Spiritualism is a social religiousmovement popular in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, according to which an individual'sawareness persists afterdeath and may becontacted by the living.[1] The afterlife, or the "spirit world", is seen by spiritualists not as a static place, but as one in which spirits continue to interact and evolve. These two beliefs—that contact with spirits is possible, and that spirits are more advanced than humans—lead spiritualists to the belief that spirits are capable of advising the living onmoral andethical issues and the nature ofGod. Some spiritualists follow "spirit guides"—specific spirits relied upon for spiritual direction.[2][3]
Emanuel Swedenborg has some claim to be the father of spiritualism.[4] The movement developed and reached its largest following from the 1840s to the 1920s, especially inEnglish-speaking countries.[3][5] It flourished for a half century without canonical texts or formal organization, attaining cohesion through periodicals, tours by trance lecturers, camp meetings, and the missionary activities of accomplishedmediums. Many prominent spiritualists were women, and like most spiritualists, supported causes such as theabolition of slavery andwomen's suffrage.[3] By the late 1880s the credibility of the informal movement had weakened due to accusations of fraud perpetrated by mediums, and formal spiritualist organizations began to appear.[3] Spiritualism is currently practiced primarily through various denominationalspiritualist churches in the U.S., Canada and the United Kingdom.
Spiritualists believe in the possibility of communication with the spirits of dead people, whom they regard as "discarnate humans". They believe thatspirit mediums are gifted to carry on such communication, but that anyone may become a medium through study and practice. They believe that spirits are capable of growth and perfection, progressing through higher spheres or planes, and that theafterlife is not a static state, but one in which spirits evolve. The two beliefs—that contact with spirits is possible, and that spirits may dwell on a higher plane—lead to a third belief, that spirits can provide knowledge about moral and ethical issues, as well as aboutGod and the afterlife. Many believers therefore speak of "spirit guides"—specific spirits, often contacted, and relied upon for worldly and spiritual guidance.[2][3]
According to spiritualists, anyone may receive spirit messages, but formal communication sessions (séances) are held by mediums, who claim thereby to receive information about the afterlife.[2]
As an informal movement, spiritualism does not have a defined set of rules, but various spiritualist organizations within the United States have adopted variations on some or all of a "Declaration of Principles" developed between 1899 and 1944. In October 1899, a six article "Declaration of Principles" was adopted by theNational Spiritualist Association (NSA) at a convention in Chicago, Illinois.[6] An additional two principles were added by the NSA in October 1909, at a convention inRochester, New York.[7] Then, in October 1944, a ninth principle was adopted by the National Spiritualist Association of Churches, at a convention in St. Louis, Missouri.[citation needed]
In the UK, the main organization representing spiritualism is theSpiritualists' National Union (SNU), whose teachings are based on the Seven Principles.[8]
Spiritualism first appeared in the 1840s in the "Burned-over District" ofupstate New York, where earlier religious movements such asMillerism andMormonism had emerged during theSecond Great Awakening, although Millerism and Mormonism did not associate themselves with spiritualism.
This region of New York State was an environment in which many thought direct communication with God or angels was possible, and that God would not behave harshly—for example, that God would not condemnunbaptised infants to an eternity in Hell.[2]
In this environment, the writings ofEmanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772) and the teachings ofFranz Mesmer (1734–1815) provided an example for those seeking direct personal knowledge of the afterlife. Swedenborg, who claimed to communicate with spirits while awake, described 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 higher and lower heavens and hells; second, that spirits are intermediates between God and humans, so that the divine sometimes uses them as a means of communication.[2] Although Swedenborg warned against seeking out spirit contact, his works seem to have inspired in others the desire to do so.
