Spiritualism

Webster's Dictionary of the English Language

·noun The quality or state of being spiritual.

II. Spiritualism ·noun The doctrine, in opposition to the materialists, that all which exists is spirit, or soul — that what is called the external world is either a succession of notions impressed on the mind by the Deity, as maintained by Berkeley, or else the mere educt of the mind itself, as taught by Fichte.

III. Spiritualism ·noun A belief that departed spirits hold intercourse with mortals by means of physical phenomena, as by rappng, or during abnormal mental states, as in trances, or the like, commonly manifested through a person of special susceptibility, called a medium; spiritism; the doctrines and practices of spiritualists.