The Patience Worth Record

Patience Worth, a disembodied spirit, communicated through the mediumship of Pearl Curran from June 1913 to December 1937. At first, Patience communicated through Pearl by actuating Pearl's movements (i.e. having Pearl spell out words) while she was using an Ouija board. Later, Patience was able to communicate through Pearl more directly by activating Pearl's repertoir of mental images and thoughts. Over the course of this extraordinary relationship, Patience, through Pearl, dictated six books and engaged in lively conversations with hundreds of individuals from all walks of life. Scattered throughout Patience's conversations were numerous poems, essays, short stories, witticisms, and parables - all of a high literary and spiritual quality. These conversations, which consist of some four million words, were carefully recorded. They fill eleven bound volumes, which are kept at the Missouri Historical Society. This book contains the text of Patience's conversations found in volume one.

The story of the invisible author who came to Mrs. John H. Curran and a friend in the summer of 1913 as they sat with a Ouija board across their knees. "Many moons ago I lived. Again I come. Patience Worth is my name." from that time forward a continuo.

Patience Worth, a disembodied spirit, was God's handmaid here on earth. She brought spiritual healing to the hearts of all her brothers and sisters who harkened to her words. Through her conversations, prose, and poetry, she gave the world many words with which to feast on and grow spiritually. But her words are not easy to chew and digest; they are not easily assimilated by our fast-food mentality. As a result, not many of us take the time to read them. For the few of us who do, her words stir within our hearts a love of, and for, God. This book presents a selection of writings by Patience Worth in the format of brief passages. The passages were culled from previously published and unpublished material. Each passage presents a particular theme in clearer than usual language (yet, still her own). In other words, the book presents Worth in manageable, understandable chunks. Each passage, as a point of meditation, provides a gateway to self-transformation.

When St. Louis homemaker Pearl Curran began writing fiction and poetry at a Ouija board in 1913, she attributed the work to the “discarnate entity” Patience Worth, a seventeenth-century Puritan. Though now virtually forgotten, her writing garnered both critical praise and public popularity at the time. The Patience of Pearl uncovers more of Curran’s (and thus Patience Worth’s) biography than has been known before; Daniel B. Shea provides close readings of the Patience-dictated writings and explores the historical and local context, applying current cognitive and neuro-psychology research. Though Pearl Curran had only a ninth-grade education, Patience Worth was able to dictate a biblical novel and a Victorian novel. Echoes of Dickens and the Potters, a circle of St. Louis women writers, make clear that Patience Worth reflects literary debts that go as far back as Curran being read to as a child. Shea argues that the workings of implicit memory suggest the medium’s creative achievements were her own body’s property. Curran also had musical training, and recent developments in the field of psychology regarding the overlap between musical and linguistic rhythms of regularity, anticipation, and surprise supply a firm foundation for attributing skills both automatic and creative to Curran. Her reflections on her doubleness in her self-study anticipate the many-personed Ouija board writing of poet James Merrill. Shea approaches Curran/Worth as a summary figure for the Victorian-era woman writer’s buried voice at the point of its transition into modernism. He investigates many lingering questions about Curran’s fluent productivity at the Ouija board, including the “smart” versus “dumb” unconscious. Shea links unconscious memory, dissociation, and automatic writing and reconsiders problematic assumptions about individual identity and claims of personal agency. The Curran/Worth Puritan/writer figure also allows scrutiny of gendered assumptions about the dangers of female speech and the idealization of women’s passive reception of divine, or husbandly, revelation. Novelistic in its own way, Curran’s life included three husbands and a child adopted on command from Patience Worth. Pearl Curran enjoyed a brief period of celebrity in Los Angeles before her death in 1937. The Patience of Pearl once again brings her the attention she deserves—for her life, her writing, and her place in women’s literary history.

Reproduction of the original.

In June 1917, Henry Holt and Company published a book over 600 pages long entitled: "The Sorry Tale: A Story of the Time of Christ." Critics hailed it as a literary masterpiece. What makes it more amazing is this book was dictated a letter at a time by Patience Worth, a disembodied spirit, through the mediumship of Pearl Curran. "The Sorry Tale" contains an elegant and exquisite depiction of the gospel of Jesus Christ that has been extracted and presented here in this book, "The Gospel of Jesus Christus According to Patience Worth." This gospel provides novel insights into the life and lessons of Jesus. It reads like an eyewitness account and includes many fascinating intimate details. This unique document is for open-minded individuals who can recognize the Word of God, regardless of the channel through which it flows. In each generation, God provides us with an opportunity to cast off the past and hear His Word anew. This gospel is just such an opportunity.

When St. Louis homemaker Pearl Curran began writing fiction and poetry at a Ouija board in 1913, she attributed the work to the “discarnate entity” Patience Worth, a seventeenth-century Puritan. Though now virtually forgotten, her writing garnered both critical praise and public popularity at the time. The Patience of Pearl uncovers more of Curran’s (and thus Patience Worth’s) biography than has been known before; Daniel B. Shea provides close readings of the Patience-dictated writings and explores the historical and local context, applying current cognitive and neuro-psychology research. Though Pearl Curran had only a ninth-grade education, Patience Worth was able to dictate a biblical novel and a Victorian novel. Echoes of Dickens and the Potters, a circle of St. Louis women writers, make clear that Patience Worth reflects literary debts that go as far back as Curran being read to as a child. Shea argues that the workings of implicit memory suggest the medium’s creative achievements were her own body’s property. Curran also had musical training, and recent developments in the field of psychology regarding the overlap between musical and linguistic rhythms of regularity, anticipation, and surprise supply a firm foundation for attributing skills both automatic and creative to Curran. Her reflections on her doubleness in her self-study anticipate the many-personed Ouija board writing of poet James Merrill. Shea approaches Curran/Worth as a summary figure for the Victorian-era woman writer’s buried voice at the point of its transition into modernism. He investigates many lingering questions about Curran’s fluent productivity at the Ouija board, including the “smart” versus “dumb” unconscious. Shea links unconscious memory, dissociation, and automatic writing and reconsiders problematic assumptions about individual identity and claims of personal agency. The Curran/Worth Puritan/writer figure also allows scrutiny of gendered assumptions about the dangers of female speech and the idealization of women’s passive reception of divine, or husbandly, revelation. Novelistic in its own way, Curran’s life included three husbands and a child adopted on command from Patience Worth. Pearl Curran enjoyed a brief period of celebrity in Los Angeles before her death in 1937. The Patience of Pearl once again brings her the attention she deserves—for her life, her writing, and her place in women’s literary history.