The Inner Enlightenment Spiritist Society meets twice a week in a midtown Manhattan studio rental. Down the hall, pacing improv theater students rehearse comedy sketches, while nearby doors muffle vocal exercises. Inside the windowless room, the small Spiritist group assembles in a circle and begins the session with a prayer and an ethics lesson: this week’s addresses intervention, namely whether or not to get involved when confronted by the unsavory behavior of another. The ensuing discussion entertained a range of creeds: The Gospels with a WWJD bent, the Spiritist doctrine promoting the greater tolerance of others’ flaws, the Metropolitian Transportation Authority’s well publicized mantra “see something, say something,” and the common sense nugget, “well, don’t do anything if there’s a weapon.” It was ultimately agreed that it really just depends on the situation.

The moderator, Eduardo Guimares, a Spiritist educator with a background in Physical Education and French, then directed members of the study group to open their copies of The Spirits’ Book to a section describing the origin and nature of spirits, their modes of transportation, and their general aspect. The Spirits’ Book is the first book of a five-volume set now regarded as the Spiritist Codification series by practitioners. The books were purportedly dictated by spirits to future founder of the Spiritist movement, Allan Kardec, during those heady days of mid-19th century spiritual revivalism sweeping both North America and Europe.

Spiritualism (not to be confused with Kardec’s variant, Spiritism, though they shared a cradle) got its start in the Burned-over district of western New York State in the latter part of the Second Great Awakening. The region was birthplace to a number of other religious and reform movements including Mormonism, the Millerites, Seventh-day Adventists, Charles Grandison Finney’s early Pentecostalism, the Seneca Falls Convention and the Oneida Society amongst others. Hence, the name “burned-over,” because the roiling fires of religious and radical fervor burned so brightly, and/or had nothing left to burn. In a relatively short time, traditional belief systems had been upended by social and political upheaval in Europe and the Americas, the Industrial Revolution, the abolition movement, women’s suffrage, shifts in scientific understanding and methodology, and the work of Marx, Engels, and Darwin. It was enough to destabilize conventional religious doctrine, and in part explains the welcome return of the known unknowns. Though, as Guimares explained it, Spiritism came to us at precisely the right time; otherwise we would not have had the tools, including the scientific method, to learn from it.

In 1848, after months of hearing unexplained rapping sounds in their house, two young sisters in Hydesville, NY claimed to have devised a way to communicate with the spirit responsible for the noise—a peddler who claimed to have been murdered five years before in their home. Some of the Fox sisters’ earliest believers included those neighboring Quakers and abolitionists who helped spread news of the event through their radical circles, firmly associating it with the progressive social causes supported in the region. By 1850, with the patronage of P.T. Barnum, and the endorsement of the New York Tribune, the sisters were catapulted to national and international prominence. Spiritualism was born, and along with it the business of mediumship for money, and scientists’ attempts to prove or debunk the paranormal practice.

The sisters performed hundreds of public seances for notable figures like James Fenimore Cooper, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and Harriet Beecher Stowe, and other “investigators,” as those studying the phenomenon were called. Medium mania swept the country; within just a few years hundreds of people, primarily women, would claim to be able to communicate with the dead. The first Spiritualist periodical Spirit World estimated that by 1851 there were 100 mediums in New York and 50 to 60 private Spiritualist circles in Philadelphia alone. In April 1855, The North American Review confirmed the New England Spiritualist Association’s claim which put the number of Spiritualists in America at nearly two million; estimates that included England and Europe put that figure closer to eight. Various physical phenomena soon supplanted the simple rapping; tables turned or tilted, instruments played themselves, bells rung, bodies levitated, spirit hands materialized, or directed medium hands to write. Spirits were photographed, their hands were cast in paraffin, pellets were held to the forehead and read. People wanted railway stock predictions, love forecasts and showmanship. Systematic investigations into the manifestations were launched. And in 1857, The Boston Courier challenged any medium to prove his or her powers before a committee of Harvard Professors for a $500 award—no money changed hands. Into this miasma appeared one Allan Kardec, née Hyppolyte L. D. Rivail.

