The Many Rooms of Spiritism in Brazil

The Many Rooms of Spiritism in Brazil
Author(s): David Hess

Source: Luso-Brazilian Review, Vol. 24, No. 2 (Winter, 1987), pp. 15-34
Published by: University of Wisconsin Press
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The Many Rooms of Spiritism in
Brazil
David Hess
To date, no study has provided an interpretation of the full

historical development of Brazilian Spiritism, which will be
understood here to mean the movement identified with the writings
of Allan Kardec.1 While in the last decade there has been a
flurry of studies on Umbanda and the Afro-Brazilian religions,
Spiritism has received relatively little attention, despite the
fact that it occupies a substantial space in the important arena
of Brazilian spirit mediumship religions.2 This relative neglect
is perhaps in part the legacy of Roger Bastide, who tended to
write off Spiritism as a white, middle-class ideology, in contrast
to the mulatto working-class nature of Umbanda.3 This article
demonstrates that the situation is more complicated, and while
Spiritism is largely a white, middle-class religious movement, its
complicated and contradictory position in the religious arena
cannot be reduced to a simple formula. On the one hand, there is
a tendency for the Spiritist movement to come apart under the
banners of Spiritism-as-science and Spiritism-as-religion, which
often correspond to internal class divisions within the Spiritist
movement. On the other hand, the intermediate position of
Spiritism as located both below the Catholic Church and the
medical profession and above Umbanda and the Afro-Brazilian
religions--in terms of access to the state and immunity from its
repressive mechanisms--creates an external pressure that operates
in favor of the movement's overall cohesion. To borrow an image
from Bakhtin, the historical development of Spiritism is centrifu-
gal on the inside and centripetal on the outside. By situating
Spiritism in this complex dynamic, one can achieve a considerably
more sophisticated understanding of this crucial segment of the
broader religious arena in Brazil. In addition, such a perspec-
tive may be useful for studying other popular religious movements,
both in Brazil and throughout Latin America.
Luso-Brazilian Review XXIV, 2 0024-7413/87/015 $1.50

O 1987 by the Board of Regents of the
University of Wisconsin System
16 Luso-Brazilian Review 24:2
Spiritism in Europe
Spiritists mark the birth of their movement with the
publication of Allan Kardec's The Book of the Spirits, which first
appeared in Paris in 1857. Kardec was neither a medium nor a
mystic; he was a schoolteacher who had already written extensively
on pedagogy under his original name, Hippolyte Leon Denizard
Rivail. Kardec approached spirit mediums as both a scientist and
a pupil, and he viewed himself as the "codifier" of the messages
that he obtained from spirits in sittings with spirit mediums. He
used the term "Spiritism" to distinguish his doctrine from the
occultist and religious overtones of "Spiritualism," which was the
name of the sibling movement in Anglo-Saxon countries. (The
latter also differed from Spiritism by not accepting
reincarnation, which Kardec believed to be scientifically
confirmed by the spirits.) Kardec's doctrine was thus very much a
product of nineteenth-century rationalism, and he shared with
other intellectuals of the time the concern that the recent
advances in scientific knowledge were eroding religious faith and
morality. Kardec viewed his doctrine as a kind of empirical
science of the spirit world, but a science that bridged the gap
between is and ought by transforming what he believed to be the
fact of spirit communication into the moral principles of
Spiritist doctrine.4
The complex nature of Spiritist doctrine as scientific,
philosophical, and moral/religious is related to two contradictory
dynamics in the historical development of the Spiritist movement.
On the outside, two institutional representatives of science and
religion--respectively the official medical profession and the
Catholic Church--attempted to silence this discourse that threat-
ened to destabilize the institutional divisions between them. On
the inside, the division between science and religion returned in
the form of the internecine schisms that the Spiritist movement
underwent in its historical development.
Two new discourses, one representing a differentiation to the
side of science and the other to the side of religion, emerged
shortly after Kardec began publishing. The growing independence
of what Kardec termed the "experimental" or scientific side of
Spiritism (and Spiritualism in the Anglo-Saxon countries), which
concerned itself with classifying and corroborating the phenomena
of spirit mediumship, eventually led to the beginnings of psychi-
cal research in the 1870s.5 To the side of religion, a member of
the Spiritist Society of Bordeaux named Jean-Baptiste Roustaing
published in 1866 the Revelation of the Revelation, based on
communications through the French medium Mme. Collignon. In this
text, the authors of the Gospels communicated new and corrected
versions of their Biblical accounts. Among the changes, they
reasserted the divinity of Christ and stated that Christ material-
ized on earth and had a completely fluidic or "perispiritual"
body. Kardec did not accept this docetic doctrine, and he criti-
cized it in both the Revue Spirite and his book Genesis.6 Al-
though Roustaing never achieved a great deal of popularity in
France, his docetic doctrine became an important means for the
Hess 17
expression of factional divisions throughout the history of

Spiritism in Brazil.
Kardec also hoped that Spiritism would bring about a more
sophisticated understanding of mental illness; however, the
medical profession reacted negatively to his ideas. In 1859, Dr.
Dechambre, a member of the Academy of Medicine, published a
critique of Spiritism, and by 1863 reports were circulating about
cases of insanity caused by Spiritism.7 In addition, a report
before the Academy of Sciences of Paris attributed spirit raps to
knee-cracking, an idea which had already emerged in the United
States with respect to the Fox sisters.8 The medical profession's
hostile attitude toward Spiritism is partly due to the fact that
the latter was much more modern and potentially threatening than
the orthodox medical profession admitted; in many ways, Spiritism
was a precursor of dynamic theories of the unconscious. The
potential for Spiritist medicine to become a rival "alternative"
medicine was even greater in Brazil, where the orthodox medical
profession was much less firmly established than in Europe.
The Catholic Church also reacted with hostility toward
Spiritism. In 1856, during the term of Pope Pius IX, the Holy
Office prohibited necromancy, clairvoyance, and "other analogous
superstitions" as "heretical, scandalous, and contrary to the
honesty of customs."9 The position did not change with the suc-
cessors of Pius IX; for example, in 1898 Pope Leo XIII added
automatic writing to the list of injunctions.10 To Catholic
theologians, Spiritism was worse than Protestantism, since it
denied key dogmas such as the Trinity and the reality of heaven
and hell, and it supported beliefs such as reincarnation and
communication with the dead, which to Catholic theologians meant a
return to pagan supersitition at best and a dangerous flirtation
with the Devil at worst.
The Reception of Spiritism in Brazil

