The Victorian Spiritualists’ Union and the Surprising Survival of Spiritualism in Australia

ABSTRACT The new religion of Spiritualism emerged in the mid-19th century. Through mediumship, Spiritualists contacted the dead, believing them to have “passed over” to another plane of existence. It spread from America to Great Britain before arriving in Australia in the 1850s. This article charts the history of the world’s oldest continuously running Spiritualist organisation, the Victorian Spiritualists’ Union (VSU, est. 1870), exploring the unexpected survival of the movement in Australia. It challenges the common idea that Spiritualism enjoyed only a brief revival in the interwar period and has maintained a tenuous status ever since. Rather, I argue that Spiritualism has experienced several peaks and troughs since its emergence in Australia, including a widespread revival in the 1970s, spearheaded by the VSU. Spiritualism in Australia survives due to the development of a church movement, the advocacy of groups such as the VSU, the generous volunteer efforts of individual Spiritualists, the acquisition of church buildings, and its geographic mobility, all of which have allowed Spiritualist churches to be responsive to changing social and cultural conditions for more than a century. It is one of Australia’s largest and most resilient alternative religious movements, not simply a Victorian-era curio.