Bringing Kibbo Kift to Lily Dale: Spiritualism, Scepticism, Pilgrimage

In autumn 2024, the artist Shannon Taggart approached Annebella Pollen with an invitation to speak at the 11th iteration of her annual symposium, The Science of Things Spiritual, held at the rural hamlet of Lily Dale, New York state. Lily Dale currently styles itself as “Western New York's home for mediumship and spiritual healing since 1879” (2026) and the large painted sign at its entrance describes it as the “World’s Largest Center for the Religion of Spiritualism”.

Taggart asked Pollen to speak about her work on the Kindred of the Kibbo Kift, a utopian and pacifist artist-led outdoor youth movement, founded in Britain in 1920, and about whom she wrote a 2015 book and co-curated a 2015-16 exhibition (Pollen, 2015; Pollen and Yiakoumaki, 2015). With their flamboyant retro-futurist medieval modernist style and their eclectic attempts to restore spiritual values to a war-torn material age, Kibbo Kift’s artistic and sacred interests intersected well with Taggart’s symposium themes, but Pollen regularly wondered what Kibbo Kift’s founder, the artist, author, novelist John Hargrave, would think of the fit. Hargrave was a widely read, well networked and self-taught scholar of comparative religion, alternative spirituality and occult practices, but he was also, at times, sceptical of what Paranthropology journal calls the “experiences, beliefs and phenomena often called paranormal, supernatural or anomalous” (2026).

This article introduces some spiritual aspects of Kibbo Kift, as outlined in Pollen's 2025 Lily Dale talk, but also reflects on the ways in which the group, especially as seen in the writings of its founder-leader, aligned with and deviated from spiritualism and cognate interests. It provides this through a discussion of Hargrave’s autobiographical novels, produced during his Kibbo Kift years; several adapt John Bunyan’s 1678 allegorical novel Pilgrim’s Progress as a seeker’s spiritual journey.