Transcendentalism

Transcendentalism Back to Spiritual Writings
Welcome to our transcendentalism section. American transcendentalism was a wave of spirituality that swept
across the world in the 1800s, as famous authors such as Hawthorne, Emerson and Thoreau led the way.

American transcendentalism took rise in the 1800s, having begun as a religion and transcended into what
today many call spirituality. Authors attempted to cre new writings that defined religion and spirituality.

Transcendentalism thus has a somewhat close association with spiritualism of the late 1800s and early
1900s. Both movements fed the need for people to believe in the existence of spirit. Started in America, the
Spiritualist Movement actually began in the mid-1800s, and was a rise in psychic mediums that would
purportedly communicate with the dead. Transcendentalism, on the other hand, taught that we are spirit and
part of God...that all existed within...a place to become one with nature and come to know one's true self.

Transcendentalism centered around the Boston area, especially in
Concord, Massachusetts. Transcendentalists wrote to create a
unique body of literature that differed from European roots. One could
call transcendentalism literary and spiritual independence. This new
thought sought to transcend society through essays, poetry, novels,
and philosophy. Ralph Waldo Emerson, a former Unitarian minister
turned essayist, identified religion as being "corpse cold." This
spiritual hunger led many transcendentalists into studying Buddhist
and Hindu beliefs, comparing their own spiritual insights with what
they read from the Middle and Far East..

Transcendentalism taught that a
humane and loving God would not
lead so many people into destruction
as traditional Christian religion
professed. Truth would be sought in
transcendentalism, truth that exists
within the very being of all.

Links to Transcend...

Ralph Emerson House
Transcendentalism author
who found the truth to lie
within.

Henry W. Longfellow
Author of song...poetry as we
know it. Are there spirits
within his home?

House of the Seven Gables
Famous home written about
by transcendentalism author
Nathaniel Hawthorne.

Harriet Beecher Stowe
Author of Uncle Tom's Cabin
had a spiritual side...

S amuel Clemens House
Wise and witty Mark Twain's
beloved dwelling place, they
could no longer live in.

Sleepy Hollow Cemetery
Author's Ridge holds the
markers of many authors of
transcendentalism.

Spirit Photography
Spiritualism was on the rise
at the same time as
transcendentalism.

Emerson wrote, "We will walk on our own feet; we will work with our own hands; we will speak our
own minds...A nation of men will for the first time exist, because each believes himself inspired by
the Divine Soul which also inspires all men." Thus, Emerson led the charge for social reform.

Transcendentalism also became a movement for social reform, as most of these authors were
staunch advocates for women's right and the abolition of slavery. Transcendentalism not only
sought to remove the fear created from religion, it sought to transform society by teaching all are

equal, spirit and a part of God.

Transcendentalism sought to teach that inspiration
should come from within, where the Divine dwelled. It
was a movement for freedom, knowledge and truth.
Transcendentalism was a protest of the day, against
society and culture, the core belief being that there exists
an ideal spiritual state that transcends the physical world
and is found through an individual's intuition, rather than
through established Christian religious doctrines of men.

Emerson is often thought to be the father of American
Transcendentalism, as his essay Nature published in
1836 became the basis for the cultural movement.

"So shall we come to look at the world with new eyes. It shall
answer the endless inquiry of the intellect, What is truth? and of the
affections, What is good? by yielding itself passive to the educated
Will. Build, therefore, your own world. As fast as you conform your
life to the pure idea in your mind, that will unfold its great
proportions. A correspondent revolution in things will attend the
influx of the spirit." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

We have included this section on transcendentalism, though hard to
define, as it certainly taught some great ideas of seeking the truth
within one's self, instead of outwardly seeking truth through written
doctrines taught by others. All of us need to seek to know truth...truth
about who we are within the whole, which we call life. Let us find our
own peace and joy, being free from fear and full of love from within.

Author, Henry David Thoreau

Louisa May Alcott Amos Bronson Alcott Nathaniel Hawthorne Sarah Margaret Fuller

Go to the Angels & Ghosts Forum & discuss Transcendentalism!