"Intellectually voracious chatterbox" Ms Craddock would, it seems, have been welcomed by World Futures, the contemporary journal that is replete with problematical claims regarding dowsing, precognition, remote healing and other manifestations of 'quantum holism' and whose editor, when not engaged in mystification about the Mayan Calendar, endorses deliriously silly works about communication with the undead. Alas, World Futures is on the ostensibly authoritative list of DIISR Journals, which gives an indication of questions about academic authority in 2010.
After providing the good folk of Gilded Age New York with lectures on the history of "Phallic Worship" (the reviewer notes that her amateur studies of this subject were disregarded by the rapidly professionalizing academic world) she espoused a union with her undead partner.
Craddock's spouse was her undoing. He was ... well, let Ida tell it: "My husband is in the world beyond the grave, and has been for many years previous to our union, which took place in October, 1892." Soph, as she called him, had wooed her feebly when he had a pulse, but once he passed over his suit became more compelling. (Alarmist parents, take heed: the Ouija board was Ida's gateway to the spirit world.)Reviewer Bill Kauffman comments that -
Discretion would seem to have been advised in this instance, but a garrulous woman in love cannot always keep a secret. Ida blabbed about Soph. Mr. Schmidt notes that the revelation "proved impossible to retract (or forget), and her sanity was henceforward disputed just about everywhere she went." At her mother's request, Ida was dragged off to the Philadelphia Asylum for the Insane, where she was imprisoned for three terrifying months for her "spiritual betrothal."Oh dear.
Even her allies were embarrassed by Ida. (The free-thought editor George Macdonald gibed: "Let the dead marry the dead.") Craddock tried to enlist spiritualists in the American Secular Union, whose members disdained the "deluded spook-lovers." Ecumenism has its limits. ... As for Soph, besides teaching his wife that one does not "have to bother about cooking" on the other side, he gave Ida "a knowledge of sex relations," which she passed along to single and married clients in her new role as evangel of sexology.
Craddock's idea of "sexual reform" was hardly polymorphous perversity. Celibate in the corporeal world, Craddock celebrated "ecstatic bliss" in the marital bed. She emphasized "strict male self-control" and unbridled (if bridal) "female passion." Although a disturbing number of her male tutees asked for hands-on instruction, she was faithful to Soph. Craddock's advice could be impractically high-minded: She told couples to think, during sexual congress, of "sermons, plans for benefiting other people, noble deeds."
