THE UNEMBODIED

There are few things more disconcerting for the modern western mind than the idea of discarnate, autonomous spirits – souls without bodies. We don’t believe in ghosts any more and we have little faith now that clairvoyants can help us communicate with the souls of the departed.

Yet, during the Victorian area dabbling in spiritualism was popular at all levels of society in both Britain and America. The séance became a feature of drawing room society – sometimes entertaining, sometimes intense and serious. Interest in spiritualism became a veritable counter-culture, in many ways comparable to the 60s revolution in our own time. It tended to upstage current religion, indulge in altered states, and give more power to the intuitiveness of women. By 1855 two million people were followers of the movement.

In some circles the encounters in the darkened séance room could be quite risqué, taking on sexual overtones. Favorite familiars from the ‘other side’ would materialise to entertain the assembled guests, many of them elderly gentlemen who flirted with such ‘apparitions’. The spirit child Pocha ‘stole money and trinkets from the sitters, climbed on the laps of gentlemen, stroked their whiskers, and allowed herself to be kissed and cuddled.’ ¹

In spite of such fraudulent theatricals, sincere spiritualism carried Royal Approval. Queen Victoria and Prince Albert participated in Spiritualist séances. Later, the clairvoyant Georgiana Eagle demonstrated her powers before the Queen at Osborne House, on the Isle of Wight. The Queen’s consort had recently died and the clairvoyant revealed to the Queen the pet name that Prince Albert used for her – a secret that no one else knew. The Queen was impressed.

And there were some very famous people who were deeply involved in spiritualism: William James, the psychologist, studied spiritualism, publishing supportive conclusions; people like Christina Rossetti, John Ruskin, Lewis Carroll, Rudyard Kipling and other famous names were involved.² And in 1840 in The British Society for Psychical Research was founded – and still exists to this day.

I would like to remind my colleagues that Jung himself had an early interest in spiritualism; his mother was a psychic and later in life Jung dialogued with disincarnate spirits. His conversations with Philemon were just that:  ‘He taught me psychological objectivity and the actuality of the soul. He formulated and expressed everything which I had never thought, said Jung.

But the situation gets blurred by his calling Philemon ‘a fantasy figure’, suggesting that he is not an autonomous spirit. Philemon was, Jung said, taken from classical literature. In other words he was a mythical character. Jung thus gives the whole thing a scientific spin by granting objectivity to the spiritual world whilst sidestepping the objectivity of Philemon as an independent spirit. However, I would say, that for Philemon to teach Jung so much he was not simply fictional, he must have been a self-directed, thinking individual, capable intelligent communication.

 But Jung refuses to call a spade a spade, throwing out a smoke screen of mythical references. Such contrived avoidance is evident throughout Jung’s work as he tries to give his occult leanings a scientific spin. He was up against the medical establishment and had to give his writings the appearance of scientific objectivity. So Instead of being legitimate agents, his spirits become ‘archetypes’, seeming to be non-personal myths of the soul-at-large. This same evasion is seen in archetypal psychology where it is de rigueur not to be ‘literal’, but to keep the discussion in the realm of imagery and fantasy, befogging the reader with endless literary references. The simple phenomenological appearance of individual spirits is fudged.  Its all in the imagination.

We can distance ourselves from the whole unreliable farrago of ‘mediums’ who claim to have access to unembodied spirits. They are either cheats or sincere hysterics with over-excitable imaginations.

However, I can’t help looking over my shoulder at the ancient traditions of shamanism among indigenous people the world over or to the priestess at the Delphi’s Temple of Apollo. As Apollo’s voice she made prophesies that determined the political and military strategies of the state. ‘She also made thousands of pronouncements that led to the freeing of slaves, the creation of successful marriages, the honouring of local gods, the successful planting of crops and engagement in trade and industry.’ ³

I can tell you, no one in ancient Greece regarded the Oracle of Delphi as a figment of the imagination.

¹  Owen, Alex. The darkened room: women power and spiritualism in Victorian England. University of Chicago Press, 1989

²    Sword, Helen. Ghostwriting Modernism. Cornell University Press, 2002

³   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oracular_statements_from_Delphi

contact: stanrich@vodafone.co.nz

(03) 981 2264