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Andrew Jackson Davis
- Discovered ability to connect w spirit world after magnetic trance, 1843
- Toured New England as trance lecturer and healer
- 1844 had vision of Swedenborg and Galen on mountain near Poughkeepsie
1845
Davis begins dictating his work ‘The Principles of Nature: Her Divine Revelations and a Voice to Mankind’ whilst in a trance - this continues over 15 months and attracted to small crowds.
1848
Fox Sisters - Hydesville Rappings. Supposedly murdered man, at farmhouse.
1852
Maria Hayden, a medium, brings the practice to England
1853
tables tournantes began in earnest on April 20, when the Constitutionnel published a story describing a strange German fad.
1858
Revue Spiritualiste journal founded by Zéphre-Joseph Piérart (former editor in chief of Journal du Magnétisme).
1859
Commission d’Enquête formed by mesmerists to investigate the ‘truth’ of the tables tournantes et parlantes… Séances conducted by Honorine Huet - most prominent French medium.
All eight of the men on the committee agreed that these two séances were unconvincing as proof of spirit intervention
1888
Fox sisters admit their rappings had been fraudulent.
November 1889
Margaret Fox recants her confession in interview conducted in presence of Newton, president of the First Society of Spiritualists of New York and a fellow of the New York Academy of Science
Maggie said decision to recant came from spirit guides. Admitted she hoped to resume lecture tour in support of Spiritualism
1882
Society for Psychical Research founded.
Not break w naturalistic science: the poss reality of Spiritualism and other occult phenomena wld not constitute a break w a naturalistic worldview, but rather indicate that our picture of the natural world had to be radically expanded.
Psychical research thus predicated on an open-ended naturalism
1869
London Dialectical Society special commission to investigate Spiritualism and psychic phenomena
Commission’s report concluded bulk of evd concerning Spiritualistic phenomena cld not at present be discounted as fraudulent. Advised more research on topic.
1875
lawyer Edward Cox established Psychological Society of Great Britain.
Establishment of psychology as wholly ‘secular’ academic discipline was still decades away
Sidgwick Circle
- Henry Sidgwick. Utilitarian moral philosopher. Advocate of educational reform
- Eleanor Sidgwick
- Arthur Balfour - SPR President 1892-5
- Lord General Balfour - in charge of cross-correspondences experiments early 20th C
- Classicist Edumnd Gurney
- Classicist Frederic Myers
- Richard Hodgson
SPR output
14,000 pages of research reports, theorizing and experimental notes published by the SPR’s journal and proceedings 1882-1900
US reaction to uses of probability in Phantasms of the Living (1886)
amateur uses of probability sparked sharp debate in first volume of Proceedings of the American branch of the SPR, where philosopher, logician and mathematician Peirce lashed out at the SPR researchers: ‘I shall not cite these numbers, which captivate the ignorant, but which repel thinking men, who know that no human certitude reaches such figures of trillions, or even billions, to one’
Hodgson’s expositions
Exposé of methods of Blavatsky 1884-5
Hodgson accused Richet, Myers and Lodge of being fooled by Palladino
Hodson exposed her fraud in trials at Myers’ house in Cambridge, 1895
SPR generational shift (Asprem)
W exception of Eleanor Sidgwick, all mems of the Sidgwick circle - first generation of SPR - were dead by 1905
SPR presidents 1900-39
- Nobel laureates Bergson, Rayleigh
- Famous politicians, Gerald Balfour, chief secretary for Ireland 1900-5
- Biologist/ philosopher, Driesch
- McDougall
- Broad
1925, stage magician Harry Price
convinced University of London to support him in establishing the National Laboratory for Psychical Research which was to act as a more scientific counterpart to the SPR. Turned out to be used more for debunk ing tho
1924, US (Asprem)
institutional schism
controversy that had erupted over tests run with famous Boston physical medium Mina Crandon (‘Margery’). McDougall, Houdini etc investigated. When the comte’s report concluded Margery was fraudulent, the American SPR took a curious course of action - disregarded the verdict, fired critics from positions of power in the society. Started circulating apologetic articles, books and pamphlets defending Margery
- One of orchestrators of this devel = Le Roy Crandon, Margery’s husband
- Prince, who had been editor of the ASPR journal and on Margery comte, was fired
1925, US, Prince
established Boston Society for Psychical Research (BSPR to act as a scientific counterpart to the American SPR
Ceased operations 1934
Last thing the BSPR did was publish Rhine’s Extra-Sensory Perception (1934) - paradigmatic text of experimental parapsychology. Initiated new phase in history of psychical research - new institutions, oft connected to mainstream research universities, pursued the scientific track through what became professional parapsychology. Emergence of professional parapsychology marked the end of the SPR as an institution of any serious scientific promise
Carrington
journalist and member of the American SPR
authored more than one hundred books, primarily on psychical research, spiritualism, magic and magical traditions, and occult phenomena such as astral projection.2 By the 1920s, those who presumed to know something about psychical research were quite likely to have their knowledge from Carrington’s writings. (Asprem)
e.g. 1909, Eusapia Palladino and her phenomena
Cross-correspondences
By 1906, some of the most prominent first-generation figures had returned from the afterlife
Verrall, Holland, and Piper would produce hundreds of messages in total, with the major breakthrough occurring during Piper’s stay in England
First systematic reports on cross-correspondences published in the SPR Proceedings, 1908
1910 the research was made available to a broader public through the concise exposition in Helen Alexandrina Dallas’ Mors Janua Vitae?
Through reliance on the cross-correspondences the SPR seems to have abandoned their earlier attempts to emulate strictly naturalistic methods, and instead developed an increasingly esoteric form of hermeneutics (Asprem)
Latin Experiment
1906:
a specific question with instructions intended for “Myers” had been translated into dense and difficult Ciceronian Latin, and read to Mrs Piper in one of her “trance states”.
researchers spent the next months attempts to draw significant references out of the mediums’ statements. In the quest to find what they were looking for, the psychical researchers seized increasingly abstruse methods of interpretation, where hidden anagrams and secret symbols were considered for clues, down to the letter.46 While they were ultimately convinced by the evidence thus produced, in the form of symbolic and thematic correspondences across a wide set of séance notes, it is hard for the outsider to avoid observing that they also stretched their interpretations to the limits in order to get to that conviction