A meeting where people try to communicate with the spirits of dead people, usually led by a medium.
From French 'séance' meaning 'sitting' or 'session,' which comes from Latin 'sedere' (to sit). The word entered English in the 1800s during the spiritualism movement's peak.
Seances became wildly popular in Victorian times (1800s) when grieving families desperately wanted to contact loved ones who died—some mediums were genuine psychics, but many were clever con artists using hidden wires and accomplices.
Spiritualism and mediumship were dominated by women practitioners in the 19th–20th centuries, often dismissed by (male) scientists and the press as hysterical fraud, erasing women's intellectual and entrepreneurial contributions to this movement.
Credit women mediums as innovators in spiritualism and communication technology, not just as subjects of ridicule.
Women mediums like the Fox sisters, Helen Duncan, and countless others were early communicators and performers who commanded stages, audiences, and income. Their work prefigured modern psychology and theater.
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