The divisions that first emerged in Europe--psychical
research, Roustaingism, and the hostile reaction of the medical
profession and the Catholic Church--followed Spiritism to Brazil.
An example of the external conflicts in nineteenth-century Brazil
is the attempt in 1871 of Telles de Menezes to charter the
Sociedade Espfrita Brasileira, an organization that Kardec of-
ficially recognized in the Revue Spirite.11 Although the proposal
received civilian approval, the Catholic Church blocked it, and as
a result the group had to reapply as the Associagao Espirftica
Brasileira, which asserted that it was a scientific society and
not religious in nature.12
However, internal conflicts over the definition of Spiritism
as a religious or scientific discourse were more salient than
external rivalries during the early period of the reception of
Spiritism in Brazil. One can trace a series of complicated
schisms and transformations among Spiritist groups in Rio during
the 1870s and 1880s, for which the divisive issue was generally
the orientation of the groups as scientific or religious. Those
interested in following this history in more detail may read
either the Paulista history of Canuto Abreu or the Carioca history

of Pedro Richard, which themselves represent a division in the
internal historical scholarship of twentieth-century Spiritists
along a similar scientific/religious dimension.13
The founding of the Federarao Espfrita Brasileira (FEB) in
1884 provided the first step toward an always uneasy and fragile
unification. However, Spiritists did not unite until the early
1890s, when the positivist-influenced penal code of the Old
Republic included a new article that outlawed espiritismo. As the
alarm generated by the new penal code subsided, the erstwhile
unity under the umbrella of the FEB became unravelled again in the
form of a new split between the scientific and religious factions,
with the former controlling the offices of the FEB and the latter
its official publication, the Reformador.14 In 1895, Spiritists
called on Bezerra de Menezes, a respected doctor and political
leader who had served as President of the FEB once before, to
return to the Presidency and attempt to restore unity. Today
Spiritists throughout Brazil credit Menezes with bringing unity
and order to the Federation during his administration from 1895 to
1900. He achieved this largely by reorienting the FEB to a more
evangelical and explicitly Roustaingist perspective; a reform in
the FEB statutes in 1895 made Roustaing's The Four Gospels of-
ficially sanctioned reading.15 On the other hand, Menezes also
supported the plans for a school for mediums, a project that
appears to have been the favorite of the scientific Spiritists.16
The FEB then became permanently characterized by Roustaing-
ism, despite the fact that the successor to Menezes, Leopoldo
Cirne, agreed to a reform of the FEB statutes in 1902 that deleted
the clause about studying Roustaing.17 His move to delete the
clause on Roustaing must have represented an attempt to appease
the scientific factions, as did Cirne's support for the school for
mediums, which received support from the religious faction only
when he included Roustaing in the curriculum.18 The ill-fated
project began in 1902, but worked only for a few years and was
then abandoned until 1911, when Cirne attempted to initiate the
project again.19 Cirne claims that this second attempt led to a
"block of resistances" within the Board of Directors of the FEB,
and the receitistas (mediums who give homeopathic prescriptions)
threatened to leave if Cirne were reelected.20 He lost his
reelection bid in 1914, resulting in the adhesion of the receitis-
tas, but he claims that over two-fifths of the membership of the
FEB left during 1913 and 1914.21 The successor to Cirne,
Arfstides Spinola, was an arch-Roustaingist who supported new
statutory reforms that reestablished the study of Roustaing in
1917,22 and the official sanctioning of the study of Roustaing has
remained part of the FEB statutes until the present day.
Thus by 1920 the leading organization of Brazilian Spiritism
had refashioned Kardec's Spiritist doctrine in terms of Roustaing-
ism and reinterpreted Spiritist practice in terms of the recei-
tista mediumship.23 As historian Donald Warren argues, Brazilians
tended to grant a privileged position to the healing mediumship,
even if this ran against Kardec's emphasis on the role of spirit
Hess 19
mediumship in teaching moral principles.24 Although receitista

mediums and homeopathic curing were present in the Spiritist
movement from the beginning,2 the dramatic increase in the
receitista mediumship is primarily a phenomenon of the first
decades of the twentieth century. This is evident not only from
their ability in 1914 to push Cirne out of office, but also from
statistics on the growth of the number of homeopathic prescrip-
tions given during the first decade of this century, which grew
from about twenty thousand in 1902 to over 240,000 in 1911.26
A second development in the medicalization of Brazilian
Spiritism was the emergence of "disobsession" or "deobsession"
(desobsessao) as a treatment for various types of maladies.
Disobsession refers to a procedure of conversing with errant
spirits who perturb and obsess the living, sometimes causing
symptoms of mental and physical illness. Like the role of
homeopathic medicine in the Spiritist movement, disobsession in
Brazil can be traced back to the last decades of the nineteenth
century, when the Sociedade Espfrita Fraternidade did
disobsession work.27 In 1888, when the spirit of Kardec appeared
before this group and gave a speech pleading for organizational
unity and a school for mediums, he also provided a method of
disobsession.28 Later, Bezerra de Menezes wrote on disobsession
in a series of articles that became an important text in the
Spiritist canon, A loucura sob novo prisma. The Reformador, the
official journal of the FEB, contains many references to the cure
of obsession in the years following Menezes' administration, and
in 1906 the journal sponsored a campaign to build a Spiritist
hospital for the cure of obsession. Although Menezes may have
thought of disobsession as a practice that could appeal to both
the scientific and religious factions, the hospital project
appears to have been the favorite of the religious faction. After
Cirne's administration, when the religious faction gained control
of the FEB, the organization abandoned plans for the school for
mediums and instead reinstated the plans for the hospital for the
treatment of obsession.29
The thaumaturgical and evangelical nature of turn-of-the-
century Spiritism was both an expression of and a contributing
factor to its transformation from a small sect in the cosmopolitan
coastal cities to a nationwide movement.30 However, the dynamics
of growth were also related to important changes that the Catholic
Church and medical profession were undergoing at the time. Prior
to the Old Republic, the Catholic Church relied on the state as
the means of exercising and maintaining influence, and the separa-
tion of church and state in 1889 left the Catholic Church in an
institutionally weak position, a problem that was compounded by
the prevalence of a non-Roman, "popular" Catholicism throughout
much of rural Brazil, where there was little state or Church
influence.31 The Catholic Church therefore began a program of
"romanizing" and building up its bureaucracy by adding dioceses
and archidioceses, a cardinalate in 1905, dozens of seminaries,
and thousands of new priests, many of whom were foreign born.32
Bruneau writes, "By 1930 the Church in Brazil resembled the large
bureaucratic organization that most people visualize when reading

