Spiritual Review, The.
Spiritualism, Occultism, Psychical Research, Mental Science. Life, Death, Immortality / A Monthly Magazine for Spiritualists [and Others].
1900--1902 Monthly
London, England. Publisher: Progressive Literature Agency. Editor: J.J. Morse. Succeeded by: The Herald of Progress
1/1, May 1900-4/25, May 1902. 32 pp., fourpence-threepence an issue, 5 s. a year post free to any part of the world.
For unknown reasons vol. 2, no. 1 (November 1900) is called a new series. James Johnson Morse (1848 or 1849-1919) was a trance speaker (mediating, most notably, Tien Sien Tie, whose portrait appears in the journal) and a physical medium who made several long trips through the United States (on one of which he visited H.P. Blavatsky). In America also he dallied for a time, as he later confessed, with free love, over which he expressed his regrets.

This journal is more of miscellany and a review than a magazine with its own point of view. In practice it served as a promotional vehicle for the Lyceum Banner, which Morse was editing at the time with his daughter, and for Mrs. J.J. Morse's Hotel (for spiritualists), and Morse's Circulating Library of Spiritualists' Literature and Progressive Literature Agency. Besides the journal's occasional publication of one of Morse's trance addresses, it carried excerpts from articles by Charles Dawburn, J.M. Peebles, Luther Marsh, and others, extensive book reviews of books sold by Morse, debates over current issues in the spiritualist movement (like the establishment of a spiritualist church), miscellaneous pieces on perpetual motion, seances in China, Taoism, "Palmistry in the Bible," reports of current spiritualist activities in Britain, and novels (J. Harry Bunn's "The Real Men of Mars: An Occult Story Founded on Fact"), etc. More importantly the journal reflects the growing awareness in the spiritualist movement that its history was slipping away, a situation it sought to remedy with articles like William Oxley's "Psychological Reminiscenses" (with photographs of molds in wax of the materialized feet of spirits) and Robert Cooper's "Historical Retrospect."

When The Spiritual Review expired in 1902, Morse left for a tour of New Zealand and Australia and then visited the United States again, where he edited The Banner of Light (1904). On his return to Britain he took up editorship of the Two Worlds. BL; LOC.

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