RT Article
T1 The Chevalier's Secret: Emma Hardinge Britten and the Dawn of American Occultism
JF Literature and theology
VO 33
IS 4
SP 451
OP 475
A1 Thompson, Robert C.
LA English
PB Oxford University Press
YR 2019
UL https://ixtheo.de/Record/1687542252
AB In 1876, prominent spiritualist medium and writer Emma Hardinge Britten published two books written by the Chevalier Louis de B., arguably a pseudonym she used to disguise her own opinions about the nature of the soul and the power of the occult will. As American spiritualism fell into disrepute—dogged by cases of fraudulent mediums and a culture of excess—occultism, typified at the time by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, rose up to replace it. Britten saw the potential that Blavatsky's views on the development of the conscious will, the existence of a spirit hierarchy, and training with skilled adepts could have for spiritualism's much less structured approach to supernaturalism, but she worried over occultism's dismissive attitude toward a unified concept of the soul. Blavatsky tended to fracture the self into several parts in her writing, dismissed the prospect of human spirit communication, and challenged the notion that all human souls were immortal. I argue that Britten created the Chevalier in order to challenge spiritualist orthodoxy while maintaining her identification as a medium who believed sincerely in the spiritualist concept of the soul. I discuss three major areas in which Britten sought to negotiate a space between spiritualism and occultism: the consequences of mediumistic passivity, the existence of non-human spirits, and the predominance of a secret Indian brotherhood at the head of an occult hierarchy.
DO 10.1093/litthe/frz034