about the Church."33
An important part of the process of romanization entailed the
suppression of religious thaumaturgy that threatened to escape
central control. In general, the Catholic Church had tolerated or
ignored traditional forms of faith healing, such as curandeiros
and Catholic benzadores. However, during the Old Republic, the
Church began to weed out popular thaumaturgy within its own ranks;
the case of Padre Cfcero is the best known.34 Despite this
pressure from above, popular demand for benzadores did not
diminish; if anything, the romanization process only created a
shortage of supply. Spiritists filled this gap by substituting
the padre's blessing and rituals of exorcism with their magnetic
or spiritual passes and the practice of disobsession. The use of
an evangelical, Christian discourse made this substitution all the
more possible, and it also served to distinguish Spiritists from
their rivals in the world of spirit mediumship, the practitioners
of "Macumba" and "low Spiritism" in Rio and the Afro-Brazilian
religions in the northeast. It is likely that the relative
strengths of these rivals from Rio to the north was an important
factor in the development of the evangelical side of Spiritism,
which tends to be strongest in this part of Brazil.
If a Christian discourse helped allay fears that Spiritists
were somehow associated with the devil or black magic, a scien-
tific discourse only reinforced this process and further served to
distinguish Spiritists from the Afro-Brazilian religions.
Spiritists were able to present themselves as scientific and
rationalistic precisely because there was a relative vacuum among
their would-be rivals in the medical profession. At the turn of
the century, Brazil had only two medical faculties and no univer-
sities, and outside of the main cities, psychiatric treatment
simply was not available. This situation persisted well into the
twentieth century; for example, the director of the Hospital
Espfrita de Marflia, located in the interior of the state of Sao
Paulo, informed me that when this hospital was founded in 1948
there was no other psychiatric treatment available in the area,
and many of their first patients came from the local jails.
Coupled to this shortage of psychiatric care was the state of
confusion and ferment in Brazilian psychiatry at the turn of the
century. Until 1903, when Juliano Moreira and Afranio Peixoto
moved from Bahia to the National Hospital in Rio, Brazilian
psychiatry in the capital was largely dominated by the neurology
of Joao Carlos Teixeira Brandao and Antonio Austregesflio. Thus
when Spiritist Bezerra de Menezes, himself a doctor, argued that
"there are two types of insanity," one originating in the brain
and the other in the spirit, he was legitimately pointing to a
shortcoming in the Brazilian psychiatry of the day.35 Some
members of the medical profession even responded favorably to the
suggestions of Spiritists.36 Nevertheless, even if psychical
research and, to a much lesser extent, Spiritism provoked some
interest among a few members of the medical profession, the
profession as a whole was hostile to these developments. Nina
Hess 21
Rodrigues, who introduced the dynamic psychiatry of Janet into

Brazil in his studies of the Afro-Brazilian religions of Bahia,
interpreted Spiritist mediumship along with Afro-Brazilian trance
episodes and popular Catholic religiosity as manifestations of
"hysterical somnambulism" or collective insanity.37
Nor did this hostility stop with words. A federal decree in
1904 on sanitary regulations provided the grounds for a series of
prosecutions against the President of the FEB, the FEB itself, and
a well-known receitista medium.38 Similarly, the outspoken
Spiritist intellectual Eurfpides Barsanulfo, of Sacramento, Minas
Gerais, was accused of the illegal practice of medicine in 1917.39
The Centro Espfrita Redemptor of Rio de Janeiro, which developed
an independent form of Spiritism and ran a clinic for disobsession
treatment, faced prosecution in 1914 and again in the 1930s.40
Spiritists based their defense primarily on the religious freedom
argument, but they also brought to bear testimony regarding the
scientific validity of their practices, and in some cases, such as
those against the Federation in 1904, the process ended in acquit-
tal.
To summarize, the pattern that emerges during this first
phase of the development of Spiritism in Brazil is that a unity of
both Spiritist factions and Spiritist discourses takes place in
response to various kinds of external pressure. For example,
rival Spiritist factions came together in the early 1890s under
the threat of the anti-espiritismo law that was declared at the
dawn of the Old Republic. In addition, external forces tended to
bring together the religious and scientific sides of Spiritist
discourse. This occurred when Spiritists defended themselves
against legal prosecution by basing their cases both on the
freedom of religion argument and the argument about the scientific
validity of their practices. Likewise, the two discourses came
together when Spiritists needed to distinguish themselves from
other popular healing traditions and spirit mediumship religions,
enabling Spiritists to serve as a substitute for popular Catholi-
cism without being replaced by the Afro-Brazilian religions.
These dynamics continued to play themselves out throughout the
development of Spiritism.
The Vargas Years (1930-1945)

Important changes in the Catholic Church and its relationship
to the state during the 1920s and 1930s created an atmosphere of
retrenchment for Spiritism during the Vargas years. In 1921,
Sebastiao Leme arrived in Rio as coadjutor, later to become
cardinal, and in 1922 Jackson de Figueiredo founded the Centro Dom
Vital, with the goal of the "recatholicization of our intellec-
tuals."41 Cardinal Leme became one of Vargas's confidants, and
although Vargas was known for quickly shifting his political
alliances, his partnership with Leme remained a stable and crucial
part of his political strategy. In return for cooperation with
Vargas, Leme extracted concessions that were unparalleled in other
Latin American countries.42 Among these were the decree of April
30, 1931, which called for religious education in public schools,
as well as the changes of the 1934 Constitution, which contained

articles allowing religious services for the armed forces, re-
ligious marriages with civil effects, and religious education in
public schools.43 In addition, a 1934 law required Spiritists and
Umbandists to register with the police, and in Rio this meant the
police division that handled alcohol, drugs, illegal gambling and
prostitution.44 Likewise, the consolidated legal code of 1932
reconfirmed the older provisions of the 1890 penal codes that
outlawed curandeirisimo and espiritismo. In short, while the
Catholic Church did not return to the position of official reli-
gion that it had held during the days of the Empire, it made
significant progress toward reinstating de jure recognition of its
de facto status.
In response to this threat from the state and the Catholic
Church, the scientific side of Spiritism was able to gain a new
lease on life. In 1926 the Liga Espfrita do Brasil (LEB) was
organized to galvanize support in protest of the constitutional
reforms proposed by Plfnio Marques, who called for religious
education in the public schools and the reestablishment of the
Catholic Church as the official religion.45 However, the LEB
attracted intellectual Spiritists and soon supported other proj-
ects that were geared more toward the internal politics of the
Spiritist movement, reinstitutionalizing the old factional dispute
along Roustaingist/Kardecist lines. For example, the LEB set up
guidelines for disobsession that restricted it to a procedure for
developed mediums to help reorient and guide wayward spirits
rather than to provide "personal consultations" for the living;
this position contrasted with the FEB's attempts to medicalize
disobsession.46 Later, the LEB supported the founding of the
Faculdade de Estudos Psfquicos, which eventually became the
Instituto de Cultura Espfrita, today one of the major institutions
associated with the intellectual elite of Spiritism.47
A second threat to the Spiritist movement emerged when
leaders of official medicine secured state support for their
struggle to maintain a monopoly over the healing of illness. In
the 1920s and 1930s, this struggle became linked to the emerging
ideologies of public health and mental hygiene. The idea of
public health had already garnered widespread public support
earlier in the century from the work of Oswaldo Cruz.48 In 1923,
the birth of the Brazilian League of Mental Hygiene helped extend
the idea of public health to include mental health, and in 1927,
the Washington Luiz government recognized this development by
creating the Service of Assistance to coordinate all public
psychiatric institutions in Rio.49 Although many doctors of the
League were more preoccupied with anti-alcoholism campaigns, which
received government support, and with integrating eugenics with
traditional Brazilian racial ideology,50 some also regarded
espiritismo as a serious problem. Two doctors who were involved
in the League, Murillo de Campos and Ant6nio Xavier de Oliveira,
wrote extended tracts on Spiritism and other spirit mediumship
religions as a social problem. One doctor associated with the
mental hygiene movement wrote that spirit mediumship was "one of
Hess 23
the major factors in mental illness," and Xavier de Oliveira

