Spiritualist Movement

The spiritualist movement, centered in the Englishspeaking parts of North America and in the United Kingdom, is a loosely structured new religious movement (NRM) that emphasizes the immortality of individual spirits, contact with the spirit world through spirit mediums, and spiritual healing. Like spiritualism in the generic sense, found in various forms throughout the world, it denies the finality of death, but it also has many functions depending upon particular social conditions.

Although spirit mediumship is the role of the “spirit medium,” and spiritual healing is the role of the “shaman,” these two roles overlap in many societies. Both mediums and shamans contact the spirit world, the former for information, and the latter to harness the healing power of spirits.

Mediumistic and Healing Procedures

It is common for both spirit mediums and healers (shamans) to work in an altered state of consciousness, brought on by meditation and/or by prayer. In spiritualist churches today, this altered state is seldom deeper than a light trance, and it rarely involves spirit possession (a spirit taking over the body of the medium or healer). Nevertheless, mediums often say that they have a team of one or more spirit guides (sometimes called “controls”) to help bring in messages from other spirits. Also, healers may attribute their healing power to “spirit,” which could be anything from a general god-force to particular spirits working through the healer.

Spirit mediums report acquiring information from the spirit world in a variety of ways or “modalities.” In one study of 98 American mediums, 70#x0025; reported being clairvoyant (“clearseeing,” that is, getting visual images), 61#x0025; said they were clairaudient (“clear-hearing,” that is, getting voices or other sounds), and 40#x0025; thought they were clairsentient or kinesthetic (“clear-feeling” or experiencing body sensations). All of these modalities may be experienced either as realistic sensory inputs or as imagined or dream-like impressions.

Shamans use a great variety of healing procedures in world societies, but spiritualists in particular are trained to do “church healings.” These typically consist of brief (5–10 minute) sessions in [Page 884]which people from the congregation come up to sit on individual benches while the healers place their hands near the sitters' bodies, covering most of the body but with limited touching.

Functions of Mediumship and Healing

Anthropological studies have found a number of functions served by spirit mediumship. In traditional Chinese society, it has been used to discover what the ancestors need in the spirit world. Living relatives then burn “hell banknotes” (imitation paper money made specially for this purpose), or small-scale effigies of cars and houses, or plastic imitations of jewelry for their ancestors, expecting health and wealth from their ancestors in return.

Spirit mediumship has sometimes been used for political purposes, such as in East Africa, particularly Zimbabwe, where the highest status political leaders claimed the aid of the most powerful spirits. The ghost dance movement among Plains Indians (1885–1890) relied upon returning spirit ancestors to protect them against the U.S. military. In ancient Greece, the Oracle at Delphi was consulted for many reasons, including for spiritual advice in political and military affairs.

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