PassionsInProse and Empirical Pragmatics have published a recently revised essay of mine, about the American poet Ella Wheeler Wilcox. Ella was an "extraordinary ordinary" woman who rose from poverty to international acclaim by writing little poems and moral articles for the newspapers. She was also fascinated by the possibility of paranormal experiences.

I followed the generally accepted 'feminist' thesis when initially writing my essay: that Ella's work is not very well known today because influential male chauvinists took over poetry and suppressed her work as well as that of other female poets. Ella was wildly successful in her time as a poetess and as a role model. Many of her fans were housewives who tried their hands at poetry from time to time. No doubt quite a few husbands believed the ladies were wasting their time with poetry and should keep themselves otherwise occupied, with their marital or household duties, of course; perhaps several gentlemen went so far as to tear up any poems they managed to find hidden away around the house.

As for the professional critics, I am convinced that several of them resented Ella's success because they had failed dismally as poets, or had enjoyed some repute and turned to criticism when the muse rudely abandoned them - usually for the lack of sentiment they disparaged women for possessing. For a woman to succeed at poetry was not the only possible blow to the male ego: worldly success during the early phase of the scientific-industrial revolution was supposedly the rightful domain of the stronger sex.

As you may well imagine, the angle I took for my essay angered several male intellectuals - the hostility expressed caused me to twist the knife a bit and to sink it even deeper when I revised the essay. Yet women for the most part responded enthusiastically. As we pioneers of the virtual world know very well, the advent of the Internet and open publishing in the form of writing sites and ezines released a flood of poetry previously dammed up in homes for want of enough media to exhibit it. It seemed as if almost everyone had become a writer overnight, and Poetry was the favorite category on every writing site, more popular by far than recipes. The servers were so inundated by poems that information managers attempted to eliminate Poetry from the taxonomic scheme of things. It was then, when literally thousands of new poems were being posted on the Internet everyday, that I by chance or God happened upon a few of Ella's poems at the brick-and-mortar library. I inquired further into the public catalogue, and I was suitably impressed by Ella and her work. I soon concluded that the American public should become reacquainted with her life and work, especially since the Internet now affords talented women with a revolutionary opportunity to express themselves poetically and to lay claim to their literary deserts in the literary world.

Odd as this might seem, I believe some of the turns we are taking in this Information Age have certain parapsychic implications for those of us who are more comfortable with the Age of Aquarius if not with the American Transcendentalists and Spiritualists. I did not dwell on the subject in my essay, so perhaps this is the proper place to elaborate on the fact that Ella was under the influence of Madame Blavatsky's Theosophical Society. She was particularly captivated by Annie Besant, the formerly atheistic sociologist who fell under the spiritual spell of Blavatsky and became her primary protégé. Mahatma Gandhi among many other renowned spiritual leaders were deeply influenced by Madame Blavatsky, Besant &Co. I myself have admired Madame Blavatsky's Secret Doctrine and Isis Unveiled. Of course I am aware that she was denounced as a charlatan, a sort of spiritual nomad who wandered over the face of the earth consulting spiritual masters and smoking a lot of tobacco from the cat's head pouch she had strung on a thong about her neck. Still, I wish I had lived then to meet her. I understand she mesmerized the scientists who arrived to investigate her, even though they were not impressed by such things as the letters from the secret Masters, the ones that dropped mysteriously out of the curtains.

Those were the days of seances, of contacting the dead. They were deathly days to millions who died violently at war and it is no wonder the living remainder wanted to get ahold of their beloved ones. Most of the seances were fraudulent, but there is always that one.... Still today people claim to be in regular contact with the departed, and may some of them are. I sometimes get an overwhelming feeling when I am intensely studying a particular historical period or person that I am in touch with the living souls of people long gone from the face of the Earth. So, yes, I wonder, Can contact be made with departed souls? Ella Wheeler raised that Question in her book, The Worlds and I. In 'The Search of a Soul in Sorrow,' she said her departed husband had never lied to her. The poem begins thus:

You Promised Me
That was a mighty promise you made me; - not once,
But many a time
Whenever we discussed the topic death -
You promised me that there were such things possible
In God's vast Universe,
You would send back a message to my listening soul,
Now I am listening with bated breath...

Moses, Elias, Matthew, Mark and John -
Paul and Cornelius, Buddha, Swedenborg -
All talked with Angels.
Science, which once denied, now publicly investigates.
I do not seek alone.

The 1916 poem still speaks to us today, at least to those of us who are seekers notwithstanding the fact that we discount the old séances as outright frauds. We seek skeptically, however. Houdini made a similar promise, to give some sign to his beloved - surely, if anyone besides the infamous trickster Sisyphus could loosen Death's bonds long enough to speak, surely Houdini could. Ella Wheeler was certainly not easily discouraged: she gives us a considerable account of her frustrating quest to make contact with her beloved Robert. She was no fool: she was not deceived by charlatans nor was she drawn in by the bigots who tried to hustle her. Nor was she much interested in what she considered to be mundane paranormal phenomena, the sort of thing that many thousands of people are intrigued by to this very day in one peculiar form or another. For example, she wrote about her experience with something called "precipitation."

"I began to visit reputable psychics. Many interested me, some distracted me, a few comforted me with what seemed real messages from the Great Beyond. Others gave only what might have been read from my mind. Still others gave the babble of elementals. None of them satisfied me. One man gave me my first illustration of that curious phenomenon, 'precipitation.' He sat at one end of a room flooded with southern California sunshine, I at the other. On a table beside me were fifty or more slates. He told me to select two and strap them together (after sponging them well) and to place them under my feet. Then I was instructed to take a sheet of paper from the table, write the names of three people who had gone away from earth, and ask one question; to seal this in an envelope and hold it in my hand. I held this for a half hour, while the man with the occult power sat quietly writing at the opposite end of the room. Suddenly he said: 'Look at your slates.' I looked at the slates and found a forget-me-not flower, in water colors, on one corner, and both slates were filled with a message signed by my husband name. No human hands had touched the slates. They were blank when placed by me under my feet. Yet I was not thrilled or stirred... I knew it was a genuine phenomenon, known to occult students... It is a peculiar mental power which enables the possessor of it to obtain facts from the sitter's mind, and precipitate them upon paper or slates... I did not believe for one instant that my husband had sent the message. It was not the message of a spirit, longing for months to communicate with the dearest soul on earth, would send when first the door was opened. It left me utterly cold, and simply curious."

So Ella does not doubt that there are paranormal phenomena, but she is not going to be hoodwinked by any of it. I for one share her attitude. I believe it is possible to contact departed souls and spirits in the 'Beyond', but I have seen no convincing evidence to convince me that such contact has been made. I think Madame Blavatsky had paranormal powers, and I also believe she was a charlatan too. I do not believe 'precipitation' was caused by a magical psychic power, but I am not absolutely certain it cannot be done. I do know we are the dead alive, for I can literally see the faces of those who lived before in the living faces around me. I know the spirit of Ella Wheeler communicates with me when I think about her and read her poetry. I enjoy that experience, and that is why have rejoined her with this second little essay.


~ David Arthur Walters ~

Copyright 2003