Spiritualism

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The spiritualist movement began in 1848 in a house in Hydesville, New York State, where lived the Fox sisters, Leah. Margeretta and Kate. At first the whole family were disturbed by 'paranormal' happenings such as phantoms and bizarre unexplained knockings. The parents decided that an unquiet spirit was to blame, and two of the sisters, Margeretta and Kate, began a communication with the spirit.

They were on the way to fame and becoming celebrated figures. The only drawback is that in 1888 the two sisters who had been principal in the occurrences, Margeretta and Kate, admitted that they had faked these altercations with the afterlife. But by then it was too late. The spiritualist church that they founded continued unabashed. Spirit healing is a branch of this minority religion, a branch that now overshadows the original movement as a church.

Generally thought of as being interested purely in communication with the spirit world, the spiritualist church has developed a growing interest in healing, confirmed when, in 1963, the National Federation of Spiritual Healing in Britain boasted of having over two thousand practitioners.

Spiritualists believe that in their work they are merely facilitating the Christian belief in the divine power of healing. Spiritual healing is distinct from faith healing in one important aspect. In faith healing, what is paramount is the patient's personal belief.

In the case of spiritual healing, however, faith itself is irrelevant, and the source of the power is said to emanate from the spirits of the dead in attendance. These spirits are brought forth by means of a spiritualist medium. Needless to say, mediumistic or spiritist diagnosis made through spirit guides and clairvoyance are expressly forbidden in scripture (Deuteronomy 18:9-13).

No less a person than James Joyce satirized the pseudo-scientific language of spiritualism in that seminal work of modernist literature, Ulysses. In the Cyclops chapter, which opens in Barney Kiernan's bar, an unnamed bibulous Dubliner recounts how the 'apparition of the etheric double' during a seance is particularly lifelike 'owing to the discharge of jivic rays from the crown of the head'.

Yet there was a more serious side to this. Spiritualism's most celebrated critic was the renowned escapologist, Harry Houdini. He was an unwilling participant in this personal crusade, in that nobody more than he would have liked, to have believed in the afterlife.

What dismayed him was the deceit and exploitation of human anguish that were employed in these sessions of communications with the dead. 'It ought to be stopped, it must be stopped,' he wrote. Distinguished figures from the world of science investigated the claims, and, in the case of Sir William Crookes, the eminent physicist, found in favour of the spiritualists.

Houdini bewailed the fact that it was only scientists who were sent to investigate the claims because the fact that these men were scientists did. not ensure that they would not be immune to the extremely clever and sophisticated trickery that a spiritualist may employ. Indeed, even he. the 'Great Houdini', claimed that he himself could be deceived by the trickery of the spiritualists. If he could be fooled, a man who had devoted his life to the creation of illusion, who then was immune?