Dr. Thea Wirsching at the Stowe Center

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Dr. Thea Wirsching at the Stowe Center

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On October 29, 2022, Dr. Thea Wirsching, an Evolutionary astrologer and literary scholar, lectured about the research behind her American Renaissance Tarot deck during the Stowe Center’s “Spirits at Stowe” weekend. Her project blends American literature and esoteric history, and features over thirty writers (including Harriet Beecher Stowe) cast as the various roles in a traditional Tarot deck. Dr. Wirsching discussed both the intellectual roots of American esotericism in Transcendentalism, and the practical realization of these ideas in the popular movement of Spiritualism. Special for the Stowe Center audience, Dr. Wirsching commented on the astrology of the heady period of the 1850s, when Uncle Tom’s Cabin was published, and how its progressive themes are reflected in our own times.

Dr. Thea Wirsching is an Evolutionary astrologer and scholar based in Long Beach, CA. She received her doctorate in American occult literature at UCLA. Much of the research for that project went into the American Renaissance Tarot, a literary Tarot that weaves together America’s esoteric history with its political history. Thea’s astrological counseling business, “the Pluto Babe,” and her Tarot practice is rooted in the healing power of narrative.

School Group Interest Form

School Group Interest Form 2023

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Adult Group Interest Form

Group Tour Interest Form 2022

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Isabella Beecher Hooker

Isabella Holmes Beecher Hooker (1822-1907)
An ardent member of the woman’s suffrage movement, Isabella Holmes Beecher Hooker joined in the cause along with Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony.

Isabella was the first child of Lyman Beecher and his second wife, Harriet Porter Beecher.

Isabella began her education at Catharine Beecher’s Hartford Female Seminary and lived with her sister Mary Perkins. In 1841 she married John Hooker, a descendant of Thomas Hooker, the founder of Hartford. John Hooker was a lawyer and an abolitionist.

In the early 1860s Isabella got involved in the woman’s suffrage movement. Isabella joined Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony as a member of the National Woman’s Suffrage Association in 1869. She was a founding member of the Connecticut Woman’s Suffrage Association. Isabella’s ideas of equality were influenced by John Stuart Mills’ On Liberty and the Subjection of Women.

In 1871, Isabella organized the annual convention of the National Woman’s Suffrage Association in Washington D.C. and presented her argument before the Committee on the Judiciary of the United States Senate. Her husband, John Hooker, believed in his wife and supported her activities. He helped Isabella draft a bill to the Connecticut Legislature giving married women the same property rights as their husbands. The bill passed in 1877. Isabella annually submitted a bill granting women the right to vote, but it did not pass in her lifetime.