Calling the Spirits
Calling
the Spirits: A History of Seances by Lisa
Morton is exactly the type of non-fiction that I love to read: an extremely
well researched story of a cultural phenomenon and the way it has evolved to be
what we now perceive it to be culturally. This is exactly how Lisa Morton outlined the
history of seances from an academic, yet entertaining perspective.
Her book is packed of all kinds of interesting stories and
facts that a mere summary of the book would not provide justice to. However, it would be fair to say that in order
to cover the issue of seances fairly she digs deep into the history of
spiritualism. While spiritualism has a lot of nuances, dictionary.com defines
it as “a system of belief or religious practice based on supposed communication
with the spirits of the dead." Morton’s outlines a wide range of history starting out with necromancy in ancient Egypt
and Greece and ends with a discussion on how there is a strong spiritualistic
presence in New York. This is enough
time to give a large overview of how this became to be and enough material to
wet the appetite for to want to dig deeper into some of the different ideas and
stories if one desires. (The book is well researched and has excellent footnotes
and a good bibliography which can help point one in the direction of other resources…should
one desire)
As she tells the story of spiritualism, many topics that are
related to communicating with the dead are covered. One of them was “mesmeric
somnambulism” which is essentially how Franz Anton Mesmer coined what we now
would know a form of hypnosis to communicate with the dead. There was also spirit
photography which was founded by amateur photographer William Mumler when he
did a self portrait where he saw a ghostly apparition of a woman in the
picture. Upon discovering this it would become his enterprise. Another topic was how trance mediums became popular
during WW2, which was done by the medium going into a trance state to speak to
a spirit. The technique by trance
mediums would be altered in the 1970s with the New Age movement’s channeling…where
instead of trying to get in touch with a loved ones spirit they would try to
communicate with past masters who had individual teachings.
Morton also includes accounts of critics of spiritualism
such as the Catholic Church claiming that the spirits would essentially be
demons or the magician Houdini who had worked as a medium before coming out to
speak against Spiritualism exposing it as fraud.
Then of course, you can not go into a history of an attempt
to communicate with spirits without talking about the Oujia board, which she
does. She shares how the Oujia board was patented by Elijah bond in 1891. This
was essentially an improvement upon the talking boards or witch boards which
had been utilized in spiritualist circles. It would become a popular parlor
game for the first two decades and then it saw a huge resurgence in the 1973
after it was featured in the movie The Excorcist and remains a popular
way of depicting communication with the spirit world in the media.
There are so many other fascinating details in this book….and
if these kinds of facts and stories fascinate you, just go out and read the
book and dive into the stories that Morton shares! I really enjoyed the comprehensive overview of seances that Calling
the Spirits provided. I appreciated how she also includes people who were openly cynical about seances as this kind of subject manner does provoke serious questions.
My review is also posted on Goodreads
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