International Association for the Preservation of Spiritualist and Occult Periodicals

   

Periodical: The White Banner

Summary:   From Pat Deveney's database:

White Banner, The.
A Literary Journal of Progressive Philosophy / A Liberal, non-Sectarian, Out-Spoken, eightpage Literary Journal of Progressive Philosophy.
Charity for All, Malice Toward None
1869--1870? Semi-monthly
Philadelphia, PA.
Language: English.
Editor: T. Marston and W.T. Reichner & Company, editors and publishers.
1/1, 1869.
$1.00 a year; 4 pp., 19 x 24.

The advertisements for the journal proclaimed that it "will advocate the free and untrammeled expression of opinion on all subjects. The impartial Fatherhood of Deity and the universal Brotherhood of our race. It will discuss free of political partizanism the equality of the elective franchise for Woman and Man. . . . The motto and practice of [this journal] shall be justice without fear. The greatest good for the largest number with Malice toward None but Charity for all." Contributions by Cora L.V. Daniels, H.T. Child, et al., and advertisements for a variety of local Philadelphia healers and mediums. Noted in the Lyceum Banner, February 1869. The American Newspaper Directory for 1870 lists the journal as having a circulation of 809. Its obituary, written by Reichner, appeared in the 1871 Year-Book of Spiritualism and notes that only six numbers appeared and that the journal failed when the editor ran out of money

Other Sources:
Issues:White Banner V1 N3 Feb 1 1859
White Banner V1 N4 Feb 15 1869
Claude-Generated Themes:   The White Banner was a mid-nineteenth-century American spiritualist paper in the harmonial vein, reporting seances, mediumship and spirit-rappings alongside consolatory accounts of the returning dead — in one instance a departed mother who spoke through the medium in seven languages. Like most early spiritualist organs it drew freely on the era's mesmeric and phrenological sciences, invoking clairvoyance, odic emanations, magnetic 'passes' and the faculties of the brain as the natural machinery through which spirits communicated. A lighter thread of dietary and breathing hygiene reflects the harmonial movement's reform sympathies. The tone alternates between tender spirit-consolation and combative replies to skeptical 'infidels,' placing the paper firmly within the first generation of organized spiritualism rather than the later mental-science or occult currents.

Generated by Claude from the periodical's digitized text; a thematic reading, not a bibliographic description.
Topics:Spiritualism