² Wittgenstein, Ludwig, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, trans. Ogden, C. K. (London, 1922), 89: 6.44Google Scholar.

³ This is a recurring story within the Turkish popular press. See Özgen, Lemi, “Enis Behiç Koryürek,” K Dergi 36 (8 June 2007), 31Google Scholar; Soner Yalçın, “Peygamberlik Mertebesine Yükseltilen Şairimiz Vardı,” Hürriyet, 13 July 2008, at www.hurriyet.com.tr/peygamberlik-mertebesine-yukseltilen-sairimiz-vardi-9424263, accessed 16 July 2019; Temizel, Sertaç Mehmet, Dr. Bedri Ruhselman Dönemi ve Sonrası Türkiye'de Ruhçuluk (Istanbul, 2014), 185–7Google Scholar. And for a critique of its accuracy, ibid., 187–90.

⁴ Koryürek, Enis Behiç, Varidat-ı Süleyman: Çedikçi Süleyman Çelebi (Ruhundan İlhamlar) (Istanbul, 1949)Google Scholar.

⁵ Safa, Peyami, Matmazel Noralya'nın Koltuğu (Istanbul, 1949)Google Scholar. See also Ağaoğlu's memoirs for the séances he attended with Peyami Safa on Büyükada, and Safa's enthusiasm about them. Ağaoğlu, Samet, İlk Köşe: Edebiyat Anıları (Istanbul, 2013), 118Google Scholar. And for an analysis of Peyami Safa's Matmazel Noraliya'nın Koltuğu see Moran, Berna, Türk Romanına Eleştirel Bir Bakış 1 (Istanbul, 2016), 237–58Google Scholar. Moran defines the novel as “propaganda” for a metaphysical world view (ibid., 237, 249). Nergis Ertürk, however, emphasizes that the novel “forces a sensitive reader to shift critical focus from the always implicit question of transnational mimicry, to the violence of uneven global capitalist modernity.” Ertürk, Nergis, Grammatology and Literary Modernity in Turkey (Oxford, 2011), 157CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁶ See, for instance, Safa, Peyami, 20. Asır Avrupa ve Biz (Istanbul, 1976), 56Google Scholar; and Ayvazoğlu, Beşir, Peyami: Hayatı, Sanatı, Felsefesi, Dramı (Istanbul, 2008), 401–8Google Scholar. Safa also wrote a book on mysticism in which he attempted to carve a space for Islam and Sufism by representing them within the language of, and in comparison with, Western mysticism and modern psychology. Safa, Peyami, Mistisizm (Istanbul, 1961)Google Scholar. It might be be useful to remember that Safa was a champion of “republican conservativism” together with intellectuals such as Nurettin Topçu, Mustafa Şekip Tunç, and İsmail Hakkı Baltacıoğlu. These figures advocated for a Bergsonian interpretation of modernity, emphasizing that the Kemalist revolution was not a break from but a continuation of the past and local traditions. See İrem, Nazım, “Cumhuriyetçi Muhafazakarlık, Seferber Edici Modernlik ve ‘Diğer Batı’ Düşüncesi,” Ankara Üniversitesi SBF Dergisi 57/2 (2002), 42–60Google Scholar. Safa was not the only figure from this circle who was interested in modern spiritualism. Mustafa Şekip Tunç also wrote on the issue of soul and spirit with references to both Islamic tradition and modern psychology, and he even penned an evaluation of Western spiritualism and its compatibility with modern science. This text displays that Tunç was well versed in Western spiritualist literature, and although he warned his readers against jumping naively onto the spiritualist wagon, he also entertained the idea that spiritualism could be further investigated by science, which in turn might provide novel forms of knowledge that could surpass our materialist limitations. See Tunç, M. Şekip, Ruh Aleminde (Istanbul, 1945), 55–91Google Scholar.

⁷ Tanpınar, Ahmet Hamdi, Saatleri Ayarlama Enstitüsü (Istanbul, 1961)Google Scholar; English translation The Time Regulation Institute, trans. Alexander Dawe and Maureen Freely, (New York, 2014).

⁸ For more see Moran, Türk Romanına, 297–322; and Wishnitzer, Avner, “Modern Turkey, Real Time, and Other Functional Fabrications in Tanpınar's The Time Regulation Institute,” Journal of the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association 2/2 (2015), 379–400CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁹ In the text, I use “spiritualism” as the generic term for the phenomenon of modern spiritualism. The Turkish neo-spiritualists mainly used a Turkified version of (new) spiritualism, i.e. neo-spiritüalizm or neo-ispiritüalizma, to refer to their craft. I thus employ the term “neo-spiritualism” while referring specifically to Turkish spiritualism. In a similar manner, I use the concept of “spiritism” (spiritisme) to refer specifically to modern French spiritualism. Spiritism is a branch of modern spiritualism developed by Alan Kardec and his followers in France in the second half of the nineteenth century. For more on these terms see my discussion below, including note 25.

¹⁰ Ruhselman, Bedri, Ruh ve Kainat (Istanbul, 1946), 10Google Scholar.

¹¹ Chiang, Howard, “Epistemic Modernity and the Emergence of Homosexuality in China,” Gender & History 22/3 (2010), 629–657CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 633; Davidson, Arnold I., The Emergence of Sexuality: Historical Epistemology and the Formation of Concepts (Cambridge, MA, 2001)Google Scholar. It might be useful to emphasize that this epistemic modernity is not only operating within the domain of science or governmentality, but also reshaping Islamic circles and discussions. It is within this framework that the Muslim modernists similarly defined and fought against “superstitions,” which they construed as “wrong” not because they were “diabolical or pagan” but because they were “mistaken” in that they were antiscientific or “irrational.” For a discussion of how this modern concept of true “religion” was validated vis-à-vis the false religion of “superstition” similarly in the Western world see Josephson-Storm, Jason A., The Myth of Disenchantment: Magic, Modernity, and the Birth of the Human Sciences (Chicago, 2017), 14–16CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹² Foucault, Michel, The History of Sexuality, vol. 1, trans. Hurley, Robert (New York, 1978), 143Google Scholar. See also Lemke, Thomas, Biopolitics: An Advanced Introduction (New York, 2011), 33–52Google Scholar.

