Academic literature on the topic 'Spiritisme – Influence'

Spiritism based on Allan Kardec’s teaching (1804–1869) has influenced Latin America since the nineteenth century. This article presents the development of Puerto Rican spiritism (espiritismo) and its central ideas before illustrating the significance of espiritismo for Puerto Ricans. It will show the involvement of espiritismo in the establishment of Puertorriqueñidad, the sense of belonging to the island. It will explain the therapeutic offers of spiritist healing, and it will illustrate the creative energy of espiritismo that inspires Puerto Rican artists to the present day.

“Nonconformist” is one of several ways to describe Puerto Rican feminist Luisa Capetillo (1882–1922). As a transnational figure who synthesizes a unique fusion of diverse influences such as anarchism, spiritism, and syndicalism, Capetillo presents a distinctive reader-writer persona as well. This essay explores how reading Capetillo invites one to listen to her like the workers at the tobacco factories where she was a lectora would. It focuses on Capetillo’s first essays—published in Ensayos libertarios (1907) and La humanidad en el futuro (1910)—in which she conveys an urgency for getting her message across in order to actively resist colonialist paradigms of exploitation.

This paper proposes a new scientific way to study the concept and technique of automatic writing in Surrealism. Based on the specialists of André Breton’s work and the experts of automatism, we expose here the literary, psychiatric, neurological and parapsychological influences that Breton had to create his own concept and writing technique. We suggest here that we have to add to all these influences, the spiritist one, specifically, that of Allan Kardec, whose doctrine and concepts, such as psychography, were a direct impact to the surrealist automatic writing, even when Breton wanted to dissociate his movement from Kardec’s doctrine. Automatic writing has been studied from many angles, specially from literary and art theory and criticism, but also from history of science, philosophy, neurology, psychology and psychiatry and even from occultism, hermeticism and esoterism. Nevertheless, we don’t know any contemporary scientific experiment on this surrealist practice, maybe because materialist principles that support traditional Neurosciences are unable to study automatic writing. For this reason, we propose to study automatic writing, not from regular Neuroscience principles that we disapprove here, but from a post-materialist Neuroscience viewpoint, which agrees with the values that Surrealism defended

As the recent clashes in Mexico City's metropolitan cathedral show, it is not just clericalism that is making an apparent comeback in post-priístaMexico: clericalism's faithful alter ego, anticlericalism—provoked to violence when clanking church bells disturbed a political rally in thezócaloin November 2007—is also stirring anew. This dialectical affinity between rival ideological traditions goes back a long way, as historic clashes over church bells—auditory symbols of institutional jurisdiction and influence—remind us: and yet, as Alan Knight points out, neither the terrain, nor the terms, of the dispute between clericalism/anticlericalism have been mapped out with enough clarity by Mexicanist historians. The 1910-40 revolution, for instance, is associated with various anticlericalisms— be it the protestant variety studied by Jean-Pierre Bastian; the constitutionalists' liberal clerophobia, irrupting circa 1914; masonic, spiritist, or popular anticlericalisms; or the “socialist” god-burning of the 1930s which climaxed in the iconoclasm studied by Adrian Bantjes. This trajectory— from priest-baiting to dechristianization within a generation—makes it tempting to posit an irreligious revolution, whose anticlericalism was a precursory form of mature godlessness. Some revolutionaries, like Tomás Garrido Canabal in Tabasco, encouraged such a conflation by using anticlerical restrictions—especially state licensing of priests, enshrined in constitutional Article 130—in a vindictive and secularizing way: squeezing the clergy so hard that priests were eradicated, not just rubber-stamped by the state. Such figures clearly hoped that persecuting priests would fatally minebelief: the day would come, Adalberto Tejeda hoped in 1926, when religion would expire and churches become places of recreation for apostate Indians. The Roman Catholic clergy, meanwhile, was fond of denouncing anticlericals as deicides, if not devils, and reinforced its own position by encouraging the association of anticlericalism with anti-Catholicism in the minds of the faithful.