Swedenborg was formerly a highly regarded inventor and scientist, achieving several engineering innovations and studying physiology and anatomy. Then, "in 1741, he also began to have a series of intense mystical experiences, dreams, and visions, claiming that he had been called by God to reform Christianity and introduce a new church."[9]
Mesmer did not contribute religious beliefs, but he brought a technique, later known ashypnotism, that it was claimed could induce trances and cause subjects to report contact with supernatural beings. There was a great deal of professional showmanship inherent to demonstrations ofMesmerism, and the practitioners who lectured in mid-19th-century North America sought to entertain their audiences as well as to demonstrate methods for personal contact with the divine.[2]
Perhaps the best known of those who combined Swedenborg and Mesmer in a peculiarly North American synthesis wasAndrew Jackson Davis, who called his system the "harmonial philosophy". Davis was a practisingMesmerist,faith healer andclairvoyant fromBlooming Grove, New York. He was also strongly influenced by the socialist theories ofFourierism.[10] His 1847 book,The Principles of Nature, Her Divine Revelations, and a Voice to Mankind,[11] dictated to a friend while in a trance state, eventually became the nearest thing to a canonical work in a spiritualist movement whose extremeindividualism precluded the development of a single coherent worldview.[2][3]
Spiritualists often set March 31, 1848, as the beginning of their movement. On that date,Kate and Margaret Fox, ofHydesville, New York, reported that they had made contact with a spirit that was later claimed to be the spirit of a murdered peddler whose body was found in the house, though no record of such a person was ever found. The spirit was said to have communicated through rapping noises, audible to onlookers. The evidence of the senses appealed to practically minded Americans, and the Fox sisters became a sensation. As the first celebrity mediums, the sisters quickly became famous for their public séances in New York.[12] However, in 1888 the Fox sisters admitted that this contact with the spirit was a hoax, though shortly afterward they recanted that admission.[2][3]
Amy and Isaac Post,Hicksite Quakers fromRochester, New York, had long been acquainted with the Fox family, and took the two girls into their home in the late spring of 1848. Immediately convinced of the veracity of the sisters' communications, they became early converts and introduced the young mediums to their circle of radicalQuaker friends.[13]
Consequently, many early participants in spiritualism were radical Quakers and others involved in the mid-nineteenth-centuryreforming movement. These reformers were uncomfortable with the more mainstream churches because those churches did little to fightslavery and even less to advance the cause ofwomen's rights.[3]
Such links with reform movements, often radically socialist, had already been prepared in the 1840s, as the example ofAndrew Jackson Davis shows. After 1848, many socialists became ardent spiritualists or occultists.[14]
The most popular trance lecturer prior to the American Civil War wasCora L. V. Scott (1840–1923). Young and beautiful, her appearance on stage fascinated men. Her audiences were struck by the contrast between her physical girlishness and the eloquence with which she spoke of spiritual matters, and found in that contrast support for the notion that spirits were speaking through her. Cora married four times, and on each occasion adopted her husband's last name. During her period of greatest activity, she was known as Cora Hatch.[3]
Another spiritualist wasAchsa W. Sprague, who was born November 17, 1827, inPlymouth Notch, Vermont. At the age of 20, she became ill withrheumatic fever and credited her eventual recovery to intercession by spirits. An extremely popular trance lecturer, she traveled about the United States until her death in 1861. Sprague was anabolitionist and an advocate of women's rights.[3]
Another spiritualist and trance medium prior to the Civil War wasPaschal Beverly Randolph (1825–1875), a man of mixed race, who also played a part in the abolitionist movement.[15] Nevertheless, many abolitionists and reformers held themselves aloof from the spiritualist movement; among the skeptics was abolitionistFrederick Douglass.[16]
Another social reform movement with significant spiritualist involvement was the effort to improve conditions of Native Americans. Kathryn Troy writes in a study of Indian ghosts in seances:
