Canadian Prime Minister Mackenzie King was a spiritualist

Mackenzie King and spiritualism...mysterious!
So Australia was not the only Commonwealth country to have a Spiritualist as Prime Minister (Alfred Deakin here)

From The archives of the Canadian Library http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/king/023011-4030-e.html
Believe It Or Not... Mackenzie King was a spiritualist. He held séances and believed he communicated with the dead on many occasions throughout his life. The fact is that Mackenzie King and some of his friends, with the help of a medium, tried to communicate with his mother's spirit, his grandfather (William Lyon Mackenzie, leader of the 1837 Rebellion), his predecessor (Sir Wilfrid Laurier), and many others. He believed that these spirits could confirm his decisions. While Mackenzie King was alive, few people knew this strange aspect of his life. He recorded his spiritualist activities in the diaries and that's how we found out!

October 30, 1925, pages 191 and 194.

"...before going to the office received in the morning mail, (mailed Kingston 28) from Mrs. Bleaney a very remarkable letter -- the interpretation of the dream I sent her. It is simply astounding how it spoke of the present elections, of seeming defeat, of the party being in a stronger position a little later on, of a clear way ahead after these troublous times, of the time it would take for people to understand, of great spiritual power to come later on, of the nearness of dear Mother, it was all like a great revelation.... My nature & reason revolt against "spiritualism" & all the ilk. -- but not against the things of the spirit, -- the belief in spiritual guidance, -- thro' intuitions."

Mackenzie King

When visiting London, England, to attend the Imperial Conference in 1926, he met with Sir Oliver Lodge and recorded Lodge’s comments on the ordering of human lives by spirit beings, and the need for faith on the part both of mediums and sitters.

In 1931 King visited Detroit to attend a séance held by the American medium Henrietta (Etta) Wriedt (1859-1942). The following year, King was invited to the Brockville home of Mrs. Fulford, the widow of a Canadian senator, where he experienced the direct voice mediumship of Mrs Wriedt, who would become his favourite medium. Throughout the rest of this decade King travelled frequently to Detroit to attend additional séances, and upon occasion Mrs Wriedt visited Ottawa.

In 1933 he met medical doctor Thomas Glendinning Hamilton at his Winnipeg residence where they discussed the Hamiltons’ psychical research experiments; the next year he pursued new contacts in England. Among other individuals he spoke with Lady Aberdeen, whose husband had been Governor-General of Canada from 1893-98. She told King that she had received evidence through automatic writing of the continued existence of her recently deceased husband; and King revealed to her in turn that he had contacted Lord Aberdeen himself through table rappings. Spending time in England again in 1936, after a trip to the League of Nations in Geneva, he visited the London Spiritualist Alliance.

Following a séance in 1933 attended by Dominion Archivist Sir Arthur George Doughty (1860-1936), King and his close friend Joan Patteson (1869-1960) took up the practice of table-rapping at their residences in Ottawa. They claimed to receive frequent messages from King’s mother, his brother Max, and former Prime Minister Sir Wilfrid Laurier (1841-1919).

In the 1940s King continued to consult mediums in England, among them Lillian Bailey (1895-1971) and Hester (Travers-Smith) Dowden (1868-1949). In 1945 the London Spiritualist Alliance arranged sittings for him with Mrs Dowden, who practiced automatic writing, and Gladys Osborne Leonard (1882-1968).

Two years later the organization put him in contact with additional mediums including a Mrs Sharplin and Miss Geraldine Cummins (1890-1969). During his final visit to London in 1948, once again he met with Mrs Leonard and Miss Cummins.

In addition to his regular attempts to obtain spirit communication, King had been interested in other aspects of the occult since at least 1918, including interpretation of dreams, numerology, the meaning of coincidences and the reading of tea leaves.

During his lifetime, King’s Spiritualist beliefs were known only to his close friends and immediate colleagues. For the most part he wanted his pursuits to remain private and stayed away from association with organized groups. The professional mediums he consulted guarded his privacy closely.

