Americans were in love with mesmerism because it was something that you could do in your own home. You could mesmerize or hypnotize your aunt or your mother or your father and people would go into these trance states and you could introduction autosuggestions tot hem or as some people saw it, you could cure them of illnesses.

Science, as it reaches the public mind, has both served to discredit and unintentionally reaffirmed mystical ideas.

Even back in its colonial days, America developed a reputation as a safe harbor for people with unusual or radical religious beliefs.

People need doorways to explore universal religious and ethical ideas.

Once the social and spiritual opening was created for women in the form of spiritualism, suddenly ambitious women who wanted to participate in the culture had a kind of a voice.

Everybody has different stories about where I came from. Nobody really knows.

Women had no clerical role anywhere in the Western world, period.