The emergence of Spiritism
The reports of communication between the living and the spirits of those who have died date back to the ancient times and can be found in all countries and in different cultures. The case of the Fox sisters, which occurred in the year 1847 in the United States, was the most famous and one of the first and most well documented in modern times, and gave rise to the research that culminated with the emergence of Spiritism.
It was through the spreading of this phenomenon in the United States that the spiritist phenomena became popular in the halls of Europe, when Allan Kardec, through his studies and researches, launched the codification of the Spiritist Doctrine.
On December 11, 1847, the Fox family, from Canadian origin, settled in a modest home in the town of Hydesville, in the state of New York, United States. The group consisted of the head of the family, Mr. John D. Fox, the wife Mrs. Margareth Fox, their two daughters: Kate, with 11 and Margareth, with 14 years of age and also another son called David. The couple also had more sons and daughters. Among them, Leah, older, who lived in Rochester, a town 30 miles from Hydesville.
Fox sisters: Kate, Margareth and Leah
At first, the Foxes were not uncomfortable in their new home. However, in the first two months of 1848, they were bothered by sounds of blows, vibrations in the room lining, floor, walls and furniture. The girls were frightened and went to sleep in their parents' room.
At first, the family did not believe that these noises had a supernatural origin and tried to locate a natural cause for them. Later, however, they were able to establish a communication system through which they asked questions and the author of the bangs responded. The best known source for this case is the testimony of Mrs. Margaret Fox in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's "History of Spiritism".
"On the night of the first disturbance we all got up, lighted a candle and searched the entire house, the noises continuing during the time and being heard near the same place. Although not very loud, it produced a jar of the bedsteads and chairs that could be felt when we were in bed. It was a tremulous motion, more than a sudden jar. We could feel the jar when standing on the floor. It continued on this night until we slept. I did not sleep until about twelve o'clock. On March 30 we were disturbed all night. The noises were heard in all parts of the house.
My husband stationed himself outside the door while I stood inside, and the knocks came on the door between us. We heard footsteps in the pantry, and walking downstairs; we could not rest, and I then concluded that the house must be haunted by some unhappy restless spirit. I had often heard of such things, but had never witnessed anything of the kind that I could not account for before.
"On Friday night, March 31, 1848, we concluded to go to bed early and not permit ourselves to be disturbed by the noises, but try and get a night's rest. My husband was here on all these occasions, heard the noises and helped in the search. It was very early when we went to bed on this night - hardly dark. I had been so broken of my rest I was almost sick. My husband had not gone to bed when we first heard the noise on this evening. I had just lain down. It commenced as usual. I knew it from all the other noises I had ever heard before. The children, who slept in the other bed in the room, heard the rapping and tried to make similar sounds by snapping their fingers.
"My youngest child, Cathie, said, 'Mr. Splitfoot, do as I do,' clapping her hands. The sound instantly followed her with the same number of raps. When she stopped the sound ceased for a short time. Then Margarett said, in sport, 'Now, do just as I do. Count one, two, three, four,' striking one hand against the other at the same time; and the raps came as before. She was afraid to repeat them. Then Cathie said in her childish simplicity, 'Oh, mother, I know what it is. Tomorrow is April fool day and it is somebody trying to fool us.'
"I then thought I could put a test that no one in the place could answer. I asked the noise to rap my different children's ages, successively. Instantly each one of my children's ages was given correctly, pausing between them sufficiently long to individualise them until the seventh, at which a longer pause was made, and then three more emphatic raps were given, corresponding to the age of the little one that died, which was my youngest child.
"I then asked: 'Is this a human being that answers my questions so correctly? 'There was no rap. I asked 'Is it a spirit? If it is make two raps.' Two sounds were given as soon as the request was made. I then said: 'If it was an injured spirit, make two raps,' which were instantly made, causing the house to tremble. I asked: 'Were you injured in this house?' The answer was given as before. 'Is the person living that injured you?' Answered by raps in the same manner. I ascertained by the same simple method that it was a man, aged 31 years, that he had been murdered in this house and his remains were buried in the cellar; that his family consisted of a wife and five children, two sons and three daughters, all living at the time of his death, but that the wife had since died. I asked: 'Will you continue to rap if I call my neighbours that they may hear it too?' The raps were loud in the affirmative."
