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Spiritism in Brazil*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Donald Warren Jr.
Donald Warren Jr.*
Affiliation:
Department of History, Long Island University, The Brooklyn Center
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Extract

Spiritism is well on the way to becoming the most national of the religions practiced in Brazil. Yet apart from Christian clergymen, social scientists, and of course Spiritists themselves, few educated people pay much attention to its rapid and wide spread. Although they must see the sensational picture stories frequently appearing in magazines and on screens, they fail to realize that Brazil has become the acknowledged capital of the spiritualistic world in the West. At most they may know that Brazil's most famous mediums get invitations to travel abroad North of the equator and in the Far East a ready coterie awaits these mediums whose best-selling psychographed works find foreign publishers. Spiritist journals, however, play on news of their travels to work up nationalist pride in Brazil as “Heart of the World, Homeland of the Gospel.” That self-regarding expression is the title of a popular national history psychographed (dictated by the Spirit of a deceased person to a medium who writes it down in trance) in 1938. Since then Brazilian Spiritism has grown hugely in national ardor and in numbers.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Inter-American Studies , Volume 10 , Issue 3 , July 1968 , pp. 393 - 405
Copyright
Copyright © University of Miami 1968

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Footnotes

*

The author acknowledges the support of the American Philosophical Society for research in the archives of the Brazilian Spiritist Federation in Rio de Janeiro in 1966.

References

1 Nogueira, Oracy, Família e Comunidade. Um Estudo Sociológico de Itapetininga/São Paulo (Rio de Janeiro: Centro Brasileiro de Pesquisas Educacionais, 1962), p. 303 Google Scholar. In another town study made in São Paulo early in 1945, Willems concluded that Spiritist sessions were limited to “pequeños círculos. O interésse pelo espiritismo é vivo, revelando, pelo menos, a relativa instabilidade e inquietação religiosa de urna certa parte da população urbana.” Willems, Emilio, Urna Vila Brasileira. Tradição e Transição (São Paulo: Difusão Européia do Livro, 1961), p. 169 Google Scholar.

2 Willems, Emilio, “Religious Mass Movements and Social Change in Brazil,” New Perspectives of Brazil, Baklanorf, Eric N., ed. (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 1966), pp. 205–232 Google Scholar.

3 Moreil, André, La Vie et l'oeuvre d'Allan Kardec (Paris: Sperar, 1961)Google Scholar. For a good study of Spiritism, see Yvonne Castellan, O Espiritismo, tr. Alcántara Silveira (São Paulo: Difusão Europeia do Livre, 1955).

4 That the English second edition of the codification is published in São Paulo is an indication of Brazil's position as world Spiritualist capital. Allan Kardec [Léon Rivail], The Spirits’ Book Containing the Principles of Spiritist Doctrine on the Immortality of the Soul. The Nature of Spirits and their Relations with Men; the Moral Law. The Present Life, the Future Life, and the Destiny of the Human Race. According to the teachings of Spirits of high degree, transmitted through various mediums, collected and set in order by Allan Kardec. Translated from the hundred and twentieth thousand by Anna Blackwell (1875) (2nd. ed., São Paulo: Lake, 1966).

5 For some Catholic clergymen in Latin America, the Second Vatican Council's failure to condemn communism disappointed less than the omission of Spiritism from its pronouncements. In their view, both doctrines are materialist, but Spiritism poses the greater menace to the Church. The Ecumenical Council seemed to brush aside urgent reports on the subject, and ended up countenancing but one oblique stricture against reincarnation: “… unico terrestris nostrae vitae cursu.” The expected version, “… the single course of our earthly life” is not, however, the translation supplied in Xavier Rynne's The Debates and Decrees of Vatican Council II. There (v. 3, p. 336) it reads “… the course of our earthly life,” which version seems to leave out unico, the word crucial to antireincarnationists. Whatever the translation, the informed opinion among Catholics and Spiritists hardly holds the Council's near or full silence on Spiritism to mean even a lapse in the Church's long struggle to stamp out human evocation of the souls of the dead. Indeed, both Catholic and traditional Protestant churchmen look with pretty much the same alarmed eye on Spiritism's growth in Latin America.

