Contemporary Spiritualism in Queensland
From its arrival in Australia in the 1850s, Spiritualism was frequently attacked by churches and newspaper commentary. Since the 1970s, however, popular opinion has become more accepting of Spiritualist ideas.
By Nicholas Desjardins
This is an 18 minute read, published December 2025.
During the colonial period, Queensland’s first Spiritualists found themselves the target of energetic attacks by mainstream clergy, who accused them of deception, devil-worship, and sorcery. These charges were echoed by the secular-minded local press, which delighted in lambasting Spiritualism without fearing the kind of retaliation that might result from attacks on more established religious traditions.
But scientists, perhaps surprisingly, often took a more measured tone. Indeed, Spiritualism in the nineteenth century was fascinating to many scientists, particularly in the young and progressive Australian colonies. The botanist Carl Hartmann, of Toowoomba, perhaps Queensland’s earliest significant pioneer of Spiritualism, was also responsible for founding the local Royal Society, and introducing several key crops to the Australian climate — crops which he had grown by ‘psychically magnetising’ them with his hands and imbuing them with loving energy, in a practice continued by Spiritualist healers today (Rooke, 2021: 48). By the 1900s, however, figures like Hartmann were much harder to find. The scientific academy had become more institutionalised and professionalised, and no longer treated Spiritualism as a valid theory, preferring rather to label it as charlatanry or ‘humbug’.
Queensland’s Spiritualists, for their part, were no passive victims. They relished challenging the accusations made against them by the churches, maintaining that their own tradition was just as oriented towards the Divine as any religious denomination, but also insisting that Spiritualism was more modern, egalitarian, and scientific than any conventional form of Christianity. The Queensland Times reported in 1877 how one local Spiritualist, Mr Thomas Yarnton, protested an anti-Spiritualist sermon on exactly these grounds, before announcing that if a table were brought to him, he would demonstrate the truth of spirit-communication right then and there (Yarnton, 1877: 4). His challenge was not taken up, and he was promptly ejected from the church.
Similar challenges were made against press criticism and academic dismissal, with Spiritualists conducting experiments, studying foreign scientific journals, and vigorously defending the scientific basis of their movement in newspaper columns. They gained a brief advantage in the press in the 1880s, when a number of local journalists, lawyers, and politicians gathered to form the Brisbane Psychological Society, under the impetus of George Smith, the owner of the local Progressive Bookshop, from which poured a variety of Spiritualist journals, newspapers, and books. The Society sponsored the visit of the international medium Fred P. Evans in 1888, whose clairvoyant abilities they tested under experimental conditions, and invited the press to see for themselves.
Yet fervour alone was not sufficient for Spiritualism to escape its marginalised condition. Despite its popularity in the 1880s, and then again following World War I, Spiritualism remained a thoroughly grassroots movement. Independent-minded and sceptical of authority, Spiritualists were unable to form the kinds of lasting, centralised institutions used by other religious traditions to defend their interests and legitimacy. Of the variety of Spiritualist organisations that appeared throughout Brisbane in the interwar period, only the Brisbane Spiritual Church on Boundary Street, Spring Hill survives to the present, the others having disappeared following the decline in Spiritualist popularity after World War II. It is difficult to maintain a church or community organisation at the best of times — far harder when members are lambasted by the press, criticised by scientists, and accused of devil-worship by the established churches.
The New Age and Contemporary Spirituality
Since the 1970s, however, Spiritualism has found itself in a more receptive environment. Christianity — at least in its traditional forms — is no longer the dominant religious force in Australian society. Over the last half-century, the Western world has seen a large-scale shift towards a new religious paradigm, which scholar of religion Christopher Partridge has labelled ‘Occulture’, a ‘vast spectrum of beliefs and practices sourced by Eastern spirituality, paganism, Spiritualism, Theosophy, alternative science and medicine, popular psychology, and a range of beliefs emanating out of a general interest in the paranormal’ (Partridge, 2005: 4). Occulture — described more commonly as ‘the New Age’ or simply ‘spirituality’ — embraces a diverse array of ideas and practices, such as meditation, yoga, spirit-communication, faith healing, astrology, feng shui, healing crystals, homeopathic medicine, UFO beliefs, magical spells, neopaganism, and a wide variety of ‘alternative’ scientific and historical theories. It is difficult to draw hard distinctions or categories within Occulture — and indeed, for many people within its spiritual milieu, a major part of the appeal of ‘spirituality’ over traditional religion is precisely its openness, pluralism, and rejection of absolute dogma.
