Was Uncle Tom’s Cabin a product of automatic writing? I read something, about 30 years ago, suggesting it was or might have been, but I don’t recall the reference. I doubted that AI (ChatGPT) would even know about it, but I checked with it and to my surprise it provided a wealth of information.
As many readers know, the book, a novel, was authored by Harriet Beecher Stowe, an American abolitionist, to help the country better understand the slavery situation, especially the cruelty and hardships of it. The book was published in 1852 and thought to be one of the triggers to the American Civil War. Uncle Tom is portrayed as a kind, Christian slave who endures much brutality by his owner.
I asked AI if there was any indication that Mrs. Stowe was a medium, perhaps unknowingly, and that the work came to her by means of automatic writing. “Harriet Beecher Stowe did, on several occasions, describe the origin of Uncle Tom’s Cabin in ways that sound very close to inspired or semi-trance composition,” AI responded. “She said the story came to her ‘in visions’ and that she felt she was not so much inventing it as receiving it from God.” AI quotes Stowe: “I did not write it. God wrote it. I merely did his dictation.” She claimed that some visions came to her with such vividness that she wept while writing them.”
AI went on to say that the language reflects a 19th-century evangelical mindset, where creative work – especially morally driven work – was often understood as “divinely inspired” rather than consciously constructed. “She emphasized visionary inspiration plus emotional compulsion, framed in Christian terms.”
AI further pointed out that spiritualists have sometimes claimed that Stowe was receiving the book by means of automatic writing or trance production, but since that interpretation isn’t mainstream, standard biographies tend to ignore it. Of course, evangelicals would most likely credit God rather than a single spirit or group of spirits in God’s kingdom and avoid using the satanic word “medium.”
In her 1961 book, Beyond the Horizon, Grace Rosher, of England, explained that she was writing letters to friends one afternoon in 1957 when she heard, apparently clairaudiently, the words, “Leave your hands there and see what happens.” To her amazement, the pen started to move without any effort on her part. Words began to form, and the message, “With love from Gordon,” slowly appeared. Thus began her regular communication with Gordon Burdick, a long-deceased friend from her youth. Burdick described life on the Other Side and delivered many profound messages.
In the course of time, Rosher was told not to grasp the pen but to simply close her hand in a loose fist and to let the pen rest on top of it. The writing then flowed more fluently.
“…I watched the pen move without any conscious effort on my part and write about things I had never dreamed of, and in a style of writing as different from my own as it could possibly be,” Rosher wrote.
In the 1918 classic, The Seven Purposes, author Margaret Cameron described her sensation in automatic writing as “comparable to that of holding a quiet, live bird, wrapped in a handkerchief, its energy muffled but palpable. Sometimes this sensation of a current from without is communicated to the hand and arm, sometimes only to the fingers.”
Stillness
Perhaps the most accomplished automatist of the 20th Century was Geraldine Cummins of Ireland. In the Introduction of The Road to Immortality, published in 1953, Beatrice Gibbes described the method employed by Cummins. She would sit at a table, cover her eyes with her left and hand on concentrate on “stillness.” She would then fall into a light trance or dream state. Her hand would then begin to write. Usually, her “control” would make some introductory remarks and announce that another entity was waiting to speak. Because of her semi-trance condition and also because of the speed at which the writing would come, Gibbes would sit beside her and remove each sheet of paper as it was filled. Cummins’ hand was quickly lifted by Gibbes to the top of the new page, and the writing would continue without break. In one sitting, Gibbes stated, Cummins wrote 2,000 words in 75 minutes, whereas her normal compositions were laboriously put together, perhaps 800 words in seven or eight hours.
Cummins’ book, the foreword of which was written by the esteemed British physicist Sir Oliver Lodge, sets forth the communications purportedly coming from Frederic W. H. Myers, a pioneer of psychical research who died in 1901, during the period 1924 to 1931.
