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What was table-turning, and what did Faraday find?
Table-turning was a nineteenth-century séance practice in which sitters rested their hands on a table that tilted, rotated or rose in reply to questions. Michael Faraday tested it in 1853 and attributed the movements to involuntary muscle action, the ideomotor effect.
Facts checked on against 12 sources, 5 of them museum, university, archive, library, government or primary texts.
Key facts
Every line comes from a source listed at the bottom of the page. The small numbers point to it.
| 1848 | The Fox sisters at Hydesville, New York, began the knocks and taps that are usually taken as the start of modern Spiritualism.12 |
|---|---|
| 1852–1853 | Table-turning crossed from America to Europe in the winter of 1852–3, and the practice spread quickly through drawing rooms.342 |
| 1853 | Michael Faraday tested table-turning, and his results were published in The Times on 30 June 1853.35 |
| 1853–1854 | Count Agenor de Gasparin and Professor Marc Thury of Geneva held table séances and named a radiating force, the ectenic force.46 |
| 1869–1871 | The London Dialectical Society investigated table-turning and related Spiritual Manifestations, and its report appeared in 1871.37 |
| 1888 | Margaret Fox Kane signed a confession, published in the New York World on 21 October 1888, saying that the Fox rappings were made by her and her sister.1 |
| 1895 | Dr. Richard Hodgson exposed the medium Eusapia Palladino, showing that she freed one hand to make the movements.1 |
What the practice was
Table-turning, also called table-tipping or table-tilting, was a séance phenomenon in which a table moved, tipped or levitated under the light touch of sitters' fingertips. Spiritualists took the movements as answers from spirits, while critics debated whether they came from unconscious muscular action, collective psychic force or spirit agency.389
In the alphabet method, sitters slowly recited the alphabet and the table tilted at the chosen letter, spelling out words and sentences. Some Evangelical clergymen concluded from such messages that the spirits were diabolic in nature.4
Faraday's test and its reception
Faraday built a simple apparatus of two boards with glass rollers between them, fastened with indiarubber bands, with an upright haystalk to show lateral movement of the upper board. Podmore states that it showed the movements came from unconscious muscular action, and that the phenomena generally stopped once the experimenters saw that the fingers were moving the table.43
Faraday concluded that sitters who believed they were pressing downward were in fact pressing obliquely, in the direction they expected the table to turn. James Braid noted in his appendix to Hypnotic Therapeutics (1853) that someone usually announced beforehand the direction in which the table was expected to rotate.6
Podmore wrote that Faraday's demonstration did little to halt the popular craze. Faraday's explanation was also contested by spiritualists, who pointed out that it could not account for tables that levitated without human touch.43
What the tradition holds
How practitioners describe it, in their terms. Described, not endorsed.
Spiritualist writers such as Hudson Tuttle recorded table-rapping and tipping as part of their own mediumship at a walnut dining table, and Tuttle described Faraday's refusal to look at tables said to hang in the air without visible support.10
Allan Kardec studied table turning and concluded in The Book on Mediums that some communications came from an outside intelligence, because the messages contained information unknown to the group.2
What the evidence shows
What historians, scientists and controlled tests have found.
Faraday's test was a controlled attempt to see whether the table or the sitters' hands were moving it. Cardboard sheets with pencil marks were used to record involuntary movement, and Faraday concluded from the marks that people, not spirits, moved the table.11
Charles Grafton Page's 1853 work Psychomancy: Spirit-Rappings and Table-Tippings Exposed detailed how such phenomena could be copied through trickery and illusion, while Dr. Carpenter attributed table answers that surprised the sitters to unconscious cerebration.912
Worked out from the evidence
Not stated outright by any one source. It is worked out from the sources cited.
- Faraday's test is best read as an attempt to separate the sitters' own muscle action from any outside force. The movements he examined were explained by unconscious muscular action, not by electricity, magnetism or spirits, though spiritualists and some investigators objected that this could not account for tables that rose with no touch.3546
- Accounts disagree on how much Faraday's apparatus settled the question. Podmore holds that it stopped many of the phenomena, while Podmore also notes that it did little to halt the craze.46
Not yet confirmed
- How far did unconscious muscular action explain the table movements that sitters reported in the 1850s?
- Why did table-turning remain popular after Faraday's apparatus was published?
Sources
Museums, universities, archives and primary texts first. Every fact is paraphrased and nothing is copied; Wikipedia is never cited.
- gutenberg.org: A Magician Among the Spirits. Read on · Primary text
- moonmausoleum.com: Table Turning: When Spirits Spill the Tea Through Furniture - Moon Mausoleum. Read on · Reference
- psi-encyclopedia.spr.ac.uk: Table-Turning – Psi Encyclopedia. Read on · University
- en.wikisource.org: 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Table-turning - Wikisource, the free online library. Read on · Library
- ria.ie: Table-Turning: a Victorian fad - Royal Irish Academy. Read on · Reference
- encyclopedia.com: Table-turning (or Table-tipping) | Encyclopedia.com. Read on · Reference
- worldpsychiccenter.com: Understanding the Intriguing Phenomenon of Table Turning. Read on · Reference
- seancescience.com: Table-tilting became popular during the medium / séance craze. Read on · Reference
- experimentalmedium.com: Table-Tipping and Spirit Rapping: Forgotten Tools of 19th Century Mediumship — The Experiemental Medium. Read on · Reference
- archive.org: Full text of "[Arcana of Spiritualism: A Manual of Spiritual Science and Philosophy](https://archive.org/details/arcanaofspiritua01tutt_0)". Read on · Primary text
- theguardian.com: The psychology of spiritualism: science and seances | Psychology | The Guardian. Read on · Reference
- Internet Archive: Cock Lane and common-sense. Read on · Primary text