one threw doubt on his mediumistic powers - in fact it

was said more than once that he gave readings that were

*spot onM - but his behaviour was thought to be ''unspiritualu and his mediumship "undeveloped". In short, he was "psychic”, not "spiritual", in the sense discussed below.

Bill was more and more ostracised from Mortfield, hut

continued to attend services in spite of silences and insults.

The church committee debated whether he should be refused

entry, but unwilling to take this step, voted instead to

return his 40 cents membership fee. After a final confront-

ation with some members of the church over this action, he

dropped out of Mortfield altogether.

The activities of Elizabeth Johns, Mary Jay and Elaine Harvey

were not as provocative as those of Jimmy, Ray and Bill.

Personality and age differences with the "old guard" were not

as pronounced either (for one thing, Mary and Elaine were in

their fifties and sixties, older than some of the established

mediums). But they felt excluded, perhaps more so than the

male mediums. The strongest expression of this feeling I

heard came from Elizabeth Johns. To a group of visitors who

included Robbie, Jimmy and me, she said that if certain Mort-

field Spiritualists, including William Veldt, one of the most

popular visiting mediums, and the elderly president, were not

prepared to accept “changes**, then as far as she was concerned

they could "arse off*'. (No one flinched).

At about the same time that the N.A.S. issue reached crisis

point and Bill Maddigan had his membership fee refused,

Elizabeth, Elaine and Mary formed their own church in an

adjacent suburb. The Ashwood Heart of spiritual Truth was

the first new Spiritualist church to open its doors in Sydney

for many years. It may be because there was so much else

happening that the move created little hostility, and in fact was welcomed by many, although Mrs Bragg returned her

invitation to the opening with the excuse that "I do not go

out much at night and anyway I am giving everything to

Mortfield". Elizabeth and Elaine retained their places on the

Mortfield church committee, and all three continued to appear

there, both in services and on the platform. One of the first

mediums invited to demonstrate at the Ashwood Heart of

Spiritual Truth was Mrs Campbell.

Medium Competition

For these and the majority of Spiritualist disputes, the struggle for approved mediumship - the legitimation of claimed

paranormal powers - is either the generating factor, or the

code in which they are expressed. That is, either they arise

because a medium or aspirant feels threatened by the promotion

of another, or, arising for other reasons, they are expressed

in terms of a tournament of clairvoyance or of "spiritual”

(psychic and/or moral) merit.

Because this competition occurs within the context of a movement

which is open, pluralistic, and has a strong vein of egalitar-

ianism, it has to be euphemised, expressed evasively, in language which refuses to call things by their true

names. In other words, it is expressed in a code which is

metaphorical or '‘symbolic”.

Hence, Spiritualists who are disliked are not, for this code, Spiritualists at all, but merely '•psychic". Again, those

who are regarded as having mediumistic ability or spiritual

merit are sometimes referred to as "power houses" or "power

generators" : they "give off” power, which is “taken in"

or "absorbed" by others. If a medium exercises her gifts

too strenuously, she may suffer a diminishment of power, which

usually has somatic effects - she feels weak, tired and terise. But some mediums - those who are "merely" psychic, and make one feel uncomfortable, bored or threatened - have the capacity to “draw off*4 psychic energy form those nearby, so that their powers do not weaken, but those in their presence allegedly feel weak, tired and tense. This is called a

11 powerdrain" , and thobe responsible stigmatized as "power- drainers’1. Mediums who are liked "give off a lot of power"; those who are disliked are M power drainer s’*. 83 1 . Nelson (1969:243). Skultans says that home circles are "the most widespread and important form of Spiritualist encounter" (1974:2-3).

2. Locke (n.d.:l). 3. Kelson (1969:212). Cne or two mediums who are the primary figures in •'their" church never go elsewhere: this type of church in which the only mediums to appear are the church leader and his or her proteges, is really a survival of what used to be the dominant pattern. A few other mediums abandon "platform work": nobbie Kobinson, one of the trustees and the central figure at Kortfield, and Peter Siman, who led the weekly “development class" were examples. The most popular mediums give one, or even more, demonstrations every week, but most appear less freouently, sometimes sharing a platform with an associate. 4. Troeltsch (i960). 5. Wallis (1 9 7 5 :9f). 6. Gordon and Eabchuk (1959). 7. Kadushin (1966). 8. For the sake of anonymity, I have given this organisation a pseudonym. CHAPTER 6

mHF BACKGROUNDS OF MORTFIELD SPIRITU AT I ST1 S Like the many attempts to construct typologies of them, sociological theories about why people are attracted to unorthodox religious movements owe much to nineteenth century German sociological history. In particular, they tend tu elaborate the view, present in Troeltsch and Weber,1 that sectarian dissent and religious salvationism in general is an expression of social protest: What they cannot claim to be, they replace by the worth of that which they wTTl one day become.

When religious dissent lacks clear identification with any particular class or stratum, or occurs among economically privileged groups, appeal to a more encompassing jiotion of deprivation than the material becomes necessary. Many factors which are not specifically connected with class have come to be seen as motivating people to affilitate with groups and ideas which are outside the "'mainstream*'. The latter are typically

explained as a response to a range of either personal or collective unsatisfied needs or aspirations - deprivation, frustration, oppression, anomie, personality disorder or alienation.

Specifically, these hypothetical factors include (as well as class), status, age, sex, life histories marked by emotional anc’ physical disturbance, and mental pathology.

Attributing an important causal role to such factors in the induction of people into unorthodox movements is a theory of "deprivation".

There is as well an even more general and vague concept of deprivation which can be appealed to, that of "alienation'*.

Occultism and "countercultural lifestyles” may thus be attributed to the stress of living in a "highly organised and institutionalised society, experienced as unresponsive, unreasonable and absurd*^. In this way, Fischler, noting that the appeal of astrology in contemporary France is greatest for middle class urban youth, links its popularity with the anxiety and anomie associated with "loss of community in the big city^.

Regardless of whether economic deprivation or alienation is the underlying cause of the attraction of a movement, it remains a problem why some people are drawn into it and others not. At this point sociologist are likely to appeal to

“disorganisation": family disruption, migration, rapid social mobility, "marginality", "maladaptive personality" and so on. These kind of theories shade off imperceptibly into psychiatri models of social deviance.

Deprivation and disorganisation theories have come under fire in recent years. Some studies suggest that the distinctivenes of beliefs and actions possessed by members of unorthodox movements is at least as much an effect as a cause of their 7 affiliation. As well, there is increasing recognition that deprivation and disorganization theories embody a dismissive attitude to their object. This

way of conceptualising religious sectarianism, for example, may appear to be far removed from the overtly evaluative and prejudiced model gf the public stereotype, but it is fundamentally similar.

Finally, all such theories run the risk of circularity unless carefully formulated. They can easily collapse into non- explanations such as that people join a movement because they would be unhappy if they did not join it, or appeal to a deprivation or disorganisation factor, the only evidence for which is the joining of the movement. Recent studies have tended to bypass the issue, concentrating instead on how movements are organised, the importance and role of social networks in recruitment, and a more fine-grained approach to the cognitive background of attraction to movements9,

I conducted long inter-views with thirty seven Spiritualists, who comprised most of the people who attended Mortfield services regularly, and all the mediums I met who were willing

to be interviewed (sixteen of the sample are in this category). Deprivation or disorganisation hypotheses receive only faint or ambiguous confirmation from the biographical material 01 these interviews. The main results are given below.

Spiritualism has more appeal to women than men

The sample was 62% female and 38/,d male. This was close to the average sex ratio at most Mortfield services, although at

some other churches I attended, and at the Mortfield healing

service the proportion of women was higher. Iaon Lewis has suggested that movements which emphasis trance states

have a special appeal to women, operating as a tension release

for those of marginal status1^.However, the Spiritualist sex ratio is not dramatically different to that of Christian 11 church attendance in Australia . The proportion of female mediums was lower ., at 56%.

Spiritualism and age

As is probably true of most religions, Spiritualism has more

appeal for the elderly than for the young. The age ratio of

the sample, however, also showed some over-representation of

people in their late twenties and early thirties (Table 1). 88

Age in years

<25 11%

25-34 19%

35-44 14%

45-54 16%

55-64 30%

65+ 11%

Table 1: Mortfielders by age.

Employment if working; previous if retired; of household head if "home duties*.

No regular employment 5%

Manual 19%

Sales, retail 24%

Clerical, officework 30%

Business, self-employed 8%

Professional (eg teacher, engineer, social worker) 14%

Table 2: Mortfielders by occupation.

Years of formal education

Table 3 : Mortfielders by education. It is probable that this pattern is a reflection of several disparate factors: the intrinsic appeal of

Spiritualism to those who have lost many friends and relatives and who are closer to death themselves; the preoccupation of most women in their middle years with raising children; and the attraction exerted in the late

sixties and early seventies by occult movements on young people, many of whom were over twenty five by the mid

seventies. The proportion at any one Spiritualist service of under 25's was higher than the sample, but very few attended regularly.

Spiritualism and Class

It is true that most Spiritualist churches in Sydney

are located in suburbs of relatively low mean income,

but some caution is required in interpreting this fact.

In the first place, population density is higher in these

suburbs. Again, there are more locations in these areas

which are accessible to public transport. My impression -

admittedly not an easy one to document - is that there

is a large middle class Spiritualist "fringe", comprising

people who may not attend church services very often,

but do attend home circles and go to mediums for private

readings. In any case, my sample of Mortfield Spiritualists

and mediums does not show Spiritualism to appeal to any

one class. The distribution of employment categories 99

is representative of the Australian population, if the age and sex skews are borne in mind (Table 2). The same can be said of the educational background of the sample

(Table 3).

This leaves open the question of whether Spiritualism is

a class movement, in the sense of expressing the consciousness of one class over and above that of others. Political parties typically display a wide cross-section of socio-

economic backgrounds, but most represent class interests

in a relatively straightforward way. However, Spiritualism

cannot be said to be a movement numerically dominated by people from one class.

Spiritualism and "disturbed" environments

In economic terms, Spiritualists do not appear to be 12 atypically insecure , but emotional disturbance is

another question. But again, unless a deprivation theory

is presupposed, the evidence on this issue remains ambiguous.

It cannot be established whether emotional disturbance gives rise to a predilection for Spiritualism, or whether both result from another factor. Again, there are obvious

difficulties in evaluating a life as "disturbed", although lives such as Elaine Harvey's and Bill Maddigan's would appear to be candidates:

Elaine was born in Essex during . Her father, an alcoholic doctor, went bankrupt, and for a time the family had slept in the fields in a tent. Her mother died when she was eleven, and her father soon remarried. Elaine said she had been mistreated by her stepmother. 91

Her father went to London, and after a period with a friend of her mother's, at thirteen Elaine followed, and was placed in a Convent, an experience she remembered with bitterness. At sixteen she went into service, but in her words ’’got into trouble”, and went back to live with her father. When she was eighteen her stepmother died, and "the new woman was worse”, so she left. She married, and her husband spent much of the Depression out of work. His mental state was affected by the following war, and after a long period of emotional instability and physical illness, he had committed suicide in the mid 1950's. r'er three children having grown up, Elaine had followed h(r son and daughter-in-law to Australia in the early 1970's.

Bill Faddigan' s mother had died v/hen he was very young, and h< had been raised by his father in Dunedin, u.Z. He remembered a succession of housekeepers, one in particular "intensely evangelical”. He came to Sydney when he was 26, set up an electrical wholesaling business and married. After seven years he left his wife and three children, and had obviously been through a period of severe strain, for a while coming under psychiatric treatment and social work guidance. It was during this period that he had been drawn to Spiritualism, although his interest in "psychic phenomena" dated back to his NZ days.

38% of the sample seemed to me to have led lives of comparable instability, and a further 22% had experienced traumatic events (a divorce or the death of a close relative or friend, for instance), to which they attributed great emotional significance.

It is only possible to guess at how "normal” these figures really are, but they seem high. 27% reported either having come under psychiatric attention or having had a “breakdown11 at some stage of their lives. Again, this seems high.

Ray Ferguson told me he had had two breakdowns, in which he perceived strange beings who spoke to him, promising that they would make a "more effective personality" of him, and that he would become a successful singer. At the time he was confused by these experiences, and "afraid of being brainwashed*', but "that was before he learnt about spirit guides'*. He had come to realize that many so-called cases of schizophrenia were really manifestations of clairvoyance and clairaudience. -*-4 The rate of psychiatric disturbance among mediums was about the same as the sample average (25%), but nearly all mediums reported a period of mental stress and crisis at the time they decided that they had mediumistic powers.

Spiritualist and traditional religion

It may be that a repressive inculcation of and attitudes which are rejected forms individuals who, even while dismissing orthodox religious systems, continue to desire 15 ••religious" answers to "religious" questions. At any rate,

73% of the sample reported having had a (Christian) religious influence in childhood which they described as "strong",

‘'strict1' or "fanatical". 32% claimed to have rejected or had doubts about such strict "orthodoxy" for as long as they could remember; the rest had not "moved on" till adulthood.

Spiritualism and seekership

The idea that movements within the cultic milieu are formed by "seekers after truth" 16 , who are prepared to give any system a try which seems as if it will be a "growth experience", also received confirmation from the sample. 86% of the men said they had been involved with one or more unorthodox religions, movements, cults, or ideas before they had found Spiritualism. Among the women, this figure was only 35%; perhaps this reflects the narrower opportunities for women to "sample around", and their lower social horizons.

Spiritualist Conversion

Focussing down to the specific context of recruitment, it is first of all noteworthy that Spiritualists do not embark on systematic conversion campaigns. In line with the movement’s

"epistemological individualism", which is characteristic of the occult r.enerally, even when they are propagandising Spiritualists never do more than invite people they think might be interested to meetings, and explain Spiritualist parlance and beliefs. In some cases there is a perceptible suspicion of outsiders and a reluctance to accept newcomers.

17 lynch has proposed a model of conversion into occult sub- cultures which divides it into four phases: (l) the reading of literature on the subject; (2) first hand experience of

’‘nonordinary realities11; (3) meeting people involved with an occult subculture; (4) reaching a point at which the subculture becomes the centre of the convert's social life.

The outlines of this model fit with the Mortfield sample, with one clear difference. Whereas the group studied by lynch was largely composed of well educated members of the middle classes, Spiritualism is not, and this is probably why the reading of literature is not such a critical factor.

Nevertheless, 27% of the sample said that they had been induced to investigate Spiritualism through reading a book or noticing an advertisement in a newspaper. Nearly all claimed ’’psychic experiences", and 40% said these had occurred since childhood.

59°> said that their first encounter with Spiritualism had been through a friend or acouaintance, and 11% said that it "ran

in the family".

These figures must be interpreted bearing in mind that they are largely derived from Spiritualist s* recollections of their own conversion. Beckford has made an important point in relation

to Jehovpb's Witness's accounts of their "conversion11 which is IB valid for all ‘‘ideological minorities". ^uch accounts are

reconstructions whic^t incorporate the movement's own views of

itself and a more o^ less conscious model of what the conversion

process should be like. Spiritualism sees itself as manifesting eternal truths of existence. It thus naturally sees conversion as a process of inner awareness and discovery of which the rejection of orthodox "belief systems and of normal standards of behaviour may be a symptom. The whole of a Spiritualists life is re-interpreted in the light of this principle, and this must involve a certain amount of "editing". For example, it is likely that many people have had “uncanny experiences*' in childhood. Spiritualists give these experiences a special

significance and attribute to them a causal role in the con-

version process which may be almost entirely retrospective. 1. This framework had already been anticipated by Engels (1975). 2. Weber (1965:106) This passage could be applied to Spiritualists: they canlt "make it" in this world, so they imagine a Spirit world in which they can "make it". The formulation is basic to many accounts of movements which are located in economically disadvantaged groups, such as working class sectarianism (Niebuhr, 1929; Pope 1942) or milXarian cults in the Third World or Medieval Europe (Worsley,1970;Lanternari,1963;Cohn,1970) They offer the promise of an advent which will overturn the existing order and give or restore freedom to the oppressed.

3. Beckford (1978a: 110).

4. Adler (1974:289) • 5. Fischler (1974). 6. Thus Vincent-Keidy and Richardson reject findings that there is "scant evidence for pathology” among Pentecostals, and allege that Catholic Neo- -‘has an inbuilt bias in attracting those who are emotionally disturbed or truly mentally ill". (1978:225). The underlying values of this position are shown by the shift .nade by Klibanov (1965), who follows lenin in seeing pietist and spiritual sects in pre-revolutionary Russia as a form of social protest, but regards their continuation in modern Russia as the expression of deviant personalities and umarginalityM . Aberle (1965) and Glock (1964) are classical statements of the deprivation view.

7. Hine (1974), Beckford (1975), Garrison (1974).

8. Beckford (1978a : 11o)

9. eg Beckford (1977), Price (1979), Wallis (1975), lynch (1977).

10. lewis (1971). of 11. Mol (1971 :23f) provides a figure^ 59c/ female for church estimates of attendance in the 1950's and 60's. 12. I did not question interviewees on their income, which would have antagonised some, and elicited Questionable replies. 13. Interview5- 14. Interview. 15. The results of the survey in Hartmann (1976) seem to confirm this, as does Downton*s study of American converts to the Divine light Mission (1979).

16. "Seekership" may be evaluated positively, as in Balch and Taylor (1977), or as a symptom of emotional disturbance, as in much of the literature.

17. lynch (1977). 18. Beckford (1978b). CHAPTER 7

THE Sri.lITUAIIST MOVEMLMT So far, I have described the main beliefs and rituals of

Mortfield Spiritualists, given an account of their inter- necine feuding, and discussed some factors which may have influenced their recruitment to the movement. I have been fairly brief about these issues; they are not my main concern.

In the two succeeding chapters, I lay the ground for the analysis of Spiritualism elaborated in Chapters 9 to 12, by placing it in a social and philosophical context, and by advocating certain ways of understanding it. In Chapter

8, I advocate that Spiritualism be interpreted as a marginal ideology, and outline some appropriate analytical tools. The present chapter argues that it is a pluralistic occult, gnostic movement, and attempts to explain the meaning of these terms.'1'

What is Spiritualism?

Although its connections with most of them are fairly loose Spiritualism belongs with a group of abstractions which people began to formulate in the nineteenth and twentieth

centuries: anarchism, feminism, socialism, surrealism, o communism, humanism and fascism are some examples. With much else besides, these words basically denote what, for

the present, can be loosely referred to as "ideas” . In

the case of Spiritualism the core idea has been summarised

as the "belief that departed spirits communicate with and •3 show themselves” to the living. Unfortunately, this statement of the Spiritualist idea is as contentious an any short (or long) outline of anarchism

or feminism. Such ideas can be separated neither from their connotations, their history, the practices through which people seek to express them, nor the presuppositions and

theories in terms of which attempts to explain, support or condemn them have been expressed.

For example, in the “popular imagination*', Spiritualism is

associated with witchcraft, "black magic'1 and fortune telling,

and shares with them a pall of ridicule and fear which has made it a suitable literary setting for both mystery thrillers

and satirical comedies. These connotations of gullibility and evil are vigorously rejected by Spiritualists, who regard

their belief as both benign and scientific,^ but the widespread negative evaluation of Spiritualism has left its mark. Like

the other isms mentioned previously, Spiritualism has been embattled from birth, and consequently its adherents are ever

ready to define and defend their position against ’’orthodoxy*' —

the established modes of religion, science and common sense.

This stand has become one of its intrinsic features.

Some groups of ideas, not necessarily less precise than

Spiritualism,have usually not precipitated practices co-

ordinated by planning and a sense of solidarity (materialism or romanticism, for instance). Spiritualists, however, come together to form groups which have as their purpose the perform- ance of activities judged to be appropriate for Spiritualism,

and sometimes also attempt to persuade outsiders of its merits. It is in the practices of these small circles, churches, societies and lodges, and larger leagues, unions and 99 associations, that Spiritualism finds its main forms of expression.

However, unlike the denominations and sects of latter day

Christianity, or "centralised cults" like and

Theosophy, spiritualism does not persist through its organizational forms, which are essentially impermanent,

even though some endure for decades. Although familial and neighbourhood traditions are significant, it is primarily

embodied in written texts: nothing like it could have 5 existed before mass literacy.

It follows that an understanding based mainly upon observation of Spiritualists and discussions with them would be as inadeouate

as an understanding of science founded upon watching and convers-

ing with scientists, or a study of socialism which paid scant

attention to socialist literature. I have made extensive use

of data from participant observation, but information culled

from books, pamphlets and periodicals written for and by Spiritu-

alists occupies a position of eaual importance in iny argument.