The entity identifying himself as Myers explained the difficulty in communicating by means of automatic writing. “The inner mind is very difficult to deal with from this side,” Cummins recorded. “We impress it with our message. We never impress the brain of the medium directly. That is out of the question. But the inner mind receives our message and sends it on to the brain. The brain is the mere mechanism. The inner mind is like soft wax, it receives our thoughts, their whole content, but it must produce the words to clothe it.”
The anonymous spirit communicating with John Scott of England, as documented in Scott’s 1948 book, As One Ghost to Another, seems to have said much the same thing as Myers. “I send out my thought to your mind and it fuses with yours, and then you and I produce words together, which you, or rather we, write with your hand,” the unseen communicator explained. “There is no way of describing to you with your present knowledge the intricate process of communication.”
In the preface to the book, Scott states that he had previously regarded such things as “a pathetic delusion provoking humour in the daily press and anger in the churches.” However, after he had retired to the country, he began experimenting with psychic matters and soon found that in his right hand a “vague urge.” When he allowed his muscles to collaborate with the urge, he found his hand scrawling across the paper under it line after line in the semblance of writing. After some experimenting and practice the words became legible and made much sense.
Inspirational Writing
Various researchers and historians have made a distinction between automatic writing and inspirational writing, but it appears to be a matter of degree. The extreme in automatic writing is that the medium’s mind contributes little, if anything, to the writing, but if the medium’s mind is contributing something to it, then it moves toward being defined as inspirational writing. The dividing line between automatic writing and inspirational writing might be 50 percent from the medium’s mind and 50 percent from the spirit’s mind. Inspirational writing would involve much more of the medium’s mind and less contribution by the spirit. Even the medium is not qualified to say how much of it came from her mind and how much from spirit.
When I was covering the annual Honolulu Marathon for the morning paper, I would mention that the count of starters and finishers included runners, joggers, plodders, frolickers, and walkers. More than half the field clearly walked the 26.2 miles, while only about one percent were competitive “runners,” yet the reporters for the evening rag and TV stations celebrated all finishers as “runners.” Moreover, there is no clear-cut definition as to where running ends and jogging begins. I suspect the range in mediumistic writing is similar to that in running and marathoning.
AI summed it up, saying, “There is substantial textual support for as viewing Uncle Tom’s Cabin as, in Stowe’s own understanding: Divinely dictated (in a metaphorical or experiential sense); Visionary in origin; Emotionally compelled rather than deliberately engineered. So your recollection—that she described writing in something like a trance or inspired state—is quite defensible. The only caveat is that historians typically interpret her language as religious inspiration, whereas later writers (especially in psychical research circles) sometimes reinterpret it as automatic writing.”
Keep in mind, however, that one should never call a real runner a “jogger.” There is no greater insult.
Next blog: May 4
Michael Tymn is the author of The Afterlife Revealed: What Happens After We Die, Resurrecting Leonora Piper: How Science Discovered the Afterlife, Dead Men Talking: Afterlife Communication from World War I. and No One Really Dies: 25 Reasons to Believe in an Afterlife. His latest book Consciousness Beyond Death: New and Old Light on Near-Death Experiences is published by White Crow books.
Michael,
An excellent article on automatic writing. I reached for my copy of Beyond the Horizon by Grace Rosher. I have been reading a lot of material on automatic writing to see where my automatic writing fits in. At the rear of Grace’s book there is a report by F. T. Hilliger Handwriting Specialist – Graphologist. Specimens were compared and “that the very least that can be said is that the writing reproduced by Grace Rosher was, if it were humanly possible, genuinely inspired by the personality of Gordon E Burdick.”
There are various methods from when dictation is given and the words written down to Grace’s version. I think it was Ruth Montgomery who used to type the dictated words. There were versions of automatic writing which were a form of trance. All these different versions.
I liked “The inner mind is very difficult to deal with from this side,” Cummins recorded. “We impress it with our message. We never impress the brain of the medium directly. That is out of the question. But the inner mind receives our message and sends it on to the brain. The brain is the mere mechanism. The inner mind is like soft wax, it receives our thoughts, their whole content, but it must produce the words to clothe it.”
