Usage
Spiritualism is used in English to mean either;
- 1) (Religion) – the belief that people can and do communicate with dead people and the practices and doctrines of people with this belief.
- 2) (Philosophy) – In a philosophical doctrine or religious beliefs emphasising that spirits and souls exist or that all reality is spiritual, not material.
- 3) (Metaphysics) – various doctrines maintaining that the ultimate reality is spirit or mind.
- 4) (Ethics) – the view that spiritual concerns are more important than this-worldly concerns (a kind of idealism or asceticism that is opposed to secularism).
- 5) (Epistemology) – another term for mysticism.
- 6) (Art) – "Abstract Spiritualism", a term coined by Gerard Tempest, friend of the renowned surrealist Giorgio de Chirico in the 1950s to describe his "landscapes of the mind's eye." A recurring theme begun in 1953 and continuing throughout the 1990s.
Read more about this topic: Spiritualism (beliefs)
Famous quotes containing the word usage:
“Pythagoras, Locke, Socrates—but pages
Might be filled up, as vainly as before,
With the sad usage of all sorts of sages,
Who in his life-time, each was deemed a bore!
The loftiest minds outrun their tardy ages.”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)
“I am using it [the word ‘perceive’] here in such a way that to say of an object that it is perceived does not entail saying that it exists in any sense at all. And this is a perfectly correct and familiar usage of the word.”
—A.J. (Alfred Jules)
“Girls who put out are tramps. Girls who don’t are ladies. This is, however, a rather archaic usage of the word. Should one of you boys happen upon a girl who doesn’t put out, do not jump to the conclusion that you have found a lady. What you have probably found is a lesbian.”
—Fran Lebowitz (b. 1951)