Allan Kardec: The Spirits’ Book

Context

The Spirits’ Book was written during a period of exploration of esoteric spirit phenomena in both Europe and the United States. The writings of the visionary Swedish scientist Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772) inspired the foundation of the Church of the New Jerusalem, whose “Swedenborgian” followers envisioned a new form of Christianity. Swedenborg’s visions were said to be conveyed to him through a host of celestial beings, including angels and spirits. The theosophical teachings of the Russian-born Madame Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831–1891) also provided major contributions to the popular understanding of spirit encounters. As she traveled through Europe, India, Egypt, and the Americas, Blavatsky acted as a medium in séances and also engaged in “automatic writing”—a method of mediumship in which one unconsciously writes the script as conveyed from a spirit.

Perhaps the single most important impetus to any movement concerning spirit phenomena occurred in the United States in 1848. In the small village of Hydesville, near Rochester, New York—in the part of the state known as the “burned-over district” for being host to so many religious revivals—three young sisters named Kate, Margaret, and Leah Fox purportedly devised a system of communicating with a spirit. This system consisted of correlating the rapping noises made by the spirit with “yes” and “no” answers or letters of the alphabet. According to the official story, Kate and Margaret claimed to have had communication with a particular spirit named Charles B. Rosma, a deceased peddler said to have been buried under the Fox home. As the sisters were the only mediums able to interpret the dialogue between themselves and Rosma, they became central figures in the burgeoning Spiritualist movement.

By the 1850s Kate and Margaret Fox would carry their newly found fame to New York City and other parts of the Northeast, attracting large crowds interested in witnessing a public séance and gathering the interest and support of such influential figures as the editor Horace Greeley and the abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison. News of the Fox sisters’ communication with spirits also spread to Europe, which allowed the Parisian Hippolyte Rivail to learn of the Spiritualist movement. Intrigued, he was nevertheless convinced that something was lacking from its belief system. Closely studying the attention that mediumship was receiving, Rivail focused on the concept of reincarnation. For Rivail, the spirit world was the true eternal world, whereas the material world was merely a place where the soul could improve itself on any number of levels. Thus, reincarnation was a journey for the soul to realize its potential, and the spirit world was a place of solace and reflection.

In 1855 Rivail decided to launch a new movement that would challenge some of the tenets of Spiritualism. With his new conjectures about reincarnation, Rivail began composing an alternative text that would offer a different version of the Spiritualist phenomena. This new version of Spiritualism would be referred to as Spiritism, and the alternative text, attributed to Rivail as Allan Kardec, would be titled The Spirits’ Book.

Kardec’s methods of investigation required him to engage in mediumship. He structured the text to appear as an extensive interview between himself and spirits designated as authorities of the spirit world. He used mediums to conduct séances and deliver over seven hundred questions to a variety of spirits, probing into their existence and everyday life within the spirit world. These questions and the spirits’ responses constitute the bulk of the The Spirits’ Book.

In 1888 the credibility of all of the movements associated with spirit phenomena was dealt a potentially devastating blow when the mature Margaret Fox admitted to having manufactured the sessions where she and her sisters communicated with spirits. Despite this admission (later recanted and attributed to Margaret’s alcoholism), The Spirits’ Book served to codify the beliefs in spirit phenomena, allowing Fox’s statement to go largely overlooked.