¹³ Kutluğhan Soyubol, “The Sciences of the Soul: The Emergence of Psy-sciences and the Modern State in Turkey” (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, The Graduate Center, City University of New York, 2016); see also Volkan, Vamık, “Turkey,” in Howells, John G., ed., World History of Psychiatry (New York, 1975), 383–99Google Scholar; Kılıç, Rüya, Deliler ve Doktorları: Osmanlı’dan Cumhuriyet'e Delilik (Istanbul, 2013), 109–35Google Scholar; Artvinli, Fatih, Delilik, Siyaset, Toplum: Toptaşı Bimarhanesi (1873–1927) (Istanbul, 2013), 256–77Google Scholar.

¹⁴ The Arabo-Turkish concept of ruh is translated from Turkish into English as “soul,” “spirit,” or “the breath of life.” See New Redhouse Turkish–English Dictionary (Istanbul, 1968), 962. Nefis or nefs (the Turkified versions of nafs) is translated as “self,” “soul,” “spirit,” or “life.” Ibid, 875. In the Islamic tradition, ruh and nafs are two elusive concepts that at times overlap with each other. The Encyclopaedia of Islam historically traces the two concepts thus: “nafs, in early Arabic poetry meant the self or person, while ruh meant breath and wind. Beginning with the Kur'an, nafs also means soul, and ruh means a special angel messenger and a special divine quality. Only in post-Kur'anic literature are nafs and ruh equated and both applied to the human spirit.” Encyclopaedia of Islam (Leiden, 1993), 880–884, at 880. Here, I employ the English concepts of spirit and soul interchangeably, although my neo-spiritualist interlocutors used the term ruh in Turkish which they translated into English more as spirit and less as soul.

¹⁵ Osman [Uzman], Mazhar, Tababeti Ruhiye, vol. 1 (Istanbul, 1941), 12–13Google Scholar.

¹⁶ Ibid. Also, for the psychoanalytic definitions, which were akin to those of biological psychiatry in their commitment to positivism vis-à-vis religious takes on the issue, see Soyubol, Kutluğhan, “Turkey Psychoanalyzed, Psychoanalysis Turkified: The Case of İzzettin Şadan,” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 38/1 (2018), 57–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The psychoanalytic discourse, however, was systematically ignored and marginalized in early republican and postwar Turkey, where the field of psy-sciences was dominated by biological psychiatry.

¹⁷ My approach here is predicated on a number of studies that have challenged a rather dominant tendency within Turkish historiography that often conflates Ottoman Turkish modernity with Europeanization or westernization. For a pioneering historical study that has problematized this tendency by focusing on the internal transformations within the early modern Ottoman state apparatus, even way before the so-called Western impact, see Rifa'at El-Haj, Ali Abou, Formation of the Modern State: The Ottoman Empire Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries (Albany, 1991)Google Scholar. See also İslamoğlu, Huri, “Modernities Compared: State Transformations and Constitutions of Property in the Qing and Ottoman Empires,” Journal of Early Modern History 5/4 (2001), 353–86CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Tezcan, Baki, The Second Ottoman Empire: Political and Social Transformation in the Early Modern World (Cambridge, 2010)Google Scholar. For some anthropological and sociological studies challenging the paradigm of modernization and westernization by focusing on the internal dynamics, cultural memory, and other particularities of modernity in Turkey see Meeker, Michael, A Nation of Empire: The Ottoman Legacy of Turkish Modernity (Berkeley, 2002)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Çınar, Alev, Modernity, Islam, and Secularism in Turkey (Minneapolis, 2005)Google Scholar; Özyürek, Esra, Nostalgia for the Modern: State Secularism and Everyday Politics in Turkey (Durham, NC, 2006)Google Scholar; Silverstein, Brian, Islam and Modernity in Turkey (New York, 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁸ It should be noted that even though it was formalized as an official association, Turkish neo-spiritualism hardly lured political circles or fostered any solid political connections. Despite its conceivable popularity within some medico-psychiatric circles, it even failed to attract physicians involved in politics such as the psychiatrist and mayor of Istanbul Fahrettin Kerim Gökay (1900–87). Turkish neo-spiritualism therefore appears mainly as an apolitical discourse, which in turn might explain the reason for its neglect by the state.

¹⁹ This is, of course, not to claim that Turkish neo-spiritualism was not secular or posed a direct challenge to secularism in Turkey. On the contrary, similar to Peter van der Veer, who sees (Western) spiritualism as “secular truth-seeking,” I consider Turkish neo-spiritualism as a secular discourse and practice which developed an elusive engagement with the Sufi discursive tradition in a period in which Sufi options were banned. van der Veer, Peter, “Spirituality in Modern Society,” Social Research 76/4 (2009), 1097–1120Google Scholar, at 1101. I am, however, inclined to take secularism as a plural (i.e. varying according to the cultural context in which it develops) rather than a single, universal project. Asad, Talal, Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity (Stanford, 2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Anidjar, Gil, Semites: Race, Religion, Literature (Stanford, 2007), 39–63Google Scholar.

²⁰ For the concept of “ecological niche” see Hacking, Ian, Mad Travelers: Reflections on the Reality of Transient Mental Illnesses (Charlottesville, VA, 1998), 1–2, 28, 51–79, 81–7Google Scholar.

