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Book Review
| Alfred J. Gabay, Messages from Beyond: Spiritualism and Spiritualists in Melbourne's Golden Age, 1870–1890, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 2001. pp. xi + 244. $32.95 paper.
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| It is often said that labour historians strive to rescue working-class historical experience from neglect and condescension. In Messages from Beyond, Al Gabay treats the nineteenth century fascination with spiritualism with a sceptical seriousness that manages to interrogate, without lapsing into scorn, what to modern eyes appears a strange and credulous cultural movement. |
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Gabay presents spiritualism as both cultural phenomenon and religion. He reminds us that internationally 'Spiritualism developed into a fully-fledged religion and philosophy of life for thousands of adherents'. What did they believe? Spiritualism was in many ways a repudiation of traditional religion triggered by Darwinism, and manifested as investigation of mystic 'signs and wonders'. Spiritualists turned to both science and nature to explore, as one of its leading Australian apostles, the medium and spiritualist advocate William Terry, observed, 'where we came from, why we are here, and whither we are going'. Followers were drawn towards the séance room and the occult; others drifted into secularist scepticism. |
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Spiritualism enjoyed significant support in nineteenth century Australia —particularly it seems in Melbourne, where Gabay focuses his study. William Terry's journal the Harbinger of Light was the leading local spiritualist journal; its motto 'Zoistic Science, Free Thought, Spiritualism and the Harmonial Philosophy' had apparently been revealed to Terry in a spirit vision, and captures the vague and melodramatic quality of much spiritualist inquiry. |
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During the 1870s the future Prime Minister Alfred Deakin was a leading Melbourne spiritualist. Gabay has sensitively explored Deakin's spirituality, and its complex relationship with his public life, in his pioneering 1992 study, The Mystic Life of Alfred Deakin. As a young man Deakin attended séances with Terry and for a time believed himself to be an 'impressional and writing medium'. |
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Spiritualists believed that they pursued a dramatic, revelatory quest; Gabay impressively explores spiritualism as an ethnographic phenomenon in his interrogation of the séance as a ritual event. The séance room formed a suitably dramatic stage, 'a sacred space' for the enactment of transcendental ritual. On this stage, women, as mediums, might also be empowered as the source of 'divine power', presiding over a mystic rite of death and rebirth. Tending to focus on the leading male spiritualists like Terry, Messages from Beyond would have benefited from a deeper investigation of the gender dimension of spiritualism, particularly on the role of women as mediums. |
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From a labour historian's perspective, Messages from Beyond presents as a study of a middle-class phenomenon: men and women with sufficient leisure to pursue the contemplation of a shadowy realm beyond the material, or the frisson of the séance. Messages from Beyond does not address the class dimensions of spiritualism, nor investigate working-class interest in spiritualism and free thought, although it existed; in Melbourne the radical feminist Rose Summerfield was a follower of the tempestuous Joseph Symes' Australasian Secularist Association during the 1880s. Other working-class radicals embraced theosophy. Spiritualism, free thought and theosophy formed a vital part of their questioning of established social, political and religious forms. |
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Theosophy, spiritualism's 'close relative', as Gabay observes, is only briefly treated in Messages from Beyond. Theosophy was established by Madame Blavatsky in 1875; Gabay reports that William Terry corresponded with her. Theosophy largely flourished after 1890, when Gabay's study cuts out. Perhaps it would have been worthwhile to have included some discussion of the movement from the mid nineteenth century spiritualist phenomenon to its fin de siecle manifestations. Still, that may simply be a way of urging Dr Gabay to write another book. Readers may also turn to Jill Roe's 1986 Beyond Belief for a history of theosophy in Australia. |
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Messages from Beyond is a penetrating study of colonial spiritualism. In its sensitivity to the beliefs and experiences of individuals once influential but now largely forgotten, Messages from Beyond not only restores these driven seekers to Australian history but also enriches our understanding of the complex and contradictory currents that ran through Australian society from the 1870s and towards the new century. |
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| University of Sydney |
MARK HEARN | |
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