Spiritualism

Spiritualism is a religious movement centered on the belief that personal identity survives death and that communication with the dead can occur through mediumship. It is a more specific term than spirituality. A person can be interested in spiritual questions without belonging to a Spiritualist church or accepting its account of communication.^[1]

Mediumship and a continuing life#

The National Spiritualist Association of Churches defines a medium as a person through whom messages or phenomena attributed to the spirit world can be conveyed. Its account includes mental experiences, such as reported voices or impressions, and physical phenomena, such as raps, writing, and materialization. These are the association's religious categories and claims.^[1]

For a believer, a message from a deceased relative can have a personal significance that differs from a general teaching about an afterlife. That helps explain why recognizable identity, rather than survival in the abstract, occupies an important place in Spiritualist accounts.

Churches and ethical teachings#

The association's declaration of principles connects continued life with belief in an Infinite Intelligence, the expression of that intelligence through nature, and individual moral responsibility. It emphasizes reciprocal kindness and maintains that reform remains possible after death.^[2]

This theology gives organized Spiritualism a scope beyond the séance. The association describes teaching, lectures, investigation of beliefs, and the protection of spiritual teachers as parts of its work. It also opposes compelling people to worship in a prescribed manner.^[2] Its declaration represents that organization; it should not be treated as a creed automatically shared by everyone who has attended a séance.

Spirit photography#

Photography became one of the movement's most striking nineteenth-century forms of representation. William Mumler produced portraits in which faint figures appeared beside or behind living sitters. The Metropolitan Museum of Art describes the support these images received from Spiritualists, who interpreted them as showing continued contact with the dead.^[3]

The museum also records a serious problem for Mumler's claims: one figure presented as a ghost was recognized as a living local resident. Mumler was later arrested in New York in 1869 on charges of fraud and larceny.^[3] The photograph is evidence of an image-making practice and its reception; identifying its additional figures as spirits requires a separate argument.

Neighboring subjects#

Spiritualism is not another name for Theistic Satanism or every practice involving spirits. Those traditions can frame death, authority, and contact differently. Likewise, an Ouija board may be used as entertainment even though talking boards also appear in accounts of spirit communication.

• Ouija board
• Theistic Satanism
• Divination
• Scrying

This encyclopedia covers traditions beyond the High Satanic Church. Church doctrine is identified as such when it appears.