The Sorcerer of Kings: The Case of Daniel Dunglas Home and William Crookes [Hardcover]

Gordon Stein (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1994

Spiritualism spread rapidly both in Britain and in the United States, with mediums setting up shop everywhere. Some mediums were obvious charlatans, while others were highly skilled conjurors. Some sincerely believed they had psychic power. Gradually, a number of the more skilful mediums gained reputations that brought them national and international fame. Among these 'superstars' was Daniel Dunglas Home, recognised as one of the finest mediums of the nineteenth-century. 19th century Scientists remained aloof about the phenomena of spiritualism, unwilling to attend seances or examine the phenomena under controlled conditions. A rare exception was Sir William Crookes, a chemist and physicist who was roundly ridiculed by many of his fellow scientists for his five-year investigation of a number of important spiritualists and mediums, including Daniel Dunglas Home, Florence Cook, and Anna Eva Fay. Although many were later proven to be frauds, Daniel Dunglas Home was able to escape detection - until now. "The Sorcerer of Kings" takes readers inside the testing procedures of Crookes to explore just what his investigation entailed. What made Sir William a believer? How could so many other mediums fall victim to their own gimmicks, while Home successfully overcame efforts to expose him? Noted researcher Gordon Stein unwraps this century-old mystery to reach startling new conclusions about a man whose 'powers' were eagerly sought on two continents, and the man of science who attempted to find him out once and for all.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In this intriguing story of spiritualism, Stein ( Encyclopedia of Unbelief ), a student of the occult and paranormal, recounts and exposes the careers of the famous British Victorian medium Daniel Dunglas Home who, the author claims, duped the brilliant chemist William Crookes. After examining Home's performances, Crookes publicly declared them genuine to a 19th-century society avid for proofs of an afterlife and communication with the dead. Stein describes how Home, a shrewd, fashionable society lion, performed magic tricks and psychological manipulation of his devoted followers, including levitation, table raps, "spirit" hands, etc. As for Crookes, he is portrayed as torn between science and his own need to believe in an afterlife, especially after the death of a beloved younger brother. Spiritualism, the author guardedly concludes, is an "unverified, religious outlook."
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 140 pages
• Publisher: Prometheus Books (January 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0879758635
• ISBN-13: 978-0879758639
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.9 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,454,936 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Interesting, worth reading, but biased., May 31, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: The Sorcerer of Kings: The Case of Daniel Dunglas Home and William Crookes (Hardcover)

I read the book The Sorcerer of Kings, by Dr. Stein, and have a few comments on it. First of all I found the book very didactic and well organized. It also provides a good source of bibliography for those interested in spiritualism. Some passages are even comic, when you imagine someone in a scene trying to grab a spirit.!

However, in my opinion, the book is highly biased to prove that William Crookes was a fraud. Actually, right from the foreword (by James Randi) one can feel that. The author should rather present the facts, and let the conclusion to the reader. In a book of this sort this is an unforgivable mistake, just because the author tries to show that William Crookes was himself biased to accept spiritual reality.

I feel extremely uneasy to accept that William Crookes was a fraud (being this the main conclusion of the author). At the beginning of the book he appears simply stupid, an easy-to-fool person. His character then slightly changes from stupidity to quackery, which is of course a heavy charge over such a scientific personality. If he was a fraud as a spiritualist investigator, I cannot see why he would be so serious and brilliant as a scientist (before and after those years of spiritualism). I simply can't accept that. I cannot accept either he could have been fooled over and over by the mediums he tested.

So, in my opinion, remains the mystery about Sir William Crookes. I tend to believe that he died convinced about some of the phenomena he investigated, but felt not worth continuing his research, simply because the scientific community wouldn't accept that, and because he had detected trickery in many cases. The book of Dr. Stein does not prove "the truth" about him. Nevertheless, it is a book worth reading by those interested in spiritualism, in general, and in William Crookes.

