Tuesday, August 11, 2026 · 天火 · tianmu.org
Spiritualism and Psychical Research
Modern spiritualism, psychical research, spirit photography, apparitions, and paranormal investigation as part of post-Blake reenchantment.
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Texts
A Wanderer in the Spirit Lands — FranchezzoA Victorian spiritualist narrative of a soul's journey through the afterlife, dictated by the spirit "Franchezzo" through the automatic writing of the medium A. Farnese and first published in 1896.Human Personality and Its Survival of Bodily Death — Frederic W. H. MyersF. W. H. Myers's founding work of psychical research, published in 1903 after his death and the source of the 'subliminal self' — this is the one-volume popular edition abridged by his son Leopold Hamilton Myers in 1906, with the glossary, case appendices, and synopsis of vital faculty.Raymond, or Life and Death — Sir Oliver LodgeSir Oliver Lodge's 1916 memorial record of his son Raymond, killed at Ypres in 1915 — letters from the Front, verbatim séance records with Mrs. Leonard and other mediums, and the physicist's argument for survival; one of the most influential grief documents of the First World War.The Coming of the Fairies — Arthur Conan DoyleThe Coming of the Fairies by Arthur Conan Doyle (1922) — Doyle's investigation of the Cottingley Fairy photographs, arguing for the genuine existence of fairies and nature spirits, blending Theosophical speculation with earnest analysis of the photographic evidence.The New Revelation — Arthur Conan DoyleArthur Conan Doyle's 1918 account of his thirty-year path from medical materialism to Spiritualism — the wartime book that made the creator of Sherlock Holmes the movement's most famous advocate, with his argument for what the new revelation means for Christianity and the life to come.The Vital Message — Arthur Conan DoyleArthur Conan Doyle's 1919 sequel to The New Revelation — his fuller wartime statement of the Spiritualist case, arguing that psychic evidence demands a readjustment of both science and Christianity, with appendices on Geley's ectoplasm experiments, spirit photography, and clairvoyance.