If you’re looking for a unique (though pricey) holiday gift for that special mystic on your list, you might be interested in this set of Spiritualist photographs being auctioned off by Swann Galleries.
The collection is from 1920 through 1922 and is described as an,
“Album of 27 Spiritualist photographs taken during seances at Dr. Thomas Glendenning Hamilton’s Psychic Room in Winnipeg, Canada. With images of camera equipment, levitation experiments, teleplasm, materializations, and psychic mediums in deep trances with supernormal ephemera.”
Take a look at this video of Mitch Horowitz talking about the emergence of liberalism, occultism and the feminist movement in the United States. It’s part of the Big Think series.
In it, he argues that it’s no surprise these movements grew together, as all three were rooted in radical ideologies of democracy, equality and personal empowerment.
The book chronicles the history of spiritualism and the occult in the US starting in the 1770s, and focusing on the Burned-over District in Upstate New York.
This video is a quick overview of some of the main themes in the book.
Take a look, and if you get chance, read the book. It’s fascinating.
