spiritualism

n.

1. 1. The belief that the dead communicate with the living, as through a medium.
   2. The practices or doctrines of those holding such a belief.
2. A philosophy, doctrine, or religion emphasizing the spiritual aspect of being.

spiritualist spir'i·tu·al·ist n.
spiritualistic spir'i·tu·al·is'tic adj.

For more information on spiritualism, visit Britannica.com.

Spiritualists do not "worship" spirits. Neither do they seek to commune with the devil. Some, as was the case with the clairvoyant Edgar Cayce (1877-1945), may be Methodist Sunday-school teachers. Others, as was true of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930), creator of the fictional detective Sherlock Holmes, may be best-selling authors.

But Spiritualists do seek contact with those who have crossed the border dividing the material world from the spiritual. Those who have died are still alive, according to Spiritualist belief, but in a different form.

God is real, but defined in different ways depending upon the individual's level of spiritual development. Often the phrase "the God of your understanding" is used to talk about divinity.

In order to contact "the other side" it is common to consult a person who has developed the gifts necessary to become a conduit to other planes of existence. Such a person is called a medium. Many Spiritualists believe that Jesus Christ was the greatest medium who ever lived on "the earthly plane." Mediums enter a passive, trancelike state and allow spirits to communicate through them. Such an experience is sometimes sought at a séance. (The great magician known to the world as Harry Houdini [1874-1926] tried all his life to discover if such things were really possible. He never attended an authentic séance. A gifted magician himself, he was always able to spot a charlatan. But he never gave up hope that the real thing existed. He promised his wife that when he died he would, if at all possible, communicate with her. He never did. Séances were held every year on the anniversary of his death, but he never spoke to her. After many years, she finally gave up.)

Spiritualism has ancient routes. But its modern American incarnation seems to have begun, as with so many other religions, in upstate New York. In May 1848, Margaretta and Kate Fox were young sisters, eleven and eight years old. They claimed to hear a rapping emanating from an upstairs bedroom. They were able to work out a code and employ it to communicate with entities on "the other side." The news spread like wildfire. Soon the whole country was caught in the spell. "Rappings" were heard everywhere. Tables rose up from the ground and slowly revolved in circles. Voices were heard. Church attendance dwindled, and spiritualist séances exploded in every city and town across America. President Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) even supported the movement.

But it wasn't long before frauds were uncovered. People who hoped to cash in on the movement through hoax and deception were exposed. The Civil War soon drew attention away from the fad.

But there were those who carried on, believing that just because fraudulent people tried to cash in on Spiritualism, it didn't mean the underlying principles were not real. Many Spiritualist churches had been formed and, just as in other religions, revivals have occurred from time to time. Spiritualist churches usually are formed around the psychic powers of one person, often a woman, who has cultivated her powers through practice and study. Services consist of listening for voices that speak from other planes of existence through mediums. Those who receive the messages then seek to act on them to improve understanding and contentment in this life.

Because the experience of communicating with spirits is an intensely personal one, it is difficult to define the word "spiritualism" with any degree of exactness with which all Spiritualists will agree. There are probably as many definitions as there are Spiritualists. The field is wide open. Of course that means there is still probably a high degree of fraud and deception. But there are those who have sincerely come to the conclusion that there is life after death. This is a belief common to many religions. Spiritualists just go one step further. They believe that those who have died want to be involved with and pass on their accumulated wisdom to loved ones.

Sources: Ludwig, Theodore M. The Sacred Paths: Understanding the Religions of the World. 2nd ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1996.

---

In contemporary usage not a version of the doctrine that spirit is the ultimate substance of the world (see absolute idealism), but the superstitious belief that the spirits of the dead communicate with the living, usually through the agency of a medium.

Spiritualism is a religious movement whose adherents seek contact with spirits through mediums in gatherings called séances. It emerged in the Northeast amid the transformations of capitalism, industrialization, urbanization, religious revivalism and experimentation, social reform, democratization, and the rising authority of science.

Spiritualism originated in 1848 in western New York, a region swept by religious revivalism and ferment after the opening of the Erie Canal. Radical ex-Quakers and abolitionists there decided that mysterious knockings in the Hydesville home of sisters Kate and Margaret Fox were communications by spirits. Press coverage generated interest in these "spirit manifestations" after the Fox sisters began a series of demonstrations in Rochester, and they were referred to as the "Rochester Rappings." Advocates claimed scientific proof of immortality. Many Americans thought they could serve as mediums.

Meanwhile, "Poughkeepsie Seer" Andrew Jackson Davis's involvement with mesmerism had by 1847 produced "harmonialism," a system of religious philosophy and social reform he claimed he had received in a trance from the eighteenth-century scientist-mystic Emanuel Swedenborg and other spirits (see Swedenborgian Churches). Rejecting Calvinist doctrines of innate depravity and eternal punishment and advocating perpetual spiritual growth, harmonialism attracted Universalists, Unitarians, Quakers, Swedenborgians, deists, members of evangelical denominations, and radical social reformers, especially abolitionists and women's rights advocates. Spiritualis memerged when Davis and his followers linked harmonialism to mediumship.

