- published: 29 Jan 2013
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Spiritism is a loose corpus of religious faiths having in common the general belief in the survival of a spirit after death. In a stricter sense, it is a religion whose beliefs and practices are based on the works of Allan Kardec and others. Formed in France in the 19th century, it soon spread to other countries, but today the only country where it has a significant number of adherents is Brazil.
Spiritism is based on the five books of the Spiritist Codification written by French educator Hypolite Léon Denizard Rivail under the pseudonym Allan Kardec reporting séances in which he observed a series of phenomena that he attributed to incorporeal intelligence (spirits). His work was later extended by writers like Leon Denis, Jean-Baptiste Roustaing, Arthur Conan Doyle, Camille Flammarion, Gabriel Delanne, Ernesto Bozzano, Chico Xavier, Divaldo Pereira Franco, Waldo Vieira, Johannes Greber[unreliable source?] and others.
Spiritism has adherents in many countries throughout the world, including Spain, United States, Canada, Japan, Germany, France, England, Argentina, Portugal and especially in American countries such as Cuba, Jamaica, and Brazil, which has among the largest proportion and greatest number of followers.