The DICT Development Group

  Spiritualism \Spir"it*u*al*ism\, n.
     1. The quality or state of being spiritual.
        [1913 Webster]
  
     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.
        [1913 Webster]
  
     3. A belief that departed spirits hold intercourse with
        mortals by means of physical phenomena, as by rapping, 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.
        [1913 Webster]
  
              What is called spiritualism should, I think, be
              called a mental species of materialism. --R. H.
                                                    Hutton.
        [1913 Webster]

  spiritualism
      n 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,
         spiritualism, spiritism, otherworldliness] [ant:
         worldliness]

  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