Mysterious knocks, flying potatoes and rebellious servants: Spiritualism and social conflict in late Imperial Russia

Book description: The relationship between states, societies, and individuals in Central and Eastern Europe has been characterised by periods of change and redefinition. The current political, economic, social and cultural climate necessitates a discussion of these issues, both past and present. It is this theme which the proposed publication intends to discuss using a selection of papers given at the 5 th Annual Postgraduate Conference on Central and Eastern Europe held at the UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies (SSEES) in 2003. The papers represent work from young international scholars from Europe and North America writing on Central and Eastern Europe. The book consists of seven papers and develops an interdisciplinary framework reflecting the range of topics discussed during the conference. It embraces the regional breadth of Central and Eastern Europe containing analyses of Russia, the former Soviet Republics, Central Europe and South Eastern Europe. The papers chosen cover a variety of fields and adopt a corresponding range of approaches with a view to assessing from a multidisciplinary perspective the relationship between state, society and individuals. The papers in the book have been ordered chronologically. The volume starts with an analysis by Julia Mannherz of social conflict in late imperial Russia and moves on to Sergei Zhuk’s discussion of the Stundist movement in Ukraine. The third paper from Stefan Detchev is a discussion of the late-nineteenth-century politics of commemoration surrounding the Bulgarian war of independence. The theme of the politics of commemoration is also present in Andrzej Michalczyk’s analysis of the commemoration of the plebiscite in Silesia by Germans and Poles during the interwar period. Michalczyk examines how a shared event is commemorated and interpreted differently by the two national groups. The idea of common and shared histories is further developed by Rüdiger Ritter in his study of the history and the historiography of post-Communist Poland, Belarus and Lithuania. The move into the contemporary period is completed in the final two papers. The use of historical imagery for political purposes is explored in Markus Wien’s study of the King Simeon II Party in Bulgaria as well as the way in which the historical image of the monarchy has been changed for political purposes during the transition from communism to democracy. The final paper by Maria Aluchna continues the discussion of the process of transition by examining the economic transformation from a communist command economic system to a modern capitalist economy

Eugenics and the afterlife: Lombroso, Doyle, and the spritualist purification of the race

No abstract availabl

Talking with the dead: spirit mediumship, affect and embodiment in Stoke-on-Trent

While Spiritualism has attracted much attention in other disciplines, geographers have largely ignored it. However, we agree with Holloway (2006 Enchanted spaces: the seance, affect, and geographies of religion Annals of the Association of American Geographers 96 182–7) that Spiritualism presents conceptual challenges that make it worthy of more attention. As Holloway suggests, the themes of affect, embodiment and materiality are particularly helpful in exploring religious experiences. The focus of this paper is on the practice and experience of spirit mediumship in a Spiritualist setting. In mediumship, a specific challenge is to materialise and embody spirit such that spirit communication feels personal and rings true. For us, this suggests that mediumship is routinely successful both because it can produce accurate messages, which are judged empirically, and also because it produces what we call affectual truths, which are judged tacitly on whether they feel right or not. To account for this, we introduce the idea of intermediumship to describe interactions in the space in-between the medium and the congregation. It is through this space in-between that the affects associated with mediumship emerge, are experienced and are verified. Rather than seeing spirit communication as somehow enchanted or extraordinary, we assert that talking with the dead is predicated on the ordinariness of the experience: that is, that talking with the dead is emblematic of affect and embodiment in everyday life

Spirited Away

At first sight the fields of magic and science do not have much of an overlap. This notion however is completely untrue for the fairly long period between 1860 and 1930. A surprisingly high number of scientists and inventors of this time were fascinated by spiritualism and believed in the existence of paranormal forces. Marie Curie for example regarded mediumistic séances as "scientific experiments" and thought it possible to discover in spiritualism the source of an unknown energy that would reveal the secret of radioactivity. Thomas Ava Edison for his part announced an extension to his phonograph in 1921 that would extract thoughts and feelings from dead bodies in order to store and play them back. He claimed that this was possible due the existence of "life units" - tiny energy particles that are the scientifically proved equivalent to the human soul Away from ideological judgment these examples illuminate an interesting crossover between the utopian vision of a boundless technology that helps to reveal even more mysteries of the immaterial world and an anti-modernist thought-space that is filled and nourished by ghost stories, an animistic world outlook and a dazzling array of esoteric philosophies. In this context the praxis of the commercial magical show plays a very interesting and intermediate roll that connects and correlates these two assumed opposite spheres

Savage Spiritualism

Modem spiritualism has been described by Professor E. B. Tylor as in large measure a direct revival of savage superstition and peasant folklore

Spiritualisme Dalam Novel the Land of Mist Karya Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

This skripsi entitled “Spiritualisme dalam Novel The Land of Mist karya Sir Arthur Conan Doyle”, is focused on Spiritualism which a system of belief that human can contact the spirit in the afterlife. The aim of this research is to identify, to analyze, and to explain the idea of Spiritualism within the novel. In order to achieve those aims, literature and idea coined by Wellek-Warren is the theory that has been used. The method of this research is descriptive, and the approaches are both intrinsic and extrinsic. The intrinsic approach used in analyzing and interpreting the work, emphasizes on the spiritualism through the plot, character, and settingwhich reflecting Conan Doyle's belief in spiritualism. The extrinsic approach has been used in analyzing the relationship between the work, Conan Doyle's life and the spiritualism belief. Moreover, the result of the research shows that the ideology of Spiritualismalso embraced by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, is heavily contained in his novel The Land of Mist. The corporated ideologies could be found in the novel such as, clairvoyance, clairaudience, ectoplasm, trance, spheres, apports, levitation, materialization, psychometry, and direct voice

#51 - The Wine of Babylon

- The Wine of Spiritalism - The Bible Condemns Spiritualism - Modern Spirtualism - Progress of Spiritualism - Quizhttps://scholarsrepository.llu.edu/keys/1024/thumbnail.jp