Born of a soldering iron and some unfaithful screws

[sovay]

I know my knowledge of the American nineteenth century is like most people with the Russian Futurists, but can somebody explain to me why it still took me until this afternoon to hear about John Murray Spear's New Motor—a mechanical Messiah built by Spiritualists in a barn in Lynn, Massachusetts, mystically birthed by one of its female followers and eventually smashed to pieces by an honest-to-God angry mob? Steampunk, give it up. You can try on all the brass and goggles you like: actual history was weirder than you.

(Courtesy of Dean Grodzins, who also asked me why I write about ghosts. At first I said I didn't, and then I talked about dybbuks for fifteen minutes straight.)

Comments

"The Thing Moves!"

[teenybuffalo.livejournal.com]

That's a great excerpt. By a funny coincidence I've just been reading Midnight Rising, a book about John Brown and the raid on Harper's Ferry. Brown hung out with William Lloyd Garrison and admired his stance on abolition, but couldn't take all the pacifism. Garrison seems to have met everybody remotely interesting in the nineteenth century.

The excerpt doesn't describe the New Machine--off to look elsewhere...

http://whofortedblog.com/2010/08/10/the-new-motor-building-the-god-machine/

OH DEAR YOG. He was taking orders from the ascended spirit of Benjamin Franklin to bring God's word to the world via better technology. History, I adore you, don't you ever stop amazing me:

The final stage of the nine-month long experiment took place on June 29th, 1854 and involved a ritual during which Spear encased himself in a suit made of metal, gemstones, plates and copper strips. He was then brought into gradual contact with the machine before slipping into a deep trance. Clairvoyants present at the ritual reported seeing an “umbilical like cord linking Spear to the machine.”

Perhaps I'm strange or something, but I'm over here going "Awwww!" I'm unilaterally declaring John Spear the (ecumenical) saint of hilarious millennial cults.

(It's not fair: the nineteenth century gets the spiritualists and the Shaker revival and John Murray Spear and that woman who decided she was the Messiah and could walk on water and tried and fell through. The twentieth and twenty-first centuries have had their cults but they've all been much shorter on delightful silliness, and much longer on death and violence.)

[sovay]

By a funny coincidence I've just been reading Midnight Rising, a book about John Brown and the raid on Harper's Ferry.

Okay, did I actually mention that I heard the author of that book at the same seminar in November where I went to hear Dean on Theodore Parker, or is it just a small, small history-geek world after all?

OH DEAR YOG. He was taking orders from the ascended spirit of Benjamin Franklin to bring God's word to the world via better technology.

I know. I am strangely disappointed in the internet that there's not a webcomic about his quest. You had better call it for Yuletide.

(Also, that blog has a juvenile, but great title.)

History, I adore you, don't you ever stop amazing me

Amen!

Perhaps I'm strange or something, but I'm over here going "Awwww!" I'm unilaterally declaring John Spear the (ecumenical) saint of hilarious millennial cults.

Are you kidding? That's adorable. If you get to the biography before me, please send back a full report!

[edit] Re the excerpt: I also can't believe there's not some kind of punk or art-rock band called Human Crotch Fact.

(It's not fair: the nineteenth century gets the spiritualists and the Shaker revival and John Murray Spear and that woman who decided she was the Messiah and could walk on water and tried and fell through. The twentieth and twenty-first centuries have had their cults but they've all been much shorter on delightful silliness, and much longer on death and violence.)

Well, I'm pretty sure the Second Great Awakening had its share of violent fuckery, because most millenarian movements do, but I do agree with you: I'm way more charmed by people who take their orders from Ben Franklin (and call themselves "Electricizers") than by people who take their orders from whatever they think Jesus is like this week.

Man, I have to write that John Adams dybbuk poem now.

Re: "The Thing Moves!"

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Spear encased himself in a suit made of metal, gemstones, plates and copper strips.

Wow! How L. Frank Baum, somehow! It's like the Tin Man and Tick Tock together. Only real.

Now I really, really want Kate Beaton to illustrate it.

[sovay]

Now I really, really want Kate Beaton to illustrate it.

I am shocked that she hasn't.