The College of Psychic Studies is an educational charity founded in 1884 as the London Spiritualist Alliance (LSA) by the English cleric and spiritualist medium William Stainton Moses, who became its first president,[2] and the journalist Edmund Rogers, one of the founders of the Society for Psychical ResearchRegistered charity founded in 1882 to conduct scientific investigations into psychic and paranormal phenomena..[3]
During its early years the college was involved in psychical research.[1] One of its more high-profile investigations was that of the materialisation medium Helen DuncanLast person to be imprisoned under the Witchcraft Act 1735, in 1944., who was allegedly able to manifest spirits of the dead by emitting ectoplasmGelatinous substance that exudes from the body of a spiritualist medium during a seance, which the spirits being communicated with are able to mould into shapes allowing them to communicate with the living. from her body.[4] From 1926 until 1930 the top floor of the college’s building in South Kensington, London was leased by the psychic investigator Harry Price as the home of his National Laboratory of Psychical Research.[1] More recently however, the college offers training in mediumship, psychometry, palmistry, numerology and trance, as well as divinatory tools such as the tarot, lenormand and dowsing.[2]
In 1955 the LSA changed its name to the College of Psychic Science, and in 1970 to the College of Psychic Studies.[5] The college’s journal, Light, founded by Edmund Rogers in 1881, is the UK’s oldest spiritualist journal, predating the formation of the college itself.[6]