Séance

The séance is the central ritual in Spiritualism, a religious movement that emerged in mid-nineteenthcentury America. Spiritualism is based on the belief that the spirits of the dead can be contacted in séances through individuals called mediums, that spiritual enlightenment and harmony with the universe can be gained from this experience, and that séance phenomena constitute scientific proof of human immortality.

The early séance was typically held in a quiet and dimly lit room in the home of the medium. There, the medium entered a trance, fell under the control of spirits, and passed messages to the participants, usually a dozen or so in number. Messages in the earliest gatherings came by means of an alphabetic code, but mediumistic speaking and writing quickly became the norm. Messages ranged in purpose from personal consolation to spiritual and moral elevation, and created a religious experience both individual and communal. The religious function of the séance was underscored by the development of regularly meeting groups and orders of ritual, including prayer and the singing of hymns. These features continued to characterize the séance as it became part of the Sunday services established by Spiritualists seeking to institutionalize the religion during the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Attendance at séances cut across lines of race and class, but they were especially popular in the 1850s, in the Northeast and the Midwest, and among white middle-class theologically liberal Protestants. The appeal of the séance lay in its ability to address the profound spiritual unease many Americans experienced as a result of theological, social, and cultural change. It allowed believers dissatisfied with the abstract deity of liberal Protestantism to establish contact with a plane of being at once spiritual and human. It assuaged concerns that the increasing cultural authority of science would diminish the importance of things spiritual. Its tranquil domestic setting provided believers with a spatial and a spiritual counterpoint to the increasingly commercial, competitive, and urban society taking shape around them. It provided women with empowerment and authority in a culture that exalted their spiritual qualities while affording them few opportunities for religious leadership. The séance also, of course, eased the grief caused by the common occurrence of premature death in Victorian America, while the more sensational "spirit manifestations" entertained an American public continually hungry for novelty.

The séance aroused hostile as well as favorable attention, in part because orthodox theologians suspected occult activity and in part because mediums were suspected of fraud. Debunking appeared almost at the outset, culminated in a series of damaging exposures during the 1870s, and continues to the present. It has often operated to undermine the religious appeal of the séance.

Yet the séance continues to provide thousands of Americans with religious fulfillment. Most obviously, it persists as the central and defining element of Spiritualist religious worship. It was also incorporated by Universal Hagar's Spiritual Church, a Spiritualistinfluenced African-American organization that was established in Detroit in 1923 and that maintains a significant membership in several eastern and midwestern cities. The closely related practice of spirit "channeling" has become an important element of the contemporary New Age movement. The continuing place of the séance in American religious life suggests the enduring quest for spiritual illumination from a higher spiritual world.

See alsoAfterlife; Astral Planes; Channeling; Enlightenment; Music; New Age Spirituality; Prayer; Religious Experience; Ritual; Spirit; Spiritualism.

Bibliography

Baer, Hans. The Black Spiritual Movement: A ReligiousResponse to Racism. 1984.

Braude, Ann. Radical Spirits: Spiritualism and Women'sRights in Nineteenth-Century America. 1989.

Carroll, Bret E. Spiritualism in Antebellum America. 1997.

Moore, R. Laurence. In Search of White Crows: Spiritualism, Parapsychology, and American Culture. 1977.

Bret E. Carroll