Spiritualism is a religious movement, prominent from the 1840s to the 1920s, found primarily in English-speaking countries. The movement's distinguishing feature is the belief that the spirits of the dead can be contacted by adepts. These spirits are believed to lie on a higher spiritual plane than humans, and are therefore capable of providing guidance in both worldly and spiritual matters.

Origins

Modern Spiritualism first appeared in the 1840s in the Burned-Over District of upstate New York where earlier religious movements such as Millerism (Seventh Day Adventists) and Mormonism had emerged during the Second Great Awakening. It was an environment in which many people felt that direct communication with God or angels was possible, and in which many people felt uncomfortable with Calvinist notions that God would behave harshly — for example, that God would condemn unbaptized infants to an eternity in hell (Carroll 1997).

Swedenborg and Mesmer

In this environment the writings of Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772) and the teachings of Franz Mesmer (1734-1815) provided an example for those seeking direct personal knowledge of the afterlife (Carroll 1997). Swedenborg, who in trance states would commune with spirits, described in his voluminous writings the structure of the spirit world. Two features of his view particularly resonated with the early Spiritualists: first, that there is not a single hell and a single heaven, but rather a series of spheres through which a spirit progresses as it develops; second, that spirits mediate between God and humans, so that human direct contact with the divine is through the spirits of deceased humans.

Mesmer did not contribute religious beliefs, but he contributed a technique, latter known as hypnotism, that could induce trances and cause subjects to report contact with spiritual beings. There was a great deal of showmanship in Mesmerism, and the practitioners who lectured in mid-nineteenth century America sought to entertain audiences as well as demonstrate a method for personal contact with the divine.

Perhaps the best known of those who combined Swedenborg and Mesmer in a peculiarly American synthesis is Andrew Jackson Davis who called his system the Harmonial Philosophy. Davis was a practicing hypnotist, faith healer and clairvoyant from Poughkeepsie, New York. His 1847 book The Principles of Nature, Her Divine Revelations, and a Voice to Mankind, dictated to a friend while in trance, eventually became the nearest thing to a canonical work in a Spiritualist movement whose extreme individualism precluded the development of a single coherent worldview (Carroll 1997; Braude 2001).

Linked to the Reform Movement

Many of the early participants in Spiritualism were radical Quakers and others caught up in the reforming movement of the mid-nineteenth century. These reformers were uncomfortable with established churches because those churches did little to fight slavery and even less to advance women's rights. Women were particularly attracted to the movement, because it gave them important roles as mediums and trance lecturers. In fact Spiritualism provided one of the first forums in which American women could address mixed public audiences (Braude 2001).

Physical Manifestations and Fraud

Spiritualists often

In the following years, showmanship became an increasingly important part of Spiritualism, and the visible, audible, and tangible evidence of spirits escalated as mediums competed for paying audiences. Fraud was certainly widespread, as independent investigating commissions repeatedly established, most notably the 1887 report of the Seybert Commission . Perhaps the best-known case of fraud involved the Davenport Brothers.

But despite widespread fraud, the appeal of Spiritualism was strong. First and foremost, the movement appealed to those grieving the death of a loved one: the resurgence of interest in Spiritualism during and after the first World War was a direct response to the massive number of casualties (Doyle 1926). But the movement also appealed strongly to reformers, who found that the spirits were in favor of such causes du jour as equal rights (Braude 2001).

The movement also appealed to those who had a materialist orientation and had rejected religion. The influential socialist and atheist Robert Owen embraced religion following his experiences in Spiritualist circles. Many scientific men who bothered to investigate the phenomena also ended up being converted. These include William Crookes, the chemist, Alfred Russell Wallace (1823-1913), the evolutionary biologist, and Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930), the physician and author (Doyle 1926).

Widespread but Unorganized

The movement quickly spread throughout the world, though only in the United Kingdom did it become as widespread as in the United States (Britten 1884). In Britain, by 1853, invitations to tea among the prosperous and fashionable often included Table-Turning, a type of séance in which spirits would communicate with people seated around a table by tilting and rotating the table. One important foreign convert was Allan Kardec (1804-1869), a French academic who wrote a number of books that initiated a faith today called Spiritism by numerous followers, particularly in Brazil (Carroll 1997; Braude 2001).

American Spiritualists would meet in private homes for séances, at lecture halls for trance lectures, at summer camps attended by thousands, and at state or national conventions. The movement was extremely individualistic, with each Spiritualist relying on her own experiences and reading to discern the nature of the afterlife. Organization was therefore slow to appear, and when it did it was resisted by mediums and trance lecturers. Most Spiritualists were content to attend Christian churches, and Unitarian and particularly Universalist churches contained many Spiritualists. As the movement began to fade, partly through the bad publicity of exposed fraud, partly through the appeal of similar religious movements such as Christian Science, the Spiritualist Church was organized, and this church can claim to be the main vestige of the movement left today (Carroll 1997; Braude 2001).

Other Prominent Mediums and Believers

Amy Post

Achsa W. Sprague was born November 17, 1827, in Plymouth Notch, Vermont. At the age of 20, she became ill with rheumatic fever and credited her eventual recovery to intercession by spirits. An extremely popular trance lecturer, she traveled about the United States until her death in 1861. Like most Spiritualists of her time, Sprague was an abolitionist and an advocate of women's rights (Braude 2001).

Cora L. V. Scott (1840-1923) was the most popular trance lecturer prior to the American Civil War. Young and beautiful, her appearance on stage fascinated men. The very incongruity of elevated discourse and physical girlishness lent credibility to the notion that spirits were speaking through her. Cora married four times, and each time adopted her husband's last name. During her period of greatest activity she was known as Cora Hatch (Braude 2001).