The Spirits’ Book:

Questions 82: Is it correct to say that spirits are immaterial?

Answer: “How is it possible to define a thing in regard to which no terms of comparison exist, and which your language is incompetent to express? Can one who is born blind define light? ‘Immaterial’ is not the right word; ‘incorporeal’ would be nearer the truth, for you must understand that a spirit, being a creation, must be something real. Spirit is quintessentialised matter, but matter existing in a state which has no analogue within the circle of your comprehension, and so ethereal that it could not be perceived by your senses.”

In contrast to the hysteria which seemed to surround early Spiritualism and all its noisy table-turning ways, The Spirits’ Book comes off cooly detached, and is full of zen-like koans. After an introductory section by Kardec describing the method used to produce the book, and a Prolegomena in which the spirits who helped write it identify themselves as John the Evangelist, St. Augustine, St. Vincent De Paul, Socrates, Plato, Benjamin Franklin, and Emmanuel Swedenborg, amongst others, the rest is structured as a Q&A with said spirits. It was during one of these sessions with the young medium daughters of a family friend that the spirits first proposed that Hyppoyte Rivail take the pseudonym Allan Kardec; evidently it was his own name from an earlier Druid incarnation, and he liked it enough to use it for all his Spiritist works.

Allan Kardec was born in Lyon, France in 1804 and educated in Yverdun. He later taught courses in the math and science in Paris, in addition to organizing free coursework for the underprivileged and proposing a number of reforms in the service of improving public education. According to the Allan Kardec Educational Society (AKES) he was born a Catholic, but raised a Protestant. These early religious experiences created in him a desire to synthesize the faiths, a desire which found its expression in his work with the spiritual realm. He experimented with a number of different intellectual fads before discovering this calling however. He joined a Freemason’s Lodge, was a member of the Paris Society of Magnetizers, and served as secretary of the Phrenological Society. Kardec was already in his early 50s before he was introduced to the spirit-rapping phenomenon in the spring of 1855 in Paris. The display intrigued him and he devoted himself to paranormal experimentation afterwards. By 1868 he had outlined the fundamentals of Spiritism in the five-book volume including The Spirits’ Book (1857), The Mediums’ Book (1861), The Gospel According to Spiritism (1864), Heaven and Hell (1865), and The Genesis According to Spiritism (1868), all published in France.

Spiritism was fast out of the blocks. It was an immediate hit with many French spiritual seekers, who embraced the doctrine’s insistence that it was a philosophy, not a religion, and one that could include, or advance, all religions. However, Spiritism did not fare as well with the popular press, nor with the Catholic Church, which had turned against Spiritualism and its ilk. The two were armed with arguments of spotty science and occultism, respectively, by the time Spiritism arrived.

Kardec followed up his widely read first volume two years after its publication with an introduction called What is Spiritism? The work was designed to dismiss those claims leveed by the press and clergy that he deemed spurious. A number of Spiritist journals and publications appeared expanding and defending his work as well, and despite the public criticism the group continued to grow into the early 20th century in Europe.

We paged through a section of The Spirits’ Book question by question: Are the properties of the perispirit mutable? The “vaporous” substance enveloping the spirit can take on any form the spirit chooses to give it. Do “spirits employ any time in transporting themselves through space?” “Yes; but their motion is as rapid as that of thought.” Guimares, the moderator, led the conversation and elaborated on some of the more purposely vague answers like: “There are many things that you do not understand, because your intelligence is limited; but that is no reason for rejecting them. The child does not understand all that is understood by its father, nor does an ignorant man understand all that is understood by a learned one. We tell you that the existence of spirits has no end; that is all we can say on the subject at present.” As Spiritists see it, the spirits aren’t being cagey with us, they are acknowledging our limits. Accordingly, Kardec’s books provide all the knowledge of the spirit world that we can handle in our current state of evolution. Spiritism decrees that we are ever-evolving beings; on our journey towards enlightenment we will live many lives, and will have a long time to fill in that haze.

