William Harcus

Fortune Tellers and Their Dupes William Harcus

Between March and June of 1857, the Reverend William Harcus, a Congregationalist minister and essayist, published a series of anonymous articles on "Liverpool Life" in the pages of the Liverpool Mercury, describing in those articles a vibrant, robust and (for Harcus) dangerous local marketplace for folk occult practices - conjuration of spirits, astrology, crystal skrying, palmistry, cartomancy and other means of divination - operating in the open, patronized by all social classes, supplied by dozens of retail practitioners, and generating significant revenue. Harcus' first-hand account of his experiences with Liverpudlian occultists has never been republished, and has consequently not featured in discussions of English occultism of the 1850s - the critical period during which Modern Spiritualism was developing in the United Kingdom. This edition of Harcus' essays is transcribed verbatim from the pages of the Liverpool Mercury, edited and annotated by Marc Demarest, the executive director of the International Association for the Preservation of Spiritualist and Occult Periodicals (IAPSOP).