During the late 19th century, many well educated people from Europe and the United States embraced Spiritism as a logical explanation of themes related to the Christian Revelation. However, most of the initial enthusiasm receded. But in some places the work of a few dedicated preachers managed to achieve a solid foundation - more notably, in Brazil, and to a certain extent in the Philippines. In Brazil, more than 2 million people declare themselves Kardecist spiritists, according to the last IBGE census data, which makes Brazil the largest Spiritist country in the world.
Spiritism has influenced syncretisms like Brazilian Umbanda and Vietnamese Caodaism.
Spiritism is not to be confused with Spiritualism. Its use with that meaning is regarded as pejorative by both Spiritualists and Spiritists. Uncapitalised, the word, in English, is an obsolete term for Animism and other religious practices involving the Invocation of spiritual beings, including Shamanism.
Kardecist Spiritism is a collection of principles and laws, based directly on the teachings of Jesus and on further revelation received from Enlightened Spirits (among them Jesus himself). Spiritists believe that their doctrine is the Consoler that was promised to mankind by Jesus, to "reestablish all things in their truer meaning". Kardecist Spiritism not only claims to be a logical successor of Christianity, but also to be a truer form of Christianity, purified from unnecessary elaborations and additions.
Allan Kardec claimed that, unlike previous doctrines which had been filtered by the imperfections of the flesh, the teachings collected in his books were closer to the truth God commanded His messengers (Angels or Enlightened Spirits to transmit to mankind. The new doctrine emerged from a research carried on by Kardec on the works of several contemporary mediums.
Present-day spiritists see a fundamental difference between "Scientific Spiritism" (the study of spiritual phenomena) and "Kardecist Spiritism" (the religious and philosophical practice derived from them). The two aspects of the doctrine are seen as complementary.
Some weeks later they started to be disturbed by inexplicable noises all over the house, mainly rythmic knocks and raps. Sometimes the knocks became effectively blows and rocked the small wooden house so that nobody could sleep there. The Fox girls one night tried to communicated with the knocks and discovered that they appeared to be intelligent and could answer to questions.
After this finding, the Foxes invited neighbours and acquaintaces to see it, causing a commotion in the local community. Soon it was news, and spread all over the world. The public response -- and especially the content of the messages from the mysterious knockers -- disgusted the local authorities and prompted an investigation that blamed the two girls for the phenomenon, though the mechanism of the fraud was not exposed. The girls had to be saved from Lynching by a good-hearted Quaker named Georges Villet.
The Fox affair was still very popular in France by the time Kardec first heard of the Spinning Tables
A spinning table was a round wooden table, around which several people sat, with their feet resting on the chairs' supports and the hands on the table top. The "energy" channelled from the spirits supposedly made the table spin around and stop on the mark assigned to each letter the communicating spirit wanted. The system was an early, and less effective, precursor of the Ouija boards that later became so popular.
Allan Kardec first became interested in Spiritism when he knew about the Fox sisters, but his first contact with it was by the spinning tables. Some of the earlier parts of the Spirits' Book were channelled this way.
Despite being published from 1857 to 1865, these books remain as the core of the Spiritist doctrine and all further elaborations on it is based on them.
Kardec also wrote a brief introductory pamphlet (What Is Spiritism? and the Spiritist Magazine (Revue Spirite), where he was the most frequent collaborator. His essays and articles would be posthumously collected in a tome named Posthumous Works.
The central tenet of Spiritism is the belief in spiritual life. The spirit is eternal, and evolves through a series of incarnations in the material world. The true life is the spiritual one; life in the material world is just a short-termed stage, where the spirit has the opportunity to learn and develop its potentials. Reincarnation is the process where the spirit, once free in the spiritual world, comes back to the world.
Christ, the greatest moral example for humankind, is deemed to have incarnated here to show us, through his example, the path that we have to take to achieve our own spiritual perfection. The Gospel is reinterpreted in Spiritism; some of the words of Christ or his actions are clarified, at the light of the spiritual phenomena, that is presented as law of nature, and not as something miraculous. It's only because of our own imperfection that we can't operate similar things; as we evolve, we will not only understand it better, but we will be able to do similar things, for all spirits are created equal, and are destined for the same end.
As pointed out above, Spiritism stresses the importance of the spiritual evolution. According to this belief, we are destined for perfection; There are other planets hosting more advanced lifeforms, and happier societies, where the spirit has the chance to keep evolving both on the moral and intellectual sense. Although not clear from Kardec's works, later writers explain this point a little bit better; it seems that we cannot detect more advanced life forms in other planets, as they are living in a slight different plane from ours, in the same way the spiritual plane is superimposed over our own plane. There is no scientific evidence to back this claim, despite the still unfruitiful attempts to apply concepts from modern physics - quantum theory, multiple universes and so on - to explain it.
The communication between the spiritual world and the material world happens all the time, but at a varied level. Some people barely sense what the spirits tell them, in a instinctive way, while others have greater conscience of the fact. The so-called mediums have these natural abilities highly developed, being able to communicate with the spirits and interact with them by several means: listening, seeing, or writing through spiritual command (also know by kardecists as Psychography). Direct manipulation of physical objects by spirits is also possible; however, for it to happen the spirits need the help (voluntary or not) of mediums with particular abilities for physical effects.
Despite the claim of a Christian base for its teachings, Spiritism draws heavily from eastern religions, most notably from Hinduism, Confucionism and Buddhism. It shares some elements with Rosacrucianism and Theosophy.
More on Spiritist Doctrine can be found in The Spirits Book.
