1. The Occult in Victorian Britain

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

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

4. spiritualist séance (table-turning, table-tipping)

5. spirit photograph

6. Spirit photograph

7. Ouija board with a planchette

8. ectoplasm

9. ectoplasm

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

11. 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)

12. 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

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

14. Daniel Dunglas Home

15. 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

16. Florence and Katie

17. Katie King

18. 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

19. 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.)

20. Mme Blavatsky

21. Mme Blavatsky and Olcott

22. Annie Besant (and J. Krishnamurty)

23. 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)

24. 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)

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

26. Georgiana Houghton: The Eye of God

27. Houghton: The Eye of the Lord

28. Svengali and Trilby

29. John Anster Fitzgerald: The Chase of the White Mouse

30. Arthur Rackham: Come, now aroundel

31. John Grimshaw: Spirit of the Night

32. Richard Dadd: Titania Asleep

33. Noel Paton: The Fairy raid

34. John Atkinson Grimshaw: Iris

35. Gnome in Cottingley

36. Cottingley photo

37. Cottingley photo

38. Cottingley