Seances, Suffrage and Civil Rights: Spiritualism in Sacramento

Spiritualists spoke to the dead at seances, but they were also early proponents for equal rights for women and people of color.

Spiritualists opposed inequality as unhealthy and they sought to liberate the individual from physical and spiritual domination by others, and from the oppressive power of the state.
While most religious groups viewed the existing order of gender, race and class relations as ordained by God, the Spiritualists were active not only in the women’s rights movement, but throughout most radical reform groups of the nineteenth century.

The Spiritualists were not mystics, but rationalists. To the Victorians, seeing was believing. As a “modern” progressive movement, the Spiritualists appealed to many because of their dedication to the observable and verifiable objects of empirical science, i.e., the manifestation of spirits. They need no minister or text to convince of the reality of spirits, they had talked to them themselves!

Not only will we share the fantastic stories of several Sacramento Spiritualists, but tear away they veil behind trance speakers, slate-writing, seances, spirit guides, and even…(shhh!) free love!