Clive Davenhall

Mars and the Mediums

Abstract

Spiritualism began, in its modern incarnation, in the mid-nineteenth century and its heyday was during the late nineteenth century and the first part of the twentieth, when it was a worldwide movement with several million adherents. The Martian ‘canal craze’ occurred during much the same period. Following the observations of Schiaparelli, initially during the 1877 opposition, Mars was seen to be criss-crossed by a network of fine lines: the famous ‘canals’. One interpretation of these features was that they were artificial waterways, constructed by intelligent beings to stave off extinction by husbanding their scarce and dwindling water supplies. The nature of the canals, and in particular any artificial origin, were always problematic amongst astronomers (and in the event they proved to be optical illusions). However, the artificial origin hypothesis was widely and persuasively publicised in a blizzard of newspaper and magazine articles, particularly because of the advocacy of Percival Lowell and Camille Flammarion.

There was some common ground between these two sets of ideas, with some spiritualists reporting communication with Martians or making astral journeys to the planet (or, less often, elsewhere in the solar system or further afield). This paper will discuss this unlikely conjunction. It will review some notable examples, investigate how contemporary astronomical understanding of Mars is reflected in spiritualist’s accounts and discuss the reasons behind this apparently surprising confluence of supernatural and scientific (or at least materialistic) ideas.

Biography

Clive Davenhall has a long-standing interest in the history of astronomy. Since 2004 he has been the Editor of the Society for the History of Astronomy’s Bulletin (previously Newsletter) and is currently a member of that Society’s Council. He contributed to a previous INSAP meeting (VII) and has written entries for the Biographical Encyclopaedia of Astronomers. In real life he is a Project Manager and Software Developer in the Wide Field Astronomy Unit, Institute for Astronomy, University of Edinburgh, based at the Royal Observatory Edinburgh. He has degrees from the universities of London and St Andrews.