Sherlock Holmes and the Fairies

Abstract

In its more theorised aspects, spiritualism was engaged in an aggressive debate with Darwinism or the consequences of Darwinism, and Darwin himself took a lively interest in the doings of clairvoyants. This ‘revolution’ was driven by the belief that contact with the dead and other disembodied spirit entities was a desirable thing. This was in direct opposition to the archaic belief that such contact should be feared and shunned and its practitioners treated as necromancers. The new ‘rational’ supernatural was believed to go beyond religion and science and explain both. Although this advance was supposedly based on ‘natural law’ and a type of spiritualised universal mechanics, it was founded on one central dogmatic assertion: survival after death as proven ‘beyond doubt’.