claimed that ninety percent of the patients at the Pavilhao de
Observaroes de Assistencia a Psychopathas had gone to Spiritist
centers.51 Other books of the time, written by doctors not
necessarily associated with the League, also approached spirit
mediumship through the prism of psychopathology.5L
In 1927, the Medical Society of Rio de Janeiro met to
consider the problem of Spiritism with respect to medicine.53
Leonfdio Ribeiro, a forensic medicine specialist who in 1931
co-authored with Murillo de Campos a book against Spiritism, led
the discussion and argued that the medical profession should take
action against the numerous cases of illegal practice of medicine
associated with Spiritist centers. The Society created a
commission to work for the enforcement of the anti-curandeirismo
and anti-espiritismo laws, and the book by Ribeiro and Campos that
followed in 1931 was a call to action aimed at judges and police
officials. The medical profession was largely unsuccessful in its
efforts; while Ribeiro managed to get the leaders of the non-
Kardecian Centro Espfrita Redemptor arrested, the prosecution was
not successful.54 Likewise, two cases in the early 1930s ended in
acquittal, one because the Attorney General recommended against
prosecution.55 The same Attorney General, Bento de Faria,
rebuffed a series of suggestions from the Brazilian Medical
Association in 1933 that included limiting the rights of defense
of Spiritists who were accused of illegal practice of
medicine.56
Despite these victories, many Spiritist centers were closed
during the 1930s, according to Spiritist intellectual Deolindo
Amorim, who lived through the period.57 Amorim states that the
internationalist posture of Spiritists made them suspect to the
nationalist regime of the Estado Novo, which accused Spiritists of
being anti-patriotic and even communist. To combat this percep-
tion, Spiritist journalists organized their first congress in
1939, during which they issued a paper on Spiritism and patrio-
tism.58
During this period, Spiritists also combatted the medical
profession's perception that linked Spiritism to mental illness,
repeating the broader historical pattern of the enhanced support
of the scientific discourse of Spiritism, even by the leaders of
the Federation, in response to the external pressure. During this
period, the Federacao Espfrita Brasileira (FEB) translated several
European psychical research studies, allowing Spiritists to
position their movement as a scientific endeavor allied more with
the medical profession and the universities than the Afro-
Brazilian spirit mediumship religions and the lower strata of
society.59 In addition, the Society for Medicine and Spiritism
was founded in Rio in 1941, and several Spiritist psychiatric
hospitals were also founded.60 In general, Spiritists owned these
hospitals and ran the administration, but in most cases they left
the day-to-day operations in the hands of non-Spiritist psychia-
trists (as in Catholic and Protestant hospitals). Thus
psychiatrists and doctors sometimes found themselves working for
Spiritists, a situation that was not conducive to their labelling

spirit mediumship a form of psychopathology.
The development of Brazilian psychoanalysis during the
postwar years, and especially its use by anthropologists and
sociologists, also contributed to a moderation of the position of
the medical profession.61 Arthur Ramos' O negro brasileiro,
published in 1934, was the first major study to use psychoanalysis
in the interpretation of Brazilian spirit mediumship religions,
and Roger Bastide credits him with breaking with the racist
discourse of the early studies of Ramos' teacher, Nina
Rodrigues.62 Bastide and Melville Herskovits were among the first
to situate Brazilian spirit mediumship in its wider institutional
context, and they both criticized those interpretations of spirit
mediumship that approached it as psychopathology.63 The emerging
social science profession, like the Spiritist movement, consti-
tuted itself as a mediator between the medical profession and the
spirit mediumship religions of the lower classes, and this rival
position of mediation is interesting to consider in light of
subsequent attempts by social scientists to reduce Spiritism to a
middle-class ideology.
The Postwar Years (1945-1964)

The various factions of the Spiritist movement once again
began to quarrel among themselves as the persecutions of the
Vargas years subsided. This time, the factional divisions took on
a regional quality. In 1947, the Federacao Espfrita do Estado de
Sao Paulo led a congress that brought together several Spiritist
federations within the state of Sao Paulo under the umbrella
organization called the Uniao Social Espirita.64 In the following
year, the Uniao Social Espfrita led a nationwide Spiritist con-
gress that in fact was limited to the federations of Rio Grande do
Sul, Parana, and Santa Catarina, as well as the Uniao Espfrita
Mineira and an observer from the Liga Espfrita do Brasil (the
group of scientific Spiritists from Rio discussed above).65 The
Uniao Federativa de Sao Paulo, which was aligned with the
Roustaingist Federagao Espfrita Brasileira (FEB), boycotted the
Congress.66 Among the positions articulated during the Congress,
the Federagao Espfrita do Rio Grande do Sul accused the FEB of
making decisions "from the top down," proposed a new umbrella
group for Brazilian Spiritism, and argued that the jurisdiction of
the FEB should be limited to what is now the state of Rio de
Janeiro.67 Likewise, the Uniao Espfrita Mineira called for the
formation of a Spiritist university, bringing back to life the old
dream of a school for mediums.68
Once again, Spiritism in Brazil reached an impasse between
two factions, one the Roustaingist FEB and the other a series of
relatively orthodox Kardecian groups led by the Federagao Espfrita
do Estado de Sao Paulo. In the manner that Brazilians like to
think is characteristic of their "national character," Spiritists
resolved the impasse not by schism but by compromise. The Pacto
Aureo of October, 1949, created a new Conselho Federativo Nacional
over the FEB, although it left the presidency of the Conselho in
Hess 25
the hands of the FEB. The Pacto Aureo meant that Spiritists could
turn their attention away from internal disputes to external
activities such as proselytism. This change corresponded roughly
to the return to electoral "democracy" after the end of the Vargas
dictatorship in 1945, when the open practice of spirit mediumship
religions once again became widespread.69
The 1950 Census data showed that while Protestantism was
growing rapidly, spirit mediumship religions were growing even
more rapidly; moreover, they represented a more radical doctrinal
challenge to the Catholic Church than did Protestantism.70 In
1953, the Conselho Nacional de Bispos Brasileiros declared Spirit-
ism (the term including in this case Umbanda) the most dangerous
doctrinal deviation in Brazil.71 The CNBB followed with a sub-
stantial public education campaign, of which the books by
Boaventura Kloppenburg and Alvaro Negromonte are perhaps the best
known. This led to rebuttals from leading Spiritist intellectuals
such as Carlos Imbassahy and Deolindo Amorim, and a war of books
and words between Spiritists and Catholics ensued.72 Many of
these texts drew on psychical research to prove or disprove the
claims of Spiritism, and thus once again the external pressure
from the Catholic Church helped nurture the development of the
scientific side of Spiritism.
While Spiritist intellectuals defended their doctrine by
invoking psychical research, among the popular levels of the
Spiritist movement the first psychic surgeons began to emerge, and
this once again brought about an open conflict between the
Spiritist movement and the medical profession. In the early
1950s, a public functionary and bartender from Minas Gerais named
Arig6 scandalized the medical profession when he claimed to
receive the spirit of a German doctor named "Fritz," who used
Arigo as a medium to perform surgical operations with unsterilized
utensils. Earning the sobriquet "the surgeon with the rusty
knife," Arig6 soon drew support from Spiritists and fire from the
Catholic hierarchy and the Mineiro medical profession, resulting
in his prosecution and conviction of curandeirismo in 1956.
Although pardoned by President Kubitschek, the healer was again
found guilty of curandeirismo after the President left office in
1960, and Arig6 led a precarious existence until his death in 1971
in an automobile accident.
Since Arig6's first operations, both Spiritist and non-
Spiritist mediums have imitated this genre of healing, and today
one can even find a Spiritist medical doctor who claims to receive
the spirit of Doctor Fritz.73 The medium, Dr. Edson Queiroz of
Pernambuco, has been censored by the Spiritist Medical Association
of Sao Paulo, even as other Spiritists accept and support his
work. In this case, the Spiritist doctors of the south have been
among the sharpest critics of Dr. Edson, perhaps even more vocif-
erous than other members of the medical profession, given that the
Brazilian Medical Association voted that there was not enough
evidence to justify revoking the Pernambuco doctor's license.
This case is interesting because it shows the complexities of the
class and status group conflicts. Within the Spiritist movement,
there is a conflict between the Paulista intellectuals--largely

