• Quick note - the problem with Youtube videos not embedding on the forum appears to have been fixed, thanks to ZiprHead. If you do still see problems let me know.

Origin of seances

Maksutov

Scholar
M
Joined
Oct 4, 2015
Messages
104
What is the best information on the origin of seances? Did these predate the time of the Fox sisters? I understand that Cagliostro may have presided over some but so much relating to him is controversial. Thoughts?
 
Maksutov said:
What is the best information on the origin of seances? Did these predate the time of the Fox sisters? I understand that Cagliostro may have presided over some but so much relating to him is controversial. Thoughts?
Click to expand...
Wiki is your friend.
One of the earliest books on the subject of communication amongst deceased persons was Communication With the Other Side by George, First Baron Lyttelton, published in England in 1760.
 
Maksutov said:
What is the best information on the origin of seances? Did these predate the time of the Fox sisters? I understand that Cagliostro may have presided over some but so much relating to him is controversial. Thoughts?
Click to expand...

Has origins in ancient witchcraft and pagan practices. The medium Andrew Jackson Davis predated the Fox sisters. Seems there were mediums conducting seances in France before Davis as well.

Frank Podmore in his book Modern Spiritualism has early information about seances. The best survey is Spiritualism: A Critical Survey by Simeon Edmunds.
 
Thank you for the comments. Does anyone have sources for detailed descriptions of the seances before the Fox sisters? I'm interested in seeing how the experience evolved into the joined hats at the table model of Victorian times.
 
Maksutov said:
Thank you for the comments. Does anyone have sources for detailed descriptions of the seances before the Fox sisters? I'm interested in seeing how the experience evolved into the joined hats at the table model of Victorian times.
Click to expand...

I think the joined hands at the table model was initially an artifact of the table turning phenomenon, which was post-Fox Sisters - the earliest US newspaper records I can find indicate 1860 and the earliest from the UK is 1853. The term "seance" applied to a spiritualistic event dates from around the same time.
 
I think that there may have been a blending of behaviors also between Mesmerism and spiritualism. At least some of the Mesmer advocates were "magnetizing" people to give them psychic powers, such as supposedly happened with Andrew Jackson Davis. Some of the spiritualist notions also go back to Swedenborg, and there were a number of occult practitioners in between. It was that time when men like Newton mixed religion, the occult and protoscience freely. A developmental period, IMO.
 
Maksutov said:
What is the best information on the origin of seances? Did these predate the time of the Fox sisters? I understand that Cagliostro may have presided over some but so much relating to him is controversial. Thoughts?
Click to expand...


I would imagine tribes were gathering to smoke, dance or sweat themselves into a state where they could communicate with animals and dead people for at least ten, twenty, maybe fifty thousand years.

The origin of the completely nonsense modern seance run by a grifter - middle ages.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom