The term is found among the extensive terminology originally devised by Allan Kardec in his books about Spiritism.
When invited to our plane of existence by a medium, "spirits who inhabit worlds of higher degree than ours ... are obliged to clothe themselves with" a garment composed of perispirit.
Due to syncretism, some variations of spiritism accept the perispirit as an actual "body" possessing power centres, defined more or less in the same way that Theosophy and Yoga define the Chakras, thus making the concept of perispirit similar to that of an astral body, a concept that was unknown to Kardec.
According to this orientalizing view, the perispirit had the function of modelling the physical body ("soma" [in Greek; "deha" in Sanskrit]) after the design determined by the karma, with each chakra linking itself to a gland and to the nervous system.
In Mandaic soteriology, the soul of the dead, upon entering the House of Life, "receives a garment and a wreath.