Allan Kardec: The Spirits’ Book

About the Author

Hippolyte Léon Denizard Rivail, also known as Allan Kardec, was born in Lyons, France, on October 3, 1804. Expected to pursue a career in law, owing to his family’s substantial history of legal training, he instead took a greater interest in the subjects of philosophy and education. As a young man, Rivail traveled to Yverdun, Switzerland, where he studied pedagogy under Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi. Returning to France, he went on to work as a teacher of general education through his early fifties. Soon Rivail took an interest in a host of esoteric ideas, including alternative healing therapies, parapsychology, physiognomic concepts associated with phrenology, and magnetism, as well as a variety of beliefs and practices emerging from the European occult movement.

After learning of the Hydesville incidents of the late 1840s, Rivail became fascinated by the concept of mediumship and the prospect of reinterpreting the tenets of Spiritualism. He took a particular interest in assessing the extent to which he could engage in dialogue with the “spirit realm.” Exploring this interest, Rivail recruited a professional somnambulist named Celina Japhet (or Bequet), who assisted him in participating in séances. During one séance in 1857, Japhet told Rivail that two of his former names were Allan and Kardec. These names Rivail combined and adopted as his own pen name for all of his Spiritism writings.

In addition to his seminal 1857 text The Spirits’ Book, Kardec also composed four other texts including The Book on Mediums (1861), The Gospel according to Spiritism (1864), Heaven and Hell (1865), and The Genesis according to Spiritism (1868). These five texts are known among followers of Spiritism as the “Spiritist Codification”—the fundamental canon of the Spiritist belief system.

After achieving considerable fame as the founder of the Spiritism movement, Rivail died of an aneurysm on March 31, 1869. Two days later, on April 2, Rivail was honored at his funeral when the French astronomer Camille Flammarion gave his eulogy, noting that “Spiritism is not a religion but a science.” Rivail was buried in the Cimetière du Père Lachaise in Paris.