In most countries, there are spiritist magazines and books, and in Brazil there is a huge network of bookstores to support the spiritist press. In between are a large number of spiritists who have a frankly evangelical style they tend to study closely Kardec's The Gospel According to Spiritism, and many view themselves as Christians. At the other extreme are those who regard Kardec's doctrine as one element in a syncretic religious and healing system. At one extreme of this diverse movement are the intellectuals: doctors, engineers, and lawyers who are more interested in psychical research and alternative medicine. There are many today who follow Kardec's spiritism in a fairly pure form, especially in Brazil, where the spiritist population was estimated at 7 million in 1990. The result was, in many places, a Syncretism, or blending of spiritist beliefs and practices with those of the local religions, such as the African religions of the Caribbean and coastal Brazil. In Europe and North America, spiritism and spiritualism soon faded into minor sects, whereas in Latin America they encountered a warm reception that was due in large part to the affinities between spiritism and African, Native American, and Iberian folk Catholic magic and religion.

The spiritist movement grew rapidly in France in the mid-nineteenth century, as did its nonreincarnationist sibling spiritualism in the English-speaking countries, and both were propagated in Latin America as well. Kardec embraced Christian morality, but he did not accept key Christian dogmas such as the Trinity and the reality of heaven and hell. He saw spiritism not as a religion but as a philosophy rooted in observation and having moral implications. In addition to supporting the idea of communication with the dead via mediums, Kardec also argued in favor of spiritual illnesses, reincarnation, and the existence of a spiritual body (perispirit). In the 1850s, Kardec began to attend sittings with mediums, and eventually he codified the spirits' teachings into a multivolume spiritist doctrine that began with his Le livre des esprits (1857 first translated into English as Spiritualist Philosophy The Spirits' Book).

However, for people more versed in the distinctions among the various spirit-oriented religious and philosophical systems in Latin America, 'spiritism' usually refers to the movement founded by the French educator Allan Kardec (born Hippolyte Léon Denizard Rivail). In everyday Spanish and Portuguese, the word espiritismo refers to a wide range of beliefs-including African, Native American, and Western-that have to do with spirits and mediums (people who claim they can communicate with spirits).

Occult phenomena definition