The Occult in Victorian Britain

Victorian crisis of faith Darwinism, physics, chemistry There is only this life (scientific materialism) Why be good?

Victorian occult Spiritualism, theosophy, psychical research Animal magnetism (mesmerism) Telepathy, hypnosis Fairies

spiritualist séance (table-turning, table-tipping)

spirit photograph

Spirit photograph

Ouija board with a planchette

ectoplasm

ectoplasm

Spiritualism 1848 John Fox and his family Daniel Dunglas Home Florence Cook and ‘Katie King’ (Annie Owen Morgan)

Spiritualism Attempt to synthesise science and religion Spiritualism „is that platform in which alone religion and science can meet” Spiritualism is standing „midway between the opposing schools [of faith and science], giving to the one a scientific basis for the divine things of old, whilst it restores to the other the much needed evidence of its expressed faith in the duality and continuity of life” (J.S. Fraser, editor of Light)

Spiritualism Unorganised for long More than 200 organisations British National Association of Spiritualists (1870s) Spiritualists’ National Federation (1891) by 1915: 141 societies The Spiritual Magazine; Medium and Daybreak; The Spiritualist Newspaper; Light; Two Worlds

The politics of spiritualism often progressive (Robert Owen’s utopian socialism) social reformism, broadly democratic slant brought spiritual matters into everyday life

Daniel Dunglas Home

The politics of spiritualism ‘domestic’ spiritualism vs professional stage magicians (by midcentury: magic was secular entertainment) Gender and class issues Sexual subtext Threatening female occult power

Florence and Katie

Katie King

2. Psychical research Society of Psychical Research, 1882 Henry Sidgwick (prof of moral philosophy) Proceedings of the SPR 1886: Phantasms of the Living (Myers, Gurney, Podmore) 1400 pages, 800 cases telepathy Relabelling the supernatural as supranormal

3. Theosophy Theosophical Society (1875) Madame Blavatsky (Helena Petrovna Blavatsky): Isis Unveiled (1878) Colonel Henry Steel Olcott Annie Besant and Anna Kigsford Astral plane, reincarnation, adepts (Buddhism, Cabbalism, Rosicrucianism, hermetism etc.)

Mme Blavatsky

Mme Blavatsky and Olcott

Annie Besant (and J. Krishnamurty)

theosophy genuine occultism elitism adepts „occult phenomena must not be confused with the phenomenon of spiritualism. The latter, whatever they may be, are manifestations which a medium can neither control nor understand” (A. P. Sinnett)

Aims of theosophy Universal brotherhood of humanity „ushering in a new epoch for science and religion” „occult science invests its adepts with a control of natural forces superior to that enjoyed by physicists of the ordinary type ... Modern science has discovered the circulation of the blood; occult science understands the circulation of the life-principle” (A. P. Sinnett)

Late 19th century: occult revival Cabbalists, Rosicrutians, Hermeticists The Hermetic order of the Golden Dawn Astrology, magic, palmistry Oriental(ist) slant (mysticism)

Georgiana Houghton: The Eye of God

Houghton: The Eye of the Lord

Svengali and Trilby

John Anster Fitzgerald: The Chase of the White Mouse

Arthur Rackham: Come, now aroundel

John Grimshaw: Spirit of the Night

Richard Dadd: Titania Asleep

Noel Paton: The Fairy raid

John Atkinson Grimshaw: Iris

Gnome in Cottingley

Cottingley photo

Cottingley photo

Cottingley