In the central years of the 19th century, a wave of paranormal events shook society. We could set this date as the phenomenon of nineteenth-century spiritualism. Flying tables, spirits and mediums were an active part of the religious, social and political life of their time.
But what are we talking about when we talk about nineteenth-century spiritualism? In this article we are not only going to talk about connections with the afterlife, turntables, Ouija boards and spiritual incarnations, but we are also going to explore the spiritualist movement of the 19th century as a current of thought close to progressivismwhich maintained close ties with the krausismthe republicanism and the feminism.
The origins of spiritualism
“Man wants to be sovereign, just like his fellow men. To govern himself he does not need a king, to elevate himself he does not need a priest. Democracy is reaching the sphere of religion, without mysteries or intermediaries, morality without rites or symbols.
Benign Pallol
Spiritism is a doctrine, a practice and a current of thought born in France in the middle years of the 19th century. The principles of spiritualism are the belief in the soul immortalityas well as in the presence of spirits in the body plane and the relationship of these with living people, generally through those known as mediums: people with a special sensitivity who act as mediators between spirits and men.
Added to this spiritual belief is a whole philosophical doctrine arisen around the spiritual experience. This philosophical doctrine does not make up a systematized religion, but it does encompass certain moral beliefs, ethical dictates and a corpus of thought that supposes a whole worldview that supports its beliefs.
According to Allan Kardec himself, spiritism:
It is both a science of observation and a philosophical doctrine. As a practical science, it consists of the relationships that can be established with the Spirits; As a philosophical doctrine, it includes all the moral consequences that flow from such relationships.
Allan Kardec, 1888
Nineteenth-century spiritism was based on the premise that the dead pass in the form of spirits to another world. They could, at times, stay on the earthly plane and help humans on the painful path of earthly life. This meant that the spirits were not considered something to fear. And, in a way, it explains the enormous extension of the phenomenon. Spiritism spread a reinterpretation of Christianity faced from places very different from those of the Catholic Church. The scientific method, empiricism and positivism were not enemies for the spiritist faith. In fact, they tried to find an explanation for the phenomenon from science.
However, more than to find an explanation for the phenomenon itself, they tried to find a complete explanation for the world. Spiritism developed an alternative social worldview to the dominant one. To do this, they articulated a whole system of thought based on elements such as the sun love, solidarity and social justice or gender equality. All these issues were the engine of a way of understanding social modernization. For the spiritualists, the ultimate goal of their faith was to reach the higher end of the collective good. The way to reach that degree of social emancipation was contact with the spirits, yes, but also a political belief. Communication between the living and spirits was not just a religious concept. It was also a conception of the world itself (Vicente Villanueva, 2019: 62, 63).
Spiritualism spread, spatially, throughout much of Europe and the American continent, as well as in Japan. Temporarily, spiritism has not disappeared since its appearance in the mid-nineteenth century. In this article, however, we are going to focus on spiritism in its most nineteenth-century facet. And, for this, we must go back to its origins.
The Hydesville events
Spiritualism has its origins in the late 1840s in the United States, in a setting in which religious sects and spiritual movements were abundant. However, in this tangle of sects and religious congregations, what ignited the spark of spiritism was practically an anecdote.
In March 1848, the 12 and 15-year-old daughters of John Fox, a Methodist living in Hydesville, New York, began to hear strange noises coming from the walls of their house. These noises, of unknown origin, became habitual for Margaret and Kate Fox. So much so that they even began to communicate with them. The girls asked questions and the sounds answered with blows. Even when Mrs. Fox asked the walls for the ages of her daughters. It was she who asked the sounds what everyone was (and is) asking us: if it was a man or a spirit. And the answer was affirmative (González de Pablo, 2006: 64, 65).