6 Allan Kardec [Léon Rivail], O Livro dos Médium ou guia dos mediuns e dos evocadores por Allan Kardec, tr. Julio Abreu Filho (São Paulo: Pensamento, 1963).

7 Reformador. Deus, Cristo e Caridade. Mensario Religioso de Espiritismo Cristào (Rio de Janeiro: Federação Espírita Brasileira, 1883 to date).

8 Francisco Candido Xavier and Waldo Vieira, The World of the Spirits, tr. R. Baldwin and Wallace Leal (New York: Philosophical Library, 1966).

9 Jean Baptiste Roustaing, Os Quatro Evangelhos (also known as Revelação da Revelação) tr. Ewerton Quadros (Rio: Federação Espírita Brasileira, 1900). First published in France, 1866. Two examples of polemics regarding Roustaing: Luciano Costa, Kardec e não Roustaing (Rio: Mundo Espírita, 1943); Indalício Mendes, “Humilde reverencia a Roustaing,” Reformador, 84,5 (May, 1966), pp. 5-6.

10 Podmore, Frank, From Mesmer to Christian Science. A Short History of Mental Healing (New Hyde Park, New York: University Books, 1963)Google Scholar. First edition published in London, 1909.

11 Luís da Câmara Cascudo, “Alma,” Dicionário do Folclore Brasileiro (2nd ed., Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Nacional do Livro, 1962), I, pp. 29-32.

12 Two examples: Padre Julio Maria, Os Segredos do Espiritismo desvendados e explicados. Estudo popular e científico, sôbre as prigens, os principios, as práticas e as fraudes espíritas. (2nd ed., Petrópolis: Vozes. 1933); Revs. Amos Binney and Daniel Steele, Theology (Igreja Metodista Episcopal do Sul, 1885).

13 Grateful appreciation for information on Umbanda is extended to Miss Diana de G. Brown for her unpublished study “The Practice of Umbanda in Rio de Janeiro.” In the growing body of literature by Umbandists, noteworthy are: Armando Cavalcanti Bandeira, Umbanda Evolução Histórico-religiosa (Rio de Janeiro, 1961); Byron Torres do Freitas and Tancredo da Silva Pinto, Camba de Umbanda (Rio de Janeiro: Aurora, 1957).

14 Cándido Procopio Ferreira do Camargo, Kardecismo e Umbanda. Uma Interpretação Sociológica (São Paulo: Pioneira, 1961).

15 Boaventura Kloppenburg, O Espiritismo no Brasil. Orientação para os Católicos. Vozes em Defesa da Fé, Estudo No. 1 (São Paulo: Vozes, 1960).

16 Better selling ones: Fernando Palmes, S. J., Metapsíquica e Espiritismo (Petrópolis: Vozes, 1960)Google Scholar; Carlos Maria de Heredia, S.J., As Fraudes Espíritas e os Fenómenos Metapsíquicos (Petrópolis: Vozes, 1958); Oscar González-Quevedo, A Face Oculta da Mente (6th ed., São Paulo: Loyola, 1958); a large book being translated into English by the Parapsychology Foundation, Inc. of New York; it is refuted by a well-known Spiritist writer, Carlos Imbassahy, A Farsa Escura da Mente (São Paulo: Edicel, 1966); Amadou, Robert, Parapsicología, Ensaio histórico e crítico, tr. Maillet, Miguel (São Paulo: Mestre Jou, 1966)Google Scholar; with a prologue by J. Herculano Pires, a Spiritist intellectual who heads the Departamento Teórico de Instituto Paulista de Parapsicología; Herculano Pires, J., Parapsicología e Suas Perspectivas (São Paulo: Edicel, 1964)Google Scholar.

17 Xavier, Francisco Cándido, Brasil, Coração do Mundo, Pátria do Evangelho pelo Espirito de Humberto de Campos (7th ed., Rio: Federação Espírita Brasileira, 1965), p. 184 Google Scholar.