What is the most appropriate term for such a social phenomenon, part abstract idea, part concrete text, part organisation?

Spiritualists themselves say they belong to a “movement", and

although it is not as precise as could be, I have adopted their usage.

What kind of movement is Spiritualism?

The practices, concerns and relationships of Kortfiel-ders

and the casual and unsystematic character erf their beliefs

about the afterlife are evidence that Spiritualism is not 100

fundamentally a doctrine of death, judgement or salvation, even though the core of its "abstract idea” is communication with the dead. With this, all studies of the movement concur.

None of them take it seriously as an eschatology.

Some treat it as a therapeutic movement. Harwood's study of Puerto Rican spirit mediums in New York more or less takes them to be an autochthonal species of community health worker, and psychotherapy is never far from Skultans' discussion of

Welsh Spiritualists.^ So construed, Spiritualism shares a domain with medicine, folk remedies, social work, entertain- ments, psychiatry, charity and the etiquettes of politeness and caring. It is one of the various ways of attempting to make people wfeel better1*.

But in spite of the fact that many Spiritualists themselves say that the movement is basically concerned with the alleviation of human suffering, many of its beliefs and practices cannot be related to this concern. It seems more accurate to say that

Spiritualism intersects the curative domain, rather than occupying it.

A wider framework is offered by Bryan Wilson's classification of Spiritualism as "thaumaturgical", that is, as concerned with the working of miracles.

As discussed in chapter 3, it is true that Spiritualists suppose powers to exist which could only be explained as

"non-material forces11 (whatever that might mean); or as physical forces which have not as yet been comprehended by science or "common sense”; or on the basis that the universe is radically different from the way we are accustomed to conceive it, so that explanations in terms of '’forces" are misguided.

But what is a ? Whatever kind of explanation they might have for the powers they allege to exists, most

Spiritualists would maintain that there are no such things as miracles, because the universe is law-governed. David

Hume’s classical statement of the empiricist case against miracles would find as sympathetic an audience at ftortfield 9 as at many a scientific conference.

To affirm that Spiritualists believe in miracles even though they deny it w^uld seem to run the risk oi missing something.

V;e can retain the point of Wilson's classification, however,

if we say that Spiritualism postulates and is -preoccupied with anomalies - specifically those "psychical" anomalies which in some way or other contravene the expected regularities of mental functioning.^

This is true, and will be taken up in the next section,

but it does not relate to some of most characteristic traits of Spiritualism, such as its pervasive tolerance of diversity,

its emphasis upon symbolic modes of thought, the ethic of self-

and self-help, or the concept of Ttrrnal Progression.

Kacklin implicitly allows this when she- postulates that

Spiritualism and its Latin variant Spiritism originated as

thaumaturgies, but having failed to compete with orthodox

medicine, "became syncretised with the beliefs and rituals

of established religions". 102 It is certainly true that Spiritualism is syncretic, although this tendency was already present in its older cousin Sweden- borgism : it does not seem to have occurred as a consequence of a medical rebuff. Nor has the borrowing been restricted to

Christianity and as perceived by Western "seekers’*. It also incorporated relics or resuscitations of European folk traditions; scientific and progressivist ideologies glimmerings of rationalism, aestheticism, and secularism; concept reminiscent of and possibly derived from shamanism and ; and values reflecting working class populism. It now resembles an archeological site in which successive levels of occupation have become inextricably scrambled.

But to relegate the non-therapeutic aspects of Spiritualism to a residue, "syncretic* and therefore apparently not amenable to analysis, can lead easily to the conclusion that there has been “a complete failure to develop a coherent and comprehensive doctrine.** 12

At one level this is true: Spiritualism i_s incoherent - although it is arguable whether Christianity, or for that matter science, are very different in this respect (not to mention communism or surrealism). But as levi-strauss's celebrated analogy between mythmaking and bricolage was

intended to show, the novel recombination of disparate materials does not preclude the possibility of system in a broad sense,^ I want to show that there is a “science" underlying the nature and extent of Spiritualist incoherence, which is taken not as a conclusion, but a starting point. As a first step in this project, I classify Spiritualism as a gnosticlsm. a category proposed "by Bryan Wilson in an early paper on sect typology^* although later abandoned by him.

Gnosis was the Greek word for knowledge, but in the 1st century

Gnosticism came to refer to a specific set of ideas, influenced by a variety of sources, which stressed the struggle between the powers of good and evil, centred on the idea of redemption through revelation, and evolved an elaborate system of magical rites and symbols. 15 I am not using the word in this narrow sense , but neither do I want it to be as wide as the pursuit of any sort of knowledge for any sort of reason. Somewhere between these senses, there is a grasping for what sociologists of religion 16 are apt to call "ultimate meanings". A Gnostic fragment describes the object of this search as:

The knowledge of that which we are and of that which we have become, of whence we came and to where we have fallen, of the goal towards which„we hasten, and of the conditions of our redemption.... '

In this sense, is an impulse which can be recognised in many different cultural forms and contexts.

Gnosticisms are never able to describe the way precisely, nor where it leads: they only hint, sometimes in paradoxical terms, at where it may be looked for, and assert that it leads to something of supreme value.

As to the Tao itself, It is elusive and evasive. Evasive, elusive... Yet within there is a vital force. The vital force is very real, And therein dwells truth.

Sometimes it is suggested that the Way has no end, or that it takes you back to where you began (it is the Way, not the goal, which is the supreme value). 104 We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring 7/ill be to arrive at where we started And know the place fro the first time.

In gnosticism the logically neat but practically untidy divide between facts and values, or knowledge and , on is put aside. The Way is both a means and an end, an activity which determines its own goal, and in it knowledge and goodness, power and power and purpose, are fused.

It is plausible to detect in the inexpressible attraction of the gnostic Way that yearning for infinite satiation and 21 oneness which Freud saw as a bastion of religion. " As well, the Wav is awesome and set apart from the everyday, and these qualities align it with the sacred, which for Lurkheim was 22 the constitutive element of the religious.

But in the sense in which I am using it, not only the conventionally designated field of religion but also those of science, politics and art can manifest the gnostic impulse.

It reveals itself in characteristic forms and expressions, rather than in distinct institutions.

What kind of gnostic movement is Spiritualism?

In attempting to locate Spiritualism within the parameters of contemporary gnosticism, I will try two strategies. The first begins with abstract ("philosophical") attributes of the

Spiritualist world-view and compares these with the world-views of other gnosticisms. The second attempts to characterise the specific attributes of the Spiritualist way and that of movements similar to it. The first strategy involves placing Spiritualism in relation to four axes of difference,these being (a) voluntarist/

fatalist, (b) subjective/objective, (c) materialist/idealist and (d) rational/intuitive.

(a) For voluntarist gnosticisms, the Way is firmly within the ambit of human comprehension and abilities. Both the vision of a “rational** technocracy promulgated in the utopias of Fourier^ and “irrational” Buddhism are examples, for

in both enlightenment results from an exercise of will. In contrast, doctrines which proclaim a predestined Elect or Chosen People, or emphasise the bestowal of Grace or the role of Providence, are more or less fatalist, insofar as will is

irrelevant.

In common with most of the contemporary manifestations of the gnostic impulse, Spiritualism is voluntarist - the critical importance of individual decision-making is one of its major

tenets.

(b) In a fairly straightforward way, Zen seeks gnosis of an O A inward sort, as do Scientology and psychotherapy, for instance.

In other cases it is clear that the Way involves a modificat- ion of what lies beyond the ego. Such is the case with

utopianism, or the identification fantasy of the myth of

stardom. In the former case, the Way may have external signs, but in the latter it is essentially an alteration of the real.

The opposition subjective/objective will serve to describe this axis, which is parallelled by Bryan Wilson’s depiction of the "introversionist sect”, in contrast to which other OR sects are implicitly extroversionist. Although it is typically believed to be made manifest through the acquisiton of objective ("paranormal" or anomalous) powers, the Spiritualist gnosis is subjective: in the final analysis, it is conceived as a transformation of the *'internal" psyche. But this does not prevent individual adherents from pursuing p f. "objective" (psychic) powers for their own sake.

(c) The third axis needs more explanation. The difference

I have in mind can be illustrated by a contrast that may be drawn between two popular myths of "fringe science", those 27 of the lost Continent of Atlantis and that of a visit to

Earth in Antiquity by astronauts from a superior extra- 28 terrestial culture.

Two structuralist analyses of these myths exist which point 29 in opposite directions. Carroll is concerned with the similarities of the myths. He argues that they both represent resolutions of the recurrent mythological oppositions nature/ culture, life/death, and high/low. Ashworth also sees both myths as mediating certain oppositions (for him, they are historically constituted out of developments in SCIENCE and

RELIGION and contemporary experience of TECHNOLOGY and

HUMANITY^) but he also points out that they are profoundly different from one another. He them to be expressions of two opposed philosophical tendencies:

Danikenism represents a mythological variant, or a variant in mythological form, of that tradition which, on the one hand, derives its roots from prophetic and millenarian Christianity, and on the other derives its roots from that form of mechanistic materialism which goes back to the Dorian Greek writers, Democritus and Lucretius...Like mechanistic science, it not only explains reality in purely empirical/material terms, but it relegates all forms of Platonism...to the status of falsity and illusion...Atlanticism in its modern form... 107 is...a rewrite of...Plato*s...Theory of Ideas. History is the expression of...an Idea which is the same as Perfection and Harmony, "but of which the empirical/material world ia a progressively imperfect and degenerate copy. For this reason Atlantis, which is the perfect society incarnate, exists at the beginning of history, and not at its end...it is anti-science, if by 'science’ one means mechanistic materialism, because unlike the latter it sees everything as a ’reflection* or manifestation of one single hidden reality, which is essentially ’ideal’ or ’psychic', but certainly not material;

This passage raises a great many more issues than can be discussed here. What I want to stress is the distinction drawn between those myths which postulate an ideal realm of which this world is an imperfect "copy” (representation, embodiment, metaphor...), and those for which there is one and only one "real world". The first are idealist, and the second 33 materialist.

Thus Scientology and Transcendental Meditation are materialist, while the myth of stardom as expressed in the activities of 34 "’fan” clubs, for example is clearly idealist.

Spiritualism inclines towards the pole of materialism: the barrier which separates us from the nother side” where spirits dwell is not metaphorical but metonymic; "this” side and the "other” are sides of the same world. But there is over- laying this a strong vein of idealism, especially in those ways of thought which align it with Theosophy.

(d) Some gnosticisms stress that gnosis must be achieved through understanding of and adherence to governing principles of laws (Canonical Buddhism, the of Loyola,

Scientology). In contrast to these rational gnosticisms, there are intuitive ones, which may go so far as to deny the validity of any laws

(antinomianism): Zen, the Franciscans, surrealism.

While Spiritualism has a systematic, "scientific” face, signified by its penchant for laying down ’’principles” end

"laws”, this is undermined by the movement's pluralism, which tolerates if not encourages disagreement over a wide range of issues, and marks any attempt at systemisation as a purely individual expression.

35 These four pairs of ideal types provide a way of locating

Spiritualism in relation to a large number of "world views".

It is, to sum up, voluntarist and subjective, more materialist than idealist, and fairly balanced between reason and intuition

This distinguishes Spiritualism from , Socialism and

Freemasonry, for examples, but to characterise Spiritualism more closely it is necessary to consider it in relation to ideas and movements which are linked to it through shared language and discourses, and to and from which there is a considerable mobility of adherents.

The anomalous

Although the social and philosphical environs of Spiritualism have shifted considerably since 1848, initially from Sweden- borgism and Mesmerism to secularism and political radicalism, later to Theosophy and Christian Science, and roost recently to homeopathy and meditative practices, throughout its history it is most comfortably placed within what Colin •X £ Campbell has dubbed "the cultic milieu"J , and is most 37 commonly called "the occult" . 109

A typical listing under this heading would include most of the

following topics, which are either gnosticisms, or phenomena

which are almost invariably given a gnostic signification:

alchemy ,*• alternative" medicine (naturapathy, iridology, faith-

healing etc, including some forms of psychotherapy), Anthrop-

osophy, astrology, ESP, flying saucers, fortune telling,

graphology, the I-Ching, the , magic, meditation,

numerology, out-of-the-body experiences, palmistry, para - psychology, phrenology, poltergeists and ghosts, ,

ftosicruciansim, , Scientology, the Tarot, ,

Theosophy, witchcraft, yoga.

The reason these topics have been called "occult” is that

they often claim to contain gnostic "secrets”, and in any

case are more or less esoteric. But there is growing agree-

ment among writers in the field that the distinguishing

trait of these topics is not "secrecy" (some, on the contrary,

are indubitably "popular")jbut anomaly: they are, in one way

or another, preoccupied with "things anomalous to our generally 70 accepted culture-storehouse of 'truths’".

Of course, this criterion is only as good as the concept of

"generally accepted 'truths'". The difficulty is that this,

"storehouse" is divided into many compartments and is under-

going constant renovation.

What little investigation has been carried out indicates that

popular belief in some of the "anomalous" phenomena listed is

at a level comparable to belief in Christianity^, which is

not usually considered "occult". On the other hand if "science"

is taken as the bench mark of general acceptability, then the **■ 110 curious conclusion results that any belief which lacks scientific

endorsement is "occult**- a net altogether too wide.

Perhaps anomaly should be regarded not so much as a

contravention of accepted "truth1* as of normal expectation.

Even if they are thought to exist or be possible, few think

of USP or levitation or faithhealing as “normal*. But neither

are comets, revolutions or new sporting records.

There is no way of overcoming these difficulties. The concept

of anomaly, while it is the unifying core of "the occult",

is itself ambiguous, and therefore the field it demarcates

is uncorrectably blurred.

What kind of occult, gnostic movement is Spiritualism?

Spiritualism is constituted within the occult domain not by

one or any number of beliefs. The concept of "belief" in

this sense is misleading, since it encompasses a wide variety

of commitments, from unquestioning allegiance to the unreflect- 40 ive recognition of the social value of a sign.

In any case, Spiritualists "share" nearly all their “beliefs"

with Theosophists, modern witches and magicians, fringe

healers, unaffiliated clairvoyants and charismatic .

What distinguishes these groups and individuals from one another

is not differences in the sets of their “beliefs", but the

way these movements are structured as systems of practices.

This helps explain why people commonly move from one “occult"

movement to another, or affiliate to more than one at a time.

A typical occult seeker will probably have been a Rosicrucian, a member of Mankind United, a theosophist,and also a member of four or five smaller specific cults. The pattern of membership is one of continuous movement from one idea to another. Seekers stay with the cult until they are satisfied that they can learn no more from it or that it has nothing further to offer them.41 111 At least as regards Spiritualism this statement is a consider- able exaggeration, but it is true that in all forms of occult- ism, and perhaps of voluntarist gnosticism, there is a strong A O tendency towards this kind of "seekership". The Spiritualist configuration is strictly provisional, and its adherents remain interested in and sometimes combine it with related movements in the way that oppositional political affiliations are often mixed, as satirized in the bumper sticker "land rights for gay whales”. And just as there are "independents" on the left, there are occult seekers who fail to find a group or system which suits them: none "make enough sense", stress the

"important issues" or have the "right" practice. Such people remain on the fringes of Spiritualism, equally attached to and detached from astrology, herbal medicine, the I Ching, numerology or whatever. Other gravities may pull them out of the occult orbit altogether, into neighboring gnostic fields like sectarian Christianity, academic study - or some form of "madness".

Truzzi detects "a continuum from scientific to purely mystical proofs" of occult claims, instanced at one end by , and at the other by personal revelation. This continuum assumes that science is essentially "intersubjective" and mysticism essentially “private", a model which is inadequate.

The "private" world of the mystic is a social construction,

"intersubjective" inasmuch as anyone knows anything about it, while science is also experienced "privately", by "subjects".

The difference lies not in the boundary of the knowing subject, but in the kind of knowledge involved. Science is systematized knowledge of causal, formal and generative connections: broadly speaking, it is metonymic and synecdochal^. The kind of knowledge Truzzi calls "mystical", on the other hand, is of paradigms, resemblances, analogies and significations: 45 it is fundamentally metaphoric.

In terms of this opposition, Spiritualism has affinities with the metonymic fields of parapsychology, and is linked more generally to orthodox science via that profitable no-man’s- j r i n land of "quasi", "proto" popular " or "fringe" science, where von Daniken, Isaac Asimov, John Taylor, Linus Pauling,

Colin Wilson, Buckminster Fuller and Lyall Watson mingle in theoretical promiscuity.

But Spiritualism has also borrowed freely from religious traditions, especially Christianity, and is close to therapeutic systems which are explicitly metaphoric.

Finally, it has roots in "folklore” , the domain, neither particularly metonymic nor metaphoric, of "popular" perceptions, attitudes and practices, where hobbies are followed, jokes made, news communicated, compassion, boredom, resignation, antipathy, envy and desire formulated, salt thrown, wood touched, charms worn, where people strive or not to "do the right thing", and intelligent forces beyond the ken of humankind are vaguely believed in. As it shades into this territory, Spiritualism becomes first '’superstitious” , then "proverbial” and finally,

"popular". Alone of all contemporary occultisms, it can still be justly called "plebeian".

All this shows that Spiritualism is nothing if not eclectic.

More, whenever it is conscious of its eclecticism it proclaims it gladly and regards it as a source of strength. Spiritualism wants to be scientific and religious, magical and everyday,

systematic and intuitive, idealist and materialist, "high"

and plebeian. It seeks the truth, but confesses that there 113 may be many ways of getting there. This pluralism is one of its most characteristic features.

Understanding SpirituaJism

Academic studies of Spiritualism are not united by a. shared

theoretical approach. Most are historical; for some reason

the place of Spiritualism in nineteenth century literature

and literary circles is covered in especial detail.

The sociological studies represent a wide range of theories A g 50 and styles; ranging over socioliguistics , microsociology , 51 applications of network theory and phenomenology' , speculations r 2 on the social origins of Spiritualist values ^ , acknowledgement 53 of the resemblances between Spiritualist mediums and shamans ,

and argument concerning Spiritualism1s status as a religious

organisation.. *. 54

These perspectives do not provide a comprehensive context

into which Spiritualism as a movement can be set, but rather

yield observations which an overall understanding would have

to take account of.

there are three kinds of perspectives which appear broad

enough to offer the possibility of such an understanding.

Firstly, Spiritualism may be taken for a science, a way of

truth, and endorsed or rejected as such. Secondly, there is

the treatment of it as a type of social or cultural activity,

the study of which has been M disciplined*' into a branch of

Sociology.

lastly, there is an approach which would attempt to make sense

of Spiritualisr-1 in terms ol the concept of ideology.

Spiritualism as a science

Fort writing about Spiritualism is partisan. It is also 114 discursive, anecdotal, and usually assumes a readership of

"true believers". This is also largely true of the comparatively 55 tiny quantity of anti Spiritualist propaganda. They both take factual claims of Spiritualism at face value, as signifiers not signs, and assess them accordingly.

If Spiritualism were "true" in the classical sense of corres- pondence with reality, then perhaps there would be no need to seek further explanation for the shape of its doctrines: they would simply exist as discoveries, though there might still be room for curiosity about how the Spiritualisftruth" was

"discovered". The main difficulty, however, would be to explain how it is that most people have failed to be converted.

Today the classical conception of truth has few adherents,

and the nicest thing philosphera can say confidently about science 56 is that it "approaches" truth. But even without this epistemological caution, it is clear that Spiritualism as a whole could not "correspond" with anything, since there is open disagreement on many issues among its followers. If one were to advocate a consistent Spiritualism, it would have to be that of a very small group, if not of a single individual.

Perhaps this step would be justifiable if I had found a

Spiritualist doctrine which seemed to me to be true, or if

I had evolved one of my own. But although I am not dogmatically attached to denying the existence of spirits, and would be interested in communicating with them, nothing I observed over the year I spent many hours of each week in the company of Spiritualists shook my . So if I were to treat Spiritualist knowledge claims in their own terms I would have to attack them. But this also leads to difficulties. Since such attacks assume that Spiritualists are guilty of correctable error, even at their most

’’understanding” they imply a standard of truth and logic from which Spiritualism is explained as a "pardonable” deviation.

Often they simply attribute the error to gullibility, stupidity or mental pathology.

