A: A new or radical religious movement outside the mainstream of thought and practice. Cults often organize around a strong central personality and emphasize community. They are often self-sufficient and cut off by choice from society, either physically, socially or both. Response Spiritualism is outside the mainstream, but is not really new. Modern Spiritualism began in 1848 when the Fox sisters discovered that they could communicate with people living in the Spirit World, in particular, a peddler who had died (was murdered) in the house their family was living in. Primitive (pre-modern) Spiritualism has probably been in existence as long as human beings themselves. From a religious perspective, Spiritualism could be viewed as radical. Many popular religions limit their communication to God alone, and only the spiritually learned (priests, rabbbis, pastors, etc.) can communicate directly with God. The idea of being able to communicate with 'normal people' such your friends, loved ones, and relatives who have died and are living in the Spirit World is often seen as radical when compared to mainstream religions. If radical is defined in terms of practices that endanger your physical well-being, then Spiritualism is not radical. Spiritualism does not advocate the use fasting, drugs, or other physically demanding procedures for spiritual advancement. Normally, meditation is about as physical as it ever gets, which certainly isn't harmful - studies have shown meditation to be beneficial, independent of your spiritual orientation.

However, just to 'cover all of the bases', certain types of trance mediumship can prove harmful to the medium if the proper safeguards are not taken, and can sometimes be fatal. This type of mediumship is extremely rare and is very difficult to develop - either 'you have it or you don't', and if you do 'have it' you will need plenty of training and assistance. To put it into perspective, compare it to the high wire act in a circus. Usually, only one or two individuals actually perform this feat. The ones who do perform it are very experienced and have capable assistants to help them. Even so, some accidents and fatalities have occurred. So in other words, as long as you don't take your Spiritualism up on the high wire without any training, you're perfectly safe. Besides, the high wire is not for everybody anyway. Spiritualism is not organized around a strong central personality. Actually, Spiritualism is organized around no personalities at all whatsoever. The Fox sisters are not treated as Goddesses, although they are certainly respected for the hard work they did - they went through many trials and tribulations to prove to others that they weren't making everything up. But there is no central personality that Spiritualists worship or follow - neither on the earth plane nor in the Spirit World. Spiritualists believe in God of course, and God could be considered a personality, but Spiritualism doesn't define God as a personality. God is actually undefined, and Spiritualists often use terms such as 'infinite intelligence' or the 'God of your understanding' when referring to God. Community is not emphasized any more or less in Spiritualism than it is in any 'mainstream' religion. The concept of community centers around church gatherings and activities just like any other religion. Spiritualism does not necessarily promote nor require communal living arrangements.

Spiritualism does not cut off people from society in any manner. I have never heard of anyone being asked to leave their family and friends and sell all their belongings because it is a requirement to learn about Spiritualism. Thank goodness it's not a requirement! I'm not Bill Gates, but I appreciate the material things I have. I certainly value my family and friends much much more than material things, and I am not willing to give them up just because someone else tells me I have to. I have never heard of a Spiritualist trying to make a person cut themselves off from society either. There just isn't any need to do so, and if you come across someone who is forcing you to abandon society in the name of Spiritualism, run away far and fast! Any decisions you make should be wholly yours, because you are responsible for your choices. Article seven in the Declaration of Principles states that you are personally responsible - 'We affirm the moral responsibility of the individual, and that we make our own happiness or unhappiness as we obey or disobey Nature's physical and spiritual laws.' * YOU can choose to cut yourself off from society if you want to, but Spiritualism will never ask you, or make you, abandon society.

Q: Have any cults crossed over and become mainstream? A: In American history, Mormons were viewed as a cult and even persecuted in the 19th century. But they hung on, prospered, and eventually moderated some of their more exotic practices, such as polygamy. 'It's been said that a cult is just a religion that hasn't got a university or a football team yet,' says Stuart. 'That's not far from it.' Response Spiritualism doesn't have a university or a football team, but that alone is not enough to call it a cult. Here is another interesting piece from the same article regarding the term 'cult': Q: What do cults think of each other? A: Often, not much. 'You haven't seen a standoff until you've seen a Christian (cultist) argue with a Wiccan (witchcraft enthusiast),' says Maryland's Stuart. And 'cult' itself is a dirty word. 'Cult is what you call the ones you don't like,' Stuart says. Is Spiritualism a cult then? Apparently, 'cult' is a word used to sling mud on the face of your opponents. It would be best to revisit the definition of what a cult is before labeling any particular group: A: A new or radical religious movement outside the mainstream of thought and practice. Cults often organize around a strong central personality and emphasize community. They are often self-sufficient and cut off by choice from society, either physically, socially or both. The two most important criteria in the definition are a strong central personality and the cutting off by choice from society. Heaven's Gate and David Koresh's Davidian group meet both criteria. But if you apply the same criteria to Spiritualism, it falls down flat. It just doesn't fit. Overall, based on what the experts in this article have said, I have to conclude that Spiritualism is not a cult.