Spiritualism spread across the North during the 1850s and subsequently to the West Coast. Associated with abolitionism and other radical reforms, it was less popular in the South. Mediums were usually women, whom Victorian Americans believed had a heightened piety and sensitivity to spirit communication; many were empowered to public social activism by their mediumship. Spirit messages often urged Americans to counteract expanding commercialization, industrialization, and urbanization by retaining communal and republican values thought to be threatened by the emerging order. Spiritualism appealed across race and class lines but was promoted primarily by an anxious new middle class.

Spiritualism had its critics. Ministers, feeling their authority threatened, labeled it necromancy, witchcraft, and a stimulus to free love. Most scientists rejected it, especially after unfavorable investigations in the mid to late nineteenth century, although a few became defenders, and some examined it within the framework of psychic phenomena from the late nineteenth through the mid-twentieth centuries. Debunkers from the 1850s forward have charged mediums with fraud. Some early sympathizers bolted to found Christian Science and Theosophy.

Such challenges limited Spiritualism's growth and appeal, but the new religion persisted and, despite its strong anti-organizational thrust, became institutionalized. Spiritualists formed perhaps thousands of circles nationwide. They founded over 200 newspapers by 1900 and publishing houses in New York City, Boston, Chicago, and San Francisco. The federal census listed 17 Spiritualist churches in 1860, 95 in 1870, 334 in 1890, and 455 in 1906, with tens of thousands of members in 1890 and 1906. Beginning in the 1870s, Spiritualists established camps in New York, Massachusetts, Indiana, Florida, and several other states. National organization efforts began in the 1860s, and the National Spiritualist Association of Churches was founded in Chicago in 1893. Although over-all numbers subsequently declined, large-scale organizations proliferated (the NASC remained the largest), giving Spiritualism a permanent institutional presence and an increasingly ecclesiastical character.

Spiritualism revitalized during the 1960s amid increased interest in alternative spiritualities, psychic phenomena, and the subsequent New Age Movement, whose eclectic practices include spirit "channeling." Yet it remained distinct from New Age religions and continues to express Americans' desire for spiritual grounding amid ongoing change.

Bibliography

Braude, Ann. Radical Spirits: Spiritualism and Women's Rights in Nineteenth-Century America. Boston: Beacon Press, 1989.

Carroll, Bret E. Spiritualism in Antebellum America. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997.

Moore, R. Laurence. In Search of White Crows: Spiritualism, Parapsychology, and American Culture. New York: Oxford University Press, 1977.

A social religious movement founded in the mid-nineteenth century in New York State. According to the definition adopted by the National Spiritualist Association of Churches, Spiritualism is The Science, Philosophy and Religion of continuous life, based upon the demonstrated fact of communication, by means of mediumship, with those who live in the Spirit World. Spiritualism is a science because it investigates, analyses and classifies facts and manifestations, demonstrated from the spirit side of life. Spiritualism is a philosophy because it studies the laws of nature both on the seen and unseen sides of life and bases its conclusions upon present observed facts. It accepts statements of observed facts of past ages and conclusions drawn there-from, when sustained by reason and by results of observed facts of the present day. Spiritualism is a religion because it strives to understand and to comply with the Physical, Mental and Spiritual Laws of Nature[,] which are the laws of God.

According to the British medium W. Stainton Moses, a Spiritualist is "one who has proven for himself, or has accepted on adequate evidence, the fact that death does not kill the spirit."

Spiritualism centers upon two basic teachings: the continuity of personality after the transition of death, and the possibility of communication between those living on Earth and those who have made the transition to death. Spiritualism teaches that death is a new birth into a spiritual body, the counterpart of the physical, which is gifted with new powers. Spiritualists claim that their beliefs are based upon scientific proof and communication with the surviving personalities of deceased human beings by means of mediumship.

After death, the individual faces neither punishment nor rewards. Individuality, character, and memory survive and undergo no change. Continued progression in the new life rests upon individual fitness. The rapidity of progress is in proportion to the mental and moral faculties acquired in Earth life. Every spirit is left to discover the truth for itself. Evil passions or a sinful life may chain a spirit to the Earth, but the road of endless progress opens up for these as soon as they discover the light. Higher and higher spiritual spheres correspond to the state of progress. The gradation is apparently endless. Communion with higher intelligences appears to be available, but the spirits report no particular communion with the deity.

Origins of Spiritualism

Spiritualism in its modern form dates back no further than 1848 and the Fox sisters. Its practices can be traced to attempts at spirit communication reaching back to ancient times. Such attempts at communication with both the surviving consciousness of the dead and various orders of spiritual beings, both angelic and demonic, appear in the oldest extant records of cultures worldwide. It has only been in the last few centuries that strong doubts about the possibility of life after death and communication with a spiritual world have arisen.

Spiritualism emerged as a direct counter to such post-Enlightenment doubts, which by the nineteenth century had become the subject of popular debates and literature.

