Jay Winter

Women played an important role in the spiritualist community. It is, therefore, not surprising that spiritualists were advocates of feminism and that the Roman Catholic Church repeatedly anathematized the movement and especially the women within it.

Leviticus 20: 6

and Deuteronomy 18:10-12 left no doubt about the sin of attempting communion with the dead.

The work of Charcot on hypnotism and trances helped to popularize the paranormal, as, in later years, did Freud's theory of the unconscious.

The Revue spirite had been founded by Allan Kardec in 1858.

Mediums' tables sold for 10 francs in 1914; crystal balls sold for 10-40

francs, according to their size and purity. Mediums and healers placed notices in the Revue spirite

As a young man, and before he had become Kaiser, Wilhelm II dabbled in spiritualism with his friend Prince Eulenberg.14 J.C.F.

'To ease the pain and to try to get in touch.' The bereaved couple attended a seance led by a celebrated medium, Mrs Osborne Leonard, who spoke in the voice of a young Indian girl called Feda

Indeed, in the words of one writer in the Occult Review, which published testimonies of those who spoke to dead soldiers, the fallen were 'helping to form a Britain or Empire beyond the grave, a better Britain or Empire than exists now on the material plane'

In the following weeks the Lodge family - father, mother, and at least two of the eleven children - continued the sessions and built up a detailed picture of Raymond's life in what they called 'Summerland' .

C atastrophe a n d consolation

of the supernatural odyssey were published in a book entitled Raymond, which went through a dozen printings be