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Secular Spirituality Reincarnation and Spiritism in Nineteenth-Century France

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Secular Spirituality Reincarnation and Spiritism in Nineteenth-Century France Secular Spirituality Secular Spirituality Reincarnation and Spiritism in Nineteenth-Century France Lynn L. Sharp LEXINGTON BOOKS A division of ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD PUBLISHERS, INC. LanhamLanham'• BoulderBoulder'• New YorkYork·• TorontoTorollto • Plymouth, UK LEXINGTON BOOKS A division of Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. A wholly owned subsidiary of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200 Lanham, MD 20706 Estover Road Plymouth PL6 7PY United Kingdom Copyright © 2006 by Lexington Books All rights reserl'ed. reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any forrnform or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Sharp, Lynn L., 1965- Secular spirituality: reincarnation and spiritism in nineteenth-century France / Lynn L. Sharp. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-I3:ISBN-13: 978-0-7391-1338-7 (cloth: alk. paper) ISBN-10:ISBN-IO: 0-7391-1338-0 (cloth: alk. paper) ISBN-13: 978-0-7391-1339-4 (pbk. : alk. paper) ISBN-IO: 0-7391-1339-9 (pbk. : alk. paper) I. Reincarnation-France. 2. Spiritualism-France. 3. Theosophy-France. 4. Occultism-France. I. Title. BP573.R5S53 2006 1I 33.90944'09034-dc22 2006024949 Printed in the United States of America 8"'The8™The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISOANSIINISO Z39.48-1992. Birth, death, rebirth, and progress without end, this is the law. Allan Kardec Contents Acknowledgments ixIX Introduction Secularism and Spirituality xiXI Chapter One Romantic Reincarnation and Social Reform Chapter Two 1850-1880: Building a Movement 51 Chapter Three Politics of the Seance: Progress, Gender, Equality 91 Chapter Four Struggles for Legitimacy: Science and Religion 123 Chapter Five Spiritism, Occultism, Science: Meanings of Reincarnation in the Fin de Siecle 163 Conclusion Thoughts for "Modem" Spirits 201 Bibliography 209 Index 239 About the Author 245 Acknowledgments Tim Tackett has patiently put up with the spiritists since they first caught my eye in graduate school. His support and encouragment have been unflagging and greatly appreciated. Tom Kselman has read and commented on almost every­ thing I've written on the spiritists. He has offered insight and encouragement and, perhaps more importantly, some excellent pointed questions about the rela­ tionship between religion and secularism. This work would be a better work if I could fully answer all his questions. Carol Harrison read the whole manuscript and made excellent suggestions, including thoughtful commentary on organiza­ tion, order, and occultists. My colleagues in the history department at Whitman College have also dealt with spirits for several years now. Their comments in "First Fridays" on various chapter drafts have frequently pushed my analysis to greater depth. I am particu­ larly grateful for Nina Lerman's small purple scribbles that have challenged Oleme to think hard about questions of gender and class. Sally Bormann deserves kudos for an amazing reading of draft chapters through the last moments of a preg­ nancy. Whitman College has also supported this project institutionally, through its generous and indispensable sabbatical program,program. The history kindly department funded my stays in Paris to do research. Portions of this work have appeared previously. The second segment of chapter four appeared in somewhat different form in the Journal of the HistoryHist01Y of Religion (vol 23, 1999); a version of much of the material in the first chapter was published in French Historical Studies (vol. 27, 2004.) I appreciate their willingness to allow them to be reprinted here. From the first days of graduate school on, Melissa Bonafont has listened, laughed, encouraged, conspired and contributed a fantastic sense of humor so that I could complete this project. Without her I should have tossed the whole thing ages ago. Nick D'Antoni has put up with weekends in front of the com­ puter, my long absences in France, and even my preference for French over Italian wine. He has constantly upheld and encouraged my intellect, both with praise and with arguments. He is also largely responsible for neither my sanity nor my research being lost on a series of recalcitrant computers. I cannot think of a better friend to share this process. This book is dedicated to Nick. IX Introduction Secularism and Spirituality American rock and roll legend Jim Morrison's grave is the most visited site in the most visited cemetery in Paris. What many seekers of famous grave sites may not know is that French spiritist leader Allan Kardec'Kardec'ss ranks close behind. In the Pere Lachaise cemetery are not only the markers of great writers Oscar Wilde and Honore de Balzac, but also, and perhaps most popular among them, the min­ iature standing stones housing the bust of Hippolyte-Leon-Denis Rivail, better known as Allan Kardec (1804-1869). Kardec was the founder of the French spiritist movement, a many-headed, many-voiced effort to derive knowledge and meaning from communication with the spirits of the deaddead.'