Posted on 27 August 2024, 7:43

Although I had read bits and pieces about William Lyon Mackenzie King, former prime minister of Canada, concerning his interest in spiritualism, I had not realized the extent of that interest until reading Anton Wagner’s comprehensive and intriguing books, The Spiritualist Prime Minister (Volumes I and II), recently released by White Crow Books. King comes across as a highly introspective, principled, honorable, self-effacing, and caring leader, but he has been referred to by historians and journalists as “Weird Willy,” “a spirit-intoxicated eccentric,” “a superstitious lunatic,” and “a certifiable nut.” On the one hand, he was a man of great zeal – a man who bargained with Roosevelt, Churchill, Truman, Attlee, and even Hitler, Hess, and Goering – but on the other hand those who were aware of his interest in spiritualism saw him as zany. In spite of this “zaniness,” he is considered by many to have been Canada’s greatest prime minister.

King was born in Berlin (now Kitchener), Ontario on December 17, 1874, received his Bachelor of Laws from the University of Toronto in 1896, a master’s degree from Harvard University in 1898 and a Ph.D. from Harvard in 1909. He was appointed Deputy Minister of Labour in Prime Minister Sir Wilfrid Laurier’s liberal government in 1900 and became Minister of Labour in 1909. In 1914, he was appointed as labour consultant for the Rockefeller Foundation. He served as prime minister of Canada from 1921-26, 1926-30, and 1935-48, a total of 21 ½ years, leading the country through industrialization, the Great Depression, and World War II. He never married and died on July 22, 1950.

Author Anton Wagner, Ph.D., was a founding executive member of the Association for Canadian Theatre Research and has edited 10 books on Canadian theatre and drama. He holds doctorates in drama (University of Toronto) and theatre (York University). In his documentary work, he explored the interplay between political, religious, and spiritual beliefs in At the Crossroads: Faith in Cuba.

Philosophically, King, who attended a Presbyterian church, was what might be classified as a Christian Spiritualist, although he sided with Christianity whenever he encountered a conflict between Christianity and Spiritualism. He believed that human conduct would change in the direction of peace once the world accepted the larger life. Nevertheless, even many Spiritualists would judge him as being extremely credulous in his acceptance of certain psychic phenomena, including dreams and visions. He shared his interest in spiritualism only with close friends, and the full extent of his beliefs did not become evident until his extensive diaries, some 30,000 pages, became public 50 years after his death. Clearly, he was a “mama’s boy,” and often sought communication with and advice from his mother and other loved ones already transitioned to the afterlife, through mediums.

Wagner’s book focuses on King’s “zaniness,” rather than his “zealousness” – on his spirituality rather than his political acumen, although they often blended, or at least King made every attempt to blend them.  The reader is challenged in attempting to reconcile his “lunacy,” which extended to astrology and palm reading, with his success in contentious politics. 

“Despite attempts by his executors to obliterate Spiritualism and the occult from his papers, enough evidence survived to allow Dr. Wagner to create a chronology of King’s more than 130 known interactions with mediums, psychics, fortune-tellers, palmists, astrologers, graphologists, phrenologists and psychic investigators,” Walter Meyer zu Erpen, co-founder of the Survival Research Institute of Canada, states in the Foreword of Volume I, adding that they denied that King discussed political matters with mediums or that they influenced his decisions. 

Palm Reading, Tea Leaves, and Crystal Balls

Wagner offers a chronology of events extracted from King’s diary. The psychic matters apparently began in 1893, at age 19, when King started opening his Bible at random for messages from God. In 1894, he experimented with mesmerism at the University of Toronto.  In 1896, a palmist told his fortune. In 1900, he has his head read by a phrenologist. In 1917, he began faith healing through prayer to heal his dying mother, Isabel, who passed 11 months later. In 1918, the spirit of his mother appeared to him in a dream, informing him that “I am alive.” In 1920, he had his palm read by a Syrian fortune-teller.  In 1921, psychic Rachel Bleaney told him of his future political gains. In 1924, he received a horoscope reading from England.  In 1925, he had a reading by the Indian phrenologist and palmist-astrologer Douglas Goray and another reading by Rachel Bleaney. She also interpreted his dreams.  In 1927, he had his handwriting analyzed by a graphologist and had two more sittings with Rachel Bleaney. In 1930, he once more had his palm read.  In 1931, he consulted a numerologist and another palmist. Somewhere in all that he attempted to find out what was ahead in a tea-leaf reading and acquired a crystal ball.  Many of the futuristic readings, but not all, pointed to his success as a great leader, but it is not always clear to what extent the readings were given by mediums or psychics unfamiliar with King’s position and background.  Some definitely were. 

