Spiritualism and Psychical Research Compared
The believers and the investigators, reading the same séances.
Spiritualism and psychical research studied the same phenomena for different reasons. Spiritualists sought communion with the dead and a new religion; psychical researchers sought to test claims by evidence, whatever the result.
What It Is
Spiritualist and Spiritist texts teach: they report messages, explain the spirit world and draw moral lessons. Psychical research texts investigate: they describe controls, witnesses and alternative explanations, and often end undecided.
Why It Matters
Reading one side without the other produces either credulity or dismissal. Together they document one of the nineteenth century’s most serious debates about mind and evidence.
Core Texts
Spiritist teaching and the scientific investigations of the same period.
Art Magic, or Mundane, Sub-Mundane and Super-Mundane Spiritism. A Treatise in Three Parts and Twenty-Three Sections, Descriptive of Art Magic, Spiritism, the Different Orders of Spirits in the Universe Known to Be Related to, or in Communication with Man; Together with Directions for Invoking, Controlling, and Discharging Spirits, and the Uses and Abuses, Dangers and Possibilities of Magical Art
Emma Hardinge Britten
Art Magic, or Mundane, Sub-Mundane and Super-Mundane Spiritism. A Treatise in Three Parts and Twenty-Three Sections, Descriptive of Art Magic, Spiritism, the Different Orders of Spirits in the Universe Known to Be Related to, or in Communication with Man; Together with Directions for Invoking, Controlling, and Discharging Spirits, and the Uses and Abuses, Dangers and Possibilities of Magical Art
Emma Hardinge Britten
English · Occult Philosophy
Arthur Conan Doyle The History of Spiritualism I
Anonymous
Arthur Conan Doyle The History of Spiritualism I
Anonymous
English · Spiritualism & Psychical Research
Researches in the Phenomena of Spiritualism
William Crookes
Researches in the Phenomena of Spiritualism
William Crookes
English · Spiritualism & Psychical Research
Thirty Years of Psychical Research, Being a Treatise on Metapsychics
Richet
Thirty Years of Psychical Research, Being a Treatise on Metapsychics
Richet
English · Spiritualism & Psychical Research
What Is a Ghost? and Phantasms of the Dead
Hereward Carrington
What Is a Ghost? and Phantasms of the Dead
Hereward Carrington
English · Spiritualism & Psychical Research
A Beginner’s Sequence
The movement
Kardec’s Spirits’ Book and Art Magic: Spiritualism and Spiritism in their own words.
Art Magic, or Mundane, Sub-Mundane and Super-Mundane Spiritism. A Treatise in Three Parts and Twenty-Three Sections, Descriptive of Art Magic, Spiritism, the Different Orders of Spirits in the Universe Known to Be Related to, or in Communication with Man; Together with Directions for Invoking, Controlling, and Discharging Spirits, and the Uses and Abuses, Dangers and Possibilities of Magical Art
Emma Hardinge Britten
Art Magic, or Mundane, Sub-Mundane and Super-Mundane Spiritism. A Treatise in Three Parts and Twenty-Three Sections, Descriptive of Art Magic, Spiritism, the Different Orders of Spirits in the Universe Known to Be Related to, or in Communication with Man; Together with Directions for Invoking, Controlling, and Discharging Spirits, and the Uses and Abuses, Dangers and Possibilities of Magical Art
Emma Hardinge Britten
English · Occult Philosophy
The investigation
Crookes and Richet: scientists applying method to the séance room.
Researches in the Phenomena of Spiritualism
William Crookes
Researches in the Phenomena of Spiritualism
William Crookes
English · Spiritualism & Psychical Research
Thirty Years of Psychical Research, Being a Treatise on Metapsychics
Richet
Thirty Years of Psychical Research, Being a Treatise on Metapsychics
Richet
English · Spiritualism & Psychical Research
