MY FIRST INITIATION INTO SPIRITISM.

It was in 1854 that for the first time I heard talk of turning tables. One day I met the magnetizer, Monsieur Fortier, whom I had known for a long time and who said to me: Do you already know of the singular property that has just been discovered in Magnetism? It seems that it is no longer only persons that can be magnetized, but tables as well, and one succeeds in making them turn and walk at will. “It is, indeed, very singular,” I replied; “but, strictly speaking, it does not seem to me radically impossible. The magnetic fluid, which is a kind of electricity, can perfectly well act upon inert bodies and make them move.” The accounts that the newspapers published of experiments made in Nantes, in Marseille, and in some other cities left no room for doubt as to the reality of the phenomenon. Some time afterward, I met Monsieur Fortier again, and he said to me: We have something far more extraordinary; not only does one succeed in making a table move by magnetizing it, but also in making it speak. When questioned, it answers. — This now, I replied, is another matter. I shall believe it only when I see it and when it is proven to me that a table has a brain to think, nerves to feel, and that it can become somnambulistic. Until then, allow me to see in the case nothing more than a tale to make us sleep on our feet.

This reasoning was logical: I conceived of the movement as the effect of a mechanical force, but, being ignorant of the cause and the law of the phenomenon, it seemed to me absurd to attribute intelligence to a thing purely material. I found myself in the position of present-day unbelievers, who deny because they merely see a fact that they do not understand. Fifty years ago, if someone had been told, purely and simply, that a telegraphic dispatch could be transmitted over 500 leagues and the answer received within an hour, that person would have laughed, and excellent scientific reasons would not have been lacking to prove that such a thing was materially impossible. Today, now that the law of electricity is known, this astonishes no one, not even the peasant. The same is true of all spiritist phenomena. To anyone who does not know the law that governs them, they appear supernatural, marvelous, and, consequently, impossible and ridiculous. Once the law is known, the marvel disappears, the fact ceases to have anything that repels reason, because it is bound up with the possibility of its being produced. I was, then, faced with an unexplained fact, apparently contrary to the laws of Nature and which my reason rejected. I had as yet seen nothing, nor observed anything; the experiments, carried out in the presence of honorable persons worthy of belief, confirmed my opinion as to the possibility of the purely material effect; the idea, however, of a speaking table had not yet entered my mind.

In the following year, we were at the beginning of 1855, I met Monsieur Carlotti, a friend of 25 years, who spoke to me of those phenomena for about an hour, with the enthusiasm that he devoted to all new ideas. He was Corsican, of an ardent and energetic temperament, and I had always appreciated in him the qualities that distinguish a great and beautiful soul, but I distrusted his exaltation. He was the first who spoke to me of the intervention of the Spirits and told me so many surprising things that, far from convincing me, he increased my doubts. One day, sir, you will be one of us, he concluded. I will not say no, I replied to him; we shall see about that later.

After some time, around the month of May 1855, I went to the house of the somnambulist Madame Roger, in the company of Monsieur Fortier, her magnetizer. There I met Monsieur Pâtier and Madame Plainemaison, who spoke to me of those phenomena in the same sense in which Monsieur Carlotti had pronounced himself, but in a very different tone. Monsieur Pâtier was a public official, already of a certain age, very learned, of a grave, cold, and calm character; his deliberate speech, free of all enthusiasm, produced a vivid impression on me, and when he invited me to attend the experiments that were taking place at the house of Madame Plainemaison, at 18 rue Grange-Batelière, I accepted immediately. The gathering was set for Tuesday the of May at eight o'clock in the evening. It was there that, for the first time, I witnessed the phenomenon of tables that turned, jumped, and ran, under conditions such that they left no room for any doubt. I then attended some trials, very imperfect, of mediumistic writing on a slate, with the aid of a basket. My ideas were far from being precise, but there was here a fact that necessarily proceeded from a cause. I glimpsed, in those apparent trifles, in the pastime that was made of those phenomena, something serious, as it were the revelation of a new law, which I took upon myself to study thoroughly.

Very soon, an occasion presented itself to me to observe the facts more attentively than I had yet done. At one of the gatherings at Madame Plainemaison's, I made the acquaintance of the Baudin family, who then resided on rue Rochechouart. Monsieur Baudin invited me to attend the weekly sessions that were held at his house and at which I forthwith became very assiduous.

These gatherings were quite numerous; besides the habitual attendees, all who requested permission to be present were admitted. The mediums were the two Mademoiselles Baudin, who wrote on a slate with the aid of a basket, called a little top, and which is described in “The Mediums' Book.” This process, which requires the concurrence of two persons, excludes all possibility of the intrusion of the medium's ideas. There I had occasion to see continuous communications and answers to questions put, sometimes even to mental questions, which revealed, in an evident manner, the intervention of a foreign intelligence.

