Cabinet

The curtain-enclosed space in which mediums claim to condense the psychic energy necessary for séance-room manifestations. Hereward Carrington suggested an electrical analogy: less expenditure of energy is required to charge a small electric conductor to a given voltage than a large one, so it may be with the cabinet, "which acts as a sort of storage battery, retaining the energy and liberating it in bundles of quanta during the séance."

Nineteenth-century biblical scholar Allen Putnam saw the ark of the covenant as an interesting model by which to under-stand the Spiritualist cabinet:

"The ark of the covenant was constructed expressly for use as a spirit battery, or an instrument through which to give forth the commands of the Lord. The special care taken to have the ark and all its appurtenances charged with the auras or magnetisms of a selected class of workmen, becomes very interesting in these days when much wonder is expressed at the customary stickling of spirits and mediums for right conditions. Biblical history furnishes precedent for great particularity, when constructing a cabinet for manifestations."

The cabinet is usually of very simple construction. It need not be more than a curtain thrown across a corner of the room. The Davenport brothers employed a special one. It had three doors; the middle door had a curtained opening on the top. Through this opening, phantom hands were immediately thrust out after the doors were shut on the mediums tied within to their seats. However, such an elaborate arrangement suggests a conjuror's apparatus, and the phenomenon of the Davenports is considered by many people to have been a stage illusion. It is described in some detail by Houdini in A Magician among the Spirits.

By the beginning of the twentieth century, many of the famous mediums, such as D. D. Home and Stainton Moses, had never used the cabinet. Through the course of the twentieth century it has gone almost entirely out of use; the majority of contemporary psychics and channels have never used the cabinet.