On February 21, 1932, King began a series of many sittings with the renowned American direct-voice medium Etta Wriedt (lower left photo). Wagner provides much background on Wriedt, almost a short book in itself while drawing from the research by British Vice-Admiral Usborne Moore, Dr. John King (no relation to Mackenzie King), William T. Stead, James Coates, and others.  Mackenzie King claimed to have had long conversations with his deceased mother, father, and sister through Wriedt and spent hours recording them in his journal (separate from his diary), but the journals were all burned by his executors in 1977. 

Two days later, he again sat with Wriedt, accompanied by two lady friends, one of them Joan Patteson, who shared many spiritual experiences with him over the years. A third sitting, the following day, was referred to as “quite wonderful” in his diary as his mother, sister, brother, and grandfather all communicated, not only with him but with Joan Patteson.  He also conversed with Senator George Albertus Cox and Sir Wilfrid Laurier, the former prime minister, while Patteson talked with her deceased mother and daughter. Wagner states that Wriedt’s seances were transformative experiences for King, Joan, and Godfrey Patteson, Joan’s husband. 

Patteson’s deceased mother asked her about her large gold brooch with the red stone. “No one but myself knew that my mother had possessed this brooch,” Patteson documented her experience for King, adding that her mother chided her for not wearing it.  “She kissed me audibly and put her hand on my knee. I felt it distinctly as if I were with her in life and there is not any tiny remote possibility of any other thing or person touching me.”

No Doubt

In his diary, King wrote: “What impresses me greatly is not only what is said but the apparent judgment & foresight with which subjects are approached or introduced. It would seem as if those we loved knew not only our behaviour, but our spiritual needs, our thoughts, and were seeking mostly to minister to them….” After 10 sittings with Wriedt, King was convinced that Wriedt was a genuine medium.  “There can be no doubt whatever that the persons I have been talking with were the loved ones & others I have known and who have passed away. It was the spirits of the departed. There is no other way on earth of accounting for what we have all experienced this week. Just because it is so self-evident, it seems hard to believe.  It is like those who had Christ with them in His day. Because it is all so simple, so natural, they would not believe & sought to destroy. I know whereof I speak, that nothing but the presence [of] those who have departed this life, but not this world, or vice versa could account for the week’s experience.”

King would have many more sittings with Wriedt before her death in 1942, but he struggled with comments by Dr. Sharpe, Wriedt’s spirit control, who often made comments that conflicted with Christian dogma and doctrine.  He also sat with renowned mediums Gladys Osborne Leonard, Helen Hughes, Eileen Garrett, and Geraldine Cummins (lower right photo).  With Cummins, he supposedly communicated with the spirit of America’s former president Franklin D. Roosevelt. King came to believe that he had clairvoyant abilities to some degree and recognized that there were low-level spirits interfering with the communication while also recognizing that there are many misinterpretations in what the medium is seeing, hearing, or feeling. He was on guard to examine everything with a skeptical eye.

In his diary for August 30, 1934, King summarized his worldview: “Broadly speaking I seem to have come to believe positively in survival after death – of personality continued – of each going to his own place – of spirits continuing to influence our lives, and some to guide and to guard, while others (not intentionally but nevertheless actually) might mislead – but to have the feeling what we get in spiritualism in the lowest plane – the borderland betwixt this world and the next—where earth influences continue to control, and where night and day are intermingled as at twilight.  It is the twilight region and must be so regarded.  The real light – the source of Truth and Justice and Love, cometh from on High – a Higher Source – and finds its way more immediately to us by the conscience in man— ‘the celestial and immortal voice – rather than by what is seen or heard in these glimpses of the unseen – faith remains the true avenue of approach to God – and Christ the way, truth & the life.”

It’s highly unlikely that the story of Mackenzie King will convince non-believers that there is something to mediumship and other psychic phenomena.  The skeptics, whether true skeptics or of the guerilla type, seem to assume that if spirits exist they must be all-knowing and infallible, incapable of error or falsehood.  Many of the phenomena experienced by King suggest tomfoolery and a certain naiveness on King’s part. Still, it is a fascinating read from an historic standpoint and of a very interesting and intriguing person.  Some other renowned figures, such as physicist Sir Oliver Lodge, cosmologist Dr. Richard Bucke, and researcher Dr. T. Glen Hamilton, are also included.   

