Séance

From the French *séance*, a sitting or session. The formal gathering at which the living attempt to address the dead. The form crystallised in the eighteen-forties around the Spiritualist movement of upstate New York, was carried to Britain through Daniel Dunglas Home, and reached the salons of Paris by the eighteen-sixties. The conventions hardened quickly: a circular table, the hands of the participants laid flat upon it or joined at the fingers, a single candle, a designated medium. The dead were addressed by name. Replies were sought through rapping, planchette movement, partial materialisation, or the medium's voice.

The Spiritualist tradition that produced the séance also produced the planchette and, in due course, the commercial ouija. The séance is the older and more formal of the practices. It assumes a circle, a discipline of silence, and a willingness to wait. The Victorian physical mediums were extensively investigated. The records are uneven.