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which Mesmer’s name is often identified—hypnotism. But when the doctors succeeded in driving Mesmer out of France, they also succeeded in convincing most people that hypnotism was a fraud. Rivail was sufficiently independent to test it for himself, and discovered that it worked. He also discovered that, contrary to what the doctors insisted, magnets could produce remarkable effects on sick people, as could various metals such as gold and copper. (This interesting notion still awaits rediscovery by the medical profession.) So Rivail was prepared to be open-minded on the subject of table-turning. He did not permit himself to be prejudiced by the fact that every empty-headed
society woman in Paris was organizing séances, and that even the much despised emperor Napoleon the Third (whom Victor Hugo denounced as Napoleon the Little) held sessions at Versailles. He looked into the matter with his usual intense curiosity and scientific detachment.
    Now it so happened that a friend of Rivail’s named Becquet had two daughters who had begun to experiment with the new craze, and had discovered that they seemed to be excellent “mediums.” It seemed to Rivail that this was not an opportunity to be missed. If the spirits really had anything sensible to communicate, then presumably they would be willing to answer questions put by a man of science. Accordingly, the Becquet girls were asked to devote a few hours every week to automatic writing; and to ask the “spirits” a number of specific questions written down by Rivail.
    The results surpassed his most optimistic expectations. The spirits, it seemed, were anxious to explain themselves at length. Rivail was excited to find that what they said seemed to make sense, and constituted a remarkable and consistent philosophy about life and death. Interestingly enough, they seemed to agree with Mesmer, who said that the universe is pervaded by a vital or magnetic “fluid.” When this fluid is able to flow through living beings, the result is health; when it is blocked, the result is illness.
    According to Rivail’s informants, the universe is pervaded by spirits of incorporeal intelligences. Human beings are simply “incarnate spirits,” spirits united with a material body. They advance toward perfection by undergoing trials during their lifetime, and after one body dies, they are reincarnated in another one. In between reincarnations, they may wander around without a body. It is these “discarnate spirits” that are responsible for various forms of mischief, such as poltergeist effects.
    In due course, the spirits instructed Rivail to publish the results of his questions. They gave him a title— The Spirits’ Book —and even told him the pseudonym he should use: Allan Kardec—both names he had borne in a previous existence, they told him.
    The Spirits’ Book appeared in 1856, and created a sensation. Kardec became the founder-figure of the French spiritualist movement, and his works attained immense influence. But he died of a heart attack only thirteen years after the book was published, at the age of sixty-five, and his influence was soon being widely questioned by the French spiritualist movement. Rivail was totally committed to the doctrine of reincarnation, the slow perfection of the spirit through a series of rebirths, which can be traced back to ancient India. But most of the “spirits” who spoke through mediums at séances had nothing to say about reincarnation. So Rivail was inclined to be critical about trance mediums, while the trance mediums and their followers denounced Rivail as a dogmatic old man. After Rivail’s death, his influence waned, and within a few years he was half-forgotten. Oddly enough, his works received immediate and widespread acceptance in South America, particularly in Brazil, and became the foundation of a religion—which calls itself Spiritism—which still flourishes there. We shall examine this at length in chapter Six.
    Now in