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About this product
Product Identifiers
PublisherMelbourne University Publishing
ISBN-100522849105
ISBN-139780522849103
eBay Product ID (ePID)2015963
Product Key Features
Number of Pages254 Pages
Publication NameMessages from Beyond : Spiritualism and Spiritualists in Melbourne's Golden Age 1870-1890
LanguageEnglish
SubjectGeneral, Spiritualism, History
Publication Year1997
TypeTextbook
AuthorAl Gabay
Subject AreaBody, Mind & Spirit, Religion, History
FormatPerfect
Dimensions
Item Height1.2 in
Item Weight9.8 Oz
Item Length8.4 in
Item Width5.5 in
Additional Product Features
Intended AudienceScholarly & Professional
LCCN2001-411924
IllustratedYes
SynopsisHistory of the spiritualist movement in Melbourne during the period 1870 to 1890. Explores the origins of the spiritualist movement and relates its rise and fall to the wider intellectual and religious currents in colonial Australian society. Demonstrates that for most believers the seance was not a scientific enterprise but a religious and highly ritualised event. Includes photographs, appendix, notes, bibliography and index. Author is Senior Lecturer in History and Religious Studies at La Trobe University, Bendigo Campus. He has published numerous articles in scholarly journals on aspects of the spiritualist movement in Australia. Previous title is 'The Mystic Life of Alfred Deakin'., The Spiritualist movement had its beginnings in the United States in the late 1840s and within a few years had spread to Australia. With its sances, mediums, trances, 'magnetisers', table-tilting and other mysterious psychic phenomena, it attracted media frenzy and public furore, but also many deeply serious converts--often highly intelligent and talented people who rejected orthodox religion in favour of scientific rationalism, but were still vitally concerned with moral debates. One of them was the young Alfred Deakin, later to become Prime Minister. Spiritualists sought 'rational, discoverable answers' to life's mysteries. They sought to 'prove' empirically the continued existence of the human personality after death, while maintaining--somewhat paradoxically--that the movement was a genuine religion. In Messages from Beyond , however, Al Gabay shows that for most believers the sance was not a 'scientific' enterprise but a religious and highly ritualised event. In this fascinating history, Gabay explores the origins of the Spiritualist movement and relates its rise and fall to the wider intellectual and religious currents in colonial Australian society. He argues that the atmosphere of Freethought and Secularism in colonial Melbourne, as well as the passionate debates of the time on the authority of the Bible and Evolution, were fundamental to the success of the movement, and that it was a cultural product of its time., A study of spiritualism in Melbourne between 1870 and 1890. Al Gabay explores the origins of the movement and relates its rise and fall to the wider intellectual and religious currents in Australian society. He shows that the seance was not a scientific enterprise but a religious event.
LC Classification NumberBF1241.G32 2001