In his 1993 book, Madame Blavatsky's Baboon, writer Peter Washington noted that the true momentum for the movement was given full vent in America; but, in fact, its roots sprouted up from people and places all over the world. Washington noted that it seemed to have found a particular following in America for certain reasons. He also said that,

The seance offers a new version of holy communion, in which faith is replaced by evidence, blood and wine by manifested spirits. It was therefore especially popular among the Protestant sects fo the east coast of the United States, deprived as they usually were of any sensuous fulfillment in their religion and susceptible to any sign of the workings of divine grace, however bizarre. It is no coincidence that Hydesville is in the middle of the notorious 'burned-over' district of New York State, so called because of the extraordinary number of religious fashions that swept through it in the early nineteenth century. Spiritualism blends easily with millenarian Christianity: though most of its messages were trivial, the expectation remained that these were merely a prelude to news of real import from the Other World. Having confirmed its own existence through the Fox girls, that world was now expected to come through with the facts about life after death, immortality, and even the future of mankind.

As Spiritualism formed, it looked to a number of individual occurrences of Spiritualist phenomena and previous movements to show its continuity with the past. For example, many famous outbreaks of an "epidemic" nature, such as that among the Tremblers of the Cevennes and the Convulsionaries of St. Médard, which to the beholders showed clear indications of demonic possession, had in their symptoms considerable analogy with modern Spiritualism. They were accompanied by spontaneous trance or ecstasy, lengthy discourses, and speaking in tongues, all of which are phenomena to be found in the séance room.

The fluency of speech noted in such outbreaks, especially of persons lacking any formal education, has been equaled, if not surpassed, by the outpourings of the unlearned medium under the influence of a "control." In such historical cases, the conditions were generally ascribed to either angelic or diabolic possession, and most frequently to the latter. Witches were supposed to converse with the Devil, and many aspects of witchcraft, notably the part played by persecuted young women and children, show a relationship to poltergeist disturbances. These were the connecting link between early forms of possession and modern Spiritualism. Cases in which children of morbid tendencies pretended to be the victims of a witch are to be found in many records of witchcraft.

However much it seemed otherwise, still it was the poltergeist who showed affinity to the "control" of the mediumistic circle. For at least the past few centuries, poltergeist disturbances have occurred from time to time. The mischievous spirit's favorite modes of manifesting itself have been similar to those adopted by spirit controls.

Both poltergeists and spirit controls require a "medium," an agent for the production of their phenomena. It is in the immediate presence of the medium that the phenomena generally make their appearance. Both also tend to display personality, even if of an infantile nature in the case of poltergeists. Intelligent communication has often been reported to have occurred by means of raps in phenomena attributed to poltergeists.

A related manifestation also believed to be caused by spirits occurred in the practice of animal magnetism, which was said to have originated with the alchemist Paracelsus, in favor with the old alchemists. An actual magnet was rarely used, but was regarded as a symbol of the magnetic philosophy. This belief rested on the idea of a force or fluid radiating from the heavenly bodies, human beings, and, indeed, from every substance, animate or inanimate, by means of which all things act upon one another.

While Paracelsus's students were engaged in formulating a magnetic philosophy, there were others. They included the seventeenth-century healer Valentine Greatrakes, who cured diseases. He claimed such magnetic power as a divine gift and did not connect it with the ideas of the alchemists. According to Spiritualist thought, these two phases of "magnetism" united and climaxed in the work of Franz Anton Mesmer, who published De planetarium influxu, in 1776, a treatise on the influence of the planets on the human body. His ideas were essentially those of the magnetic philosophers. His cures equaled those of Greatrakes; but he infused new life into both theory and practice and won for himself the recognition, if not of the learned societies, at least of the general public. He laid the groundwork for the discovery of the induced hypnotic trance. This has considerable significance in Spiritualism.

In 1784 a commission was appointed by the French government to consider magnetism as practiced by Mesmer and his followers. Unfortunately, its report only served to cast discredit on the practice and exclude it from scientific discussion. A detailed account of the trance utterances of a hypnotic subject was given in 1787 in the journals of the Swedish Exegetical and Philanthropic Society. Members of the society inclined to the doctrines of their countryman Emanuel Swedenborg, who was the first to identify the "spirits" as the souls of the deceased.

Until the third decade of the nineteenth century, the explanations of mesmerism concerned themselves almost entirely with a fluid or force emanating from the mesmerist—and even visible to the eye of a clairvoyant. In 1823, however, Alexandre Bertrand, a Parisian physician, published his Traité du Somnambulisme. In 1826 he published the treatise Du Magnetisme Animal en France, in which he set forth a relationship between ordinary sleepwalking, somnambulism associated with disease, and epidemic ecstasy and advanced the doctrine, now generally accepted, of suggestion.

Animal magnetism was by this time receiving a good deal of attention all over Europe. A second French commission appointed in 1825 presented its report in 1831, which, although of no great value, contained a unanimous testimony as to the authenticity of the phenomena. In Germany magnetism was also practiced to a considerable extent, but rationalist explanations of the associated phenomena found some acceptance. There was a class, however, more numerous in Germany than elsewhere, who inclined toward a Spiritualist explanation of mesmeric phenomena. Indeed, the belief in spirit communication had grown up beside magnetism from its conception, in opposition to the theory of a magnetic fluid.

In the earlier phases of "miraculous" healing, the cures were ascribed to the divine gift of the person conducting the session, or the operator, who expelled the evil spirits from the patient. In epidemic cases in religious communities, as well as in individual instances, the spirits were questioned both on personal matters and on abstract theological questions.

