Modern Spiritualist movement

The Spiritualist movement' or Modern Spiritualist movement in the United States usually refers to the branch of religious thought traced to Hydesville, New York and Margaretta and Catherine Fox. On March 31st 1848 these two sisters claimed to communicate with a poltergeist that had been haunting their house. The first "Mediums" in the US, or to Andrew Johnson Davis hypnotist, faith-healer and clairvoyant from Poughkeepsie who in 1847, as the story goes, predicted the appearance of the Fox sisters.

Demonstrations of "mediumship" proved to be a profitable venture. Seances and spirit consultations were soon a popular form of entertainment and spirtual catharsis. The Foxes were to earn a living this way and others would follow their lead.

The US movement influenced a concurrent development in England. In 1853 the first Spiritualist Church was established in the British Isles by David Richmond at Keighley in Yorkshire. 1855 The first Spiritualist newspaper in Britain, The Yorkshire Spiritual Telegraph, was published. By the 1870s there were numerous Spiritualist societies and churches throughout the US and England.

Related

• Perfectionist movement
• Oneida Society
• Neoplatonism
• Emanuel Swedenborg
• Theosophy