.... The movement was popular, democratic, energetic, and spectacular. It offered followers everything from a hope for social justice (and a reason to practice it) to "proof' that death did not mean the end of life but only a new beginning. Followers of Kardec talked frequently and at great length to the spirits of the dead, they explored what they called life "beyond the veil" that separated this life and death, and they believed firmly in reincarnation. This belief in reincarnation was widespread in the nineteenth century. Although theories of reincarnation were not unknown earlier, they remained rare and secreted among esoteric searchers. Only in the 1830s, with the rise of romantic socialism and the influx of ideas taken from "newly discovered" (by the West) Hindu and Buddhist thinkers, did reincarnation begin to be integrated into 1 more popular writings and spread generally among the literate. I It was with the spiritist movement from the 1850sl850s on that reincarnation became truly popular, as • "Spiritisme" is the French term for what English-speakers call "spiritualism." In French the term spiritualisme is a philosophical term referring to the belief that the human spirit or soul exists, as opposed to materialism, which denies the existence of the spirit. I have chosen to use the English equivalent, "spiritism" to distinguish the move­ ment from thethc more general use of "spiritualism," and from related, but distinctly differ..differ­ ent, Anglo-American variants. xi xii Introduction people spoke daily with the spirits and saw themselves as on a continuum with beings that had already gone beyond the grave. The spirits have always been with us. Historians of the pre-modem era study belief in them as folklore or popular culture. In non-European societies, anthropologists look for cultural meaning in "different" cosmologies. In Euro­ pean peoples, continuing belief in spirits and magical thinking is often labeled "backward" or "superstitious," and implied as foolish. While it may occasionally be any of those things, it is also a continuing facet of modem life. As such, it needs to be explored for the meanings that it gives both to popular culture and as an embedded factor of modernity. Here I attempt to do just that, by studying one facet of belief in the world "beyond the veil"veil"-the-the continuing school of thought that proposes reincarnation as the progressive means to a better world and spirit communications as proof of that theory. In other words, I take spiritism seriously as an alternative spirituality, as popular religion, and as expressing (and attempting to resolve) one of the key tensions in the nineteenth century: that between religion and science. I have set out here to tell the story of the spiritist movement, including its antecedents among the romantic socialists and freethinkers who imagined a variety of new, secular approaches to essentially religious questions. The story also shows how spiritists and other thinkers used reincarnation to argue for social reform, for political change, and for a changed vision of gender. Lastly, I argue that rather than EnlightenmentEnlightemnent thought replacing Catholic religious tradition in nineteenth­ century French culture, the relationship of reason to religion is more compli­ cated. Lines of spiritualist thought in the nineteenth century, especially spiritism, created new combinations of spirituality, reason, and romantic outlooks that refused to give absolute primacy to either Enlightenment materiality or to the narrow religiosity of the Catholic church. Reincarnation and spiritism offered a secular version of spirituality popular with those who may have wanted to reject Catholicism in favor of science but definitely wanted to retain a deep-seated reli­ gious outlook on the world. This development was quintessentially modem, part of creating a modem political and religious outlook that peaked at the tum of the twentieth century, but is with us still and helped form religious outlooks that con­ tinue today.itoday.2 Reincarnation, for the romantic socialists, for freethinkers, and especially for the spiritists, was attractive because it
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