One hundred and thirty years ago this year, a New York medium followed the advice of his spirit guides and founded a wooded area next to what is now Lake Helen where he settled Cassadagathe south’s largest and self-proclaimed spiritual community Psychic capital of the world.
Here are 12 things to know about Cassadaga, a small bucolic village full of psychics, mediums and healers in an unincorporated area of Volusia County that is home to the Southern Cassadaga Spiritualist Camp Meeting Association (SCSCMA).
Where is Cassadaga located?
Cassadaga, a community of approximately 57 acres and 13 blocks, is on incorporated land near Lake Helen in Volusia County, between DeLand, Orange City and Deltona and about 30 miles north of Orlando. Many residents are mediums and healers who offer their services from their homes or apartments,” according to the the camp site.
Several of the original buildings are still there, including Harmony Hall, built in 1895, Brigham Hall (1898), and the Andrew Jackson Davis building where the bookstore is located, built in 1904 to replace an earlier structure built in 1895, according to the National Register of Historic Places. Thirty-three of Cassadaga’s 55 houses were built between 1895 and 1915, the NRHP reported in 1991.
What is Cassadaga’s religion?
THE fundamental beliefs of spiritualism are that personal identity lives eternally beyond the end of the physical body, and that it is a scientifically proven fact that certain people called mediums can communicate with the dead and classify the manifestations of Spirit. Spiritualists consider spiritualism to be a religion, a philosophy and a science.
Spiritualists believe in God, whom they call Infinite Intelligence; Jesus, whom they consider “one of the greatest teachers and spiritual leaders the world has ever known”; and the Christian Bible as God’s truth, but they do not believe in the concept of the devil, falling from grace or sinning.
What is the difference between a medium and a medium?
Everyone is psychic to some extent, SCSCMA believes. But mediums are people who are able to receive information and help through spiritual energy that ultimately comes from God, according to the organization’s fact sheet.
Healers are people who can become “a channel for transmitting God’s healing energies to others, whether for physical, emotional, mental, or spiritual healing.”
Do the people of Cassadaga believe in witchcraft or black magic?
“Absolutely not,” the SCSCMA said. Witchcraft and black magic are not part of spiritualism.
Who founded Cassadaga, Florida?
George Colby owned Cassadaga in 1875, according to the association’s history, but did not found the camp until 1894.
Born in Pike, New York, in 1848, Colby was baptized in a frozen Minnesota lake in 1860 and later claimed he could speak to spirits, much more…