Neighbors and acquaintances began to flock to the home. The Fox sisters became the sensation of the moment. Despite the fact that the family was expelled from the home and the sisters separated, the Foxes continued to act as mediators between the spirits and the humans. However, with the separation of the sisters, Kate’s mediumistic abilities began to sharpen. In her sessions, objects began to be seen flying, changing places, pianos being played alone or tables shake violently (especially the latter) to answer your questions. With the help of Isaac Post, a Quaker with whom he had befriended, he systematized all these manifestations to create a decipherable code that would allow him to contact the spirits, similar to the Ouija boards that we know today (González de Pablo, 2006: 65 )
In this way, the possibility of communicating with deceased loved ones was left open, which evidently fueled the interest in spiritism among the population and contributed to its spread. The random manifestations of the spirits were, on the other hand, possible to decipher at those times. The tables (swivels, ruffles) became the main space for spiritual communication, since all the manifestations that had previously been random were located in them. Other mediums besides the Fox sisters emerged (González de Pablo, 2006: 66) and, in general, the phenomenon spread like wildfire.
The Hydesville phenomena and those known as rotary tables they are considered as the starting points of spiritism, almost as a foundational milestone. However, the phenomenon is strongly rooted in the problems of its time. So much so that it took less than five years to jump the pond and become a fairly strong movement in Europe.
The spiritualist phenomenon barely took five years to reach Europe. And the way to do it was precisely through the turntables themselves. In April 1853 German newspapers began to report a series of strange events involving spirits and parlor tables. From the German newspapers it made the leap to the French and from the French to the rest of Europe (González de Pablo, 2006: 66). The phenomenon spread like wildfire, both among the elites and among the popular classes. It was in France where spiritualism and turntables ceased to be an experience lived within the private sphere of the home to become a collective movement. And he would do it around the figure of Allan Kardec.
Allan Kardec, the father of spiritualism
Allan Kardec was born as Hippolite Léon Denizar Rivail in 1804 and died (or disincarnated, as he would have claimed) in 1869. He dedicated himself to translation and writing, as well as pedagogy, but he is known, above all, for being the systematizer and the main thinker of the philosophical doctrine known as spiritualism.
Allan Kardec’s life was normal until 1854. However, before becoming Allan Kardec, Hippolite Rivail was already in contact with free thought. He founded a study center based on the Pestalozzi method, married the governess Amelia Boudet and published several works related to didactics and pedagogy.
However, from 1854 he began to come into contact with certain experiences that marked Kardec’s life forever. Between 1854 and 1855 Kardec began to make contact with the aforementioned rotary tables and with events similar to those of Hydesville. also with the auto write. That is to say, the production of texts that do not come from the conscious thought of the person who writes them, but rather are the transcription of an unconscious flow of thoughts of the author.
After coming into contact with these paranormal experiences and with certain spiritist circles, he began to attend spiritism sessions with different medium (i.e. those who mediate between spirits and people). In this way, already inserted within the spiritist movement, he decided to systematize it, after having come into contact with a spirit he called The Truth, who was the one who, so to speak, revealed it to him.
In this way, Rivail, who was now calling himself Allan Kardec because it was the name that the spirits had revealed to him, at the height of 1857 published the book of spirits, the key work of spiritualism. This work, along with What is spiritualism? systematizes the philosophical doctrine that accompanies Kardec’s spiritual experiences and explains to the world what spiritualism is in itself.
Kardec’s first work (which was not Rivail’s first) was divided into four parts. First of all, the First Book: the first causes. After the Second Book: spiritist world or of the spirits. In third place, Third Book: Moral Lawsin which Kardec includes a section dedicated to social inequalities. This inequality is not, for the spiritualists, a divine design, but is the work of man. Kardec also affirms that those who abuse their social position will be punished. The fourth book is dedicated to hopes and consolations and includes a final conclusion (Tur Balaguer, 2019:
It will be this way of facing social inequalities (of class and gender) that connects spiritism with various political cultures of the time. Beyond its spiritual burden, it will be this way of conceiving inequalities that attracts many spiritists to the spiritist creed, especially considering the context in which this creed emerged.
The publication of the book of spirits, in some way, also pushed associationism among spiritualists. During the following year, in 1858, the Society of Spiritualist Studies of Paris and, after her, many others of a similar nature in France and in the rest of the spaces in which spiritism gained prominence. Among them, Spain.
Spiritism in Spain
Spain in the mid-nineteenth century
Between the months of April and May 1854, the phenomenon of the turntables landed in Spain. It arrived, like other European countries, through the press. And that arrival, of course, was accompanied by the…