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Spiritism (book)
''Spiritism'' (german: Der Spiritismus) is an 1885 book by German philosopher Eduard von Hartmann, the author of the famous treatise ''Philosophy of the Unconscious.'' In professor Corinna Treitel's opinion, publication of this book became one of the "key events" in history of the "German occult movement." This book was "one of the first works to attempt a complete psychological explanation of all occult phenomena." According to Charles Massey, one of the founders of the Society for Psychical Research, publication of this book made the "most brutal blow" out of all ones that were ever directed against Spiritualism. Contents of the book #The general state of the question. #The physical phenomena. #The ideality of the manifestations. #Transfigurations and materialisations. #The spirit hypothesis. Spiritism and Spiritualism At the beginning of the first chapter Hartmann explains that "the word 'Spiritism' is of French production", but the English and most part of the Germans ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Eduard Von Hartmann
Karl Robert Eduard von Hartmann, was a German philosopher, independent scholar and author of ''Philosophy of the Unconscious'' (1869). His notable ideas include the theory of the Unconscious and a pessimistic interpretation of the "best of all possible worlds" concept in metaphysics. Biography Von Hartmann was born in Berlin, the son of Prussian Major General Robert von Hartmann and was educated with the intention of him pursuing a military career. In 1858 he entered the Guards Artillery Regiment of the Prussian Army and attended the United Artillery and Engineering School. He achieved the rank of first lieutenant but took leave from the army in 1865 due to a chronic knee problem. After some hesitation between pursuing music or philosophy, he decided to make the latter his profession, and in 1867 earned his Ph.D. from the University of Rostock. In 1868 he formally resigned from the army. After the great success of his first work ''Philosophy of the Unconscious'' (1869)—the pu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Séance
A séance or seance (; ) is an attempt to communicate with spirits. The word ''séance'' comes from the French word for "session", from the Old French ''seoir'', "to sit". In French, the word's meaning is quite general: one may, for example, speak of "''une séance de cinéma''" ("a movie session"). In English, however, the word came to be used specifically for a meeting of people who are gathered to receive messages from ghosts or to listen to a spirit medium discourse with or relay messages from spirits. In modern English usage, participants need not be seated while engaged in a séance. Fictionalised conversations between the deceased appeared in ''Dialogues of the Dead'' by George, First Baron Lyttelton, published in England in 1760. Among the notable spirits quoted in this volume are Peter the Great, Pericles, a "North-American Savage", William Penn, and Christina, Queen of Sweden. The popularity of séances grew dramatically with the founding of the religion of Spiritualis ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Helena Blavatsky
Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, uk, Олена Петрівна Блаватська, Olena Petrivna Blavatska (; – 8 May 1891), often known as Madame Blavatsky, was a Russian mystic and author who co-founded the Theosophical Society in 1875. She gained an international following as the leading theoretician of Theosophy. Born into an aristocratic family of Russian-German descent in Yekaterinoslav, then in the Russian Empire (now Dnipro in Ukraine), Blavatsky traveled widely around the empire as a child. Largely self-educated, she developed an interest in Western esotericism during her teenage years. According to her later claims, in 1849 she embarked on a series of world travels, visiting Europe, the Americas, and India. She also claimed that during this period she encountered a group of spiritual adepts, the "Masters of the Ancient Wisdom", who sent her to Shigatse, Tibet, where they trained her to develop a deeper understanding of the synthesis of religion, philosop ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
William Crookes
Sir William Crookes (; 17 June 1832 – 4 April 1919) was a British chemist and physicist who attended the Royal College of Chemistry, now part of Imperial College London, and worked on spectroscopy. He was a pioneer of vacuum tubes, inventing the Crookes tube which was made in 1875. This was a foundational discovery that eventually changed the whole of chemistry and physics. He is credited with discovering the element thallium, announced in 1861, with the help of spectroscopy. He was also the first to describe the spectrum of terrestrial helium, in 1865. Crookes was the inventor of the Crookes radiometer but did not discern the true explanation of the phenomenon he detected. Crookes also invented a 100% ultraviolet blocking sunglass lens. For a time, he was interested in spiritualism and became president of the Society for Psychical Research. Biography Crookes' life was one of unbroken scientific activity that extended over sixty-seven years. He was considered remarkable for ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
William Walker Atkinson
William Walker Atkinson (December 5, 1862 – November 22, 1932) was an attorney, merchant, publisher, and author, as well as an occultist and an American pioneer of the New Thought movement. He is the author of the pseudonymous works attributed to Theron Q. Dumont and Yogi Ramacharaka. He wrote an estimated 100 books, all in the last 30 years of his life. He was mentioned in past editions of ''Who's Who in America'', in ''Religious Leaders of America'', and in similar publications. His works have remained in print more or less continuously since 1900. Life and career William Walker Atkinson was born in Baltimore, Maryland on December 5, 1862, to Emma and William Atkinson. He began his working life as a grocer at 15 years old. He married Margret Foster Black of Beverly, New Jersey, in October 1889, and they had two children. Their first child died young. The second later married and had two daughters. Atkinson pursued a business career from 1882 onwards and in 1894 he was ad ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Katie King (spirit)