²¹ For late Ottoman discussions of science and religion see Hanioğlu, Şükrü, “Blueprints for a Future Society: Late Ottoman Materialists on Science, Religion, and Art,” in Özdalga, Elisabeth, ed., Late Ottoman Society: The Intellectual Legacy (London, 2005), 28–116Google Scholar; and Yalçınkaya, M. Alper, Learned Patriots: Debating Science, State, and Society in the Nineteenth-Century Ottoman Empire (Chicago, 2015)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²² Weisberg, Barbara, Talking to the Dead: Kate and Maggie Fox and the Rise of Spiritualism (New York, 2004)Google Scholar; Chapin, David, Exploring Other Worlds: Margaret Fox, Elisha Kent Kane, and the Antebellum Culture of Curiosity (Amherst, 2004)Google Scholar; and for a classical account, Doyle, Arthur Conan, “The Career of the Fox Sisters,” in Doyle, The History of Spiritualism (London, 1926), 86–119Google Scholar.

²³ Monroe, John Warne, “Crossing Over: Allan Kardec and the Transnationalisation of Modern Spiritualism,” in Gutierrez, Cathy, ed., Handbook of Spiritualism and Channeling (Leiden, 2015), 248–74Google Scholar, at 248; Lachapelle, Sofie, Investigating the Supernatural: From Spiritism and Occultism to Psychical Research and Metaphysics in France, 1853–1931 (Baltimore, 2011), 7–14Google Scholar.

²⁴ Monroe, John Warne, Laboratories of Faith: Mesmerism, Spiritism, and Occultism in Modern France (Ithaca, 2008), 6–7Google Scholar.

²⁵ For Kardec's use of the term spiritisme to differentiate it from the generic term “spiritualism,” see Kardec, Allan, The Spirits’ Book, trans. Blackwell, Anna (Brasilia, 1996), 21Google Scholar. For Ruhselman's discussion of the issue and use of the term “(experimental) neo-spiritualism,” see Ruhselman, Ruh ve Kainat, 10. See also Monroe, “Crossing Over,” 251–2; and Monroe, Laboratories of Faith, 105.

²⁶ Kardec's first book on the issue, Le livre des esprits (Paris, 1857), laid out the doctrine of spiritism. This was followed by Le livre des médiums (Paris, 1861), written as a guidebook for the practice of spiritualism, L’évangile selon le spiritisme (Paris, 1864), Le Ciel et l'Enfer (Paris, 1865), and finally La Genèse selon le spiritisme (Paris, 1868), in which Kardec attempts to reinterpret Catholic doctrine and morality within the framework of spiritism.

²⁷ Treitel, Corinna, “What the Occult Reveals,” Modern Intellectual History 6/3 (2009), 611–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 615.

²⁸ Hess, David J., Spirits and Scientists: Ideology, Spiritism, and Brazilian Culture (University Park, 1991)Google Scholar. And on the international dynamics of the movement see Monroe, “Crossing Over,” and Lachapelle, Investigating the Supernatural, 132–40.

²⁹ See Nirun, Ata, Türkiye'de Ruhlar ve Ruhçular (Istanbul, 2007), 75–6Google Scholar. Beşir Ayvazoğlu, “Ey Ruh, Geldinse Haber Ver,” Timetürk, 14 Aug. 2008, at www.timeturk.com/tr/makale/besir-ayvazoglu/ey-ruh-geldinse-haber-ver.html, accessed 16 Oct. 2018.

³⁰ For more on Avnullah El-Kazımi see the memoirs of his two novelist daughters, Zorlutuna, Halide Nusret, Bir Devrin Romanı (Ankara, 1978)Google Scholar; and Kür, İsmet, Yarısı Roman (Istanbul, 1995)Google Scholar.

³¹ Nirun, Türkiye'de Ruhlar, 75–6.

³² For new studies on early Ottoman spiritualist circles predicated on Western spiritualist/spiritist sources see Jean-François Meyer, “Spiritism in the Ottoman Empire as Reported in the French Revue Spirite (1858–1900)”; and Alexandre Toumarkine, “Insights into the Ottoman Spiritist Milieu and Its Practices according to English Sources (1860s–1870s),” both papers presented at the Spiritism in the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish Republic Workshop, Orient Institut Istanbul, 22–3 Jan. 2016. See also Türesay, Özgür, “Between Science and Religion: Spiritism in the Ottoman Empire (1850s–1910s),” Studia Islamica 113 (2018), 166–200CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 175–7.

³³ Hürmen, Fatma Rezzan, ed., Ressam Naciye Neyyal'in Mutlakiyet Meşrutiyet ve Cumhuriyet Hatıraları (Istanbul, 2000), 229–30Google Scholar.

³⁴ Brummett, Palmira, Image and Imperialism in the Ottoman Revolutionary Press (Albany, 2000), 218–20Google Scholar.

³⁵ Merzuk, Hasan [Hasan Bedreddin], Cinlerle Muhabere: Spiritizm, Fakirizm, Manyetizm Tarifi, Tarihi (Istanbul, 1910/1911 (1328))Google Scholar.

