Matt Tomlinson

Although claims to sacredness are often linked to the power of a distant past, the work of making places sacred is creative, novel, renewable, and reversible. This Element highlights how sacred space is newly made. It is often associated with blood, death, and geographic anomalies, yet no single feature determines sacred associations. People make space sacred by connecting with ]''extrahuman'' figures ? the ancestors, spirits, and gods that people attempt to interact with in every society. These connections can be concentrated in people''s bodies, yet bodies are particularly vulnerable to loss. The Element also examines the multidimensional and multisensory dimensions of sacred space, which can be made almost anywhere, including online, but can also be unmade. Unmaking sacred space can entail new sacralization. New and minority religions in particular provide excellent sites for studying sacredness as a value, raising the reliably productive question: sacred for whom?

This book explores the historical and social dynamics of Spiritualism - a religious movement associated in the popular imagination with nineteenth-century parlour séances and ghost photography. It continues to be practised actively today in Australia, the UK, and USA. The authors draw on their deep fieldwork, interviews, and archival research to analyse Spiritualism?s resilience and the enduring popular appeal of mediumship.There are three key contributions of the book: the first is that the scholarly study of ?belief? should be rehabilitated. The authors propose a model of belief as a dialogue between claims to truth and commitments to institutions supporting those claims. The second is women?s agency in Spiritualism. From the movement?s beginnings, strong female leaders have decisively shaped its religious and political profile. The third is the need to analyse Australian Spiritualism as a distinct variant of a transnational Anglophone family of ritual practice.