History of spiritism in Brazil

Following the emergence of modern Spiritualist events in Hydesville, New York, United States, via the mediumship of the Fox sisters (1848), the phenomena quickly spread to Europe where, in France, the so-called "turning tables" became a popular fad.

In Brazil the ideas that gave rise to Spiritism date back to the early experiences with the so-called "vital fluid" (animal magnetism, mesmerism) by practitioners of homeopathy, namely the physicians Benoît Jules Mure, a native of France, and João Vicente Martins, from Portugal, who arrived in the country in 1840 and applied it to their patients.

In the city of Rio de Janeiro, then capital of the Empire of Brazil, the first Spiritist sessions were held by French individuals, many of whom were political exiles from the regime of Napoleon III of France (1852–1870), in the 1860s.

Some of these pioneers were the journalist Adolphe Hubert, editor of the periodical Courrier do Brésil, the professor Casimir Lieutaud, and the psychographic medium, Madame Perret Collard.

The reaction in the press of the time is expressed, for example, in a comment published in the pages of the Jornal do Commercio, accusing Spiritism of creating "madmen" and calling for police intervention, concluding: "It is an epidemic more dangerous than yellow fever..." (Jornal do Commercio, 13 December 1874) In 1875, the Confúcio Group launched the second Spiritist periodical in the country (the first in Rio de Janeiro), the Revista Espírita (Spiritist Review), edited by Antônio da Silva Neto.

Prominent figures associated with this group include Joaquim Carlos Travassos, who in 1875 presented the first translation of "The Spirits' Book" into the Portuguese language to Bezerra de Menezes.

Immediately, the Board of the Academic Society sent letters to the Chief of Police and the Minister of Justice, Counselor Manuel Pinto de Souza Dantas, demonstrating the arbitrariness of that measure.

[16] On the same day, a committee of Spiritists was received by Emperor Pedro II of Brazil, to whom they handed a document with a detailed exposition of the facts and a request for justice to be served.

To mark the first anniversary of the news about the repression of Spiritists, the I Espírita Exposition of Brazil was opened on 28 August 1882, at the headquarters of the Academic Society, at 120 Rua da Alfândega.

On this occasion, the newspaper "O Renovador" (The Renewer) was also launched by Major Salustiano José Monteiro de Barros and Professor Afonso Angeli Torteroli.

It was Elias da Silva who, at the end of that year (27 December 1883),[18] held a preparatory meeting for the reorganization of the movement in the Municipality of the Court at his own residence, given the apparent lack of understanding among the members of the various existing Spiritist entities there:[19] the "Centro da União Espírita do Brasil," the "Grupo dos Humildes," the "Grupo Espírita Fraternidade," and the "Sociedade Acadêmica Deus, Cristo e Caridade."

This decree, inspired by positivism, associated the practice of Spiritism with rituals of magic and charlatanism, as expressed in Article 157, which stated: Spiritists protested to Campos Sales, who was then the Minister of Justice, but without success.

The following year (1894), with the easing of the political situation, Augusto Elias, together with Fernandes Figueira and Alfredo Pereira, launched a fundraising campaign to support FEB's projects.

Its board of directors included names such as Júlio César Leal[nb 4] and Bezerra de Menezes, who resigned from it in 1896 due to a campaign of personal insults against him, as he was considered a mystic who did not bother to reason.

[nb 5] With Júlio César Leal's resignation from the presidency of FEB, after seven months in office due to a profound administrative, financial, and ideological crisis experienced by the institution, Bezerra de Menezes accepted to assume the position once again on 3 August 1895.

[23] On 15 April 1905, the headquarters of FEB, located at 97 Rosário Street in the historic center of the city, was visited by officials from the General Directorate of Public Health, who issued citations against the medium Dr. Domingos de Barros Lima Filgueiras for the illegal practice of Medicine.

The centralizing role of FEB at the national level was questioned in the 1920s with the founding of the Spiritist League of Brazil by Aurino Barbosa Souto (31 March 1926), which had a similar purpose.

"Jornal do Brasil" published an interview with the writer Coelho Neto (7 June 1923), who had been an uncompromising opponent of Spiritism but converted to it after participating in a conversation over the telephone between his deceased granddaughter and her mother.

Since the 1920s, clashes between Spiritism and psychiatry had been occurring in Brazil, which only ended around the mid-20th century due to advancements such as the research conducted between the 1950s and 1960s on mediumship in the country by French sociologist and ethnologist Roger Bastide.

The professionals educated at the Faculty of Medicine of Rio de Janeiro considered Spiritism as a contagious pathology capable of incapacitating large human contingents for work.

), tuberculosis, leprosy, worm diseases, and, in short, all the evils that contribute to the annihilation of the vital, physical, and psychic energies of our people, of our race in formation.

In the following year (1938), the work "Brasil, Coração do Mundo, Pátria do Evangelho" was published, also psychographed by Francisco Cândido Xavier and attributed to the spirit of Humberto de Campos.

The book narrates the formation of Brazil from a Spiritist perspective, in which spiritual entities are said to have influenced the country's main historical events, from the "diversion" of Cabral's fleet to the abolition of slavery, prophesying a prominent place among Christianity.

The presidency of the Second Congress was entrusted to Argentine doctor Luís Di Cristóforo Postiglione, who invited Francisco Klörs Wemeck and Deolindo Amorim to serve as secretaries.

He was also accused of fraud (which was not proven and later retracted),[30] in 1958, by his nephew Amauri Pena, and he was involved, along with Waldo Vieira, in the scandal of the so-called "materializations of Uberaba" in 1964, which was covered in 70 pages of the magazine "O Cruzeiro," accompanied by 87 photographs, in eleven editions over a three-month period.

In the context of the federative movement that spread after the signing of the so-called "Golden Pact," in 1953 the National Conference of Bishops of Brazil reiterated the Catholic condemnation of Spiritism.

On 13 December 1963, the Brazilian Institute of Psychobiophysical Research (IBPP) was founded in the city of São Paulo by the engineer and Spiritist parapsychologist Hernani Guimarães Andrade.

The first interview took place on the night of 28 July, which achieved the highest audience rating in the history of Brazilian television,[34] and the second on 21 December 1971, which was also a great success in terms of viewership.

In the cinema, the film Joelma 23rd Floor (1979) was released, directed by Clery Cunha and starring Beth Goulart, based on the work "Somos Seis" psychographed by Chico Xavier.

They maintain nursing homes, orphanages, schools for underprivileged people, daycare centers, and other social assistance and promotion institutions in all Brazilian states.