Allan Kardec

Hippolyte Léon Denizard Rivail (; 3 October 1804 – 31 March 1869), known by the pen name of Allan Kardec , was a French educator, translator, and writer. He is the author of the five books known as the Spiritist Codification, and the founder of Spiritism.

Early life Rivail was born in Lyon in 1804 and raised as a Roman Catholic. He pursued interests in philosophy and the sciences, and became an acolyte and colleague of Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi. Rivail completed a Bachelor of Arts and a doctorate in medicine. He was also fluent in German, English, Italian, and Spanish, in addition to his native French. Kardec became interested in Protestantism after his education in Switzerland. He was also trained in positivist ideas, although he ended up not being an orthodox positivist.

Career He was a member of several scholarly societies, including the Historic Institute of Paris (Institut Historique), Society of Natural Sciences of France (Société des Sciences Naturelles de France), Society for the Encouragement of National Industry (Société d'Encouragement pour l'Industrie Nationale), and The Royal Academy of Arras (Académie d'Arras, Société Royale des Sciences, des Lettres et des Arts). He was also involved, from the age of 19, with the controversial hypothesis of animal magnetism, being a practitioner of mesmerism.

Educator Rivail's work with Pestalozzi helped lay the foundations for the teaching model in schools in France and Germany. For several decades he helped advance Pestalozzi's pedagogy in France, founding schools and working as a teacher, educational writer and translator. At the time, Franz Mesmer's theory of animal magnetism had become popular. When confronted with the phenomena described, some researchers, including Rivail, pointed out that animal magnetism might explain them. Rivail, however, after seeing a demonstration, dismissed animal magnetism as insufficient to explain his observations.

As a result of these influences, Rivail began his own investigation of psychic phenomena, mainly mediumship.

He compiled over one thousand questions concerning the nature and mechanisms of spirit communications, the reasons for human life on earth, and aspects of the spiritual realm. He asked those questions to ten mediums, all purportedly unknown to each other, and documented their responses. From these, he concluded that the best explanation was that personalities that had survived death were the source of at least some mediumistic communications. He became convinced that the mediums:

provided accurate information unknown to themselves or others present (e.g. personal information about deceased individuals); demonstrated unlearned skills such as writing by illiterate mediums, handwriting similar to the alleged communicating personality, and speaking or writing in a language unknown to the medium (xenoglossy and xenography); accurately portrayed a range of personality characteristics of deceased individuals.

He compiled the mediums' responses that were consistent and adapted them into a philosophy that he called Spiritism, which he initially defined as "a science that deals with the nature, origin, and destiny of spirits, and their relation with the corporeal world."

Rivail wrote under the name "Allan Kardec", allegedly following the suggestion of a spirit identified as "Truth". On 18 April 1857, as Allan Kardec, Rivail published his first book on Spiritism, The Spirits Book, comprising a series of answered questions (502 in the first edition and 1,019 in later editions) exploring matters concerning the nature of spirits, the spirit world, and the relationship between the spirit world and the material world. This was followed by a series of other books, including The Medium's Book, The Gospel According to Spiritism, Heaven and Hell and The Genesis According to Spiritism, and by a periodical, the Revue Spirite, which Kardec published until his death. Collectively, the books became known as the Spiritist Codification.

Kardec's research influenced the psychical research of Charles Richet, Camille Flammarion and Gabriel Delanne.

Personal life Family On 6 February 1832 he married Amélie Gabrielle Boudet.

Death Allan Kardec's grave at Cimetière du Père Lachaise. The inscription says Naitre, mourir, renaitre encore et progresser sans cesse, telle est la loi ("To be born, to die, to be reborn again and keep progressing, that is the law"). After his death caused by aneurysm in 1869, Kardec was buried at the Cimetière du Père Lachaise.

Writings Cours pratique et théorique d'arithmétique (1824) Plan proposé pour l'amélioration de l'éducation publique (1828) Catéchisme grammatical de la langue française (1848) Le Livre des Esprits (The Spirits Book), 1857 Le Livre des Médiums (The Book on Mediums), 1861 L'Évangile selon le Spiritisme (The Gospel According to Spiritism), 1864 Le Ciel et L'Enfer (Heaven and Hell), 1865 La Genèse (Genesis or, The Genesis According to Spiritism), 1868