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32 FALL 2025
ConnectionP R E S B Y T E R I A N
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BOOKS
A Review of
The Spiritualist
Prime Minister
By Dr. Robert Revington
The Spiritualist Prime Minister,
2 vols.
Written by Anton Wagner
Guildford, Surrey: White Crow
Books, 2024
It is important to know what Anton
Wagner’s new biography of Cana-
dian Prime Minister William Lyon
Mackenzie King (1874–1950)
both is and is not. Readers who
want a more traditional overview
of King’s life would be advised
to turn to Allan Levine’s 2011
biography. Although Wagner’s
two-volume study, The Spiritualist
Prime Minister, includes a helpful
chronology of King’s life as an
appendix at the end of the first
volume, this biography will be
best appreciated by those who
already know the basic outline
of his life. Having said this, taken
on its own terms, the roughly
800 pages of this work offer an
exceptionally detailed study of
King, but focused on one spe-
cific area: his spiritualist beliefs.
Parts of this work could even
serve as an outline of the history
of spiritualism itself.
King’s time as prime minis-
ter—spanning most of the years
from 1921 to 1948—makes him
“Canada’s longest-serving Prime
Minister” and “one of the long-
est serving elected leaders in
the Western world,” and he has
been called “Canada’s greatest
Prime Minister” (vol. 1, p. 21). In
spite of these achievements, he
is also known for his occult and
spiritualist idiosyncrasies—to the
point that his sanity is sometimes
questioned (vol. 1, 21). Wagner
observes that “three major con-
flicts in Mackenzie King’s char-
acter shaped his life and actions:
his religious faith, his uncontrol-
lable sex drive, and his spiritual-
ist beliefs and occult practices”
(vol. 2, p. 323). People have not
always wanted this last area in
particular to be publicly known.
Some of the most interesting
parts of Wagner’s work examine
how King’s literary executors tried
(and ultimately failed) to sup-
press knowledge of this aspect
of King’s life. For example, King’s
executors coerced a spiritualist
writer named Geraldine Cummins
not to include King’s name in an
appendix to her 1951 memoir.
King’s “spiritualist notebooks”
were burned in 1977, although
some of his other personal spir-
itualist accounts survived (vol.
2, p. 101). One can understand
why this kind of suppression was
considered necessary to protect
King’s reputation. Canadians may
have been unnerved to learn (as
one example) that King was ask-
ing U.S. president Franklin Delano
Roosevelt for advice on whether
to expose Russian spies “or give
the secret of the atom bomb to
the Russians” in the aftermath
of the Gouzenko Affair in 1945
(vol. 1, 347; vol. 2, pp. 256–57).
That is because Roosevelt was
dead by then; King was seeking
advice from Roosevelt’s spirit in
séances! In fact, given that it was
not until 1954 that the House of
Commons investigated whether to
decriminalize fortune-telling and
witchcraft, it is at least ambiguous
whether some of King’s spiritualist
practices (such as using a crystal
ball) were even legal in his lifetime
(vol. 2, p. 61). Communication
with spirits from the Beyond alleg-
edly helped King negotiate a trade
agreement with the United States,
as well (vol. 2, pp. 141–42).
Granted, 2025 has shown us that
having a head of state take advice
from the dead is far from the worst
thing to ever happen in Canada–
U.S. trade relations!
King was interested in séances
and visits with fortune-tellers or
trance mediums. Yet, his interest
in spiritualism also led him to do
such things as: take “automatic
writing” messages seriously, read
tea leaves, find messages in the
shapes in his shaving cream,
table rapping, palm readings,
receive horoscopes, consult a
crystal ball, or find hidden mean-
ing in the placement of the hands
on clocks, along with showing an
interest in numerology and graph-
ology. The fortune-teller Rachel
Bleaney and the American me-
dium Etta Wriedt were among the
spiritualist figures King interacted
with. He would also find spiritual
significance in seeming coinci-
dences in his reading habits: for
example, in his reading of the
Bible, he saw parallels between
the political turmoil he faced in
1926 (the time of the famous
King-Byng Affair) and the account
of Paul’s shipwreck in the Book of
Acts (vol. 2, p. 51).
King is sometimes maligned
for having séances with his dead
dogs. Yet, I cannot be flippant
about these after having read
Wagner’s biography. The passag-
es detailing King’s vigil alongside
his dog Pat, before Pat’s death,
are the most genuinely moving
passages in Wagner’s work and
will be touching to anyone who
has ever deeply loved a pet (vol.
2, pp. 292–295). King believed
that Pat’s bark would be the first
sound to greet him in Heaven (vol.
2, p. 311).
One of this biography’s biggest
contributions is to demonstrate
that King’s spiritualism did in-
fluence his political life—a fact
which older works on King (such
as those by H. Blair Neatby)
have downplayed. Among other
things, King’s involvement with
spiritualism may have influenced
“his appeasement of Hitler and
Mussolini” (vol. 2, p. 330). In
1934 in particular, King’s “little
table” conversations were guid-
ing his decisions to an unhealthy
degree (vol. 1, p. 133). After the
spirit of the late Prime Minister
Wilfrid Laurier allegedly—and
wrongly—predicted the results of
the 1934 Ontario provincial elec-
tion, King admittedly “determined
that he should only trust commu-
Check out the PCC’s
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nications from his own family in
the Beyond” (vol. 1, p. 141). That
same year, King’s spiritual guides
also inaccurately predicted who
Prime Minister R. B. Bennett
would recommend for knighthood
(vol. 1, pp. 143–144). Some peo-
ple might question the reliability of
such communications altogether
after such experiences, but King
was more apt to attribute these
inaccuracies to evil spirits (vol.
1, p. 144). King also made use of
séances when trying to figure out
the complicated political situation
in Europe in 1936 (vol. 2, p. 161).
King believed that he was being
guided by spirits from the Beyond
throughout his life.
King was both a spiritualist and
a Presbyterian. His Presbyterian
friend—and former Knox College
principal—Thomas Eakin ap-
pears in some anecdotes in these
pages. There is some discussion
of King’s Presbyterian family
background and beliefs (vol. 1,
pp. 65–66). King believed himself
to have “a God-given mission to
bring about peace on earth” (vol.
2, p. 159). King even suggested
that Winston Churchill’s hero-
ics during the Second World War
“almost confirmed the old Pres-
byterian idea of predestination or
pre-ordination; of his having been
the man selected for this task”
(vol. 2, p. 251). Yet, it is King’s
spiritualism that predominates
over his Presbyterian beliefs in
these volumes—and the PCC
has, of course, never endorsed
spiritualism.
As I have said, for people who
are not already familiar with the
basic events of King’s life, this bi-
ography may be harder to follow.
Also, the thematic nature of the
chapters sometimes means that
the work is not chronological and
the changes in subject from one
chapter to another can make the
work seem disjointed at times.
Nonetheless, this biography is an
impressive achievement and is an
excellent read for those who want
to thoroughly engage with this
side of Mackenzie King.