The subjects treated were generally frivolous. The attendees occupied themselves chiefly with things pertaining to material life, to the future, in a word, with things that had nothing really serious about them; curiosity and amusement were the principal motives of all. The Spirit that usually manifested itself gave the name of Zephyr, a name perfectly in accord with its character and with that of the gathering. Nevertheless, it was very good and had said it was the protector of the family. Although it often made people laugh, it also knew, when necessary, how to give weighty counsel and to wield, if the occasion presented itself, the epigram, witty and biting. We at once became acquainted, and it offered me constant proofs of great sympathy. It was not a very advanced Spirit, but later, assisted by superior Spirits, it aided me in my labors. Afterward, it said that it had to reincarnate, and I heard no more of it. It was in those gatherings that I began my serious studies of Spiritism, less still by means of revelations than of observations. I applied to this new science, as I had done up to then, the experimental method; I never elaborated preconceived theories; I observed carefully, compared, deduced consequences; from effects I sought to go back to causes, by deduction and by the logical chaining of facts, not admitting as valid an explanation except when it resolved all the difficulties of the question. Thus did I always proceed in my earlier works, from the age of 15 or 16. I understood, above all, the gravity of the exploration I was about to undertake; I perceived, in those phenomena, the key to the so obscure and so controverted problem of the past and the future of Humanity, the solution that I had sought throughout my whole life. It was, in short, a whole revolution in ideas and in beliefs; it was necessary, therefore, to proceed with the greatest circumspection and not lightly; to be a positivist and not an idealist, so as not to let myself be deceived. One of the first results that I gathered from my observations was that the Spirits, being nothing more than the souls of men, possessed neither full wisdom nor integral knowledge; that the knowledge at their disposal was circumscribed to the degree of advancement they had reached, and that their opinion had only the value of a personal opinion. Recognized from the beginning, this truth preserved me from the grave pitfall of believing in the infallibility of the Spirits and prevented me from formulating premature theories on the basis of what had been said by one or some of them.

The simple fact of communication with the Spirits, whatever they might say, proved the existence of the surrounding invisible world. This was already an essential point, an immense field opened to our explorations, the key to innumerable phenomena until then unexplained. The second point, no less important, was that this communication permitted one to come to know the state of that world, its customs, if we may so express ourselves. I soon saw that each Spirit, by virtue of its personal position and of its knowledge, unveiled to me one face of that world, in the same way that one comes to know the state of a country by questioning inhabitants of all classes, no single one being able, individually, to inform us of everything. It falls to the observer to form the whole, by means of the documents gathered from different sides, collected, coordinated, and compared with one another. I conducted myself, then, with the Spirits as I would have done with men. To me, they were, from the least to the greatest, means of informing myself and not predestined revealers. Such were the dispositions with which I undertook my studies and in which I always persevered. To observe, to compare, and to judge, that was the rule that I constantly followed.

Up to that point, the sessions at Monsieur Baudin's house had had no determined aim. I tried there to obtain the resolution of the problems that interested me, from the point of view of Philosophy, of Psychology, and of the nature of the invisible world. I brought to each session a series of questions prepared and methodically arranged. They were always answered with precision, depth, and logic. From then on, the sessions assumed a very different character. Among the attendees were serious persons, who took a vivid interest in them, and, if it happened that I was absent, they were left at a loss as to what to do. The futile questions had lost, for the majority, all attraction. At first, I had only cared to instruct myself; later, when I saw that this constituted a whole and was taking on the proportions of a doctrine, I had the idea of publishing the teachings received, for the instruction of everyone. It was those same questions that, successively developed and completed, constituted the basis of The Spirits' Book. In the following year, in 1856, I frequented at the same time the spiritist gatherings that were held on rue Tiquetonne, at the house of Monsieur Roustan and Mademoiselle Japhet, somnambulist. These gatherings were serious and were conducted with order. The communications were transmitted through the intermediary of Mademoiselle Japhet, medium, with the aid of the basket with a spout.

My work was concluded, for the most part, and it had the proportions of a book. I, however, made a point of submitting it to the examination of other Spirits, with the aid of different mediums. I thought of making it an object of study in the gatherings of Monsieur Roustan. After some sessions, the Spirits said that they preferred to review it in private and set for that purpose certain days on which I would work in particular with Mademoiselle Japhet, in order to do it more calmly and also to avoid the indiscretions and premature comments of the public.

I was not content, however, with that verification; the Spirits had so recommended to me. The circumstances having put me in relation with other mediums, whenever an occasion presented itself I took advantage of it to propose some of the questions that seemed to me the most thorny. It was thus that more than ten mediums lent their concurrence to this work. It was from the comparison and the fusion of all the answers, coordinated, classified, and many times remodeled in the silence of meditation, that I elaborated the first edition of The Spirits' Book, delivered to publicity on the 18th of April, 1857.

Toward the end of that same year, the two Mademoiselles Baudin married; the gatherings ceased and the family dispersed. But, by then, my relations were already beginning to expand, and the Spirits multiplied for me the means of instruction, with a view to my later works.

[1] Extracts, in extenso, from the Book of Predictions concerning Spiritism — A Manuscript composed with special care by Allan Kardec, and of which no chapter had yet been published.

[2] The date was left blank in the manuscript.