1890: From The Other Side, The Remarkable and Instantaneous Transference Of A Sceptical Gentleman

In the 15 May 1890 issue of Lucifer (the issue containing HPB's "Thoughts on the Elementals"), A. F. Tindall published a short piece entitled "Some of the Follies and Fallacies connected with 'Spiritualism'".

The piece is a marvelous bit of myth-....er...canon-making, as Tindall bemoans the fall of Spiritualism from a pure faith into a fragmented in-fighting cult, its various factions driven by Mammon and editors with axes to grind. There's some truth in that view, to be sure, but a look back at the Davenport brothers as emblematic of a lost golden age seems, even in 1890, to smack of premature hagiography.

Tindall, who is associated with the London Occult Society, appears periodically in the pages of The Two Worlds, and this bit of snidery is, I think, directed at our Emma:

The battle in those times (the golden age Tindall is manufacturing) was over the reality of the phenomena, not over their Causes; the world generally denying their existence and dividing Spiritualists into but two classes, dupes and knaves. This was a time when intense conviction on one side, and bitter scepticism on the other obtained. This was before it paid to simulate phenomena; therefore the tricksters had not appeared, neither had rival editors commenced to carve the movement into sects, nor so-called trance speakers, with one-sixth foreign influence and five-sixths of their own brains, commenced to form their utterances into creeds.

Hmmm. According Tindall, perhaps without warrant, the benefit of the doubt (this is after all something appearing in Lucifer), it's interesting to see what Emma looks like from the other side.

To give him full credit, Tindall's piece is quite funny, and well worth the read, if only for the transference of the sceptical gentleman (which I hereby reserve for future use as the title of a to-be-written comic novel).