The Occult in Victorian
Britain
Victorian crisis of faith
Darwinism, physics, chemistry
 There is only this life (scientific
materialism)
 Why be good?

Victorian occult
Spiritualism, theosophy, psychical research
 Animal magnetism (mesmerism)
 Telepathy, hypnosis
 Fairies

spiritualist séance
spirit photograph
Spirit photograph
Ouija board with a planchette
ectoplasm
ectoplasm
Spiritualism
1848 John Fox and his family
 Daniel Dunglas Home


Florence Cook and ‘Katie King’ (Annie
Owen Morgan)
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)

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
The politics of spiritualism
Often progressive (Robert Owen’s utopian
socialism)
 Social reformism, broadly democratic slant
 Brought spiritual matters into everyday life

Daniel Dunglas Home
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

Joanna Southcott (1750-1814)
Florence and Katie
Katie King and
Sir William
Crooks
Katie King
Katie King
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

Theosophy
Theosophical Society (1875)
 Mme 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.)

Mme Blavatsky
Mme Blavatsky and Olcott
Annie Besant (and J. Krishnamurty)
theosophy
Genuine occultism
 elitism
 adepts
 „occult phenomena must not be confused
with the phenomenon of spiritualism. THe
latterm whatever they may be, are
manifestations which amedium can neither
control nor understand” (A. P. Sinnett)

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)

Late 19th century: occult revival
 Cabalists, Rosicrutians, Hermeticists
 The Hermetic order of the giolden Dawn
 Astrology, magic, palmistry
 Oriental(ist) slant

Mesmer’s baquet
Mesmerism
Magnetism (Mesmerism) exposed
Animal magnetism (cartoon)
Animal
magnetism
Svengali and Trilby
John Anster Fitzgerald: The Chase of the
White Mouse
Arthur Rackham: Come, now aroundel
John Grimshaw: Spirit of the Night

Edward
Robert
Hughes:
Midsummer’s
Eve
Richard Dadd:
The Fairy
Feller’s
Master
Stroke
Richard Dadd: Titania Asleep
Fairies on a Toadstool
Fitzgerald: The Captive Robin
Noel Paton: The Fairy raid
John Atkinson Grimshaw: Iris
Amelia Murray:
The Moth fairy
Gnome in
Cottingley
Cottingley photo
Cottingley photo

Cottingley