Ectoplasm

[David Casseres]

I wrote
>> The Great War
>> finished the job of demolishing any real competition for spiritual 
>> direction, and after WW II it was time for the occult program to pass 
>> from the intellectual Elect to the spiritually needy preterite 

Daniel O'Hara sez
>...except the causal relations implicit here aren`t quite as neat as all 
>that. One literary landmark would have to be Conan Doyle`s worldwide 
>crusade for Spiritualism, begun shortly after WWI.... At 
>that time occultism was the province of the preterite, and mediumistic 
>ability 
>was no respecter of class, as Conan Doyle all too readily points out. 
>Certainly the most famously faked fairy photographs were not products of 
>any intellectual elite, but of an eight-year old girl and her sister.

I was dimly aware of that last bit, but not that in general "occultism 
was the province of the preterite."  Thanks for pointing it out!  What 
had me fooled is that the pre-WWII occultism that is still discussed 
seriously by today's occultists is that of the intellectuals; which is no 
surprise, of course.


Cheers,
David