GENERATIONS OF REASON: A Family's Search for Meaning in Post-Newtonian England by Joan L. Richards. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2021. 456 pages, with 21 b/w illustrations, 1,218 endnotes, and a 35-page index. Hardcover; $45.00. ISBN: 9780300255492. *The title gives no clue who this book is about. Nor does the publisher's description on its website, the abbreviated blurb inside the book jacket, the four endorsements posted on the jacket's back ("beautifully written," "epic masterpiece," "magnificent study," "compelling and wide-ranging"), or even the chapter titles. The reader first learns whom the book is about and how it came into focus in the author's Acknowledgments. In studying the divergent interests of Augustus De Morgan and his wife, Sophia, the importance of De Morgan's father-in-law William Frend's thinking became apparent. This is turn led Richards to delve into the lives and beliefs of two ancestors from the previous generation, Francis Blackburne and Theophilus Lindsey, who felt compelled by their commitment to "reasoned conclusions about matters of faith" (p. x) to move away from orthodox Anglicanism and establish the first Unitarian church in England. Thus the book eventually evolved into chronicling the lives of three generations over a century and a half during (roughly) the Enlightenment era. *A central motif running through the experiences, beliefs, and work of these families was their steadfast commitment to a form of enlightened rationality that provided coherence and foundational meaning for their lives. Reason informed their ecclesiastical commit-ment to Unitarianism, their views of science and mathematics, and their public activity favoring social and educational reforms. But also, paradoxically, their search for reason led to the beliefs and practices (of some family members) that today would be considered pseu-do-scientific--mesmerism, phrenology, and spiritism, among others. *As Richards notes in the book's opening sentence, for her, Generations of Reason is "the culmination of a life devoted to understanding the place of mathematics in modern European cultural and intellectual history." The mathematics and logic of early- to mid-nineteenth-century Britain has been an ongoing research interest for Richards during her forty-year tenure as a historian of mathematics at Brown Universi-ty. It is this that largely drew me to the book and which I will focus on here: it climaxes in a substantive treatment of the progressive mathematics of De Morgan, whose work contributed to transforming British algebra and logic. This is in stark contrast with the radical ideas of Frend, who refused to admit negative numbers into mathematics. *A central figure behind the developments under investigation is John Locke, whose Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689) and The Reasonableness of Christianity, as Delivered in the Scriptures (1695) exercised a tremendous influence over and challenge for eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British thinkers. Locke's ideas defined and emphasized rationality in relation to knowledge generally and to scientific and religious knowledge in particular, providing dissenters with a rationale for combatting traditional theology and conformist science and philosophy. For Locke, however, a literal reading of scripture was still authoritative for religious beliefs. This was true for Frend and De Morgan also, even though they held tolerant attitudes toward a wide latitude of thinkers. *Locke's view of Reason also affected period reflections on mathematics. Like others in the early modern and Enlightenment eras, Locke had held up mathematics as a model of absolutely certain knowledge because of the clarity of its ideas and the supposed self-evidence of its axiomatic truths. Of course, this characterization applied more to Euclidean geometry than to the burgeoning domains of analytic mathematics, such as calculus, which, as Berkeley charged, still lacked a sound theoretical basis. As for logic, Locke had an acute antipathy toward traditional argument forms and proposed that one should reason with ideas rather than words, assessing their agreement or disagreement in less convoluted ways than in a syllogism. In expressing such relations with language, though, one should use meaningful and unambiguous terms. This was somewhat problematic in algebra and calculus, where symbolic expressions were manipulated to produce useful and important results, even when their meaning was less than clear. *Around the turn of the nineteenth century, Frend campaigned to bring algebra in line with Lockean reasoning: algebra was conceptualized at that time as universal arithmetic, containing such laws as the transposition rule if a + b = c then a = c - b. Thus, no expression should be employed if its meaning was unintelligible. In the above equations, one must assume the condition b < c to rule out negative values, since numbers, which represent quantities of discrete things, cannot be less than 0. Excising negative quantities from mathematics was extreme but necessary in order to adhere to a literalistic view of rationality. *British mathematicians largely resisted following Frend down this path of purity, though they were unsure how to rationally justify their use of negative and imaginary quantities without going outside mathematics and appealing to things like debts. Robert Woodhouse, in