The Psypioneer Newsletter contains articles on the personalities and organisations of this field in bygone days.  The Newsletter is now edited by SNU historian Paul Gaunt, but its scope is much wider even than Spiritualism. Much of its material is reprinted in full from old books and journals. Yet there is a large amount of literature which, in general, is not to be found in the Newsletter.

Absent first are papers from the Proceedings and Journal of the Society for Psychical research, even though it has published many essential investigations. This is because they are already available in electronic form through the SPR web site, free to SPR members. Moreover, by a small extra subscription, electronic versions of some other parapsychology journals, such as “Journal of Parapsychology” can be reached via the same site. (www.spr.ac.uk).

The second omission is of survival evidence and discussions of the survival question. Again, there is a fine web site devoted to just this subject, www.survivalafterdeath.org an outstanding educational resource, which also acts an on line newspaper for psychic news. Indeed when Psypioneer was launched, it was announced first on this survival web site.

Third is religious controversy. Spiritualists have been arguing about relations with mainstream Christianity for over 150 years Arthur Findlay, for example, might write an article asserting that Jesus was not historically attested - a Christian Spiritualist would reply that he was! Sometimes the same sources are quoted decade after decade. The Pioneer carries historical material about workers of all different beliefs, but is not directly interested in criticising any.

The fourth omission, oddly enough, is of spirit teaching. This implies no criticism of the value of such teaching, often received in trance. It is just that it is not usually about events in the historical record. An unfortunate exception was the many predictions of No War immediately before the Second World War. Early in 2006, however, Psypioneer did serialise the 1845 trance addresses through Andrew Jackson Davis called “Clairmativeness”. This is because they had been lost to later generations, and were an essential step in understanding how the Harmonial Philosophy of Davis developed.

Turning to the positive side, who do you find in Psypioneer? You will find acknowledgment of Australians, from the sometime Prime Minister Alfred Deakin downwards, who contributed to this field, such as Richard Hodgson who was convinced of survival by the Boston medium, Mrs Piper, and Raynor Johnson who was so eminent he was asked to write Teach Yourself Psychical Research.  You might play a part yourself, because as announced in the May 2005 issue, the Pioneer is compiling a census of Australian psychic periodicals; some are not in the National Library at Canberra (yet!), and volumes have turned up far away.

In 2006, Elizabeth Pretty of the Spiritualist Alliance, Auckland (which has a historic library including volumes of Harbinger of Light, Australia’s premier psychic journal) began to direct material about New Zealand to the Pioneer, so expect to see the early days there much illuminated in the months ahead.

In general Psypioneer Newsletter helps you to understand more about the workers of the past, and the organisations and publications through which they worked. Sometimes even the present day leaders do not know about them - they may just be names. It is not unknown for confusions to develop in the history, or for aspects of their work, which are not fashionable today, to be overlooked. The Newsletter tries to fill in the picture and restore it to its true colours.

I believe Arthur Conan Doyle recognised the importance of remembering the past, which is why he compiled his classic two volumes History of Spiritualism. A mere Newsletter is no substitute for such substantial works, but it can alert you to their publication, and offer factual building blocks that can be used in many ways today.

LESLIE PRICE