HISTORY

Prior to PsyPioneer, there had been a forerunner website publication called Psychic Pioneer from 1999 to 2001, written by Leslie Price, and which included news items. This had been supported on launch by grants from Spiritual Truth Foundation, the College of Psychic Studies and by private donors such as Edwin Butler and Denise Iredell.

PsyPioneer began as a free online monthly newsletter in May 2004 - available on publication to an email subscribers list.

Leslie Price was the founder editor of Psypioneer, and Paul Gaunt took over in July 2005, assuming ownership in February 2006.  Much support was given by established UK institutions in the field, such as Society for Psychical Research (SPR), College Of Psychic Studies (CPS), Spiritualists’ National Union (SNU), Churches’ Fellowship for Psychical and Spiritual Studies (CFPSS) and Psychic News (PN).

Circulation reached 480 e-subscribers in 2012.

In addition to circulation to the e-subscribers, PsyPioneer has always been archived on the website of the Woodlands Sanctuary Foundation Inc. in Melbourne, Australia, whose members Garth Willey and Peter Hui provide literary and technical help respectively.

The material in PsyPioneer - now a journal rather than a newsletter - deals with historic personages and organisations in the psychic field, and includes reprints of obituaries and other biographical sketches, old articles, book reviews and original papers. The most influential reprint (in April 2005) was of the Lewis Report into the Hydesville phenomena of 1848.

No particular standpoint is adopted about the phenomena under discussion, and personalities discussed include Spiritualists, Theosophists, Christians, Rationalists and non-committed historians and parapsychologists.  Among those in whom we have taken a special interest may be mentioned Andrew Jackson Davis, the Fox sisters, Stainton Moses, Emma Hardinge Britten, Arthur Conan Doyle, and a number of physical mediums.

You can obtain Psypioneer free and direct by sending an e-mail entitled “Subscribe” to psypioneersub@btinternet.com  or “Unsubscribe” to discontinue.

 To contact Psypioneer please e-mail psypioneer@btinternet.com

CONTENT 

The Psypioneer Journal contains articles on the personalities and organisations of this field in bygone days. The Journal 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, journals, letters and newspapers.

Yet there is a large amount of literature which, in general, is not to be found in Psypioneer. 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.

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. PsyPioneer 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.

In general PsyPioneer Journal 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 Journal tries to fill in the picture and restore it to its true colours.

Arthur Conan Doyle recognised the importance of remembering the past, which is why he compiled his classic two volumes History of Spiritualism. A mere Journal 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.