“Words of Healing”: The Literature of Automatic Writing as Treatment and Prescription in the Victorian Age

The student who dives deep into the mysteries that enshrine Truth . will tell of her beauties, and proclaim to those have ears hear words healing. So wrote English cleric spiritualist W. Stainton Moses in his Spirit Teachings (1883)-or, if is be believed, so spirit Imperator, who, promising spiritual bodily edification, enlisted as earthly amanuensis. Treating purportedly real writings like transcribed by discourses their reception occultism, psychical research, literature, this paper examines phenomenon automatic writing, also called passive or psychography, an evolving means wellness and, later, a source medical prescription from 1850s through 1890s. This essay suggests yet-unintuited connection between rise writing Spasmodic poetics alternately championed critiqued Sydney Dobell.