Undoubtedly, on some level spiritualists recognized the Indian spectres that appeared at seances as a symbol of the sins and subsequent guilt of the United States in its dealings with Native Americans. Spiritualists were literally haunted by the presence of Indians. But for many that guilt was not assuaged: rather, in order to confront the haunting and rectify it, they were galvanized into action. The political activism of spiritualists on behalf of Indians was thus the result of combining white guilt and fear of divine judgment with a new sense of purpose and responsibility.[17]
In the years following the sensation that greeted the Fox sisters, demonstrations of mediumship (séances andautomatic writing, for example) proved to be a profitable venture, and soon became popular forms of entertainment and spiritual catharsis. The Fox sisters earned a living this way and others followed their lead.[2][3] Showmanship became an increasingly important part of spiritualism, and the visible, audible, and tangible evidence of spirits escalated as mediums competed for paying audiences. As independent investigating commissions repeatedly established, most notably the 1887 report of theSeybert Commission,[18] fraud was widespread, and some of these cases were prosecuted in the courts.[19]
Despite numerous instances of chicanery, the appeal of spiritualism was strong. Prominent in the ranks of its adherents were those grieving the death of a loved one. Many families during the time of the American Civil War had seen their men go off and never return, and images of the battlefield, produced through the new medium of photography, demonstrated that their loved ones had not only died in overwhelmingly huge numbers, but horribly as well. One well known case is that ofMary Todd Lincoln who, grieving the loss of her son, organized séances in theWhite House which were attended by her husband, PresidentAbraham Lincoln.[16] The surge of Spiritualism during this time, and later duringWorld War I, was a direct response to those massive battlefield casualties.[20]
In addition, the movement appealed to reformers, who fortuitously found that the spirits favoured such causesdu jour as abolition of slavery, and equal rights for women.[3] It also appealed to some who had amaterialist orientation and rejected organized religion. In 1854 theutopian socialistRobert Owen was converted to spiritualism after "sittings" with the American medium Maria B. Hayden (credited with introducing spiritualism to England); Owen made a public profession of his new faith in his publicationThe Rational Quarterly Review and later wrote a pamphlet, "The future of the Human race; or great glorious and future revolution to be effected through the agency of departed spirits of good and superior men and women".[21]
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A number of scientists who investigated the phenomenon also became converts. They included chemist and physicistWilliam Crookes (1832–1919),[citation needed] evolutionary biologistAlfred Russel Wallace (1823–1913)[22][independent source needed] and physicist Sir Oliver Lodge.[citation needed] Nobel laureatePierre Curie was impressed by the mediumistic performances ofEusapia Palladino and advocated their scientific study.[23] Other prominent adherents included journalist and pacifistWilliam T. Stead (1849–1912)[24] and physician and authorArthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930).[20]
Doyle, who lost his son Kingsley in World War I, was also a member ofthe Ghost Club. Founded in London in 1862, its focus was the scientific study of alleged paranormal activities in order to prove (or refute) the existence of paranormal phenomena. Members of the club includedCharles Dickens, Sir William Crookes, SirWilliam F. Barrett, andHarry Price.[25] TheParis séances ofEusapia Palladino were attended by an enthusiasticPierre Curie and a dubiousMarie Curie.Thomas Edison wanted to develop a "spirit phone", an ethereal device that would summon to the living the voices of the dead and record them for posterity.[26]
The claims of spiritualists and others as to the reality of spirits were investigated by theSociety for Psychical Research, founded in London in 1882. The society set up a Committee on Haunted Houses.[27]
Prominent investigators who exposed cases of fraud came from a variety of backgrounds, including professional researchers such asFrank Podmore of theSociety for Psychical Research and Harry Price of theNational Laboratory of Psychical Research, and professionalconjurers such asJohn Nevil Maskelyne. Maskelyne exposed theDavenport brothers by appearing in the audience during their shows and explaining how the trick was done.
