Spiritism

Spiritism is a spiritualistic philosophy codified in the 19th century by the French educator Hippolyte Léon Denizard Rivail, under the codename Allan Kardec; it proposed the study of "the nature, origin, and destiny of spirits, and their relation with the corporeal world". Spiritism soon spread to other countries, having today 35 countries represented in the International Spiritist Council.

Spiritism postulates that humans are essentially immortal spirits that temporarily inhabit physical bodies for several necessary incarnations to attain moral and intellectual improvement. It also asserts that spirits, through passive or active mediumship, may have beneficent or maleficent influence on the physical world.

The term first appeared in Kardec's book, The Spirits Book, which sought to distinguish Spiritism from spiritualism.

Spiritism has influenced a social movement of healing centers, charity institutions and hospitals involving millions of people in dozens of countries, with the greatest number of adherents in Brazil. Spiritism was also very influential in the new Vietnamese religion called Cao Đài or Caodaism, born in 1926 after three spirit mediums received messages that identified Allan Kardec as a prophet of a new universal religion. After 1975, Caodaism was almost closed down by the Vietnamese government, but it has now re-emerged on the public scene and Caodaists recently visited the Kardec Spiritist Center in Lyon to re-establish contacts with the legacy of French Spiritism. There are about four million Caodaists in Vietnam and in the Vietnamese diaspora, so they are the largest Spiritist group in Asia.

Spiritism is based on the five books of the Spiritist Codification written by French educator Hypolite Léon Denizard Rivail under the pseudonym Allan Kardec, in which he reported observations of phenomena at séances that he attributed to incorporeal intelligence (spirits). His work was later extended by writers such as Léon Denis, Gabriel Delanne, Arthur Conan Doyle, Ernesto Bozzano, Gustav Geley, Chico Xavier, Divaldo Pereira Franco, Emídio Brasileiro, Alexandr Aksakov, William Crookes, Oliver Lodge, Albert de Rochas, and Amalia Domingo Soler. Kardec's research was influenced by the Fox sisters and the use of talking boards. Interest in Mesmerism also contributed to early Spiritism.

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