![]() Training is involved, and the brochure tells me that multiple levels of study over four to six years are required.Ī Spirit guide doesn’t have a body, but as the name suggests, guides a living being.Ĭlairvoyants see, clairaudients hear, clairsentients feel. This isn’t something you decide to do on a whim. Spiritualism is the “Science, Philosophy, and Religion based on the principle of continuous life.”Ī person becomes certified to be a medium or a healer. From a bright red flyer I picked up at the Cassadaga Welcome Center:Ī medium is one whose “organism is sensitive to vibrations from the spirit world.” It’s through them that spirit intelligence conveys messages.Ī spiritual healer is not necessarily a medium, and sometimes heals through laying on of hands. Over time, a particular group of Quakers in Rochester called the Waterloo Friends formed a bond with the three Fox sisters, and declared themselves Spiritualists.Īt this juncture, a glossary may be helpful. Frederick Douglass (also not a Spiritualist) published his anti-slavery newspaper, The North Star, from Rochester. Anthony (not a Spiritualist) lived in Rochester. Religion and social reform often go hand in hand, and one of the girls’ followers, abolitionist Amy Post, made her home a stop on the Underground Railroad. Mid-19th century Rochester was a hub of religious and social reform, so much so that the area became known as the “Burned Over District” due to the proliferation of religious movements. There, the sisters amped up their extreme listening skills and founded the concept of Spiritualism - essentially the idea that life continues after death and that the dead can be contacted in the spirit realm. Maggie and Katy soon grew overwhelmed by the crowds at their home and decamped to their married sister Leah’s house in nearby Rochester. Neighbors came to witness the demonstration and to ask – and have answered – questions of their own. Rather than being frightened by the disembodied sounds, they communicated with the noises, asking questions and getting knocky answers in the “one means yes, two mean no” vein. In 1848, Maggie and Katy Fox intrigued the citizens of their hometown of Hydesville, New York with what they came to call “spirit rapping.” Legend has it the two girls heard a knocking somewhere in their house. There’s a second reason I’ve come to Cassadaga, and that’s my fascination with a set of sisters other than my own. They wanted to stop being speechless with grief.īy the end of the 19th century, if you wanted mediums in the South, you wanted Cassadaga. The living wanted to say goodbye, or hello. Many of the living wanted to reach out to vanished loved ones, and the practice of Spiritualism, where mediums claimed to transmit messages from the beyond, offered a direct line. More than 500,000 families on either side of Mason-Dixon Line had at least one son, brother, or father killed. Otherworldly practices like séances gained traction after the Civil War. There, in the flat scrub of central Florida among the longleaf pines, he founded the winter home for the Spiritualist community of Lily Dale, New York, a community organized in 1879, not far from Cassadaga Lake, New York. ![]() Johns River as far as it went at the time, and then hoofed it 10 or so miles. ![]() ![]() Colby was a medium, who, on the advice of his spirit guide, took a train to Jacksonville, Florida, a steamboat down the St. Cassadaga is home to the Southern Cassadaga Spiritualist Camp Meeting Association, a community incorporated in 1894 by a fellow from Pike, New York, named George Colby. I am not a religious person, not “spiritual” in any sense. I want someone to tell me they are still right here, that they love me, and that missing them so much I am sometimes speechless with grief is something I can stop doing. So many lives ended, so many voices silenced. Willie the dog, Ed the cat, Peach the cat, and my mother’s mother, my grandma Jo. My mother, my sister Sarah, and my sister Susie, too. I’ve come to Cassadaga, Florida, because I want to hear someone tell me that my family is still around me. My mother is at my left shoulder, my sister Sarah on my right. Sometimes I think if I could turn my head quickly enough I’d catch them just behind my shoulders, but I never do. I see them all the time, although it’s more accurate to say I feel them. ![]()
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