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

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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 ritual 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 paranormal "phenomena" such as healing „by touch, astral travel and various kinds of clairvoyance and divination. The main Spiritualist ritual, while having the outward form of a Christian church service, centres on a demonstration of mediumship. 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 "occult", 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 Spirit; (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 reality, 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 Heaven: 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 newspapers: Huntdown Spiritual Church welcomes Med. William Veldt. James Rd. 2 p.m. Healing Karawa Psychic Research Sanctuary, Scouts Hall, Thompson St. Sun. 2.30 p.m. Mary Jay and Elaine Harvey. Mortfield Spiritualist Church, 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 Jesus. 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 meditation. 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 Religion 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 prayer 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 God 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 eternity 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 Plane**. 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.
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