This approach is unsatisfying, because Spiritualists on the whole do not seem to be madder or less intelligent than anyone else. What seems to be needed is a way of analysing Spiritual! which will ’’bracket” its truth-claims, so that they can be discussed not in terms of the value they give themselves, but in terms of their values in a higher order of understanding

At the same time, it is necessary to avoid the implication that all truth-claims are equally valid, because then nothing at all could be said (validly) about anything. In other words, our analysis must incorporate the notions of object language,

in which the doings and sayings of Spiritualists are reported, 58 and metalanguage, in which the object language is discussed.

This method leads beyond the polemical to the critical, from

the philosophical to the sociological.

Spiritualism as a religion or wav of life

Sociology assigns the objects of its study a place within

social action, thereby relegating them to the status of

representing modes of existence which are typical, if not

universal (the ’’economic”, "political”, ’'sexual" etc). 1

have already adopted this strategy in arguing that Spiritualism

is gnostic, and although I have reservations about it, as a 116 way of thought it is too deeply embedded to be altogether abandoned.

This assignment of a study object to the "social* should have the effect of bracketing its truth claims. But in practice the issues those claims raise continue to be troublesome. The distinction between object language and metalanguage cannot be consistently maintained without intoler- able pedantry. As well, the situation is complicated by the fact that Spiritualist language contains its own metalanguage, its commentary upon itself. As well, the theorist's assumptions regarding the truth claims of the object language will be coded in the sociological metalanguage, most conspicuously by the amount of attention accorded to those aspects of the object language perceived as "problematic*, and the explanations provid- ed for them. Inevitably the polemical code of empirical truth intrudes into the critical code of sociological truth.

Examples of this are easy to find. It is so common a "theory” in the sociological literature that millenarian, sectarian and generally unconventional movements are distorted expressions of political and/or psychological discontent as to be virtually

✓ 59 a cliche. Such a view presupposes that the ideas espoused by these movements are false: it is, in effect, an attempt to explain (ll sociogically” ) how untruth may be believed.

By contrast, some hermeneutic and pheonomenolgyical studies do 60 not avoid, or even proclaim, relativism. Between these two tendencies it is probably impossible to maintain a balance.

Within sociology, a study of Spiritualism would conventionally be assigned to the . Although I have freely mined this discipline for analytical concepts, my position is that nothing is gained by treating spiritualism 117 as a religion, if that entails either using Spiritualism to test an existing theory about the nature of religion, or to consfruct a new or modified theory on the basis of its particular characteristics.

In the first place, I take seriously the doubts raised by fil Smith concerning the viability of religion as a theoretical object. whether these are justified or not, it is scarcely arguable that the ’’scientific study of religion" is not in fact a complex set of partially overlapping paradigms which are as diverse and contradictory as the phenomena they claim to elucidate.

More specifically, Spiritualists themselves describe their movement as not only a "religion", but also a ’’science" and a "way of life", and it should already be clear that this description is correct.

Spiritualism could just as easily be classified as a hobby, art-form, entertainment or therapy as a religion; of course, the sociological study of the last is much more developed, but that has very little to do with Spiritualism.

One sociological category wide enough to comfortably accommodate

Spiritualism is "popular culture". Put this concept is even vaguer than that of religion, and studies within the field lack any shared theoretical basis. Tony Bennett has made a cogent defence of popular culture as a "teaching object", a way of studying the "alignment of the relationships between the culture and ideology of the dominant classes and the culture of subordinated classes". But this defence is nevertheless premissed on the recognition that

There is no such thing as popular culture...it is useful...only...in being used to refer, more abstractly, to a particular set of processes and relationships.^3 118 It would seem best to see if there is a theoretical framework which will allow that "set of processes and relationships" to be apprehended more directly. The one which

I believe to be most fruitful is that of ideology. 119

1. In general, the critique of existing literature entailed by this approach has been left implicit. 2. It is worth reiterating the historicity of these abstractions. - The primacy of the Roman bishropic, valorisation of the real or imagined attributes of classical antiqity, and fantasies of equality (for examples), existed before Roman Catholicism, humanism or communism. To come into being, the latter required a specific moment of self-consciousness.

3. Concise Oxford pjiglish Dictionary.

4. In a similar way, anarachists protest the popular association their creed with terrorism. 5. Jones (1975) makes a similar' observation.

6. Harwood (1977), Skultans (1974)

7. A nineteenth century radical physician wrote that "politics is medicine writ large11 .

8. \vilson (1969) 9. David Hume, i-nnuiry, Section 10 Part 1 n A miracle is a violation of the laws of nature: and as a. firm anc unalter-pbie experience has established these Laws, the proof against a miracle, from the very nature of the fact, is as entire p.r any argument from experience can possibly be imagined" (ibid:491) However, when Hume goes on, in the second part of the essay, the doubt curing, and the raising of the dead, Spiritualists would part company with him.

10. I'any Spiritualists are interested in such pet anomalies of fringe science as the Jurin shroud, the . or Stonehenge, but it is wthe hidden powers and abilities of the mind" which are in focus.

11. Macklin (1974:393)

12. el son (1969:84)

13. Levi-Strauss (I966:l6f). 1’he point is made again in Iebdige's study of British Youth subcultures (1979).

14. Wilson (1959).

15. It is likely that some of the specific ideas of Spiritualism are ultimately derived from Gnosticism, via Christianity and perhaps through other, subterranean sources, but there is no real hope of tracing any such links, even if the project was thought worthwhile.

16. host influential has been Geertz's definition of religion: "a system of symbols which acts to establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations in men by formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and clothing those conceptions with such an order of factualitv that the moods and motivations seem uniouely realistic" (Geertz, 1966). 17. Quoted in Eouisson (1976:27). 120

19. T.S. Elliott, little Gidding, V. The gnosticism of Elliott's historical/nationalist/ religious nostalgia is parallelled in the ensuing lines of the chapter of the Tao-te Ching just quoted: To pass on is to go further and further away. To go further away is to return. 20. It is again to David Hume that we must go for the classical statement of this gap. liume argued that there was no logical connection between ’’is" statements and "ought" statements (Hume 1960:455f)*

21. Freud (1957), Westlake (1971).

22. lurkheim (1965)•

23. Fourier (1971)-

24. Wallis (1976).

25. Wilson (1569:366).

26. The standard put-down among Mortfielders of this attitude was that it characterised "psychism" rather than "Spiritualism".

27. See the bibliographies of Carroll(1977) and Ashworth (1980). The earliest source is Plato’s Timaeus (1970).

28. Von Daniken (1969) and others.

29. Carroll (1977)

30. Ashworth (1980)

31. Ashworth uses capitals to name myths in a sense like that established by Barthes: "a second order semiological system" which has been appropriated so that it distorts reality ("Barthes, 1973:109,114).

32. Ashworth (1980:363-365) 33. This is materialism in the strictest sense, from which all connotations of physicalism are excluded. Non- physical entities (spirits and psychic forces) may be material of the real. Or, no less "real", they may nevertheless also stand in a relationship of signification, representation or to the world of the senses in which case they belong to an idealist system. *

34. I’ame (ano; its stepmother Creativity) are gnostic; they confer a kind of power ano knowledge•which for the "fan" is experienced in fantasy. The connotation c.f vulner- ability}..’, of not be inf able to survive in thf "real world", so frequently attached to the Star, clearly reveals the idealism of this myth. The effort of approximating an ideal so weakens tlu mundane self that sexual unhappiness, drug addiction melancholy and illness may result; conversely, they may be the levers by which the Star b> comes sufficiently detached from the world to 121

find the ideal. A tragic death, especially an early one, always enhances the aura of a star: sordid reality cannot then tarnish the ideal which he or she alive can only imperfectly instantiate (hence the post-mortem sanctification of Judy Garland. James Dean, Marilyn Monroe, the Kennedys, Janis Joplin etc). These features align the myth of the Star with cettain idealist gnosticisms of former times: the sickly, bohemian, Artist (Keats, Schubert, van Gogh), the Holy Innocent/Idiot, the Martyr, the Shaman.

35. Of course, my method here is idealist.

36. Campbell (1972)

37. Thus Wilson (1973), Tiryakian (1976) and Drury and Tillett (1980). Gloch and Bellah (1976) speak of the "new religious consciousness", Davidson (1975) of the "new mysticism”.

38. Truzzi (1976:246)

39. For example, a survey carried out in Sydney in the mid seventies among college students and their contacts had a majority believing in ESP, and telepathy, and larger numbers professing credence in graphology, faithhealing and clairvoyance than in a ’’personal*' God (Martin, n.d.) Campbell (1971:25) cites another survey which claims that in 1970 in Britain about 3/4 of people "touched wood" and i "threw salt", while Warren (1970:599) cites Gallop Poll figures indicating thau about 50% of Americans in the 1960's believed flying saucers to be Mreal“, and that 5% claimed to have seen one. (A similar pei-centage claim to have seen ghosts).

40. Also, to speak of "beliefs” implies that possibility of dettachment from their context - that the "belief in reincarnation" in Mortfield is somehow identical to the "belief in reincarnation** in Benares. Chapter 8 makes the same point about ”idea“.

41. Buckner (1968:225-226)

42. The term seems to have been first used in this sense by Iofland and Stark (1963).

43. Truzzi (1976:249) 44. Metonymy is the substitution of one name for the name of something contiguous; synechdoche of genus for species or vice versa. My calling science metonymic and synechdochal is itself a metonym. It is not that science itself performs these substitutions, but rather that it is concerned with those relationships of contiguity and classification which underpin the linguistic processes of metonymy and synec doche.

45. I am using Jakobson*s (1956) sense of a substitution by .similarity, rather than the wide Aristotelian sense adopted by Turbayne (1970:11-12), according to which metaphor is any "improper* application of a signifying unit, a meaning which includes metonymy, synecdoche, catachresis and in fact all the tropes of classical rhetoric. ( Again, my usage of this description is metonymic.) Although it often is, mysticism need not be expressed metaphorically. But its 122 objects are those "symbolic1' relationships of resemblance upon which metaphor plays. The metonymy/metaphor distinction as it occurs in Spiritualist ideology is discussed in chapter 9.

46. Truzzi, 1976:249

47. Ashworth (1980)

48. Moore (1977), Barrow (1980). Brown (1970), Pearsall (1972), Goldfarb (1978), Kerr (1972).

49. Zaretsky (1974)

50. Skultans (1974)

51. locke (n.d.) 52. Macklin (1974,1977)

53. Skultans, (1974), Macklin (1977) and Nelson (1969) all make this point.

54. Nelson (1968)

55. There ha? in fact been scarcely any anti-Spiritualist literature of note since McCabe (1920), but there are the more generally anti-occult attacks of Gardner (1957), and Randi (1980).

56. See Popper (1959), Kuhn (1970), Lakatos (1970), Mulkay (1979), Chalmers (1976).

57. These terms come from the logical study of semantics (eg Carnap, 1964); obviously I am using them to do different work than elucidating problems of modality and intensionality.

58. This line goes back to Feuerbach, and Marx's characterisat- ion of religion as "the expression of real distress and also the protest against real distress...the sigh of the oppressed creature*1 (Marx & Engels, 1975:39).

59. "his ir especially true of many popularisations of the occult, where anything offbeat is taken seriously, but the attitude also pervades some "academic" work as the book edited by Tiryakian (1974) shows.

60. Smith (1963).

61. The pages of the Journal of Popular Culture, or collections such as Bigsby (19767 are ample evidence of this.

62. Bennett (1979:28). Hebdige (1979) uses the concept of subculture in a similar fashion. CHAPTER 8

DISCOURSE, CODE AND TEXT Ideology The concept of ideology derives from the insight that what is done and thought is dependent - and not just superficially so - on the social environment in which thinking and doing occur. But this insight, true and important as it is, scarcely constitutes a distinctive theoretical paradigm.

Rather, the use of the term signals an attempt to conceptualise the relationship between meaningful activity and the world, between text and context, in a particular way.

From its first use, ideology has been political, imbedded in outlooks which associate unhappiness, inequality and lack of freedom with the production of wrong ideas (being uneducated ^ , ruled by the ideas of the ruling class, not having the right ’’line”...). Making the text better and 2 making the context better are conceived as linked tasks.

Thus, two linked groups of questions are raised, having their origin in the dual character of ideology as a "sociolog- ical” concept and a "political” one. One group is addressed to the issue of how society is reproduced: what meanings must exist for a social formation to function? The other is concerned with how and why social representations are distortions of what they purport to represent: why is it that people believe to be true that which from other perspectives, is false?

As a reproducer of social relations ideology represents the social function of ideas, how they work to maintain social 3 order. When incorporated into historical materialism, this function helps to explain how ideology presents distorted representations. Because social order is the order of some class or classes over others, ideology is "false", firstly because it reflects the contradictions of a class order (a contradiction cannot be "true”) and secondly because the social order is oriented to the requirements of the ruling class: ideology expresses its truth, which may not be "the" truth.4

It is too easy to say that this attribution of "false con- sciousness" begs the question of what "true consciousness" might be. Ideology had a political birth, and the criticism of ideas - which assumes a position on their truth - is essential to it. Besides, any use of language implicates the user in problems of truth.

Marx's critique of classical political economy remains the paradigm analysis of the processes through which ideology distorts. Briefly, it inverts, makes the part stand for the whole, displaces, fragments and creates imaginary unities.^

Ideology and signification

Humans produce material culture by modifying nature. They also communicate by means of systems of communication, that is, they produce signs, which "mediate all social life". ?

Since ideology consists of the attribution of meanings, that is, is a signifying practice, "whereever a sign is present, ideology is present too. Everything ideological possesses g a semiotic value". As Ivepham puts it

Ideology is structured discourse...the view that ideology is made up of ideas is itself misleading...We cannot understand ideological concepts or ideological propositions as standing in some one-to-one relation with non-ideological, non-distcrU?d factual or scientific concepts, propositions or facts.

In fact, there are several reasons for not thinking of ideologies as composed of ideas. For one thing, ideas are usually thought of as subjective thoughts or impressions, but ideology is by definition a "social fact", and to that extent "objective". For another "idea" implies an autonomy which the constituent elements of ideology lack: it makes sense to speak of "ideas" moving from one system of "belief to another while remaining the same, whereas ideologies, if they are to treated as systems of signification, must be thought of as structures in which the elements are defined by their mutual interrelationships.

Thus, an ideology is not a bundle of "ideas" (more or less correct, vivid, strange etc), but a structure of interrelated signifying practices or discourses.

Two points must be made about this description. As MacCabe points out, the word "discourse" has a specific connotation in recent discussions, being intended as an anti-"logicist"

(nonempiricist) and anti-subjective substitute for "theory",

"speech", "intuition" etc.^ That is, its use implicitly rejects theories of knowledge which have as their starting point the creation by a "knowing subject" of an idea corresponding to a reality "out there".

Second, the word "structure", being based on the metaphor of building, may lead the reader to think of something firm and mechanically constructed. Ideological structures are not like that. They are fuzzy, organic and easy to get entangled in: in Barthes’ memorable image, "sticky". ^

Text and Code

Of critical importance in understanding the structure of discourses are the notions of text and code. Texts are the products of signifying practice, the empirical reali ations of discourse. Codes are relatively autonomous systems of 12 signification within discourse. Every text is an ennunciation of the intersection of a set of codes, which are linked by denotation and connotation, including such figures as metaphor, metonymy and synecdoche; by logical connections including deduction, induction, contradiction, opposition etc; and perhaps by other, more obscure linkages. This structure is (more or less) learnt by individuals and reproduced over time as all language is. The process is never perfect. Misunderstandings occur; contradictions and unsatisfying features of the structure, which are always present, create instability and an internal dynamic; there is ceaseless interaction with other ideologies; and finally, the ideology must continue to make some kind of sense of the changing material practices with which it is associated.

Revealing how texts are constructed by the operation of the codes which compose them, that is, decoding, is the basic strategy by which

semiotics gives us a sort of photomechanical explanation of semiosis, revealing that where we thought we saw images there were only strategically arranged aggregations of black and white points, alternations of presense and absence...

The issue then shifts away from the * image* of the text, what it "means* to the meaning of the presences and absences which compose it, the placing of its codes within discourse. Codes, however, are not literally "in" discourse; but rather *in* the reading of discourse. A reading is a translation from one discourse to another, and the deconstruction of an ideology is possible only from the vantage of another ideological site.^ 128

Contradiction and regeneration

In Marxism, ideology embodies contradictions because, in

Stuart Hall’s words, of "the fundamentally antagonistic 1 4 T. nature of culture under capitalist conditions*. For

Levi-S’trauss, on the other hand, mythology - a term which 15 denotes a field very similar to that of ideology - is directed to overcoming logical contradictions which may beMuniversal" 1 “natural” or "mental". But whether it is conceived in terms of logical opposition or of political or psychodynamic struggle, there is wide agreement that ideology works to express and rework contradictions. This creates an element of instability and growth: ideologies strive to resolve these contradictions, and in doing so dialectically regenerate themselves.

Different ideologies are produced in the context of different classes, institutions, activities, interests and biographies.

An image for this multi-levelled character of ideology is imbrication, the overlaying of tiles, although this image risks giving insufficient emphasis to its "ready-made** heterogeneity.

Perhaps it should be said that Ideology is imbricated bricolage.

Ideology is not simply a collection of ideologies, but a

M structure-in-dominance*, in which elements and relationships which support the ruling order predominate over those which do not. Hall* s summary of the place of the mass media can be generalised; ideology as a whole does the work of ’classifying out'the world within the discourses of the dominant ideologies. This is neither simply, nor consicous, ’work’: it is contradictory work - in part because of the internal contradictions between those different ideologies which constitute the dominant terrain, but even more because these ideologies struggle and contend for dominance in the field of class practices and class struggle. There is no way in which the ’work’ can be carried through without, to a considerable degree, also reproducing the contradictions which structure its field. Thus the regenerative, dialectical tendency of ideologies is materially constrained. Ideological transformations which do not serve the hegemonic structuring of the social circumstances in which they arise may encounter active resistance,^ or incorporation^. They are censored (like pornography), suppressed (like political dissent), or relegated to specialised, institutional contexts (like v 2 0 sociology;. When they appear to be fairly "harmless", they become marginal: like Spiritualism.

Spiritualism as a marginal ideology

A product of the mid-nineteenth century, Spiritualism has remained ever since on the ideological margin, slowly waning, in a state of semi-suspended animation. Nevertheless it remains sufficiently attractive to have maintained itself for more than a century, and most of the time has been regarded by the state as "harmless". This situation raises three sets of questions. One has to do with why and how Spiritualism is marginal^that is, with those features which are disjunctive from or in opposition to the ruling ideologies. Another has to do with Spiritualism as a transformation of dominant ideological structures, that is, with those features which have saved it from extinction cr suppression. Finally, there is the issue of why Spiritualism has continued to be attractive for sone people. Spiritualists are aesthetic consumers (and producers). Their activities give them pleasure, which is why they continue to pursue them, rather than spending their leisure reading, playing- sport watching television or making love21- which is 130 not to say they are never bored with their activities

(they quite often are).

Spiritualism is a marginal ideology, ♦’deviant” by the norms of dominant ideologies. Nevertheless, it is closely related to those dominant ideologies, both in its assumptions and values, and in the way it constitutes itself as an

"entertainment” . The following chapters analyse this compound of traditional texts and variable beliefs, of stereotyped 22 practices and fragile groups, as a system of signification.

In the following chapter I discuss six codes which I argue comprise the core of Spiritualist discourse. For Spiritualists, this discourse, and the hegemonic discourses of which it is itself a transformation, constitute a familiar. Spiritualist texts appear to create pleasure by "playing around” , that is, transforming this familiar, so that it assumes forms which are both novel and recognisable as transformations of the known. ChapterslO and 11 illustrate by textual analysis two of the characteristic ways in which this is done. 131 1. ••De Tracy's school of ' ideologues' .. .wants to educate the French people, and above all, the young people, so that a rjust and happy society can be established" (larrain, 1979:27) 2. larrain (I979:17ff); Hall (1977b).

3. This role is given particular emphasis in Althusser’s influent!pi essay (1971).

4. These are the crucial theses of the seminal fragment, The German Ideology (Marx & Engels, 1978)

5. When the concept of ideology as a misleading phenomenal form is abandoned, the use of the word moves out of the materialist orbit. Cf the discussions of Lacan in Willemen (1978:67-69), Garnham (1979) and larrain (1979:168-169).

6. Hall (1977a: 323,337); Poulantzas (1973).

7. Hall (1977a: 32a).

8. V.N. Volosinov, Karxism and the Philosophy of language, quoted in Hall (T977a:329).

9. Kepham (1974:102).

10. KacCabe (1978/9:29f).

11. 3arthes writes of “an implacable stickiness* which is "the essence of ideology" (1975:29).

