From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.44 [gcide]:
Spiritualism \Spir"it*u*al*ism\, noun
1. The quality or state of being spiritual.
2. (Physiol.) 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.
3. 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.
What is called spiritualism should, I think, be called a mental species of materialism. --R. H. Hutton.
From WordNet (r) 2.0 [wn]:
noun
1: (theology) any doctrine that asserts the separate existence of God
2: the belief that the spirits of dead people can communicate with people who are still alive (especially via a medium)
3: concern with things of the spirit [syn: {spirituality}, {otherworldliness}]
From Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0 [moby-thes]:
29 Moby Thesaurus words for "spiritualism": Berkeleianism, Hegelianism, Kantianism, Neoplatonism, Platonic form, Platonic idea, Platonism, absolute idealism, animatism, animism, form, hylozoism, idealism, immaterialism, mediumism, metaphysical idealism, monistic idealism, necromancy, panpsychism, personalism, psychism, seance, sitting, solipsism, spirit, spiritism, subjectivism, transcendental, universal
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