The founders of the SPR were always looking at mechanisms for communication when they were living and when they were in spirit.
Thanks
Bruce
Mike…
Interesting to read that you were with the Honolulu morning paper (presumably the Advertiser at the time)–as during my time in the Islands, I was for a while
with what you call the “evening rag” (then the Star-Bulletin). Small world.
Your AI adventures are always illuminating. Hope you’ll stick with them…
Hi Mike,
I saw a movie about her where it showed she would get strong headaches, which many mediums I know get, just before she would receive a spirit message with guidance.
I believe it also indicated her book divinely inspired.
As a medium, for written spirit communication, I agree with this:
[The spirit] “I send out my thought to your mind and it fuses with yours, and then you and I produce words together, which you, or rather we, write with your hand…”
The whole message is transmitted in total.
Then I write it all out as if pouring out water out of a pitcher not what I’m writing until I read it afterwards. If there are errors they correct me.
Further, pertaining to automatic writing, it happened to me only once. I would say it was semi-automatic as Kardec would call it , and that was for a children’s book that they wrote for me.
My right arm was full of strong energy is the best I can describe it, I was told to write with pen and paper instead of typing it. My arm and my hand moved in a steady pace with a strong pulling and control on my hand with me only slightly guiding the pen. Them forcing the words.
It was extremely interesting.
During spirit trance sessions, interestingly my right arm usually feels a lot of energy throughout the meeting.
I believe Stowe came for a powerful mission to change hearts and minds regarding slavery and to be a most inspirational and proactive participant in helping those that wanted to escape it.
Respectfully,
Yvonne Limoges
As a friend pointed out by email, it would be interesting to know how Ms. Stowe gained her knowledge surrounding things in the South. Traveling from Hartford, CT. to the South wasn’t all that common in 1850 and there was nothing really in the way of audio-visual material. She may have traveled to the slave states, but I’m not aware of it.
We’ll never know for sure, but it’s an amazing book for its time. Thanks, Yvonne, for your comment.
Dear Mike,
You may well already be aware, but Paul Gaunt, editor of the Spiritualists’ National Union ‘Pioneer Journal’, has five well researched articles in back issues of that journal [https://snu.org.uk/the-pioneer-journal/pioneer-journal-archive/] addressing automatic writing, including one dedicated to Grace Rosher, whose books are personal favorites of mine:
Paul Gaunt – Automatic Writing, Stainton Moses [Pioneer Journal, Vol.3, No.3, June 2016]
Paul Gaunt – Automatic Writing [Pioneer Journal, Vol.4, No.2, April 2017]
Paul Gaunt – Automatic Writing, Grace Rosher [Pioneer Journal, Vol.6, No.6, December 2019]
Paul Gaunt – Automatic or Spirit Writing [Pioneer Journal, Vol.9, No.3, June 2022]
Paul Gaunt – Automatic Writing [Pioneer Journal, Vol.9, No.4, August 2022]
One of the particularly interesting aspects of Grace Rosher’s automatic writing – in addition to the detailed professional handwriting analysis that was carried out and matched to writing samples of Gordon Burdick while alive – is that it was later done, not holding the pen between thumb and forefinger, as one would normally hold a pen to write with, but rather with the fountain pen resting on top of her thumb and forefinger without grasping it, whereby the pen would proceed to write under that configuration. A picture of this is show on the front of the slipcover of the original edition of her book ‘Beyond the Horizon’ and reproduced in Paul Gaunt’s aforementioned article above. She discussed the phenomenon further in Appendix IV of that book, as follows:
“Since the manuscript of this book had been placed in the hands of the publishers, a new development has arisen with regard to the writing. As previously stated I had been asked by my communicator to relax my hold on the pen so that he could ‘manipulate it more easily’, which resulted in the pen writing while lying between my first finger and thumb which were held far apart, and later with the pen just resting against my closed fist. On July 22nd of this year 1961, having placed the pen in the latter position, I noticed to my surprise that although my hand was perfectly still, the pen was quivering very rapidly. I was puzzled by this — as I had never noticed anything of the kind before. Having — raised my hand so that the pen was in a position to write, I noticed when the writing came that it was not as good as usual and that the words were all joined together. Glancing at the pen I then noticed that instead of resting across my hand it was balancing on the edge of my first finger, and wrote, ‘I am trying to write with the least possible contact with you,’ and concluded by saying, ‘this is just one step nearer to my being able to write without any contact with you at all’. Since then the writing has greatly improved and the words are no longer joined together, the writer having now it seems acquired the necessary force of his own to enable him to raise and lower the pen himself even in that precarious position. His ultimate ambition being to be able to control the pen entirely alone. The pen writing in this position has been witnessed by a number of people.”
