Spiritualism is the name given to all the practices or means used to communicate with the spirits of the dead and developed in the 19th century mainly in English-speaking countries, England and America; and then it spread while soon became a religious movement dividing the public. The phenomenon took on frantic proportions as the seances became fashionable and every aristocrat by the end of the decade had attended at least one. Great personalities, such as Queen Victoria herself and Prince Albert, Dickens, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and even scientists such as Freud, were fascinated by the phenomenon.
Spiritualism resonated with the middle and upper classes, as mentioned above, and brought turmoil but also hope to those seeking scientific explanations for the mystery of death and the breadth of the human spirit. Others moved to Spiritualism out of a need to alleviate the pain of loss.
The phenomenon survived for half a century despite criticism and began to lose ground when many psychics were revealed to be just scammers. The phenomenon of Spiritism began in the early 1840s and became fashionable in the following years, however, the beginnings of the phenomenon were in the late 18th century, when the German doctor Franz Mesmer began his experiments with animal magnetism studying the physical energy of every living being and the method used was basically hypnosis.
Mesmerism, according to Mesmer, prevailed for about 50 years and was especially popular even after his death, especially around 1830, about a decade before Spiritualism.
The astrological occurrence that now explains man's interest in research and communication (even with hypnosis!) was the conjunction of Jupiter with Uranus in 1775 in the sign of Gemini. This synodic circle is related to the opportunities for expansion and innovation while promoting knowledge in eccentric and radical ways for the time. It is no coincidence, then, that Mesmerism and experiments with electricity, let alone Galvinism (also studied at the same time as Mesmerism) found fertile ground in the late 18th century.
In 1828 the planet Uranus, one of the planets that is responsible for the fashion or the trend of each era, entered the sign of its modern rulership, Aquarius. The 7-8 years of its stay in this sign, were marked by technological discoveries, such as the first experiments with steam trains, revolutions took place in colonies and the Statue of Liberty was erected.
Spiritualism brought turmoil but also hope to those seeking scientific explanations for the mystery of death and the breadth of the human mental capacity.
Definitely very Aquarian events. So anything progressive and revolutionary was experimenting and flirting with the idea of Modernism. Also in 1831, we had another conjunction of Jupiter with Uranus, this time in Aquarius and in those years the interest in hypnosis, phrenology and psychology was rekindled.
Thus we reach 1840, the date that is officially considered the beginning of Spiritualism and we observe that on the planetary scene there were several remarkable events. Initially, the planets that give the trends are Uranus, in Pisces now, and Neptune in Aquarius in mutual
reception [Uranus rules Aquarius and Neptune Pisces. Then it was the other way around. This is called mutual reception]. The planet Neptune associated with metaphysics in the sign of Aquarius, uses modern methods to answer the big questions. The planet Neptune also rules sleep, drugs (let's not forget that cocaine was in demand then), transcendental phenomena, mysticism and fraud. So these two, Uranus and Neptune, acted together, and formed the frenzy with the psychics. It was certainly extreme, radical and, not coincidentally, took on the dimensions of religion and movement. Soon all the psychic
phenomena of levitation, automatic writing, telekinesis, ghost appearances, and parapsychology began to be studied. Also, these two are related to the art of photography and we have all more or less seen the famous Victorian photographs where there are supposed to be capturing ghosts.
In 1843, we had a Jupiter-Neptune conjunction in Aquarius that magnified the trend and gave the idea of Universality. With the conjunctions of these two, we have true gurus yet swindlers to appear and promise miracles, we have an upsurge of religious phenomena and the distinction
blurs against the mystical.
In the years that followed, Victorian England had reached the brink of psychosis with the phenomenon leading to an obsession with death. The terrorist planets Saturn and Pluto met in Taurus in 1851, leading the world to uncertainty about the future (we saw it this year in 2020 when they met on January in Capricorn and brought us fear and constraints) and a little later the war broke out of the Crimea and in America the Civil War. The need for man to believe that there is life after death, clearly gave mental support and a hope that life is not in vain.
At the social level, the woman was oppressed. Sexuality, the same. Hysteria, which was also fashionable at the time, was simply the sexuality that was struggling to get out of the corset and a revolutionary pathological attitude towards oppression and modesty. The Gothic novels, which were published in volumes at the time, described the anxieties of the soul through the ghost that haunted the house. The spirit possessed the insane wife who was looking for a way out of the endless boredom of her life and began to imagine to be possessed, not by the spirit of the dead, but by the spirit of herself struggling to get out. It is no coincidence that the spiritual movement had mainly female
members who, of course, were against slavery and in favour of women's emancipation.
Believer it or not of the phenomenon, the fact that it lasted half a century and managed to make brilliant minds of the time wonder about its validity, certainly gives the phenomenon a usefulness. Along with the opportunists who simply took advantage of the fashion of the time to make money, there were scientists or people who studied Spiritism and gathered information about people who seemed to have psychic powers and could act as mediums between the Planes.
One of the people who believed in and studied Spirituality, by writing books and later founding the religious movement in Brazil, was the French teacher Alan Cardek. The mapping of human psychic abilities is a remarkable event in world history because it promotes the knowledge of psychology, anthropology and medicine, while bringing man one step closer to the answers that existential mysteries have plagued the Soul for centuries.
Anastasia Diakidi
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