The belief in reincarnation is one of the major differences between Spiritualism as earlier described, and the Spiritism that Kardec laid out in his series. Spiritists will also point out that Kardec codified our understanding of the spirit world and its prescriptions for us, and rigorously applied the scientific method to his experimentation. As evidence of this method in action, Spiritists will emphasize that over the course of the five-book series Kardec asked the spirit guides thousands of questions, and cross-referenced the answers using different mediums.

Another characteristic differentiating Spiritism from Spiritualism is the way that mediumship is viewed. Jussara Korngold, one of the founders of the Spiritist Group of New York(SGNY), explained, “Kardec emphasizes that mediumship is not the key work of Spiritism. The main thing is its philosophy—the work on your inner transformation by enlightening you to the realization of what you truly are.” She went on to say that while Spiritualists will use mediumship for revelations great to small—from telling the future to answering questions like ‘does my boyfriend like me?’—“Spiritists see it as helping us and others who are alive, or not, to be enlightened, to reach perfection….Some books are dictated by highly evolved mentors,” and all the mediumship services at a Spiritist center, including disobsesssion, are free. “The main goal is to help humankind alive or dead.”

After the Civil War, there was a surge of interest in Spiritualism due to the massive casualties suffered. A number of formal Spiritualist organizations were formed, and celebrated scientists, authors, and sympathizers including Arthur Conan Doyle, Alfred Russel Wallace and Mary Todd Lincoln, soon filled their ranks. Despite all this, Spiritualism’s credibility was weakened at the turn of the century thanks in part to increased accusations of charlatanism. The Fox sisters themselves shocked the community by publicly confessing in 1888 that the mysterious rapping was all just a bunch of ankle, knee and toe popping; they later recanted that confession though too. Spiritualism suffered another blow when the Seybert Commission, initially established by the will of Henry Seybert, to investigate “all systems of Morals, Religion, or Philosophy which assume to represent the Truth, and particularly of Modern Spiritualism” discovered fraud in every case they examined. The commission’s findings were widely derided by Spiritualist groups, but the report further marginalized the movement. Bitterness over the efforts to discredit certain mediums whipped old friends Harry Houdini (skeptic) and Arthur Conan Doyle (believer) into a lather; their feud eventually washed up in the pages of The New York Times as a series of acrimonious letters and messages to one another.

The backlash within the scientific community and the Church, along with new ideas like Freud’s theory of the unconscious helped fracture Spiritualism into smaller sects, some of which would later become the New Age movement. But, Spirtism had found a foothold in South America, and was just beginning to flourish in its future center, Brazil. The last major census carried out by the The Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics, or IBGE, in the year 2000, found that 2.2 million Brazilians identify themselves as Spiritists; unofficial counts by Spiritist groups and supporters put it closer to 20 million if you take into account all those who frequent the Spiritist centers in Brazil, and who practice Umbanda, or other syncretic religions combining African, Brazilian Indian, Catholic, and Spiritist elements. Not surprisingly, all the students at the IESS were from Brazil.

Toward the end of class, one student ventured a question about obsessors. “If you feel something like envy, is it always the result of an obsessor or can it be human causing it?” Guimares remarked that when you sit with a sad or angry person, you can sense those emotions, and they can impact your own mood. “It’s all vibrations,” he said. If you send out that sort of vibration, you will attract more of the same—humans send and sense vibrations, and that’s how we communicate with spirits too.

Suddenly, the lights went out. One side of the room was illuminated by a single red bulb. Four chairs were placed in front of it, and four members from the group stood before them waiting. What sounded like classical harpsichord music came from a small boombox in the corner, and the students assumed meditative postures. We were ushered towards the chairs in single file to receive The Passes. The Spiritist pass-giver is someone deemed to be actively working toward inner betterment, intellectual learning and moral and ethical self-cleansing. It is viewed as a task of great responsibility, and one which In the Domain of Mediumship, an important Spiritist tome, indicates could be tainted by the use of cigarettes and alcohol, along with cursing, emotional imbalance, and being ironic. The pass-giver moves his or her hands repeatedly over the seated recipient from head to waist. “We remove the negative energy around the chakras, and then we start giving you energy,” Jussara Korngold explains. The pass is one the central tenets of Spiritism, and can be described in Korngold’s book Practical Guide for Magnetic and Spiritual Healing as “the transmission of [cosmic] fluids coming directly from the spiritual world. These fluids are manipulated by the Spiritual Benefactors and channeled through incarnate pass givers, who donate a portion of their own ‘vital fluid’ to assist the patient.”

