ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author explains his interest in the modern Anglo-American tradition of Spiritualism. He indicates the religio-philosophical movement that makes use of human mediums to communicate with the spirits or souls of the deceased, and which has found its particular home in Anglo-American culture of the mid-nineteenth century to date. The author details his approach to studying contemporary Spiritualist practices, and to categorizing Spiritualism as a distinct religious tradition. He shows how his interest in shamanic traditions alerted him to the useful comparisons they offer in the endeavour to categorize Spiritualism. The author begins by making a simple comparison of mediumship within the Spiritualist tradition with shamanism, with the intention of testing whether Spiritualism could be categorized as a shamanism, the thesis being that it could indeed be so categorized. His early studies of shamanism took him to examples identified in Siberia, and among indigenous North American people, particularly Alaska and Greenland.
