music and tales
We’ve covered the Golden Dawn, we’ve covered Spiritualism and Theosophy. If you were doing something crazy and far out in the Victorian era, we’ll get to it, but at long last we turn our gaze on the single most influential […]
Today we feature one of my favorite artists, Paul Laffoley. His work exists in the genre of Visionary Art. There is nothing else like it and no one else i know of who does what he does. He takes an […]
In examining the more colorful forms of spirituality that appeared during the Victorian and Edwardian eras, there are some interesting figures who movements like Theosophy drew upon and reimagined into a mythological status. The Compte Saint Germaine is perhaps one […]
Sounds like a sequel to the Temples of Syrinx, but the temples of Damanhur are instead a very real, underground complex of… temples, built for about 16 years in utter secrecy by a small group of artsy, new agey folks […]
Now that we’ve covered the history of Theosophy, let’s end our little sojourn with a discussion of what the movement was all about. Basically, Spiritualism began the idea that ghosts and occultish things could be reasoned out and studied scientifically. […]
When Helena Blavatsky died in 1891, she left a strong movement. Her last book, the massive 2 volume The Secret Doctrine contained an enormous amount of deep thinking, wild assertions, challenging revelations and talking points to last for years. Indeed, […]
“We assert that the divine spark in man being one and identical in its essence with the Universal Spirit, our “spiritual Self” is practically omniscient, but that it cannot manifest its knowledge owing to the impediments of matter. Now the […]
By the beginning of the 20th century Spiritualism was being attacked rabidly by skeptics. To Spiritualism’s credit, it claimed to be a scientific religion, not asking its followers to take anything on pure faith but offering direct experience of communication with the […]
By the end of the 1850s Spiritualism was in full swing and seances were all the rage. Prior to the Fox Sisters (see yesterday’s post) two other key people had set the stage for Spiritualism’s rapid rise. One was Emanuel […]
Probably the biggest new religious/occult movement to arise in the Victorian era was Spiritualism. Certainly several new offshoots of Christianity formed during this period, particularly in the US where due to The Second Great Awakening a number of new Christian […]