members of the medical profession, but also including lawyers,
engineers, and other professionals--and the largely evangelical
(but not necessarily Roustaingist) rank-and-file. Opinion on
Edson within the Spiritist movement thus breaks fairly cleanly
along class and occupational lines: Spiritist medical profes-
sionals align with their colleagues outside the movement even to
the extent of becoming some of the most vociferous critics of
Edson. However, on other issues, such as the efficacy of
Spiritist practices such as passes and disobsession in the treat-
ment of mental illness, the intellectuals align with the rank-and-
file against the medical profession. Thus the intellectuals have
the paradoxical role of representing the inside of the Spiritist
movement to the outside and the outside to the inside.
1964 to the Present

As the Catholic Church became increasingly concerned with
politics in the aftermath of the coup, the development of the
theology of liberation and the application of Vatican II meant
that the leaders of the Catholic Church rethought their policy
toward popular religiosity in Brazil. Boaventura Kloppenburg, who
had been one of the most outspoken Catholic critics of Spiritism
and Umbanda during the late 1950s and early 1960s, now issued a
statement on "a new pastoral position with respect to Umbanda."74
However, it is important not to overestimate the change in his or
the Church's position. While the Franciscan theologian notes that
Vatican II calls for "valuing popular customs and traditions," he
condemns both the "syncretism" of Umbanda with Spiritism and the
Umbandists' acceptance of the doctrines of reincarnation and
necromancy, both of which he argues are irreconcilable with
Catholic Church doctrine.75 Because necromancy may be interpreted
to mean any form of spirit mediumship, Kloppenburg's statement
amounts to a condemnation of a fundamental aspect of these reli-
gions, and in this respect the revolution of Vatican II amounts to
a cosmetic change. In an interview, Boaventura Kloppenburg
informed me that he had waited for the dialogue of Vatican II, and
after spending ten years outside of Brazil he had returned to find
only the same Spiritist "propaganda," so he began preparing a new
edition of his 1960 book on Spiritism.76
In the 1960s and 1970s, a group a Catholic intellectuals led
by Jesuit Padre Oscar Gonzales Quevedo reinterpreted the para-
psychology of the United States and Europe in light of Catholic
Church doctrine, and they have used it in classes and books to
challenge the scientific basis of the claims of Spiritism,
Umbanda, and the Afro-Brazilian religions. The more subdued
polemics of science fit well with the post-Vatican II celebration
of religious diversity; this strategy allows the Catholic Church
to continue its attacks on spirit mediumship practices in a mode
that is well-suited to the reality of an increasingly urban and
modern Brazil. Ironically, Quevedo is now under prohibition to
speak, because, according to Boaventura Kloppenburg, he also used
parapsychology to make skeptical commentaries on Catholic dogmas
Hess 27
such as miracles and demonic possession.77 However, this has not

affected the Church's general program of the reinterpretation of
parapsychology for its use in combatting Spiritism and other
spirit mediumship religions.
Spiritists have also reinterpreted the parapsychology of the
northern hemisphere according to the Spiritist doctrine; they have
even given it the new name of "psychobiophysics." While Spirit-
ists have not publicized their parapsychology in the large, public
classes that Catholic intellectuals prefer, they do have a program
in parapsychology at their college in Curitiba. However, the main
mode for the promulgation of Spiritist parapsychology has been the
Spiritist newspapers and journals, some of which obtain a wide
circulation. Likewise, there are now numerous Spiritist books on
parapsychology written by Spiritist intellectuals such as Hernani
Guimaraes Andrade, Jorge Andrea, Carlos Imbassahy, and
J. Herculano Pires.
Spiritist parapsychology legitimizes Spiritist claims that
their therapeutic practices are not curandeirismo but a form of
"alternative medicine." In 1985, Sao Paulo Spiritist
intellectuals co-sponsored the First International Congress on
Alternative Therapies, which provided a forum for discussions of a
wide variety of alternative therapies ranging from Spiritist
therapies to acupuncture, homeopathic medicine, chiropractic, and
the psychokinetic effects of healing, all of which Spiritists see
as examples of the fluidic energies associated with the
perispiritual or astral body. Likewise, Spiritists
enthusiastically received the California hypnotherapists who
practice past-life therapies, which confirm the Spiritist doctrine
of reincarnation. Finally, Spiritists presented their own
spiritual passes and disobsession as therapies for mental illness,
and they are now attempting to introduce alternative therapies of
this type into the dozens of psychiatric hospitals that they own
and operate, which up to the present (with a few exceptions) have
generally employed mainstream psychiatrists and practiced
conventional psychiatry. To this effect, one can now find
articles such as "Spiritist Therapy in Psychiatric Hospitals" in
orthodox medical journals.78
In contrast, the medical profession has tended to approach
"alternative" Spiritist therapies as "religious" or "ethno"
therapies. While this marks a substantial development from the
1930s, when spirit mediumship religions were seen as laboratories
of insanity, it does not imply a recognition of the paranormal
forces that Spiritists claim to be at work in their healing
techniques. Instead, most medical professionals regard any
efficacy of these techniques to be due to suggestion, which may be
augmented in a population that believes in spirits, mediums, and
spiritual forces. 9 Significantly, one Spiritist psychiatrist,
Pedro Mundim, has created a great deal of interest among Spiritist
intellectuals by using cultural relativism and anthropological
research to reinterpret orthodox psychotherapies as "symbolic
therapies" that only use a different language from that of reli-
gious or ethnotherapies.
In the last two decades Spiritists have therefore begun to