The lights came up, and tiny dixie cups full of “magnetized” Poland Springs water were passed around. We were directed to drink it. We did.

Obsession

“I approached her and noticed she felt my presence… I touched her and she shivered… I grabbed her arms and they became my arms. I got a little dizzy and she swayed. I thought and she responded. I lifted her and we walked together… Then, through her I slapped his face, crazy with hatred, overjoyed to find her insane with me, the two of us acting as one. And we are still one, and we’re going to remain so.” This is, in his own words, how a discarnate spirit took possession of a high society girl exactly on her fifteenth birthday party. The party breaks up, naturally, and the girl is committed to a mental hospital. Had she become insane or mad, according to the usual standards of behavior? Or was she possessed by an evil spirit? Should she be submitted to the orthodox medical routine for such cases, or else should she be exorcized? This book tells her story. Why she had become involved in the process, exposing herself to her plight and what a dedicated group of both incarnate and discarnate people did to release not only her, but also those who became entangled with her in an ugly story way back in a previous incarnation.”

The quote and synopsis are taken from Obsession, “co-authored” by Divaldo Pereira Franco. He claims to have taken dictation for this and other works from its primary author, his spirit guide Manoel Philomeno de Miranda, through a process called automatic writing.

Franco, along with the recently-deceased celebrated medium-author Francisco “Chico” Xavier, is one of the most prominent Spiritist authors, mediums and speakers. The two men “channeled” more than 500 books combined, including historical novels, works of philosophy, religion, and science, poems, chronicles, short stories, histories, and children’s books. And the two are widely accepted to be the definitive tour guides through the Spirit world.

Franco’s book Obsession is meant to be read as the narrative non-fiction tale of an obsessor spirit who is fixated on a teenage socialite. According to the Spiritist doctrine there are four types of obsession, and none of them are good:

1. A spirit (or disincarnate) influences a living person (or incarnate). In this case the person may not even know they have obsessor attached to them.
2. Incarnate to incarnate. The visible kind.
3. Incarnate to disincarnate. A living person may obsess over the spirit of a recently lost loved one, keeping them both in turmoil.
4. Disincarnate to disincarnate. A spirit might become attached to another spirit and pursue it across the universe.

In my second class, a student asked “what’s the best way to get rid of a human obsessor?” Another student helpfully chimed in “restraining order!” before the moderator could respond that luckily that scenario was the easiest to handle—you might talk to the person for instance, or avoid them, and if all else fails, there is always that restraining order. The first category is more serious, he explained. Often only full comprehension of the situation, and then action, typically of the Spiritist center sort will help.

Obsession “is a bit intense” for those just getting into Spiritism, Frederico Goveia, the 27-year-old manager of the Philharmonic of the Americas orchestra, chuckled when asked about Divaldo’s book. I had met Goveia in the morning study group before he was to give a talk on mediumship and composers.

The bespectacled Brazilian-American recommended Nossa Lar, one of Francisco Xavier’s works (dictated by spirit Andre Luiz), after Kardec’s own of course, for those first trying to orient themselves with the spirit world. Nosso Lar, which translates into Astral Home in English, reveals conditions in the spirit world and its people, places, and organization.

Xavier and Divaldo works wield enormous influence with Spiritists. When discussing spirit world matters in the meetings, the moderators often defer to Xavier/Luiz’s work and use his (their?) descriptions of it. Based on such descriptions, we can infer that the spirit world is arranged a lot like a big city, maybe even New York City in fact. Busy spirits whiz past one another like they would down Fifth Avenue at rush hour. The physical world is a reflection of the spirit world; we apparently build what we know.