Foxes' house in Hydesville
Soon after developing this system of communication with the author of the noises, still frightened, the Fox called all their neighbors who also came to witness the phenomenon and ask questions, which were answered with absolute precision, convincing even the most unbelieving. In the days that followed, the rumors of these phenomena spread quickly, attracting a crowd of people.
Subsequently, through an alphabetical combination of the noises produced, the identity of the entity producing them was reached. He was a peddler named Charles B. Rosma who, four years earlier, had been murdered in that residence by the tenant and buried in the cellar. Some excavations were made on the site, but at first nothing was found. In the summer of 1848 the Fox's own son, David, resumed the undertaking, making excavations to a depth of five feet, when hair and fragments of bones were found, which were recognized by a physician as belonging to a human skeleton. However, due to the precariousness of the evidence, no action was taken regarding the criminal investigation of the case.
The two girls, Margaret and Kate, were removed from the house, as it was suspected that the phenomena were linked to their presence. Margareth moved in with her brother David Fox and Kate moved to the house of her sister Leah in the city of Rochester. However, the phenomena followed the Fox sisters. Wherever they were, the noises occurred.
The Fox sisters then became the creators of a "spiritualist movement" that later spread throughout the world. They spent approximately 10 years performing presentations of their "mediumistic powers". In 1858, because of their marriages, Margareth and Leah withdrew from the movement, leaving only Kate.
In the year 1870, a renowned scientist of the time, Sir William Crookes, made several experiments with Kate and concluded that she did indeed possess various mediumistic abilities. Crookes reported: “With a full knowledge of the numerous theories which have been started, chiefly in America, to explain these sounds, I have tested them in every way that I could devise, until there has been no escape from the conviction that they were true objective occurrences not produced by trickery or mechanical means.”
At the end of the 1880s, Kate and Margaret disagreed and, determined to tarnish the image of the eldest, Margaret published a long critique of Spiritualism, blaming Leah for a supposed manipulation of everything that went on. Anxious to harm Leah as much as possible, the following month Margaret and Kate traveled to New York, where a reporter offered $ 1,500 for them to publicly state that they were cheating on allegedly communicating phenomena with spirits.
However, a year after allegations of alleged fraud, Margaret decided to deny her "confessions", claiming to have made them in exchange for money offered by religious who took advantage of their poverty and wished to discredit the spiritualist movement.
It was not until November 1904, 56 years after the beginning of the phenomena, that the skeleton of the peddler murdered at the Fox residence was finally found. According to news published on November 3, 1904 by the Boston Journal, boys at a school were playing in the cellar of the old house when, amid the debris of a wall that existed in the cellar, they found the parts of a human skeleton. Next to the skeleton was found a can of a customary species used by peddlers.
Allan kardec, the encoder of Spiritism
The phenomena occurred in Hidesville was one of the most documented and studied phenomena of spiritual manifestation, and their authenticity was proven by scientists and scholars of the psychic sciences of the time. From these phenomena, the attempts to communicate with the invisible world spread throughout the world and the so-called "table-turning" (also known as table-tapping or table-tilting), became popular.
In this system, people used to sit around a small table and place their hands flat on it. After some time, the table began to show signs of movement, it rose in the air and spun under the hands of those who held the session. By arranging a circle or a frame formed by the letters of the alphabet, a dialogue could be established with the table, once it was agreed that it should tilt when a particular letter was pointed out.
The "table-turning" meetings became fashionable in the United States and then in Europe. In 1852, invitations to elegant meetings were common in England, where, after tea, the guests were amused by consulting the rotating tables. Evidently, at that time, such meetings were driven primarily by "curiosity" and "fun", rather than by a desire for learning and research.
