Spiritualism after the Great War

British Spiritualism has attracted a good deal of historicalcomment, but most scholars assume that popular interest in themovement had faded by the close of the First World War. Thisarticle examines Spiritualism and the culture in which it flourishedbetween the wars and in doing so challenges the assumption thatbelief in the supernatural was thoroughly displaced by science-basedsecularism in the twentieth century. Spiritualist egalitarianismreflected and responded to the increasingly democratic valuesof the twentieth century, but more important for Spiritualism'ssuccess was its ability to incorporate a variety of existingsupernatural concepts into its developing and flexible cosmology.The many ways in which traditional supernatural beliefs penetratedeveryday language supplied simultaneously a rich resource forSpiritualist thought and a setting where conversion to Spiritualismcould feel natural and even inevitable.