“You know about New Year’s Resolutions?” our moderator João Korngold, from the SGNY, continued. “Everyone has them, and now that it’s over a month into the New Year, almost everyone has broken them. It’s like that in the spirit world,” he went on. “You may have an aspect of yourself that you think you are going to improve in the next life—you may think ‘I will be totally different, I will accomplish this and that,’ but you probably won’t.” You’ll make progress slowly; the process is long, infinitely so.

I had to admit the idea of a million broken resolutions stretched across an infinity punctuated by vaporous visits to a celestial Midtown housing harried specters a depressing one to say the least. But I hadn’t quite understood the city metaphor. “You only attract spirits of a similar vibration in the spirit world,” our moderator clarified; beings that are as evolved as you are—a flattering idea for most. And, it is precisely the idea of incremental improvement through reincarnation that Spiritists find comforting, and what in their view helps make them more empathetic humans.

The evening of my last class with the group we read through The Mediums’ Book. The first half of the meeting is devoted to its study and is open to the public; the second half is by invitation only—for those serious about mediumship. A passage related to direct or automatic writing prompted an aside on homosexuality. Chico Xavier postulated in one of his books that in the future there would be more cases of homosexuality. The logic behind the claim goes something like this: Each life you live you learn a little more. Sometimes you incarnate as a man, sometimes a woman—it does not always alternate in that fashion, but does enough. Because of the increase in promiscuity among heterosexuals over the last few generations, when a promiscuous man comes back as a woman to learn the lessons he needs to learn as a member of that gender, he will still have some leftover lust for women; hence that person will manifest as a lesbian.

“Spiritism provides the answers…for people who are seeking to improve themselves, and to religious philosophical questions,” Frederico Goveia explained. “You have two evolutions to go through—intellectual and moral—and the progress must be balanced. Too many people dabble with mediumship and get obsessed with past life regression, but as you sow so shall you reap. If you are constantly progressing, and always improving, chances are you are the best you ever were right now. If you are in a bad state you might be reaping what you sowed from a past life, and there’s no reason to dig into it.”

Goveia came to the United States from Brazil when he was 13. He moved first to Miami, and made his way to New York three years ago. He described his introduction to Spiritism in 1998. He was experiencing a depression with extrasensory aspects. None of the visits to doctors, their treatments, or his prescribed medication, was helping. His father thought it might be an obsession issue and recommended that they return to Brazil, where after a few months of magnetic passes and Spiritist study his condition improved.

Spiritism is part of the fabric of the Brazilian culture, Goveia explained. “People go to mass Sunday morning, and go to the Spiritist center to get passes in the afternoon.” The religious syncretism appealed to him, and he didn’t find it at all contradictory with conventional forms of Christianity. “Spiritism restores Christianity to its primordial essence, which did embrace the idea of reincarnation—The Council of Nicaea changed that. Even the Bible identifies John the Baptist as the reincarnation of Elijah, and the word ‘resurrection’ meant ‘reincarnation’ by Jews at that time.” I looked up some of these claims online and it seems there’s a whole genre devoted to debunking or confirming them.

But there is no disputing that the group prizes inclusivity. The Long Island Spiritist Doctrine Studies website is peppered with quotes by Mahatma Ghandi, Victor Hugo, Leo Tolstoy, Benjamin Franklin, Carl Jung, Dr. Ian Stevenson, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Paramahansa Yogananda, as well as images of Gustav Klimt paintings. The center’s director, Dulcinete Story says “Spiritism is nothing new, in fact it has been found throughout ancient times and during all great civilizations, certainly the enlightened teachings of Plato and Socrates have many of the same teachings that Spiritism now brings forth.”

Jussara Korngold sees Spiritism as a way of life. “By learning about why you are here, where you came from, what is going to happen after, your whole point of view changes. Some people may ask ‘why do I have to care about the environment if I don’t have kids? I won’t be here—it doesn’t concern me.’ But if you think you are coming back, you must care.”

