Keeping in Touch: An Anthology of the Victorian SeanceMain MenuIntroductionFurther ReadingI - Spiritualism and Its BelieversII - Ambivalent SkepticsIII - Scoffers and FraudsIV - The Private SeanceV - The Public SeanceWork CitedMegan Brueningb3bbdc9bd1941527cc9ff27849ef1a643abdd7d3
Experiences in Spiritualism
12016-11-23T12:25:09-05:00Megan Brueningb3bbdc9bd1941527cc9ff27849ef1a643abdd7d3714plain2016-12-16T21:01:17-05:00Megan Brueningb3bbdc9bd1941527cc9ff27849ef1a643abdd7d3Identified only by the name “Amberly,” the author of “Experiences in Spiritualism (1874 Fornightly Review) reports how he attends a séance but remains unconvinced of spiritualism in general. At the same time Amberly concludes by commenting that spiritualism may teach the readers something about how human beings gather knowledge in an era of great intellectual and technological change. By doing so, Amberly implicit admits that the world of the Victorian era is an ambiguous, ambivalent time containing phenomena that cannot (or should not) be explained merely by traditional schema when new ones are becoming available.