an 1803 work, was one of the first Cambridge mathemati-cians to propose a more formalistic algebraic approach in calculus. This agenda was furthered a decade later by members of Cambridge's Analytical Society, one of whom was George Peacock. His and others' attempts to convert Cambridge analysis from Newtonian to Leibnizian calculus were waged through translating a French textbook and making notational changes in Cambridge's mathematical examinations. *In 1830 Peacock's Treatise on Algebra introduced a more formalistic approach in algebra. Richards argues, drawing upon some fairly recent research, that Peacock's position was grounded in a progressivist view of history: arithmetic developed naturally out of fluency with counting, and algebra out of familiarity with arithmetic. Arithmetic suggests equivalent forms (equations, or symbolic assertions like the above rule) that can also be accepted as equiva-lent/valid in algebra without being constrained by restrictions appropriate to arithmetic. Such transitions, he thought, constitute genuine historical progress. Algebra thus splits into two parts for Peacock, arithmetical algebra and symbolical algebra, the latter based upon his principle of the permanence of equivalent forms, as found in his 1830 A Treatise on Algebra. *Peacock's approach to algebra set the stage for later British mathematicians such as De Morgan (Peacock's student), Boole, and others. Initially inclined to follow his future father-in-law's restrictive approach in algebra, De Morgan was soon won over to Peacock's point of view, even going beyond it in his own work. In a series of articles around 1840, De Morgan identified the basic rules governing ordinary calculations, but he also began entertaining the notion of a symbolical algebra less tightly tied to arithmetical algebra. By more completely separating the interpretation of algebra's operations and symbols from its axioms, symbolical algebra gained further independence from arithmetic. This gave algebra more flexibility, making room for subsequent developments such as the quaternion algebra of William Rowan Hamilton (1843) and Boole's algebra of logic (1847). *After exploring the foundations of algebra, De Morgan turned his attention to analyzing forms of reasoning, a topic made popular by the resurgence of syllogistic logic instigated at Oxford around 1825 by Richard Whately. Traditional Aristotelian logic parsed valid arguments into syllogisms containing categorical statements such as every X is Y. De Morgan treated such sentences exten-sionally, using parentheses to indicate total or partial inclusion between classes X and Y. Thus, every X is Y was symbolized by X)Y since the parenthesis opens toward X; to be more precise, one should indicate whether X and Y are coextensive or X is only a part of Y. By thus quantifying the predicate, as it was called, De Morgan allowed for these two possibilities to be symbolized respectively by X)(Y and X))Y, in compact symbolic form as ')(' and '))'. Combining the two premises of a syllogistic argument using this notation, one could then apply an erasure rule to draw its conclusion. De Morgan enthusiastically elaborated his symbolic logic by adopting an abstract version of algebra that paved the way for operating with formal symbols in logic. De Morgan's symbolism is not as inaccessible as Frege's later two-dimensional concept-writing (though the full version of De Morgan's notation is more complex than indicated here), but it is still rather forbid-ding and failed to find adherents. *In addition to expanding Aristotelian forms by quantifying the predicate, yielding eight basic categorical forms instead of the standard four, by 1860 De Morgan was generalizing the copula "is" in such sentences to other relations, such as "is a brother of" or "is greater than." He began to systematically investigate the formal properties of such relations and the ways in which relations might be compounded. Though intended as a way to generalize categorical statements and expand syllogistic logic, his treatment of relations was later recognized as an important contribution that could be incorporated into predicate logic. Richards's treatment gives the reader a fair sense of what De Morgan's logic was like, and while a detailed comparison is not developed, the reader can begin to see how De Morgan's system compares to Aristotelian logic, Boole's algebra of logic, and contemporary mathematical logic. *However, as indicated at the outset, exploring De Morgan's algebraic and logical work is only a subplot of Richards's story. Her book is principally a brief for how Reason grounded the work and lives of several significant thinkers in an extended family over three generations. As she ties various threads together, the reader occasionally senses that the presentation may be too tidy, drawing parallels between vastly different developments to make them seem of a piece, all motivated by the same driving force of Reason. Nevertheless, Richards's account forces the reader to continually keep the bigger picture in mind and to connect various facets of the actors' lives and work to their deeper commitment to Reason. Her book thus offers a commendable case study for how technical trends in mathematics might be tied to broader cultural and philosophical concerns. *Reviewed by Calvin Jongsma, Professor Emeritus of Mathematics, Dordt University, Sioux Center, IA 51250.