In Germany Justinus Kerner experimented with Frederica Hauffe, "the Seeress of Prevorst," in whose presence physical manifestations took place and who described the condition of the soul after death and the constitution of man—the physical body, the soul, the spirit, and the nervengeist, an ethereal body that clothes the soul after death—theories afterward elaborated by Spiritualists. Other German investigators, such as J. H. Jung (Jung-Stilling), C. Römer, and Heinrich Werner, recorded the phenomenon of clairvoyance in their somnambules. In 1845 Baron Karl von Reichenbach published research he claimed demonstrated the existence of an emanation, which he called od or odyllic force, radiating from every substance. This effluence allegedly could be seen by clairvoyants and had definite colors and produced a sensation of heat or cold.

Animal magnetism received little attention in England until the third decade of the nineteenth century. In 1828, Richard Chevinix, an Irishman, gave mesmeric demonstrations. John Elliotson, of University College Hospital, London, practiced mesmerism with the O'Key sisters, who were somnambules, and although he first believed in the magnetic fluid, he afterward became a Spiritualist. In 1843 two journals dealing with the subject—the Zoist and the Phreno-magnet—were founded. Most of the English mesmerists of the time preferred the magnetist explanation of the phenomena to the notion of spirit agency. Within the Spiritualist community, the so-called "magnetic" phenomena were largely attributed to the agency of the spirits of the deceased.

Spiritualism as a Religious Movement

In responding to the challenge of Enlightenment thinking, Spiritualism became the first of the new "scientific" religions. Adherents talked little of faith. Rather, they asserted that they could prove Spiritualism's central doctrine of survival of death through facts, instead of relying on traditions and the revelations of ancient times. They saw Spiritualism as a progressive and evolutionary faith reconciling religion with contemporary science. "Spiritualism," wrote Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, "is a religion for those who find themselves outside all religions; while on the contrary it greatly strengthens the faith of those who already possess religious beliefs."

Not long after Spiritualism swept America, it began to take over Europe. According to Washington, "In the wake of failing political revolutions in 1848—the very year of the Hydesville phenomena—it rapidly became part of an 'alternative' synthesis which included vegetarianism, feminism, dress reform, homoeopathy and every variety of social and religious dissent." He noted that when Harriet Beecher Stowe, famed American abolitionist, visited Europe in 1853, the seance was "all the rage."

Early Spiritualists also believed their religion restored primitive Christianity, pointing to inscriptions in the Roman cata-combs in which the early Christians spoke of the dead as though they were still living. According to Saint Augustine, in De cura pro Mortuis, "The spirits of the dead can be sent to the living and can unveil to them the future which they themselves have learned from other spirits or from angels, or by divine revelation." Not surprisingly, much of the movement's motivation still rested in anti-Catholicisim—not so different from the antagonism many Protestant sects harbored without Spiritualism.

Spiritualists do not believe in an afterlife of unchangeable bliss or eternal damnation. In their perspective, there is no hell with brimstone and flames of fire as some Christians teach. In like measure they deny the existence of devils, a final judgment, and the vicarious atonement. Christ was a great teacher who descended to set an example. "It is our task to do for Christianity what Jesus did for Judaism," said a message received by W. Stainton Moses from the spirits who allegedly spoke through his automatic writing. Spiritualists also deny the resurrection of the physical body, as did the hieracites, a sect that flourished in the fourth century: they maintain that it is the soul alone that resurrected.

Spiritualism admits all the truths of morality and religion of all other sects. The moral stance is illustrated in the role of mediums. Spiritualists tend to maintain that those mediums who hold séances and become the direct mouthpieces of the spirits are only supereminently endowed with a faculty common to all humanity—that all men and woman are mediums to some degree, and that all inspiration, whether good or bad, comes from the spirits.

It is in connection with this idea of the universality of mediumship that the effect of Spiritualism on the morals and daily life of its adherents is most clearly seen. The spirits are naturally attracted to those mediums whose qualities resemble their own. Enlightened spirits from the highest spheres seek "highsouled" and earnest mediums through which to express themselves. Mediums who use their divine gifts for ignoble ends are sought by the lowest and wickedest human spirits, or by elementals, who do not even reach the human standard of goodness. Indeed, it is claimed that the lower spirits communicate with the living much more readily than do the higher, by reason of a certain gross or material quality that binds them to Earth. As with the full-fledged medium, so with the normal individual; if one is to ensure that the source of inspiration be a high one, one must live in such a way that only the best spirits will control.

In the United States, Spiritualists embraced many socialist ideals, and many resided in the socialist communities of the nineteenth century. The loose, nondogmatic approach also allowed some Spiritualists to embrace a variety of different ideals, such as free love. In England, where habit and tradition were more settled, Spiritualists emphasized its compatibility with Christianity and projected an image of affording a fuller revelation of the Christian religion. In France, Allan Kardec's doctrine of reincarnation blended with the doctrines of Spiritualism to produce Spiritism, a form of Spiritualism highly alienated from Christianity.

These varied forms of Spiritualism are held together by two central beliefs: that the soul continues after "the great dissolution" (death of the body) and continually progresses and that the freed spirit can communicate with living human beings. The continuity of life after death is, of course, one of Spiritual-ism's most important tenets. It is not a distinctive one, since most of the world's creeds and religions also affirm such a belief. But Spiritualist ideas concerning the nature of the life of the freed soul are unique.

