Psychic “channeling” did not begin S P I R I T W O R L D in America with , and Jonathon Edwards, and the A visit to two villages that still New Age movement we know today is really only the most recent share the nineteenth century’s iteration of a feature of America’s conviction that we can religious and spiritual landscape that traces back to our colonial communicate with the dead past. Nor did the country’s fascination with communes and “intentional” small communities By Stephan A. Schwartz start with the 60s.

By the end of the 19th Century there were villages -- sometimes We walk down a street that seems called “camps” or “colonies” -- lifted from a Victorian era dotted across the nation devoted children’s book and there, on the to the practice of the same white clapboard cottage’s wall, is metaphysical disciplines in vogue the small sign we have been told to today. Some were permanent from look for: “Mrs. Hanson, Medium”. the beginning, others were Reverend Hanson, as she is inhabited only during “seasons”, properly known, answers the door and most have disappeared or, like and there, behind her, is Mr. the Chataugua circuit, are only Hanson. in what can only be called remnants of a larger past. We a front parlor, sitting in an open know of utopians such as the necked short-sleeve white shirt because their lovingly reading his paper. We are invited preserved buildings and their in, but only my wife Hayden can furniture which touches us with its enter the reading room, lest “your beautiful, economical, style. But vibrations” disturb the clarity of we have only a removed sense of Mrs. Hanson’s focus. On the left of the communities as living centers. the entrance to her Reading Room, In contrast, their less well-known pinned to the wall, is her cousins, the villages of the Certificate of Ordination from the American Spiritualist Movement, International General Assembly of are still to be found, as I Spiritualists, and her Florida State discovered, tucked away here and business license, entitling her to there across the land. Two of them, give readings from her home. Lilly Dale, New York and Cassadaga, Florida are remarkably

© copyright 2004 by Stephan A. Schwartz. AMERICAN HERITAGE APRIL/MAY 2005 66 well-preserved examples of American camp style. Susan Glasier, office manager for the assembly, who answered my Lilly Dale – formally, The Lilly many questions, tells me that the Dale Assembly – founded in 1879, town is still seasonal, “although we is located on 175 acres in Chatagua have a permanent population of County in upstate New York not about 275 people. Our season runs far from the shores of Lake Erie. from June 25th to September 5th Built along the banks of a small and, during that time, the lake one mile from the town of population doubles. “Visitors are Cassadaga and Highway 60, it is always welcome,” she adds, and the mother of all Spiritualist about 20,000 a year do stop by. communities in America, and There seem to be less than a dozen describes itself as “the world’s the day we are there at the height largest center for .” In of the season. parallel with its cousin, Chatagua Village, which is about a half hour The nostalgic architecture though away in the town of Mayville, Lilly is not the first thing that catches Dale began as an assembly my attention. It is the small signs building around which tents on hanging in cottage gardens that platforms were erected for the say things such as “Kitty Osborne - summer season, when families Medium.” gathered to hear speakers and ministers. By the 1880s, these had This is a religious village; its become permanent structures residents are practitioners of their notable for their small scale, faith’s principal sacrament, “the gingerbread scrollwork, and d e m o n s t r a t e d f a c t o f encircling screened-porches; communication, by the means of homes built in a time before with those who live television and air conditioning, in the Spirit World” – those who when sitting on your porch in the are physically dead. Spiritualists dark talking with friends was an are a branch of one of America’s appreciated pleasure. The streets founding religious impulses, are narrow and tree shaded but, as Transcendentalism. In these I go through the gates, it is obvious solidly American theological that the New York weather over a woods, are found Emerson, century has taken its toll and, Thoreau, Mark Twain and, some while some cottages are pristine, say based on eye-witness accounts, others are in what realtors Abraham Lincoln. euphemistically call a “fixer upper” state.