The new religious landscape created by contemporary spirituality has proven fertile ground for Spiritualism. Occulture treats spirituality as a matter of individual preference, values diversity and eclecticism of beliefs, and frequently crosses the boundaries of ‘science’ and ‘religion’ — all tendencies which were native to Spiritualism since its origin. As a result, while Spiritualism remains a marginalised tradition, it is today much less likely to suffer attacks and accusations as it once did. Indeed, in recent decades many of its core beliefs have enjoyed a newfound popularity and public acceptance. After the New Age movement — the vanguard of contemporary spirituality — arrived in Australia during the 1970s, a new generation of Spiritualist churches began to emerge in Queensland on the tide of this cultural shift.
The Salisbury Centre for Personal Development
An early example, steeped in the cultural milieu surrounding the New Age, was the Salisbury Centre for Personal Development, founded in 1986. A decentralised organisation catering to a diverse range of spiritual seekers, the Salisbury Centre embodies the eclecticism of contemporary spirituality, offering more traditional Spiritualist services alongside demonstrations of eastern-influenced meditation, indigenous American shamanism, and non-spiritual community activities.
Formally established in April 1986, it had evolved from a home circle conducted by Glennys Mackay. Titling herself as both a ‘lecturer in metaphysics and the paranormal’ and a ‘spiritual priest’, Mackay was an early pioneer of this New Age formulation of Spiritualism, describing her psychic powers as a ‘gift from God’ as well as a ‘science of the mind’. Her style of Spiritualism is captured neatly by her appearance on the 1996 ghost-hunting documentary New Age of Aquarius, in which she brandishes a copper-wire ‘aurameter’ to detect several spirits, which she proceeds to dramatically allow to possess her in order to exorcise them. This was the flavour of Spiritualism upon which the Salisbury Centre was built — a vibrant, open-minded embrace of the new Occulture. This is reflected in the name. Though known colloquially by many as the ‘Salisbury Spiritual Church’, it is officially a ‘Centre for Personal Development’, and throughout its early years was largely conducted as a kind of community centre, hosting social events and craft activities alongside talks on Spiritualism, the paranormal, holistic health and wellbeing, and various other forms of spirituality. From around 2000, it was reorganised along the lines of a church, centred around a weekly Sunday evening service, and typically drawing in anywhere from five to thirty congregation members.
Despite the prevailing values of tolerance and harmony, it must be noted that the arrival of New Age ideas into Spiritualism has been an issue fraught with conflict and careful negotiation, with a wide range of different viewpoints competing for the relatively few positions of spiritual authority afforded in these organisations. In this respect, the Salisbury Centre has lessened this conflict and encouraged diversity by operating in a comparatively decentralised manner, with each weekly service being run by a different medium in their own unique style.
Figure 1: Exterior signage at the Salisbury Spiritual Centre, 2022 (QAR).
As a result, while all services are run by ordained ministers, they vary considerably in their style and content. Some are modelled closely on those of the Brisbane Spiritual Church, while others run as informal circles more closely resembling a typical Spiritualist home circle or draw on other tendencies in contemporary spirituality.
The most popular of these is a monthly ‘Shamanic Service’, conducted around a central altar built from healing crystals and oracle cards, in which the presiding shaman (who is also an ordained Spiritualist minister) might call upon the archangels of Raphael and Michael, alongside the Hindu devas (who are associated here with healing crystals), and the spirits of the Snake, Jaguar, and Condor. This captures well the flavour of the Occulture flowing into present-day Spiritualism — an eclectic melting-pot of traditional Spiritualist ideas, infused with Eastern religious ideas filtered through the Orientalist lens of Theosophy, and blended with elements drawn from a wide range of religions around the world. For people within this milieu, the use of ‘Spiritualist’ as a sectarian religious identity makes little sense — it is merely one part of a fluid, dynamic spiritual practice built from a wide range of influences.