place a greater value on the scientific side of their doctrine.
With this revaluing of science has come a new opening of the
century-old wound of Roustaingist/orthodox Kardecian rivalry.80
The current crisis began when the capital of Brazil was trans-
ferred to Brasilia, resulting in a rivalry between two federations
in the state of Rio for control over the federalizing responsi-
bility of the new state of Rio de Janeiro. Although neither of
these two federations, the Federagao Espirita do Estado do Rio de
Janeiro nor the Uniao das Sociedades Espfritas do Estado do Rio de
Janeiro is Roustaingist, the latter allied politically with the
Roustaingist FEB and eventually won control of the federalizing
responsibilities for the state. A similar rivalry has erupted in
the state of Sao Paulo between the Uniao de Sociedades Espfritas
and the Federagao Espfrita do Estado de Sao Paulo (FEESP), with
the outcome that FEESP--probably the largest and most powerful
Spiritist federation in Brazil, dwarfing even the FEB--has today
no institutional relationship with the FEB or the Conselho
Federativo Nacional.81
The details of these internecine quarrels are probably only
of interest to the Spiritists involved in them, but the underlying
processes involved are of more general interest. There is a
general sentiment among the Paulistas and intellectuals that the
FEB is anti-democratic, and in this cycle of Brazilian history
with its return to "democracy" such a concern may galvanize
Spiritists into a new conflict with the FEB. Some Spiritists are
trying to organize a coalition of federations--mostly the dissi-
dents of the states of Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo, but including
Spiritists from Espfrito Santo and perhaps other states--to bring
about a separation of the FEB from the Conselho Federativo
Nacional. The Spiritists who are interested in this process
generally hold professional occupations, belong to the upper
middle class, and adhere to the interpretation of Kardec's doc-
trine as a scientific, philosophical, and moral body of texts
rather than the "third revelation."
Certain patterns of the historical development of Spiritism
shed light on the present-day processes and point to likely future
tendencies. To a certain extent, developments in the external
relations support the ascendency of the scientific tendency within
Spiritism. This involves defending Spiritism from attacks by
Catholic parapsychologists and attempting to win acceptance for
the Spiritists' conception of alternative therapies from members
of the medical profession. Likewise, the scientific discourse of
Spiritism helps distinguish the movement from competitors in the
religious arena such as Umbanda, Candomble, and even
Pentecostalism. However, at present there is a relative absence
of state repression of the type that threatened to occur at the
dawn of the Old Republic and which did occur during the Vargas
years, and as a result the centripetal force is currently
relatively weak and the centrifugal force of the internal class
divisions brings out the latent internal divisions within the
Spiritist movement.
Hess 29
Class and status dynamics therefore play themselves out in

multiple and contradictory ways in the historical development of
the Spiritist movement. With respect to the Catholic Church, the
medical profession, and the state, Spiritists may wrap themselves
in evangelical Christianity or science to defend themselves, just
as they may use these discourses to distinguish themselves from
Umbanda and the Afro-Brazilian religions and win adherents from
these religions. By defending principles of spiritual healing and
spirit mediumship to other elites, Spiritists in effect defend
popular healing and religion without identifying themselves with
it, and consequently they occupy a mediating position between
popular and elite ideologies. Within the Spiritist movement, a
similar class and status division plays itself out in the division
between scientific or intellectual Spiritists and religious or
evangelical Spiritists, with the educated, middle-class elite
generally supporting the scientific tendency. Yet it is important
to remember that all Spiritists to some extent speak both lan-
guages; as I have shown, such discursive divisions line up not
just with class and status differences but also with specific
situations and contexts. By examining the historical development
of the Spiritist movement from this perspective, one can intelli-
gently investigate the problem delineated by Bastide for the study
of religion in the Brazilian reality, that is, the complex rela-
tionship between the domain of religion and ideology and that of
social structure.
NOTES
1This article is based on dissertation research for the

Anthropology Department of Cornell University, supported by the
Fulbright Commission and the Social Science Research Council. I
wish to thank James Boon, Patric Giesler, Thomas Holloway, and
David Holmberg for their comments and suggestions, and Roberto
da Matta for his help in Brazil.
2Less than a dozen researchers have studied Spiritism during
the last three decades, and none of them has attempted to present
a historical survey of the development of the Spiritist movement
in Brazil. In addition to the studies cited below, they include
C. P. Camargo, Kardecismo e Umbanda (Sao Paulo: Pioneira, 1961)
and Catdlicos, protestantes, e esp-'ritas (Petropolis: Vozes,
1973); M. L. Cavalcanti, O mundo invisCvel (Rio: Zahar, 1983); J.
P. Renshaw, A Sociological Analysis of Spiritism in Brazil (Ph.D.
Dissertation, University of Florida), 1969; L. E. Soares, "O autor
e seu duplo," Religiao e Sociedade 4 (1979): 121-140; and D.
Warren, "Spiritism in Brazil," Journal of Inter-American Studies
10 (1968): 393-405; and "The Portuguese Roots of Brazilian
Spiritism," Luso-Brazilian Review 5:2 (1968): 3-33.
S. Greenfield also has several articles on Spiritism in press.
3See R. Bastide, "Le spiritisme au Bresil," Archives de
socioZogie des religions 24 (1967): 3-16, and The African
Religions of Brazil (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1978, orig. 1960).
4This division is reflected in the Kardecian corpus, which can