³⁶ Feridun Tepeköy, “Büyük Vazifeli Dr. Bedri Ruhselman: Hayatı ve Fikirleri (unpublished manuscript, 1969), MTİAD Archives, Istanbul, I-1, 18. Merzuk's book is also interesting for displaying a cultural “slip of the tongue” by employing the word cin (“jinn”) rather than ruh (“spirit”), as was used in Western spiritualist discourse. In the Islamic tradition, a jinn is a supernatural creature created of smokeless flame. A jinn is also believed to be capable of possessing a human being and is considered the major underlying reason for “madness,” prompting the term majnun/mecnun, which means “jinn-possessed,” to become the generic word for “mad” in the Muslim world. Michael Dols, Majnun: The Madman in Medieval Islamic Society (Oxford, 1992), 213–20. Therefore the concept of “jinn” seems to emerge early on as a possible cultural translation or substitute for the spirit—in the way it was used by Western spiritualists—in the Ottoman Turkish context. The ambiguous line between the belief in communicating with the spirits and the Islamic concept of the jinn would continue to haunt the issue in the republican years, and some Islamic scholars would consider Turkish spiritualists (as well as their Western counterparts) to have been deceived by jinns they mistook for spirits. See, for example, Rifa'i, Kenan, Sohbetler, vol. 2 (Istanbul, 1992), 329Google Scholar. It should be remembered that within the Catholic context of France, some Catholic commentators similarly point to Satan at work in the séance rooms. Treitel, “What the Occult Reveals,” 614; Monroe, Laboratories of Faith, 17, 30–37, 145, 147.

³⁷ Crookes, William, Kuvve-i Ruhhiye: Yeni Tecrübeler, İspiritizme hadiselerine dair taharriyat, trans. Bahaeddin, Mehmet [Toven] (Istanbul, 1910 (1326))Google Scholar. Other publications on the subject in the Ottoman Empire and later Turkey that preceded Ruhselman's studies include Ragıp Rıfkı [Özgürel]’s books, Manyetizma ve Hipnotizma (Istanbul, 1341 (1922–3)); and İspiritizma Tecrübeleri: Ahiretle Nasıl Konuşulur (Istanbul, 1930), which were also influenced by Allan Kardec. See also Nirun, Türkiye'de Ruhlar, 76–8; Türesay, “Between Science and Religion.”

³⁸ See Hüseyin Rahmi Gürpınar's novels, such as Cadı (The Witch, 1912), Gülyabani (The Goblin, 1913), Ölüler Yaşıyor mu? (Are the Dead Alive?, 1932). For an illuminating comparison, see also the history of spiritualism in Russia, where spiritualism emerged roughly in the same period as an upper-middle-/upper-class phenomenon, became a literary theme, inspired a number of publications, including the spiritualist journal Rebus, and turned into an object of ridicule particularly targeting the upper classes. Carlson, Maria, “Fashionable Occultism: Spiritualism, Theosophy, Freemasonry, and Hermeticism in Fin-de-Siècle Russia,” in Rosenthal, Bernice Glatzer, ed., The Occult in Russian and Soviet Culture (Ithaca, 1997), 135–52Google Scholar, at 136–9.

³⁹ Osman, Mazhar, Spiritizma Aleyhine (Istanbul, 1910 (1326))Google Scholar.

⁴⁰ Ibid., 4–5. Unless otherwise noted, all translations are mine.

⁴¹ Ibid., 3. Osman particularly emphasized that it is psychiatrists’ duty (for the sake of humanity—vazife-yi insaniye—to prevent this disease. Ibid.

⁴² Here the similar (diagnostic) definitions of spiritism and its increasing popularity in France by French psychiatrists should be noted. For example, Dr Philibert Burlet proclaimed in a lecture at the Société des sciences médicales in 1862 that “the city of Lyon was in danger” as the cases exhibiting signs of mental disorders directly related spiritism were rising in numbers. He further asserted that the practice of spiritism, which relied on exaggerated religious ideas, intense belief in the supernatural, and an unhealthy love of the mysterious, was pathological in itself. Lachapelle, Investigating the Supernatural, 59. Also see Burlet, Philibert, Du spiritisme considéré comme cause d'aliénation mentale (Lyon, 1863)Google Scholar. And for the police archives of Marseille depicting spritism as an epidemic, driving people mad, and thus a matter of public hygiene, see Monroe, Laboratories of Faith, 178–9.

⁴³ For Rhine's studies see Rhine, J. B., Extra-sensory Perception (Boston, 1934)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Rhine, J. B. and Pratt, J. G., Parapsychology: Frontier Science of the Mind (Springfield, IL, 1957)Google Scholar.

⁴⁴ Monroe, John Warne, “Cartes de Visite from the Other World: Spiritism and the Discourse of Laicisme in the Early Third Republic,” French Historical Studies 28/1 (2003), 119–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 119–25.

⁴⁵ For more on Ruhselman's biography, see Tepeköy, “Büyük Vazifeli”; Nirun, Türkiye'de Ruhlar, 79–121; Temizel, Dr. Bedri Ruhselman, 11–19. And for a short autobiographical account on the issue, Ruhselman, Bedri, “Introduction,” in Ruhselman, Bedri and Ökten, Recai, Messages from Spatium: The First Part of Messages Transmitted by an Elevated Spirit Known under the Symbol of KADRI through the Mediumship of Recai Ökten (Istanbul, 1953), v–viGoogle Scholar.

⁴⁶ Ertuğrul Saltuk, one of the first neurosurgeons in the country, remembers how he met Ruhselman for the first time at Bakırköy Hospital in 1935. He became a follower of Ruhselman and his movement in the ensuing years. Ertuğrul Saltuk interview (5 Sept. 1969) in Tepeköy, “Büyük Vazifeli”, III-1, 43–5.

⁴⁷ Those five books are Ruh ve Kainat (The Spirit and the Universe) (Istanbul, 1946), Ruhlar Arasında (Among the Spirits) (Istanbul, 1948), Allah (Istanbul, 1951), Medyomluğun İlmi İzahı (Scientific Explanation of Mediumship) (Istanbul, 1951, published in both Turkish and English), and Mukadderat ve İcabat (Destiny and Consent) (Istanbul, 1953). In addition to these five books, Ruhselman left another book manuscript, entitled İlahi Nizam ve Kainat (Divine Order and the Universe), which was published posthumously in Istanbul in 2013.