AMERICAN HERITAGE APRIL/MAY 2005 67 Lilly Dale is a company town, the technique similar to those taught land owned by the Lilly Dale today has been practiced for more , the houses on than a century. Next to it is a 99 year leases. It practices a school. Like most middle-class cottage industry whose products people of the 19th Century the are readings, New Age treatments, residents of Lilly Dale had great and energetic healings. There are respect for education, and the between 10 to 15 mediums -- Andrew Jackson Davis Lyceum, individuals “sensitive to vibrations one of the town’s largest buildings, from the spirit world.” -- in attests to this conviction. Largely permanent residence, with the forgotten today, Andrew Jackson number growing to 40 during the Davis in his time was a major season. Many more in Lilly Dale celebrity, author, lecturer, at 60 are healers. Most carry the title awarded an M.D.. He was also the Reverend, and are ministers in one founder of the Lyceum School branch or another of the system which began here in Lilly Spiritualist Church, a community Dale and became a big part of of believers, as old as the these cooperative communities. Mormons. But, most of all, the newspapers of the age describe Davis as an In the middle of the town, there is impressive clairvoyant and an auditorium, an unusual wood medium. When he spoke he drew frame structure with wooden walls great crowds. -- panels really -- that allow it to be opened to the outdoors. At the The tree-shaded narrow streets back is a green and white stained invite walking. The Spiritualists, glass window reading “Memory of with their explicit belief in the my Mother.” Below the window is kinship of all life, had been a small mirror with black writing abolitionists, and would be over its silvery surface. It says, supporters of women’s suffrage. “This temple erected by B.F. Barlett But it is their passionate and dedicated in remembrance of environmentalism that is reflected his mother Obera Bartlett.” There in their town planning. is no one there, as I walk around, but a woman passing by tells me to After a short walk there is a clearly come back at 2:30 for the open special little grove of trees, distinct public service, when there will be a from the rest. Sacred Groves are talk, and someone will channel. one of humanity’s most ancient places of worship and instruction. Nearby is a “Healing Temple,” By Roman times, the sacred groves where a laying-on-of-hands of the Etruscans -- almost always

AMERICAN HERITAGE APRIL/MAY 2005 68 oaks -- were already legendary. In There are two places for food in this one, in the middle, there is a Lilly Dale, the “Good Vibrations” large old tree stump with stairs cafeteria, and a small coffee shop, built up on one side. When a “Monika’s Delites” which visitor to Lilly Dale was invited for specializes in Viennese coffees. By a stump speech, it was meant quite the end of lunch it is almost 2:30, literally. Visiting spiritualist and there is just enough time to get ministers and speakers declaimed back for the Spiritualist service that here, so many, and so vigorously, is held every day at the same time that the stump bears the wear of during the 10 week season. their boots. A little further on, Everyone is welcome. there is the only brick building I have seen in the village. It turns The service begins promptly with a out to be the Marian Skidmore hymn, then an older woman comes Memorial Library. A look at its out on the stage and gives us a shelves reveals it must be one of trance sermon speaking in a kind the largest collections of of theatrical scotch brogue. It is Spiritualist literature in the designed to be uplifting, but the country. thing that affects me the most is that the idea of a woman lecturing Winding along, the little lane leads in a trance seems quite to the lake, and a small white unexceptional to the audience of 75 frame hotel, The Maplewood. It or so. Then there is some organ has 42 rooms costing between $21 music and an older man introduces and $44 a night. The only other another woman in a floor-length place to stay within Lilly Dale is lime green high necked gown with the Leolyn, just outside the gated lace. There are mostly woman in grounds, but owned by Lillydale. the congregation, but with a good It has 11 rooms for $33 a night. sprinkling of men, and one of them leans over and explains to me that Two American flags fly from the this lady is the “Message Maplewood’s porch, and entering Minister.” the lobby, even more than the town, is a trip back into time. In The woman on stage speaks about the foyer there is a little sign that the “spirit side of life” and, then, makes me laugh: “No channelling begins going through the audience. in the lobby.” Oddly, there is no She has little “messages”, from the place to eat in the hotel, but a man dead, which she passes on. As I sitting in one of the wicker chairs listen to her I say to myself, "If this gives directions where to go. lady is for real, I'd like to receive a message from Gil, a close friend

AMERICAN HERITAGE APRIL/MAY 2005 69 from my boyhood who committed water”. I don’t know the suicide in his mid-30s. For the importance of that, but the choice man sitting in front of me the of a Northern Native American woman talks about someone word, I suspect, was to show the named Paul with whom he will do connection with the mother business. When she passes on, I community and its nearby town of lean over and ask if what he has Cassadaga, New York, as well as to heard makes any sense. He says affirm the Spiritualists’ strong he has just talked with a man identification with Native named Paul who represented a Americans, whose cause they salvage company with which he championed. Many 19th Century was considering working. For mediums also channelled Indians, another man she seems less on, whom they claimed provided the saying something about his information they passed on. singing (which he tells her he does not do). Just at the end she comes Less than 20 years after its own back to me and says she sees founding in 1894, Lilly Dale’s something about a boat, then a members, participated in the friend ‘on the spirit side who took founding of this Florida “camp”. his own life in youth.” They built it on land donated by a wandering clairvoyant medium, Sometime later, on a trip south, my George Colby, and it covers 55 wife Hayden and I leave Georgia acres today, with privately held and cross the Florida border, and land around its periphery. For head down near Orlando to Lilly decades Lilly Dale readers used Dale’s southern sister, Cassadaga. Cassadaga to escape the rigorous As we leave the main highways, New York winters, and there is still the glaring tourist patina of the an exchange between the two state falls away. We are in an older, communities, although they are quieter, more ramshackle, but to now completely separate. us, more appealing Florida. On Interstate 4, there is no offramp There is a sense of deja vu when marked “Cassadaga”. But a we arrive. It is Lilly Dale with helpful general store owner tells tropical vegetation. The same me to look for Exit 55, “Lake short tree-lined streets, the same Helen”. After you leave the cozy architecture. The same little highway, he tells me, “follow the signs that hang like an old signs a few miles.” fashioned country doctor’s placard from lamp posts and stakes in front The name is a Seneca Indian word of many of the houses: “Rev. Janie meaning “Rocks beneath the Henderson Owens -