Si une vague fantastique a déferlé en France au cours de la première moitié du XIXe siècle, comme toutes les modes, le fantastique fut bientôt démodé. Néanmoins, il demeura bien vivant, en se transformant, jusqu’à la fin du XIXe siècle et au-delà. Dans Le conte fantastique en France. De Nodier à Maupassant , P.-G. Castex retrace une continuité de la tradition fantastique allant des romantiques de 1830 à Lautréamont, Villers de l'Isle-Adam et Maupassant, le fantastique se modifiant et se reniant d’une génération à l’autre sous diverses influences (le progrès de la psychiatrie et de l'électromagnétisme, le développement du spiritisme ou l’évolution du goût littéraire). Castex ne limite pas le fantastique à un seul genre littéraire ni même à la littérature, le reconnaissant tantôt dans la peinture de Delacroix ou de Boulanger, dans la caricature de Ramelet, dans l’opéra (Robert le Diable), le ballet (La Sylphide), la musique instrumentale (La Symphonie fantastique) et même dans la virtuosité de Paganini. Mais il ne va pas jusqu’à présenter les Fleurs du Mal comme une œuvre fantastique . Au carrefour du romantisme, du Parnasse, du symbolisme, l’auteur des « Correspondances » et de « L’Albatros » suscite une glose abondante, mais l’aspect fantastique de l’œuvre attire peu l’attention. Pourtant, Claude Pichois, dans l’édition de La Pléiade (1975), affirme qu’« un fantastique moderne » naît avec Baudelaire. Quelques critiques, comme Rosemary Lloyd qui s’intéresse à l’influence d’Hoffmann sur Baudelaire, ont abordé l’aspect fantastique de cette œuvre inclassable. D’autres, comme Walter Benjamin, soulignent la parenté de Baudelaire avec Edgar Allan Poe. Mais la question de la spécificité du fantastique baudelairien est loin d’être résolue, notamment en ce qui concerne la modernité de ce fantastique, et surtout la forme qu’il prend dans Les Fleurs du Mal. C’est ce que je me propose d’explorer.

Le terme « culte à María Lionza » renvoie à un ensemble de pratiques rituelles consacrées à la déesse María Lionza et à d’autres esprits de son panthéon. Il est présent sur une grande partie du territoire vénézuélien, notamment dans la région de Yaracuy, au centre ouest du pays, sur la côte caribéenne et dans les grandes villes comme Caracas. La Montagne de Sorte, dans la région de Yaracuy, est le principal centre de pèlerinage des croyants. Bien qu’il soit originaire du Venezuela, le culte à María Lionza est également visible, avec quelques variantes, dans plusieurs autres pays de la région caribéenne et de l’Amérique du Sud, voire aux États-Unis et en Europe. L’origine de ce culte remonte à la conquête espagnole du Venezuela. Au fil des ans, les pratiques sacrées indiennes, les religions africaines apportées par les esclaves noirs ainsi que le catholicisme auraient fusionné donnant lieu à des manifestations religieuses nouvelles (Mintz et Price 1992 ; Andrews 2004). Dès la fin du XIXe siècle se seraient ajoutées à ces trois sources principales d’autres influences culturelles comme le spiritisme kardeciste et l’occultisme, entre autres (Pollack-Eltz 1972 ; Clarac de Briceño 1996 ; Barreto 1990). Cependant, et à la différence de cultes afro-américains comme la Santería Cubaine, le Candomblé ou le Voudou haïtien, le culte à María Lionza n’est pas, dès son origine, connecté aux communautés d’esclaves africains. Jusqu’au XXe siècle, ce culte contenait essentiellement des éléments d’origine catholique et indienne, notamment des images religieuses de saints ou des pratiques d’adoration d’éléments naturels comme des cascades ou des fleuves. A cette période-là, le culte était majoritairement répandu parmi la population métisse et rurale, et l’apport africain n’était que peu présent –la possession spirituelle ou l’usage de percussions, par exemple, étaient rares lors des cérémonies. Dans les années quarante, le culte devint urbain du fait de la migration massive de la population rurale vers les grandes villes suite au boom pétrolier (Coronil 1997). C’est dans ce nouveau contexte, et essentiellement sous