spiritualism (spiritism)

Spiritualism or spiritism is the belief that the human personality survives death and can communicate with the living through a sensitive medium. The spiritualist movement began in 1848 in upstate New York with the Fox sisters who claimed that spirits communicated with them by rapping on tables. (The "raps" were actually made by cracking their toe joints.) By the time the sisters admitted their fraud some thirty years later, there were tens of thousands of mediums holding séances where spirits entertained with numerous magical tricks such as making sounds, materializing objects, making lights glow, levitating tables and moving objects across the room. The mediums demonstrated every variety of psychic power from clairvoyance and clairaudience to telekinesis and telepathy. Repeated charges of fraud did little to stop the spiritualist movement until the 1920's when magicians such as Houdini exposed the techniques and methods of deceit used by mediums to fool even the wisest and holiest of men and women.

The Hollywood version of séances is fairly accurate: people sitting around a table, holding hands in a darkened room, a faked trance by the medium who passes on to the group any information given by the spirit, often accompanied by tricks such as the levitating table, mysterious sounds, materializing objects, etc. For many, spiritualism was "scientific proof" of life after death, which didn't involve any of the superstitious non-sense of religion.

See related entries on channeling and James Van Praagh.