12. For extended treatments, see Eco (l976:32ff), Metz (1970), Barthes (1974J.

13. Eco (1976:50).

14. Hall (1977a:323).

15. levi-Strauss (1963:209).

16. Ibid:229. levi-Strauss's use of expressions derived from structural phonemics, and Greimas' “ semantic square" (Leo, 1976:81f) are examples of formalisations of such logical oppositions.

17. Hall (1977a:346).

18. Hall, referring to Gramsci, stresses that hegemony Hhas to be actively won and secured; it can also be lost1* (l977a:333). Connell_and Irving (1980) is a writing of Australian history from this perspective.

19. Hebdige (1979:93f). In a paper about scientology, Wallis (1975a) has shown how the resistance of "society** can accelerate the marginalisation of a movement, driving it to greater - extremism” , a point already r^ade in Cohen (1972)-

Willemen (1979:67). 132 21. Barthes has lamented that hedonism has been repressed by nearly every philosophy...It seems that (our) society refuses (and ends up by ignoring) bliss to such a point that it can produce only epistemologies of the law ^and of its contestation), never of it absence, or better still: of its nullity. (1975 90).

22. Since speech and writing are the central and the most elaborate forms of signifying practice, ideologies are realized most centrally in spoken and written texts. It is not accidental that Spiritualism, in common with most marginal and ostracised movements, has developed its own dialect, a jargon which "includes lexical items which label every facet of the church life and belief system” (Zaretsky, 1974:166). CHAPTER 9

THE CODES OF SPIRITUALISM In what follows I discuss six codes of which Spiritualist ideology may be viewed as an intersection. My choice of these particular codes is motivated: I want to indicate that

Spiritualism incorporates and modifies codes which are important in the dominant ideologies of the social context in which it survives. Other purposes might generate a different set of codes. But this does not imply that

Spiritualism could be fruitfully analysed in terms of any set of codes equally easily. In the first place, the six codes correspond to categories which Spiritualists themselves use in explaining what they do and believe. Second, as the analysis of Spiritualist texts in chapter 11 shows, these systems of meaning are constantly alluded to in

Spiritualist practice.

I have given the codes such names as "Communication”,

"the Symbolic", "love”, and "Science". In this context, such terms do not have their normal denotation (the media of communication, the domain of symbols, the emotion of love, the institutions of science etc). A code is a meaningful

system, a set of signs organised according to certain rules which form a space within which meaning is created - which does not mean that the rules are never broken, modified or replaced, or that this semiotic space must be filled. In

simpler cases, like the "logical codes" of chess notation or botanical description, ^ the rules can be specified and are complete. For the more general, fuzzier, cultural codes which constitute ideology, like those discussed in this p chapter, and the code of amour dissected by Barthes, the rules are too complex, shifting and ambiguous to be clearly

formulated, and are incomplete: all that can be done is to

indicate the site upon which they operate, the place of the

space formed by them. 135 A code includes the myths attached to its name. Thus any model of message flow (or its absence) belongs to the space

formed by the code of Communication; Love (which in Spiritualist

discourse is only weakly linked to sexuality) points to that

which generates expressions of kindness, sympathy, caring,

giving, incorporation and oneness; Science indicates the domains of experiment, theory, causation and the inquiring attitude; Individualism signifies pluralism, tolerance, autonomy, selfishness, charisma etc.

A code includes the antonyms of its name. Faith (and also

Culture, Art, rteligion etc) inhabits the site of Science, as

Science inhabits the site of Faith; Love also connotes

suffering; the rules which define the individual reciprocally define the collcctive.

The manifestation of these codes in Spiritualist discourse

is intrinsically incomplete and contradictory, a mirror of

primary process:

Ultimately it is unimportant whether the text's disper- sion is rich here and poor there; there are nodes, blanks, many figures break off short...he who utters this discourse...does not yet know that as a good cultural subject h<-. shouiti neither repeat nor contradict himself, nor take the whole for the part; all he knows is that what passes through his mind at a certain moment is marked,like the printout of a code.

The limits of discourse cannot be defined. For that reason

following resume of Spiritualist codes is, like them,

incomplete and "intuitive".

yjach of us can fill in (these codes) according to his own history; rich or poor, the figure must be there, the site (the compartment) must be reserved for it... the property of a Topic is to be somewhat empty: a Topic is statutorily half coded, half projective (or projective because coded). What we have been able to say below...is no more than a modest supplement offered to the reader to be made free with, to bemadded to, subtracted from, and passed on to others. Communication

It is not accidental that so many words in the Spiritualist jargon have today acquired a primary referrent in understand ings of modern forms of communication, especially of broad- casting. For examples: transmit, contact, control, channel medium, message, tune in. Spiritualism, which assumed its present form about the time that the technical means of electronic communication were becoming forseeable, is,like them, concerned with a form of communication which is intermediate between direct perception and traditional means of representation like the verbal description or the drawing. like the latter, electronic communication is mediated by technology, and, at least since the invention of recording, is not govern, ed by the constraints of "real time". On the other hand, unlike the painting or book, it presents; it does not represent. It is a transcription, not an imitation.

The Spiritualist medium is like a camera or microphone, through which Spirit, however fugitively and with what distortion, is conveyed. She does not bear the inscriptions of Spirit; rather, Spirit "comes through" her. She is a medium or a channel; she tunes in anc having made contact, transmits messages and is controlled.

Spirits, it is said, are eager to communicate with the living. They usually have benevolent intentions, being either former acquaintances wishing to demonstrate their continued existence, or guides who desire to pass on

"elevating" advice and information. /lthough often attributed "higher" wisdom and greater knowledge than the living, spirits are not infallible; sometimes, as in "rescue work”, it is they who stand in need of advice.

But always the basic mode of discourse with Spirit is pedagogical and didactic. When mediums and spirits communicate what they do is teach and preach to each other and their 5 witnesses. "Messages" are also "lessons” .

The complexity and ambiguity of the Spiritual communication circuits can be illustrated by a consideration of the central Spiritualist ritual practice of divination.

(Although Spiritualists themselves are sensitive about accusations of "fortune telling", because of its association

with legal persecution, psychometry, including * flower reading’^ clearly belongs in this category.)

Divination is concerned with a flow of information from the world to the diviner (in this case, the medium). This communicative process involves a special part of reality which is "marked off" and in some way or other catalyses

the information flow. It also involves Spirit, because

divinatory information is paranormal, anomalous in terms of conventional expectations. Without the term of Spirit,

divination becomes diagnosis, the perusal of symptoms in £ search of underlying conditions. Without the marked off

catalyst, the omen or portent, divination reduces to

clairvoyance.^

Scores of divinatory techninues have been practised, from

aeromancy (which uses the weather as omen) to x.ylomancy

(twigs or burning logs). Craens are often produced by human

activity, as in the fall of the T'arot cards, the cast of the

I Ching yarrow stalks, the administration of poison to an

animal, or the distribution of tealeaves in a cup, although 138 as astrology, palmistry or phrenology show, human interven-

tion is not necessary. What is necessary is that the pattern

or process which is taken as the omen be free of intentional manipulation. Divination privileges an aspect of reality which is out of human control, and reads into it a human

significance

Jpiritualists tend to be attracted to all kinds of popular

divinatory techniaues, such as astrology, palmistry, the Q 'J'arot, biorhythmic analysis and tealeaf readings, but at

Mortfield flower reading is the central and most elaborated

divinatory prac ti ce . Fl o we r reading is "explained”

(implicitly, except by Spiritualist intellectuals, who may

bring the matter into consciousness) by at least four

different models of information flow, which are outlined

below.

(I) Psychometry.

Psychometry was "discovered" by Joseph Buchanan, a nineteenth

century American physician, who advocated it as a method of

medical diagnosis.^ Buchanan himself suggested a Mesmeristic

explanation 12 which Sepharial links with the aura:

The functions of this sense...imply...the existence of subtile aura attaching itself to every material object...This aura...is a storehouse of every experience attaching to the body it is related to...

This provides an inbuilt explanation for psychometric

failures. The psychometric sense may be interfered with

if the object has been handled by more than one person who will impress his or her "vibrations”. That is why only

the person who wants a reading should touch the flowers presented to the medium at the flower service.

/ 139 (2) Guidance However, it is also normally believed by Spiritualists that in delivering messages, a medium is directed by his or her guide(s). Sometimes, too, the guides of the recipient pass on messages to the. medium. In a reading, for example, a medium might say

I can see a nun in Spirit standing behind you. She would be about fifty years old. Her face is wonderful a beautiful person She instructs me to tell you that she is going to take good care of you and to keep your pecker up. (Mrs Miller, flower reading)

Medium? frequently make such references to guides and other

Spirit information sources, this appeal to authority being basic,

to the fabrication of message authenticity.

(3) Telepathy Some Spiritualists argue that there is a large element of telepathy in psychometry, that the omen functions to facili- tate mental communication. (Whether this communication is with the recipient, people significant to the recipient, or spirits, is not very clear, but in any case the imagery and conditions which the medium "picks up” must be allowed to be ones of which the recipient is not necessarily conscious). This interpretation is along the lines given by Mario Schoenmaker, a Perth "psychic” discussed by .

Drury and Tillett.^ Not a Spiritualist, but sharing much of their jargon and interests, Schoenmaker, hpving studied

tarot cards, pendulums, crystal balls and so on... believes that all these material things, including the photograph and item of personal jewellery that he may use, are simply points of focus for 'tuning in'. They have no particular value in themselves. Here the medium is implicitly depicted as a counsellor or confessor with a special technique for gaining access to her clients’ minds, and the flowers "become “centering devices" which enable the medium to concentrate her clairvoyant faculties. This is a very common interpretation of teacup readings.

(4) Clairvoyant diagnosis

Drury and Tillett contrast Schoenmaker with a palmist, who believes that "he has no intuitive or psychic gifts at all, receives no impressions and does no 'tuning in'". Mr.

Hedgcock "is as scientific as possible. It is never guess- work or 'intuition', but an exact analysis of specific aspects of the hands’’"^. Here the paranormal element

("Spirit" or whatever), if it enters at all, arises in the connection between the "world" and the omen (ie,it is not 17 clear how a person's fate impresses itself on the palm).

Drawing "clairYoyant” conclusions from the physical properties of an object presented for psychometry does not make any sort of “common sense", and some mediums, aware of this, speak of being "thrown off the track" by them (that a pansy makes me think of thought should not imply that the person who presented it is thoughtful...). But other mediums do not see this as a problem. Mrs Bragg, for example, was in the habit of basing entire readings on the appearance of the flower, proceeding from stem to leaves to petals, and relating the colours, wilt, texture etc of each to alleged conditions affecting the recipient. In this case, a causal “Scientific" interpretation seems to have been abandoned entirely in favour of the Symbolic principle of correspondence. 141 The endemic ambiguity of Spiritualist communication circuits will come up again, when the "bases of “evidence** in the code of Science are considered. The different models of divination above include almost every possible circuit: in psychometry, from world to omen to medium, with Spirit operating as facilitator; in guidance, from world to Spirit to medium, with the omen as facilitator; in telepathy, from world to someone's mind (via ordinary perception) to medium (with

Spirit and omen facilitating the last stage); in clairvoyant diagnosis, from world to omen (facilitated by Spirit) to medium. What is important is not how but that: the world is, for this code, a vast network of informational exchange, upwards, downwards and across. Life is a school, in which humans and spirits, pupils all, though in different grades, struggle to imbibe knowledge and graduate to the ultimate gnosis.

Individualism

Spiritualists place great stress on the principle that an individual's fate is ultimately determined by the life choices made by that person. Two of the seven "Principles of Spiritualism" drawn up by the British Spiritual National

Union in 1950, which at Mortfield functioned almost as a catechism, are "personal responsibility" and the related ••compensation and retribution hereafter for all the good and 18 evil deeds done on earth". These principles imply "self- help"; not only material success but also psychic development 19 and spiritual progress are "up to the individual". The endemic pluralism of the Spiritualist movement has already 20 been mentioned. The code of Individualism aanifests itself especially in three Spiritualist contexts: the construction of mediumship, the relationship of freewill to "salvation” (gnosis), and the "problem of evil”. (a) Mediumship as gift/faculty. Cn the one hand psychic ability and the attainment'of ' gnosis are constructed by Spiritualists as ‘‘natural gifts", bestowed on some and lacking in others. But they are also seen as "perfectible qualities"; all humans have equal "psychic potential". This contradiction provides one of the main axes along which competition between mediums is played out.

The first idea justifies elitism and fatalism; the second 21 supports egalitarianism and freewill. (b) Gnosis and freewill

“Personal responsibility" denies original and grace. In terms of Troeltsch:s categories, it opposes the ecclesiast- ical, but contains elements of both mystical and sectarian soteriologies. In its insistence that the individual will be rewarded or punished according to his or her own efforts, it shares an original impulse of dissenting .

But Spiritualism is mystical in its refusal to posit a final judgement, and in its depersonalisation of the dietv to the point where God hardly bears any resemblance to the loving and threatening parent figure of sectarian soteriology. Fatalism and freewill are placed in an equilibrium which can easily become unstable.

(c) The problem of evil like all beliefs which hold out hope for the suffering by maintaining that the universe is basically good, Spiritualism is caught up in a fundamental problem: why is there evil in the world at all? Answers to this question within 143 particular ideologies are closely bound up with their placement of the individual subject, and again, Spiritualism reveals fundamental ambiguities.

Weber gave the name theodicies to "consistent philosphies 22 of moral meaning" which attempt to answer this question.

Spiritualism does not have a theodicy in this sense. it combines aspects of the doctrine of karma, "which postulates a complete closure of the moral system over timespans altogether incommensurable with the human life span", with elements which embody tne conception of a transcendent providence, u an , all-powerful God, whose ’motives' 23 are in principle inaccessible to human understanding". 24 The problem of evil remains unsolved , and Spiritualists waver between four possible "solutions" to it: evil is caused by the weakness of the powers of good, in particular of good spirits; by the moral and psychic failings of people; by a basic flaw 25 in the design of the universe; or is, perhaps together with the physical world in general, an illusion which vgreater 2 6 understanding" will unravel, as the following passage from a sermon delivered at a National Spiritualist Conference suggests:

Some people say if you're sick you should stay sick because it's an act of God. But in my opinion God never made anything in this world which is impure. It is the hand of man that has made things the way they are and anyway it's the physical body that suffers all these ailments and when the physical comes into it it’s got nothing to do with God it’s got to do with man himself.

Personal responsibility has a positive and a negative side. It holds out hope for each individual to "succeed", but it also confronts humanity with an image of its inadequacy; the world is a good place, but spoilt because humans are 144

"unworthy” of their freedom.

This in a familiar guilt paradigm. But it is in the back- ground of Spiritualist thought, since other explanations of evil may be easily activated (as providence or illusion).

Love

When Spiritualists reflect upon what they do and why they do it, the concept of love predominates. Spiritualists say that the "work” they are involved in is one of "service to humanity", and believe that "the inability to give and 91 receive love is the fundamental cause of the world’s problems."

Cne of the few passages in the Christian Bible which can be read as endorsing Spiritualist practices is Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, in which "spiritual gifts" are discussed, among which are named prophecy, healing, miracle- working and ecstatic utterance. The author limits the importance of these activities by arguing that they are simply aspects of the same immanent power:

There are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit. There are varieties of service, but the same Lord. There are many forms of work, but all of them, in all men, are the work of the same God. In each of us the Spirit is manifested in one particular way, for some useful purpose.

This passage is followed by a renowned paean to love which many Spiritualists appear to know virtually by heart:

I may speak in tongues of men or of angels, but if I am without love, I am a sounding gong or a clanging cymbal. I may have the gift of prophecy and know every hidden truth; I may have faith strong enough to move mountains; but if I have no love I am nothing. I may dole out all I possess, or even give my body to be burnt, but if I have no love, I am none the better.

...Are there prophets? their work will be over. Are there tongues of ecstasy? they will cease. Is there knowledge? it will vanish away; for all our knowledge and our prophecy alike are partial, and the partial, vanishes when wholeness comes...In a word, there are three things that last for ever: faith, hogg and love; but the greatest of them all is love.

These sentiments echo through the whole of the Spiritualist outlook. According to Jimmy Green, a medium is " a person who has decided to do God’s work for humanitarian motives and gives out messages from Spirit to help their fellow man!1 Both he and Bill Maddigan told me that they considered

Spiritualism to be a form of social work. As Jimmy explained in the Mortfield Church magazine which he edited, people drawn to Spiritualist churches are often

sad or lonely or depressed; on their downers, recovering from a broken marriage or an unhappy love affair, some mixed up, still others looking for answers or seeking spiritual truths. No greater service can be chosen by man, or woman, in their service of God, than mediums developing to the extent that they can alleviate pain or distress. All we are doing is follow- ing God's commandement by using the spiritual gifts promised to,us in his name by St Paul in I orinthians Chapter 12.

There is an ambivalence in the Spiritualist code of love, captured in the opposition of the Greek agape and eros, as construed by Nyrgren:

Agape is the New Testament word for Love, and the noun had virtually to be invented to express it; the verb was used among other things, for the patient seeking of another's well-being, no matter whether they responded. The Platonic tradition in particular took eros as aspiration towards God, a kind of sublimation of sexual desire, a direction of the libido towards the spiritual. ^

The goal of gnosis, even while, in the Spiritualist ideology, it is intrinsically bound up with agape, with service, is 34 fundamentally self-centred, and therefore erotic. "Each soul's progress is an individual and often lonely one. The 35 journey back to one's source has to be bravely undertaken". Although the lover of gnosis needs the love of others, and although to "progress" one must give love to others, the giving of love may so weaken the self through "powerdrain" 146 that the quest may be endangered.

Therefore mediums often warn that one should not become too involved in helping others. Personal responsibility may be invoked as a counter to agape :

There are many times in life when we just want to sit and cry when we see the problems people are coining to. We see the problems that we ourselves and our kids and our loved ones fall into and it's a lot harder sometimes to stand back and not pick them up much harder and it hurts much deeper. I3ut if they don't l

vo matter how difficult it is to share love with discipline discipline is still part of the things God's given us.

(Andy Johnson,sermon)

In chapter 5 I mentioned that Spiritualists use two Urms for mediumistic ability: "Spiritualism", which is laudatory, and "psychism", which is derogatory. It seems clear that the former represents agape (it is selfless, dedicated to serving humanity), whereas psychism is a pure manifestation of eros, of power and knowledge sought for its own sake.

It is possible to discern attempts with Spiritualism to over- come this opposition between agape and eros, Spiritualism and Psychism. Cne is along thf lines of Newton's

vision of a continually active and creative God whose love for his creation was imperfectly mirrored in human love, as it was, at a lower level, in the cosmic sympathy, immanent in a spiritus,which bound the 147

37 universe together.

This leads to the Symbolic code, discussed below. Another resolution of the antinomy is some practical solution which emphasises IQ the "work” of Spiritualism. Above all, it is healing which

most clearly works tc reconcile the tension with Spiritualism

engenders between the imperative to progress towards gnosis,

and the imperative to love and give to others. Making this explicit, Boddington writes that healing is a "solvent” for the problem of "psychic powers" versus "spiritual insight",

since it both makes "a breach in the walls of materialism"

(as an anomalous phenomenon) and "through its sympathetic treatment of suffering ennoblers the healer and expands . XQ the soul of the sufferer by gratitude".

As this passage indicates, love and suffering are complements in Spiritualist ideology - one evokes the other. Suffering

especially reveals itself in two contexts. One is the concern with health, happiness and healing. The other is the risk of madness and worldly ruin associated with the gift ana pursuit of mediumship.

^he path of the Spiritualist medium does not involve ordeals

and trials of physical and mental strength associated with many shamanistic cultures and some movements within contemporary

occultism. Nevertheless, the goal of progress is a dangerous

one: the "psychic sense" which the medium aims to "develop"

is not easily distinguishable from, and can become, madness, and this is a risk of which Spritiualists are keenly aware.

Thus, a columnist in a British Spiritualist newspaper makes mention of a "closing down" exercise, by means of which

a person who is clairvoyant or has potential mediumship, which is causing some embarassment or discomfort, can be taught to close the channel until he or she is ready, or desires, to use these gifts in some type of spiritual service.40 148

In conversation, Mortfielders'concern about the danger of madness was shown "by remarks like:

There are just as many people in lunatic asylums "because of as from drugs. (Robbie Robinson)

One day, if he keeps on the way he's going, that guy is going to meet the real thing, and when he does, he'll fly apart. (Andy Johnson, of Ray Maddigan)

My mother can't bear crowds. It's because of her , because as you get higher, you become more vulnerable to spiritual attack. (Elizabeth Johns)

Somehow the medium has to contain or resolve the contradictions of Spiritualist belief, as well as the eaually pressing and, as I would argue, fundamentally identical contradictions of society in general. This need presses upon mediums with particular insistence, and is the source of the power of the image of the moving eouilibrium within Spiritualist ideology.