Spiritualists believe in the possibility of communicating with spirits. A secondary belief is that spirits are in some way closer to God than living humans, and that spirits themselves are capable of growth and perfection, and can progress through successively higher spheres or planes. The afterlife is therefore not a static place, but one in which spirits continue to evolve. The two beliefs: that contact with spirits is possible, and that spirits are more advanced than humans, leads to a third belief, that spirits are capable of providing useful knowledge about moral and ethical issues, as well as about the nature of God and the afterlife. Thus many Spiritualists will speak of their spirit guides — specific spirits, often contacted, who are relied upon for worldly and spiritual guidance.[23] Spiritualism emerged in a Christian environment and has many features in common with Christianity: an essentially Christian moral system, a perceived belief in the Judeo-Christian God, and liturgical practices such as Sunday services and the singing of hymns. The primary reason for these similarities is that Spiritualists believe that some spirits are 'low' or mischievous, and delight in leading humans astray. Therefore, beginning with Swedenborg, believers have been cautioned to hesitate before following the advice of spirits, and have usually developed their beliefs within a Christian framework.[24]

Nevertheless, on significant points Christianity and Spiritualism are quite different. Spiritualists do not believe that the acts of this life lead to the assignment of each soul into an eternity of either Heaven or Hell; rather, they view the afterlife as containing many hierarchically arrayed 'spheres,' through which each spirit can successfully progress. Spiritualists also differ from Christians in that the Judeo-Christian Bible is not the primary source from which they derive knowledge of God and the afterlife: their own personal contacts with spirits provide that source.[25] Spiritualists were fiercely opposed by Christian leaders. Here an 1865 tract equates Spiritualism with Witchcraft, and blames the faith for inducing the Civil War. The tract goes on to berate Spiritualism for its association with Abolitionism.Religions other than Christianity have also influenced Spiritualism. Animist faiths, with a tradition of shamanism, are obviously similar, and in the first decades of Spiritualism many mediums claimed contact with American Indian spirit guides, in an apparent acknowledgment of these similarities. Unlike animists, however, spiritualists tend to speak only of the spirits of dead humans, and do not espouse a belief in spirits of trees, springs, or other natural features. Hinduism, though an extremely heterogeneous belief system, generally shares a belief with Spiritualism in the separation of the soul from the body at death, and its continued existence. But Hindus differ from Spiritualists in that they typically believe in reincarnation, and typically hold that all features of a person's personality are extinguished at death. Spiritualists, however, maintain that the spirit retains the personality it possessed during its (single) human existence. Spiritism, the branch of Spiritualism developed by Allan Kardec and predominant in most Latin countries, has always emphasized reincarnation. According to Arthur Conan Doyle, most British Spiritualists of the early Twentieth century were indifferent to the doctrine of reincarnation, very few supported it, while a significant minority were vehemently opposed, since it had never been mentioned by spirits contacted in séance. Thus, according to Doyle, it is the empirical bent of Anglophone Spiritualism —its effort to develop religious views from actual observation of phenomena— that kept Spiritualists of this period from embracing reincarnation.

Spiritualism also differs from occult movements, such as the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn or the contemporary Wiccan covens, in that spirits are not contacted in order to obtain magical powers (with the single exception of obtaining power for healing). For example, Madame Blavatsky (1831–1891) of the Theosophical Society only practiced mediumship in order to contact powerful spirits capable of conferring esoteric knowledge. Blavatsky apparently did not believe that these spirits were deceased humans, and in fact held beliefs in reincarnation that were quite different from the views of most Spiritualists

[edit] Developments after the 1920s Main articles: Spiritualist Church, Spiritualists' National Union, Survivalism (life after death), and Spiritualist Association of Great Britain After the 1920s, Spiritualism evolved in three different directions. The first of these continued the tradition of individual practitioners, organized in circles centered on a medium and clients, without any ecclesiastical hierarchy or dogma. Already by the late nineteenth century Spiritualism had become increasingly syncretic, a natural development in a movement without central authority or dogma.[28] Today, among these unorganized circles, Spiritualism is not readily distinguishable from the similarly syncretic New Age movement. These spiritualists are quite heterogeneous in their beliefs on issues such as reincarnation or the existence of God. Some appropriate New Age and Neo-Pagan beliefs, and others call themselves 'Christian Spiritualists', continuing with the old tradition of cautiously incorporating spiritualist experiences into their Christian faith. The second direction taken by Spiritualism has been to adopt formal organization, patterned after formal organization in Christian denominations, with established creeds and liturgies, and formal training requirements for mediums.[29] In North America the churches are primarily affiliated with the National Spiritualist Association of Churches, and in the UK with the Spiritualists National Union, founded in 1891. Formal education in spiritualist practice emerged in 1920, continuing today with Arthur Findlay's College of Psychic Studies. Diversity of belief among organized spiritualists has led to a few schisms, the most notable occurring in the UK in 1957 between those who held Spiritualism to be a religion sui generis, and a minority who held it to be a denomination of Christianity. The practice of organized Spiritualism today resembles that of any other organized religion, having discarded most showmanship, particularly those elements resembling the conjurer's art. There is thus today a much greater emphasis on 'mental' mediumship and an almost complete avoidance of the miraculous 'materializing' mediumship that so fascinated early believers such as Arthur Conan Doyle.[30] The third direction taken by Spiritualism has been a continuation of its empirical orientation to religious phenomena. Already as early as 1882, with the founding of the Society for Psychical Research, secular organizations emerged to investigate spiritualist claims. Today many persons with this empirical approach avoid the label of 'Spiritualism,' preferring the term 'Survivalism.' Survivalists eschew religion, and base their belief in the afterlife on phenomena susceptible to at least rudimentary scientific investigation, such as mediumship, near death experiences, out-of-body experiences, electronic voice phenomena, and reincarnation research. Many Survivalists see themselves as the intellectual heirs of the Spiritualist movement.