Katie King was the name given by Spiritualists in the 1870s to what they believed to be a materialized spirit. The question of whether the spirit was real or a fraud was a notable public controversy of the mid-1870s. The spirit was said to have appeared first between 1871 and 1874 in séances conducted by Florence Cook (medium), Florence Cook in London, and later in 1874–1875 in New York in séances held by the Mediumship, mediums Jennie Holmes and her husband Nelson Holmes. Katie King was believed by Spiritualists to be the daughter of John King, a ''spirit control'' of the 1850s through the 1870s that appeared in many séances involving materialized spirits. A spirit control is a powerful and communicative spirit that organizes the appearance of other spirits at a séance. John King claimed to be the spirit of Henry Morgan, the buccaneer (Doyle 1926: volume 1, 241, 277). Florence Cook Florence Cook (ca 1856 – 1904) was a teenage girl who started to claim mediumistic abilit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Animal Magnetism
Animal magnetism, also known as mesmerism, was a protoscientific theory developed by German doctor Franz Mesmer in the 18th century in relation to what he claimed to be an invisible natural force (''Lebensmagnetismus'') possessed by all living things, including humans, animals, and vegetables. He claimed that the force could have physical effects, including healing. He tried persistently, without success, to achieve a wider scientific recognition of his ideas.Wolfart, Karl Christian; Friedrich Anton Mesmer. ''Mesmerismus: Oder, System der Wechselwirkungen, Theorie und Anwendung des thierischen Magnetismus als die allgemeine Heilkunde zur Erhaltung des Menschen'' (in German, facsimile of the 1811 edition). Cambridge University Press, 2011. . Foreword. The vitalist theory attracted numerous followers in Europe and the United States and was popular into the 19th century. Practitioners were often known as magnetizers rather than mesmerists. It had an important influence in medici ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Unconscious Mind
The unconscious mind (or the unconscious) consists of the processes in the mind which occur automatically and are not available to introspection and include thought processes, memories, interests, and motivations. Even though these processes exist well under the surface of conscious awareness, they are theorized to exert an effect on behavior. The term was coined by the German Romantic philosopher Friedrich Schelling and later introduced into English by the poet and essayist Samuel Taylor Coleridge.Christopher John Murray, ''Encyclopedia of the Romantic Era, 1760-1850'' (Taylor & Francis, 2004: ), pp. 1001–1002. Empirical evidence suggests that unconscious phenomena include repressed feelings, automatic skills, subliminal perceptions, and automatic reactions, and possibly also Complex (psychology), complexes, hidden phobias, and desires. The concept was popularized by the Austrian neurologist and Psychoanalysis, psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud. In psychoanalytic theory#The uncon ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer ( , ; 22 February 1788 – 21 September 1860) was a German philosopher. He is best known for his 1818 work ''The World as Will and Representation'' (expanded in 1844), which characterizes the phenomenal world as the product of a blind noumenal will. Building on the transcendental idealism of Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), Schopenhauer developed an atheistic metaphysical and ethical system that rejected the contemporaneous ideas of German idealism. He was among the first thinkers in Western philosophy to share and affirm significant tenets of Indian philosophy, such as asceticism, denial of the self, and the notion of the world-as-appearance. His work has been described as an exemplary manifestation of philosophical pessimism. Though his work failed to garner substantial attention during his lifetime, Schopenhauer had a posthumous impact across various disciplines, including philosophy, literature, and science. His writing on aesthetics, morality, and psyc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Somnambulism
Sleepwalking, also known as somnambulism or noctambulism, is a phenomenon of combined sleep and wakefulness. It is classified as a sleep disorder belonging to the parasomnia family. It occurs during slow wave stage of sleep, in a state of low consciousness, with performance of activities that are usually performed during a state of full consciousness. These activities can be as benign as talking, sitting up in bed, walking to a bathroom, consuming food, and cleaning, or as hazardous as cooking, driving a motor vehicle, violent gestures and grabbing at hallucinated objects.Swanson, Jenifer, ed. "Sleepwalking". ''Sleep Disorders Sourcebook''. MI: Omnigraphics, 1999. 249–254, 351–352. Although sleepwalking cases generally consist of simple, repeated behaviors, there are occasionally reports of people performing complex behaviors while asleep, although their legitimacy is often disputed. Sleepwalkers often have little or no memory of the incident, as their consciousness has ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Paranormal
Paranormal events are purported phenomena described in popular culture, folk, and other non-scientific bodies of knowledge, whose existence within these contexts is described as being beyond the scope of normal scientific understanding. Notable paranormal beliefs include those that pertain to extrasensory perception (for example, telepathy), spiritualism and the pseudosciences of ghost hunting, cryptozoology, and ufology. Proposals regarding the paranormal are different from scientific hypotheses or speculations extrapolated from scientific evidence because scientific ideas are grounded in empirical observations and experimental data gained through the scientific method. In contrast, those who argue for the existence of the paranormal explicitly do not base their arguments on empirical evidence but rather on anecdote, testimony, and suspicion. The standard scientific models give the explanation that what appears to be paranormal phenomena is usually a misinterpretation, mi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Frank Podmore
Frank Podmore (5 February 1856 – 14 August 1910) was an English author, and founding member of the Fabian Society. He is best known as an influential member of the Society for Psychical Research and for his sceptical writings on spiritualism. Life Born at Elstree, Borehamwood, Hertfordshire, Podmore was the son of Thompson Podmore, headmaster of Eastbourne College. He was educated at Haileybury and Pembroke College, Oxford (where he first became interested in Spiritualism and joined the Society for Psychical Research – this interest remained with him throughout his life). In October 1883 Podmore and Edward R. Pease joined a socialist debating group established by Edith Nesbit and Hubert Bland. Podmore suggested that the group should be named after the Roman General, Quintus Fabius Maximus Verrucosus, who advocated weakening the opposition by harassing operations rather than becoming involved in pitched battles. In January 1884 the group became known as the Fabian Society ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
