It's said that in years past, one in every fifty thousand people is spontaneously born with the ability to see, and interact with spirits of various sorts. Those with these powers generally pass them down family lines, creating 'clans' of empowered human beings. Since the Renaissance in the west and the modernization in the east, these people have generally concealed their abilities. Many heroes of the past, Beowulf, Achilles, Kintaro, and hundreds of others were spiritualists, taking advantage of their supernatural abilities to change the course of history, either by protecting the world from monsters (mostly hollows, but some of them Spiritualists themselves) or by using their powers to win wars for their people.

These powers are innate, the powers that spring forth from deep within the human soul. As one might expect, this natural development of spiritual powers shares more in common with the Hollows which manifest instinctively from souls than that which Shinigami train in themselves, and which blends the human power with that of the Spirit King. No two Spiritualists will develop very similar abilities, unless they are related, and even then there will generally be large differences. It is typically clear from a young age that a Spiritualist is in the making, due to the large amount of spiritual power and surprising durability and presence such a person possesses, capable of fighting the least of hollows with their raw power and a weapon of some sort, if given proper training.

When a family line of Spiritualists persists for some time, they tend to develop into 'clans' of some sort or another, using their powers to help protect one another (and, of course, this close conglomeration of spiritual power also helps to draw more hollows to the area, which in turn mandates that they support eachother.) The 'stages' of Spiritualist power have no real name, because it varies among spiritualists. A ninja clan of spiritualists may label them as 'Chunin, Jounin, and Sanin' while an order of knights may use "Knight, Champion, Paladin." Spiritualists without a heritage frequently don't give names to the stages of their powers, relying on the names they give their abilities alone.

It should be noted, that while First Stage spiritualists are relatively common, it is extremely rare to see a second stage Spiritualist, with perhaps an average of ten per generation throughout the entire human world. There are absolutely zero known Spiritualists of this level of power living at this time.