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The psychical researcherHereward Carrington exposed fraudulent mediums' tricks, such as those used in slate-writing,table-turning, trumpet mediumship, materializations, sealed-letter reading, andspirit photography.[28] The skepticJoseph McCabe, in his bookIs Spiritualism Based on Fraud? (1920), documented many fraudulent mediums and their tricks.[29]
Magicians and writers on magic have a long history of exposing the fraudulent methods of mediumship. During the 1920s, professional magicianHarry Houdini undertook a well-publicised campaign to expose fraudulent mediums; he was adamant that "Up to the present time everything that I have investigated has been the result of deluded brains."[30] Other magician or magic-author debunkers of spiritualist mediumship have includedChung Ling Soo,[31]Henry Evans,[32]Julien Proskauer,[33]Fulton Oursler,[34]Joseph Dunninger,[35] andJoseph Rinn.[36]
In February 1921Thomas Lynn Bradford, in an experiment designed to ascertain the existence of an afterlife, committed suicide in his apartment by blowing out the pilot light on his heater and turning on the gas. After that date, no further communication from him was received by an associate whom he had recruited for the purpose.[37]
The movement quickly spread throughout the world; though only in the United Kingdom did it become as widespread as in the United States.[5] Spiritualist organizations were formed in America and Europe, such as the London Spiritualist Alliance, which published a newspaper calledThe Light, featuring articles such as "Evenings at Home in Spiritual Séance", "Ghosts in Africa" and "Chronicles of Spirit Photography", advertisements for "mesmerists" andpatent medicines, and letters from readers about personal contact with ghosts.[38] In Britain, by 1853, invitations to tea among the prosperous and fashionable often included table-turning, a type of séance in which spirits were said to communicate with people seated around a table by tilting and rotating the table. By 1897, spiritualism was said to have more than eight million followers in the United States and Europe,[39] mostly drawn from themiddle andupper classes.
Spiritualism was mainly a middle- and upper-class movement, and especially popular with women. American spiritualists would meet in private homes for séances, at lecture halls for trance lectures, at state or national conventions, and at summer camps attended by thousands. Among the most significant of the camp meetings were Camp Etna, inEtna, Maine; Onset Bay Grove, inOnset, Massachusetts;Lily Dale, in western New York State;[40]Camp Chesterfield, in Indiana; theWonewoc Spiritualist Camp, inWonewoc, Wisconsin; andLake Pleasant, inMontague, Massachusetts. In foundingcamp meetings, the spiritualists appropriated a form developed by U.S. Protestant denominations in the early nineteenth century. Spiritualist camp meetings were located most densely in New England, but were also established across the upper Midwest.Cassadaga, Florida, is the most notable spiritualist camp meeting in the southern states.[2][3][41]
A number of spiritualist periodicals appeared in the nineteenth century, and these did much to hold the movement together. Among the most important were the weeklies theBanner of Light (Boston), theReligio-Philosophical Journal (Chicago),Mind and Matter (Philadelphia), theSpiritualist (London), and theMedium (London). Other influential periodicals were theRevue Spirite (France),Le Messager (Belgium),Annali dello Spiritismo (Italy),El Criterio Espiritista (Spain), and theHarbinger of Light (Australia). By 1880, there were about three dozen monthly spiritualist periodicals published around the world.[42] These periodicals differed a great deal from one another, reflecting the great differences among spiritualists. Some, such as the BritishSpiritual Magazine were Christian and conservative, openly rejecting the reform currents so strong within spiritualism. Others, such asHuman Nature, were pointedly non-Christian and supportive of socialism and reform efforts. Still others, such as theSpiritualist, attempted to view spiritualist phenomena from a scientific perspective, eschewing discussion on both theological and reform issues.[43]
Books on the supernatural were published for the growing middle class, such as 1852'sMysteries, by Charles Elliott, which contains "sketches of spirits and spiritual things", including accounts of theSalem witch trials, the Lane ghost, and the Rochester rappings.[44]The Night Side of Nature, by Catherine Crowe, published in 1853, provided definitions and accounts of wraiths, doppelgängers, apparitions and haunted houses.[45]
Mainstream newspapers treated stories of ghosts and haunting as they would any other news story. An account in theChicago Daily Tribune in 1891, "sufficiently bloody to suit the most fastidious taste", tells of a house believed to be haunted by the ghosts of three murder victims seeking revenge against their killer's son, who was eventually driven insane.
