William Stainton Moses (1839 – 5 September 1892) was an

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ...

cleric Clergy are formal leaders within established religions. Their roles and functions vary in different religious traditions, but usually involve presiding over specific rituals and teaching their religion's doctrines and practices. Some of the ter ...

and spiritualist

medium Medium may refer to: Science and technology Aviation * Medium bomber, a class of war plane * Tecma Medium, a French hang glider design Communication * Media (communication), tools used to store and deliver information or data * Medium ...

. He promoted spirit photography and

automatic writing Automatic writing, also called psychography, is a claimed psychic ability allowing a person to produce written words without consciously writing. Practitioners engage in automatic writing by holding a writing instrument and allowing alleged spir ...

, and co-founded what became the

College of Psychic Studies The College of Psychic Studies (founded in 1884 as the London Spiritualist Alliance) is a non-profit organisation based in South Kensington, London. It is dedicated to the study of psychic and spiritualist phenomena. History British National Assoc ...

. He resisted scientific examination of his claims, which have generally been demolished.

Life

Moses was born in Donington near

Lincoln Lincoln most commonly refers to: * Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865), the sixteenth president of the United States * Lincoln, England, cathedral city and county town of Lincolnshire, England * Lincoln, Nebraska, the capital of Nebraska, U.S. * Lincol ...

. He was educated at

Bedford School :''Bedford School is not to be confused with Bedford Girls' School, Bedford High School, Bedford Modern School, Old Bedford School in Bedford, Texas or Bedford Academy in Bedford, Nova Scotia.'' Bedford School is a public school (English ind ...

University College School, London ("Slowly but surely") , established = , closed = , type = Public schoolIndependent day school , religion = , president = , head_label = Headmaster , head = Mark Beard , r_head_label = , r_he ...

and

Exeter College, Oxford (Let Exeter Flourish) , old_names = ''Stapeldon Hall'' , named_for = Walter de Stapledon, Bishop of Exeter , established = , sister_college = Emmanuel College, Cambridge , rector = Sir Richard Trainor ...

. He was ordained as a priest of the

Church of England The Church of England (C of E) is the established Christian church in England and the mother church of the international Anglican Communion. It traces its history to the Christian church recorded as existing in the Roman province of Brit ...

by Bishop Samuel Wilberforce in 1870. Moses attended his first

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, spea ...

with Lottie Fowler in 1872. Charles Williams and Daniel Dunglas Home were the next mediums he visited. Five months after his introduction to

spiritualism Spiritualism is the metaphysical school of thought opposing physicalism and also is the category of all spiritual beliefs/views (in monism and dualism) from ancient to modern. In the long nineteenth century, Spiritualism (when not lowercase ...

, he claimed to have experienced

levitation Levitation (from Latin ''levitas'' "lightness") is the process by which an object is held aloft in a stable position, without mechanical support via any physical contact. Levitation is accomplished by providing an upward force that counteract ...

. The automatic scripts of Moses began to appear in his books ''Spirit Teachings'' and ''Spirit Identity''. The scripts date from 1872 to 1883 and fill 24 notebooks. All but one have been preserved by the London Spiritualist Alliance. Moses published ''Psychography. A Treatise on One of the Objective Forms of Psychic or Spiritual Phenomena'' in 1878. In it, he coins the term "psychography" (from ''psycho'' and ''graphy'') for the spiritualist concept of channeling messages from the dead via

(also known as "independent writing", "direct writing" or "spirit writing"). Moses was one of the first vice-presidents of the

Society for Psychical Research The Society for Psychical Research (SPR) is a nonprofit organisation in the United Kingdom. Its stated purpose is to understand events and abilities commonly described as psychic or paranormal. It describes itself as the "first society to co ...

(SPR). Other early members included

Frederic W. H. Myers Frederic William Henry Myers (6 February 1843 – 17 January 1901) was a British poet, classicist, philologist, and a founder of the Society for Psychical Research. Myers' work on psychical research and his ideas about a "subliminal self" ...

Henry Sidgwick Henry Sidgwick (; 31 May 1838 – 28 August 1900) was an English utilitarian In ethical philosophy, utilitarianism is a family of normative ethical theories that prescribe actions that maximize happiness and well-being for all affected i ...

and Edmund Gurney. In 1886 and 1887 in a series of publications the SPR exposed the tricks of the medium William Eglinton. Because of this, some spiritualist members including Moses resigned from the SPR. Moses endorsed the

spirit photography Spirit photography (also called ghost photography) is a type of photography whose primary goal is to capture images of ghosts and other spiritual entities, especially in ghost hunting. It dates back to the late 19th century. The end of the Americ ...

of Édouard Isidore Buguet, however, Buguet was exposed as a fraud.

Joseph McCabe Joseph Martin McCabe (12 November 1867 – 10 January 1955) was an English writer and speaker on freethought, after having been a Roman Catholic priest earlier in his life. He was "one of the great mouthpieces of freethought in England". Becomin ...