After convalescing, Goveia’s own commitment to Spiritism was strengthened by what he calls a lack of dogma or hierarchy in the group, and of course, the charity aspect. “There is no financial gain of any kind, no commercial aspect. All the services and therapies are given for free. Every Spiritist center in Brazil embraces charity cause—they feed homeless, or work with children. All of the proceeds from books that were channeled or received [including Xavier and Franco’s work] fund charitable organizations.” In addition to his work as the manager of the Philharmonic, Goveia himself is quite active in the Spiritist community and lectures on the music and Spiritism, the mediumship of great composers specifically. “Mahler, Mozart, Shubert, Handel, Bach—you see that they were influenced. They wrote in such a feverish way. Compare that to the way Divaldo or Chico wrote novels—the thoughts came clean, they didn’t make corrections. There are spirit guides that are devoted to the progress of music, to all fields of human knowledge.”

He believes science “through quantum physics or different dimensions will eventually corroborate in scientific terms what Kardec has been saying” about the Spiritual realm all along. Though Kardec said Spiritism is “a science [itself] that is always progressing with the times,” he also advised that “if for whatever reason in the future science says something that contradicts Spiritism stick to science.”

Before our conversation ended, I asked about the water that went from bottle to belly without any discernable magnetization. “Water is the most conducive element for transmission of energy” he said; it was magnetized by the spirits while I was sitting there waiting to drink it.

An economist by trade, Jussara Korngold, is also one of the founders of the SGNY and the volunteer CEO of Friends of Renascer, a nonprofit organization in Brazil that helps provide healthcare and assistance for families below the poverty line. I missed her in the classes at the center, so had to catch her on the phone. When I finally did, she was driving. “But I’m wearing an earpiece, so don’t worry!” she laughed. I was expecting the author of Those Left Behind: Understanding Suicide from a Spiritist’s View, and the Practical Guide for Magnetic and Spiritual Healing to be more reserved, but she was giggly and personable. She indirectly indicated that Goveia’s conversion tale, if you can call it that, was not necessarily unique. People get into Spiritism for two reasons she said. “Ninety-five percent do so because of pain, and 5% for love.” The first group is seeking comfort, healing or understanding, and the second group, in which she includes herself, is made up of spiritual seekers. Spiritist chatrooms online seem to support her theory. Most people posting did so shortly after the death of a family member or due to a personal crisis. Korngold herself is a third generation Spiritist, but truly committed herself to its application in her life when she was 11 years old. Since then she has been an active member—writing, teaching, volunteering, translating and practicing her mediumship.

“In this country we need to reeducate people that a psychic is not a medium—we are not talking about psychics.” To her, it is about healing and understanding and she believes that Spiritists can work in tandem with scientific treatments not against them. For instance, in cases of addiction, “we recommend three forms of treatment: medical, to treat the physical dependence; psychiatric, to treat the emotional dependence and spiritual to get rid of the attached obsessor spirits feeding on the addiction. That’s why we see such a small percentage of results, because people are often overlooking the spiritual side.”

The dissemination of Spiritist works and philosophy in English is one of the main goals of the organizations that belong to United States Spiritist Council, a council which includes the SGNY, the IESS, and the LISDS. To that end, all of Spiritism’s major works are translated and available for free download on the SGNY website. “With the collapse of the global marketplace, Spiritism is needed greatly,” Story added. “It is through study, fraternity and prayer that we can repair the damage that materialism has caused, not just in the United States but across the globe.”

The groups are aware of their fringe status in this country however, along with the fact that the belief in spirits is generally regarded as an eccentric one at best. To change such perceptions is one of the primary reasons members agreed to speak to me in the first place. “If information is going to get out about Spiritism, we at least want to make sure some of it is true!” Korngold exclaimed, before continuing “we are absolutely not a cult. We never charge for meetings, our expenses are open to see. The main thing is philosophical: How can I find happiness and peace? By giving happiness and peace to others, by having a good energy. This is true reasoning and understanding. We don’t say you have to change your religion, but most probably it will come to a point when it is impossible to deny that the spirit survives, that the spirit communicates, and that there is reincarnation. Either religions will adapt or they will lose [their followings]. Spiritism is not the religion of the future, but the future of religions.”

Nicole Whelan is a writer and musician who lives in Brooklyn. Her last piece for Last Exit was Confessions of a Cyberchondriac in Issue 11.

Copyright Last Exit 2009