Spiritualists believe that the soul, or spirit, is composed of a sort of attenuated matter inhabiting the body and resembling it in form. On the death of the body the soul withdraws itself, without undergoing any direct change, and for a period remains on the "Earth plane." But the keynote of the spirit world is progress, so after a time the spirit proceeds to the lowest "discarnate plane." From that plane they go on to higher and higher planes, gradually evolving into a purer and nobler type. At length it reaches the sphere of pure spirit.

From the comments of mediums speaking in trance, a picture of the spirit domain has been constructed by Spiritualists. It is thought to be a somewhat attenuated version of earthly life, conducted in a highly rarified atmosphere. Automatic drawings, purporting to depict spirit scenes, afford a description no less flattering than that gleaned from mediums speaking in trance, although many such drawings appear imaginative rather than factual. From their exalted spheres the spirits are said to be cognizant of the doings of their fellow individuals still on Earth.

The other central belief of Spiritualism is that the spirits communicate with the living—primarily through the agency of mediums—offering their aid and counsel. They can produce in the physical world certain phenomena that transcend known physical laws. Most Spiritualists, in seeking proof of the reality of the creed, have been content with what is described as "subjective" phenomena, including such as trance speaking, automatic writing, clairvoyance.

Spiritualism was enlivened by more or less sensational physical manifestations through an entire period of its history. These found great favor among both believers and psychical researchers. Their success seemed to promise irrefutable proof of the extraordinary nature of Spiritualist phenomena, and they were relatively easy to investigate. They were so intimately connected with fraud unfortunately, that any hope for verifying the phenomena disappeared in the first half of the twentieth century.

Manifestation of phenomena therefore occupies a central place in Spiritualism, and the question of the genuineness of claimed phenomena remains of great importance. It is true, of course, that paranormal phenomena are also central to the development of other great religions that have claimed miracles in support of doctrine. Spiritualists point to the Judaeo-Christian Holy Bible as a book full of accounts of "miraculous" phenomena not essentially different from those demonstrated by modern mediums—inspired trance addresses, paranormal healing, apparitions, and prophetic statements. The primary difference is that traditional religions assume a perspective of awe in the presence of the occasional miraculous event, whereas Spiritualists view such events as constant aspects of a mundane world.

The Literature of Spiritualism

There is vast literature on Spiritualism. Many important works from the nineteenth century are long out of print. This literature ranges from mediumistic communications of varied value, including spirit revelations from automatic writing, trance sermons, and séances, to personal experiences of investigators and theories of psychical researchers, to histories of Spiritualism and attacks on it.

Books that chart the transition from mesmerism and animal magnetism to Spiritualism are valuable for the information and opinions of the time. Emma Hardinge Britten's Nineteenth Century Miracles (1884) and Modern American Spiritualism (1869) are full of detailed, hard-to-find information on the events of the period but are written from the viewpoint of a firm believer and worker in the field and are sometimes marred by inaccurate quotations. Alphonse Cahagnet's The Celestial Telegraph (2 vols., 1851) and Robert Hare's Experimental Investigation of the Spirit Manifestations (1856) are also of special period interest.

Autobiographies of mediums are fascinating and well worth studying for their firsthand subjective viewpoint. A classic work of this kind is D. D. Home's Incidents in My Life (1863). Other popular works of this kind are Estelle Roberts' Fifty Years a Medium (1969) and Doris Stokes's Voices in My Ear (1980).

Various histories of Spiritualism are available, but there is no single satisfactory work. It is advisable to study different histories, bearing in mind the commitment of their writers. Cesar de Vesme's History of Experimental Spiritualism (2 vols., 1931) is a comprehensive survey of Spiritualist type phenomena in many countries from primitive times on. William Howitt's The History of the Supernatural (1863) is useful, if simplistic, in tracing the antecedents of Spiritualism in past ages. E. W. Capron's Modern Spiritualism: Its Facts and Fanaticism, Its Consistencies and Contradictions (1855) has special interest as an account of the movement in its early years.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's History of Spiritualism (2 vols., 1926) is an important review of the background and history of the movement, but non-critical in its presentation. Frank Pod-more's Modern Spiritualism (2 vols., 1902) is a skeptical review, valuable for its detailed information of early mediumship. J. Arthur Hill's Spiritualism: Its History, Phenomena and Doctrine (1918) is useful but fragmentary. A. Campbell Holms's The Facts of Psychic Science and Philosophy (1925) is a useful tabulation of the phenomena of Spiritualism but non-critical in treatment.

In the decades since Spiritualism celebrated its centennial in 1948, a variety of scholars, primarily sociologists and historians, have taken a look at the movement and provided valuable additions to the literature. Foremost is J. Stillson Judah's The History and Philosophy of the Metaphysical Movements in America (1967), which discusses Spiritualism in the larger context of the movement, from the doctrines of Emanuel Swedenborg to Spiritualism and then to Theosophy. An excellent modern survey of nineteenth-century Spiritualism in the United States is provided in Slater Brown's The Heyday of Spiritualism (1970); and British Spiritualism is covered in Geoffrey K. Nelson's Spiritualism and Society (1969). Hans Bear supplies a most valuable discussion of the very neglected spiritual churches, the movement of Spiritualism in the African American community. Lamar Keene, a former Spiritualist, documents the continuance of fake materialization séances in some Spiritualist churches. Keene's volume joins a long list of older but still valuable literature, such as John W. Truesdell's The Bottom Facts Concerning the Science of Spiritualism (1884); Julien J. Proskauer's Spook Crooks! Exposing the Secrets of the Prophet-eers Who Conduct Our Wickedest Industry (1932); Harry Houdini's A Magician Among the Spirits (1924); and the anonymous Revelations of a Spirit Medium (1891; reissued by Harry Price and Eric J. Ding-wall).

