About this episode
This is first episode in a series called The Spirit-Era and Its Aftermaths. Across the next few installments of AEWCH, I’ll be investigating the way the spiritual, technological, and occult flourishing at the turn of the 19th/20th century is affecting our lives to this day. The Spirit-Era was a time marked by spirits, of course. But also miracles, hucksters, paranormal investigators, and genuine spiritual teachers. There were seances and fakirs, performances of incredible feats in private and on stages both which were thought to be revelations of different worlds, or worlds that could be possible.The intelligentsia of the time might go to see spirits materialize in dark rooms. They might write novels inspired by meeting notorious occult figures. Or maybe they would decide to form societies to investigate the afterlife. Many of the Spirt-Era's most famous artists and writers found themselves inspired by and even joining occult orders. New occult organizations and forms - some with anarchist aspirations, others connecting to labor rights movements, still others taking fascist turns, - were rising and falling.Like in our own era, new technologies emerged and others became popularized. The telephone became more available, and so, later, did the car and motion picture with sound. But also there was the fortune cookie, bringing a sort of precogniostic levity to the everyday. These innovations marked changing experiences of time and space across the planet.Plagues, wars, sinking ships. It seemed like there was never a moment of rest. I’m sure you can relate.Two themes ran through the Spirit-Era: the shifting relationship of the spiritual and material, and the deep understanding that everything was changing, so anything might be possible.In these episodes, we won’t just be trying to learn from history to avoid repeating it, but rather to deeply consider the Spirit-Era and conjure its best aspects.Because within the spectacle, there were many revelations to be had. Some of them we take for granted in our everyday lives, and forget they were handed to us by people who took the great risk or the absurd plunge into the era's spiritual possibility.We’ll look at the ways paranormal investigations pushed on science, how esotericism informed advancing literature and performance. We’ll even investigate whole world views with their own coherence, that developed at the time, and see why we can learn so much from them.And we'll look at why so many of these boundary-pushing advances are stigmatized today. One reason I’ll mention now: The Spirit-Era is difficult for us because it isn’t part of the past, but something beyond us. A future where we allow ourselves to think in ways that dissolve the material realm as we know it, and try to understand the forces - whether social, dialectical, economic, or spiritual - fully anew.The Spirit-Er
