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DOI: 10.18413/2408-932X-2020-6-2-0-4

Deocultisation of mediumistic phenomena based on factual and speculative data in the 19th-20th centuries

This article examines the ideological and methodological foundations of individual research approaches in the development and study of mediumship, spiritism and spiritualism of the 19th-20th centuries. Mediumship in the 19th century ceased to be secret in all senses, although it carried the occult in itself in the form of a misunderstanding of what was behind it: spirits or something earthly. The spirits themselves were secret in the sense that they were not externally revealed. But their secret nature was disclosed by mediumists, as they believed, and almost everything was clear to the spiritualists. In coverage of psychic (mediumistic) phenomena, man appeared to the world not only as a connecting link between the phenomenal and supersensible worlds, but also as the owner of that metaphysical constant of the individual nucleus, the study of which was extremely important for both spiritualists and mediumists. Spiritists tried to untie the knot of death in solving philosophical and anthropological problems by looking beyond its threshold with the help of mediumship, and they found themselves rejected and condemned in society. Mediumists, announcing the reality of mediumistic phenomena, also did not avoid this. Some of the mediumists suggested that with a serious and universal study of the mediumistic facts, these facts could serve as a strong basis for the belief in the inviolability of the individual human being, surviving the death of the body. Mediumists did not go beyond the limits of factual space. Spiritual doctrine, on the contrary, was an example of speculative constructions based on facts, where mediumship was a kind of portal to other dimensions of being. The medium himself was presented not just as a mediator, but as a resident with dual – earthly and transcendental – citizenship. What this citizenship was and what prevented mediumists from groping for supersensible being, it will be possible to establish if we pay attention to the personalities who were directly involved in the methodological work on mediumistic manifestations.

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