The Redlands Christian Spiritual Centre
A more traditional approach to Spiritualism can be seen in the Redlands Christian Spiritual Centre, founded only a few months after the Salisbury Centre. Here, newer elements of contemporary spirituality (such as healing crystals and mandalas) are integrated carefully into what remains a firmly Christian Spiritualist framework, revealing its heritage both from the Brisbane Spiritual Church and the older British Spiritualist tradition.
Figure 2: Marilyn O'Sullivan turning the first sod at Capalaba, July 2001 (Redlands Christian Spiritual Centre).
The Redlands Christian Spiritual Centre was founded in August 1986 by Rev. Marilyn O’Sullivan. Born to a Baptist family in Wales, O’Sullivan had turned to Spiritualism after having a clairvoyant accurately predict that she would move to Australia in her thirties (O’Sullivan, 2022). In 1986 she founded a Spiritual Church, which met at rented community halls in Thornside and Alexandra Hills until 2003, when funds were raised to build a permanent church building in Capalaba.
By that time, O’Sullivan had been ordained as a Spiritualist minister by Rev. Frank Bruce of the Brisbane Spiritual Church, and firmly shared his pro-Christian stance.
To reflect this, she soon renamed her Church as the Redlands Christian Spiritual Centre. Nevertheless, the Unitarian message of Spiritualism remains alive and well — the Centre remains in friendly communion with both the Brisbane Spiritual Church and the Salisbury Centre, and O’Sullivan emphasises that its name does not constitute a normative claim that Spiritualism should be Christian, but simply a statement that it is a safe place for Christian Spiritualists. Further, she is careful to distinguish Christian Spiritualism from that of the ‘orthodox churches’, noting that Christian Spiritualism believes only in a loving God and rejects any idea of divine punishment or retribution, recognising that everyone is personally responsible for their own actions, being neither condemned by original sin nor saved through faith alone. In a characteristic Spiritualist formula, spiritual development is thus an individual journey, and one can that only be undertaken through compassion and good deeds.
In the early 2020s, when this research was undertaken, the Centre’s sermons were conducted largely along the same lines as those of the Brisbane Spiritual Church, though with Christian imagery and Bible readings taking centre-stage alongside performances of mediumship. Representations of Christ figured prominently on the walls, while the stage (or ‘platform’, in Spiritualist terminology) was adorned with hand carved wooden furniture and décor, all bearing ornamental crosses. Many of these are custom pieces, carved by members of the small but active congregation, lending the Centre a distinctive yet consistent appearance.
Figure 3: Fundraising in Redlands, n.d. (Redlands Christian Spiritual Centre).
Indeed, beyond O’Sullivan’s pioneering role, the Centre is a testament to the grassroots activity of its members. Lacking the external funding that might be afforded to a church belonging to a larger denomination, the establishment of the Redlands Christian Spiritual Centre was funded by community donations and local fundraising events, most notably the long-running bric-à -brac stalls, from which were sold a variety of trinkets, ornaments, and homewares donated by congregation members. While these stalls were ended in 2015, fundraising has continued in the form of a large inventory of healing crystals and spiritual jewellery offered for sale within the Centre
Healing crystals are displayed throughout the Centre, and serve as a focus for meditation – a conspicuous example of how contemporary spiritual practices have been carefully integrated into traditional Spiritualist practice. A painting of a mandala, displayed at the entrance, exemplifies how Buddhist elements and motifs have been integrated into the Centre. O’Sullivan, like many Spiritualists, views Buddhism as a kindred tradition and a source of inspiration, particularly in its meditation practices and emphasis on compassion.
A further interfaith connection is showcased in a photo displayed as part of the Centre’s memorabilia, which shows Minjerribah-Moorgumpin elders conducting a smoking ceremony in July 2001 to inaugurate the building’s construction. Thus, while the Centre remains committed to a Christian identity, it maintains an openness and dialogue with other religions and spiritual traditions.
While burials are not conducted on Centre grounds, the gardens in front of the entrance are home to several memorial plaques, remembering congregation members and their loved ones, and adorned with shrubs and flowers, the care and maintenance of which remains a key element in honouring those who have ‘passed into Spirit’.  Most prominent of these memorials is the central stained-glass window of the Centre, which shines over the platform. Bearing a cross emblazoned with the letters ‘M. G.’ and the image of an eagle in flight, it serves as a memorial for O’Sullivan’s late son, Martin Gulliver, who passed away shortly before the church building was established. The visibility of memorials at the Centre underlines its core Spiritualist dedication towards continued connection with those who have passed — particularly via mediumship, when the loved ones memorialised at the Centre communicate with the world of the living in various ways.
