Aksakof, Alexander N. (1832-1903)

Imperial councillor to the czar and the pioneer of Spiritualism in Russia, as well as a Swedenborg enthusiast. He was born in Repiofka, Russia, in 1832 and educated for civil duty at the Royal Lyceum, St. Petersburg. He was introduced to modern Spiritualism by Andrew Jackson Davis 's Nature's Divine Revelations in 1855.

In order to form a correct judgment of both physiological and psychological phenomena, he studied medicine at the University of Moscow for two years. He translated Emanuel Swedenborg's Heaven and Hell, Count Szapary's Magnetic Healing, and the principal works of Robert Hare, William Crookes, J. W. Edmonds, Robert Dale Owen and the Report of the Dialectical Society. Because works on Spiritualism in Russian were suppressed by the censor but German publications were tolerated, his literary activity of necessity centered in Germany.

He founded the Psychische Studien which, under the new title Zeitschrift für Parapsychologie, was instrumental in provoking the first strictly scientific Russian investigation of Spiritualism.

Daniel D. Home, who visited Russia for the first time in 1861, became connected through marriage with Aksakof's family. In 1871 Aksakof introduced Home to Professor Boutlerof and to other professors of the University of St. Petersburg. However, the body of savants was left unconvinced of the reality of his phenomena.

In 1874 the French medium Camille Brédif paid a visit. Professor Wagner attended a seance and was deeply impressed. His article in the Revue de l'Europe aroused such a storm that the university felt impelled to delegate an investigating committee and asked Aksakof to make the necessary arrangements for them. Aksakof went to England in 1875 and engaged a nonprofessional medium, using the name of Mrs. Clayer (to whom he was introduced by Crookes) for presentation to the committee. The lady, who is mentioned in Crookes's Researches, produced strong physical phenomena in good light. The committee, however, refused to be impressed and Professor Mendeleyeff, its principal member, declared in his report Materials by Which to Judge Spiritualism that the medium had an instrument under her skirt and produced table movements and raps by this agency. To this report Aksakof published a caustic reply under the title A Monument of Scientific Prejudice.

In 1876 his request for permission to publish in St. Petersburg a monthly Review of Mediumship was refused. In 1881 he founded the publication Rebus, which was largely subsidized by Aksakof after funds dwindled. It popularized the teachings of Spiritualism.

Aksakof experimented with Henry Slade and Charles Williams when they visited St. Petersburg, and he made arrangements for Kate Fox-Jencken when the czar desired to consult her for the safe conduct of the coronation ceremonies. William Eglinton, Elizabeth d'Esperance, and Eusapia Palladino were the next mediums who engaged his attention. His wife was herself mediumistic and helped him in his work. In a Case of Partial Dematerialisation (1896), he recorded testimonies of an astounding occurrence with d'Esperance.

His most important book, Animismus und Spiritismus (1890), was published in answer to Dr. Edward von Hartmann's Spiritualism. F. W. H. Myers reviewed it in Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, where he stated: "I may say at once that on the data as assumed I think that Mr. Aksakof has the better of his opponent." In the book Aksakof says that for the comprehension of mediumistic phenomena we have three hypotheses: 1. Personism (or change of personality) may stand for those unconscious psychical phenomena that are produced within the limits of the medium's own body, those intra-mediumistic phenomena whose distinguishing characteristic is the assumption of a personality changing to that of the medium. 2. Under the name animism we include unconscious psychical phenomena that show themselves outside the limits of the medium's body. Extra-mediumistic operation of objects without contact and finally materialisation. We have here the highest manifestation of the psychic duplication; the elements of personality overstep the limits of the body up to the point of complete externalisation and objectification. 3. Under the name spiritism we include phenomena resembling both personalisation and animism but which we much ascribe to some extra-mediumistic and extra-terrene cause. They differ from the phenomena of personalisation and animism in their intellectual content which affords evidence of an independent personality.

Spiritualism and Science (Der Spiritualismus und die Wissenschaft ) [1872] was another of Aksakof's important works. His literary output was considerable, and during his lifetime he translated or wrote over 30 books relating to Spiritualism and psychic research. In 1874, he started a German monthly journal Psychische Studien (Psychic Studies). One of his last translations was Colonel De Rochas's Exteriorisation of Motricity. Under dreadful physical handicaps Aksakof kept on working to the last. His right hand became useless, his eye almost sightless. He died January 17, 1903, after an attack of influenza. Aksakof bequeathed a large sum of money to the British Society for Psychical Research. His own work as an experimenter and psychical researcher was well ahead of its time and not properly recognized.

Sources:

Aksakof, A. N. Animism and Spiritism. Leipzig: Oswald Mutze, 1980.

Britten, Emma Hardinge. Nineteenth-Century Miracles. New York: W. Britten, 1884.

Doyle, Arthur Conan. The History of Spiritualism. New York: Charles H. Doran, 1926. Reprint, New York: Arno Press, 1979.

Society for Psychical Research. Proceedings Vol. 6: 665.