. (1920). ''Spiritualism: A Popular History From 1847''. Dodd, Mead and Company. pp. 151-173 Moses had supported Buguet in an article for ''Human Nature'' in May 1875. After Burguet was exposed later in the same year, Moses insisted that Buguet was still a genuine medium and he had been bribed to make a false confession. The case has been cited by researchers as an example of spiritualists willing to believe and refusing to accept evidence of fraud. William Stainton Moses Photograph 2

In 1884, Moses was a founding member, together with Rogers, of the London Spiritualist Alliance, afterwards the

. Moses died on 5 September 1892.

Reception

Moses performed in dark conditions only with a small select circle of friends, he did not allow psychical researchers to attend his séances and refused to be tested. The psychical researcher Frank Podmore wrote: Stanhope Speer spirit photograph

It seems reasonable to conclude that all the marvels reported at osesseances were, in fact, produced by the medium's own hands: that it was he who tilted the table and produced the raps, that the scents, the seed pearls, and the Parian statuettes were brought into the room in his pockets: and that the spirit lights were, in fact, nothing more than bottles of phosphorised oil. Nor would the feats described have required any special skill on the medium's part. Frank Podmore. (1902). ''Modern Spiritualism: A History and a Criticism''. Volume 2. Methuen & Company. pp. 283-287

It was suggested that Moses looked up obituaries, daily newspapers, biographies or ''

The Annual Register ''The Annual Register'' (originally subtitled "A View of the History, Politicks and Literature of the Year ...") is a long-established reference work, written and published each year, which records and analyses the year's major events, developmen ...

'' to research the history of deceased people.

described Moses as a "deliberate impostor" and wrote that his apports and all of his feats were the result of trickery. Science historian

Sherrie Lynne Lyons Sherrie Lynne Lyons (born 1947) is an American author, science historian and skeptic. Lyons works as an Assistant Professor at the Center for Distance Learning of Empire State College at the State University of New York. She is the author of the b ...

wrote that the glowing or light-emitting hands in séances could easily be explained by the rubbing of oil of

phosphorus Phosphorus is a chemical element with the symbol P and atomic number 15. Elemental phosphorus exists in two major forms, white phosphorus and red phosphorus, but because it is highly reactive, phosphorus is never found as a free element on Ea ...

on the hands. Moses was caught twice with a bottle of phosphorus. A psychologist

Théodore Flournoy Théodore Flournoy (15 August 1854 – 5 November 1920) was a Swiss professor of psychology at the University of Geneva and author of books on parapsychology and spiritism. He studied a wide variety of subjects before he devoted his life to psych ...

wrote that before admitting a supernatural explanation for the

s of Moses, "we must first of all be sure that he himself was not capable of elaborating them subconsciously. To my mind, he was quite capable." Many of Moses's statements about ancient history have proven to be false. Researcher Georgess McHargue has suggested that Moses' mediumship was the result of self-suggestion and unconscious trickery. The first documented instance of

cryptomnesia Cryptomnesia occurs when a forgotten memory returns without its being recognized as such by the subject, who believes it is something new and original. It is a memory bias whereby a person may falsely recall generating a thought, an idea, a tune ...

occurred in 1874 with Moses.

Robert Todd Carroll Robert Todd Carroll (May 18, 1945 – August 25, 2016) was an American author, philosopher and academic, best known for The Skeptic's Dictionary. He described himself as a naturalist, an atheist, a materialist, a metaphysical libertarian, and a ...

. (2014)
"Cryptomnesia"
'' The Skeptic's Dictionary''. Retrieved 2014-07-12.

Publications

Under the pen name "M.A. Oxon", Moses published the following books on spiritualism: *''Spirit Identity'' (1879) *''Psychography'' (1882)
''Spirit Teachings''
(1883) *''Higher Aspects of Spiritualism'' (1880) Moses also edited the periodical ''

Light Light or visible light is electromagnetic radiation that can be perceived by the human eye. Visible light is usually defined as having wavelengths in the range of 400–700 nanometres (nm), corresponding to frequencies of 750–420 t ...

'' and wrote on spiritualism for ''Human Nature''.

References

Sources

* *''The Controls of Stainton Moses'' by A. W. Trethewy * ''Life and Experiences of Edmund Dawson Rogers, Spiritualist and Journalist'' (autobiography, 1911, new edition by Kessinger Publishing, London, 2004) * Frank Podmore. (1902)
''Modern Spiritualism: A History and a Criticism''
Volume 2. Methuen & Company. Chapter ''The Mediumship of Stainton Moses''. pp. 270–288 * {{DEFAULTSORT:Moses, William Stainton 1839 births 1892 deaths Alumni of Exeter College, Oxford English spiritual mediums People educated at Bedford School People educated at University College School People from Donington, Lincolnshire