Growth is not simply expansion: it must also be regulated and balanced.^

In this work, the first thing is to have balance. (Robbie)

I would say to you as you move througkuthis great flowing imitation of earthly time ^ as you move forward into that which is to unfold as the so do you need to understand the harmmy which is needed that the body and the heart and the mind may be maintained in beauty and in pep.ee. (r'rance lecture)

Progress

Cne of the principles laid down by the. i-.ritish S.'J.U. states that 149

there is a path of Eternal Progress open to every human soul thaX wills to tread it by the path of Eternal Good.

In a general sense, Spiritualism connotes Progress in the manner of all gnostic occultisms and miraculous systems.

The sign formed from the relationship of anomaly and the

Beyond signified by it is itself a signifier of ascent, transcendence and progress.^ (That is why miracles are

"uplifting": if they fail to "lift up", they fail as miracles, and are merely confusing or frightening). The "language of 45 growth" ' is one which Spiritualism shares with many similar movements.

Within Spiritualism, Progress is open to both "agapic" or "erotic" interpretations. In the first sense, the Law of Progress means that everyone is, or could be, or should be, becoming more selfless, kind and understanding. In the second sense, the Law means that everyone (now or in some future life) is moving towards greater psychic power and knowledge.

June Macklin has noted that the notion of progress held by the New England Spiritualists studied by her was anachronistic in its particular stress on the optimistic individualism associated with 19th century capitalism, particularly in its "Yankee" variant.^ Something of this also lingers in the attitudes of some of the older members of Mortfield church, but for most of the younger ones the idea of progress has taken on the more consciousness-oriented and fatalistic

shades of "New Age" mysticism: progress is seen less as

"self-improvement", and more as the expansion of awareness.

The Spiritualist notion of progress has two features which

justify the description "Faustian".4? Firstly, in Spiritualist 150 discourse about "progressing", there is a tendency to exclude meanings or values which transcend "human" ones. Robbie Robertson's Danikenist interpretation of the Gospels is an only slightly extravagant example of this tendency. According to him, Jesus was a visitor from the "Universe of Nebadon".

What the average Spiritualist fails to appreciate is that although Jesus the Christ did a wonderful job in visiting us and helping us, he was also helping himself. His status, His spiritual prestige, was enhanced and uplifted among His fellow Spiritual Princes by His descending to the lowest rung ofgthe ladder to live the life of an ordinary mortal.

This passage also illustrates another frequently recurring "Faustian" idea, that the individual must take on all worldly and other worldly attributes (the "highest" and the "lowest") 49 to further its upward reach. Cne medium informed a meeting that he was looking forward to being reincarnated as a woman. He knew this would happen, since in its spiritual progression the soul has to experience existence both as a male and as a female. He added that for the same reason 50 souls are reborn under every astrological sign of the zodiac.

Science: anomalies and proofb

The influence of Science on Spiritualism is shown in part by the number of words in the Spiritualist jargon, which allude to scientific methodology ("proof", "demonstration", "evidence", "condition")or translate mental or psychic pheonomena into physical imagery ("projection", "powerdrain", "wavelength", "vibration", "positive", "negative"). The metaphor of place is particularly prominent: mental conditions are "with" people, a medium "places" a message, entities "attach" themselves and may be "thrown off" or "picked up" etc. —^ ".. . Secondly, there is the preoccupation of Spiritualists with finding proof or evidence of Spirit.

Spiritualism retains a positivism inherited from its origins as a nineteenth century attempt to ’’prove" (scientifically) the correctness of "faith” (in life after death).^ Though ambiguous, the motto "There is no religion higher than Truth" is usually given a positivist interpretation, to mean "Don’t CO believe anything you haven't experienced for yourself".

But this scientism does not cut very deep. Spiritualism is much less confident about the validity of its beliefs than

Science is in its laws and theories, as Spiritualism's endless search for "proof" indicates. Spiritualists, adherents of a minority creed that is more often ridiculed than taken seriously, are defensive. The most active and apparently convinced members of Mortfield frequently expressed this tension:

They (the spirits) send you false information to test your faith. Sometimes they give you things to think about, too. (Elizabeth Johns) They take you up just to bring you down. (Jimmy Green)

Sometimes I wonder if 1 should give it all away. (Robbie Robinson)

Spiritualists have evolved a complex patterning of faith and 53 doubt. When the "evidence* is plausible, they are positivists,but if positivism threatens basic tenets, they are likely to turn to mysticism.

But this tension can only provide the ground for more doubt, which in turn can only be dispelled by further "proof". We all know that at certain times we need proof and then afterwards reproof of what we have found Sometimes light and vision are taken away. How can I do what is right in these times. It is not easy to stand up for truth. (William Veldt, a sermon)

The need for "proof and reproof" becomes a compulsive craving, and forms the underlying rationale of Spiritualist ritual.

Spiritualist ritual is concerned with providing a context in which either (a) spirits can affirm their existence by presenting themselves to the living and authenticate themselves 54 by supplying "evidence", that they are who they claim to

be, or (b) the "phenomena" described in chapter3 can be

exhibited, in order to demonstrate the reality of a world

"beyond the physical".

There is, in fact, much effort made by Spiritualists to insure that the phenomena they seek are "genuine". Some

aspects of the flower service illustrate this. There is an

acute awareness that mediums might be alleged to fudge their readings in the way described by Joseph Me Cabe, who explains that mediums

watch carefully the faces of sitters and find their way by changes of expression. "I see a young man" says the medium, with half-closed but very watchful eyes. There is no response on behalf of the sitter. "I see the form of a young woman - a child", the medium goes on. At the right shot the sitter’s face lights up with joy and eagerness, and the fishing goes on. Probably in the end, or after a time, the sitter will tell people how the clairvoyant saw the form of her darling child "at once".

The flower service and psychometry in general offer an

"evidential" advantage over other kinds of mediumship, because the medium does not, or is not supposed to, know the identity 56 of the person to whom he is giving a message. It is true that some clues are available concerning who "brought which flower. Mediums are occasionally in the church or hall when the audience enters, and might have an opportunity to identify bringers of flowers by noting the colour and shape of the bags they are wrapped in. The bags axe placed in the tray roughly in the order of entry, and if the medium has had a chance to observe the latter, it could conceivably provide another source of clues. In a reasonably small group it is easy to deduce the owner of the last flower. Finally, guesses can sometimes be made about the personality and mood of the 57 bringer of a flower from the nature of the floral offering.

For the majority of mediums conscious attempts at fraud would be exceptional. In any case, if anything ever occurs in a Spiritualist service which cannot be explained by assuming that mediums are ouickwittcd, imaginative, and able to communicate vividly, I never observed it.

It is a problem that the more fraud-proof a procedure, the less spectacular it is. Early Spiritualism specialized in rappings, levitations, materializations and so on, but such phenomena were repeatedly exposed as tricks. In abandoning them, Spiritualism has cut its risks, but also forgone the prospect of really "miraculous” demonstrations.

In any case, in all Spiritualist ritual the presence of a medium is required to make contact with Spirit, and this opens up a second area of doubt. In addition to qualms about the reality of Spirit, there is room for skepticism about the validity of claims by individuals to be sufficiently "developed" to sensejdescribe,and communicate with Spirit accurately. Unanimous agreement about the distribution of ''development1' among these who claim it is never achieved in mainstream

Spiritualism, leading to what Locke appropriately calls 154 cp Ma culture of imperfect charisma". A believer is not obliged to take any failure of a "proof of Spirit” as evidence against the existence of Spirit. Such failures can be, and usually are, ascribed to the medium, who is presumed to be insufficiently developed, to have misinterpreted Spirit, to have been misled by a mischievous or malevolent entity, to have suffered a 59 powerdrain from a hostile medium etc. The supplementary need for ’’proof of thf medium” therefore becomes primary, since if Spirit is refuted to anyone’s satisfaction, that person ceases to be a Spiritualist. The "proof of Spirit" for those who continue to be Spiritualists thus becomes an investigation of the quality of individual mediums.

So it comes about that demonstrations are competitions, in which mediums pitch themselves against Spirit. The audience of the Spiritualist demonstration is preoccupied with comparing the merits of different mediums. Liking one medium more than another is explained - pluralistically - by the Law of Sympathy (below): "like attracts like’’. ^

Prom all this, it follows that it is quite consistent for mediums to denigrate the abilities of other mediums, doubt their own powers, and issue warnings against "gullibility", as in the following examples

Conversation between Ray Ferguson, Robbie Robinson and Elizabeth Johns:

Ray: I don't know. I feel my powers are going off a bit lately. I think, well, it's because I've been ignoring my clairvoyance. My clairvoyance has almost gone I think. And other things too. I've been trying to concentrate on getting the names and addresses of people. I've had some success with that, but maybe I'm trying too hard. Robbie: Listen, you can't choose what you want to do. It's them up there who make the decisions. Ray: Yes, yes, I know that, but I feel, I feel strongly, that they want me to do this. Robbie: Ray f y0U know, and everyone else knows,.that your readings have been very slow lately. Now, ' 155 that’8 because you've been trying too hard.

Elizabeth: Yes, that's right. Sometime they take it away from you, and when they do that, you've just got to accept it, because it means that they're preparing you for something higher.

A sermon of Mrs Miller: Someone might came along to a meeting with a business problem and the medium might contact that person's mother. Now let's say that the mother says through the medium sign the document. let us be honest with ourselves many people who come to church would take this as advice to sign and then if- things went badly they would blame the medium. But they forget that the mother might have been the worst businessman in the world. Understand this: all Spiritualism does is contact spirits in the Astral and there are just as many dunderheads up there as there are down here. If you've got business problems you should take them to a business consultant.

Part of a conversation with Ray Ferguson:

How was Johnny Glen tonight? About half right? Well that's about average for him. Mind you, it takes a really good medium to be right eighty, ninety, one hundred per cent of the time. Only really famous mediums are that good. Jimmy and Elaine and me, well, we're not in that class, but those people, people like John and Robbie and William Veldt, they're not developing now. They've got to a certain level and they stay with that.

Far from imposing a rigid formula for assessing the worth of alleged "proofs of Spirit", Spiritualism encourages the proliferation of interpretive options. This is shown if we compare the Spiritualist with the skeptical position regarding an alleged "phenonenon". The latter has to decide between "", trickery, suggestibility, or some unknown physical explanation. The Spiritualist may, without

sacrificing his beliefs, opt for any of these possibilities, as well as construing the pheonomenon as a genuine signifier

of Spirit. But this pluralism works to invalidate the status of phenomena as evidence. For an event to be evidential, it must be placed within a model of causal interaction. Spiritualist phenomena, however, are not construed in an unambiguous way: as a result, the most that could be said of them is that they only constitute an incomplete ’’proof11 6f a "Beyond”.

Without going too minutely into the epistemological ramifications of this claim, I will illustrate it by outlining some of the different models which Spiritualists use to construe "phenomena”, and which constitute them as intractably ambiguous "evidence".

(l) Physical phenomena

In many ways the simplest Spiritualist phenomena are those which resemble the stereotypical "miracle”, where an "obvious" violation of the "laws of nature" occurs. It may be that these never happen; however, the point is that even if they did, it would not be possible to give them a coherent meaning within Spiritualist ideology. Take, for example, the phenomenon of apportage. If genuine, at least three causal models could explain its occurrence.

(a) The medium wills that an object pass through solid matter.

The power of Spirit joins with this will, which then is able to cause the anomaly. Apportage is a "supernatural ability"; Spirit is the "motor" of this ability.

(b) The medium wills that the power of Spirit cause an object to pass through solid matter. Apportage is not an ability, but an effect of having harnessed Spirit to one’s will;

Spirit functions not as a "motor", but as a "tool".

It is true this difference is not clearcut. The difference between a motor and a tool is clear enough in some casesj b u t in the typical "machine”, the two become fused. Perhaps this fusion represents a third type of model - Spirit as a machine. (In any case, the modus operandl of the anomaly remains obscure.) Furthermore, the distinction is blurred by the ambiguity of the medium's "will”, which becomes quite problematic in some cases of physical phenomena. In the

alleged movement of furniture during a seance, for example, what is supposed to be happening? Does it occur as a result of the medium's will or as a result of a spirit's will? What is it that makes medium and Spirit indispensable to one another?

(c) There is a third way of conceiving physical phenomena,

sometimes put forward as an interpretation of magical

”changing".' This theory would seem to have an affinity with

Spiritualism, and the language appropriate to it is readily elicited, although I never heard it formulated clearly.

Perhaps it is not "the world" (objective reality) which changes, but the way in which witnesses perceive the world:

the object does not really pass through solid matter, but

somehow everyone is made to think that it has. Here, physical phenomena become a form of ESP, by which a telepathic

suggestion is induced. The induction is paranormal, since it applies to all witnesses at all times.

(2) Control

A medium speaks in a voice not her own or writes in a hand not her own. How does this provide "evidence”?

The controlling spirit stands in the "place” of the medium's "mind”. The body, in truly Cartesian fashion, is now a machine with a "ghost". 156 What "proves" that the medium's body is not under her "control" are the signs of otherness (the trance, the accent, the form of words, the style of writing). But these are precisely what are unnecessary for a "scientific" hypothesis. If the spirit writes with the hand of the medium, why cannot it write in the hand of the medium? (It does so to "prove" itself, but this "proof" itself makes the phenomenon doubtful).

(3) Auras Seeing auras might appear to involve looking at Spirit directly. But most mediums say it is not like "ordinary" seeing. Perhaps they only "seem-to-see" auras, clairvoyantly, as they perceive future conditions or past events. On the other hand, according to some the aura is at least partly

"physical" (or, strictly, "paraphysical", since established science does not recognise its existence). In that case, aura-seeing is neither the seeing of Spirit nor the quasi- seeing of Spirit, but the super-seeing of matter.

(4 ) Healing

As a general rule, Spiritalists conceive mental healing to work rather in the way that Mesmer said it did.^ Thus* there is a cleansing effect, a drawing out of mental and physical

"poisons". The sweeping motions of the hands induce out and brush away sickness, often via the fingertips and toe- nails. The healer wrings her hands at intervals to disperse 65 the "poisons” which have become attached to them. Vitality

is conveyed from healer to healed, and this "powerdrain" means that healers have to be careful of their own health.

But at the same time, while there is no tendency on the part of Kortfielders to attribute sickness to delusion, in the 67 manner of Christian Science, nor cures to the patient's

"suggestibility", processes are believed to take place in healing which do not conform to the "magnetic fluid” model.

Sometimes people get sick because their "etheric body” has been displaced or because an "earthbound entity" has 69 attached itself. As well, in any successful cure,

"balance” is restored to the patient, and this balance, obscurely mental and physical, is difficult to relate to 70 the theory of a auasi-physical fluid.

Podmore discusses further accounts of Spiritualist healing which attribute it neither to hypnotic suggestion nor to modifications of a "physical" medium like that postulated by Mesmer, but to the influence of the same "power"

(whatever it is) exercised in physical phenomena, or to 71 the action of spirits.

(5) Astral travelling

Astral travelling is hard to make sense of in terms of .. 7? any paradigm that resembles those of science. Some psychic researchers attempt to explain its effects by 73 telepathy,another claims that "the only mechanism likely to be operating is the electomagnetic aura",^ while others feel that OOBE's are hallucinatory, though giving some credence to the clairvoyant and apparitional aspects of 75 the phenomenon.

Spiritualist's attempts to be "scientific" fail. Actually it is necessary that they do so, because the code of

(positivist) Science is antithetical to the Spiritualist gnosis.

Spirit manifests itself through anomalies, which are violations of the conventionally " e x p e c t e d " T h e s e violations operate as signifiers of gno®is: being in this world but not of it, they point beyond it. Such signifiers require proof of their validity, otherwise

"who is to say1' that Spirit is not imaginary? But positivist assumptions, the most likely recourse of an attempt to be ’’scientific”, require that all phenomena be brought within the ambit of determining laws. Spiritualist phenomena are therefore not usually supposed to be miracles, but are thought to be governed by ”laws" which are "higher” than those of natural science.

However, if the Spiritualist anomalies were "proved” to be lawlike, they would cease to be violations of the expected and, no longer being anomalous, they would cease to point to gnosis.

Spiritualists are on the horns of a dilemma, caught between gnosis which cannot be ’’proved” (positivistically), and proof which cannot be gnostic.

The Symbolic

Spiritualism is "not just a science”; it expresses values methods and imagery which derive from ’’aesthetic” domains: from Art and Sensibility (mediums are "sensitive"); that is, the site ruled not by Proof but by Poetry.

"Like attracts like”, Spiritualists say, understanding the corollary that unlikes repel each other. The phrase is of deep significance.

It is an expression of the hermetic Doctrine of Correspond- 77 ences, a concept "at the root of all occult interpretation”.

There exists

a certain subtile correspondence or analogy... between the superior and inferior worlds...between the noumenal and phenomenal, between the mind of man and his bodily condition, between the spiritual and the natural. A modern astrologer stresses the fundamental character of this vision of the universe as an analogical totality in the following terms:

No mastery of stellar science is possible without understanding the degree to which nature herself has dramatised the essential relationship among things in general...Astrological judgement is an orderly analysis of various relationships through their most simple significance... Symbolism must be seen to be revealing because it is natural...Man may divide up his universe in everyday living, but he cannot cancel out the relationships of any one part of it with every other part. The whole remains total or complete.

•he Aesthetic, metaphorical principle of "like attracts like” appears in Spiritualism in a number of distinct contexts.

(1) Phenomena as metaphors RO '.'he chronic "cognitive dissonance” of the attempt to conceive Spiritualism as a Science is tolerable because models of causation are not fully brought into play.

Instead, putative anomalies may be explained by postulating relationships of signification between different domains, R1 which need not be presumed to have a causal basis. Where Science conceives the world to be like a collection of machines, the Symbolic construes the world as an expressive system in which self, matter and Spirit are linked by a series of symbolic correspondences. The causal connections which are ruptured by anomalies and which Science seeks to 82 restore are no longer seen as fundamental.

(2) The levels of Spirit

The various levels or planes of Spirit sort themselves out on the basis of attraction and repulsion. Fere on earth - 0-2 or below in - the "grossest" elements are knit together, and have sunk away from and below "purer" element which are similarly knit together at higher levels. "Good” souls congregate together away from the less purified, who also keep company. In this way, the principle underlies the karmic elements of Spiritualist eschatologies, and also

supplies a rationale for internecine "sectarianism" (since the "good”, the "pure” and the "correct” will seek each other out, as will their opposition).

(3) Reading

Experience of Spirit in its "raw” state, no matter how vivid,

seldom contains much of clear value for the living. As the medium experiences it, it is a stream of images. Even when Spirit "speaks” to a clairaudient, or through a trance

speaker, the "true meaning" of the words, wrapped up in

’’elevated" and "archaic” phraseology, is often obscure.

Usually, therefore, the material requires "reading" -

Spiritualism and contemporary criticism having independently

generalised this term iri the same direction to mean decoding,

the analysis of signifiers. Just as thf ability to interpret

"normal" sensations is necessary for "normal" perception,

th. ability to "read" supposedly "paranormal" sensations is

necessary for clairvoyance. A person may be a "natural”

psychic, in that their minds are bombarded with paranormal

input, but if she cannot learn to translate this input into

meaningful output, her mediumship remains ’’undeveloped”. She is like a radio receiver without a modulator.

(she ’’sees” but cannot "read”).®^

Clairvoyance, then>requires not only the "reception" of

experience attributed to a paranormal source, but a diagnostic skill; the ability to constitute this experience as a pc "solution” - that is, as a "message”. In this work of translating from Spirit to the world, the medium may unintentionally introduce distortions into the messages intended by Spirit. Therefore mediums will sometimes simply "pass on" an image or a phrase, without interpretation. "I'm giving it to you as I get it”, they say.

(4) Control

Control can also be seen as governed by the law of "like attracts like", because it is influences which in some way are "in sympathy" with the sensitive which are most likely to be "picked up ", That is one reason why spiritual progress is thought to involve .a Faustian pursuit of diverse experiences, since it is by experiencing many things that a medium acquires "sympathy" with many things, and is thereby able to "open up" to a wider range of psychic influences.

