Italy, the unchallenged fiefdom of Catholicism until World War II, has gradually seen the emergence of a new religious landscape in which non-Catholi… - Cecilia Gatto Trocchi

Spiritualism opposes reasoning with the force of its conviction, its facts, its miracles, its supernatural. It is the religion of the 19th century, without rituals, without priests, and wrapped in an envelope of scientificity. Imagination and sentiment find their place there, and rituality is represented by invocations, prayers, evocations and continuous revelations.

C. G. Trocchi, Le sette in Italia, III. Le sette di matrice cristiana, p. 50.

While Positivism was founding the social sciences (proclaiming the death of theology) and Marxism was instigating the proletariat to leave institutional religion branded as the ‘opium of the people’, thousands and thousands of people were attempting to communicate with the spiritual worlds through mediums and seers.