Sources:

Ancient Wisdom and Secret Sects, "Mysteries of the Unknown." Alexandria, Va.: Time-Life Books, 1996.

Barbanell, Maurice. Spiritualism Today. London: Herbert Jenkins, 1969.

Barrett, Sir William F. On the Threshold of the Unseen: An Examination of the Phenomena of Spiritualism and of the Evidence for Survival After Death. London: Kegan Paul; New York: E. P. Dutton, 1917.

Bayless, Raymond. Voices From Beyond. New Hyde Park, N.Y.: University Books, 1975.

Beard, Paul. Survival of Death: For and Against. London: Psychic Press, 1972.

Berger, Arthur S., J.D.; and, Berger, Joyce, M.A. The Encyclopedia of Parapsychology and Psychical Research. New York: Paragon House, 1991.

Brandon, Ruth. The Spiritualists: The Passion for the Occult in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. New York: Alfred A. Knopf; London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1983.

Britten, Emma Hardinge. Modern American Spiritualism: A Twenty Years' Record of the Communion Between Earth and the World of Spirits. New York, 1870. Reprint, New Hyde Park, N.Y.: University Books, 1970.

——. Nineteenth Century Miracles; or, Spirits and Their Works in Every Country of the Earth. London and Manchester: John Heywood, 1884. Reprint, New York: Arno Press, 1976.

Capron, E. W. Modern Spiritualism: Its Facts and Fanaticisms, Its Consistencies and Contradictions. Boston, 1855. Reprint, New York: Arno Press, 1976.

Carrington, Hereward. The Story of Psychic Science. London: Rider, 1930.

Crookall, Robert. The Supreme Adventure: Analyses of Psychic Communications. UK: J. Clarke for Churches' Fellowship for Psychical Study, 1961.

Dearden, Harold. Devilish But True: The Doctor Looks at Spiritualism. London: Hutchinson, 1936. Reprint, Boston: Rowan & Littlefield, 1975.

Doyle, Arthur Conan. The History of Spiritualism. 2 vols. London: Cassell; York: George H. Doran, 1926. Reprint, New York: Arno Press, 1975.

Ducasse, C. J. A Critical Examination of the Belief in a Life After Death. Springfield, Ill.: Charles C. Thomas, 1961.

Findlay, Arthur. On the Edge of the Etheric; or, Survival After Death Scientifically Explained. London: Psychic Press, 1931. Reprint, Corgi, 1971.

Garrett, Eileen J. My Life as a Search for the Meaning of Mediumship. London: Rider, 1939. Reprint, New York: Arno Press, 1975.

Gauld, Alan. The Founders of Psychical Research. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1968. Reprint, New York: Schocken Books, 1973.

——. Mediumship and Survival: A Century of Investigations. London: Heinemann, 1982.

Gregory, William. Animal Magnetism; or, Mesmerism and Its Phenomena. 2d rev. ed. London: Nichols, 1877. Reprint, New York: Arno Press, 1975.

Hare, Robert. Experimental Investigation of the Spirit Manifestations. New York, 1855.

Hart, Hornell. The Enigma of Survival: The Case For and Against an After Life. Springfield, Ill.: Charles C. Thomas, 1959.

Haynes, Renee. The Society for Psychical Research, 1882-1982: A History. London: Macdonald, 1982.

Hill, J. Arthur. Spiritualism: Its History, Phenomena and Doctrine. London: Cassell; New York: George H. Doran, 1918.

Home, Daniel Dunglas. Incidents in My Life. London: Long-mans, Green, 1863. Reprint, New Hyde Park, N.Y.: University Books, 1972.

Houdini, Harry. A Magician Among the Spirits. New York: Harper & Row, 1924. Reprinted as Houdini: A Magician Among the Spirits. New York: Arno Press, 1972.

Jackson, Herbert G., Jr. The Spirit Rappers. New York: Doubleday, 1972.

Jacobson, Nils Olof. Life Without Death? On Parapsychology, Mysticism, and the Question of Survival. New York: Delacorte Press, 1973. Reprint, London: Turnstone Books; New York: Dell, 1974.

Kerr, Howard. Mediums and Spirit-Rappers and Roaring Radicals. Urbana, Ill.: University of Illinois Press, 1972.

Lewis, James R. Encyclopedia of Afterlife Beliefs and Phenomena. Detroit: Visible Ink Press, 1995.

Lodge, Sir Oliver. Raymond, or Life and Death; with Examples of the Evidence for Survival of Memory and Affection After Death. London: Methuen; New York: George H. Doran, 1916.

Maryatt, Florence. There Is No Death. London, 1892. Reprint, New York: Causeway Books, 1973.

McCabe, Joseph. Spiritualism: A Popular History from 1847. London: Fisher Unwin, 1920.

