The Occult Magazine: 1885 and 1886

Through the generosity of Pat Deveney, the Occult Magazine for 1885 and 1886 is now available in PDF form. This is the journal of record for the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor, and more generally for "the amorphous opposition" (to quote Pat) to the Theosophical Society, which had by this time adopted a stance against practical magic, and the engineering of the soul in the here-and-now.

Uncollected Essays from 1866...and 1868...and 1871

The particular pleasures of recovering uncollected material...

Tonight, three uncollected essays of Emma's from what was perhaps the most exciting -- in the positive sense -- year of her life: 1866, which she spent in London, giving both private "soiree" lectures (published as Questions Answered Extempore) and public lectures, in St. James' Hall in Regent Street, and elsewhere. The three lectures recovered were all published in The Spiritual Magazine (the work product of Benjamin Coleman, William Howitt and others), during the course of 1866: Psychology; Or, The Science Of Soul (Lecture One), Psychology; Or, The Science Of Soul (Lecture Two), and
The Discerning Of Spirits, which was reprinted in December of 1866 as The Discovery of Spirits in The Banner Of Light.

Many of the concerns and areas of interest that Emma would later unfold in her life -- the relationship between clairvoyance and somnabulism on the one hand, and spiritualism on the other, galvanic medicine, and psychometry, as well as the critique of what Peebles called "churchianity" and the search for the ur-religion -- appear prominently in these lectures, and in general they give us a good sense for Emma-the-scientist, attempting as she did throughout her life to bend the physical sciences to the will of the parascience of spiritualism.

This snippet particularly interested me:

I have attempted to shew you that magnetism and psychology are the two great columns that support the temple of Spiritualism, and I must here add that the great mission of Spiritualism is not alone to convince you of the presence of the blessed dead. I believe that its chief work is to prepare the soul for its spiritual home; to advise us on the true nature of life, inform us of its science, give us an appreciable understanding of the duties that are required of us here, and of the nature of the influences that hinder us in its performance.....I conclude, therefore, this discourse, by charging upon all who are endeavoring to investigate this occult science of soul to start from its basis stones, -- magnetism and psychology. Like physics which forms the base of the column of which metaphysics is the apex, animal magnetism is the base and spiritualism the apex of the column of this great science of the soul.

The Masonic borrowing cannot go unnoticed, but this strikes me as a very early formulation of one of Emma's life-long obsessions: the construction of a rational religion - a faith that was also a science - to replace "churchianity".

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And, from 1868, Questions and Impromptu Answers (Series 1) and Questions and Impromptu Answers (Series 2), also from The Spiritual Magazine.

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And, from 1871, Impromptu Answers To Questions (which we should probably normalize to Questions and Impromptu Answers (Series 3)) and What Relation Does Spiritualism Bear To Science?, from the same run of The Spiritual Magazine that contained The Scientific Investigation of Spiritualism.

Emma and the HBofL

Number 1 on the research agenda: what if any active, organizing or pollinating role did Emma play in the foundation and activities of the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor?

Getting the first digital edition of The Occult Magazine for 1885/6 together today (thanks, Pat!), I came across this fortuitous juxtaposition on the back page of issue 1.

Here, in miniature, the social network we know about:

1. the Scots publisher Hay Nisbet, connected to Emma directly, and at one remove through David Duguid and others, and connected to Peter Davidson (having published Davidson's book on the violin) -- clearly the gateway node between Emma's network and the HBofL network
2. the editors of the Occult Magazine, canvassing for a copy of Ghost Land as they begin their new publishing ventures
3. and, most distant, the editor of Ghost Land, Emma herself.

. The fact that the editors felt the need to advertise for a copy of Ghost Land might tend to suggest that they had no direct connection with Emma, but, on the other hand, Emma claimed at several junctures prior to 1885 that she had no copies of Ghost Land left to hand out.

Stridency

Emma's career, as I have said elsewhere, is marked by attempts to escape from her self-chosen role as Spiritualist propagandist: first, her attempt to found an institution for "outcast women" in various east coast cities in the late 1850s and early 1860s; secondly, her brier career as a political operative for the Lincoln campaign (how connected she was to that campaign, I don't know); thirdly, her stint as a galvanic physician.

And of course, there are her various stints as editor and publisher: with the SDSK, with the Western Star, with The Two Worlds (which was really conceived of, in modern terms, as a merchandising vehicle with a house rag, rather than as a journal per se), and with The Unseen Universe.

And in every case, after a period of time spent trying to make the new venture fly, Emma returned to the road. And each time she returned, it was (as far as I can tell) to smaller audiences, more arduous traveling schedules, and lower fees.

Depressing, when you look at it from afar.

Why did Emma have an ambivalent relationship with Spiritualism? Part of the answer is, I think, because Spiritualism, as a movement, had an ambivalent relationship with Emma.

A stunningly clear example of this (thanks, Pat) is the beating Moses Hull administers to Emma in this piece from Hull's Crucible of 30 July 1874. The piece is well worth reading in its entirety, and, beyond being a clear sign that 1874 was a -- if not the -- year that the unitary facade of Modern Spiritualism collapsed into the street, it is a clear indication that the whisperings and mutterings from other parts of the planet about Emma's heavy-handed didacticism and pontification weren't just regional grumblings.

Whether Emma ever saw this piece, I don't know. Certainly, she continued to conjure with Hull's name right up to the bitter end -- she quotes him extensively in her farewell address to the readers of The Unseen World.

Of course, it may be that Hull was motivated to administer his whipping in public because he -- and others -- knew Emma was leaving Spiritualism (in fact but not in public) and turning (or returning, depending on your perspective) to occultism at this time. Nothing like smacking the splitters a few times, on their way out the door, to rally the faithful.

A. R. Wallace, Emma and the Christian Right

There is a story on the AP wire today about Alfred Russel Wallace, famously the "co-discoverer" of evolution, with Darwin, and equally famously a scientist-spiritualist, whose conversion to Spiritualism was triggered, at least in part, d by Emma's 1855-65 trance lectures in London.

The AP wire piece suggests that Wallace's Spiritualism is being leveraged, these days, by fundamentalist xians of the "intelligent design theory" bent, to reintroduce the hand of the (christian) Creator into the evolutionary mechanism.

Some battles are fought, again, and again, and again, over and with the bodies of the dead.