⁴⁸ See Zürcher, Erik J., Turkey: A Modern History (London, 2004), 186–93Google Scholar; Mardin, Şerif, Religion, Society, and Modernity in Turkey (Syracuse, 2006), 233–4Google Scholar; Baubérot, Jean, Histoire de la laïcité en France (Paris, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Monroe, “Cartes de visite,” 119–25.

⁴⁹ For how this project hardly worked see Casanova, José, Public Religions in the Modern World (Chicago, 1980), 40–72Google Scholar; Asad, Formations of the Secular, 181–201. And for a philosophical discussion of the modern emphasis on the individual vis-à-vis the communal and its embeddedness in Western liberal tradition, MacIntyre, Alasdair, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theology (Notre Dame, 1984), 256–63Google Scholar.

⁵⁰ Monroe, Laboratories of Faith, 3.

⁵¹ For the claims of scienticity of the Turkish neo-spiritualist movement see H. Saadetin Arel's introduction to Ruhselman's Ruh ve Kainat, 2, 8–10. For the French case, Monroe, Laboratories of Faith, 110.

⁵² Ruhselman, Allah, 18: “Allah[‘]ı araştırırken insanın objektif yola müracaatı… sübjektif ruh faaliyetlerini hazırlayıcı bir vasıta halinde kullanabilmesi içindir.”

⁵³ Ruhselman, Ruh ve Kainat, 8. Ruhselman stressed the importance of going beyond the five senses—an approach that modern science utterly relied on—to understand the world and beyond. Ibid., 15–16, 17–18. “Both human beings and all substances in the world are more complex than the way that contemporary science defines them. The states of matter are not limited to solid, liquid, and gas, as the universe is not three-dimensional.” See ibid., 20–21, 41.

⁵⁴ Ibid., 8–9.

⁵⁵ Ibid., 10, 30–31: “bugünkü akademik ilmi ve onun neticelerini içine alan fakat ona mahkum olmayan ve bu yolda kendisine yeni menfezler bulan.”

⁵⁶ Ruhselman, Allah, 5–34.

⁵⁷ Particularly see Recep Doksat (1927–1989), who wrote the first thesis on hypnosis in the country to fulfill his medical specialization in neuropsychiatry and became one of the major proponents of the idea of considering metaphysics within science and accepting parapsychology as an indispensable part of mainstream psychiatry. Doksat, Recep, “Parapsikoloji ve Paranormal Fenomenlerin Şuur Anlayışı Bakımından Önemi,” in Songar, Ayhan, ed., Sinir Sistemi Fizyolojisi, vol. 3 (Istanbul, 1959–60), 709–871Google Scholar, at 709–11, 715–19. Doksat's medical specialization thesis was also published in a book form in 1962. Doksat, Recep, Hipnotizma (Istanbul, 1962)Google Scholar. He gave the first seminar on parapsychology on an academic level in Turkey at the psychiatry clinic of the University of Istanbul in 1959.

⁵⁸ Doksat, “Parapsikoloji,” 733–8. Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake in Rome for heresy in 1600, and later romanticized as a “martyr for science.”

⁵⁹ For this kind of take on the issue by contemporary journalists see Murat Bardakçı, “Ruhların Yazdırdığı Söylenen ve 54 Yıl Kasada Saklanan Kitap Nihayet Yayınlandı,” Habertürk, 14 April 2013, at www.haberturk.com/yazarlar/murat-bardakci/835851-ruhlarin-yazdirdigi-soylenen-ve-54-sene-kasada-saklanan-kitap-nihayet-yayinlandi, accessed 16 July 2019f.

⁶⁰ See Türk Düşüncesi 2/7 (1954), 67–71; Bedri Ruhselman, Refet Kayserilioğlu, and Süleyman Alpata's columns in Resimli Yirminci Asır in the early 1950s. See also Recep Doksat's articles in Cumhuriyet; and Peyami Safa's article series in Vakit, all published in the same period. In addition see Bedri Ruhselman, “Seller Altında Kalan Bölge,” Ekspres, 31 Jan. 1959; “Ruhlarla İlgili İlk Konferans,” Ekspres, 1 Feb. 1959; “Türkiye Metapsişik Tetkikler ve İlmi Araştırmalar Cemiyetinden,” Cumhuriyet, 15 April 1950. Also see obituaries published for Ruhselman: Peyami Safa, “Dr. Bedri Ruhselman,” Tercüman, 19 Feb. 1960; “İspiritizmacı Bedri Ruhselman Vefat Etti,” Milliyet, 19 Feb. 1960; “Ölüm Gününü Bilen Kadın,” Hürriyet, 20 Feb. 1960; “Doktor Bedri Ruhselman’ı Kaybettik,” Kadın Gazetesi, 20 Feb. 1960. Also see Temizel, Dr. Bedri Ruhselman, 147–67, 169–89, 219–44.

⁶¹ This is, of course, akin to spiritualism's complicated history of acceptance and rejection by scientific circles in the West. At this point, apart from the involvement of scientists such as Charles Richet, William Crookes, and others, one should think of Carl G. Jung's involvement with spiritualism. Also, for the Hungarian psychoanalyst Sándor Ferenczi and his involvement with spiritism, see Gyimesi, Julia, “Why ‘Spiritism’?”, International Journal of Psychoanalysis 97/2 (2016), 357–83CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Ian Hacking even finds the origins of randomization in experimental design in the methodological claims of spiritualism, particularly its conceptualizations of telepathy, and hence demonstrates the movement as not only being affected by scientific methodology and argumentation but also influential on them. Hacking, Ian, “Telepathy: Origins of Randomization in Experimental Design,” Isis 79/3 (1988), 427–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁶² Doksat, “Parapsikoloji,” 715, 734.

