Behind Chico Xavier, Divaldo Franco and the whole of Brazilian Spiritism stands a Frenchman who was never a medium himself: Hippolyte Léon Denizard Rivail, a sober Parisian educator who treated the fashion of table-turning not as a parlour game but as something to be investigated methodically. Under the name Allan Kardec he turned a tangle of phenomena into an ordered doctrine — and gave a whole movement its name.
Rivail the Teacher
Born on 3 October 1804 in Lyon into a family of lawyers, Rivail went to school in Switzerland under the famous education reformer Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi in Yverdon, whose pedagogy shaped him deeply. Back in Paris he became a respected teacher, translator and author of textbooks on grammar and arithmetic used in French schools. In short, Rivail was the opposite of a credulous enthusiast — a man of the Enlightenment, of method and reason.
The Dancing Tables
In the early 1850s the wave of modern Spiritualism washed over Europe from the United States — set off by the Fox sisters and their rapping spirits. In the Parisian salons, table-turning became the fashion. Rivail at first reacted with mockery; his remark is well known:
"I will believe it when I am shown that a table has a brain to think with and nerves to feel with."
Only in 1855 did he let himself be persuaded to attend a session. What changed his mind was less the movement of objects than the intelligence behind the answers: the rapping and writing produced coherent, logical sentences. Rivail resolved neither to believe nor to dismiss the phenomenon, but to examine it.
The Method
Here lies what is truly remarkable about Kardec. Rather than rely on a single medium, he drew up extensive questionnaires on philosophical, moral and scientific topics and had them answered through numerous circles, unknown to one another, across France and beyond. He then compared the answers and kept only what recurred in agreement, discarding the contradictory and idiosyncratic. This comparative, source-critical procedure was his claim: Spiritism was to be at once an experimental science, a philosophy and a moral teaching.
One may honour the ambition and still see its limit. Agreement between mediums who shared the same cultural and religious background is, by today's standards, not independent confirmation — shared expectations produce shared answers. Kardec's procedure was not a controlled experiment in the modern sense. What remains notable is the stance: the attempt to bring method to a field that others left to showmen or dismissed wholesale.
Where the Name Allan Kardec Comes From
During this work, tradition has it, a spirit told him they had known each other in a former life — that in Celtic times Rivail had been a Druid named Allan Kardec. Rivail adopted the name, partly so as not to burden his reputation as an educator and partly to make clear that the new books were not his own thought but that of the spirits.
The Five Books
Between 1857 and 1868 the so-called codification appeared — five works that to this day form the foundation of Spiritism:
- The Spirits Book (Le Livre des Esprits, 1857) — the foundation, over a thousand questions and answers on the soul, the spirit world and reincarnation.
- The Mediums Book (Le Livre des Médiums, 1861) — a practical manual of mediumship, with explicit warnings against fraud, self-deception and obsession.
- The Gospel According to Spiritism (L'Évangile selon le Spiritisme, 1864) — a moral reading of the teachings of Jesus without church dogma.
- Heaven and Hell (Le Ciel et l'Enfer, 1865) — no physical hell, but the state after death as a consequence of the life lived.
- The Genesis (La Genèse, 1868) — the attempt to reconcile creation and miracles with natural science and spiritist law.
In addition, in 1858 Kardec founded the journal Revue Spirite and the Société Parisienne des Études Spirites. His core axiom, which separates him from Anglo-American Spiritualism, is reincarnation: the soul returns in order to mature morally and intellectually — why this is no mere quibble is set out in the article on the difference between Spiritism and Spiritualism.
The Barcelona Book-Burning
Kardec's rejection of church dogma provoked the resistance of the Catholic Church. The most spectacular incident was the public burning of spiritist books in Barcelona on 9 October 1861: by order of the bishop, a shipment of Kardec's writings was seized and burned. The effect was the opposite of what was intended — the event drew international attention and made Spiritism all the better known.
A Faith That Can Face Reason
Unlike some occult currents of his time, Kardec wanted no secret doctrine but transparency and testability. In The Genesis he formulated a sentence that sounds remarkably modern for a 19th-century doctrine:
"Spiritism advances together with science; were a new discovery to prove it mistaken on a point, it would change on that point."
Whether the movement always lived up to this is another question. As a programme, however, it stands close to the stance at issue here: look, examine, correct — and treat the relationship between consciousness and brain as an open question rather than a settled one.
Death and the Most-Visited Grave
Kardec worked to the last on the Revue Spirite and the leadership of his society. On 31 March 1869 he died in Paris of a ruptured aneurysm. His grave at the Père Lachaise cemetery is built as a Celtic dolmen and remains one of the most densely flower-covered of the whole grounds. Carved into it is his motto: "Naître, mourir, renaître encore et progresser sans cesse, telle est la loi" — to be born, to die, to be born again and progress ceaselessly, such is the law.
Why Brazil and Not France
In Europe Spiritism faded in the 20th century between world wars and materialism. In Brazil, by contrast, Kardec's teaching became a living mass movement — carried by figures such as Chico Xavier, who explicitly understood his books in Kardec's tradition. For millions of Brazilians the name Allan Kardec is more familiar today than in his homeland; streets, schools and hospitals bear his civil name, Rivail.
What Remains
Kardec's lasting merit is less a proof than a stance: he took seriously a phenomenon that some laughed off as a fairground act and others damned as the work of the devil, and tried to order it with reason and method. It is precisely this middle ground — neither credulous nor contemptuous — that the articles on this site follow.
Sources
- Allan Kardec / Hippolyte Léon Denizard Rivail (1804–1869): biographical accounts; Psi Encyclopedia (SPR), entry Allan Kardec.
- The codification: Le Livre des Esprits (1857), Le Livre des Médiums (1861), L'Évangile selon le Spiritisme (1864), Le Ciel et l'Enfer (1865), La Genèse (1868); Revue Spirite from 1858.
- On the Barcelona book-burning (9 October 1861) and the grave at Père Lachaise: standard accounts of the history of Spiritism.
- On its later influence see the articles on Spiritism and Spiritualism and on mediumship in Brazil.