The psychical researcher Roy Stenman, in his book ‘Spirit Communication: An Investigation into the Extraordinary World of Mediums Psychics and the Afterlife’, records, “I visited Grace Rosher in 1961, soon after her book ‘Beyond the Horizon’ was published, and saw for myself the extraordinary phenomenon of her fountain pen, testing loosely on her hand, writing a legible message. When it first happened, I thought it was some sort of electric force in myself that was causing the pen to move, she told me. But she was soon convinced that it was her fiancé’s spirit hand that was controlling the pen.” (p.60)
Best, Paul
Dear Mike,
Another strange addition to the modest but highly significant body of automatic writing literature is one so deeply obscure that I only learned of relatively recently in the past handful of years and was only fairly recently able to obtain with great difficulty from an antiquarian bookseller in Amsterdam. It is not available via the used book market and I have never seen it digitized, much less reprinted. This is ‘The Result of an Experiment’, anonymously published in 1909 by the artistic couple Evelyn & William De Morgan, who devoted some twenty years to the joint project of automatic writing. An overview of the book is given on the De Morgan Foundation website [https://www.demorgan.org.uk/the-result-of-an-experiment-new-acquisition/].
A fine overview of the character of the work is given in A.W.M. Stirling, ‘William De Morgan and His Wife’ (1922):
“De Morgan and his wife had an experience of which they never spoke to the outer world, and respecting which their reticence is easily comprehensible, since they both felt strongly that in dealing with any phenomena apparently inexplicable on materialistic grounds, not only caution but reverence was requisite. They both recognized very clearly that the majority of such investigations in Spiritualism were productive of two evils—an incitement to fraud to prey on credulity, and the danger of a loss of mental balance in the participators. Still more they appreciated the fact that all deductions from such experiments must remain largely theoretical, and that the phenomena investigated are open to more than one interpretation. On the other hand, they felt that if any substratum of truth underlay the seeming triviality of much of these phenomena, they did not wish lightly to expose what was sacred to the sneers of the prejudiced.
This being so, they determined to prosecute their experiment without bias, simply and privately ; they decided that each evening they would set apart a quiet time after dinner for the development of automatic writing ; and that they would admit no friends to take part in it, or to share their confidence. Owing to the retired life they then led, they were able to pursue this plan with very few breaks in its continuity ; they sat with no other apparatus than a pencil and a sheet of paper, while one placed a hand upon the wrist of the other. At first little or no result was arrived at. When the pencil moved, it wandered aimlessly over the paper, describing meaningless gyrations. By and by, words appeared, incessantly repeated ; then broken sentences, but so disjointed and senseless that often they felt disposed to give up the attempt. After many months of patient perseverance, however, the writing assumed a different form.
Angels professed to write—occasionally interrupted by their prototypes—and a definite course of teaching was instituted by what purported to be the glorified Spirit of a man who, when on earth, had been a wretched leper. In this fashion they got a mass of correspondence, most of it curious, some of it of singular and lofty beauty, all of it totally different from the usual inanities procured under like conditions. It is an interesting question how far the conjunction of two rare minds, acting in complete harmony, sufficed to produce a rare development ; but to the self-constituted mediums it seemed that an influence external to their consciousness evolved every phrase. Moreover, two things were curious about the experiment.