Figure 4: Altar, rostrum, and memorial to Martin Gulliver, Redlands Christian Spiritual Centre, 2022 (QAR).
The White Eagle Lodge, Maleny
In 1990, four years after the establishment of the Redlands Christian Spiritual Centre, a family from the Brisbane Spiritual Church founded their own institution on the Sunshine Coast, dedicated to the Spiritualist teacher White Eagle. The resultant White Eagle Lodge at Maleny embraced certain esoteric and mystical aspects of the New Age, most notably the practices of astrology and meditation, and the cultivation of an ‘inner light’ for the purposes of personal enlightenment and the healing of others.
Founded by Doris Commins, the Lodge traces back originally to the Brisbane Spiritual Church, which Commins had joined in 1939, and had remained an active committee member over several decades. A strong advocate of an open, Unitarian view of God, Commins found particular resonance with the teachings of a being named White Eagle, whose works began to flow into the Church alongside those of Silver Birch in the 1960s.
White Eagle had been channelled by the English medium Grace Cooke (notable also for her channelling of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle after his death in 1930) and was said to be the powerful spirit of an ancient Native American teacher and a ‘Tibetan sage’. The content of his teachings was similar to that of Silver Birch, blending Christian symbols and rhetoric with Orientalist, Theosophical notions of ancient ‘Masters’ residing in the ‘mountains of the far East’, and an abstract interpretation of God — typically pictured as a beam of divine, loving light (Cooke, 1980: 24).
These teachings found their way to Brisbane in the 1960s, and resonated deeply with Commins, who after contacting Cooke began work on establishing a White Eagle Lodge in Queensland. In 1990 Commins secured land near Maleny and, with the help of family, established the Lodge as one of only three in the world. Now run by her daughters, Lyn Edwards and Gay Robinson, and numbering around 150 members, the Lodge operates in a more systematic fashion than many other Spiritualist centres, being solely built around the teachings of White Eagle, and being in communion with the ‘Mother Lodge’ back in England.
At the same time, it too reflects deeply the pluralism, eclecticism and global outlook at the heart of the New Age. They do not practice the kind of ‘evidential mediumship’ practiced at the Brisbane Spiritual Church or the Salisbury Centre (that is, communicating with deceased loved ones in order to establish evidence of the afterlife), but rather confine their mediumship to higher entities, in particular their personal ‘spirit guides’. Their practices focus particularly on spiritual healing, chakra healing, astrology, meditation, and yoga, and they remain in contact with a wide variety of different religious groups, including the Abbey Church in Caboolture and the Brisbane Spiritual Church. It is notable that, of all the Spiritualist groups discussed here, the White Eagle Lodge is the only one to openly identify with the label of ‘New Age’; as avid astrologers, they place a deep importance on the coming of the Age of Aquarius.
The World Light Fellowship of Australia
Beginning in 2000, a new generation of Spiritualist churches began to appear in Queensland, organised under the banner of the World Light Fellowship of Australia, headed by local Spiritualist leader Sarah Neil. Having previously run a local Spiritualist newspaper, Neil connected at the turn of the century with the World Light Fellowship, a US-based organisation formed as a ‘big tent’ for a variety of contemporary spiritual movements, including Spiritualism. Having been ordained as a minister by the Fellowship, Neil founded a Spiritualist church in Mudgeeraba, running out of the post office building for eight years, after which it moved to Maudsland, becoming known as Sacred Connections Gold Coast.
The international headquarters of the World Light Fellowship, however, had been based in the World Trade Centre in New York City, and in 2001 were destroyed in the 9/11 attacks, effectively dissolving the organisation. Subsequently, Neil re-formed her organisation as an independent World Light Fellowship of Australia, and began to train and ordain new Spiritualist ministers throughout Queensland. Some of the new ministers would go on to found their own churches, while others joined the Fellowship to support their already-existing churches. A variety of these — largely small operations with no permanent premises — were ultimately ephemeral, including one church in South Tweed, two or three in Springwood, and another in Runcorn. Several, however, proved to be more lasting, and continue to the present.
