Licht des Jenseits.
Oder Blumenlese aus dem Garten des Spiritismus. Eine Zeitschrift für die Spiritische Wissenschaft und Lehre / für spiritistische Studien.
1866--1872 Monthly
Vienna, Austria. Language: German and French.
Publisher: Holzhausen. Editor: Constantin Delhez, editor and publisher.
1/1, January 1866-1872. 6 Florins in Vienna a year, 4 Thaler in Germany. 32-36 pp.

Delhez (1807-1879) was a Belgian who worked as a French teacher in Vienna. He started the first spiritualist association in Austria (the private spirit circle "Nächstenliebe") and in 1866 began Licht des Jenseits, the first spiritualist journal in that country. See G.L. Ditson, "The Literature of Spiritualism Abroad," Banner of Light 26/15 (December 25, 1869): 2. Delhez's story of his conversion to spiritism in Paris in 1860 is given in Union Spirite Bordelaise (reprinted from this journal) in the issue of April 15, 1866. This was properly a "spiritist" journal, patterned after Allan Kardec's Revue Spirite. Delhez was the translator into German of several of Allan Kardec's works. His reverential attitude toward Kardec was made clear in his "Program" for the journal in the first issue: "one can find all that is desired [about spiritualism] in the Le Livre des Esprits." For Delhez, spiritism was a scientific endeavor, demonstrable by the facts of the seance, especially written messages received through the planchette, and was on post-mortem survival of the spirits and communication with them, and on the moral system that the communications inculcated. The journal contained spiritist discourses, historical sketches on apparitions and possession, reports on the doings of various societies throughout Europe, communications from the spirits, regular reports of the seances for the month, articles of interest (on, e.g., the evils of the Jesuits: "the Jesuit Monacina absolves from every fault a mother ‘‘who wishes the death of her daughters if she cannot marry them off because of their ugliness or poverty'"), extended discussion of the spiritist Ten Commandments, etc., and also published appropriately spiritist novelettes and poetry. Most notably the journal printed early communications through the extraordinary scryer and automatic-writing "Medium Adelma" -- Baroness Adelma von Vay (on whom see the notes under Reflexionen aus der Geisterwelt). Delhez and Gottlieb Dammerung (the editor of Psyche) had earlier collaborated on Odognostischer Brief an denkende Freunde der Natur (Vienna, 1862). Osterreichische Nationalbibliothek; Osterreichischen Landesbibliotheken; Amsterdamse Universiteitsbibliotheek; Wolfenbuttel HAugB; Freiburg Inst Grenzgeb Psychol.; Bibliotheek van de Universiteit van Amsterdam.

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