(5) Auras

The aura is often identified with the cloud of light said to surround holy persons and portrayed in Christian iconography as the ahlo or nimbus. Another common citation among p /: Spiritualists is Joseph's "coat of many colours".

Paracelsus had written in the sixteenth century that "the vital force ..in man...radiates round him like a luminous ft 7 sphere". In 1844, Keichenbach theorised about an "Gdic Force" 88 surrounding people and objects. However, the aura in its contemporary occult conception is largely the work of Charles 89 Leadbeater .

According to this, the aura is composed of the emanations of the human being on the different "planes" in which it qn exists. These resolve themselves into several distinct auras, the perception of which is dependent on the type of clairvoyance used. There is the aura of the astral body, which reveals by its colour and patterning the passions, emotions and sensations which the subject is experiencing

or is prone to. There is another aura which indicates "what sort of use he has made of his life so far in this

incarnation", another by which the sensitive may know "how

far his real life as a soul has advanced, and what progress 91 the ego has made in its unfoldment towards

There is also a health aura, which, being composed of etheric

matter, "needs much less-developed sight than the astral part 92 of the aura" and is composed of "an infinitude of straight

lines radiating evenly in all directions from the pores of

the body...on the advent of disease, there is an instant

change, the lines in the neighborhood of the part affected

becoming erratic, and lying about in all directions in the wildest confusion, or dropping like the stems of faded flowers.

Leadbeater's book on the aura was published in 1902. Nine

years later, W.J. Xilner, a physician and surgeon at St.

Thomas' Hospital in London, published The Aura, in which he

claimed that it could be made visible to normal sight by

viewing through lenses coated with dicyanin. ^hus seen,

the aura supposedly appeared as a "faint grayish cloud" ^ divided into three parts, the form and colouration of which qc; cold “be of assistance in diagnosis, Kilner's book, while

having no effect on orthodox medicine, continues to

influence people interested in "the psychic" and "popular

science". Taylor, for example, while dismissing Kilner's

claim that the aura is composed of radiation in the ultra-

violet as having "little substance", goes on to suggest

that it is part of the body's infra-red radiation.^

Many contemporary authors identify the aura with the

mysterious patterns recorded by a photographic plate placed adjacent to an object in a strong electro-magnetic 97 field, called Kirlian photography after its discoverers.

The idea that there are several auras has become fairly widespread. For example, a recent exponent of ’’" refers to the astral, mental and vital auras, indicative of emotional, medical and intellectual conditions 98 respectively. Most Mortfielders, however, refer to the aura as a singular entity.

Thus, the aura has as ”scientific" a background as any

Spiritualist phenomenon. In reality, however, it functions as a symbolic field; like a medieval painting or the neon lights of a city, it is replete with signs.

The size, shape, texture, pattern and luminosity of the aura are all part of this symbolism, but most important is colour.

The Spiritualist colour symbolism pertains not only to auras, but is generalised to include especially clothing, jewellery, interior decoration :.and the flowers brought to the Spiritualist service.

Just as there is a pluralism concerning the causal models which may underlie phenomena, there is a pluralism concerning the symbolic coding of auric colours, for ”no two people ever 99 receive psychically or spiritually in the same way’’. ^ There is, however, a reasonable consensus, as is shown by

Table 4, which compares the colour associations generally made by Mortfielders with those of Leadbeater,100 33ruCe Copen, a "popular science” author,^®^ and Genevieve V/oelflf, a 102 contemporary Californian medium.

(6) Flowers In the flower service, the flowers are not simply objects

for psychometrising, but introduce both literal colour and 166

COLOUR MORTFIELD LEADBEATER COPEN WOELFL

Black Evil* Hate, malice. Hate, malice. sickness, Brown depression, Avarice, Avarice, anxiety* selfishness, selfishness, indulgence jealousy. jealousy. Grey in drugs and Depression, Fear, tobacco. fear depression Grey- Depressed blue feelings. Violet Gentleness, goodness, love of truth, divine zeal. Purple Occultism, Sublimity, Royal quality, psychic love of glory, powers. ceremony. exhaltation, honour, magnetic attraction. Eark blue Psychic indigo ability. "Hue Spirituality. Religious SPIRIT, ' Will, feeling. spirituality, spiritualist religiosity. perception, truthfulness, realisation. Turquoise Culture, spirituality, high morality. Green Healing. Adaptability, Sympathy, Immortality, cunning, altruism, growth, versatility, charity, hope, sympathy, ingenuity endurance compassion. compassion. Yellow Intellect, Intellect, MIND, Wisdom, will, intelligence. intelligence. intellectuality. intuition, Gold Godliness love of light, peace. Orange Vivacity, Pride, Wisdom, Health, liveliness ambition justice. aspiration. Crimson Love. Avarice, maliciousness. Red Sex, Anger. PHYSICAL, Human love, violence. friendship, healing. health, vigor, love. Link Love, Divine love, gentleness, amiability, friendliness. White Purity, Pure spirit. Spirituality, meditation. godliness,high aspiration.

Table 4 : Auric colour symbolism. 167 associational richness. Flowers are in common use throughout the world as decorations, offerings, omens and emblems. In modern societies they are appropriate at marriages and funerals, military parades and peace demonstrations. Women are courted and the sick comforted by flowers.

Cirlot notes two distinct sets of floral associations. They 103 are "symbolic of transitoriness, of Spring and of beauty". They are also, because of their shape, "an image of the 'Centre'", of quintessence, concentration and the soul*. 105 Since flowers are, as Freud mentions, "the genitals of plants", are transformed into seeds, and are conventionally linked with

Spring, they connote fertility and vigour. Finally, the scent of flowers, like Spirit itself, is all-pervading, intangible, ineffable, essential.10^

There is also an aesthetic of the varieties of flowers. In

Hamlet, Ophelia, inventing her own flower ceremony, distributes flowers and herbs to the Danish court, saying

There's rosemary, that's for remembrance;... and there is pansies, that's for thoughts...There's fennel for you, and columbines; there's rue for you; and here's some for me; we may call it herb of grace o'Sundays. Oi you must wear your rue with a difference. There's a daisy; I would give you some violets, but they withered all when my father died. Shakespeare is here drawing upon a magical law closely related to Paracelsus's Doctrine of Signatures. A charming

expression of it is to be found in The language and Poetry

of Flowers.108 This book, published in 1877, concerns

"that graceful symbolism which has in every nation entwined

itself around the floral gifts of Creation", and contains

"a complete vocabulary; quotations illustrating the various sentiments and meanings attached to flowers and plants;

flower language in bouquets etc; together with a collection

of selected poems illustrating the nature, beauty, sentiments, teachings and associations of the floral world etc. 168 Every plant likely to "be familiar to a nature enthusiast of

Victorian England is correlated with an emotion, character trait or sentimental condition, from abecedary (volubility) to zinnia (thoughts of absent friends), and from absent (wormwood) to zest. From it, we learn that fennel represents strength, columbines folly, rue disdain (it also symbolises grace - "o' Sundays"), daisies innocence,and violets faith- fulness or modesty. With the aid of this set of correspond- ences, posies become "flower messages".

Martin mentions that some of the mediums of the church she studied "have a complex and well-developed code of meanings in the flowers which the spirits so often 'present* to their living kin".^'1'® At Mortfield, floral significations were confined to the auric colour code, aiid occasional remarks about the appearance, size, perfume or condition of a blossom or herb.

Conclusion

In Chapter 1, a model of Spiritualism as an ideology was discussed which could be represented figuratively like this!

DOMINANT CODES

transformations

SPIRITUALIST CODES

enunciations

SPIRITUALIST TEXTS t#9 This chapter has sketched a nap of the main Spiritualist codes sometimes cutting away below the surface to investigate the archeology of the salient features. Some parts of the map are blank, others blurred, yet others exhibit pentimenti — underlying layers of past meanings which intrude into the present. This is necessarily so, because ideologies are incomplete, ambiguous, contradictory and in constant flux.

Accounts of them, being themselves ideological, are bound to reflect these features.

As to the "dominant ideologies", there are "readings" of novels, films, newspapers and even conversations 112 which are concerned to expose the insistence of ideological distortion, and to assess how the texts in question reinforce or undermine it; and there are a number of intensive invest- igations of specific ideological fields, among them Marx's theories of commodities and of the wage relationship,11*5

Lukaos' of reification11^ and recent theorisations of the 115 construction of subjectivity. ' But because it can only be grasped from the inside, in terms of itself, the perception of ideology is necessarily partial; it can be glimpsed only

"through a glass darkly":

Commonly said: "dominant ideology". This expression is incongruous. For what is ideology? It is precisely the idea insofar as it dominates: ideology can only be dominant. Correct as it is to speak of an "ideology of the dominant class", because there is certainly a dominated class, it is quite inconsistent to speak of a "dominant ideology" because there is no dominated ideology: where the "dominated" are concerned, there is nothing, no ideology, unless it is precisely - and this is the last degree of alienation - the ideology they are forced (in order to make symbols, hence in order to live) to borrow from the class that dominates them. The social struggle cannot be reduced to the struggle between two ideologies: it ie^the subversion of all ideology which is in question.

This exaggerates - for what is the ideological terrain from which it speaks? Struggle and contradiction are present in all ideology: the dominated evolve distinct ideologies 117 which manifest signs of resistance. But apart from the problem of finding a site from which to compare ideologies in this way, there are great difficulties concerning verifiability, not to mention the sheer complexity of the signify systems concerned.

I shall therefore turn aside from the task of analysing how Spiritualism is a transformation of dominant ideologies Instead, the focus of the next two chapters will be on how

Spiritualists texts function as enunciations. 171

1. Fiske & Hartly (1978:60) 2 . Barthes (1978). In another place, Barthes says "the code is a perspective of quotations, a mirage of structures; we know only its departures and returns; the units which have resulted from it (those we inventory) are themselves, always, ventures out of the text, the mark, the sign of a virtual digression toward the remainder of a catalogue" (1974:20).

3. Barthes (1978:4)

4. Ibid:59

5. Zaretsky (1974:171) remarks that Spiritualists "are particul- arly attuned...to he talked at lectured to, and verbally managed". 6. Ginzberg (1980) explores the ramifications of this fact,and the consenuent intimate connections between divination and science, art history, medicine, criminology and psycho- analysis.

7. Cicero (1938:235) divided divination into two sorts: "natural" (by means of dreams and prophecies) and "artificial" (by observation of "portents'*). My discussion is concerned only with the latter, since "natural” divination is the same as clairvoyance.

8 . Feuerbach (1881) posited that the projection of the human onto the non-human was the constituting factor of religion. This theory provides an example of "the logic of the supplement"(Derrida, 1976:141-164), whereby what appears at first as something “marginal with respect to a plenitude - as writing is to the activity of speech or perversion to normal sexuality - is identified as a substitute for that plenitude or as something which can supplement or complete it. It then becomes possible to show that what were conceived as the distinguishing characteristics of the marginal are in fact the defining qualities of the central object of consideration" (Culler, 1979:168). The elevation of the distinctive characteristics of divination to the defining element of religion in general results in an interpretation of religion as alienation.

9. In its "popular form", as it appears in some daily mass- circulation newspapers, biorhythmic analysis is a divinatory technique resembling astrology, where the omen is a mathematical function of the time of birth.

10. The original Spiritualist phenomena,, the "rappings" so seldom heard today, were also omen-s, but in this case the message code was public, not the esoteric property of the medium:one knock for "yes", two for "no" etc.

11. Buchanan (1885); Heywood (1948). Buchanan (1814-1899)> described by the Dictionary of American Biography as "erratic" (Johnson, 1929:216-217),was a proponent of ••eclectic medicine", a movement opposeo to the “materialistic** 172 outlook of orthodox medical science, and was also a Rousseau/s^ educational reformer (Buchanan, 1882). He claimed "that any person of a highly impressionable temperament, who will cultivate his faculties for such investigation, may learn..to recognize and describe the action of the various organs, and to estimate their relative strength by the impressions which he receives from contact*’(Buchanan 1885: 24-25). 12. Buchanan (1885:23), 13. Sepparial (1972:310) This explanation makes a lot more sense of the psychometrzing of personal possessions than of flowers. Psychometry has a close affinity with contagious magic. Foucault cites a seventeenth century author on magic, who refers to "mourning roses that have been used as obsequies, which, simply from their former adjacency with death, will render all persons who smell them sad and moribund". (Foucault, 1970:23)* ?4. Drury and Tillett (1980)

15. Ibid:39-40. This theory parellels a common theological position on the of images in Christianity, Buddhism etc.

16. Ibid:40

17. The obverse of this account of palmistry in the usual explanation of astrology. While the palm (the omen) is an effect of the fate, in astrology "the stars” (the omen) is the cause of the fate.

18. Nelson (1969:193) 19. Macklin (1974:415) 20. Dolgin (1974) shows how even "dogmatic” encompasses a wide diversity of individual beliefs. 21. Macklin, citing Dubois (1955), argues that Americans believe that all men are created equal, while holding that man is perfectible. This contradiction is also embodied in Spiritualist philosophy. So it is that all of the mediums in the sample claimed on the one hand that all humans are endowed by Natural law with some psychic abilities (so in that we are all equal), while on the other hand...all knew of gifted relatives in their backgrounds, from which one could infer that they perceived a legitimate claim on a genetically bestowed ability that made them special, more sensitive instruments (Macklin, 1977:68;.

22. Parsons (1965:XIVIII).

23. In the case of Spiritualism, this deity is a remote, beneficent, obscure "intelligence''. 173

24. "Brother John", the author of a Dorothy Dix type column in Psychic News, quoted the following letter: I cannot pray since my cat was killed. I asked the spirit guides to take care of him when crossing the road. What good did it do? He suffered "badly for an hour and a half. I can still hear him whimpering...I just say, "Bless you“ - hut who will do the blessing I don't know. Brother John replies, basically, that spirit guides do not possess unlimited powers, that pets are not all that important, that, "life on our plane must have its accidents and fatalities" - and that he is sorry about the reader's cat.

But fatalism is modified by a reiteration of the idea that evil is "unavoidable owing to man's contributory causes". Each person can contribute towards overcoming it by "personal responsibility, which we would discharge by developing and becoming attuned to the spirit world".

25. Perhaps,although this is not elaborated, a necessary flaw, along the lines of Leibniz's idea that this is the best of possible worlds. (leibniz,1965). The theological difficulties concerning the "freedom of God" which this doctrine causes Christianity would not touch Spiritualism's conception of the deity as an abstracted intelligence: God,a vague, loving craf t sperson, is not even clearly conce ived as volitional, let alone omnipotent.

26. This view, not a dominant one in Spiritualism, is the distinguishing idea of Christian Science. An underlying motif of Hindu - Buddhist philosophy - the world as may a - it is also present in Christian thought: "Whatever is* is good; and evil, the origin of which I was trying to find, is not a substance...For you (God) evil does not exist... Yet in the separate parts of your creation there are some things which ve think of as evil because they are at variance with other things. But there are other things again with which they are in concord, and then they are good...And since this is so, I no longer wished for a better world, because I was thinking of the whole of creation" (Augustine, 1974:148-9) 27. lauer (1974:346)

28. New English Bible, I Corinthians, Ch. 12, vs 4-8.

29. Ibid, Ch. 13, vs 1-3, 8-9, 13.

30. Interestingly, there is no mention of the recently bereaved, who are a small minority of "seekers". 31. ie wLove your neighbour as yourself" (Matthew 22:39) 32. Elaine Harvey illustrated the theme of love and service with a reminiscence which has the quality of a parable. A friend's “heart had stopped", and she had “gone to the other side, and seen the people and buildings there.” St Paul had appeared before her, and asked, "Will you do God's work?" She replied that she would; if she had refused, she would certainly have died. (Here death is pictured as something 174

to be put off as long as possible - as if the MphysicalM was not such a bad place after alii) She had been allowed to "come back", and ever since had done "God's work" of helping and caring for people and being "kind and cheerful", even though she herself had been sick and in and out of hospital.

33. Quoted in Ferguson (1976:108). For the purposes of my discussion it does not matter whether Nyrgren's interpretation is correct or not.

34. The gnostic journey is back to the self's source, to the place where the seeker and the sought become fused. "God is outside of none, present unperceived to all; we break from Him, or rather from ourselves; what we turn from we cannot reach; astray ourselves, we cannot go in search of another; a child distraught will not recognize its father; to find ourselves is to know our source" ^Plotinus, Sixth Bnnead, IX,10; 1952:358).

35. Pettitt (1974:12) 36. It must be said that to women who spend most of their lives tending the needs of others, this is usually good advice.

37. Eattansi (1973:165) 38. As in the following prose piece by Mary Jay: Who is to say. Who does God's work. I am no better than you. And you are no better than me. We are all God's children. Colour and creed alike. So each and everyone of us has the same rights. I thank God for my free-will. And for every day I live. To walk under the sun, and feel its warm rays. To feel the gentle breeze on my face. The falling rain, as it hits the roof tops. Stars that shine so brightly, like jewels. The sweet soent of the flowers, that bloom. Listen to the birds that sing. For all !\ature, creatures big and small. To feel apart and know God is within. To always walk tall. For what i did wrong today. Try to put right tommorrow. Try to see good in everyone. Pray to help me be wiser as I grow old. To keep my childhood dreams. Have Faith, love and above all Grace. This is how I feel. If you the reader do not think I should do God's work. Then I am truly sorry. God ~ bless us all.

39. Boddington (1947:118-119)

40. Psychic LTews, 4 January, 1975:7

41. Halifax makes a similar point about shaman?: As intermediary between the realms of the divine, the nether world, and the middle world, the shaman becomes a master of thresholds...Just as twilight in the temporal threshold, shamanic equilibrium is the process of occurring at that threshold, where the shaman - wizard becomes the guide, the path, the vision, the image the personification of both the transfigured and the field of transformation. 175 42. This and the following line contain the peculiar trope of referring to something by describing it as a metaphor ("imitation", precursor) of itself. Such a catachre is can only connote "madness", since it undermines all "reality11. Perhaps it becomes necessary to discover the ’•true names” of things. (See FN 63). 43. Nelson (1969). 44. This terminology relies on the scheme outlined by Barthes in Mythologies (1973:114f).

45. Balch & Taylor (1977:85 ).

46. Macklin (1974:391; 1977:68-70, 73-74). 47. This concept comes from Spengler, for whom it represents a distinctively modern and European attitude: The Faustian soul1 s...prime symbol is pure limitless space...the Faustian is an existence which ip led with a deep consciousness and introspection of the ego, and a resolutely personal culture evidenced in memoirs, reflections, retrospects and prospects and conscience” (Spengler, 1946:183) Wilson (1973:25) cites Faust’s "longing for the occult" as an attempt to escape the "dusty room of his personal consciousness".

48. Said in conversation. Here, true to ’’individual responsibility", even the love of Jesus is really a matter of His "looking out for Himself”. 49. Hence Faust's onymoronic declaration: I vow myself to excitment, intoxication, the bitterest pleasures, amorous hatred and stirring remorse. My heart, now free of the longing for learning, shall close itself to no future pain. I mean to enjoy in my innermost being all that is offered to mankind,to seize the highest and the lowest, to mix all kinds of good and evil, and thus to expand my self till it includes the spirit of all men - and with them, I shall be ruined and perish in the end. (Goethe, 1949:54-55; Faust I lines 1765-1775) 50. This fragment of personal mythology is rich in connotations, representing a pluralist acceptance of sexes and zodiac signs (since I have been or will be these other things, how could I be critical of them?), and also referring to the Doctrine of Correspondence, since by "vibrating" on the “wavelengths" of different modes of existence, the self "tunes into” and thus becomes more like the Universe as a totality.

51. Falfreman (1979)- 52. Macklin's comments on "Mrs M." (Macklin, 1977:72) hold for most Sydney Spiritualists. Mrs. M. "hears, sees and feels the spirits speak to her, appear to her, and touch her”, like scientists, she takes replicability to be 176

essential in providing evidence for a theory, and there- fore seeks - and finds - "proof of spirit" from other mediums as well as her own experiences. She “maintains a skeptical antidogmatic attitude" and "values inductive reasoning".

53. Discussing the skepticism which had been voiced in the press about Yuri Geller*s feats, Jimmy Green claimed the following etymology for the word ’’". In Sanskrit, wgu" meant dark and "ru" meant light. The guru is therefore one who if-aris from darkness to light. "These days Jimmy concluded,"it1s hard to know who's a guru and vho's a rugu!" (Guru is Sanskrit, but it meant grave, weighty or dignified).

