Ectoplasm

[Daniel O'Hara]

On Wed, 19 Feb 1997, David Casseres wrote:

> 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.

Quite. Whereas we dismiss the validity of the substance of such occultism 
(on scientific and materialist grounds) whilst finding the working-class 
spiritualist phenomenon merely of great sociological import.
To bolster the Conan Doyle material a little: his campaign for 
Spiritualism was begun in 1920, and lasted for roughly ten years; "The 
Land of Mist" was published in 1926. It contains a number of appendices 
which give ACD's sources for his fictional material, including not only 
documentation of the popular attention given to the movement but also 
some apparently serious, official research conducted in France. 
I find it most tantalising that ACD's campaign was in fact a _response_ to 
the extent of Spiritualism's advent, indicating that it had been growing 
for years before 1920...