Not long after King’s death on 22 July 1950 at “Kingsmere,” his country estate in Quebec, his beliefs became known when the Psychic News published a letter telling of the late Prime Minister’s interest in Spiritualism. The story was picked up by Maclean’s Magazine in December 1951, then by Canadian newspapers. Attention focussed often on the extent to which he might have relied upon messages from the spirit realm to direct his decisions.

In her Unseen Adventures (1951), Geraldine Cummins describes sittings that she held for a British Commonwealth statesman, who was most assuredly Mr King. In their initial meeting, his identity had been concealed from her. Cummins was impressed by her visitor’s “realistic and critical analysis of evidence presented by other psychic experiments. He was far too intelligent to be credulous, and his observations on the subject were to me very instructive.” Two years later, following a second sitting that warned about potential troubles in Asia, the statesman had said that “he made it a rule to ignore advice thus given: he trusted solely to his own and his advisers’ judgment.”

King’s voluminous personal papers were acquired by Library and Archives Canada. Unfortunately, in 1977, his literary executors made the decision to burn the notebooks in which mediums had apparently recorded their impressions in response to questions King had asked.

The remaining records about his Spiritualist activities were closed and only opened to researchers in 2001, a full 50 years after his death.

Through experience, King had discovered that attempts to predict the future by asking for counsel from spirits were rarely productive; he understood that séances were not to be used for fortune-telling.

Thanks to the Survival Research Institute of Canada for the above extracts.

Thanks for that Z good background detail of course in the UK the famous Balfour was also a Spiritualist wasn't he ?

Admin wrote:Thanks for that Z good background detail of course in the UK the famous Balfour was also a Spiritualist wasn't he ?

Allegedly!

In 1882, Henry Sidgwick, Frederic Myers, Edmund Gurney, Arthur and Gerald Balfour founded the Society for Psychical Research. Sidgwick became the first president of the S.P.R. and continued in this position for nine years. His influence and connections drew a number of distinguished persons into the Society, which fulfilled the function of a "Spiritualist church for intellectuals."

Arthur Balfour, who was Sidgwick's ablest student at Cambridge, would serve as president of the S.P.R., as did his brother, Gerald Balfour, and sister, Eleanor Sidgwick. Council Members and Honorary Members of the SPR included a past Prime Minister (William Gladstone) and a future Prime Minister (Arthur Balfour), 2 bishops, Tennyson and Ruskin, 'Lewis Carroll' and "a surprising number of titled persons."

Ex Prime Minister Gladstone called psychical research, "The most important work which is being done in the world. By far the most important work." William James, psychologist, philosopher and father of author Henry James, became president of the American S.P.R. in 1885. But the driving force of the S.P.R. came from Sidgwick, Myers, Gurney, the two Balfours, and Walter Leaf. Sidgwick's wife was to become principal of Newnham College, Cambridge in 1892.

The original objective of the S.P.R. was to conduct research into "that large group of debatable phenomena designated by such terms as mesmeric, psychical and spiritualistic." Committees were organized to examine telepathy, hypnotism, mesmeric trance, clairvoyance, ESP, apparitions, haunted houses, and to determine the laws of physical spiritualistic phenomena. In its early stages, the S.P.R. held séances in the townhouse of Arthur Balfour which his sister Eleanor organised. Various mediums of reputation were investigated with the purpose of ruling out charlatans and determining if entities from the spirit realm or deceased persons did in fact communicate with the living.

Thank you Z and to think a bit like the early problems with Benjamin Franklin there is the classic with Gladstone.

Questioning the spirit of Gladstone the person said is it you and the educated Gladstone said "Yus tis I"

Admin wrote:Thank you Z and to think a bit like the early problems with Benjamin Franklin there is the classic with Gladstone.

Questioning the spirit of Gladstone the person said is it you and the educated Gladstone said "Yus tis I"

in case people get here there is also this other piece from my article in Psychic News https://www.spiritualismlink.com/t2197-william-lyon-mackenzie-king-the-spiritualist-prime-minister