Moses ( Rev ), William Stainton

Rev. William Stainton Moses: Medium, Spiritualist, and Voice of Spirit Teachings

Rev. William Stainton Moses (1839–1892) was a university-educated medium and one of the most prominent British spiritualists of the nineteenth century. A minister of the Church of England, a teacher, a scholar, and a gifted medium, Moses became known for his automatic writing, physical mediumship, and his influential role in the development of British Spiritualism.

William Stainton Moses was born on 5 November 1839 in Donnington, Lincolnshire, England. His father was headmaster of Donnington Grammar School. Only one unusual incident is recorded from Moses’ early years. He sometimes walked in his sleep, and on one occasion, while still asleep, he went downstairs to the living room, wrote out a homework assignment, and returned to bed without waking. The next day, his essay was judged the best of all those submitted.

Moses began attending Bedford College in 1852 and later won a scholarship to Exeter College, Oxford. He proved to be an ambitious and diligent student, but his health broke down from overwork. He left his studies for a time, travelled, and spent six months in a monastery on Mount Athos in Greece. After recovering his health, he returned to Oxford and completed his B.A. degree. In 1863, at the age of twenty-four, he was ordained as a minister of the Church of England and sent to Kirk Maughold, near Ramsey, on the Isle of Man.

In 1869, Moses became seriously ill and was treated by Dr. Stanhope Templeman Speer, who was visiting from London. This meeting became the beginning of a lifelong friendship with Dr. Speer and his family. During his recovery, Moses spent time in the Speer household, and for seven years he tutored their son, Charlton.

In 1871, Moses accepted a mastership at University College School in London. Until this point, he had shown little interest in Spiritualism. That changed in 1872, when Mrs. Speer persuaded him to attend a séance. It was the first of several sittings, including some with the remarkable medium D. D. Home. Within about six months, Moses became convinced of the truth of Spiritualism, and soon began to show signs of mediumistic ability himself.

In the home circle that Moses established with the Speer family, he revealed powerful paranormal physical abilities. These included levitations of himself, apports, table-tiltings, and other physical manifestations. Objects left in his bedroom were often found arranged in the shape of a cross. Lights, sounds, and unusual smells were produced during his séances. There were also materialisations of luminous hands and columns of light that vaguely suggested human forms. Phenomena of this kind continued, though with decreasing frequency, until around 1881.

In 1872, Moses also began automatic writing, a practice that continued until 1883. He recorded his scripts in a series of notebooks and later published many of them in the widely read newspaper The Spiritualist under the pseudonym “M. A. Oxon.” These writings formed the basis of several books, including Spirit Identity (1879), Higher Aspects of Spiritualism (1880), and Spirit Teachings (1883).

Many of Moses’ automatic writings took the form of dialogues between himself and a group of spirit controls known as the “Imperator” group. These communications presented a coherent spiritualist cosmology and became deeply influential in British Spiritualism. In content and influence, they may be compared with the work of the American seer Andrew Jackson Davis. Spirit Teachings quickly became known as the “Bible of British Spiritualism.”

This is why Moses remains such an important figure for anyone interested in mediumship, séances, spirit communication, automatic writing, ghosts, and the history of Spiritualism. If these subjects call to you, the Occult World Skool Community is where you can continue the study in depth. Inside the community, you can meet fellow occultists, explore spirit contact, mediumship, necromancy, haunted places, paranormal investigation, ritual practice, demonology, and the wider mysteries of the unseen world. Do not simply read about spirit communication from a distance — step into a serious occult community where these traditions are studied with depth, curiosity, and respect.

At times, Moses’ scripts included evidential communications. Together with his physical demonstrations, these were enough to attract the attention of both spiritualists and psychical researchers. Sir William Crookes was an occasional sitter at Moses’ séances. After attending one of these séances in 1874, Frederic W. H. Myers persuaded Henry Sidgwick to help organise a group to investigate mediumship. This eventually became a forerunner of the Society for Psychical Research, founded in 1882.

The Society for Psychical Research was originally intended as an alliance between spiritualists and researchers for the serious investigation of psychic phenomena. Moses sat on the first council as a vice president. However, he and many other spiritualists became impatient with the critical attitude of the researchers. After Eleanor Mildred Balfour Sidgwick made comments on the fraudulent slate-writing medium William Eglinton in 1886, Moses withdrew from the SPR council and resigned from the society. Several others left with him or soon after.

In 1884, Moses had already founded his own organisation, the London Spiritualist Alliance. This was intended to replace the British National Association of Spiritualists, which had existed from 1872 to 1882. Moses had been associated with the BNAS for much of that time, but he became disenchanted with it and left in 1880. The new London Spiritualist Alliance began publishing the spiritualist journal Light under Moses’ editorship. This journal continues today through the College of Psychic Studies, successor to the LSA.

Moses remained in his teaching position at University College School until failing health forced him to resign in 1889. He died three years later, on 5 September 1892, from complications brought on by Bright’s disease.

He left his notebooks of automatic writings and séance records to two fellow spiritualists, Charles Massey and Alaric A. Watts, who lent them to Frederic Myers for study. Myers later reported on them in the SPR Proceedings. He was impressed by the similarity between Moses’ phenomena and those associated with D. D. Home, and he emphasised Moses’ moral uprightness and personal integrity.

Most of Moses’ séances were private and were not usually attended by outsiders. The records, though detailed, were kept either by Moses himself or by the Speer family. These factors reduce the evidential weight that can be attached to his mediumship. Even so, Moses remains, along with D. D. Home, one of the only major physical mediums who was never caught in fraud and was not seriously suspected of it.

Moses’ other books, also published under the pseudonym “M. A. Oxon,” include Psychography (1878) and Ghostly Visitors (1882).

Rev. William Stainton Moses stands as one of the central figures of British Spiritualism: a scholar, minister, medium, teacher, and recorder of spirit communications. His life bridges religion, education, psychical research, séances, automatic writing, and the enduring human desire to understand what lies beyond death.