The Salem Seer Reminiscences Of Charles H Foster

This Is A New Release Of The Original 1891 Edition.

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1891 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER VIII. During my early association with Mr. Foster, we frequently held conversations on religious beliefs, the churches, and the attitude of clergymen to Spiritualism. Many clergymen called upon him, and he was always pleased to receive them. I proposed that we should insert in our advertisements that all clergymen could have the privilege of investigating this subject through him free of charge. Thereafter we caused notices similar to the following to appear in the leading papers of the cities which we visited: Mr. C. H. Foster, the medium, is desirous of meeting the clergy of, that they may have an opportunity to investigate the phenomena given through him. He will be glad to meet them in his rooms at, at any time, and will give them sittings free of charge. It is to be hoped that the clergy will visit Mr. Foster, and witness the manifestations he gives. Mr. Foster, during the summer, was often invited to Nahant to visit his friend, the Rev. Mr. Mountford, at whose house he frequently met Longfellow. It is probably owing to the communications which Mr. Longfellow received through Mr. Foster that gives the spiritual flavor to many of his verses. For example: Spirit friends are ever with us, Whispering, could our ears but hear, Words of love and hopeful promise: E'en though dead, they still are near. The Rev. Mr. Mountford was the author of "Miracles, Past and Present." As Swedenborg was the great spiritual medium of his day and generation, so, we believe, Charles H. Foster was the great medium of the nineteenth century. A century separates them. Swedenborg died in 1772, and Foster was doing his best work in the decade following 1870. Foster exerted an extensive influence, either for good or evil. If it were for evil, all the more...

This book examines the manifestations of materiality across different gothic media to show the inhuman at the heart of literature, film and contemporary media, outlining a philosophy of horror that deals with the horror of the nonhuman, the machine and the nonorganic. The author explores how materiality lends itself ideally to discussions of gothic and horror and acts as a threat to attempts to control meaning which falls outside the realm of consciousness. It brings the two together by examining the manifestations of this materiality to focus on a form of horror that is concerned with the (in) human by reading blood as the conduit of an unnameable materiality that circulates through gothic media, seducing with its familiar mask of gothic aesthetics only to uncover the horror of a totally alienating and inhuman otherness. Film, media, popular culture, philosophy and nineteenth-century literature are brought together and juxtaposed to create a continuity of ideas, and highlighting differences. The book offers innovative readings of notions of blood inscription in different media, of the Dark Web, accelerationism and technoscience to account for the widespread haemophilia in contemporary culture. This title is an essential read for researchers, undergraduate and postgraduate students in film studies, media studies, literature, philosophy, cultural theory and popular culture. Its interdisciplinary nature, clear exposition of thought and theoretical ideas will make it a key resource for both students and for general readers with an interest in contemporary horror, media and pop culture.

The statesman and reformer James Oglethorpe was a significant figure in the philosophical and political landscape of eighteenth-century British America. His social contributions—all informed by Enlightenment ideals—included prison reform, the founding of the Georgia Colony on behalf of the "worthy poor," and stirring the founders of the abolitionist movement. He also developed the famous ward design for the city of Savannah, a design that became one of the most important planning innovations in American history. Multilayered and connecting the urban core to peripheral garden and farm lots, the Oglethorpe Plan was intended by its author to both exhibit and foster his utopian ideas of agrarian equality. In his new book, the professional planner Thomas D. Wilson reconsiders the Oglethorpe Plan, revealing that Oglethorpe was a more dynamic force in urban planning than has generally been supposed. In essence, claims Wilson, the Oglethorpe Plan offers a portrait of the Enlightenment, and embodies all of the major themes of that era, including science, humanism, and secularism. The vibrancy of the ideas behind its conception invites an exploration of the plan's enduring qualities. In addition to surveying historical context and intellectual origins, this book aims to rescue Oglethorpe’s work from its relegation to the status of a living museum in a revered historic district, and to demonstrate instead how modern-day town planners might employ its principles. Unique in its exclusive focus on the topic and written in a clear and readable style, The Oglethorpe Plan explores this design as a bridge between New Urbanism and other more naturally evolving and socially engaged modes of urban development.

A story that includes spiritualist seances, conspiracy, and an important church trial, Wayward Saints chronicles the 1870s challenge of a group of British Mormon intellectuals to Brigham Young's leadership and authority. William S. Godbe and his associates revolted because they disliked Young's authoritarian community and resented what they perceived as the church's intrusion into matters of personal choice. Expelled from the church, they established the New Movement, which eventually faltered. Both a study in intellectual history and an investigation of religious dissent, Wayward Saints explores nineteenth-century American spiritualism as well as the ideas and institutional structure of first- and second-generation Mormonism.

A fantastical field guide to the hidden history of New York's magical past Manhattan has a pervasive quality of glamour—a heightened sense of personality generated by a place whose cinematic, literary, and commercial celebrity lends an aura of the fantastic to even its most commonplace locales. Enchanted New York chronicles an alternate history of this magical isle. It offers a tour along Broadway, focusing on times and places that illuminate a forgotten and sometimes hidden history of New York through site-specific stories of wizards, illuminati, fortune tellers, magicians, and more. Progressing up New York’s central thoroughfare, this guidebook to magical Manhattan offers a history you won’t find in your Lonely Planet or Fodor’s guide, tracing the arc of American technological alchemies—from Samuel Morse and Robert Fulton to the Manhattan Project—to Mesmeric physicians, to wonder–working Madame Blavatsky, and seers Helena Roerich and Alice Bailey. Harry Houdini appears and disappears, as the world’s premier stage magician’s feats of prestidigitation fade away to reveal a much more mysterious—and meaningful—marquee of magic. Unlike old-world cities, New York has no ancient monuments to mark its magical adolescence. There is no local memory embedded in the landscape of celebrated witches, warlocks, gods, or goddesses—no myths of magical metamorphoses. As we follow Kevin Dann in geographical and chronological progression up Broadway from Battery Park to Inwood, each chapter provides a surprising picture of a city whose ever-changing fortunes have always been founded on magical activity.