Spiritualism in Denmark Spiritualism in Denmark

494 Kragh

Chapter 62 Spiritualism in Denmark Spiritualism in Denmark

Jesper Vaczy Kragh

Spiritualism was a highly conspicuous movement in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Denmark. It attracted people from a range of social classes and spread to various parts of the country. It also became a widely discussed movement among the public. Danish spiritualists caught the attention of academics, created a stir in the press, and alarmed and annoyed the Danish clergy. However, spiritualism had its rise and fall, and periods of great interest were followed by times of decline.

The Rise of Spiritualism in Denmark

Spiritualism came to Denmark from Germany. In March, 1853, the German press began to print reports of table turning, and news of these experiments reached Denmark in April the same year. Spiritualism became an object of public debate in Copenhagen, and several pamphlets on spiritualism were published in the 1850s. Especially the writings of the Danish politician, author, and spiritualist, Constant Dirckinck-Holmfeld (1799–1880), attracted attention to the spiritualist cause. In the late 1850s, leading Danish intellectuals and artists such as the theologian Hans Lassen Martensen (1808–1884), the drama- tist Johan Ludvig Heiberg (1791–1860), and the actress Johanne Luise Heiberg (1812–1890) began to show an interest in spiritualism. Thus, small private circles, devoted to the study of spiritualist phenomena, were established. In the early 1860s, the first spiritualist organisation, Foreningen til Undersøgelse af de såkaldte Spiritistiske Fænomener (The Society for the Investigation of the So-called Spiritualist Phenomena) was founded by the bookkeeper Harald Jensen (1810–1889). He also translated works by the French spiritualist Allan Kardec (1804–1869), Le Livre des Esprits (1857) and Le Livre des Médiums (1861), into Danish. However, it was not until the late 1880s that a large spiritualist movement took shape. In the following decades, new organisations, private circles, and a large number of spiritualist journals appeared. The exact number of people sympathising with spiritualism is unknown, but a considerable number of spiritualist organisations existed in the twentieth century. In the 1930s, more than sixty spiritualist organisations were united in Danske Spiritisters

Kirkesamfund (The Religious Community of Danish Spiritualists). The biggest organisation, Spirititisk Broderskab (The Spiritualist Brotherhood), founded in 1894, had more than 2,000 members in the beginning of the twentieth century. The Spiritualist Brotherhood was also one of the oldest of the organisations, and its teachings were an example to most of the other organisations. The foundation of the spiritualist organisations was the belief in life after death and that contact with spirits could be obtained through a sensitive inter- mediary, i.e., a medium. According to the spiritualists, life on earth did not end with the death of the physical body; rather, the human soul was reborn several times. In this respect, most Danish organisations were deeply inspired by Allan Kardec and his notion of reincarnation. Unitarian conceptions about a unity of God and the humanity of Jesus as well as a belief in science and progress were included in the teachings of the majority of spiritualist organisations. The spiritualists supported Darwinism and opposed the Danish National Church and its notions of hell and eternal condemnation, which they found erroneous. Instead, they proclaimed a new liberal Christian faith. Salvation was for every- one, said the spiritualists, and God did not condemn or punish anybody. In the spiritualist version of Christianity, the belief in progress played a central role. It was a part of God’s scheme that both the material and spiritual world were developing for the better. Life was a learning process and part of a perfect plan, where every man and woman, after a series of reincarnations, would attain all the love and happiness that God had intended for all his creations. The religious life in the spiritualist organisation was centred on séances or sittings, lectures on the spiritualist religion and, to a lesser extent, various social causes. Unlike their peers in the USA and other Western countries, Danish spiritualists were not deeply engaged in social reforms. In their journals, Danish spiritualists occasionally supported the emancipation of women and criticised prevailing gender roles. Philanthropic work was also carried out by a small segment of the spiritualist organisations, but social and economic inequality was not a major issue in the majority of these organisations. Besides the spiritualist organisations, a number of private circles existed in the early twentieth century. For the members of some of these circles, religious matters played a minor role. They raised objections to the spiritualist organisations’ religious ceremonies, which they found unscientific, and they also criticised the organisations’ adherence to the teachings of Allan Kardec. On the other hand, anti-Christian spiritualists, well-known in countries like Britain, were not common in Denmark.