AMERICAN HERITAGE APRIL/MAY 2005 70 Drawings; Patti Aubrey - Certified whether single or double. Most Medium; Dr. Warren Hoover - have four posters, with a sink in Spiritual Counselor and Teacher the room, and the toilet and Metaphysics, Certified by shower in a kind of closet. The SCSCMA.” These are the crofters hotel also has the only place to eat of Cassadaga. we can find in town, The “Lost in Time Café, situated at one end of Most are elderly, grandmaws and the lobby. The home-made biscuits grandpaws looking much as are better than all right, and the Norman Rockwell saw them. I salads are big with fresh hadn’t fully appreciated this while ingredients. Lunch is simple, in Lilly Dale, or maybe it is clearer cheap, and better than road food. in Cassadaga. These are villages of the elderly and the single young, Hayden, decides she would like a with only a sprinkling of the reading. Although the hotel has middle-aged, and few young mediums on call, and the marrieds with children. As in Lilly Cassadaga Spiritualist Psychic Dale, no one in Cassadaga seems Therapy Center -- one of several to have much money, but they centers in town -- advertises “5 appear to have a gentle long-lived Mediums on Duty,” we decide to quality of life. Like Lilly Dale, go for the mother stream. So, after Cassadaga also has a lake and, lunch, we go across the street to overlooking the lake at the edge of the Andrew Jackson Davis the town is a white cement garden Building which is older than the table and chairs. Affixed to the hotel, and which houses the middle of the table is a neat bronze Southern Cassadaga Spiritualist plaque reading, “A gift from (the Camp Meeting Association. emphasis is mine) Julia Slater on her 100th birthday, August 25, Inside the Davis Building, we find 1996.” a bookstore with lots of books by modern consciousness writers, as Hayden, and I get into town and well as obscure early spiritualist go straight to the Cassadaga Hotel, books little seen in the modern the only place to stay within the New Age, but on much the same village. It has one of those long subjects. screened porches that are so inviting. They began building the At one end of the bookstore, there hotel, which has 20 rooms and five is a white board with the magic suites in 1927, and it is remarkably marker names of those mediums intact and true to its origins. on duty, along with their telephone Rooms currently go for $60 a night numbers. When I ask how one

AMERICAN HERITAGE APRIL/MAY 2005 71 decides which to pick, the woman de Tocqueville scion of one of the behind the counter says, “Have oldest Norman noble families in you ever had a kind of gut feeling? France arrived in the United States, A sort of knowingness? Well there accompanied by his close friend you go. That’s part of your own Gustave de Beaumont. Tocqueville psychic functioning. Everyone has saw and, more importantly, it, and we encourage you to use it.” appreciated that the crux of our End of subject; I can’t think of democracy was the capacity for anything to say to that. change, and the conviction that every person was entitled to live Hayden selects Helen C. Hanson. out what they believed. He wrote, The woman behind the counter “They [the Americans] have all a calls, and we are told to walk lively faith in the perfectibility of down to the end of the block and man...; they consider society as a turn left. We’ll see the sign. It will body in a state of improvement, be $40 for half and hour. (Prices humanity as a changing scene, in range from $25 for a 15 minute which nothing is, or ought to be, short reading, to $60 for an hour; permanent; and they admit that each practitioner negotiates for her what appears to them today to be or himself.) good, may be superseded by something better tomorrow.” Thirty minutes later, Hayden Simple places like Lilly Dale, emerges thanking Mrs. Hanson. Casadaga, and the other As we walk away she says, “I intentional communities became wanted to see if she could talk to one expression of that deeply one of my grandparents, but I got a American drive, and the heritage ‘fat lady, with nice hands.’ It was they left us extends far beyond no one I could imagine. Still, I’m their endearing cottages, and glad I did it. Later that night, in a wooded pathways. conversation with her mother, Hayden learns of a stout aunt who ______had doted on her as a child, but Stephan A. Schwartz is a Virginia died when she was little more than based writer who has written a baby. She was, in her mother’s frequently on extraordinary human words, “very vain about the beauty functioning, including the classic book of her hands.” The Secret Vaults of Time.

In 1831, just before the Transcendentalist flowering that produced so many of these villages began, Alexis Charles Henri Clérel

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