Over time, however, the phenomenon of the table-turning was declining in popularity and became anecdotal because of the many frauds that were practiced by famous psychics at the time. Harry Houdini himself, one of the most famous illusionists of the time, unmasked several of these mediums, exposing the tricks they used.
However, behind the "fad" and the large number of frauds that characterized the table-turning event, there was a real phenomenon that caught the attention of Hippolyte Léon Denizard Rivail, a leading French author and educator, a prominent member of several scientific societies, who would later use the pseudonym of Allan Kardec.
Professor Rivail first heard of the phenomenon of table-turning in 1854. However, as a student of hypnosis, magnetism and electricity, he already had an opinion for such phenomena: According to him, the bodies gathered at such meetings generated an extremely strong electromagnetic force capable of moving objects. But when he finally came to know the phenomenon personally, he realized that the explanation was not so simple.
When he began attending such meetings, he realized that behind the phenomenon there was a clever cause. It was then that he began a deep research on the invisible phenomena that came to give rise to Spiritism.
Allan Kardec developed a specific method of experimental investigation of the spiritist phenomena, since the method of the natural sciences could neither investigate nor demonstrate the existence of the spiritual world. In his method of research, he applied the method of experimentation, in his own words: “...I have never formulated preconceived theories; I observed accurately, compared, took consequences; Sought by effects to reach causes by deduction, by the logical chain of facts, not accepting as valid an explanation, unless it could solve the difficulties of the question. (“Allan Kardec biography" - Henri Sausse)
Through his serious, impartial and thorough research, Allan Kardec came to the conclusion that there were invisible intelligences communicating, that is, the "spirits" of the dead could communicate with the world of the living. And the existence of this communication proved the existence of an invisible world, a dimension parallel to ours, on which official science had not yet had any knowledge.
In August 1855, he began to coordinate a team of mediums, to whom he began to submit a set of questions and answers of various themes he developed, which the spirits, through them, should respond. Kardec subjected this work to a very strict control, both with regard to the choice of mediums, who should be "unsuspecting" people of recognized moral qualities, and with regard to the analysis of communications from a logical point of view. Another resource used by Kardec was the "universal consensus", that is, the agreement of several communications, received by different mediums, at the same time and in different places, on the same subject.
Thus, in 1857, Kardec launched the first edition of "The Spirits' Book", which contained 501 questions and respective answers from spirits on different themes such as God, the universe, the spirits, reincarnation and the laws that govern the spiritual world. In its second edition, in 1860, the book went on to bring 1019 questions. Kardec later released four other books: "The medium’s book" (1861), "The Gospel According to Spiritism" (1864), "Heaven and Hell" (1865) and "The Genesis" (1868). These five books constitute the so-called "spiritist codification" and are considered the basis of Spiritism.
Although it appeared in France, it was in Brazil that Spiritism was consolidated and today it is growing vertiginously. The number of spiritist books published in Brazil is extraordinary. The most important Brazilian spiritual medium, Chico Xavier, psychographed more than 400 books, having sold more than 45 million copies!
One of the differentials of Spiritism in relation to other doctrines is that it has a scientific, philosophical and religious character. In the book "The Genesis", Kardec highlights the spiritist proposal to walk alongside the scientific discoveries: "Spiritism, marching hand in hand with progress, will never be overthrown because if new discoveries should demonstrate that it is in error upon a point, it would modify itself in regard to it. If a new truth is revealed, it accepts it."
Therefore, Spiritism does not hold "unquestioned dogmas" nor does it fear to debate any of the presuppositions that serve as its basis. On the contrary, it goes hand in hand with science. The "Book of Spirits", launched in 1857, continues modern to this day. What we observe is that, as science evolves, evidence is increasingly strengthened to demonstrate the continuity of life after death, communication with spirits, and reincarnation.
