Spiritism

Let me explain about Spiritism.

Once upon a time, there was this man called Hyppolyte Leon Denizard Rivail, an educator and professor in France, who was invited to research about spirit-tapping phenomena. In the mid eighteenth century, communication with spirits was fashionable. At any social gathering, you could see someone receiving messages from the dead just for entertainment purposes. Mr. Rivail, who was raised as Catholic and absolutely skeptical about the seances, accepted the offer to research those phenomenas. However, despite his skepticism, he ended up not only believing those communications were true, but also compiled his research in five books that became the foundation of the new religion.

Mr. Rivail traveled the world visiting mediums of all ages and social status. In the seances, he would make questions and the spirits would answer his questions through the medium. What he came to realize was that the answers were the same wherever he was, even in different parts of the world. That could only mean they were genuinely coming from spirits.

The five books: The Spiritist Book, The Mediums Book, Gospel According to Spiritism, Genesis and Heaven and Hell became the basis of a new philosophy, and Mr. Rivail named it "Spiritism", because "new ideas deserve new names". He published those five books under the pseudonym Allan Kardec to differentiate them from his previous work as an educator. Allan Kardec, he came to find out, was in fact his own name in a previous life.

Basically, those books teach us about Life and Death, where we came from, where we are going to, the purpose of life on Earth, our mission here, God, Jesus, Reincarnation and much more. Science is extremely validated in his whole work.

Those books became popular in Europe, except in England, because the English elite refused to accept we could be born again in a less privileged condition, for example that a white and rich man could be born again as a slave, and vice-versa. However, his books continued to sell in Europe and finally came to Brazil, where they were very well accepted in the high society. What happens next, I will tell in my next post.

Peace!

About me

I was born in Sao Paulo, Brazil, on January 2nd 1968, on a Tuesday, at 1 pm, right after a summer storm. My mother didn't make it to the hospital, so she delivered me with the help of a mid-wife, a fat and old lady from the neighborhood.

My mother has been a Catholic and my father was a Jehovah Witness. How did that happen? My father converted to JW after marriage, and my mother, although respectful to his choice, refused to give up on her belief on saints and Mother Mary. My father, also respectful, accepted the fact she wouldn't change her mind. I am extremely grateful for having such loving parents who did not allow their personal spiritual choices disrupt their marriage. They lived happily together for 52 years.

So, I was raised by a Catholic mother and a Jehovah Witness father, and I really got the best of the two of them. I learned from my mother about faith and acceptance, and I learned from my father the teachings of the scriptures. However, maybe because of the ambiguity there, I grew up with a lot of questions. I remember praying to God when I was a teenager and asking Him to show me the right path, because Catholicism and JW were not quite satisfying to me at that time. I had my mother and my father as teachers, but at young age, I had my own way of seeing things in a way that I couldn't explain in words at that time. I could only feel it, sense it, and be anxious about it.

In a search for the right path, I went to Buddhism meetings for a while, and I went to Christian meetings for a while (called Evangelica in Brazil). In the meantime, I was baptized catholic at age 16, and I married in a Catholic church. I couldn't quite quit Catholicism, probably out of guilt.

But after one year of marriage, my daughter was 1 year old, a phenomena happened that changed my life. My baby started to see things that we couldn't see. She was just a baby, but she could see and point with her finger to something or someone invisible to the rest of us. She used to be scared to the point she did scream and cry a lot. It was so disturbing that we couldn't sleep at night. People told me to take her to a Spiritist Center, and I immediately refused the idea. However, I could not see my baby suffering every night like that, pointing and screaming... That used to give me goose bumps. Rather reluctantly, we decided to take her to one place we knew that could (apparently) help her.

The first seance was scary! I was extremely fearful about those things, spirits that could come and haunt us... that was kinda crazy. Although spiritism and the communication with spirits in general is well accepted and practiced in Brazil, I was still afraid and with my heart full of pre-judgments.

What happened next was very surprising though! The second seance we went with my baby, the spirit that was disturbing her was helped and taken to the right place in the spiritual realm. I came to learn that sometimes spirits can be lost and they get attached to others with no intention of doing any harm. That spirit, who was a relative of mine who had passed away months earlier, was still confused and lost, and thankfully to that humble place, he was helped and taken care of. After that, my baby never saw spirits again, and we all had peace in our house from that day on.

I could not just ignore what happened to all of us. I felt I should give all that some thought. I came to realize that there is a place where we can go and deal with the unknown. I came to realize that there is a lot I could learn and maybe have a lot of my questions answered. That was when I started to read about Spiritism and it didn't take long for me to join a Spiritist Center for study.

I will talk about it some more, but I just want to add that Spiritism is not only a religion, but it is science and philosophy altogether. It is a lesson of Love and Forgiveness.

I am happy with its teachings.

Peace!