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/spˈɪrɪtʃəwəlɪzm/ /spˈɪrɪtʃwəlˌɪzm/ Listen

noun

Spiritualism n.

The quality or state of being spiritual.

(Physiol.) The doctrine, in opposition to the materialists, that all which exists is spirit, or soul that what is called the external world is either a succession of notions impressed on the mind by the Deity, as maintained by Berkeley, or else the mere educt of the mind itself, as taught by Fichte.

A belief that departed spirits hold intercourse with mortals by means of physical phenomena, as by rappng, or during abnormal mental states, as in trances, or the like, commonly manifested through a person of special susceptibility, called a medium; spiritism; the doctrines and practices of spiritualists. "What is called spiritualism should, I think, be called a mental species of materialism."

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Etymology of 'Spiritualism'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Spiritualism" Quotes from Famous Books

... in connection with their healing magnetism so freely given to Spiritualism, should awaken sympathy if not ...

— Buchanan's Journal of Man, April 1887 - Volume 1, Number 3 • Various

... significantly across Mrs. Makely to me, and then frowned and shook his head. I asked her if she knew what he meant. "Why, didn't you know that spiritualism was that poor man's foible? He lost his son in a railroad ...

— A Traveler from Altruria: Romance • W. D. Howells

... was strange, its effect upon the young man was at least equally unforeseen. Greif had always despised persons who professed to dabble in the supernatural, and had laughed to scorn all the so-called manifestations of spiritualism, mesmerism, and super- rational force. When he had heard that the great astronomer Zollner had written a book to explain the performances of Slade, the medium, by means of a mathematical theory of a fourth dimension in space, Greif ...

— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford

... spiritual analysis. It was followed by "Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau, Saviour of Society," a book suggested by the collapse of the French Empire, and recalling the scathing satire with which he lashed the impostures of spiritualism in "Sludge the Medium." In 1872 he published "Fifine at the Fair," to the delight of those who loved him, and, as usual, to the irritation of those who did not. "Red Cotton Nightcap Country" appeared in the following year; and, after an interval of two years, was ...

— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne

... netted bead purses for the Select Home for Poor Gentlemen's Daughters. Josephine let down her back hair dowdily, partook recklessly of poetry and pickles, read inordinately in bed,—leaning all night on her elbow,—and was threatened with spinal curvature and spiritualism. Adelaide set invisible little traps in every nook and cranny, every cupboard and drawer, from basement to attic, and with a cheerful, innocent smile sat watching them night and day. Madeline, fiercely calm, warned off the others, with pale lips and flashing ...

— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various

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