Spiritualism (movement)

Beliefs

Spiritualists hold that communication with the spirits of deceased people, regarded as discarnate humans, is possible. They believe that spirit mediums are especially gifted for such communication, but that anyone can become a medium through study and practice. Spirits are thought to be capable of growth and perfection, progressing through higher spheres or planes, and the afterlife is not static but a realm of evolution. These beliefs lead to the conviction that spirits can provide knowledge about moral and ethical issues, God, and the afterlife.

Many believers rely on spirit guides, specific spirits contacted for guidance. Formal communication sessions, called séances, are conducted by mediums. The movement lacks a defined set of rules, but various organizations have adopted declarations of principles. The National Spiritualist Association adopted a six-article Declaration of Principles in October 1899 in Chicago, Illinois, adding two more in October 1909 in Rochester, New York, and a ninth in October 1944 in St. Louis, Missouri. In the UK, the Spiritualists' National Union bases its teachings on Seven Principles.

Origins

Spiritualism first appeared in the 1840s in the Burned-over District of upstate New York, a region where earlier religious movements like Millerism and Mormonism had emerged during the Second Great Awakening, though those movements did not associate with spiritualism. This area fostered beliefs that direct communication with God or angels was possible and that God would not act harshly, such as condemning unbaptised infants to eternal hell. The writings of Emanuel Swedenborg and the teachings of Franz Mesmer provided models for seeking direct personal knowledge of the afterlife.

Swedenborg, who claimed to communicate with spirits while awake, described a spirit world with multiple heavens and hells and viewed spirits as intermediaries between God and humans. Although he warned against seeking spirit contact, his works inspired others to do so. Swedenborg had been a respected inventor and scientist before experiencing intense mystical visions in 1741, claiming a divine call to reform Christianity. Mesmer contributed a technique later known as hypnotism, which could induce trances and reports of contact with supernatural beings, often presented with showmanship in mid-19th-century North America.

Evolution

Spiritualists reacted with uncertainty to late 19th- and early 20th-century theories of evolution. The concept of evolution aligned with spiritualist ideas of progressive human development, but the belief in animal origins threatened the foundation of the immortality of the spirit, as it suggested humans might not be specially endowed with spirits. This led spiritualists to embrace spiritual evolution, teaching that after death spirits progress to new spheres of existence at a rate more rapid and under conditions more favorable to growth than on Earth.

John Page Hopps, in a talk at the London Spiritualist Alliance, supported both evolution and spiritualism, claiming humanity started imperfect from the animal's darkness and would rise into the angel's light, evolving after death on various spheres. Theosophy opposed this interpretation, teaching a metaphysical theory of evolution mixed with human devolution, where humanity starts in a state of perfection and falls into materialization, eventually regaining self-conscious perfection through reincarnation. Madame Blavatsky was critical of spiritualism and aligned theosophy with Eastern occultism.

After the 1920s

After the 1920s, spiritualism evolved in three directions that all persist today. The first continued the tradition of individual practitioners organized in circles centered on a medium and clients, without hierarchy or dogma. By the late 19th century, spiritualism had become increasingly syncretic, and today these unorganized circles resemble the new age movement, though theosophy is a closer precursor. Contemporary syncretic spiritualists hold heterogeneous beliefs on reincarnation or the existence of God, with some adopting new age or neo-pagan ideas and others calling themselves Christian spiritualists.

Spiritualism also influenced art, having a pervasive impact on artistic consciousness and contributing to modernism, inspiring the abstract art of Vasily Kandinsky, Piet Mondrian, Kasimir Malevich, Hilma af Klint, Georgiana Houghton, and František Kupka. The second direction involved formal organization patterned after Christian denominations, with established liturgies, seven principles, and training for mediums. In the US, spiritualist churches are primarily affiliated with the National Spiritualist Association of Churches or the spiritual church movement; in the UK, the Spiritualists' National Union, founded in 1890, is predominant.

Formal education in spiritualist practice began in the 1920s with organizations like the William T. Stead Center in Chicago and continues at the Arthur Findlay College in England and the Morris Pratt Institute in Wisconsin.