The New Motor: Building the ‘God Machine’

In October of 1853 in the town of Lynn, Massachusetts, a group of people congregated under the watchful eye of a man named John Murray Spear, gathered together to begin work on a mysterious machine, an experiment that has since become synonymous with the early spiritualist movement. If successful, they believed that the machine in question had the power to “revolutionize the world and raise mankind to an exalted level of spiritual development.” It was thought that once finished, the machine itself would act as a physical body for God, a metal and copper suit to contain the divine spark. They called it the New Motor; Heaven’s last, best gift to man.

A former minister of the Universalist church in Barnstable Massachusetts, John Murray Spear was well-known for having maintained very outspoken views regarding the issues of slavery and women’s rights. In Portland, Maine during an anti-slavery speech in the heart of the city, he was beaten senseless by an angry mob, a beating which left him incapacitated for many months. However, this didn’t stop Spear from continuing to minister to three separate churches until the year 1852, when he broke ties with the Universalist Church for good. It was around this time that Spear joined an ever growing community that had begun calling themselves “spiritualists“. In later generations, despite his activism, this would become the topic his name was most notably attached to. Spear spent years devoted to developing his abilities as a trance medium, and eventually, he came to believe he was being guided by the spirits of notable scientists Emanuel Swedenborg and Benjamin Franklin.

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