The Spirits' Book
- Language:
- English
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- No scanning noise detected (automatic measure over the whole text, not checked by hand)
- Extent:
- ~190,000 words · 881 passages
Cite this work
- APAAllan Kardec. (n.d.). The Spirits' Book. Digital reproduction: SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/allan-kardec/the-spirits-book
- MLAAllan Kardec. The Spirits' Book. Digital reproduction, SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/allan-kardec/the-spirits-book.
- ChicagoAllan Kardec. The Spirits' Book. Digital reproduction, SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/allan-kardec/the-spirits-book.
Reference to the edition that SigPhi reproduces: SigPhi is its digital reproduction, not its publisher. The edition's year is not in the metadata (hence "n.d."), and the translator appears only when recorded.
What it is about
The founding book of Spiritism: a thousand-odd questions on God, the soul, reincarnation and the moral life, with their answers.
Context and history
How it presents itself has to be explained, because it is part of the text: the work states that the answers were dictated by spirits through mediums, and that Allan Kardec — the pen name of the educator Hippolyte Rivail — merely gathered and ordered them. That attribution is a doctrine, not a verifiable fact, and this note can neither endorse it nor hide it. The book is of 1857 and stands here as what it is: the founding document of a movement of considerable influence, above all in Brazil, and a piece of evidence for nineteenth-century religiosity.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
Grave, slow of speech, unassuming in manner, yet not without a certain quiet dignity resulting from the earnestness and single-mindedness which were the distinguishing traits of his character, neither courting nor avoiding discussion, but never volunteering any remark upon the subject to which he had devoted his life, he received with affability the innumerable visitors from every part of the world who came to converse with him in regard to the views of which he was the recognised exponent, answering questions and objections, explaining difficulties, and giving information to all serious inquirers, with whom he talked with freedom and animation, his face occasionally lighting up with a genial and pleasant smile, though such was his habitual sobriety of demeanour that he was never known to laugh. Among the thousands by whom he was thus visited were many of high rank in the social, literary, artistic, and scientific worlds. The Emperor Napoleon III., the fact of whose interest in spiritist-phenomena was no mystery, sent for him several times, and held long conversations with him at the Tuileries upon the doctrines of THE SPIRITS’ BOOK. Having suffered for many years from heart-disease, ALLAN KARDEC drew up, in 1869, the plan of a new spiritist organisation, that should carry on the work of propagandism after his death. In order to assure its existence, by giving to it a legal and commercial status, he determined to make it a regularly constituted joint-stock limited liability publishing and bookselling company, to be constituted for a period of ninety-nine years, with power to buy and sell, to issue stock, to receive donations and bequests, etc. To this society, which was to be called "The Joint Stock Company for the Continuation of the Works of ALLAN KARDEC," he intended to bequeath the copyright of his spiritist writings and of the Revue Spirite.…