Spirit Mothers.
Messenger of Celestial Love & Herald of the Mother Civilization.
Champion of Woman & Best Friend of Man / We Come to Liberate; Clasp Hands with Us / The Age of Ripening Is the Worthy Age
1898--1907? Monthly, irregular
Los Angeles, CA, Decoto, Alameda County, CA, Home, WA.
Editor: Olivia Freelove Shepard.
Publisher: Press of Niles Herald.
Succeeds: The World's Friend
Succeeded by: Medium (Los Angeles, absorbed this journal for a time, 1899); Hypatia (temporary name change of Spirit Mothers in November 1901)
1/1, 1898. 2 pp., 50-25 cents a year.

The journal, with its companion Astraea, marks the twilight of the era, dating back to the late 1850s, when strong, aggrieved women marched arm in arm under the banner of spiritualism and universal reform. It was decidedly backward looking in its viewpoint, with recollections of early materializing seances with Elsie Reynolds and M.E. Williams, and a long "Reminiscence" of Emma Hardinge [Britten's] stump speeches around California for Abe Lincoln in 1864. The journal had a troubled history. It was absorbed into the Medium (Los Angeles), in 1899, with Shepard becoming an assistant editor of that journal, but it must have continued or been revived in some fashion because it is advertised in Lois Waisbrooker's Woman Clothed with the Sun, April 1902, as "edited by Olivia Freelove Shepard, in connection with Astrea, edited by E. Pauline Thorndyke." The two journals are called "companion papers" and were said to have appeared in alternate months. from the same town. In some advertisements for Astraea Shepherd is listed as editor. By 1903 the journal was appearing from Home, Washington, the location of the Home Colony and of Lois Waisbrooker, and in 1904, the World's Advance Thought was welcoming the reappearance of the journal. In 1907 Shepherd left the Home Colony for Olalla, Washington, with hopes "to resume her paper in the autumn," but it is unlikely her hopes were realized. The World's Advance Thought said of this journal: "It is a mouth-piece for the interpretation of that nobler spirituality for which all good mortals and spirits are striving, and especially for the spread of the Mother-Love that shall redeem the world." The Religio-Philosophical Journal, October 6, 1898, echoed the sentiment: "It is the spread of the Mother-Love that shall redeem the world. Hence, to help on this nobler spirituality, Olivia F. Shepard has started a monthly entitled Spirit Mothers, at 605 West Third Str., Los Angeles, Cal. It makes a good appearance, and contains fine reading." Shepard (c. 1829-1912) was an old-time radical reformer and spiritualist who wrote for Woodhull and Claflin's Weekly in the early 1870s, edited the World's Friend, participated in every reform convention (including the Vineland female dress reform convention in 1874), ism and movement of the era, including Esperanto, and for a short while had been married to Sivartha (on whom see the note under the Mind-Cure and Science of Life). She also was a fierce critic of the Parker Spiritual Society, in which Katherine A. Tingley (later successor of William Q. Judge in the Theosophical Society) was involved. Waisbrooker noted humorously that Shepard had never revealed what the middle initial "F" in her name stood for until about 1902 when prompted to do so by a spirit. (A story that, as a noted scholar has pointed out was unlikely to be true since Shepherd's mother's middle name was "Freelove").

The journal had affectionate notes from and about Eunice Sleeper (who gave her large fortune to the Progressive Spiritualist Society, sued unsuccessfully to recover it, and then died in poverty), Jeannette W. Crawford, Lois Waisbrooker (with whose Clothed with the Sun the journal exchanged advertisements), and impassioned exhortations on the Brotherhood of counterpart souls, known by the Crescent and six pointed star and rainbow flag and led by "our great, good Patriot Father, Thomas Paine, chose the rainbow to be placed on our National Ensign. That was a high inspiration; he saw that bow of promise the most fitting symbol of what our country should stand for in the eyes of the oppressed of the world. He is now one of the most honored members of the great Spirit Congress which deliberates on our Nation's affairs; in that Upper Congress Spirit Mothers occupy a central position, urging arbitration, the abolition of war and death penalties, and the inauguration of Equal Rights and Universal Good Will; then may the rainbow's prismatic arch on our flag proclaim to the world the reign of Freedom, Justice & Love."

Astraea.
Organ of the Organ Astraea; An Illuminated Pathway between the Two Worlds.
The Stone rejected must the corner guild in the New Temple that your hands will build / For Justice will be poised by weight and scale, and Truth walk radiant with a coat of mail.--Prophecy / Jove Means to Settle Astraea in Her Seat Again and Let Down From His Golden Chain an Age of Better Metal.--Ben Jonson, 1615
1902? Monthly
Decoto, CA.
Editor: Olivia Freelove Shepard.
Succeeds: World's Friend-->Spirit Mothers
1/1, 1902 (?) 75 cents a year, 2 pp.

The journal was advertisement in Now, April 1902, and noted in Lois Waisbrooker's Clothed with the Sun the same month as a journal devoted to the freedom of women. The journal was the "companion paper" of Spirit Mothers published in the same town by E. Pauline Thorndyke. Shepard was an old-time radical and spiritualist who wrote for Woodhull and Claflin's Weekly in the early 1870s, married Sivartha for a time, was a representative of Katherine Tingley's Parker Spiritual Society before Tingley went on to brighter pastures in Theosophy. The journal printed a letter from Jay Chaapal, the old reformer to whom Lois Waisbrooker had given her Foundation Principles when she left Iowa, and carried advertisements for her Clothed with the Sun and Lucy A. Mallory's World's Advanced Thought.

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