Spiritualism and a Mid-Victorian Crisis of Evidence by: Peter Lamont
 |
| Daniel Dunglas Home |
The main argument of the essay dealt with seance phenomenon. The article cited that the events of the seance room were central to spiritualist practice and belief. Spiritualist beliefs, like other articles I have written of, viewed spiritualist beliefs as being a result of "The Victorian Crisis of Faith", Lamont begged to differ. Seance phenomena, according to Lamont was the primary reason given by for initial conversion to spiritualism.
 |
| A artist rendering of D.D. Home levitating |
The man of the hour in this article was none other than Daniel Dunglas Home. D.D. Homes, as Daniel is better known, was and is one of the most famous Victorian mediums. He conducted seances for British aristocracy, Continental royalty and other very influential peoples. Victorian's interested in spiritualism recognized Home to be rather different from other contemporary mediums. He was fairly well educated and NEVER accepted payment (according to Lamont). His success, however, relied upon an ability to produce a wide range of seemingly inexplicable phenomena in the seance room without any signs of trickery being involved (pg. 899).
A "typical" Home seance would take place in a well lit room, in which spectators could easily investigate for fraudulence. Home was able to produce raps, moving tables, playing of musical instruments without a visible hand playing them and much more. Witnesses could not debunk him in his 25 years of conducting seances. He was never caught cheating and was tested more thoroughly than any medium in this period. Home became the exemplar medium used as a reference for many other spiritualist mediums.
Naturally critics were lurking around every corner. Some cited witnesses of Homes' seances as being victims "of some kind of mental condition" (pg. 900). Others suggested Home's reported phenomena were the results of 'imaginings'. Some critics sought to coin what Home's did as a form of Mesmerism. William Gregory and John Elliotson, experts in Mesmerism, both after attending a seance conducted by Home stated that what Home did was not mesmerism.
 |
| Sir David Brewster |
 |
| Table Turning in 19th Cent France |
Stage conjurers and scientist were the next peoples to be called in to prove Home's phenomena as trickery. Neither group, however, appears to have known how the phenomena associated with the most famous medium of the period were produced. W.B. Carpenter tried to explain Home's table-tipping/turning by "ideomotor action" An Ideomotor phenomenon is defined as in reflexive responses to pain, the body sometimes reacts reflexively to ideas alone without the person consciously deciding to take action (Wikipedia). Sir David Brewster, an expert on optics and author of Letters of Natural Magic, a book that had sought to provide natural explanations for ostensibly supernatural phenomena (pg. 901) attended a seance conducted by Homes and later wrote a letter to his sister saying "he did not believe the phenomena to be the result of spirits, he could not conjecture how they were produced." Brewster seeking answers went on to make stuff up. It was clear that Brewster did not know how to explain what he had seen and, as such as position would no doubt have been embarrising for the author of a debunking publication it is not surprising that he came up with some conjectures, as he put it 'for the information of the public' (pg. 902).
Home's reputation continued to grow in the decades to come even with all the critics. He conducted regular seances for Napoleon III and Empress Eugenie, Queen Sophia of Holland, and Tsar Alexander II, whose goddaughter he later married. As one would suspect Home's seance received a lot of publicity. The central argument of the periodical press was an appeal to the authority of conjurers that were experts in such matters and would know how Home performed his tricks.
Conjuring
 | ||
| A floating head trick in Modern Magic |
 |
| Levitation Trick |
One source of an answer that article speaks of in large detail is conjuring. Conjuring as an entertainment may be seen withing the context of leisure as a whole. Leisure pursuits were evolving from a love of sports and reading an other forms of entertainment to avenues that produced wonder. Modernity in its quest to squelch this wonderment changed fanatical creatures into representations-a dwarf and giantess were turned into a drunkard and Chrisitinized African. "Curiosity and amazement were still used to draw the audience but that audience was now offered explanation and the orderly knowledge of modernity." (pg. 903).
Magic and mystery made the world more ambivalent, less certain and orderly. Conjuring relied upon wonder perhaps more than any other form of entertainment and did so in a way that had obvious links to the mystery and magic that modernity fought against. Conjuring provokes wonder through providing an audience with an anomaly and effect for which there is no explanation, agencies such as slight of hand were ruled out. Could Home's be a conjurer? The exemplar magician was by the late nineteenth century, 'well dressed, well mannered, and well skilled in the art of expose (pg. 905).
Conjurers could not provide an answer to what was going on in the seance rooms either. With the emergence of Modern Spiritualism conjurers were appearing who claimed their were genuine. This went against old conjurers who explicitly stated they performed mere tricks. Robert-Houdin, a renowned French conjurer cited that Home's reported levitation was a stage illusion known as Pepper's Ghost
 |
| Representation of the Peppers Ghost stage illusion |
The article went on to describe in some other sources of evidence for Home's debunking but Lamont states in conclusion that the problem of spiritualism and people believing it was not a crisis of faith but a crisis of evidence. No matter what critics tried they could not come up with an explanation to how Home's did what he did. Perhaps we will never know. Though many believers of Home's abilities did not necessarily believe it was the work of spirits they could not provide any evidence that he conducted any form of trickery. What if not spirits caused these wondrous
seance phenomena? The world may never know
No comments:
Post a Comment