McHargue, Georgess. Facts, Frauds, and Phantasms: A Survey of the Spiritualist Movement. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1972.

Meek, George W., and Bertha Harris. From Séance to Science. London: Regency Press, 1973.

Mulholland, John. Beware Familiar Spirits. London: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1938. Reprint, New York: Arno Press, 1975.

Murchison, Carl, ed. The Case For and Against Psychical Belief. Worcester, Mass., 1927. Reprint, Arno Press, 1975.

Myers, F. W. H. Human Personality and Its Survival of Bodily Death. 2 vols. London: Longmans, Green, 1903. Reprint, New York: Arno Press, 1975. Abr. ed. New Hyde Park, N.Y.: University Books, 1961.

Olcott, H. S. People From the Other World. American Publishing, 1875. Reprint, Rutland, Vt.: Charles W. Tuttle, 1972.

Osty, Eugene. Supernormal Faculties in Man. London: Methuen, 1923.

Podmore, Frank. Modern Spiritualism: A History and a Criticism. 2 vols. London, 1902. Reprinted as Mediums of the 19th Century. New Hyde Park, N.Y.: University Books, 1963.

——. The Newer Spiritualism. London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1910. Reprint, New York: Arno Press, 1975.

Price, Harry. Fifty Years of Psychical Research: A Critical Survey. London: Longmans, Green, 1939. Reprint, New York: Arno Press, 1975.

Price, Harry, and E. J. Dingwall, eds. Revelations of a Spirit Medium. London: Kegan Paul; New York: E. P. Dutton, 1922.

Proskauer, Julien J. Spook Crooks! Exposing the Secrets of the Prophet-eers Who Conduct Our Wickedest Industry. New York: A. L. Burt, 1932. Reprint, Ann Arbor, Mich.: Gryphon Books, 1971.

Richet, Charles. Thirty Years of Psychical Research. London and New York, 1923. Reprint, New York: Arno Press, 1975.

Sargent, Epes. The Scientific Basis of Spiritualism. Boston: Colby & Rich, 1880.

Tabori, Paul. Companions of the Unseen. London: H. A. Humphrey, 1968.

——. Pioneers of the Unseen. London: Souvenir Press, 1972.

Thomas, John F. Beyond Normal Cognition: An Evaluative and Methodological Study of the Mental Content of Certain Trance Phenomena. Boston: Boston Society for Psychical Research, 1973. Reprint, New York: Arno Press, 1975.

——. Spirit Summonings, "Mysteries of the Unknown." Alexandria, Va.: Time-Life Books, 1996.

Truesdell, John W. The Bottom Facts Concerning the Science of Spiritualism. New York: G. W. Carlton, 1883.

Wallace, Alfred Russel. On Miracles and Modern Spiritualism. London, 1875. Rev. ed. New York: Arno Press, 1975.

Washington, Peter. Madame Blavatsky's Baboon: A History of the Mystics, Mediums, and Misfits Who Brought Spiritualism to America. New York: Schocken

Belief in a world of spirits has been a constant feature of all human societies. However, systematic communication with that world through spirit mediumship and possession is a central feature only of certain peripheral cults in primitive societies, and of spiritualism in the Western world since the middle of the 19th century. In preliterate societies, spirit possession cults have been described as deprivation cults, attracting women and other downtrodden and depressed categories of person (Lewis 1971). Through membership of the cult, a measure of lost status and esteem may be regained. In Western society communication with the spirits of the departed has been spasmodic. The voice of God, and intimations of divine presence, though central to the tradition of Christian mysticism, fall outside the province of strictly spiritualist experience.

As an organized movement, spiritualism has a quite precise time and place of origin. Historians of spiritualism trace its beginnings to March 1848, when unaccountable noises were heard by two young sisters in an isolated farmhouse in New York State. The rappings were attributed to the spirit of a travelling salesman murdered there some years earlier, and were interpreted as his attempts to establish communication with the living. Whatever the significance of the original rappings, within two years of their being heard the Fox sisters and their mother had established themselves as successful mediums with huge followings in New York City. Spiritualist circles and seances mushroomed along the east coast of America, and thence spread in two directions: westwards across the American continent and eastwards across the Atlantic to Europe.

The most striking characteristic of early spiritualist experience is precisely its non-religious quality: messages from spirits are peculiar for their concreteness, triviality, and a certain mundane bizarreness. Conan Doyle, a historian of spiritualism, and himself a spiritualist, was sensitive to the bad impression which such trivial preoccupations might create. He therefore reminded his readers that the first message transmitted by cable across the Atlantic was a commonplace enquiry from a testing engineer. 'So it is that the humble spirit of the murdered pedlar of Hydesville may have opened a gap into which the angels have thronged' (1926: 56).