Many families, "having no faith in ghosts", thereafter moved into the house, but all soon moved out again.[46]
In the 1920s many "psychic" books were published of varied quality. Such books were often based on excursions initiated by the use ofOuija boards. A few of these popular books displayed unorganized spiritualism, though most were less insightful.[47]
The movement was extremely individualistic, with each person relying on his or her own experiences and reading to discern the nature of the afterlife. Organisation was therefore slow to appear, and when it did it was resisted by mediums and trance lecturers. Most members were content to attend Christian churches, and particularlyuniversalist churches harboured many spiritualists.
As the spiritualism movement began to fade, partly through the publicity of fraud accusations and partly through the appeal of religious movements such asChristian science, theSpiritualist Church was organised. This church can claim to be the main vestige of the movement left today in the United States.[2][3]
London-bornEmma Hardinge Britten (1823–99) moved to the United States in 1855 and was active in spiritualist circles as a trance lecturer and organiser. She is best known as a chronicler of the movement's spread, especially in her 1884Nineteenth Century Miracles: Spirits and Their Work in Every Country of the Earth, and her 1870Modern American Spiritualism, a detailed account of claims and investigations of mediumship beginning with the earliest days of the movement.
William Stainton Moses (1839–92) was anAnglican clergyman who, in the period from 1872 to 1883, filled 24 notebooks with automatic writing, much of which was said to describe conditions in the spirit world. However,Frank Podmore was skeptical of his alleged ability to communicate with spirits andJoseph McCabe described Moses as a "deliberate impostor", suggesting hisapports and all of his feats were the result of trickery.[48][49]
Eusapia Palladino (1854–1918) was an Italian spiritualist medium from the slums of Naples who made a career touring Italy, France, Germany, Britain, the United States, Russia and Poland. Palladino was said by believers to perform spiritualist phenomena in the dark: levitating tables, producing apports, and materializing spirits. On investigation, all these things were found to be products of trickery.[50][51]
The British mediumWilliam Eglinton (1857–1933) claimed to perform spiritualist phenomena such as movement of objects andmaterializations. All of his feats were exposed as tricks.[52][53]
TheBangs Sisters, Mary "May" E. Bangs (1862–1917) and Elizabeth "Lizzie" Snow Bangs (1859–1920), were two spiritualist mediums based in Chicago, who made a career out of painting the dead or "spirit portraits".
Mina Crandon (1888–1941), a spiritualist medium in the 1920s, was known for producing anectoplasm hand during her séances. The hand was later exposed as a trick when biologists found it to be made from a piece of carved animal liver.[54] In 1934, the psychical researcherWalter Franklin Prince described the Crandon case as "the most ingenious, persistent, and fantastic complex of fraud in the history of psychic research."[55]
The American voice mediumEtta Wriedt (1859–1942) was exposed as a fraud by the physicistKristian Birkeland when he discovered that the noises produced by her trumpet were caused by chemical explosions induced by potassium and water and in other cases by lycopodium powder.[56]
Another well-known medium was the Scottish materialization mediumHelen Duncan (1897–1956). In 1928 photographer Harvey Metcalfe attended a series of séances at Duncan's house and took flash photographs of Duncan and her alleged "materialization" spirits, including her spirit guide "Peggy".[57] The photographs revealed the "spirits" to have been fraudulently produced, using dolls made from painted papier-mâché masks, draped in old sheets.[58] Duncan was later tested byHarry Price at theNational Laboratory of Psychical Research; photographs revealed Duncan'sectoplasm to be made fromcheesecloth, rubber gloves, and cut-out heads from magazine covers.[59][60]
Spiritualists reacted with an uncertainty to the theories ofevolution in the late 19th and early 20th century. Broadly speaking the concept of evolution fitted the spiritualist thought of the progressive development of humanity. At the same time, however, the belief in the animal origins of humanity threatened the foundation of the immortality of thespirit, for if humans had not been created by God, it was scarcely plausible that they would be specially endowed with spirits. This led to spiritualists embracingspiritual evolution.[61]
