s and the majestic strophes of the Hebrew Psalms, for the genders
are the shadowy survivals of a time when all things had their spirits,
male or female, and the Psalms voice the faith for which thunder was the
voice of God and the hail was stored in His armoury. It would take us
far beyond the scope of our present inquiry to follow down this line in
all its suggestive ramifications. Animism, medieval witchcraft and the
confused phenomena of knocks, rappings and the breaking and throwing
about of furniture and the like reported in all civilized countries for
the past two or three centuries, supply the general background for
modern Spiritualism. (The whole subject is fully treated in the first
and second chapters of Podmore.)

_The Genesis of Modern Spiritualism_

Modern Spiritualism does not, however, claim for itself so ancient an
ancestry. In 1848 mysterious knockings were heard in the family of John
D. Fox at Hydesville, N.Y. They appeared to have some purpose behind
them; the daughters of the family finally worked out a code: three raps
for yes, one for no, two for doubt, and lo, a going concern was
established. It is interesting to note that mysterious noises had been
about a century before heard in the family of the Wesleys in Epworth
Rectory, England. These noises came to be accepted quite placidly as an
aspect of the interesting domestic life of the Wesleys. It has usually
been supposed that Hattie Wesley knew more about it than she cared to
tell and, as far as the illustrious founders of Methodism were
concerned, there the matter rests.

But the Fox sisters became professional mediums and upon these simple
beginnings a great superstructure has been built up. The modern interest
in Spiritualism thus began on its physical side and in general the
physical phenomena of Spiritualism have become more bizarre and complex
with the growth of the cult. Raps, table tiltings, movements of articles
of furniture, playing upon musical instruments, slate writing, automatic
writing, of late the Ouija Board, materialization, levitation, apparent
elongation of the medium's body, are all associated with Spiritism. It
was natural that the voice also should become a medium of communication,
though trance mediumship belongs, as we shall see, to a later stage of
development.

Incidentally the movement created a kind of contagious hysteria which
naturally multiplied the phenomena and made detached and critical
attitudes unduly dif