The Mystery of the Fox Sisters.

"The Mystery of the Fox Sisters" manuscript title page courtesy
of Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin

Happy Hydesville Day to all my Spiritualist readers!

Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve spent my lunchtime reading manuscripts in the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle collection at the Harry Ransom Center. Sir Arthur’s archive includes cool spirit photographs, his Ouija board, and other personal belongings, along with reams of manuscripts and books.

Because Hydesville Day was near, I read through his handwritten manuscript “The Mystery of the Fox Sisters” in which Sir Arthur examines the denouncement of Spiritualism by Maggie and Kate Fox. I couldn’t help but feel moved by the challenges that these young women faced as the founders of the Spiritualist movement in America 170 years ago today.

As a sensitive woman with a few sisters myself, I could relate to the battling personalities Sir Arthur sketched out, especially the feeling of jealousy that Kate Fox claimed her older sister Leah had for Maggie and herself:

“I don’t know why she [Leah] has always been jealous of Maggie and me, I suppose because we could do things in Spiritualism that she couldn’t.”

True, Leah Fox Fish Underhill is often the forgotten sister, but it was her social standing in Rochester that helped her younger sisters navigate mediumship and build their reputations in the field once they left their Hydesville cottage, as the raps followed them to Leah’s home.

Reading these 90-year-old yellowed pages, it occurred to me that mediums of today continue to be concerned with their reputations as they vie to make their livings in a materialist world. In a lecture Sir Arthur wrote called “The New Revelation,” he said, “The object of life is to become less material, which really means less selfish.”

I agree. Sister and brother mediums, let’s not equate ourselves with the objects we own, the titles we earn. Let’s let go of concern with our own egos over others for material gain. It is human nature to be competitive and compare ourselves with the standings of others, perhaps by cutting down others so that we may feel grander in the process.

Why? We fear we ourselves will be diminished. We will disappear if we do not build ourselves up.

Today we acknowledge spirit communication as it was revealed to Maggie and Kate Fox in Hydesville 170 years ago by the rappings of a slain peddler. We celebrate the courage of these young pioneers, the beginnings of Spiritualism, a provincial movement that blossomed into a worldwide religion that espouses messages of love and unity.

Let’s go a step further. Let us celebrate the indestructible grace of everyone we meet. How? By knowing yourself to be that allowing, peaceful space of awareness which you view as the environs of the spirit world, the place where you feel close to Spirit. You’re closer than close, you are that space.

Happiness and peace is the home address for all of us.

We are that awareness now. What’s keeping you from being happy and peaceful right now? Just the thought, “I don’t like this.”

Know that you are not thoughts, you aren’t defined by your relationships, your income, your memories, your feelings, perceptions...you are simply that which is aware of these words.

Celebrate Hydesville Day by fully acknowledging you never die because you are eternal now.