Comments on: The Lure of the Séance https://jillmorrow.net/the-lure-of-the-seance/ THE NOVELS OF JILL MORROW Fri, 21 Jun 2024 20:42:19 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.4 By: Jill Morrow https://jillmorrow.net/the-lure-of-the-seance/#comment-178023 Fri, 21 Jun 2024 20:42:19 +0000 https://jillmorrow.net/?p=1479#comment-178023 In reply to Bob DiNapoli.

I’m okay with things existing/happening just because they DO. In some ways, trying to define what they actually are or come from gets in the way. Of course, a scam is a scam. I suppose the trick is discerning one when you “feel” it.

]]> By: Bob DiNapoli https://jillmorrow.net/the-lure-of-the-seance/#comment-177895 Sun, 16 Jun 2024 00:36:18 +0000 https://jillmorrow.net/?p=1479#comment-177895 It’s not the quickest read on my shelf, but James Merrill’s The Changing Light at Sandover chronicles years’ worth of Ouija board and automatic writing sessions he conducted with his partner, the artist David Jackson, in which they communed with a large cast of dramatis personae, some human souls between incarnations, others more advanced spirits who’d got beyond that lower order to-ing and fro-ing. Merrill himself was cagey about the literal reality of the whole thing (like Yeats and his wife about their own long automatic-writing experiences); he seems happiest with it (as I suppose am, more or less) as a fascinating thought-experiment, make of that what you like.

]]> By: Jill Morrow https://jillmorrow.net/the-lure-of-the-seance/#comment-177887 Sat, 15 Jun 2024 15:09:56 +0000 https://jillmorrow.net/?p=1479#comment-177887 In reply to Kristina Riggle.

Kristina, I make of it that we’re never QUITE sure!

]]> By: Jill Morrow https://jillmorrow.net/the-lure-of-the-seance/#comment-177886 Sat, 15 Jun 2024 15:09:00 +0000 https://jillmorrow.net/?p=1479#comment-177886 In reply to Bob DiNapoli.

Bob, compared to AI, spiritualism does seem … quaint.

]]> By: Kristina Riggle https://jillmorrow.net/the-lure-of-the-seance/#comment-177865 Fri, 14 Jun 2024 22:55:50 +0000 https://jillmorrow.net/?p=1479#comment-177865 I’m supposedly a skeptic, yet a séance would probably scare the daylights out of me. Make of that what you will.

]]> By: Bob DiNapoli https://jillmorrow.net/the-lure-of-the-seance/#comment-177849 Fri, 14 Jun 2024 13:22:35 +0000 https://jillmorrow.net/?p=1479#comment-177849 When I think of the way the Internet has by now mugged up a global counterfeit of the Communion of the Saints (turbocharged by AI, of course), the fugitive gleam of possibility latent in the antique spiritualist urge begins to look just a little less wrongheaded. Still naïve and dodgy, of course. But there are some doors we need to hold ajar, however cautiously, if only to let a little air into the confines of our hermetically sealed modernity.

]]> By: Jill Morrow https://jillmorrow.net/the-lure-of-the-seance/#comment-177848 Fri, 14 Jun 2024 13:14:06 +0000 https://jillmorrow.net/?p=1479#comment-177848 In reply to Joe.

Joe, I agree with everything you posted. Unfortunately, there are too many people in this world (and out of it) willing to take advantage of sadness and desperation.

]]> By: Joe https://jillmorrow.net/the-lure-of-the-seance/#comment-177847 Fri, 14 Jun 2024 12:29:09 +0000 https://jillmorrow.net/?p=1479#comment-177847 A quote by G.K. Chesterton seems to me apropos: ““When men choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing, they then become capable of believing in anything.” Yes; the longing and emptiness we feel is what makes people like the Fox sisters possible. Such people abound today. But I might contend that for those who yearn for something more, the hope offered by spiritualism can be a false hope. Can a seance offer something beyond the logical? Information that is not a fraud? Perhaps. But we might want to keep in mind that not all “spirits” are benevolent. There lies the danger….

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