Keith Parsons has done a very interesting you-tube on PM King.  The link is:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6yRpQ15JFOg&list=PLLB-82YMhiPFPKSm2Ke69aK0DKTftpvo0&index=54 

Michael Tymn is the author of The Afterlife Revealed: What Happens After We Die, Resurrecting Leonora Piper: How Science Discovered the Afterlife, and Dead Men Talking: Afterlife Communication from World War I.
His latest book, No One Really Dies: 25 Reasons to Believe in an Afterlife is published by White Crow books.

Posted on 12 August 2024, 11:33

The mediumship of Mina Crandon, aka “Margery,” is probably the most controversial case in the annals of psychical research.  Only that of Eusapia Palladino rivals it in that respect. The Margery case has been previously discussed at this blog, the most recent being March 14, 2022.  As stated there, Dr. Joseph Rhine provided the most damning evidence against Margery.  That was based on one sitting, on July 1, 1926, a sitting he didn’t even complete, so certain was he that Margery was cheating. Since Rhine is the scientist most responsible for the change from psychical research to parapsychology, the latter avoiding mediumship and any discussion of spirits or survival, the Margery case may even outweigh the Eusapia case in its historic value.

It would take far too many words to again summarize the arguments for and against Margery (upper left photo) I personally found the evidence for far exceeding the evidence against and concluded that most of the evidence against Margery was based on ignorance or an assumption that mediumistic phenomena must fit into a materialistic paradigm.  This blog will simply summarize the report of Dr. Robert J. Tillyard (upper right photo) as set forth in the December 1926 issue of the The Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research and leave it to the reader to judge his testimony.

An eminent English-Australian biologist and entomologist, Tillyard studied Margery on April 29 and May 1, 1926, two months before Rhine, and then reported on his observations in a lecture before the National Laboratory of Psychical Research on July 6, just five days after Rhine’s sitting with Margery. His lecture was edited for both the British and American journals.  Tillyard refers to himself in the third-person, as the “lecturer” and as “he.”

In planning a trip to America and England, Tillyard was anxious to observe several mediums and wrote to Sir Oliver Lodge, the famous British physicist and psychical researcher, for a recommendation. Lodge recommended Margery. “It was the one of the most extraordinary experiences he had ever had in his life,” Tillyard said in his lecture and essay (again the “he” refers to himself).  “He did not know whether those present realized the stir Margery had caused in that quaint old city of Boston, the center of American intellect and culture. It was strange to find the intellectual University of Harvard in the throes of a mental, if not moral, revolution because of one woman.”  (Both Margery’s husband, Le Roi Crandon, M.D. and Mark Richardson, M.D., were professors of medicine at Harvard and strong supporters of Margery’s mediumship.  Richardson subjected her to many tests, one of them depicted in the lower left photo.)

Tillyard was warned by one Harvard professor not to see Margery, telling him that it was “thoroughly a bad place, and that his honor would be stained forever if he went, that no decent man or woman should set foot inside that door,” and that she was a vampire and a descendant of Mary Magdalene. He then visited Professor William McDougall, head of the Harvard psychology department, who also warned him that the “the whole thing was a gigantic conjuring trick,” though he could not provide Tillyard with any definite evidence of fraud on the part of Margery. “…and upon going later through the various departments of Harvard he (again, Tillyard referring to himself) could see that that the University was thoroughly materialistic.  It was the most materialistic university he had ever come across. They had no time for anything that contravened the tenets of materialism. They held that if a thing was not provable on a materialistic hypothesis it must be a fraud.”

Strict Controls

On his first sitting with Margery at the Crandon home, Tillyard thoroughly inspected the séance room and the cabinet to rule out any kind of fraud. The cabinet was designed to restrain Margery and rule out trickery on her part.  Tillyard then tied up Margery as tightly as he possibly could with picture wire, as it was suggested by others that she must be double-jointed and able to escape from such binding as well as the cabinet in order to perform her tricks.  He padlocked her neck, so that she was entirely immobilized.  After Margery was bound and secured in the cabinet, a small group, including Dr. Crandon, Mrs. Tillyard, and three others, formed a small circle around the cabinet.  Tillyard sat on her right and, for additional control purposes, held her right hand, which protruded from the cabinet, while one of the others held her left hand.

“The light was turned down and Margery went into trance after ten minutes’ waiting, during which time a gramophone with an automatic repeating device went on and on with a beautiful soft melody with a gentle lullaby,” Tillyard continued his report. He was told that the musical vibrations gave Walter, Margery’s deceased brother who often spoke in the direct voice (independent of Margery’s vocal cords) power to work with.  When it had become clear that Margery was in a trance state, the lights were turned up. 