Characteristic Beliefs

Spiritualists believe in the possibility of communicating with spirits. A secondary belief is that spirits are in some way closer to God than living humans, and that spirits themselves are capable of growth and perfection. The afterlife is therefore not a static place, but one in which spirits continue to evolve. The two beliefs: that contact with spirits is possible, and that spirits are more advanced than humans, leads to a third belief, that spirits are capable of providing useful knowledge about moral and ethical issues, as well as about the nature of God and the afterlife. Thus many Spiritualists will speak of their spirit guides -specific spirits, often contacted, who are relied upon for worldly and spiritual guidance.

Comparisons with Other Faiths

Spiritualism emerged in a Christian environment and has many features in common with Christianity: an essentially Christian moral system, a perceived belief in the Judeo-Christian God, mystical panentheism, and liturgical practices such as Sunday services and the singing of hymns. The primary reason for these similarities is that Spiritualists believe that some spirits are "low" or mischevious, and delight in leading humans astray. Therefore, beginning with Swedenborg, believers have been cautioned to hesitate before following the advice of spirits, and have usually developed their beliefs within a Christian framework.

Nevertheless, on significant points Christianity and Spiritualism are quite different. Spiritualists do not believe that the acts of this life lead to the assignment of each soul into an eternity of either Heaven or Hell; rather, they view the afterlife as containing many hierarchically arrayed "spheres," through which each spirit can successfully progress. Spiritualists also differ from Christians in that the Judeo-Christian Bible is not the primary source from which they derive knowledge of God and the afterlife: their own personal contacts with spirits provide that source.

Religions other than Christianity have also influenced Spiritualism. Animist faiths, with a tradition of shamanism, are obviously similar, and in the first decades of Spiritualism many mediums claimed contact with American Indian spirit guides, in an apparent acknowledgment of these similarities. Unlike animists, however, spiritualists tend to speak only of the spirits of dead humans, and do not espouse a belief in spirits of trees, springs, or other natural features.

Buddhism and Hinduism share a belief with Spiritualism in the separation of the soul from the body at death, and its continued existence. Unlike Spiritualism, these faiths often believe in reincarnation, and they also hold that all features of a person's personality are extinguished at death. Spiritualists maintain, on the other hand, that the spirit continues to retain the personality it possessed during its (single) human existence.

Spiritism, the branch of Spiritualism developed by Allan Kardec and predominant in most Latin countries, has always emphasized reincarnation. According to Arthur Conan Doyle, most British Spiritualists of the early Twentieth century were indifferent to the doctrine of reincarnation, very few supported it, while a significant minority were vehemently opposed, since it had never been mentioned by spirits contacted in séance. Thus, according to Doyle, it is the empiricist bent of Anglophone Spiritualism – its effort to develop religious views from actual observation of phenomena – that kept Spiritualists of this period from embracing reincarnation (Doyle 1926: volume 2, 171-181).

Spiritualism also differs from occult movements, such as Order of the Golden Dawn or the contemporary Wiccan covens, in that spirits are not contacted in order to obtain magical powers (with the single exception of obtaining power for healing). For example, Madame Blavatsky (1831-1891) of the Theosophical Society only practiced mediumship in order to contact powerful spirits capable of confering esoteric knowledge. Blavatsky apparently did not believe that these spirits were deceased humans, and in fact held beliefs in reincarnation very similar to those of Hinduism (Braude 2001).

Developments after the 1920s

Already by the late nineteenth century Spiritualism had become increasingly syncretic, a natural development in a movement without central authority or dogma (Braude 2001). In its most syncretic form, Spiritualism is not readily distinguishable from the similarly syncretic New Age movement, and like the New Age movement draws heavily from shamanism and embraces the idea of reincarnation (Guthrie, Lucas, and Monroe 2000).

Most contemporary Spiritualists believe in reincarnation, but that the spirit rests between incarnations and retains the personality and physical characteristics, via the astral or spirit body, of the person in their most recent incarnation.

References

• Brandon, Ruth, The Spiritualists: The Passion for the Occult in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1983
• Braude, Ann. 2001. Radical Spirits: Spiritualism and Women's Rights in Nineteenth-Century America. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
• Britten, Emma Hardinge. 1884. Nineteenth Century Miracles: Spirits and their Work in Every Country of the Earth. New York: William Britten.
• Brown, Slater, The Heyday of Spiritualism, New York: Hawthorn Books, 1970
• Carroll, Bret E. 1997. Spiritualism in Antebellum America. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
• Doyle, Arthur Conan. The History of Spiritualism. New York: G.H. Doran, Co.
• Guthrie, John J. Jr., Phillip Charles Lucas, and Gary Monroe (editors). 2000. Cassadaga: the South’s Oldest Spiritualist Community. Gainesville, FL : University Press of Florida.
• Weisberg, Barbara, Talking to the Dead, San Francisco:Harper, 2004
• Wicker, Christine, Lily Dale: the True Story of the Town that talks to the Dead, San Francisco:Harper, 2003

See also

• Spiritualist Church
• Spiritism
• Theosophy
• Necromancy

Critics

• Michel Eugène Chevreul
• Harry Price
• Harry Houdini
• Thomson Jay Hudson
• James Randi

External links

• Спиритуализъм

Spiritualismus ספיריטואליזם 心霊主義 Spiritisme Spirytualizm Espiritualismo