Johanne Agerskov

Johanne Elisabeth Agerskov (1873–1946), daughter of the Danish inventor Rasmus Malling-Hansen, was a Danish medium. Together with her husband, Michael Agerskov, she was responsible for the ethico-religious, philosophical, and pseudo-scientific book, Toward the Light (in Danish, Vandrer mod Lyset!), first published by Michael Agerskov in Copenhagen in 1920.

In her younger days Johanne Agerskov worked as a teacher, and she married Michael Agerskov in 1899. Their only daughter, Inger Agerskov, was born in 1900, and Johanne became a housewife. During the first decade of the twentieth century, Michael became interested in spiritual phenomena, and persuaded his wife to participate in séances, even though she was skeptical in the beginning. Soon Johanne came to believe that the spirits of the transcendental world had called upon her, and had given her the message that she was a medium, and that before her birth she had promised to be instrumental in bringing eternal truths to mankind.

Convinced that she had a special mission, Agerskov and her husband formed a circle with two more couples, and for many years held weekly séances, in which they believed messages from the spirits of the light were given to Agerskov through intuitive thought-inspiration. She claimed a unique ability to close off her own thoughts, so that all she could "hear" in her mind, according to her, was the thoughts of the spirit with whom she was supposed to be in contact. That was very demanding, and in that period she gave up all the pleasures of social life, in order to be focused and prepared for the séances. The members of the circle would submit questions for her to ask the spirits, and shortly she would give them answers, supposedly from the spirits, which the other participants would write down.

That resulted in the publication of the book, Toward the Light, which Agerskov called "a message to mankind from the transcendental world", and which she and her husband sent out to all the bishops and sixty ministers of the Danish national church. Their hope was that these would participate in a reformation of the Danish church, based upon the new knowledge given in Toward the Light. The Agerskovs made great efforts to that end, through correspondence and by opening their home to anybody who wanted to see them about Toward the Light; but there was little public interest in the book, and the expected reformation did not take place.

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