Tillyard then heard a voice, “like a hollow stage whisper,” come from the floor.  “Hello! Hello, everybody! I am here. I am fine. I am coming along all right,” the voice, identified by others as that of Walter, said with a chuckle. Tillyard watched Margery to see if there was any movement of her lips, and saw none. He concluded that ventriloquism could be ruled out.  During his two visits, he said Walter spoke in the dark, in red light, and in white light, but his time in white light was limited due to the harmful effect it had.

“Walter had many absurdities,” Tillyard continued. “He was a very human being, a bad boy at swearing, and when he got annoyed he let out some good American expressions.” He was full of quips and jokes.  When Dr. Crandon introduced Walter to Tillyard, Walter said, “Hello, here’s an insect man.  Hello, bugologist.”  Dr. Crandon then asked Walter to whistle, which he did. He was then asked to whistle in tune with a melody coming from a gramophone, which he also did. Walter then began talking with various sitters and became something of a master of ceremonies.

Tillyard was now prepared to accept Walter as a distinct and engaging personality. He considered the claim that Walter was an extension of Margery’s personality, but Walter had a completely distinct personality, clearly unlike Margery’s.

Various phenomena were observed by Tillyard, beginning with ringing of the bell-box by Walter (held by Tillyard well out of Margery’s reach). He also carried out the scales experiment that McDougall had warned him about.  One pan on the weight scale was loaded with weights, but Walter brought down the empty side as the weighted side went up.  Tillyard referred to it as a “remarkable” experiment. When asked how he did it, Walter explained that he “filled the interstices of the matter with psychic stuff,” which made the empty side heavier than the pan holding the weights. Walter further explained that the production of the independent voice was done by means of a teleplasmic (ectoplasmic) lung and voice-production apparatus, while certain delicate manipulations were carried out by a finger-like process from a kind of teleplasmic arm.

Psychic Stuff

In the case of Margery, the teleplasm usually came out by a fine white cord from the nose or ear (lower right photo). Walter further explained that the teleplasm was drawn from the medium’s central nervous system. “This formed just a fine film, and was apparently hardened up and made turgid and also visible to the eye by being filled with some kind of psychic stuff,” Tillyard explained, adding that Walter had the ability to mold or develop it into various instruments suitable for the particular work at hand. “Thus, Walter used a long, straight rod or ‘terminal’ for many of his experiments, and was able to make the end of the terminal.luminous or phosphorescent.

Tillyard examined a mass of teleplasm and stated that it “was white and somewhat shiny, rather like the white part of a large cauliflower cooked and served with white sauce, or perhaps a better simile would be that it was like a plate of cooked sheep’s brains. As for what it looked like, it was most difficult to describe this, he (himself) could not think of any living tissue which gave him either the appearance or feeling of it exactly. One got a very strong impression of great turgidity and firmness, something like that of a well-blown pneumatic tire, but there was also a suggestion of a living response to pressure, like reciprocation from a friendly hand-pressure.”

Tillyard observed the formation of a “psychic hand” from the teleplasm.  He was told by Walter that one of the sitters, referred to as “Dr. Jones” provided most of the teleplasm but Margery provided most of the power.  “In this experience, two buckets were provided, one containing almost boiling water on which was floating about four inches of hot melted paraffin wax, while the other contained cold water. The lecturer (himself) had control of these two buckets and sat with his face almost over them so that he could see and hear everything that went on in them.”  Walter asked Tillyard what part of his (Walter’s) anatomy he would like to have dipped into the pail for the psychic mold. Tillyard asked for a hand and wrist. 

After a lot of splashing and dipping, the hand with wrist was produced and was unlike the hand of any person in the room. All agreed that it was a male hand and not Margery’s.  Walter claimed that it was a model of his own hand.  On a second try, the hand of a small child was produced.  Tillyard said it floated up like a luminous cloud, formed a complete hand, and then disappeared.
Tillyard concluded that he was not sure whether the spiritualistic hypothesis was correct, but he thought it reasonable to suppose a distinct personality.  He added that he was not opposed to the spiritualist theory, but that if he became a spiritualist he would not join the spiritualist church and would endeavor to leaven the phenomena with a new truth, which he would urge on every man.

Michael Tymn is the author of The Afterlife Revealed: What Happens After We Die, Resurrecting Leonora Piper: How Science Discovered the Afterlife, and Dead Men Talking: Afterlife Communication from World War I.
His latest book, No One Really Dies: 25 Reasons to Believe in an Afterlife is published by White Crow books.