A little bit about Spiritualism

[truthseekerlee]

Extracts from wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiritualism

Spiritualism is a religion that began in the United States and flourished from the 1840s to the 1920s—especially, though by no means exclusively—in English-language countries. By 1897, it is said to have had more than eight million followers in the United States and Europe, mostly drawn from the middle and upper classes. The religion's distinguishing feature is the belief that the spirits of the dead can be contacted by "mediums," and can therefore provide living people with information about the afterlife.

Developing for a half century without canonical texts or formal organization, the religion attained a cohesion by way of widely distributed periodicals, tours by trance lecturers, camp meetings, and the missionary activities of accomplished mediums. Many of the most prominent Spiritualists were women, and most adherents supported radical causes like abolition and women's suffrage. By the late 1880s the credibility of the movement had weakened, due to widely publicized accusations of fraud, and formal organization began to appear. Spiritualism still exists today, primarily through the form of the Spiritualist Church, though modern organisations have generally rejected more Christian elements and embraced more New Age ideas.

Swedenborg and Mesmer


Emanuel Swedenborg.

In this environment, the writings of Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772) and the teachings of Franz Mesmer (1734-1815) provided an example for those seeking direct personal knowledge of the afterlife. Swedenborg, who claimed to communicate with spirits while in trance states, described in his voluminous writings the structure of the spirit world. Two features of his view particularly resonated with the early spiritualists: first, that there is not a single hell and a single heaven, but rather a series of spheres through which a spirit progresses as it develops; second, that spirits mediate between God and humans, so that contact with the divine is through the spirits of deceased humans.


Franz Mesmer.



Mesmer did not contribute religious beliefs, but he brought a technique, later known as hypnotism, that it was claimed could induce trances and cause subjects to report contact with supernatural beings. There was a great deal of professional showmanship inherent to demonstrations of Mesmerism, and the practitioners who lectured in mid-19th-century North America sought to entertain their audiences as well as to demonstrate methods for personal contact with the divine.

Perhaps the best known of those who combined Swedenborg and Mesmer in a peculiarly North American synthesis was Andrew Jackson Davis, who called his system the Harmonial Philosophy. Davis was a practicing Mesmerist, faith healer and clairvoyant from Poughkeepsie, New York. His 1847 book, The Principles of Nature, Her Divine Revelations, and a Voice to Mankind, dictated to a friend while in a trance state, eventually became the nearest thing to a canonical work in a Spiritualist movement whose extreme individualism precluded the development of a single coherent world view.

Read the full article at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiritualism

[SusanNYC]

Thank you for posting this information. The (new) Manhattan Spiritualist Church on 35th Street between Park Ave. and Lexington, is held at The New Church which is a Swedenborgian Church and a historic landmark, and he himself is active in the church. His footsteps can be heard at times during meetings in the overhead reception and seance room. Such a beautiful little church with the steeple taken down for adjacent apartment buildings. He is very active there and I've felt his presence when psychometrizing his bust in the conference room. He's greeted me in a BIG way a few times upon walking up to the church when away for a while and has arranged for a pamphlet to magically appear near to me that's all about his religion. What a nice man

Susan x

[truthseekerlee]

Wow that's a wonderful experience!
It's great to know peoples encounters with the other side.