Jostein Gaarder Victor Hellern Henry Not Popular Books

Jostein Gaarder Victor Hellern Henry Not Biography & Facts

Spiritism or Kardecism is a reincarnationist and spiritualist doctrine established in France in the mid-19th century by writer and educator Hippolyte Léon Denizard Rivail (a.k.a. Allan Kardec). Kardec considered his doctrine to derive from a Christian perspective. He described a cycle by which a spirit supposedly returns to material existence after the death of the old body in which it dwelled, as well as the evolution it undergoes during this process. Kardecism emerged as a new religious movement in tandem with spiritualism, the notions and practices associated with spiritual communication disseminated throughout North America and Europe since the 1850s. Kardec coined the term spiritism in 1857 and defined it as "the doctrine founded on the existence, manifestations, and teachings of spirits". Kardec claimed that spiritism combines scientific, philosophical, and religious aspects of the tangible universe and what he described as the universe beyond transcendence. After observing table-turning, a kind of seance, he was intrigued that the tables seemed to move despite lacking muscles and that they tables seemed to provide answers without having a brain, the spiritualist claims being "It is not the table that thinks! It is us, the souls of the men who have lived on Earth." Kardec also focused his attention on a variety of other paranormal claims such as "incorporation" and mediumship. Kardecist doctrine is based on five basic works, known as the Spiritist Codification, published between 1857 and 1868. The codification consists of The Spirits' Book, The Mediums' Book, The Gospel According to Spiritism, Heaven and Hell, and The Genesis. Additionally, there are the so-called complementary works, such as What is Spiritism?, Spiritist Review, and Posthumous Works. Its followers consider spiritism a doctrine focused on the moral improvement of humanity and believe in the existence of a single God, the possibility of useful communication with spirits through mediums, and reincarnation as a process of spiritual growth and divine justice. According to the International Spiritist Council, spiritism is present in 36 countries, with over 13 million followers, being most widespread in Brazil, where it has approximately 3.8 million followers, according to the data from the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics, and over 30 million sympathizers, according to the Brazilian Spiritist Federation. Spiritists are also known for influencing and promoting a movement of social assistance and philanthropy. The doctrine has had a strong influence on various other religious currents, such as Santería, Umbanda, and the New Age movements. Definition The term spiritisme was created by the French educator Hippolyte Léon Denizard Rivail (known as Allan Kardec) to specifically name the body of ideas systematized by him in The Spirits' Book (1857). To designate new things, new terms are needed. This is required by the clarity of language in order to avoid the confusion inherent in the variety of meanings of the same words. The words spiritual, spiritualist, spiritualism have a well-defined meaning. To give them another meaning, to apply them to the doctrine of Spirits, would be to multiply the already numerous causes of amphibology. (...) Whoever believes to have something within themselves beyond matter, is a spiritualist. However, it does not follow that they believe in the existence of Spirits or in their communications with the visible world. Instead of using the words spiritual, spiritualism, we employ, to indicate the belief we have just referred to, the terms Spiritist and Spiritism, whose form recalls the origin and the radical sense and which, for that reason, have the advantage of being perfectly intelligible, leaving to the word spiritualism its own meaning. However, the use of the term, whose root is common to various Western nations of Latin origin or Anglo-Saxon, quickly led to its incorporation into everyday usage to designate everything related to the alleged communication with spirits. Thus, today the term spiritism refers to various religious and philosophical doctrines that assert the survival of spirits after the death of the body, and primarily in the possibility of communicating with them, either casually or deliberately, through evocations or spontaneously. The term Kardecism is repudiated by some followers of the doctrine who reserve the word spiritism solely for the doctrine as codified by Kardec, affirming that there are no different branches within spiritism, and they refer to believers of various currents as spiritualists. These followers believe that spiritism, as a doctrinal body, is singular, making the use of the term Kardecist spiritism redundant. Thus, those who adhere to the teachings codified by Kardec in the basic works (with varying degrees of tolerance for concepts that are not strictly doctrinal, such as apometry) simply identify themselves as spiritists, without the addition of Kardecist. The works themselves disapprove of the use of other expressions like Kardecist, stating that the codified teachings, in their essence, are not linked to the unique figure of a man, as is the case with Christianity or Buddhism, but rather to a collective of spirits whom they believe manifested themselves through various mediums at that historical moment and were expected to continue communicating, thus keeping the doctrinal body in a constant evolutionary process. However, another portion of followers considers the use of the term Kardecism appropriate. These expressions emerged from the need of some to distinguish spiritism (as originally defined by Kardec) from Afro-Brazilian religions such as Umbanda. The latter, discriminated against and persecuted at various times in Brazilian history, began to identify themselves as spiritists (at one point with the support of the Brazilian Spiritist Federation), in an effort to legitimize and consolidate the religious movement, due to the existing proximity between certain concepts and practices of it and Kardec's spiritism. Qualification as a science Alexander Moreira de Almeida still attempts this legitimation, even calling Kardec's approach "revolutionary." However, the current scientific consensus considers parapsychology a pseudoscience, disregarding the alleged paranormal phenomena that underpin spiritism, such as mediumship, reincarnation, obsession, table-turning, séances, automatic writing, spiritualist art, and typology. Critics of pseudoscience even define parapsychology as a "perversion", as parapsychologists claim that science cannot be the only privileged field that is exempt from the explanations they defend. Animal magnetism (mesmerism) is also present in spiritist teachings, with constant references to mesmeric concepts such as magnetic fluids. According to this hypothesis, some people could perform healings through "fluids". However, the animal magnetism hypothesis is considered pseudoscientific, as scient.... Discover the Jostein Gaarder Victor Hellern Henry Not popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Jostein Gaarder Victor Hellern Henry Not books.