Guest Column

By Madis Senner

Heaven on Earth

As Spiritualism began to catch fire, people began to practice mediumship and communication with Spirits among small circles of friends. These people were earnest and passionate about their practices, as are many people today; however, others saw the opportunity for fortune.

Several became mediums for profit and began employing theatrics. Fraud became increasingly rampant as Spiritualism grew.

While the Fox Sisters were taking Broadway by storm, others saw Spiritualism as an agent of liberation and as a break from the materialism of the modern world, not as a profit-making venture.

John B. Buescher in his book The Other Side of Salvation: Spiritualism and the Nineteenth Century Religious Experience notes that there were several strains, or minor movements, within the larger Spiritualist movement.

One of those strains saw communication with Spirits as means for making a better world, or a heaven on earth.

“Many…who turned to Spiritualism sensed a biblical millennium, which manifested itself in plans for egalitarian utopias where humans mingle with angels or become angels themselves,” he wrote. “Thus, Spiritualism was not just a means of contacting the spirits of the deceased or of exploring the afterlife. Rather, it meant the opening wide of a gate between a perfect Heaven and an imperfect Earth. This idea provided a link between spiritualism and social reform” (page 123).

Many social reformers believed that angels could help guide them in bringing about a better world, or that Spiritualism opened up a higher mind.

“Spiritualists gave voice to an enlightened progressivism and were among the era’s strongest proponents of the liberation of all people from oppressive bonds and limitations. Spiritualism was simultaneously idealistic, liberal and anarchic” (ibid page 151).

Ann Braude notes that “The Spiritualist network, including Progressive Friends, assembled large audiences for radical causes” (page 69). Abolitionism, women’s rights, free speech, food reform, were some of the causes.

The Fire Burned Out

The spark or consciousness that had burned brightly within Spiritualism as a vehicle of divine transformation began to wane as the decades progressed. It increasingly began to be associated with the money grabbers, circus performers and fraudsters that were bilking the public.

While the ranks of Spiritualism would continue to grow until early in the 20th century, the social reformers and dreamers were long gone from the movement by then.

Braude notes that public wrath began pouring on mediums within Spiritualism during the 1870s (page 181). One of the first critics was Andrew Jackson Davis. Madame Blavatsky, who would go on to found Theosophy, similarly would aggressively expose fraud and bogus theatrics.

Buescher notes “by the 1880s, reform advocates were often either members of mainstream liberal churches … or where anarchists or atheists… By that time, much of Spiritualism had devolved into stage magic or where co-opted by its later competitors” (ibid page 235).

While many would passionately and earnestly continue to devote themselves to Spiritualism, the stigma of the charlatans and money grabbers would dwindle their ranks as well.

A New Age

When I reflect on Spirit House and Timothy Brown who advocated things such as free speech and community by opening up Spirit House to all, I see him as being part of the social reform segment of the Spiritualist movement.

Had he built Spirit House a few decades later, he would probably have advocated for one of the liberal Christian or progressive alternative Spiritual strains then flowering. During his time, Spiritualism was a popular vehicle for spirituality and social reform while the Burnt Over period in New York state raged. It was emancipating.

So how does one honor the tradition of Spiritualism that Brown and other social reformers espoused?

I don’t see it as embracing Spiritualism that exists today that seems focused on communication with Spirits and little if any interest in social reform or social justice causes. I think we need to view the intent and consciousness that drove Brown and other Spiritualist reformers.

They saw the possibility of being inspired by the divine or developing one’s inner faculties and working with the mystical to help transform the world. We must embrace that consciousness to see how we can give it strength or manifest in this world of ours no matter how it is adorned.

We must, as they did, look at ways of bringing about heaven on earth, and then we will be similarly embracing the divine that inspired them.

Sources: Ann Braude, Radical Spirits: Spiritualism and Women’s Rights in Nineteenth-Century America; John B. Buescher, The Other Side of Salvation: Spiritualism and the Nineteenth-Century Religious Experience; Slater Brown, The Heyday of Spiritualism.

Madis Senner is founder of the Spirit House Society, a group committed to the purchase and preservation of the nationally recognized historic monument.