TABLE TURNING AND TABLE TALKING, 1853
You hear at the present day, that some persons can place their fingers on a table, and then elevating their hands, the table will rise up and follow them; that the piece of furniture, though heavy, will ascend, and that their hands bear no weight, or are not drawn down to the wood; you do not hear of this as a conjuring manoeuvre, to be shown for your amusement; but are expected seriously to believe it, and are told that it is an important fact, a great discovery amongst the truths of nature.
(Michael Faraday, Table Turning and Table Talking)
By the 1850s, “la danse des tables” had travelled across the pond and became all the rage in Europe. Skeptics of spiritualism turned to leading scientific minds of the day to investigate the phenomenon, and surprisingly there was little consensus even among them. Michael Faraday (1791-1867) was one such scientist, a British chemist and pioneer of electromagnetism, who’s work eventually led to the creation of the electrical industry.
In 1853, he decided to see what all the fuss was about and attended a table turning séance at a friend’s house. Faraday brought with him a few simple tools of his own design to measure things like pressure and height. He concluded that the only energy moving the tables was that of living humans in the room. He published his results in several pamphlets and as an addendum to this book, Table Turning and Table Talking, however not all were convinced by his results.
Faraday was highly critical of the public for accepting spiritualism so rapidly and without question. Perhaps he was unable to understand what made spiritualism appealing to so many, whether it be a sense of individual power, the ability to speak with dead loved ones, or just accessible entertainment. Regardless, his conclusions gained him serval adversaries in the spiritualist and scientific community.