COMMENT:Physical mediumship attracts the attention of both paranormalists and skeptics. But though American Spiritualism started with the Fox sisters, private seances and trance mediumship was more prominent in the movement until the 1870's. In a time when the very idea of women speaking in public was condemned, women trance mediums were able to became active precisely because womanly passivity was thought to be conducive to spirit communication. For many decades, Spiritualism was a radical religious movement embracing unpopular causes like abolition, women's rights, free love (i.e. freedom to resist male lust), socialism, and temperance. Many reformist leaders were nurtured within Spiritualism. Communing with the dead was an illusion, but Spiritualism was a much more benign superstition than the orthodox Christianity dominant in 19th century America.
DATE:19980922
KEYWORDS:psi:history religion:history
MISC:268p.
PUBLISHER:Beacon
SUBMITADDR:bibliographer@csicop.org
SUBMITNAME:Taner Edis
TITLE:Radical Spirits: Spiritualism and Women's Rights in Nineteenth-Century America
