SPIRITUALISM

in religion, the belief, or practices based upon the belief, that departed souls hold intercourse with mortals, usually through a medium by means of physical phenomena or during abnormal mental states, such as trances. The important terms in spiritualism are defined in the following ways. Spirit is the essential part of man. After the death of the body the spirit lives on. The spirit world is the world of disembodied spirits. A medium is a person on earth who is sensitive to vibrations from the spirit world and is able to convey messages between that world and this one and to produce other spiritualist phenomena. A control is a disembodied spirit who gives messages to a medium who in turn gives them to men and women on Earth. A sance is a meeting (usually small) around a medium to seek messages from the spirits. Telepathy is the communication of ideas through other than physical means. Clairvoyance is the power of seeing through means other than the physical eye. Clairaudience is the power of hearing through means other than the physical ear. Levitation is the lifting of an object by other than the physical means. Materialization is the appearance of a spirit in matter. Apport is the production of objects without physical means or the passing of objects through objects ( e.g., walls) which have no openings. An important later development of spiritualism has been in the direction of spirit healing. Unorthodox healings have in the past been associated with sacred places and religious rites, and medical science is inclined to attribute all such healings to the normal process of suggestion working under favourable conditions. But it is also claimed that there is a genuine power of paranormal healing found in certain persons, and from the spiritualist point of view these healers are regarded as mediums who acts as agents of spirit doctors. Healings are claimed for a variety of conditions, some of which are regarded as incurable by orthodox medicine. The attempt to communicate with discarnate spirits seems to be one of the forms that religion may take in human societies and to be widely distributed in space and time. Practices very like those of a modern spiritualistic sance have been reported in various parts of the world, as, for example, Haiti and among the North American Indians, and there is no reason for supposing that these are of recent origin. The record of a materialization sance of long ago is preserved in the account in the Old Testament of Saul's visit to the witch, or medium, of Endor, in the course of which a materialization appeared that was regarded by the king as the prophet Samuel (I Sam. 28:719). Certain mediumistic phenomena were reported in the witch trials of the Middle Ages, particularly the appearance of spirits in quasi-material form and the obtaining of knowledge through spirits. It may be supposed that many of those persecuted for the practice of witchcraft were what would now be called mediumsalthough their mediumship was coloured by the fact that it was organized in a forbidden cult, and the spirits with which communication was established were regarded as devils. Some mediumistic phenomena were also found among those regarded in the Middle Ages as possessed by devils; e.g., speaking in languages unknown to the speaker and levitation or partial levitation. Although spiritualistic practices seem to be widespread, they were virtually unknown in modern civilized society until March 1848, when odd happenings were reported at the house of a farmer named Fox in a small town in New York state. Previous occupants of the house had been disturbed by unexplained raps at night. After a severe disturbance by raps during Mr. Fox's tenancy, his youngest daughter, Kate, was said to have successfully challenged the supposed spirit to repeat the number of times she flipped her fingers. Once communication had apparently been established a code was agreed upon by which the raps given could answer questions, and the spirit was said to have identified himself as a man who had been murdered in the house. The practice of having sittings for communication with spirits spread rapidly from that time. Kate Fox (afterward Mrs. Fox-Jencken) and one of her sisters gave much of their later lives to acting as mediums in the United States and in England. Many other mediums gave similar sittings, and the movement became widespread. The attempt to communicate with spirits by table turning became a popular pastime in Victorian drawing rooms. Much of this activity was motivated by mere curiosity and the fascination of the supernatural, but it also had a more serious intention. Many inquirers wished to convince themselves as to human survival of bodily death; others suffered from the loss of loved relatives and friends and found consolation in the belief that they were able to communicate with them; others wanted information about the future life. To promote these serious ends, spiritualist associations or churches were formed. The rise of this new cult was not allowed to take place without opposition. There was not only verbal condemnation with accusations of fraud but also mob violence. This was, no doubt, partly a popular reaction to a novel system of ideas and practices that were suspected of being based on either fraud or evil. The suspicion of evil was perhaps strengthened by a conjectured relationship to the discarded system of witchcraft. Although individual spiritualists were often members (or even ministers) of Christian churches, the general tendency of the established religious bodies was to suspect the movement and its claim to a new revelation that would either supplement or replace the Christian revelation. The spiritualist practices seemed also to some religious bodies to be a part of the forbidden activity of necromancy. A decree of the Holy Office of the Roman Catholic church in 1898 condemned spiritistic practices, although permitting legitimate scientific investigation of mediumistic phenomena. For those who had lost their faith in traditional Christianity, there was offered a new religion based not on an ancient tradition but on fact that could be observed by anyone. For those to whom materialistic ways of thinking had closed the possibility of a life after death, there was offered a new hope of immortality. To those suffering from grief after the death of their loved ones, there was offered the possibility of communicating with them. There were strong emotional involvements in both the rejection and the acceptance of spiritualism that have made difficult an impartial appraisal of the evidence. in philosophy, a characteristic of any system of thought that affirms the existence of immaterial reality imperceptible to the senses. So defined, spiritualism embraces a vast array of highly diversified philosophical views. Most patently, it applies to any philosophy accepting the notion of an infinite, personal God, the immortality of the soul, or the immateriality of the intellect and will. Less obviously, it includes belief in such ideas as finite cosmic forces or a universal mind, provided that they transcend the limits of gross Materialistic interpretation. Spiritualism as such says nothing about matter, the nature of a supreme being or a universal force, or the precise nature of spiritual reality itself. In ancient Greece Pindar (flourished 5th century BC) expounded in his odes the substance of a spiritualistic Orphic mysticism by attributing a divine origin to the soul, which resides temporarily as a guest in the home of the body and then returns to its source for reward or punishment after death. Plato's view of the soul also marks him as a spiritualist, and Aristotle was a spiritualist for distinguishing the active from the passive intellect and for conceiving of God as pure actuality (knowledge knowing itself). Ren Descartes, often acclaimed as the father of modern philosophy, viewed the soul as the unique source of activity, distinct from, but operating within, a body. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, a versatile German Rationalist, postulated a spiritualistic world of psychic monads. The Idealists F.H. Bradley, Josiah Royce, and William Ernest Hocking saw individuals as mere aspects of a universal mind. For Giovanni Gentile, propounder of a philosophy of actualism in Italy, the pure activity of self-consciousness is the sole reality. The steadfast belief in a personal God maintained by Henri Bergson, a French intuitionist, was joined to his belief in a spiritual cosmic force (lan vital). Modern Personalism gives priority to persons and personality in explaining the universe. The French philosophers Louis Lavelle and Ren Le Senne, specifically known as spiritualists, launched the publication Philosophie de l'esprit (Philosophy of the Spirit) in 1934 to ensure that spirit was given proper attention in modern philosophy. Though this journal professed no philosophical preference, it has given special attention to personality and to forms of intuitionism. Dualism and monism, theism and atheism, pantheism, Idealism, and many other philosophical positions are thus said to be compatible with spiritualism as long as they allow for a reality independent from and superior to matter. Additional reading