⁶³ See Songar, Ayhan, “Dünyadaki Parapsikoloji Araştırmaları (ve bir psikiyatr göziyle bu araştırmaların düşündürdükleri),” Ruh ve Madde 14/162 (1973), 9–19Google Scholar; and Songar, Ayhan, Sibernetik (Istanbul, 1979)Google Scholar.

⁶⁴ As a matter of fact, in most cases the spirits that the Turkish neo-spiritualists got in contact with identified themselves by certain names or symbols which they claimed to have chosen simply to connect with the living. Spirits sometimes were accorded epithets such as “Plan of the Masters” or “Traveler of Perfection” by the spiritualists. See Ruhselman, , Mukadderat ve İcabat (Istanbul, 1953), 6–8Google Scholar; and Muammer Bilge, “Ruhlarla Görüşme Olanağımız ve Görüşmelerimiz,” Metapsişik Araştırmalar Gurubu communication reports, 19 Sept. 1974, MTİAD Archives, Istanbul. The process of spirits taking names might seem confusing since they could adopt either ordinary names such as Kadri and Akin or the emblematic ones of historical figures such as Mevlana Celaleddin Rumi, the popular thirteenth-century Sufi poet, mystic, jurist, and theologian, or Şems-i Tebrizi (Shams Tabrizi), the Rumi's spiritual instructor. It seems hard to ignore the high level of historically conditioned symbolism involved here. The emergence of a spirit calling itself Rumi in the early republic, offering guidance to the Turkish spiritualists, no doubtneeds to be reconsidered within the republic's ferocious secularization project, in which only a few Sufi orders, most notably the Mevleviye of Rumi, could continue to quasi-legitimately function, hence making Rumi and Şems-i Tebrizi among the very few Sufi mystics who could be referred to in the public sphere in that period. Also note the sociohistorical similarity of the case with the appearance of the spirit of the fifteenth-century French heroine Joan of Arc in the séances of French spiritualists during the Second French Empire at the apogee of French nationalism.

⁶⁵ Ruhselman, Mukadderat ve İcabat, 147. Also see Ruhselman, Ruh ve Kainat, 97–9, 478–90.

⁶⁶ Ibid., 195–6, 219, 437–83, 486. That said, it should be noted that Ruhselman also asserted the possibility of lower-level spirits communicating with humans known to them in their previous lives immediately following their disincarnation and before their next reincarnation. This, however, is “allowed” only in case further influences “from below” are seen as necessary for the spirits’ contemplation of past life and experiences on track with their ongoing processes of progression (tekamül). Otherwise, the disincarnated (ordinary) spirits could not contact the living. Ruhselman, İlahi Nizam ve Kainat, 203.

⁶⁷ Ruhselman, Ruh ve Kainat, 99.

⁶⁸ On the three- and four-dimensional realities and perception see ibid., 78–88. For earlier Western discussions of the fourth dimension and its inconceivability for human beings among philosophers, scientists, and occultists all the way from Kant to astrophysicist Karl Freidrich Zollner see Treitel, Corinna, A Science for the Soul: Occultism and the Genesis of the German Modern (Baltimore, 2004), 5–7Google Scholar.

⁶⁹ Ruhselman, Ruh ve Kainat, 67–8.

⁷⁰ Ibid., 92.

⁷¹ Ibid., 91–2.

⁷² Ibid., 95–9, 307, 310–28.

⁷³ Ibid., 156: “Bedenle ruhu birleştiren bağ … yarı maddi bir nevi zarf.”

⁷⁴ Ibid. 173–94.

⁷⁵ Ibid., 431–49.

⁷⁶ Ibid., 435–49. Here, readers familiar with French spiritism might read Ruhselman as altering the spiritist conception of reincarnation by claiming that all life is on a continuum, from plant to animal and human. French spritists were indeed critical of the idea of a transmigration of human souls into bodies of “inferior beings,” defining this as a vulgar belief, and stressing the development of the périsprit as a hindrance for a human being to adapt to the conditions of animal life. See Denis, Léon, Le problême de l’être et la destinée (Paris, 1908)Google Scholar, 361 n. 1. Yet it would be wrong to assume that Ruhselman was at odds with the French spiritists’ loi du progrés. Ruhselman never stated that the souls could move “backwards” and reincarnate as inferior beings. His differing emphasis on all life as a continuum, however, might be read in line with the Sufi thought and the Aristotelian idea of the soul, and their effects on his interpretation.

⁷⁷ For Ruhselman on progression in other planets see Ruh ve Kainat, 458–69, 1037–40.

⁷⁸ My approach in this section is motivated by some recent studies scrutinizing the overlapping (as well as diverging) layers of meanings and constitutive interactions between modern scientific and Islamic discourses from historical and anthropological perspectives. See Shakry, Omnia El, The Arabic Freud: Psychoanalysis and Islam in Modern Egypt (Princeton, 2017)Google Scholar; Pandolfo, Stefania, Knot of the Soul: Madness, Psychoanalysis, Islam (Chicago, 2018)Google Scholar; and Doostdar, Alireza, The Iranian Metaphysicals: Explorations in Science, Islam, and the Uncanny (Princeton, 2018)Google Scholar.

⁷⁹ For a brief account of some of the Sufi ideas prevalent among the Ottomans, and their sources, see Uludağ, Süleyman, “Osmanlı Dönemi Tasavvuf Düşüncesinin Bazı Temel Kaynakları,” in Ocak, Ahmet Yaşar, ed., Osmanlı Toplumunda Tasavvuf ve Sufiler (Ankara, 2005), 19–45Google Scholar.