be divided into the more scientific texts--The Book of the Mediums
(1859) and Genesis (1868)--and the moral-religious texts--The
Gospel According to Spiritism (1864) and Heaven and Hell (1865)--
as well as the first book, The Book of the Spirits, which mixes
the two voices in more equal proportions.
5See J. Cerullo, The Secularization of the Soul (Philadelphia:
ISHI, 1982), and A. Gauld, The Founders of Psychical Research (New
York: Schocken, 1968).
6Revue Spirite (June 1866): 188-190. Genesis, ch. XV, pp.
65-67.
7Respectively, Dr. Dechambre, "La doctrine spirite," in Gazette
Medicale, hebdomaire de Medicine et Chirurgie, cited in
U. Machado, Os intelectuais e o espiritismo (Rio: Antares and
Brasilia: INL, 1983), p. 99; and Revue Spirite (February 1863):
51-59 ("Sur la folie spirite").
8See Revue Spirite (June 1859), pp. 141-149 ("Les muscle
craquers") and R. L. Moore, In Search of White Crows (New York:
Oxford, 1977), p. 27.
9B. Kloppenburg, 0 espiritismo no Brasil (Petr6polis: Vozes,
1960), p. 113.
10H. Thurston, The Church and Spiritualism (Milwaukee: Bruce,
1933).
11November, 1865, pp. 323-325.
12Reformador (September 1965), pp. 19-20. The Federagao
Espfrita Brasileira (FEB) supervises a coleqao rara that contains
almost all of the primary source documents for this period, but it
would not make these documents available for consultation.
13C. Abreu, Adolpho Bezerra de Menezes (Sao Paulo: Livraria
Allan Kardec, 1950); P. Richard, "Carta aberta ao Presidente da
Federagao Espfrita Brasileira," in Guillon Ribeiro, Trabathos do
grupo "Ismael" da Federagao Esp-rita BrasiZeira, vol. 1 (Rio:
FEB, 1914, orig. 1901).
14Abreu, op. cit., pp. 58-72.
15L. Dos Anjos, "A posicao zero," Obreiros do bem (April 1979):
3. In his book The Moon and Two Mountains (London: Souvenir
Press, 1966), medium Pedro McGregor states that during these years
the subtitle of the Reformador changed from "Evolutionist Organ"
to "Religious Monthly of Christian Spiritism." Again, however,
the original issues of the journal for this period were not
available for consultation. B. Kloppenburg (0 espiritismo no
Brasil, p. 45) claims that Menezes was a Roustaingist.
160breiros do bem (June/July 1979): 15. Because of the lack
of primary sources for this period, it is difficult to determine
the exact relationship between the scientific Spiritists and the
school for mediums; however, a subsequent group of relatively
scientific Spiritists, the Liga Espfrita do Brasil, supported the
school for mediums at its second congress in 1930. (Revista
Esp-rita do Brasil, May 1930, p. 117).
17Cirne himself is said to have been "a devoted student of the
work of Roustaing." Obreiros do bem, (April 1979): 41.
18Ibid., p. 15.
Hess 31
19Ibid.
20L. Cirne, Antichristo, senhor do mundo (Rio: Bedeschi,
1935), pp. 268-270.
21Ibid., p. 273.
22Dos Anjos, Obreiros do bem (June/July): 3, 14; and
(August/September): 2.
3Further evidence in favor of the receitista/Roustaingism link
is Machado's point (p. 148) that Bittencourt Sampaio, who was a
receitista medium, was one of the first Brazilians to push
Roustaingism.
24D. Warren, "A terapia espfrita no Rio de Janeiro por volta de
1900," Religiao e Sociedade 2:3 (1984): 59-60, 82.
25Abreu, Adolpho Bezerra de Menezes, pp. 21, 26. Also, see
Reformador (November 1955): 256-257.
26Source: FederaGao Espfrita Brasileira, Esboqo Histdrico
(Rio: FEB, 1912), p. 41.
27Ibid., pp. 18, 22-23.
28Ibid. Spiritists are also fond of pointing out that Kardec
wrote an article on the "Cure of Obsessions" in the Revue Spirite
(February 1866): 38-42.
29Cirne, Antichristo, pp. 280ff.
3UWith the absence of official statistics for this period,
indices of this growth are problematic. One index is the explo-
sion of new Spiritist journals in the 1890s, documented in C.
Ramos, A imprensa espCrita no Brasil, 1869-1978 (Juiz de Fora,
M.G.: Instituto Maria, 1978). Another is the growth of state
Spiritist federations; by the mid-1930s, all of the major
Spiritist state federations or leagues had been formed. See B.
Kloppenburg, 0 espiritismo no Brasil (Petropolis: Vozes, 1960),
p. 20.
31See T. Bruneau, The Political Transformations of the
Brazilian Catholic Church (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1974), p. 33, and P. Oliveira, Religiao e dominaqao de classe
(Petropolis: Vozes, 1985), pp. 279-296.
32Bruneau, p. 33.
33Ibid., p. 34.
34R. Della Cava, Miracle at Joaseiro (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1974).
35B. Menezes, A loucura sob novo prisma (Rio: FEB, 1939),
p. 11.
36For example, H. Roxo, "Delfrio epis6dico," in H. Roxo, Manual
de psiquiatria, (Rio: Guanabara: 1946, orig. 1916), pp. 475-576.
7R. N. Rodrigues, "La Folie des Foules," Annales Medico-
Psychologiques, 1901; 0 animismo fetishista dos negros bahianos
(Rio: Civilizacao Brasileira, 1935, orig. 1901).
38Federacao Espfrita Brasileira, As curas espiritas perante a
lei (Rio: FEB, 1907).
39F. Nobre, A perseguiqao policial contra EurCpides Barsanulfo
(Sao Paulo: Edicel, 1981); J. Rizzini, Eurcpides Barsanulfo, o
apdstolo da caridade (Sao Paulo: Correio Fraterno, 1979).
40On the 1914 case, see A. Spfnola and L. de Mesquita Barros,
Caridade perseguida. Recurso criminal no. 247 (Rio: Cadaval,
32 Luso-BraziZian Review 24:2
1915). On the cases in the 1930s, see L. Ribeiro and M. de

