From Matter to Spirit
The Result of Ten Years’ Experience in Spirit Manifestation

A decade-long study of the spiritualist world, this volume provides a glimpse into the Victorian fascination with the occult.

Sophia Elizabeth De Morgan (Author)

9781108027441, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 19 May 2011

444 pages, 5 b/w illus.
21.6 x 14 x 2.5 cm, 0.56 kg

Sophia Elizabeth De Morgan (1809–1892) was the wife of the mathematician and logician Augustus De Morgan and mother of the celebrated ceramicist William De Morgan. In this book, published in 1863, De Morgan, writing as 'CD' – with a preface by her husband signed as 'AB' – acknowledges that alleged spirit manifestations have faced much criticism and scepticism, but argues that it was a little-understood phenomenon that merited further investigation. She spent a decade on this research, and focused on the role of the mediums, people who were believed to communicate with the spirit world. She was aided in this by the arrival of a medium who lived with the De Morgan family for six years. Her chapters also examine in depth the process of dying and ideas about the afterlife. A first-hand account of the nineteenth-century spiritualist world, this book provides a fascinating glimpse into Britain's changing religious landscape.

Preface Augustus De Morgan
1. Introductory – method of experimenting
2. Rapping and table-moving – reality of phenomena
3. Writing: first experiments
4. Mesmerism
5. Mediumship: modes of influence
6. Mediumship (continued): writing-vision-drawing
7. Mediumship (continued): the voice and hearing
8. Mediumship: nature of influence
9. Process of death and formation of the spiritual body
10. Daybreak
11. The home of the spirit
12. Appearances after death
13. Correspondence and development
14. Influx and inspiration
15. The word of God
Notes to chapter XV.

Subject Areas: History of ideas [JFCX]