Spiritism owes its birth and popularity largely to the work of Allan Kardec (1804 –1869). He was raised as a Roman Catholic, earned a Bachelor of Arts degrees in science and a doctorate in medicine, and was fluent in German, English, Italian, and Spanish in addition to his native French. During much of his life Rivail pursued interests in education, philosophy and the sciences.
In his early 50s Kardec became intrigued by reports of strange phenomena occurring during seances, a popular form of entertainment at the time in Europe. Believing that, if genuine, this could be of vast importance to science and to religion he began a careful investigation of psychic phenomena, mainly mediumship.
Kardec had a friend with two daughters who were mediums and were engaged in this activity. He was impressed with the communications that they claimed came from spirit communicators and began to attend regular sittings or séances with them. Before accepting a spiritual or paranormal cause Kardec believed it would be necessary first to discover if ordinary material causes could explain these communications such as fraud, hallucination, or unconscious mental activity.
He proceeded to investigate the truthfulness of these spirits’ assertion that they were a higher form of intelligence by formulating a series of questions in relation to the various problems of human life and the universe in general and submitted them to his unseen spirits. Answers were given through the two young mediums who agreed to devote a couple of evenings every week for this purpose.
Kardec went on to develop over one thousand questions concerning the nature and mechanisms of spirit communications, the reasons for human life on earth, and aspects of the spiritual realm. In addition to the two girls he began his investigations with, he posed those questions to ten mediums, all of whom were purportedly not known to each other.
He became convinced that the mediums provided accurate information unknown to themselves or others present (e.g. personal information about deceased individuals) and that they accurately portrayed a range of personality characteristics of deceased individuals.
After nearly two years of his conversations with spirits (always through mediums) he remarked to his wife:
“It is a most curious thing! My conversations with the invisible intelligences have completely revolutionised my ideas and convictions. The instructions thus transmitted constitute an entirely new theory of human life, duty, and destiny, that appears to me to be perfectly rational and coherent, admirably lucid and consoling, and intensely interesting. I have a great mind to publish these conversations in a book; for it seems to me that what interests me so deeply might very likely prove interesting to others.”
The book, Kardec maintained, was dictated and directed by the spirits themselves and was titled “The Spirits’ Book.” When published sold it widely all over Europe. Kardec founded The Parisian Society of Psychologic Studies for the purpose of obtaining more material from spirits to elucidate the truth of the teaching. Similar associations were speedily formed all over the world which transmitted the most remarkable of the spirit-communications received by them to the Parisian Society. Kardec thus acquired an enormous amount of spirit-teaching from all over the world which he studied, collated, and coordinated to form an enlarged “Revised Edition” of the The Spirits’ Book, again under the direction of the spirits by whom it was originally dictated. Kardec also drew on this same material to compile four other works, The Mediums’ Book, The Gospel as Explained by Spirits, Heaven and Hell, and Genesis. [Kardec, Allan. The Spirits’ Book: Revised.
Kardec called the teaching he received Spiritism whose fundamental principle is the relation of the material world with spirits, or the beings of the invisible world. Spiritism maintains that humans are essentially immortal spirits that temporarily inhabit physical bodies for many incarnations to attain moral and intellectual improvement. It also claims that spirits, through mediumship, may have beneficial or detrimental influence on the physical world. Spiritism differs from and Spiritualism as it teaches reincarnation or rebirth into human life after death, whereas Spiritualism does not necessarily do so.
Kardec pointed out that the essence of the communications from ‘higher’ spirits contained in Spiritism is a “moral teaching that can be summed up, like that of Christ, in the gospel maxim, ‘Do unto others as you would that others should do unto you’; that is to say, do good to all, and wrong no one. This principle of action furnishes mankind with a rule of conduct of universal application, from the smallest matters to the greatest. “They teach us that selfishness, pride, sensuality, are passions which bring us back towards the animal nature, by attaching us to matter; that he who, in this lower life, detaches himself from matter through contempt of worldly trifles, and through love of the neighbour, brings himself back towards the spiritual nature; that we should all make ourselves useful, according to the means which God has placed in our hands for our trial; that the strong and the powerful owe aid and protection to the weak; and that he who misuses strength and power to oppress his fellow-creature violates the law of God. They teach us that in the spirit-world nothing can be hidden, and that the hypocrite will there be unmasked, and all his wickedness unveiled; that the presence, unavoidable and perpetual, of those whom we have wronged in the earthly life is one of the punishments that await us in the spirit-world; and that the lower or higher state of spirits gives rise in that other life to sufferings or to enjoyments unknown to us upon the earth. “But they also teach us that there are no unpardonable sins, none that cannot be effaced by expiation. Man finds the means of accomplishing this in the different existences which permit him to advance progressively, and according to his desire and his efforts, towards the perfection that constitutes his ultimate aim.” Such is the sum of spiritist doctrine, as contained in the teachings given by spirits of high degree.”