l’influence de la santería cubaine, que le culte commence à subir un processus d’afroaméricanisation avec plus de recours aux possessions spirituelles, aux percussions et à une multiplication des entités surnaturelles. Aujourd’hui, le culte à María Lionza entretient de multiples connexions avec d’autres cultes afro-américains comme le Palo Mayombe, l’Umbanda et le spiritisme dominicain. L’incessant partage d’éléments entre ces pratiques oblige à les considérer toutes en termes de continuité et à adopter à leur égard une perspective d’analyse comparatiste. Enfin, quant aux liens du culte avec d’autres religions, force est de constater que l’immense majorité des Maríalionzeros (les pratiquants du culte) s’affirme catholique, paradoxalement à l’opposition historique de l’Église catholique à la pratique de ce culte. Les églises évangélistes, dont le nombre au Venezuela ne cesse de s’accroître, critiquent elles aussi le culte avec véhémence, l’accusant souvent d’être une œuvre du diable. Le culte à María Lionza englobe des rituels de guérison, divination, purification et initiation, dans lesquels les épisodes de possession sont fréquents. La transe est plus ou moins violente selon l’esprit qui « descend » et la façon de « travailler » de chaque médium ou materia (matière). Parfois la possession pousse le médium jusqu’à la blessure ou l’automutilation (Ferrándiz 2004). Cela dit, nombre de croyants rendent hommage aux divinités de manière très calme et discrète, sans inclure des épisodes de transe. A part María Lionza, ce culte compte des centaines d’esprits, nommés aussi entidades (entités) ou hermanos (frères). Ceux-ci correspondent aussi bien à des divinités n’ayant jamais eu une existence terrestre qu’à des personnages célèbres ou aux âmes de défunts. Ces esprits sont regroupés en différentes cortes (cours) ou ensembles de divinités présentant une affinité ethnique, sociale ou professionnelle. On retrouve ainsi la Corte Africana (Cour Africaine), la Corte Malandra (Cour des Délinquants) ou la Corte Militar (Cour Militaire), parmi bien d’autres. Les cortes, quant à elles, sont ordonnées suivant une logique pyramidale : celles ayant moins de pureté sont placées en bas du panthéon tandis que les plus pures ou dites « avec le plus de lumière » sont placées en haut, aux côtés de María Lionza et du Christ. S’ils réalisent de bonnes actions, les esprits en position basse peuvent gravir l’échelle du panthéon. Ce vaste panthéon spirituel peut être interprété comme un dispositif de réappropriation voire de subversion de l’histoire. Il est par exemple fréquent que les esprits d’anciens chefs indiens ayant lutté contre les Espagnols pendant la Conquête (les célèbres caciques) descendent dans le corps des médiums et racontent, en témoins directs, les faits survenus il y a 500 ans, donnant leur avis sur la situation politique actuelle et offrant des conseils à l’assistance. Le culte relie ainsi passé, présent et futur, vie et mort, mémoire collective et expérience individuelle. Le culte à María Lionza ne constitue une pratique ni unifiée ni cohérente. Chaque groupe de culte, nommé centro (centre), organise les rituels à sa manière et donne sa propre version de l’origine de la déesse. Les rivalités entre les centros sont fréquentes et parfois violentes. Non seulement pluriel, le culte à María Lionza est aussi dynamique et changeant. En effet, les pratiquants le transforment incessamment en y incorporant de nouvelles divinités (tel que l’ex-président Chávez) et de nouvelles techniques rituelles à travers notamment les technologies de communication. María Lionza, quant à elle, est une déesse imaginée et représentée de façons très différentes, voire apparemment contradictoires : on peut la voir indienne, blanche, métisse ou, plus rarement, noire, selon les mythes, légendes ainsi que les études à caractère historique retraçant son origine. Cela dit, deux versions iconographiques et littéraires de María Lionza sont particulièrement répandues : d’une part, celle où elle apparaît comme une femme indienne