54. Either in the form of details of circumstantial details of names, dates, places, personal characteristics etc, or as vaguer ’’conditions".

55. Me Cabe (1920:105). 56. The use of "billets", which for flowers substitutes tickets on which a cmestion is written by the recipient carry this testing a stage further. The medium does not look at the question until after the reading is finished, and so has to "demonstrate’’ clairvoyance under the circumstances of neither knowing the recipient nor the auestion asked by the recipient. Billets were not used in Sydney at the time of fieldwork, but have caught on recently, probably from the U.S. (Zaretsky, 1974:199-200). Chinese Spirit mediumship involves a similar practice (Elliott, 1955)*

57. The difficulties of providing a situation in which empirically adeouate psychometric "proof" can be provided are greater in home circles than in services. In one circle which agreed to have a regular psychometric ritual, there was a lively discussion about the details. Some wanted the objects to be personal possessions (rings, watches etc), but it was objected that since the members of the circle knew each other fairly well, there was a good chance that people could be identified by such signifiers. It was therefore agreed that flowers should be brought. A further objection was then made that people should not use plain brown paper bags, because if two people brought the same kind of flower, it could be impossible to tell whose flower was being read. So flowers should be enclosed in marked or otherwise easily identifi- able bags. In the event, at the next seance most of the bags were plain brown ones, and nearly half contained jewellery rather than flowers.

^8. Locke (n.d.: 7-8). See also Nelson (1968:480),

59. m this, Spiritualism is like "normal science" (.Kuhn) except that it never solves any problems set by its paradigm. 177 60. A medium's reputation need not be based on ’’platform work"; Peter Siman and Robbie Robinson confined themselves to circles and private readings, while Mr & Mrs Godwin concentrated on healing. Platform work, however, is the normal way of building a clientele of followers and augmenting one's prestige and influence.

61. Here Ray is using the word in one of its more specific senses, as direct perception of Spirit, or the E.S.P. of visual imagery.

62. The closestl heard to it came from Jimmy Green: "physical phenomena are really just a form of mental phenomena”. But comments like "nothing on the earth plane is truly real”, are a stock-in-trade of Spiritualist discourse.

63. This speculation is a easy springboard into metaphysics. If something can be made to appear as other than what it is, what is it, really? In a trilogy of “children's" novels by Ursula le Guin (1971,1974a, 1974b), the magic of the imaginary world of Earthsea is premised on a kind of supernatural nominalism, whereby power over things is obtained by knowing their "true names". This doctrine seems very logical, if things can really be made to appear as if they are something else. The model of magical changing, incidentally, is not only a philosophical fantasy, but alive and well in "popular culture". In a recent Superman comic, lex luther hypnotizes the world into not being able to perceive the Man of Steel (Superman Pocketbook ->/16t 1980 :20f).

64. But Boddington's claim that without the theory of a "vital" fluid, "the whole fabric of Spiritualism falls to the ground" (1947:124) seems a great exaggeration.

65. Boddington (1947:130-1,137) notes the necessity of -cleansing passes" to -stroke away the diseased particles”, which cling both to the patient and the healer. A trance lecture on healing printed in theroneod magazine of the Kortfield Church refers to "drawing away...these darkened cloaks of fear, these false cloaks of prtence, these heavy cloaks of the weariness and the poisoned matter wxth which the body has become lopded. The greater part of thF healing work that you do is in cleansing...so that the light and beauty of the spirit may begin to H o w and show..."

66. Boddington (1947:130) speaks of ’’saturation passes'* whioh convey power to the patient. See also Wilson (1973:231)-

67. Podmore (1963:249ff), Douglas (197C:47), Wardwell (1965).

68. Spiritualists usually believe that a possessing soul needs to be "talked round" - in fact, it is as unhappy as the person possessed, and needs love. But sometimes their expulsion is more abrupt, m the course of an anecdote, Mrs Campbell told me how she had expelled one spirit: "you get to buggery out of here, I said, and they got out". 178

70. In a ’’trance lecture" a Mortfield medium said, "When you are seeking to heal, look at those whom you meet and ask within yourself: what part of this person needs balancing? for invariably the lack of balance often lies in the lack of love, and therefore as you seek to love each other and as you try to radiate love into the world that is surrounding you, so you are in very truth radiating the healing energy of divine life which is creativeness, and creativeness is contained within the tenderness of love.“ Halifax refers to “shamanic balance" as “ a process that is intrinsic to all of shamanism" (1979:19). See also Bowen (l978:85ff) 71. Podmore (l963:192ff) 72. Drury and Tillett (1980:162)

73. Watson (1974:306-7), Muldoon and Carrington (l973:20f)

74. Taylor (1976:155) 75. Ashby (1972:151)

76. As for any occultism, the theme of anomaly runs right through Spiritualist ideology, extending to the kinds of Spirits which are “contactedu, these freouently, in fact normally, being from exotic times, places and cultures (Africa, China, Egypt etc). There is a connection here with Spiritualist pluralism (an acceptance of anomalies tends to an acceptance of difference).

77. Sepharial (1973:VI)

78. Ibid: V. The writer goes on to state that ’'the mystic, the poet and the creative artist are all unconscious interpreters of this universal law...which binds the Microcosm to the Macrocosm" (ibid:Vl). William Blake, a follower of Swedenborg, expresses the Doctrine of Correspondence in the po^m Auguries of Innocence: To see a World in a Grain of Sfjid And a Heaven in Wild Flower, Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand And Eternity in an hour. (Blake 1958:62) Spence points out that magical spells"appear to have arisen in the idea that there is some natural and intimate connection betwen words and the things signified by them... Thus, if one repeats the name of a supernatural being the effect will be analogous to that produced bv the being itself M( Spence 1960:377).

79. Jones (1971:7-9). After astrology, the most complex working out of this metaphorical paradigm is the Doctrine of Signatures (the "signs of nature"), advanced by Paracelsus in the sixteenth century and elaborated by Dells. Porta, a system of analogues between botanical and human physiology which provides a rationale for herbal treatment. (Crow, 1973:211-212; Schumaker, 1972: 112f; Krappe, 1930:236). 179 80. According to the influential theory propounded by Festinger (1957), discrepant cognitions create tension which the individual strives to reduce by making his cognitions more consistent. Festinger et al (1965) used the theory in a study of a Californian flying saucer cult with spiritualistic features to explain why failures of prophecy did not result in the immediate demise of the movement. Based on a behaviourist paradigm, the theory in its more refined versions borders on circularity, but can be disconfirmed in more concrete formulations (cf Chaparis & Chaparis, 1964).

81. The distinction between “causal" and "metaphorical" explanations of anomalies parallels Pierce's distinction between indices, connected to their referrent by causality or continuity, and icons, connected by resemblance (Singer, 1980). (However, the difference is ignored by Saussure (1966), questioned by Kco (l976:191f) and revamped by leach (1976:12-16)). The distinction between "metaphor and metonymy is magical thought was first made explicit by Frazer (l970:14ff) in his discussion of homeophathic and contagious magic. See leach (1976:29-31). 82. Since psychic research attempts to bring miracles within the scope of causal models of explanations, it is antagonistic to the Symbolic, though both agree against "orthodoxy” that anomalies exist and are significant. Jury's concept of , rhowever, may be an attempt tq bridge the gap (cf Coll.ins and linch, 1979; Mayne, 1966).

8;?. Ideas of hell are not well-developed among Mortfield Spiritualists, most of whom tend to think of "this sink of iniquity" (Robbie) as as bad as place ?s can be found anywhere. In the U.S., with its stronger "fire and brimstone" fundamentalist tradition, there seems to be more emphasis on the idea that "sin and wrong doing will necessarily bring remorse and suffering that would be difficult to describe in words*'. (Natural Spiritualist Associations of the U.S.A. Spiritualist Manual, 1967, p39, quoted in Macklin (1977:59).;

84. The case of Dennis is an example of how recognized "psychic powers" do not necessarily coincide with successful mediumship. Dennis was introduced to the church by Mary Jay, to whom he was distantly related. Mary's belief that he "showed a lot of promise" was agreed with by others, and after a few weeks he was encouraged to so some public mediumship, "reading” some of the flowers at a Sunday evening service. His readings were hesitant and uninteresting, and recognising this he soon stepped down, later he said that he could "see colours all over the room” from the auras, a sensation he had previously reported at Peter Siman's developeuint circle . No one denied Dennis's "promise", but it became clear that Dennis was unable to make whatever was happing in his head real fox* others. After a few more weeks he dropped out of church activities, excusing himself on the ground that his child was ill. 180 85. A few mediums claim that their guides do this diagnostic work. A British medium claims to receive "like a host of others...symbols, such as a clock in a tower offering the same time on all four faces, a broken coin, dirty windows being washed to afford a clear view of the countryside**, but that he does not have to read these himself. "Quite simply, the interpretation is supplied, but not in sound or words.** (Psychic News 5 April, 1978:2). A few Mortfield mediums experienced this kind of assistance from their guides, but it is not usual. Symbolic diagnoses can be used to create many effects, from bathos and grand- iloauence to self-parody. An example of the last isatongue in-cheek report from the Mortfield Church magazine: A progressive pioneer Spiritualist, one of the better known mediums on the Spiritualist church circuit, really brightened up a recent service. He was getting a message from a spirit called Richard. He wasnft sure whether the spirit was in thr spiritual or in the physical spheres. He said, wWait - they’re showing me a box - he's definitely in spiritlM A trifle uncon^entional perhaps, but these little verbal titbits help to brighten up our spiritual services. 86. Genesis Chapter 37:3, King James Version (more recent translation have "a long-sleeved robe"). recause he had precognitive dreams and was persecuted for their, Joseph is an appealing figure to Spiritualists.

87. Spence (1960:51)

88. Reichenbach (1977)

89. ieadbeater (1971). The publication dates of this book provide a revealing index of the acceleration of interest in the “psychic": 1902, 1920, 1942, 1952, 1959, 1964, 1969, 1971...

90. Ibid: 6-9. 91. Ibid: 64 92. Ibid: 117

93. Ibid: 115 94. Kilner (1974:21) 95. Ibid: 6 96. Taylor (1976:126)

97. Cstrander & Schroeder (l971-200f), Watson (1974:141-150), Copen (1976:28), Sydenham (1979), Drury & Tillett (1980: 166-167). Copen (1976:5) links the aura tu the body's electro-inductive properties.

98. Metzer (1971:5) Colour symbolism is important in the occult/popular science/fringe medicine generally. (There ip a " chromotheropist"practising in Sydney, who" treatp people by seating them in light coloured in such a way as 181 to counteract their “conditions".) Most of the anthropological literature on colour symbolism is preoccupied with physiological correlations: white is the colour of semen and milk, red of blood etc (Eliade, 1976:93ff; Turner, 1965)

99. Woelfl (1976:77). While most Mortfielders associated red with sex and violence, Andy Johnson affirmed it to be "the true and original colour of spiritualility".

100. Leadbeater (1971). - Kay Stanford (1970:30), says that Leadbeater is '•‘generally correct**, although he Mdiffers slightly from my own experience in interpretation of subtleties in a few of the colours*1. Stanford claims to see rosy pink auras around the lower abdomens of pregnant women (ibid:l-3) 101. Copen (1976:40)

10?. Woelfl (1976:77). The words that most recur in this matrix provide a succinct summation of some primary Spiritualist preoccuptions: spirit, love, health, intellect, fear, depression...

103. Cirlot (1971:109). It is these connotations which make flowers particularly apt as Buddhist offerings, as the Pali stanzas whica has colour and scent, I offer at the blessed feet of the lord by this merit may there be release (Moksha). Just as this flower fades, so my body goes towards destruction* (Orombrich, 1971:115-6). Cirlot argues that the tlreco-Koman use of flowers at funerals was "not so much an offering as an analogy**, and their presence at feasts an example of pn antithetical symbol, ’’like the skeleton which the Egyptians would bring to their banouets, as a reminder of the reality of death and as a stimulus towards the enjoyment of life** (ibid:110).

104. Ibid:110. Spiritualists, with many others, consider flowers to be excellent images for concentrating and clearing the mind in mediation (Edwards, n.d.:7).

105. Freud (1974:192). Freud claims in this passage that in dreams blossoms "indicate women’s genitals, or in particular, \irginity" (ibid:192). (This, of course, is not the "structuralist” Freud of contemporary fashion"!) 106. nTo manifest itself as a smell is the nearest an objective reality can go towards becoming a concept without leaving the realm of the sensible altogether" (Gell, 1977:29). "Spirit*1 originally meant "breath” , a pheonomenon which has somethings in common with scent.

107. Shakespeare (1959:898)

108. Anon, 1877

109. Ibid: title page. 182

110. Martin (1971:152). In this case, the messages are "overheads" , and the flowers are present only "in spirit".

111. locke (n.d.) has produced a structuralist analysis of a Spiritualist "cosmology", based on participant observation of a group in Perth, which bears some striking resembalances to the present one. He makes a distinction between elements which are dualistic or binary (derived, he claims, "from Gnostic influences'1) and those which are not. In the former category he lists high/low, spiritual/material, control/surrender, right/wrong, self-giving/self, active/ passive, development/regression, evidence/illusion, spirit/ human and higher self/lower self. " ImportantM non-binary elements include power, medium, knowledge a.nd agent. He argues that these elements and their relationships produce two kinds of structures. Firstly, they “ delineate fundamental states of being and activities” which comprise “the modal, Spiritualist pattern of culture". Second, they generate the ”structural features of optative action".

112. Eg Woolfson (1976). In recent years it is film criticism which has taken this sort of ideological analysis most seriously (cf Screen Reader I. 1977)

113. Marx (1976).

114. lukacs (1971).

115. Cf Coward and Ellis (1977).

116. Parthes (1975:32-3). 117. See, eg Jayawardena (1968). CHAPTER 10

THE DELPHIC VOICE The medium and the message

The critical enunciator of Spiritualist texts is the medium, a figure with something in common with the doctor, the priest and, not least, the entertainer.

In their study of television - another entertaining medium -

Fiske and Hartley use the word “‘bardic" to describe oral texts which function to provide a confirming image of a culture to itself. In its bardic role, television, they argue, articulates consensus, implicates individuals in dominant value systems of the culture, celebrates the doings of the culture's members, gives assurance of the culture's practical adequacy, exposes its inadequacies, supplies its audience with a status and identity, and transmits security and involvement.^ i

These characteristics of television texts’are shared with those uttered by Spiritualists mediums. Both “media*1

struggle to reflect, maintain and enforce the ways of thinking, feeling ana acting of the culture in which they are imbedded, by reiterating and reworking the set of codes in which they find expression. This bardic function of 2 flower readings is examined m Chapter 10.

At the same time, mediums are brought into competition with each other, and this means they have to make their readings not only confirmatory, but interesting. One way of doing

this is variation. There are distinct message "styles” At

Mortfield, the "old guard" tended to emphasise the giving of circumstantial ''evidence'' relevant to the recipient of

the message, such as names, dates, and descriptions of

places and persons, while the "new guard" gave greater 185 prominence to inner experience and symbolic language. Mediums tend to acquire personal stylistic •'trademarks'*, and at the same time - like television stations - they vary their ’•programming", or else the interest of even an ardent audience would flag. In the course of reading the flowers at a service, the same medium is likely to deliver messages in a number of different styles.

However, the most pervasive entertaining device of the flower reading is one which it shares with all oracular texts: the quality of delphism.

The delphic text

The delphic text is distinguished by its suggestive indeter- minacy. Like the patterns of the Rorschach test, it encourages reading, but refrains from substantiating itself. It remains ambiguous, open and tantalizing.

Clearcut examples are "Biblical" prophecies and astrological

"predictions", but delphic aualities obtrude into a wide range of texts, including poetry^ and political rhetoric.4

The delphic text is suggestive because, like narrative and pedagogical texts, it provokes the formulation of enigmas.

Questions emerge, which prompt the reader to invent and review possible answers, and to continue scanning for answers raised by itself which gives the suggestive text its "meaning" for the reader.

Kead "as they are meant to be read", classical narrative and pedagogical texts do not disappoint; the reader who scans them "in the right way" will find there the answers to the ouestions they (seem to) raise. In this sense they are

“closed". Those "modern" texts which deliverately pitch themselves against the classical model (Nietzsche and Kafka, ?8€ for instance) deliberately "disappoint": they raise questions which they refuje to answer, thus challenging the reader to complete them. Such texts are (defiantly) MopenH.

The delphic text does not declare itself either open or closed. Many of its enigmas it neither answers, nor deliberately fails to answer. The reader is left scanning, and since solutions cannot be found within the text, there is pressure to import them from outside the text, that is, from the context of the scanner’s biography and knowledge - just as happens with the Rorschach blot. The recipient of the clairvoyant text is neither supplied with a completed text, nor challenged to complete one, but is rather Inveigled into writing unawares.

Analysis

The following extract from a flower reading of Joy Scott, one of the regular platform mediums at Mortfield, provides an illustration of this technique, whereby an illusion is generated that the solution of an enigma raised by the text comes from it, whereas in reality it comes from the context.

And as I come to this little flower here I feel a nervous condition a great impatience Oh I am feeling I am all tensed up Who a m I with first please? Who owns this little flower? (The recipient identifies himself) Are you expecting something to take place soon? Recipient: My wife's expecting a baby in five weeks.

The text attributes a condition of impatience to the recipient.

Enigma: what is the cause of this impatience? (Of course, such an attribution would be difficult to refute; who does not live in expectation of something?) The medium refers the enigma to the recipient, whose biography provides an

answer. It seems that because the text has initiated the

scanning, it is attributed gnostic potency: this reading

was considered a "great success", because Joy Scott had

"picked up the condition" of impending paternity "at once".

Characteristic delphic devices are the cliche, the symbol

and the paradox. Because of its vagueness, the fading of

its meaning from over-use, the use of a cliche raises the

question of its precise significance ("in this context"); but because it poses as self-explanatory, transparent, the

text in which it appears can fail to clarify without appearing evasive.

Spiritualist readings are riddled with cliches. Here is an

extract from a reading of Mrs Miller, another Mortfield

"regular":

There has been a little bit of you could almost call it a storm in a teacup I have been a little bit uptight about something over the recent period but now I'm coming to an understanding that as the saying goes all’s well that ends well. I'd just say to whoever you are to;just let things settle down and take their course because that's just the way it's going to be all's well that ends well.

What storm in a teacup? (Any storm might turn out at some

future date to have been in a teacup; on examination, any

teacup might turn out to contain a storm...) What have

"I" (the recipient^) been uptight about? (What is it to be

uptight, anyway?) What will end well? What things will

settle down? (And so on.) These phrases are applicable to

anything. They may apply to the same thing or to different

things. The passage is a collection of signifiers in search

of something to signify, and it is up to the recipient to

help it find them. tsa

As a more extended illustration of the dynamics of the

delphic text, there follows a longer message given by Mary

Jay to Elizabeth Johns. (The lines of this text,which will be returned to in the next chapter, are numbered for conven-

ience of reference.)

1. I get a stitch in time saves nine. 2. Do you ever feel as though you're having your leg pulled? 3. Because somebody just pulled my leg. 4. Er I don't know if it's coming with this flower or not 5. but there was a auestion put up with this flower 6. I feel 7. and the answer's yes 8. there's nothing to stop it 9. go all the way 10. things'll never look back 11. Also I feel somebody's going to do me out of a job here 12. so I'm not going to ask you to finish reading this flower 13. but I feel that this person also could get up here and read flowers and probably have done. 14. There's um a little bit of tidying up around this person to be done 15. um 16. I see things scattered everywhere 17. and I feel that they've go to do a bit of 18. tidying up or picking up pickinguup the pieces 19. more or less 20. Ihere's also a problem 21. with this person 22. I feel that it weighs pretty heavy at times 23. but I'm being told 24. that a lot of the problems are our own makings 25. and we are the only ones 26. that can really solve our own problems 27. I hope you can understand 28. what it is 29. but then the message is for you and no one else. 30. I feel that this person's moved around a bit too 31. and I feel that there's um 32. more moves ahead. 33. Who am I with? 34. Elizabeth: Thank you Mary. 35. Where am I going? 36. Mary: Place the message? 37. E: Yeah 38. No. 39. M: Okay. 40. E: Yes thank you very much. 41. M: That’s it 42. there's nothing to hinder what you're doing 43. it's very straight 44. and I'm being told to say 45. go ahead go along with it 46. all the way. t89

A reader unfamiliar with Spiritualist discourse will feel the need for some clarification of some of the jargon used-here.

1. "get": receive from Spirit.