While they wrote, the sense of a word which they were transcribing might occasionally become apparent to them, but the meaning of what they were transcribing—the gist of an entire sentence, far more, an entire paragraph—was totally unintelligible to them until they were able to read it as a whole. Still more, the writing itself varied in a fashion which they could not influence, what purported to be different on each occasion producing entirely different autographs. After a time the experiment was abandoned, principally because its outcome latterly consisted of a repetition of the first letters produced ; but the beautiful ideas suggested by these communications made a deep impression on both writers, possibly all the more that these were a reflex of their own mentality.
For the motif dominant in all these letters likewise permeates De Morgan’s fiction ; the belief that this life is but one phase of a great whole, one stage in a continuous progression, and that the growth of a soul is the greatest good ; while the same message Evelyn passed on to the world in glowing colours and fair fancies. In most of her later pictures can be traced that paramount idea of struggle and of growth, the battle for attainment to a rarer atmosphere, a finer development ; and her work is penetrated with a wealth of spiritual insight apparent to those whose minds are atune to interpret it.” (pp.355-6)
Evelyn De Morgan was a very gifted painter in the late Pre-Raphaelite movement and her canvases often deal with spiritual themes. In respect of the above, one of her most remarkable paintings is ‘The Kingdom of Heaven Suffereth Violence and the Violent Take it by Force’ (1878) [see https://www.demorgan.org.uk/collection/the-kingdom-of-heaven-suffereth-violence-and-the-violent-take-it-by-force/%5D. Stirling goes on to describe the significance of this painting with regard to Evelyn De Morgan’s understanding, gleaned in no small part from her experiments with automatic writing, of the nature of the soul’s discarnate possibilities and development:
“One picture especially may be cited in this connexion. In ‘The Kingdom of Heaven suffereth violence,’ within a small space of canvas is depicted the gradual evolution of a developing soul. At the base are seen the grey, sad forms of the spiritually damned—those who dwell mentally in outer darkness. Next are depicted their first painful steps upwards towards the light which, as yet, cannot be discerned by them, even though a faint flush from that far-away glory is already dyeing their drab-hued garments. Then, gradually, as they struggle upwards by slow, arduous degrees, the colour intensifies ; their darkened gaze is directed towards the heavens—not, as previously, earthwards ; till, by and by, when they have risen higher, the chains fall from their fettered limbs, the bandages from their blinded eyes, and there bursts upon each emancipated spirit the gladness and the music of the spheres.” (pp.356-7)
The scholar Emma Merkling has similarly investigated the deep connection between Evelyn De Morgan’s paintings and her spiritual understandings and convictions. See, for example, Emma Merkling – Evelyn De Morgan and the Art of the Imponderable, An Interview [https://thethinkersgarden.com/evelyn-de-morgan-and-the-art-of-the-imponderable-an-interview-with-emma-merkling/]. Also of interest is her recent 2021 PhD Thesis, Emma Merkling, ‘Imponderable: Physics, Mathematics, and Spirit in Evelyn De Morgan’s Art and Automatic Writings, 1883–1919’
Let me end with a favorite quote from ‘The Result of an Experiment’:
“I am sent to say that our world is the real world, our thought the real thoughts, and our work the real work. You are in a land of shadows and your days are spent in probation, but your attitude of mind depends on the fruit you reap … earth life is dull, cold, grey and the spirit is cramped in the prison of clay, but outside the sun of the spirit-spheres shines, and the glory and light of Heaven is a great reality.” (p.59)
Best, Paul
Thanks, Paul, for your comments. Grace Rosher’s writing seems to fall between direct writing (no hand on the writing instrument) and automatic writing. I’ve read her two books and they are both very interesting. As for DeMorgans, I was familiar with Augustus and Sophia DeMorgan and their historic 1863 book, but not the DeMorgans you mentioned. I’ll look for more about them. I’m still searching for more about Sidney Dean, the United States congressman mentioned by William James in one of his books. as a very gifted automatic writer.