nue chevauchant un tapir et, d’autre part, celle où elle est représentée comme une femme métisse ou blanche, habillée comme une femme du XVIIe ou XVIIIe siècle, portant une couronne sur la tête et tenant une rose sur la poitrine (Canals 2010). María Lionza apparaît souvent accompagnée de Felipe le Noir (El Negro Felipe) et de l’Indien Guacaipuro (El Indio Gucaipuro). L’ensemble de ces trois figures, nommées les Trois Puissances (las Tres Potencias), a, pour les croyants, un double sens : d’un côté, il est l’expression divine du métissage de la population vénézuélienne à travers les représentants de ce que les Vénézuéliens appellent « les trois races » (las tres razas, c’est-à-dire indien, blanc et noir) qui ont constitué le réseau ethnique du pays, et, d’un autre côté, il représente le paradigme d’entente et de réconciliation historique entre ces trois sources culturelles. Bref, les Trois Puissances sont, en même temps et pour les croyants, le reflet de ce qu’est le Venezuela et l’exemple de ce qu’il devrait être. Les images religieuses ont une grande importance dans le culte (Canals 2011) et donnent lieu à une industrie ésotérique qui a acquis une échelle planétaire. Lors des cérémonies, les croyants se réunissent autour de l’autel, nommé aussi portal (portail) où se trouvent surtout des statuettes de divinités. Hormis ces icônes, le culte serait inconcevable sans un grand nombre d’objets ou produits à forte composante sensitive et symbolique. Parmi ceux-là, il faut distinguer les substances « naturelles » (tabac, rhum, miel) de celles composées dans les perfumerías ou boutiques ésotériques. Dans ces boutiques s’amoncellent des savons, flacons de parfum, crèmes, encens et nombre d’autres éléments fabriqués à des fins très précises liés à la vie quotidienne et arborant des noms suggestifs: Amarra Hombres (lotion de séduction « attrape-hommes » adressée aux femmes) ou Tumba Negocios (produit pour faire échouer les affaires de ses concurrents commerciaux). Cette industrie ésotérique joue un rôle économique important au Venezuela et ailleurs. En fait, le culte à María Lionza est, pour nombre de croyants, un moyen de survie. Les rituels de guérison, divination ou initiation sont souvent payants, sans arriver pour autant aux prix exorbitants pratiqués dans d’autres religions comme la Santería. Par ailleurs, le culte à María Lionza est très présent sur le net, aussi bien sur des sites ésotériques que sur des réseaux sociaux. Cette présence sur Internet joue un rôle décisif dans l’expansion et la réinvention du culte. Récemment, certains groupes de culte ont initié des démarches pour intégrer le culte au Patrimoine Immatériel de l’UNESCO. Cette volonté de reconnaissance institutionnelle constitue un changement par rapport à la dynamique historique du culte qui a maintenu vis-à-vis du pouvoir et de l’officialisme une position majoritairement d’opposition, bien que nombre de représentants politiques et de militaires aient été, depuis les années 1950, pratiquants du culte en secret (Taussig 1997)

Le spiritisme, nouveau courant de pensee etablissant d'une facon rationnelle l'existence des esprits et la possibilite de communiquer avec eux, s'introduit en france au milieu du 19e siecle. Il constitute alors, pour les romanciers, une source d'inspiration dont les variantes sont revelatrices de differentes prises de position. Des auteurs se mettent au service de la doctrine et donnent nais-sance a des romans de propagnade qui veulent plaire tout en informant, instrui-sant et moralisant. D'autres ecrivains se contentent, plus simplement, d'exploiter les phenomenes psychiques. Ils creent des oeuvres " de fantaisie " qui alimentent le courant diffus du fantastique, ouvrent la voie a la science fiction avec le roman astronomique, ou donnent, grace aux biographies romancees, un nouvel eclairage a l'histoire. Les adversaires du mouvement, des ecrivains catholiques et des scientifiques pour la plupart, produisant des ouvrages detracteurs ou se melent le burlesque et la satire. Sous ces trois aspects, le roman spirite, genre eminemment polymorphe, connaitra son apogee entre les deux guerres mondiales