Actual practice of Spiritism includes a few activities, whose form vary widely from place to place. In some cases, more or less ellaborated rituals might be involved, despite the lack of explicit doctrinal prescription. In fact, anything that is not explicitly discouraged is lightly tolerated.
All groups carry on mediunic meetings, in which they either invoke or receive the spirits of deceased persons, which is done nowadays exclusivel for charitable reasons. Such reasons include bringing relief to the family of a recently deceased person, sending alway some evil influence that is lurking about someone and, quite usually, allow spirits of people that died an unfortunate or unexpected death and are unaware of their state. Often such meetings include the presence of suffering spirits, whose pain make blind and full of wrath, rebel spirits that do not want to heed by the "rules" or spirits that seek vengeance against those who did them wrong. In all cases, Kardecist approach is to listen to the spirits' complaints, pray for them, try to instruct them and invite them to come around frequently to share the benefit of their friendship.
A mediunic meeting is carried on around a wooden table, around which the mediums seat. Other participants may be invited to complete the table but they usually seat in benches around it. The meeting is carried on with dim light (often from ultra-violet lamps) in a room without windows. The door is kept closed (though not locked) during all the meeting. There is a "Book of Prayers" where visitors write the names of people (alive or not) they want to send prayer for.
As mediunic meetings are intended to deal with sufferers, they are not easy to cope with if you are weak of heart and has not read along the doctrine enough. Depending on the group you are with, meetings can be quite mild, with bland-faced people chanting prayers in a low voice while the mediums weep, whisper or mumble. But a usual mediunic meeting is a rather violent spectacle, in which the suffering, rebel or vengeant spirits take possession of the mediums suddenly and spit out bad words with harsh voices, often with blows on the table or frantic movement of the eyes and the neck.
Another important venue of practice for spiritists is charity work. Most spiritist centers maintain some kind of charitable activity. It's common for a center to specialize on one type of assistance, for example: elder people, poor pregnant woman and mothers with newborn babies or abandoned children. In such cases, assistance can range from educational activities, supply of food or medication, and social integration, up to the maintenance of private asylums for the unassisted. These entities are maintained by donations from the community at large, which in many cases includes people that are not spiritists, but feel comfortable about doing so due to the transparent work done by those centers. In Brazil nearly all Spiritist centres are recognised as both religious temples and charities.
Spiritism has no temples: each "Spiritist Centre" is a place where people meet to have lectures on doctrine, share mutual support, receive the Blessing (spiritism), drink "energised" water and (if prepared) to attend to Mediunic Meetings in which contact is made with the deceased (for the benefit of both them and the living) with the help of mediums.
The Centres are very active on charity, maintaining free literacy schools, hospitals or clinics (practising "normal" medicine), libraries and addiction recovery clinics. The most recognisable activity carried by them is, actually, helping the poor by distributing soup, clothes, blankets and schoolbooks. They are also very active in campaigning against abortion, suicide and addictions.
In Brazil, Spiritism is organised nationwide by the Brazilian Spiritist Federation, which is affilited to the International Kardecist Spiritism Union, located in Paris, France.
Spiritist Centres (and also the BSF) are also active book publishers.
He embraced all Christian ramifications like a single Religion, derived from the word of Jesus, needing a new revelation, which was made on that moment by spirits. Therefore, the rituals and the organisation are taken from whatever religion one follows, though what really matters are not the exterior ritual and practices but the moving spirit behind that.
Spiritism was only established as a religion since its active participants were (and still often are) expelled from their religions but still felt the need for a place to practice some kind of worship and religious work.
Spiritists claim that the name Spiritism should also be used to name the science studying the survival of the human soul and the communication with it.
Most of the Christian opposition to Spiritism is found among Evangelical Christians, especially those of Lutheran doctrine, who belive salvation is a free gift of God, which we are unworthy of. Contrary to this, Spiritism states that all spiritis will eventually attain full illumination. Christian Fundamentalists also reject spiritism following the traditional translation of the Bible (King James Version).
The Catholic Church clearly forbids its members to take part in mediunic sessions, or any type of reunion concerning the evocation or the communication of spirits. Most religions have a similar position, however, depending on the country, there seems to be more tolerance towards spiritism. This is especially observable in Brazil.
Most Eastern religions (and some ancient Western ones) reserve a central role for the worship, or the veneration of the ancestors (For this reason, Spiritism has found some resistance outside the West).
In Ancient Greece it was believed that the dead inhabited the Hades and that it was possible to reach them, either by mediumship or by a type of Astral projection. Ulysses and Orpheus are two characters who went to the Hades eventually. In the Illiad, Achilles and Ulysses also used a bloody sacrifice to summon the sould of the dead.
In the Medium Age, as an influence of the Germanic peoples, it was believed that the dead could eventually come back and haunt persons or places; this being the origin of the legends of ghosts and haunted houses.
By the time of William Shakespeare popular belief on ghosts was widespread in Britain and he used them as plot devices in several of his works, like Hamlet, Julius Caesar (play) and Macbeth.
Asian Shamans claimed to have fully accomplished the ability to communicate with the dead and the gods and served as intermediates between them and the living people. American Native medicine men also claimed the same ability.
These religions consist basically in the worship of gods of African (Orisha) and Brazilian (Caboclo and Preto Velho) entities, with a varied degree of sincretism, usually with strong catholic influence. They are: Candomblé, Xambá, Batuque and Umbanda (The name Macumba is deemed as pejorative).
Because of the misuse of the term Spiritism in the past to designate these cults, persists a confusion regarding the religion.