The spiritualists' view of evolution did not stop at death. Spiritualism taught that after death spirits progressed to spiritual states in new spheres of existence. According to spiritualists, evolution occurred in thespirit world "at a rate more rapid and under conditions more favourable to growth" than encountered on earth.[62]
In a talk at the London Spiritualist Alliance,John Page Hopps (1834–1911) supported both evolution and spiritualism. Hopps claimed humanity had started off imperfect "out of the animal's darkness" but would rise into the "angel's marvellous light". Hopps claimed humans were not fallen but rising creatures and that after death they would evolve on a number of spheres of existence to perfection.[62]
Theosophy is in opposition to the spiritualist interpretation of evolution. Theosophy teaches a metaphysical theory of evolution mixed withhuman devolution. Spiritualists do not accept the devolution of the theosophists. To theosophy, humanity starts in a state of perfection (seeGolden age) and falls into a process of progressive materialization (devolution), developing the mind and losing the spiritual consciousness. After the gathering of experience and growth through repeatedreincarnations humanity will regain the original spiritual state, which is now one of self-conscious perfection.
Theosophy and spiritualism were both very popular metaphysical schools of thought especially in the early 20th century and thus were always clashing in their different beliefs.Madame Blavatsky was critical of spiritualism; she distanced theosophy from spiritualism as far as she could and allied herself with eastern occultism.[63]
One medium who rejected evolution wasCora L. V. Scott; she dismissed evolution in her lectures and instead supported a type ofpantheistic spiritualism.[64] The spiritualistGerald Massey wrote thatDarwin's theory of evolution was incomplete.[65]
Alfred Russel Wallace believed qualitative novelties could arise through the process of spiritual evolution, in particular the phenomena of life and mind. Wallace attributed these novelties to asupernatural agency.[66] Later in his life, Wallace was an advocate of spiritualism and believed in an immaterial origin for the higher mental faculties of humans; he believed that evolution suggested that the universe had a purpose, and that certain aspects of living organisms are not explainable in terms of purely materialistic processes, in a 1909 magazine article entitled "The World of Life", which he later expanded into a book of the same name.[67] Wallace argued in his 1911 bookWorld of Life for a spiritual approach to evolution and described evolution as "creative power, directive mind and ultimate purpose". Wallace believednatural selection could not explainintelligence ormorality in the human being so suggested that non-material spiritual forces accounted for these. Wallace believed the spiritual nature of humanity could not have come about by natural selection alone, the origins of the spiritual nature must originate "in the unseen universe of spirit".[68][69]
Oliver Lodge also promoted a version of spiritual evolution in his booksMan and the Universe (1908),Making of Man (1924) andEvolution and Creation (1926). The spiritualist element in the synthesis was most prominent in Lodge's 1916 bookRaymond, or Life and Death which revived a large interest for the public in the paranormal.[70]
Allan Kardec promoted a version of spiritualism,Spiritism, which combined spiritual evolution withreincarnation, popularized by French romantic socialists.[71][72] Spiritism also established a peculiar relationship with the philosophy ofPositivism.[73] While Positivism rejected theological and metaphysical explanations, valuing only empirical and scientific knowledge, Kardec sought to integrate this vision with the belief in the existence of the spirit and in communication with the dead.[72] Thus, Spiritism presented itself as a "Positive Faith", attempting to reconcile the rational and investigative method of Positivism with the belief in the immortality of the soul and in reincarnation.[74] Kardec appropriated the scientific language of the time to give legitimacy to his doctrine, structuring it as a kind of "spiritual science" that offered evidence of life after death and promoted a reforming morality in a context of social and religious crisis in the 19th century.[75]
After the 1920s, spiritualism evolved in three different directions, all of which exist today.