The movement which developed was quite remarkable in a number of ways. First, it accorded a very special role to women in that mediumship was thought to be primarily, though not exclusively, a feminine art. Secondly, it involved a startling array of events such as levitations, ectoplasmic apparitions, telekinesis, and apports. Thirdly, it led to an alliance between spiritualists and scientists which is unique in the history of religion. While feminine stereotypes have always attributed greater intuitive and mystical powers to women (as they saw it at the time), their alleged passivity, lack of high intelligence, and lack of education made them seem peculiarly fitted to become mediums. In this connection Conan Doyle wrote: 'Great intellect stands in the way of personal psychic experiences. The clear state is certainly most apt for the writing of a message' (1926: 2). This congruity between stereotypes of femininity and the requirements of mediumship opened up career opportunities for women. The circles or seances were frequently held in the houses of mediums. However, in addition to the domestic setting the concerns of spiritualist messages were also of an intimately domestic and familial kind. The intrusion of scientists into this scene of cosy domesticity seems an unlikely event. The Society for Psychical Research was founded in February 1882 in order to make 'an organized and systematic attempt to investigate that large group of debatable phenomena designated by such terms as mesmeric, psychical and Spiritualistic'. Members of the society included philosophers, scientists, and politicians. Among the famous names are Henry Sidgwick, Lord Balfour, William James, Sir William Crookes, Andrew Lang, Henri Bergson, Gilbert Murray, and William McDougall. Although both science and religion are concerned with the ultimate nature of reality, only in the case of spiritualism were scientific criteria thought to be relevant for the establishment of religious truth and falsehood. This overlap of interests and techniques is perhaps to be accounted for by, on the one hand, the concreteness of spiritualist claims and, on the other hand, the direction of much scientific research during the 1880s, which was concerned with radiation physics.

In contrast to the respectable scientific solidity of the psychical researcher, the mediums tended to be young, vulnerable, beautiful, and possessed of a certain childlike naivety. The relationship between Sir William Crookes and Florence Cook is in many ways typical of the relationship between scientist and medium. Florence Cook's spirit guide was an ectoplasmic apparition called Katie King. It was claimed that this materialization could move and talk quite independently of Florence. However, in 1874 the medium's reputation was dramatically threatened by allegations of fraud and trickery. Florence Cook decided to throw herself on the mercy of Sir William, who was known to have an interest in psychical research, having investigated the Scottish medium Daniel Dunglas Home. The move proved highly prudent since Sir William wasted no time in jumping to Florence Cook's defence. The precondition of his investigating her gifts was that he should remove her from her parents' house to his own, in the north of London. From the very outset he felt it his duty to defend Florence, particularly if he could remove 'an unjust suspicion which is cast upon another. And when this other person is a woman — young, sensitive and innocent — it becomes especially a duty for me to give the weight of my testimony in favour of her whom I believe to be unjustly accused' (quoted in Hall 1962: 35). Hall puts forward the hypothesis that Sir William and Florence became lovers and that he extended scientific respectability to her in return for sexual love. Hall's interpretation appears to be highly plausible but, even if he were proved to be wrong in detail, the alliance is illuminating from a sociological perspective. Whereas most religious roles for women provide an exalted status and liberation for women at the cost of rejecting traditional femininity, spiritual mediumship capitalizes on existing relationships and transfers them to a spiritual plane. Spiritualism enthrones women in their traditional roles and relationships.

Although there have been many charges of fraud and counter-fraud, spiritualist belief has by and large remained impervious to such exposures. The late 19th century was the high point of dramatic apparitions and events. The First World War with its large numbers of bereaved provided yet another peak in the growth of the spiritualist movement. Thereafter, spiritualism gradually reverted to its earlier unassuming concerns. Essentially a domestic religion, it provides women with the opportunity of a religious life without transgressing the norms of traditional femininity. It also provides that much sought-after kind of work, work based at home — and the spiritual attention of circles is directed towards problems associated with marriage, family, and illness.

(Published 1987)

See also paranormal.

— Vieda Skultans

Bibliography
• Doyle, A. C. (1926). The History of Spiritualism.
• Hall, T. (1962). The Spiritualists.
• Lewis, I. (1971). Ecstatic Religion.
• Nelson, G. K. (1969). Spiritualism and Society.
• Skultans, V. (1974). Intimacy and Ritual: A Study of Spiritualism, Mediums and Groups.

---

This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)

Dansk (Danish)
n. - spiritisme, spiritualisme

Nederlands (Dutch)
spiritualisme, geloof in communicatie met de doden, nonmaterialsme

Français (French)
n. - spiritisme, (Philos) spiritualisme

Deutsch (German)
n. - Spiritismus, Spiritualismus

Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - πνευματισμός, (φιλοσ.) πνευματοκρατία

Italiano (Italian)
spiritismo, spiritualismo

Português (Portuguese)
n. - espiritualismo (m)

Русский (Russian)
спиритуализм, спиритизм

Español (Spanish)
n. - espiritismo, ocultismo, espiritualismo

Svenska (Swedish)
n. - spiritualism, spiritism

中文（简体）(Chinese (Simplified))
唯心论, 灵性, 招魂说

中文（繁體）(Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 唯心論, 靈性, 招魂說

한국어 (Korean)
n. - 심령술, 정신적 영향, 관념론

日本語 (Japanese)
n. - 降神術, 精神主義, 唯心論, 降霊術

العربيه (Arabic)
‏(الاسم) تحضير الأرواح, المذهب الروحي‏

עברית (Hebrew)
n. - ‮דרישה אל המתים, העלאה באוב של רוחות מתים, ספיריטיזם, ספיריטואליזם‬

If you are unable to view some languages clearly, click here.

To select your translation preferences click here.