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In continental Europe and particularly in Brazil, a branch of Spiritualism called Spiritism is developing and evolving into a new religion.
We have all seen old Victorian illustrations of ghosts as white sheets of cloth and poorly faked photos of spirits created by double exposure, mainly resulting from the Spiritualist movement in Britain and the United States. The movement saw its peak at the end of the nineteenth century, and it’s mostly recognized as a fad today, almost a century later.
In some other countries, however, especially in continental Europe and particularly in Brazil, a branch of Spiritualism called Spiritism is still very relevant and evolving, making it a fascinating example of the development of a new religion. Followers will be quick to emphasize the distinction between the more widely known Spiritualism and Spiritism, which was founded by a Frenchman named Hypolite Rivail (1804–1869) under the pseudonym “Allan Kardec.” This fad, or fallacy, is being promoted in the name of science.
Chico Xavier
According to the Brazilian Institute for Geography and Statistics (IBGE), which conducts the official census, Brazil has the largest number of Spiritists in the world: over 2.3 million followers, around 1.3 percent of the total population and the third largest religious group, behind Catholics and Evangelicals[1].
All three groups are Christian; the Brazilian Spiritists give special relevance to “The Gospel According to Spiritism.” The most important leader of this movement in Brazil, Francisco “Chico” Xavier (1910–2002), is our main focus of interest here because he epitomizes Brazilian Spiritism.
Chico Xavier is said to have been a medium. His main form of mediumship, however, was “psychography,” that is automatic writing by which he claimed to contact the dead in the form of letters from the deceased and also new books by deceased famous authors.
By selling these “psychographed” books, of which Xavier is said to have authored nearly 400, the movement has been able to flourish and to promote charity works in a self-reinforcing loop where each chain reinforces the other with Xavier at the top. He was clearly not a “Sexy Sadie,” however; even in life Xavier, who lived modestly and never married, was already worshipped as a kind of ascetic saint. There is no evidence that the image of him upheld by his followers is not true. Nearly a decade after his death, and in the centenary of his birth, his life is being dramatized and promoted in major feature movies,[2] and it’s almost unthinkable to question Xavier’s public persona.
But a critical analysis of Chico Xavier’s paranormal claims quickly reveals their utmost frailty. I was myself surprised. Until I got a better look, I had always assumed Xavier’s claims had a kernel of truth. If they were not authentic paranormal phenomena, I thought they would at least prove unsolved and intriguing. On the contrary, that turned out not to be the case.
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