I.S. Oliveira - Physicist, Ph.D. Oxford/1993

2.0 out of 5 stars Pure unsubstantiated speculation, February 14, 2012

By 

S. Alexander Hardison ")O(Cage )O(" (Washington, NC USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Sorcerer of Kings: The Case of Daniel Dunglas Home and William Crookes (Hardcover)

I must confess that I was greatly disappointed with this book. The fact of the matter is that there are far better books out there about Daniel Dunglas Home (and I'm speaking of skeptical sources, such as Frank Podmore's brilliant, though old, work "Modern Spiritualism: A History and a Criticism" and "The Newer Spiritualism"). The information presented in this book is highly misleading and really presents no new information, aside from Randi's interjection that one octave mouth harmonicas were found in the Home's collection at the Society for Psychical Research. Lamont speculates this as highly improbable since Eric Dingwall, the man who cataloged Home's collection never recorded the presence of the harmonicas. Randi was relying on word of mouth in this case, from a friend who claimed he saw the harmonicas there; pay attention to the lack of substantiation.

Podmore was really the first person to have suggested that Home may have concealed some sort of musical apparatus on his person to achieve the accordion effect, though Randi's explanation is a far reaching idea to say the least; imagine concealing harmonicas in ones mouth, even under very dim candle light (regardless of how thick your mustache is, someone is going to catch you). The fact is that although not all of Home's seances were well lit, a very high number of them were (Home even stressed the importance of this to his fellow Spiritualists in "Lights and Shadows of Spiritualism"). Also, he was under closer observation than any other medium of the 19th Century and never detected in trickery, contrary to what Stein's books says (he was under closer observation that any, excluding perhaps Leonora Piper when Richard Hodgson investigated her, but that happened much later into the 19th Century). The fact that Home was under close observation by so many skeptical people over such a long period of time says quite a bit. Yes, many of the people who attended his seances did seem gullible, but an equal number were not; William Makepeace Thackeray, for example, was highly skeptical. Also, William Crookes and others were not gullible -Crookes let his controls get looser when he was testing Florence Cook and others, though his tests with Daniel were very well conducted, even attracting the likes of Charles Darwin to want to investigate Home; also, if Home was a charlatan, it would take balls to deceive the Emperor of France with fake mediumship (the penalty would obviously be death or severe punishment).

Stein really speculates a lot, but knows very little about Home and the specifics of the phenomena attributed to him, therefore he really doesn't address the root of the problem, or present any useful new information. No one has ever been able to explain how Home could have faked many of his more impressive phenomena (such as the fire tests, the phenomena witnessed under the close observation of highly skeptical witnesses and the like; Podmore, the leading critic of the late 19th and early 20th Century got the closest to doing this -see "The Newer Spiritualism"). All Stein (and Randi for that matter, sadly) does is repeat much of the same mindless drabble and speculation that people have done since Home was alive, all because they could not explain how he did what he did.

A much more balanced biography of Home was done by the magician Peter Lamont. The book is called "The First Psychic" and can be found up here as well. Lamont reserves his judgement until the very end of the book (in the Bibliography, I believe). Lamont also believes Home to have been a charlatan, though he is fascinated by him (which is justified!. Importantly, Lamont admits he could, with some measure of probability, be wrong and Home may have been genuine. That is a truly skeptical attitude. "The First Psychic" presents the evidence in a very balanced way (the most balanced when talking about D.D. Home that I've seen to date; he presents the evidence in his favor and the speculation against him). Stein's book really offered nothing new and it even twists the facts in some cases to support his preconceived notion that Home was a fraud. Whether Home was genuine or fraudulent we can never know for sure; however, it seems like studying the available sources from Home's time would be the best bet in understanding the issue and forming your conclusions. I will again refer interested parties to Lamont's book and also to the works of the ever skeptical Frank Podmore; you might also wish to investigate Andrew Lang's book "Historical Mysteries" in search of the chapter on Home (chapter 10, I believe; it is a very comprehensive analysis of Home and Lang was a brilliant scholar).