4. ie I don't know if the foregoing or following (?)

impression is intended by Spirit for the bringer of

this flower or has meaning in some other context.

5. Sometimes people (are said to) ''place" specific

questions on their flower - somehow "think the question

in relation to the flower" - which they wish the medium

to "pick up" and reply to.

10. Probably a concatenation of "things'11 never be the

same" and "you'll never look back".

11. "do me out of a job": is or will be a medium like me.

23. ie by Spirit (spirit guides).

35. Refers to 32.

36. ie does the message make sense to you?

The text generates a series of enigmas, hardly any of which are resolved within it. Some, such as that arising from

32.' (ie what moves?) could definitely be "solved" by the recipient's biography: Elizabeth had recently returned to

Sydney after several years living in Newcastle. Others, such as those raised by the imagery of intidiness and the attribution of a "problem" ( 14- 26), may or may not have made "sense" to her.

If a message sets enough signifying snares, one or two are bound to catch a signified. In this example, it is the following sequence which most succeeded in this:

Who is pulling Mary's leg? (3)

What is the question on the flower? (6)

To where are there more moves ahead? (i?) Reinforced by the prediction that the recipient is a

(potential) medium ( 11- 13), these acquired a linked

series of answers from the (contextual) fact that the reading is for Elizabeth. It is Elizabeth who i-s ’’pulling

Mary's leg”, by seeking a reading when she is (at least) as well "developed" as Mary; the question on the flower may be ’’Will my mediumship continue to develop?"; and the

"more moves ahead" are a symbol of this future development.

Awareness of this interpretation motivates the ironic, teasing interchange of 33- 4-0, and the affirmations of

41- 46.

Only occasionally do things "fall into place" like this.

Most of the snares of delphic texts temain empty, or at least trap only flotsam of dubious value. Mediums have a

catch-phrase for such disappointments. If an image or attribution fails to elicit a response, they often say,

"I'll leave it with you", meaning "Think about it,its

significance may become clear to you later". Weeks or

even months later, a signified may wander into the lure, causing in the recipient a sudden rush of gnosis: "so that's what it meant!" 191 1. Fiske and Hartley (1979: 850-7) 2. There is a further similarity between the two media. Just as commercial television channels compete with each other for "ratings", so mediums, different "channels" to Spirit, compete with each other for prestige and influence. Both types of channel, because they are in competition, are impelled to amplify their differences from each other; but because they are competing by the same means for much the same audience, their products all tend towards a predictable sameness. This metaphor, of course, is not perfect. Television produces commodities which are (indirectly) exchanged for commodities. Although mediums sometimes charge for their services, and churches depend on the donations of their congregations, on the whole mediumistic products are marginal to commodity circulation. This peripherality is probably a reflection of their low value in an open market situation; but whatever the explanation, it does seem that Spiritualism could be commodified relatively easily.

Secondly, and more importantly, anyone can try to be a medium. The situation is comparable to one in which the state maintained no control over the operation of broadcasting stations. Mediums recognise that it would be in the interests of all to have a "licensing system" for mediums, and there is incessant discussion of this possibility - analogous to boards of "self-regulation" set up by broadcasting stations. In this way, the anarchy of competition could be controlled, and "standards" of mediumistic discourse imposed.

3. Cf Hmpson's classic (1973)

4. See, eg, Corcoran (I979:166f)

5. These, like all the oral texts quoted in this study, are verbatim transcriptions. It will be apparent that Spiritualist mediums have quick imagainations and a ready facility with words.

6. In both texts quoted so far, the recipient of the message is referred to as "1"- the medium" puts herself in the place of the person whom she is addressing (whose identity is unknown). Other terms in Spiritualist messages for the recipient are "you", "somebody", "this person", "they" (as a third person singular pronoun unmarked for sex) and as included in "we". "Personal pronouns always deserve notice" (Fowler and Kress, 1971: 201). In this case, the pronominal floating is a consequence of the anonymity of the recipient. CHAPTER 11

THE BARDIC VOICE While delphism propels the reader or hearer forward and outward in a quest for answers, the bardic art is one of saying the same things over and over again in ways that only seem novel. The delphic text is a structure of endlessly varied vagueness. The bardic text is a structure of recurring allusions.

The enunciation by Spiritualist texts of the central codes of Spiritualism discussed in chapter 9 is analogous to the variation of motifs in a musical composition. Some features are altered while others are held constant; elements are bunched up, spread out and regrouped; patterns inverted, transposed and repeated.

The texts reticulate these variations. Barthes has described the intersection of codes as it occurs in the classical narrative as a "weaving".^ This metaphor implies something rather too calculated and regular for what normally happens in a flower reading or Spiritualist sermon. On the other hand, the juncture is usually more orderly than a tangle.

What usually occurs is perhaps most appropriately described as a knotting.

Many more codes find their way into this knotting than the central ones of Communication, Individualism, Love, Progress,

Science and the Symbolic, but it is these which recur most insistently. In this chapter I indicate some of the typical ways in which the reticulation of these codes and their variations occurs in Spiritualist texts.

A Brief Bardic Reading

The following message, delivered by Andy Johnson from a flower I brought to a service, was quoted in chapter 1: 194

1. It would seem there’s a forest and trees the forest can hide the trees trees are of wood and wood builds houses so it would appear you're prepared to go on building but that’s not literal 2. it means go on developing yes that’s spot on go on developing 3. but you haven't found peace. 4. Who am I with? 5. It would be beaut if things were easy 6. but one day you’ll say hey the forest's made of trees.

The main framework on which the codes are threaded in this message is the symbol of the forest hiding the trees, itself an inversion of the proverb " can't see the wood for the trees", which here is implicitly inverted to "can’t see the trees for the wood". By metonymic and metaphoric steps, this image is cleverly made to represent the Spiritual progress of the recipient. A secondary framework is the attribution of a lack of peace to the recipient, a reference to suffering which gives the medium an opportunity to offer comfort.

All but one of the six codes figure in this reading, which is typical in this respect: the Symbolic (l); Progress (2);

Love (3, 5)J and,finally, Science, Individualism and Progress are all connoted by the clairvoyant (hence "evidential*') promise of future for the recipient, to be propelled by a recognition of the true value of the individual ( 6).

A reading of Elizabeth Johns provides another brief example of the Spiritualist bardic text (Table 5).

Analysis of a Sermon

Sermons provide the most straightforward example of the bardic text in Spiritualism. In the extract quoted in chapter

1 it is clear that the codes are brought together in a more 195

Text Codes

You suffer with your head- A piece of "evidence* for aches and worries clairvoyance (Science). Also Love. if you can't go over or Progress Symbolised. through things you can go under or around them you should also say what Honesty - a secondary you mean Spiritualist code, which relates to the integrity of the Individual. you should give love a try Love. this is the right path Progress. you hear when Spirit talks An assurance of mediumship to you (Progress); a piece of evidence (Science); a flow of information (Commun- ication). but you should share your Communication; destiny of knowledge which is what you the Individual; Love. came here for your material life must be Personal responsibility put in order before you do (Individualism) is a pre- anything else requisite of Progress. throw off the old j Progress you could quite easily walk Individualism away you have your life they have theirs

Table 5: Bardic analysis of a reading of Elizabeth Johns. 196 open weave.

Personally I feel that this is a religion that can never be stifled out it is not a new religion it is a very old religion very very old and has run through all civilisations and will run through all civilisations

This affirmation of the historical continuity of Spiritualism

is, I argued in chapter 2, part of an argument that its

ideas are true, that is, Scientific. The text now adverts, not altogether consistently, to Progress:

and our voice must go with the times for as we look into history we find as our moral code demolishes so does civilisation die away

The speaker has been reminded of history by Spiritualism's lack of history, and of Progress by history. But the Progress here is the advance of decay. Decadent civilisation must be opposed by the Individual:

we have to look for something within to give us faith

Faith is an antonym of Science, and so the text returns to

the code that it commenced with.

and we have to find more than faith in Spiritualism faith alone is not enough we are expected to ask scientific questions and we are to expect that scientific questions will be answered

Asking and answering is Communication, a code which continues

to be reiterated throughout the concluding lines of this

extract. . But Love enters here as well, in the form of a

desire by spirits to alleviate ignorance. 197

for there are many scientists on the other side of the other side of the veil who are willing and over-anxious in many instances to give to us

-what they know of Science, and Science as it has Progressed in Spirit -

the knowledge that they had upon earth and the advanced knowledge that they have gained from Spiritualism.

The knots of the bardic text

The previous chapter offered an account of flower readings in one of their dynamic aspects. As delphic texts they sustain interest by a variety of suspense - by raising questions which keep their hearers scanning text and context for possible answers.

As bardic texts, flower readings sire static. They create interest by forming an abstract pattern of code references, like a computer card, the pattern on which corresponds to 2 a set of electronic states within a computer . Thus, the reading given by Mary Jay to Elizabeth Johns, which was analysed in the last chapter as a delphic text (pp 188-190), can be reduced to a bardic tabulation, as outlined in

Table 6.

We begin to approach that perspective from which, in the words of Eco quoted in chapter 8, "where we thought we saw images there (are) only ... alternations of presence and absence*. The surface of the knot of the Spiritualist text is a pattern of codes. The codes which are the cords of this knot form part of a vast web of ideology. Caught Lines Gobbi. Indiv, Love Prog. Science Symbolic 1 *

2 * ■ • - ...... 3-4 * 6 * *

7-13 * 14-18 * *

20-22 * * | 23 *

24-29 * 30-32 * *

42-43 * 44 * 45-46 *

Table 6 : Bardic tabulation of Mary Jay's reading (p. 188) 199

in this web, Spiritualists pick and tug, trying to unravel a thread which will deliver them to gnosis. 200

1. Barthes (1974: 20). 2. Levi-Strauss (1963: 230f).

/ CHAPTER 12

GNOSIS, IDEOLOGY AND RITUAL Problems and Paradigms

Until recently, academic studies of Mcult movements were largely guided by two paradigms, which sometimes opposed and sometimes were complementary to one another. On the one hand, it was assumed that they are symptoms of social or individual malaise. In contrast to the attitude of anthropologists towards comparable activities found in remote tribes, sociologists often considered them to be the expression of lacks which a kinder or more orderly society would rectify.

Second, cults tended to be analysed in terms of conceptual frameworks developed for the study of Christian sectarianism.

The first paradigm might have led to a deeper questioning of the model of social "health" on which it was based. But more commonly it resulted in the assumption that the beliefs and activities of cults are merely epiphenomena of social pathology, and that it is therefore superfluous to attempt to understand them as discourses in their own right. The major product of the second paradigm was a scholastic proliferation of typologies, as each newly studied movement - and each movement newly studied from a different point of view - failed to fit comfortably into existing sect/cult classifications.

The influence of both approaches is waning. Simplistic deprivation theories have come under fire. Sociologists are less pre- occupied with typologies, and it is increasingly recognised that cults are not just "religious", but also aesthetic, political and ” scientific*, or at least philosphical. Their internal organisation, the social milieux in which they operate, and their relations with the state and the mass media are being examined more closely, and their beliefs treated more seriously. These new approaches represent an advance on the old. But they share few if any common paradigms. In this study, I have taken account of their wider view, while trying not to write from an eclectic perspective. At the same time, I hare aimed at providing an interpretation of those features of Spiritualism which I regard as most problematic.

At first I was struck by the contrast between the strange beliefs on grand topics, and the down-to-earth normality of those who held them with such enthusiasm. But two other aspects of Spiritualism came to concern me more; its ritualism, and its incoherence. The interpretation I have presented of Spiritualism as the ideology of a gnostic movement is an attempt to come to terms with these features.

Spiritualism as an Occult Gnosticism

Although it claims to be * progressive” , and a "science**,

Spiritualism exhibits, in a number of different ways and at a number of different levels, a repetitive, static character.

It has changed little in over a century. Each service and seance repeats essentially the same events. Each Spiritualist text reiterates the same small cluster of codes and utilises much the same set of rhetorical devices. All these traits exemplify ritualism.

It is true that by the standards of "orthodox* religion,

Spiritualism is not particularly ritualistic. But it is, if judged by the standards it sets itself - those of philosophy and science.

I confess that as Spiritualist activities became familiar to me, my boredom threshold sank. I was not alone in this.

Even devotees had a similar problem. "What can we do to brighten up our services?* was a recurrent topic of conversation.

Ritualism is not without its defenders, who praise it as both necessary and creative.^But it is difficult to forget Freud’s argument that the repetitive, compulsive character of both ritual and the obsessive actions of neurotics results from the symbolic expression of repressed desires, which provokes 2 guilt and anxiety, but fails to satisfy the libido. Rituals may still be necessary, but such an analysis compels us to question whether they ought to be.

I have to confess that although I often felt bored during services, after them I nevertheless sometimes experienced a feeling of peace and elevation and "effervescence* which

I thought was more than just relief that the ritual was over.

I felt - or felt that I could have felt - "redeemed*. I came to believe that this emotion was a hint of what Spiritualists meant when they spoke of Spirit, and so began to conceive of the movement as a gnosticism, a seeking for enlightenment, perfection, totality.

Spiritualism is a particular kind of gnosticism. It is occultic, that is, it attributes significations of gnosis to anomalous phenomena. Ciphers of gnosis are believed to be written in the world as contraventions of normal expectations or established natural laws.

A consideration of magic helps to set this preoccupation in a wider context. Two distinct emphases can be discerned in anthropological theories of magic. Many nineteenth and early twentieth century writers, most notably James Frazer*, saw magic as fundamentally instrumental/rational in orientation, a failed science. This view, later stigmatised as "intellectualist", 205 still has defenders , but emphasis on magic's expressive/ symbolic aspects, persuasively argued for by Malinowski^, has been more influential in this century. Magic has come to be seen as an emotional and aesthetic activity, rather 7 than as a flawed craft .

In a paper which addresses several important issues, Alfred

Gell has outlined a position which he hopes would bridge the gap between magic as art and magic as craft. In doing so, he offers an alternative understanding of magical ritual to Freud's theory, while retaining some of the latter's critical element.

With Meyer Fortes, Gell takes magical ritual to be primarily concerned with making manifest a realm which does not belong o to the "patent" realm of everyday experience . In other words, magic is occultic. Gell argues that the occult realm is constituted by the postulation of a domain whose defining attribute is that it is incomprehensible:

It is of the essence of the occult that it cannot be grasped in itself ... (it) is the modality of events which transcends, or lies beyond, the horizon of possible awareness.

For Gell, the symbolic character of magic can be traced to nature of the conceptual act which establishes the occult realm.

Only a doctrine which 'semantises* the perceptual world can break down the otherwise impenetrable barrier, allowing access to the imagined totality of which the perceived world is only a fragment. Occult thinking is founded on the proposition that the relation between experience and the totality of the cosmos can be mediated by signs... The occult...is by nature incapable of direct representation, since it does not correspond to anything in the world... Hence the sole possibility remaining is oblique expression in more or less inadequate symbolism. 206

This account of the phenomenological constitution of the

occult helps to illuminate the antinomy discussed in chapter 9; if an alleged "phenomenon" were indisputably confirmed and scientifically theorised, it would no longer be anomalous and so cease to be a sign of gnosis; but conversely, if phenomena were held to be intrinsically immune to such validation, that is, to be purely "symbolic", they would cease to be admissable as "valid" evidence. Of all the dilemmas created by Spiritualism for itself, this one, which is premissed on the opposition of scientific/rational to symbolic/expressive, is perhaps the most fundamental.

According to Gell, the reason occultism becomes ritualised is that it can never achieve its object. Its compulsive repetitive- ness is the obsession of frustration:

The occult or transcendent can only be found as an image or cipher of something unreachable in itself, and the image or cipher can only exist within, and not beyond, the boundaries of the patent sphere. Consequently... we may accurately represent the patent sphere as bounded from the transcendental sphere by a reflecting surface, so that the external skeleton of the world construct takes on the aspect of a hall of mirrors - a surface which endlessly reflects back what takes place within the space it encloses but which has the property ot seeming to allow access to a virtual space which lies beyond the untransgressable boundaries of the world construct... In attempting to make forays into (the occult realm), magical thought only encounters its own reflections, endlessly adumbrated in looking glass space.

Ultimately there is no gnosis to be found within Spiritualism, only variations of the familiar: paraphrases and fragments of derivative texts. Unable to comprehend its impossible object, it keeps on repeating the same patterns, yearning for a redemption 13 which must always remain beyond reach.

Spiritualism as an ideology

Over the period of my involvement with Mortfield Church, it gradually became clear to me that in spite of much clever and 207 persuasive talk, the adherents of Spiritualism have very confused ideas about its fundamental tenets. On survival after death, the nature of Spirit, the workings of "evidence", the meaning of "love", the manifestations of "progress" and many other issues, I received hesitant, ambiguous and inconsistent explanations, and the deeper I delved, the more tangled the knots became. Spiritualists are fully aware of this incoherence, and with the disarming eclecticism of the occult milieu, explain that each person must find their own way to "Truth".

As with my finding its ritualism problematic, some will see in my concern with Spiritualism’s incoherence evidence of excessive rationalism. To such an objection there can be no infallible answer: it may be that this is basically a 14 matter of taste . But once accepted, I would argue that the incoherence of Spiritualism follows from its ideological character. It is a reflection of the incoherence of the society which has given birth to it.

Religion is the self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has either not yet found himself or has already lost himself again. But man is not an abstract being encamped outside the world. Man is the world of man, the state, society. This state, this society, produce religion, an inverted worl4-consciousness, because they are an inverted world. 5

It is with this critical position in mind that I have represented SpiritualisB as an ideology, as a structure of amorphous, incomplete and inconsistent codes. The texts which enunciate these codes entertain and edify. They produce aesthetic experiences through the use of "rhetorical" devices, most distinctively the delphism analysed in chapter 10. At the same time they compose a bardic discourse, as discussed in chapter 11. This bardic voice of Spiritualism adverts to fragments of signifying structures which are only incidentally about spirits. More fundamentally, they are concerned with information transactions, scientific validation, metaphorical paradigms, the ego, , and with suffering and its requital.

The problems engaged by Spiritualism are, in fact, basic questions of epistemology and morality that also occupied

Plato and Newton, Augustine and Goethe. To observe that

Spiritualism fails to solve them is not to denigrate it. But actually its attempted formulations and solutions are riddled with antinomies, omissions and dubious conflations. Some of these have been created or given a special significance by

Spiritualism for itself. Such are Spirit, the afterlife, and, as I have already noticed, law and anomaly. But most of them have been taken over with the cultural expressions in which

Spiritualists have been given them: autonomy and heteronomy, freewill and providence, mind and matter, hierarchy and equality, metaphor and metonymy. Failing to resolve these contradictions, Spiritualists nevertheless cannot let them alone, but, in the image of the last chapter, must pick away at them, teasing and tugging, but failing to untangle. This is the ritualism of ideology, to complement the ritualism of the occult.

From this perspective, the contrast between the abnormality of the Spiritualist belief system and the normality of most of its followers is easier to grasp. On the one hand, it is true that Spiritualism readily provokes scorn and ridicule from 209 non-believers, and apology or defiance from devotees. Although not so incomprehensible as to be "insane", nor eo threatening as to be "criminal", it is definitely "marginal". And yet its dominant codes are enunciated in discourses which are by no means marginal. In outline, if not always in detail, the concepts, assumptions and problems of Spiritualist ideology are thoroughly conventional. To mention a few of the more obvious connections implicit in chapter 9, the idea of progress, the valorisation of science and the centrality of the individual are completely typical of the ideology of modern capitalism.

In this way, the marginality of Spiritualism comes to appear less obvious than its essential ordinariness. * * *

Thus, I represent Spiritualism as suspended between two illusions.

The Spiritualist gnosis is an illusory hope, while the world which that gnosis would be a redemption from is a reality grasped through the illusory senses of ideology. 210

1. Eg Turner (1969), Douglas (1973).

2. Freud (1907).

3. Durkheim*s word (1965). 4. Frazer (1970).

5. Horton (1964). 6. Malinowski (1954).

7. Beattie (1966).

8. Gell (1974). 9. Fortes (1966).

10. Gell (1974: 20-21). 11. Ibid: 21-22. 12. Ibid: 25-26.

13. I am thinking of the boy in Escher's lithograph "Belvedere", who contemplates a

cube-like absurdity in his hands. He gazes at this incomprehensible object and seems oblivious to the fact that the belvedere behind him has been built in the same impossible style (Escher, 1977: 16).

14. Feyerabend's "anarchist" critique of scientific method is a very thorough application of this principle ( Feyerabend, 1975).

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