Spiritualism (disambiguation)
Encyclopedia
Spiritualism refers to a belief in an afterlife
, and that spirits
of the dead can communicate with the living through a medium
. It also refers to the philosophy, doctrine, or religion pertaining to a spiritual aspect of existence.
Spiritualism may also refer to:
Religion
Philosophy
Afterlife
The afterlife is the belief that a part of, or essence of, or soul of an individual, which carries with it and confers personal identity, survives the death of the body of this world and this lifetime, by natural or supernatural means, in contrast to the belief in eternal...
, and that spirits
Soul
A soul in certain spiritual, philosophical, and psychological traditions is the incorporeal essence of a person or living thing or object. Many philosophical and spiritual systems teach that humans have souls, and others teach that all living things and even inanimate objects have souls. The...
of the dead can communicate with the living through a medium
Mediumship
Mediumship is described as a form of communication with spirits. It is a practice in religious beliefs such as Spiritualism, Spiritism, Espiritismo, Candomblé, Voodoo and Umbanda.- Concept :...
. It also refers to the philosophy, doctrine, or religion pertaining to a spiritual aspect of existence.
Spiritualism may also refer to:
Religion
- SpiritualismSpiritualismSpiritualism is a belief system or religion, postulating the belief that spirits of the dead residing in the spirit world have both the ability and the inclination to communicate with the living...
, a religious movement that began in the United States and which has flourished internationally from the 1840s to the present - Spiritual church movementSpiritual church movementThe spiritual church movement is an informal name for a group of loosely allied and also independent Spiritualist churches and Spiritualist denominations that have in common the fact that they have been historically based in the African American community. Many of them owe their origin to the...
, a religious movement with historically African American membership and Christian forms of worship that developed in the United States in the wake of the expulsion of black members from primarily white Spiritualist denominations - SpiritismSpiritismSpiritism is a loose corpus of religious faiths having in common the general belief in the survival of a spirit after death. In a stricter sense, it is the religion, beliefs and practices of the people affiliated to the International Spiritist Union, based on the works of Allan Kardec and others...
, a similar religious movement, established in France in the mid-nineteenth century, often referred to as "Kardecist spiritism" after its founder Allan Kardec, and quite popular in the Caribbean nations - EspiritismoEspiritismoEspiritismo is the Latin American and Caribbean belief that good and evil spirits can affect health, luck and other elements of human life....
, a cultural variation on Spiritism and Spiritualism, popular in Latin American nations, particularly Mexico
Philosophy
- Spiritualism (beliefs)Spiritualism (beliefs)Spiritualism is a dualist metaphysical belief that the world is made up of at least two fundamental substances, matter and spirit. This very broad metaphysical distinction is further developed into many and various forms by the inclusion of details about what spiritual entities exist such as a...
, the belief that spirits of the dead can communicate with the living - Spiritualism (philosophy)Spiritualism (philosophy)In philosophy, spiritualism is the notion, shared by a wide variety of systems of thought, that there is an immaterial reality that cannot be perceived by the senses...
, the idea, in any system of thought, that there exists an immaterial reality that is beyond the reach of the senses - IdealismIdealismIn philosophy, idealism is the family of views which assert that reality, or reality as we can know it, is fundamentally mental, mentally constructed, or otherwise immaterial. Epistemologically, idealism manifests as a skepticism about the possibility of knowing any mind-independent thing...
, a Western philosophy pertaining to the idea that matter can be explained by mind but that mind cannot be explained by matter