This book examines the legacy of European esoteric speculation, particularly Platonic ideals, as they are transformed on a new continent. Promoting knowledge rather than salvation as the path to spiritual improvement, Neoplatonism met with a democratizing impulse in America, one that eschewed the binary destinies of heaven or hell and offered instead an afterlife for all peoples, races, and religions. Spiritualism represents the ultimate marriage of universal salvation and the pursuit of esoteric knowledge, as a new generation of Americans embraced a completely inclusive heaven. While sci ... More

This book examines the legacy of European esoteric speculation, particularly Platonic ideals, as they are transformed on a new continent. Promoting knowledge rather than salvation as the path to spiritual improvement, Neoplatonism met with a democratizing impulse in America, one that eschewed the binary destinies of heaven or hell and offered instead an afterlife for all peoples, races, and religions. Spiritualism represents the ultimate marriage of universal salvation and the pursuit of esoteric knowledge, as a new generation of Americans embraced a completely inclusive heaven. While scientific and frequently political progressivists, Spiritualists looked to the past for answers about the present, undercutting a march of time and betraying conflicting cultural ideals. While technological and medical innovations were hallmarks of a great future, Platonic and Renaissance articulations of the cosmos persisted and increased: humanity did not inhabit a degraded material world, but rather the universe was shot through with the divine. This work examines implicit and explicit expressions of time and progress as they intersect with Spiritualist cultural concerns—memory, technology, love, medicine, and finally nascent psychology. In each the author finds echoes of Plato, pulling time backward even as it marched toward a brighter future.