⁸⁰ Particularly see Henry Corbin's discussion of the issue in one of his minor works, Swedenborg and Esoteric Islam, trans. Leonard Fox (West Chester, 1995). It is, however, not surprising to find that some Persian Sufi orders, such as the Tariqat Oveysi Shah-Maqsudi, dabbled in hypnotism and communicated with spirits, as well as Sufis such as Soltan Hoseyn Tabandeh Gonabadi Reza Ali-Shah, who argued the commensurability of Sufi conceptualizations of sleep and dreaming with Western conceptualizations of hypnotism around the same period. See Doostdar, Alireza, “Empirical Spirits: Islam, Spiritism, and the Virtues of Science in Iran,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 58/2 (2016), 322–349CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 334.

⁸¹ Brown, John P., The Dervishes: Or, Oriental Spiritualism (London, 1868)Google Scholar. See also Zarcone, Thierry, “Occultism in an Islamic Context,” in Bogdan, Henrik and Djurdjevic, Gordan, eds., Occultism in a Global Perspective (London, 2014), 151–76Google Scholar, at 159.

⁸² Zarcone, “Occultism in an Islamic Context,” 164, 167. For more on Ayni see Toprakyaran, Erdal, “The Two Faces of the Turkish Governor, Educator and Scholar Mehmet Ali Ayni (1868–1945),” International Review of Turkish Studies 1/3 (2011), 62–73Google Scholar.

⁸³ Zarcone, “Occultism in an Islamic Context,” 163.

⁸⁴ See Vett, Carl, Dervish Diary, trans. Hathaway, Elbridge W. (Los Angeles, 1953)Google Scholar.

⁸⁵ Lachapelle, Investigating the Supernatural, 133–40. It should be noted that in the same period Sufism was becoming an issue of interest in the West. Although not attracting the attention of the spiritualist or spiritist circles specifically, it was taken into consideration by theosophists (spearheaded by the eccentric par excellence Madame Blavatsky), who were credited as being influential in the establishment of Sufism in the West. See Sedgwick, Mark, Western Sufism: From the Abbasid to the New Age (Oxford, 2017), 135–55Google Scholar. However, it seems impossible to elicit any connections or interactions between Blavatskian theosophists and Turkish neo-spiritualists.

⁸⁶ Ruselman, Ruh ve Kainat, 368: “İmajinasyon, bir şeyi ruhta suretlendirmektir.” Imagination (khayal/hayal), according to the Sufi doctrine, relies on the heart (kalb/kalp) and differs from or is even “corrective” to the human intellect (aql/akıl), which is not adequate as a source of knowledge of God. Even though aql can grasp the divine lordly condition (rububiyah/rububiyet) and the unattainability of God, it cannot interpret its imminence, nor is it able to sense its light, beauty, and magnificence. In other words, the human intellect cannot comprehend God's essential presence entrenched within the world of the living. This knowledge can only be achieved through the path of the heart, which unveils (kashf/keşif), and thus materializes, this “reality” through imagination, as well as witnessing (shudud, mushahada/şehadet, müşayede) and tasting (dhawq/zevk), all of which transcend the limitations of the human intellect. “Taṣawwuf,” in Amin Banani, Richard Hovannisian and Georges Sabagh, eds., Encyclopaedia of Islam, Brill Online, 2014, at http://referenceworks.brillonline.ezproxy.gc.cuny.edu/entries/encyclopaedia-of-islam-2/tasawwuf-COM_1188, reference, CUNY Graduate Center, accessed 4 Aug. 2014. See also Chittick, William C., “Rūmī and waḥdat al-wujūd,” in Banani, Amin et al. , eds., Poetry and Mysticism in Islam: The Heritage of Rumi (Cambridge, 1994), 70–111Google Scholar, at 73–4; Chittick, , The Sufi Path of Knowledge (Albany, 1989), 28–30Google Scholar; Corbin, Henry, Alone with the Alone: Creative Imagination in the Sufism of Ibn ‘Arabi (Princeton, 1998), 231Google Scholar; Uludağ, Süleyman, Tasavvuf Kültüründe Keşif ve Keramet (Istanbul, 2008), 39–43Google Scholar.

⁸⁷ For more on dreams, visions, and the saints see Mittermeier, Amira, Dreams That Matter: Egyptian Landscapes of the Imagination (Berkeley, 2010), 150–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 164–70, 236–7; Crapanzano, Vincent, “Saints, Jnun, and Dreams,” in Crapanzano, Hermes’ Dilemma and Hamlet's Desire: On the Epistemology of Interpretation (Cambridge, MA, 1992), 239–59Google Scholar; Uludağ, Tasavvuf Kültüründe, 48–9.

⁸⁸ The Holy Qur'an, trans. Abdullah Yusuf Ali (London, 2000), Surah 23:99–100; Surah 25:53; Surah 55:19–20.

⁸⁹ Ibn, Muhyiddin ‘Arabi, The Universal Tree and The Four Birds, trans. Jaffray, Angela (Oxford, 2006), 29Google Scholar n., 50 n., 59, 64–8, 73, 75–8, 82, 102; İbnü’l-Arabî, , Fusûsü’l-hikem, trans. Demirli, Ekrem (Istanbul 2006)Google Scholar, 76, 92, 134. See also de Vaux, B. Carra, “Barzakh,” Encyclopaedia of Islam (Leiden, 1960), 1071–2Google Scholar.

