Spiritualism

spiritualism: see spiritism.

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spiritualism

Belief that the souls of the dead can make contact with the living, usually through a medium or during abnormal mental states such as trances. The basis of spiritualism is the conviction that spirit is the essence of life and that it lives on after the body dies. A medium is a person sensitive to vibrations from the spirit world, who may hold meetings known as séances in order to seek messages from spirits. A “control” is a spirit that gives messages to the human medium, who in turn gives them to other people. Spirits are also thought to manifest themselves through such means as rapping or levitating objects. Some spiritualists claim powers of paranormal healing. Scientific study of spiritualist phenomena has been the focus of the Society for Psychical Research, founded in Britain in 1882. See also theosophy.

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spiritualism

1. the belief that the disembodied spirits of the dead, surviving in another world, can communicate with the living in this world, esp through mediums

2. the doctrines and practices associated with this belief

3. Philosophy the belief that because reality is to some extent immaterial it is therefore spiritual

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Spiritualism

Arcati, Madame

medium who materializes her client’s two successive wives. [Br. Drama: Noel Coward Blithe Spirit in On Stage, 236]

Medium, The

Menotti’s opera of a medium haunted by her own hoax. [Am. Opera: Benét, 653]

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Spiritualism 

(1) A mystical movement, the adherents of which believe that the souls of the deceased exist after death and that it is possible to communicate with these souls.

Spiritualism arose in the mid-19th century in the USA and soon spread both in the USA and in Western Europe. It traces its origins to ancient animistic beliefs and diverse conceptions of the existence of a supernatural world and of nonmaterial beings, such as spirits, demons, and angels. Its adherents believe in the possibility under certain conditions of communicating with such beings, including the souls of deceased people. These conceptions may be compared to the doctrine of the transmigration of souls in Brahmanism, Buddhism, and Hinduism and to doctrines of the ancient Egyptians and the Orphics and Pythagoreans in ancient Greece. Communication with the spirit world was regarded as the privilege of a small number of specially ordained people—magi, priests, or soothsayers, such as the Greek Pythians or Roman sibyls—and the means of communication were cloaked in deepest secrecy.

In contrast, spiritualism immediately assumed the character of a mass mystical movement whose followers sought “experimental” proof of the existence of the soul after death. In the practice of spiritualistic séances, phenomena of communication with spirits of the dead were considered manifestations of “physical medi-umism.” They included movements and knockings of various household articles, especially table tipping, sounds of musical instruments, the appearance of light, voices speaking, and even materialization, that is, the sudden appearance and equally sudden disappearance of individual parts of the body (hands or faces).

By the end of the 19th century, there were several million spiritualists in Great Britain and more than 10 million in the USA. Societies and associations of spiritualists were organized, and newspapers and journals were published; in Russia, the best known was the journal Rebus (1881–1917). The theorists of spiritualism were the American A. J. Davis and the Frenchman A. Kardec. Spiritualism evoked sharp criticism from materialist scientists. In 1871, on the proposal of D. I. Mendeleev, a commission was created under the auspices of St. Petersburg University for the study of spiritualistic phenomena, and it branded spiritualism superstition. F. Engels called spiritualism “the most barren of all superstitions” (K. Marx and F. Engels, Soch., 2nd ed., vol. 20, p. 382).

Spiritualism still exists in the West, with its followers united in communities and associations, including the National Spiritualist Association of Churches in America and the Spiritualist National Union and International Spiritualist Federation in Great Britain.

REFERENCES

Shakhnovich, M. I. Sovremennaia mistika v svete nauki. Moscow-Leningrad, 1965.
Doyle, A. C. History of Spiritualism, vols. 1–2. London, 1926.
(2) An objective, idealist philosophical view that regards spirit as the primary reality, as a special incorporeal reality that exists distinct from and independent of matter. “Spiritualism” was introduced into use as a philosophical term by V. Cousin. Subsequently, several schools and trends, primarily in French and Italian philosophy of the 19th and 20th centuries, were known as spiritualism, including those of J. Ravaisson-Mollien, J. Lachelier, E. Boutroux, A. Rosmini-Serbati, V. Gioberti, C. Renouvier, M. Sciacca, H. Bergson, and L. Lavelle.
All religious beliefs in the existence of god and the immortality of the soul are fundamentally spiritualistic. Spiritualism characterizes a most diverse collection of teachings of antiquity and modern times, which have asserted in opposition to materialism the fundamental nature of the spiritual principle. Such teachings include those of Plato, St. Augustine, Leibniz, G. Berkeley, and many others. Sometimes, in opposition to the intellectualistic forms of idealism, the irrational aspects of spirit are accentuated in the concept of spiritualism, with spirit being regarded as some kind of integral entity that cannot be reduced to reason, thought, or other individual phenomena.and