Using Ape to Prove Angel: Reimagining Connections with Animals in Nineteenth-Century Evolutionary Theologies

During the nineteenth century, spiritualist, Theosophical and psychological thinkers developed what I call “evolutionary theologies” to explain the human-animal relationship in light of Darwin and other biological theories. I apply both historical and comparative methodologies as well as conceptual metaphor theory to examine the development of these new theologies, which continue to be influential in spiritual but not religious and “New Age” communities. These thinkers used both the Bible and Asian myth to reimagine human transformation, with animal qualities playing a role in both our evolutionary futures as well as our pasts. Thinkers evaluated include the spiritualists Andrew Jackson Davis and Emma Hardinge Britten; Theosophists Helena Blavatsky and A.P. Sinnett; and psychologist Frederic W.H. Myers. They developed new threads of commonality with non-human animals while also finding new reasons to be wary of the body and its “animal” passions.