The Age of Angels: spiritualism and evolutionary progressionism in a nineteenth-century geologic time chart

Abstract

The term ‘Anthropocene’ often carries apocalyptic overtones of environmental devastation, but many nineteenth-century iterations of the ‘Age of Humans’ idea were explicitly optimistic. The current time period was framed as a ‘Psychozoic Era’ or ‘Age of Mind’ in which human beings took their predetermined place at the pinnacle of ‘creation’. Hiram Alvin Reid, an amateur scientist in the midwestern United States, took this line of thinking a step further. He drafted a geologic time chart in which the current ‘Age of Man’ was succeeded by a future ‘Age of Angels’, wherein humans will become higher beings. Reid was a Christian spiritualist who thought that evolution drove both physical and spiritual advancement, including the recent development of a ‘sixth sense’ that allowed humans to perceive ghosts and angels. Reid’s views, while idiosyncratic and coloured by his metaphysical beliefs, drew heavily on mainstream concepts in biology and geology. Prominent geologists like James Dana and Joseph Le Conte argued for an Age of Mind in terms that mixed scientific rigor with religious and progressionist ideas. The Psychozoic was also embraced by many progressive-minded individuals outside the natural sciences, paralleling widespread modern interest in the Anthropocene.

Keywords:

• Anthropocene
• evolution
• Hiram Alvin Reid
• Psychozoic
• progressionism
• spiritualism

Acknowledgements

This manuscript was significantly improved by comments from Eileen Herrstrom and two anonymous reviewers. I also wish to thank the staff of the University Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, for their assistance in obtaining reference materials.

Notes

1. For example, an interdisciplinary Anthropocene conference held at the University of Iowa prominently featured a photo of an oil slick on its website (uianthropocene.com), and the program included a multimedia dance piece that ‘provide[d] a meditation on issues of scarcity and dwindling resources, that mourn[ed] the loss of visible starlight in metropolitan areas, [and] that cover[ed] dancers in plastic bags to symbolize what has been happening to the natural world over the past two centuries’ (Charis-Carlson 2015).

2. The distinction between ‘spiritualism’ and ‘spiritism’ is a matter of some confusion. Some would argue that belief in spirit communication should be referred to as ‘spiritism’ rather than ‘spiritualism’, since the word ‘spiritualism’ already denoted an anti-materialist philosophical doctrine. ‘Spiritism’, however, was considered a derogatory term by many, and – particularly in North America – ‘spiritualism’ was widely adopted in preference to it (Edmunds 1966).

3. Adam was not the only one who entertained the possibility that nature tended to progress to intelligent life but that said intelligence need not necessarily be human. Matthew (1928) speculated that, without man in the picture, ‘in far distant ages to come the destiny of the world might be committed into the hands of some super-intelligent dog or bear or glorified weasel’ (p. 234).

4. He held a patent for a sheep-shearing machine, among other inventions.