Jay Winter

Women played an important role in the spiritualist community. It is, therefore, not surprising that spiritualists were advocates of feminism and that the Roman Catholic Church repeatedly anathematized the movement and especially the women within it.

Leviticus 20: 6

and Deuteronomy 18:10-12 left no doubt about the sin of attempting communion with the dead.

The work of Charcot on hypnotism and trances helped to popularize the paranormal, as, in later years, did Freud's theory of the unconscious.