Spiritualism

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 mediums. 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. Today, Spiritualism has obsorbed itself into British popular culture. Spiritualism is closely related to Spiritism, a religious movement that originated in France, and is today widespread in Brazil and other Latin countries.

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-19th 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[1], 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).