Campos, 0 espiritismo no Brasil: Contribuiqao ao seu estudo
clZ'nico e mddico legal (Sao Paulo: Editora Nacional, 1931).
41Bruneau, Political Transformations, p. 36; D. Odilao Moura,
As ideias catdlicas no Brasil (Sao Paulo: Convfvo, 1978), p. 119.
42Bruneau, p. 37.
43Moura, Ideias catdlicas, pp. 87-88.
44D. Brown, Umbanda. Religion and Politics in Urban Brazil
(Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press, 1986), p. 146.
45D. Amorim, Ideias e remiscencias espCritas (Juiz de Fora,
M.G.: n.d., ca. 1980), pp. 49ff.: Cirne, Antichristo, p. 284.
46Revista EspCrita do Brasil (August 1930): 217.
47Amorim, pp. 163ff.
48N. Stepan, Beginnings of Brazilian Science (New York:
Science History Publications, 1976).
49J. F. Costa, Histdria da psiquiatria no Brasil (Rio:
Documentario, 1976), pp. 25, 31.
50Ibid., pp. 46-49, 60ff.
51Respectively, A. Guimaraes Filho, cited in Ribeiro and de
Campos, O espiritismo no Brasil, p. 61; and A. Xavier de
Oliveira, Espiritismo e loucura (Rio: Coelho Branco, 1931), p.
193.
52For example, P. Cavalcanti, Contribuiqao ao estudo do estado
mental dos mediuns (Recife, 1934); and 0. Cesar, "Contribuigao
para o estudo do espiritismo como fator predisponente de per-
turbagoes mentais," Revista Nova 1:4 (Sao Paulo), 563-581.
53Ribeiro and Campos, 0 espiritismo no Brasil, pp. 179ff.
54L. Ribeiro, "Curandeirismo," in Memdrias de um mddico legista
(Rio: Sul Americano, 1975).
55Sousa do Prado, Padres, medicos, e espiritias (refutaqao aos
"Leonidos") (Rio: Author, 1932).
56D. Barreto, Parapsicologia, curandeirismo, e lei (Petr6polis:
Vozes, 1972), pp. 48-49.
57Video-taped interview by Krishnamurti de Carvalho Dias,
archives of the Instituto de Cultura Espfrita do Brasil.
58Amorim, Ideias e remiscencias, pp. 170ff.; Anais do Instituto
de Cultura Esp<rita do Brasil, vol. 3, p. 177.
59Especially important are the polemical books by Carlos
Imbassahy, who marshalled the results of psychical research to
defend Spiritism from its detractors in the medical profession and
Catholic Church. See, for example, his 0 espiritismo a luz dos
fatos (Rio: FEB, 1935), and A mediunidade e a lei (Rio: FEB,
1943).
60Inacio Ferreira's clinic in Uberaba, Minas Gerais, was
founded around 1940, and the Sanatorio Americo Bairral of Sao
Paulo was founded in 1936. On the latter, see C. Bianchi, A
histdria do sanatdrio "Am6rico Bairral" (Sao Paulo, 1984).
61See L. de Almeida Prado Galvao, "Notas para a historia de
psicanalise em Sao Paulo," Revista Brasileira de Psicandlise, 1:1,
pp. 46-64.
bZBastide, The African Religions of Brazil, p. 21.
63Ibid., p. 23.
Hess 33
64Uniao Social Espfrita, Anais do Primeiro Congresso Espirita

do Estado de Sao Paulo (Sao Paulo: Uniao Social Espfrita, n.d.,
ca. 1948).
b5Uniao Social Espfrita, Anais do Congresso Brasileiro de
Unificagqo Esp-rita (Sao Paulo: Uniao Social Espfrita, n.d. ca.
1949).
66Kloppenburg, 0 espiritismo no Brasil, p. 20.
67Uniao Social Espirita, Anais . . . de Unifiqacao Espirita,
ca. 1949, pp. 61-66.
68Ibid., p. 130.
69Anthropologist Diana Brown (Umbanda, Religion . . ., pp.
150-152) has shown that Umbanda grew significantly during this
period, spreading to Sao Paulo and Minas Gerais during the 1950s.
70See, for example, Kloppenburg's comparison of the 1940 and
1950 census figures in 0 espiritismo no Brasil, p. 26. These
figures showed an increase of 78 percent for Spiritists, 62
percent for Protestants, and only 24 percent for Catholics.
71B. Kloppenburg, "Brazil: Spiritism," in the New Catholic
Encyclopedia (New York: McGraw Hill, 1967), vol. 2, p. 771.
2For example, D. Amorim, 0 espiritismo a luz da cr'tica
(Curitiba: Federagao Espfrita do Parana, 1955); C. Imbassahy and
M. Cavalcanti de Mello, A reencarnagao e suas provas Curitiba:
Federacao Espfrita do Parana, ca. 1945); C. Imbassahy, A evolugao,
corn ua resposta a critica sobre o livro "A reencarnaqao e suas
provas" (Curitiba: Federagao Espfrita do Parana, 1955); M.
Cavalcanti de Mello, Como os tedlogos refutam... (Curitiba:
Federagao Espfrita do Parana, ca. 1958); and A. Negromonte, 0 que
e espiritismo, ca. 1953. Also see the pamphlets Porque nao admito
a reencarnagao and Reencarnagao, exposiqao e critica, by B.
Klo penburg.
See S. Greenfield, "Spiritist Healing in Brazil" (mimeo),
1983. See also L. da Rocha Lima and L. Neiva, Forqas do espirito
(Rio: Ed. Artenova, 1972), and issue #134-B of Revista planeta:
As curas paranormais.
74B. Kloppenburg, "Ensaio de uma nova posigao pastoral perante
a umbanda," in Cultos Afro-Brasileiros (Rio: Sono-Viso do Brasil,
1972).
75Ibid., p. 61.
76Interview, February 4, 1986.
77Ibid.
78D. Souza and F. Deitos, "Terapia espfrita em hospitais
psiquiatricos," Revista da Associaqao Brasileira de Psiquiatria.
2:2, pp. 190-194.
79See C. Martins and F. Bastos, "Estado atual da psicoterapia
no Brasil," Boletim da CZlCnica Psiquidtrica da Faculdade de
Medicina da USP 2:2 (1963):49-53; and C. Martins, "Psiquiatria
transcultural e pafses em desenvolvimento," Revista Brasileira de
Psiquiatria 3:1 (1969):31-62; and A. Pinho et al., "Tratamentos
religiosos das doencas mentais," Revista da Psiquiatria ClCenica
4:4 (1975):183-192.
80Interviews with leadership of the Federagao Espfrita do
Estado do Rio de Janeiro, November 12, 1984; and the Uniao das
34 Luso-BraziZian Review 24:2
Sociedades Espfritas do Estado do Rio de Janeiro, November 7,

1985.
81Interview with the President of the FederaSao Espfrita do
Estado de Sao Paulo, June 12, 1985; with the former General
Secretary of the Uniao das Sociedades Espfritas do Estado de Sao
Paulo, July 26, 1985.

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The Many Rooms of Spiritism in Brazil

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The Many Rooms of Spiritism in Brazil

Author(s): David Hess

To date, no study has provided an interpretation of the full

Luso-Brazilian Review XXIV, 2 0024-7413/87/015 $1.50

expression of factional divisions throughout the history of

The Reception of Spiritism in Brazil

either the Paulista history of Canuto Abreu or the Carioca history

mediumship in teaching moral principles.24 Although receitista

bureaucratic organization that most people visualize when reading

Rodrigues, who introduced the dynamic psychiatry of Janet into

The Vargas Years (1930-1945)

as well as the changes of the 1934 Constitution, which contained

the major factors in mental illness," and Xavier de Oliveira

Spiritists, a situation that was not conducive to their labelling

The Postwar Years (1945-1964)

there is a conflict between the Paulista intellectuals--largely

1964 to the Present

such as miracles and demonic possession.77 However, this has not

In the last two decades Spiritists have therefore begun to

Class and status dynamics therefore play themselves out in

1This article is based on dissertation research for the

4This division is reflected in the Kardecian corpus, which can

1915). On the cases in the 1930s, see L. Ribeiro and M. de

64Uniao Social Espfrita, Anais do Primeiro Congresso Espirita

Sociedades Espfritas do Estado do Rio de Janeiro, November 7,

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