![]() ![]() ![]() Beginning in 1875, the apparent transparency of the Spiritualist seance became the object of critique of an emerging occultist movement of Theosophy, which sought to undermine the authoritative human spirits of Spiritualism by turning the human spirits of the Spiritualist s_eance wholesale into disruptive non-human mediators called “Diakkas,” “Bhuts,” and “Elementals,” and replacing Spiritualism’s authoritative “Indian” control spirits drawn from the imaginary of the American frontier with Tibetan “Mahatmas” drawn from the orientalist imaginary of the Empire. However, this article shows that the actual phatic channels proposed by Spiritualism consisted almost entirely of mediating chains of human spirits who stood between the bereaved seance guests and the spirits of the dear departed called “strangers.” While the “strangers” were, like the seance guests, departed white people, the authoritative “control spirits” were frequently exotic others such as “Indians” from the American imaginary of the Frontier. Recent media studies research on 19th-century Spiritualism has foregrounded the technological metaphors that suffuse Spiritualist models of the seance. ![]()
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