One of these was a small church in Eagleby, founded in 2004 by two local Spiritualist ministers that had been ordained by the Fellowship. After the death of one of its original founders, the church was moved to Beenleigh, where it can be found today as the Beenleigh Spiritualist Centre, drawing a typical Sunday congregation of between twenty and thirty people. Since 2013, it has been headed by Bob Colquhoun, another minister ordained by Sarah Neil and a key figure in the local Spiritualist community. Colquhoun became involved with Spiritualism in the 1980s, influenced by Norman Ivory, a notable British Spiritualist who had emigrated to Australia the decade earlier. Alongside the Beenleigh Centre, Colquhoun is also currently president of the Hemmant Spiritual Church, a slightly smaller institution which had earlier been founded by two local Spiritualist women who went on to approach Sarah Neil for ordination.
Figure 5: Hemmant Spiritual Church interior, 2022 (QAR).
From 2007, Colquhoun also worked for a time as president of the Salisbury Centre for Personal Development, where he continued efforts begun by members of the Centre to reorient it along more explicitly Spiritualist lines. While the Salisbury Centre is presently not part of the Fellowship, this case illustrates the connectedness of the local Spiritualist community: despite minor differences in tendency or practice, all of the local Spiritualist churches remain in friendly contact. A key reason for this is that Queensland — being distant from the major Spiritualist centres in Britain and the US — has a relatively small pool of professional mediums on which to draw. Local mediums and visiting foreign mediums thus tend to be shared among the various local churches, ensuring that similar messages are disseminated between them and building a general sense of familiarity.
Nevertheless, organising a Spiritualist church, much less a broader organisation like the World Light Fellowship of Australia, is no easy feat. Spiritualists are typically resistant to any kind of central organising or authority, and thus the difficulty of building lasting Spiritualist institutions has impeded the tradition’s success throughout its history. The Fellowship has navigated these challenges by learning from past attempts at Spiritualist institutionalisation, and charting a careful path between the more traditional Christian Spiritualist tendency and the growing influence of contemporary spirituality. Fellowship leaders consciously differentiate their spirituality from mainstream Christianity, typically viewing the latter as unnecessarily hierarchical and dogmatic, and as avoiding personal responsibility for one’s actions.
In this way, today’s Spiritualist groups remain in careful negotiation with contemporary spirituality. Fellowship leaders are sceptical about what they view as a shallow, commercialised ‘New Age’ movement, but optimistic about the potential for such movements to bring people towards Spiritualism and a more authentic spirituality. At the same time, the Fellowship has eagerly embraced a variety of spiritual beliefs and practices popularised through contemporary spirituality, with shamanism, meditation, tarot, and various Buddhist, Hindu, Native American, and occult elements being popular throughout their congregations.
Since its origins in the 1850s, and now with a fresh twenty-first century momentum, Spiritualism has maintained a firm self-identity alongside a pluralism and openness to other ideas and traditions. The movement views itself not as ‘one true faith’, but as an ongoing process of discovery, discussion, experimentation, and spiritual growth. On these terms it continues in contemporary Queensland.
Sources and further reading
Ivan Cooke. 1980. The Return of Arthur Conan Doyle. Liss, Hampshire: White Eagle Lodge.
Desjardins, Nicholas. 2022. ‘Divine Light in the Sunshine State: A History of Spiritualism in Queensland.’ B.A. (Hons) thesis, School of Historical and Philosophical Inquiry, University of Queensland.
O’Sullivan, Rev. Marilyn. 2022. Personal communication with the author.
Partridge, Christopher. 2005. The Re-Enchantment of the West: Alternative Spiritualities, Sacralization, Popular Culture and Occulture. Edinburgh: T & T Clark.
Rooke, Phillipa. 2021. ‘Carl Heinrich Hartman, 1835–1887.’ Theosophy in Australia 85.2: 48–50.
Yarnton, Thomas. 1877. ‘Spiritualism and Spiritualists and the Rev. Peter Campbell.’ Queensland Times, Ipswich Herald and General Advertiser, 27 February, p. 4.
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