Introduction
Understanding Modern Spiritualism
Spiritualism affirms that personality survives death and can communicate through mediums. It developed in a passionate era through telegraph, social reform, magnetism and new sciences.
Sessions, beatings, automatic writing, trance and photography of spirits became very popular.
To be retained
Four essential principles
- Spiritualism affirms that personality survives death and can communicate through mediums.
- Sessions, beatings, automatic writing, trance and photography of spirits became very popular.
- Spiritualist churches organize services, prayers, songs, healing and mediumistic demonstrations.
- spiritualism transforms mourning into a belief that the dead continue to evolve and communicate.
Small timeline
A tradition shaped by history
Origins and training
Sessions, beatings, automatic writing, trance and photography of spirits became very popular.
Historical developments
Many women acquired an unusual public discourse as mediums and some maintained abolitionism and women's rights.
Ritual life and teachings
Spiritualist churches organize services, prayers, songs, healing and mediumistic demonstrations.
A living and plural tradition
The movement also experienced fraud and conflicts over evidence.
History and development
Sessions, beatings, automatic writing, trance and photography of spirits became very popular. Many women acquired as mediums an unusual public speech and some maintained abolitionism and women's rights.
The movement also experienced fraud and conflicts over evidence. The loss of world wars revived interest in Europe.
Worldview, beliefs and practices
Spiritualist churches organize services, prayers, songs, healing and psychic demonstrations. Some insist on God and Jesus, others on a more open philosophy.
Medium-sized development is done in circles. Unlike Kardec, reincarnation is not a universal principle.
Texts, symbols and transmission
There is no single cannon. Andrew Jackson Davis, Emma Hardinge Britten and Arthur Conan Doyle influenced the movement.
Symbols: light, butterfly, dove, spirit trumpet and seven principles in some churches.
What research can and cannot say
The tests of mediumness remain controversial and no demonstration of post-mortem communication makes scientific consensus. Grief, memory, cold reading and social expectations explain certain phenomena, without exhausting the experience lived by the faithful.
References