⁹⁰ Chittick, William C., “The Perfect Man as the Prototype of the Self in the Sufism of Jāmi,” Studia Islamica 49 (1979), 135–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. 152–5. Corbin, Henry, İslam Felsefesi Tarihi: Başlangıçtan İbni Rüşd’ün Ölümüne, vol. 1, trans. Hatemi, Hüseyin (Istanbul, 1986), 192–3Google Scholar.

⁹¹ Ruhselman also refers directly to this light and color allegory, prevalent in Sufi discussions of wahdat al-wudjud. See Ruhselman, Ruh ve Kainat, 48. For some discussions of the issue among the late Ottomans see Efendi, Mustafa Fevzi, Risale-i mir'atü'ş-şühud fi mes'eleti vahdeti'l-vücud (Istanbul, 1320 (1902))Google Scholar; Kam, Ferid, Vahdet-i vücud (Istanbul, 1331 (1912)); and İsmail Fenni Ertuğrul, Vahdet-i Vücud ve Muhyiddin-i Arabi (Istanbul 1928)Google Scholar.

⁹² William C. Chittick, “Waḥdat al-Shudūd” in Encyclopaedia of Islam, Brill Online, 2014, at http://referenceworks.brillonline.ezproxy.gc.cuny.edu/entries/encyclopaedia-of-islam-2/wahdat-al-shudud-SIM_7819. Reference. CUNY Graduate Center, accessed 24 Nov. 2014; Schimmel, Annemarie, Mystical Dimensions of Islam (Chapel Hill, 1975), 267Google Scholar.

⁹³ Ruhselman, Mukadderat ve İcabat, 263.

⁹⁴ L. Gardet, “Ikhlāṣ,” in Encyclopaedia of Islam, Brill Online, 2014, at http://referenceworks.brillonline.ezproxy.gc.cuny.edu/entries/encyclopaedia-of-islam-2/ikhlas-SIM_3512. Reference. CUNY Graduate Center, accessed 24 Nov. 2014. See also al-Ghazali, , On Disciplining the Soul, trans. Winter, T. J. (Cambridge, 1995)Google Scholar; and Al ‘Arabi, Ibn, Bezels of Wisdom, trans. Austin, R. W. J. (Mahwah, NJ, 1980)Google Scholar.

⁹⁵ Ruhselman, Allah, 71: “Serdolunmuş şartlar ve kayıtlar altında, yani beşeriyetin henüz bugünkü geniş idrak ve ıttıla vasıtalarından mahrum bulunduğu devirlerde bu kanaatlerinde mazur idiler.”

⁹⁶ Ibid., 71: “Bu suretle onlar o zamanki kanaatlerinde haklı idiler, duygularında samimi idiler, yollarında doğru idiler.”

⁹⁷ Ibid., 73: “Allahı sonsuz bir aşk ve iştiyakla anarak Ona yönelen…hangi yolda olursa olsun muhteremdir, mübarektir ve Allah yolundadır.” Such evaluations of Ruhselman's were also taken under consideration and criticized for their lack of profundity by the Sufi writer Ayverdi. See Ayverdi, Samiha, Mülakatlar (Istanbul, 2005), 141–6, 161–2Google Scholar, 173–4, 213–16.

⁹⁸ Ruhselman, Allah, 71: “Hakikatin yeni ışıklarını saçarak, bu istikametini değiştirmiş yollara tekrar eski nezahat ve safiyetini kazandırmağa çalışırlar.” It should be remembered that neo-spiritualism claimed to be an improved version of Western spiritualism, or more specifically French spiritism. Ruhselman clearly employed the same discourse on the issue of wahdat al-wudjud, which according to him was improved and upgraded in neo-spiritualist discourse.

⁹⁹ Bedri Ruhselman's letter to Recai Ökten, Istanbul, 2 March 1948, MTİAD Archives, Istanbul.

¹⁰⁰ Rumi, Jalal al-Din, Masnavi, Book Three, trans. Mojaddedi, Jawid (Oxford, 2013), 237: 3900–10Google Scholar, original emphasis.

¹⁰¹ Ruhselman, Allah, 77–8.

¹⁰² For a comparison of these lines with Ruhselman's conceptualization of progression of spirits towards perfection see my discussion of Ruhselman's conceptualizations above.

¹⁰³ Moreover, it should be asked if zikr (the remembrance of God through rhythmic repetition—one of the core elements of Sufi rituals) could be considered together with the spiritualist practices of mediumship, trance, and disengagement from the material world to be able to connect with the world of the spirits (spatium). This kind of an emotional–anthropological question might open the possibility of a comparison between the visceral methods employed by the two doctrines. Zikr ceremonies were indeed strictly banned in the Turkish public sphere by the republican government. The issue of zikr and viscerality has recently been put under scrutiny by some anthropologists. See Hirschkind, Charles, The Ethical Soundscape: Cassette Sermons and Islamic Counterpublics (New York, 2006)Google Scholar; and Mittermaier, Dreams.

¹⁰⁴ Doksat, Parapsikoloji, 855.

¹⁰⁵ For Sufism's gradual return to the public sphere see CKafadar, emal, “The New Visibility of Sufism in Turkish Studies and Cultural Life,” in Lifchez, Raymond, ed., The Dervish Lodge: Architecture, Art, and Sufism in Ottoman Turkey (Berkeley, 1992), 310–21Google Scholar; Kara, Mustafa, Din, Hayat, Sanat Açısından Tekkeler ve Zaviyeler (Istanbul, 2013), 292–8Google Scholar; and Zarcone, Thierry, “The Transformation of the Sufi Orders in the Turkish Republic and the Question of Crypto-Sufism,” in Warner, Jayne L., ed., Cultural Horizons: A Festschrift in Honor of Talat S. Halman (Syracuse, 2001), 198–209Google Scholar.