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The Fox Sisters were just little girls when they first acquired regional fame as mediums. Collectively, they become known as the “Fox sisters” and probably everyone in the Spiritualism Movement of the Victorian Age would have known their names. Their names were Margaret Fox, Kate Fox, and Leah Fox. Here, there lived three sisters who would become legendary mediums. To envision this great moment, we must travel back to western New York, to the small town of Hydesville. The earliest known Victorian Age psychic séances actually started in the newly formed United States, not England. You could even say Victorians developed an all-consuming fascination with ghosts and spirits, which were also heavily featured in popular fiction and periodicals of the time. However, séances also grew to be a source of entertainment for many people of the Victorian Era.
VICTORIAN SEANCE PLUS
In many cases, séances were an entirely somber event with only the loved ones of the departed present, plus the psychic medium facilitating the séance. In fact, séances became one of the most popular pastimes during the Victorian Era. While indirect, the revolutionary scientific advancements of the time (see below) seemed to heavily influence the spread of Spiritualism and the widespread practice of psychic séances. However, in the Victorian Era, this began to radically change as people felt freer to defy the church on such matters and some religious movements actually condoned the practice of communicating with the dead. However, there was a long historical pause on these types of practices when the dominant religions of the Renaissance Period frowned on these practices and forbade them. In Ancient Times and continuing into the Middle Ages, psychic mediums were sometimes used to communicate with recently departed loved ones and with ancestors. Séances were usually led by a psychic medium and the psychics were usually paid for this service. This pervasive movement became known as Spiritualism and the rituals used to communicate with the afterlife spirits were called séances. For the first time in a long time, people came to believe they could communicate with the dead, or more precisely, they could communicate with the spirits of the deceased in their afterlife. During the Victorian Era, a transformative movement swept over the world.
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For context, the Victorian Era began when Queen Victoria assumed the English throne in 1837 and ended when she died in 1901. Psychic mediums played a defining and fascinating role during the Victorian Era.