Spiritism, a new shift in public opinion supporting the existence of spirits and the possibility of communicating with them, penetrated france in the middle of the 19e century. At that time, it inspired novelists who varied in their positions accor-ding to their source of information. On the one hand, some writers supported the doctrine of spiritism and gave birth to novels which meant to entertain, but also to inform, teach and moralize. On the other hand, other writers merely chose to exploit psychic phenomena. They created flights of fancy which inspired the diffuse trend of fantasy fiction, breaking new grounds for science-fiction with astronomy novels. This shed new lights on history with romanced biographies. Catholic and scientific writers were the leading apparents ; they produced destructive works where burlesque and satire were interwoven. Under these three different forms, the spiritist novel, a highly polymorphic genre, reached its peak between world war 1 and 2 world war 2

This chapter examines some of the earliest attempts at synthesizing theological speculation with the methods of the empirical sciences, drawing special attention to the epistemic and moral consequences of such syntheses. It also considers the neglected influence of Spiritism and psychical research among Iranian intellectuals in the first half of the twentieth century. The chapter first discusses the role of Mirza Khalil Khan Saqafi in bringing Spiritism to Iran and Spiritists' method of communication with disembodied souls, which they claimed were the fruit of modern scientific discovery. It then explores how experimental spirit science atracted interest from outside the network of commited Spiritists, focusing on Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's views on hypnotism and séances with disembodied spirits. Finally, it shows how the Spiritists promoted empirical observation as a reliable means for verifying the existence of souls.

Spirituality is a relevant field for science and a body of research shows its health benefits. In turn, spiritism presents itself as a theoretical-practical doctrine that can positively influence mental health. This narrative-integrative review carried out a search aiming at the scientific knowledge produced in the interface between spiritism and mental health. It was seen that, currently, institutional research centers, such as the Center for Research in Spirituality and Health (NUPES) and the Health, Spirituality and Religiosity Program (ProSER) are dedicated to this theme, in addition to areas of psychology, such as transpersonal and the anomalistic. It was also demonstrated that the spiritist proposal of “intimate reform” has a therapeutic inclination for the mind, with benefits evidenced in research on some specific spiritist activities, such as mediumistic meetings, passes and the study of the gospel and doctrine. In parallel, mediumship has been extensively researched, demonstrating itself as a legitimate human phenomenon, not invented, still to be better understood.

This chapter analyzes the uses and appropriations of scientific discourse in Argentine magazines from the fin de siècle: a period in which literary modernism coincided with the development of spiritualisms that aspired to the status of science (or “occult sciences”) like Spiritism and Theosophy. The aim is to examine concrete examples that relativize the sharp division between science, art, and spiritualism in the culture of this period. The main sources explored are La Quincena. Revista de letras (1893–1899), Philadelphia (1898–1902), La Verdad (1905–1911), and Constancia (1890–1905). In addition, the chapter focuses on how the astonishing growth of science in Argentina, as well as the social legitimation of scientific discourses, influenced other fields, giving shape to new literary expressions, beliefs, and utopian projections that synthesized the material and the spiritual.