The first of these continued the tradition of individual practitioners, organised in circles centered on a medium and clients, without any hierarchy or dogma. Already by the late 19th century spiritualism had become increasinglysyncretic, a natural development in a movement without central authority or dogma.[3] Today, among these unorganised circles, spiritualism is similar to the new age movement. However, theosophy, with its inclusion of Eastern religion, astrology, ritual magic and reincarnation, is an example of a closer precursor of the 20th-century new age movement.[76] Today's syncretic spiritualists are quite heterogeneous in their beliefs regarding issues such as reincarnation or the existence of God. Some appropriate new age andneo-pagan beliefs, while others call themselves "Christian spiritualists", continuing with the tradition of cautiously incorporating spiritualist experiences into their Christian faith.
Spiritualism also influenced art, having a pervasive influence on artistic consciousness, with spiritualist art having a huge impact on what became modernism and therefore art today.[77]
Spiritualism also inspired the pioneeringabstract art ofVasily Kandinsky,Piet Mondrian,Kasimir Malevich,Hilma af Klint,Georgiana Houghton,[78] andFrantišek Kupka.[79]
The second direction taken has been to adopt formal organization, patterned after Christian denominations, with established liturgies and a set of seven principles, and training requirements for mediums. In the United States the spiritualist churches are primarily affiliated either with theNational Spiritualist Association of Churches or the loosely allied group of denominations known as the spiritual church movement; in the U.K. the predominant organization is theSpiritualists' National Union, founded in 1890.[citation needed]
Formal education in spiritualist practice emerged in 1920s, with organizations like the William T. Stead Center in Chicago, Illinois, and continue today with theArthur Findlay College at Stansted Hall in England, and theMorris Pratt Institute in Wisconsin, United States.[citation needed]
Diversity of belief among organized spiritualists has led to a few schisms, the most notable occurring in the U.K. in 1957 between those who held the movement to be a religionsui generis (of its own with unique characteristics), and a minority who held it to be a denomination within Christianity. In the United States, this distinction can be seen between the less Christian organization, the National Spiritualist Association of Churches, and the more Christian spiritual church movement.[citation needed]
The practice of organized spiritualism today resembles that of any other religion, having discarded most showmanship, particularly those elements resembling the conjurer's art. There is thus a much greater emphasis on "mental" mediumship and an almost complete avoidance of the apparently miraculous "materializing" mediumship that so fascinated early believers such as Arthur Conan Doyle.[80]
Already as early as 1882, with the founding of theSociety for Psychical Research (SPR), parapsychologists emerged to investigate spiritualist claims.[81] The SPR's investigations into spiritualism exposed many fraudulent mediums which contributed to the decline of interest in physical mediumship.[82]
Spiritualism and its belief system were affirmed as covered by the Employment Equality Regulations 2003 at the United Kingdom Employment Appeal Tribunal in 2009.[83]
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{{cite book}}:ISBN / Date incompatibility (help)Spiritist philosophy, so accessibly presented in Kardec's books, struck many educated middle- and lower middle-class people as rational, consoling, and reassuringly familiar. Rooted in Romantic Socialism and Positivism, it fit the expectations of many seekers of alternative cosmologies especially those sympathetic to the visionary discourse of the mid-nineteenth-century left. (...) He accomplished this change of direction by adapting one of the key elements of Charles Fourier's cosmology—the idea of reincarnation—and bolstering it with an epistemology drawn from Comtean Positivism.
{{cite book}}:ISBN / Date incompatibility (help)CS1 maint: publisher location (link){{cite book}}:ISBN / Date incompatibility (help){{cite book}}:ISBN / Date incompatibility (help)
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