Translator's Note.

Most Spiritists are familiar with the basic works of the Spiritist Doctrine, especially The Spirits' Book, the repository of its fundamental principles, which Allan Kardec unfolded in the remaining volumes that constitute the Spiritist Codification.

Many, however, are unaware of the difficulties Kardec faced in order to make the Spiritist Doctrine known and practiced in those very difficult times of the nineteenth century, precisely because they do not peruse other writings he left, which focus in a surprising way on his guidelines for the Spiritist Movement.

Those scholars who wish to learn about the first steps of the nascent Spiritist Movement will find abundant material for their research in Allan Kardec's Spiritist Review, notably in the volumes pertaining to 1860, 1861, 1862, 1864, and 1867, the years in which the Codifier of the Spiritist Doctrine, taking advantage of the summer vacation of the Spiritist Society of Paris, traveled from the French capital to visit some cities in the interior of France, reaching, in 1864, Antwerp and Brussels, in Belgium.

Today, with the advance of technology and the rapidity of the means of communication, the world has become small and accessible to a significant portion of its population. One can take a plane in the morning, in Paris, and arrive the same day in Brasília. Very different, however, was the panorama that existed in Allan Kardec's time. To make his Spiritist Journey in 1862, the Codifier needed nearly two months to travel 693 leagues and visit about twenty cities, and this because France, in the middle of the nineteenth century, already possessed a railway network that crossed the country in all directions and whose trains traveled at the incredible speed of 50 kilometers per hour… Of all Allan Kardec's journeys, undertaken in the service of the Spiritist Doctrine, that of 1862 was the most important, meriting from him a special booklet, published in the same year, exceedingly rich in observations on the state of Spiritism — which was then celebrating its fifth anniversary — and in instructions on the formation of Spiritist Groups and Societies, besides the counsels and guidance that he lavished upon the adherents of the new Doctrine.

And what was Kardec seeking on these journeys? It is he himself who reveals it to us in “General Impressions” of this work: “(…) our journey had a twofold objective: to give instructions where these were necessary and, at the same time, to instruct ourselves. We wished to see things with our own eyes, in order to judge the real state of the Doctrine and the manner in which it is understood; to study the local causes favorable or unfavorable to its progress, to sound out opinions, to assess the effects of opposition and criticism, and to know the judgment that is made of certain works. We were desirous, above all, of shaking the hands of our Spiritist brethren and of expressing to them personally our most sincere and lively sympathy, repaying the touching proofs of friendship they give us in their letters; of giving, in the name of the Society of Paris, and in our own name in particular, a special testimony of gratitude and admiration to those pioneers of the work who, by their initiative, their disinterested zeal, and their devotion, constitute its first and firmest supports, always marching forward, without troubling themselves about the stones thrown at them and placing the interest of the cause above personal interest.” And, further on, he concludes: “From several points of view, our journey was very satisfactory and, above all, very instructive on account of the observations we gathered. If any doubts could remain as to the irresistible character of the Doctrine's march and the impotence of the attacks, as to its moralizing influence, as to its future, what we saw would suffice to dispel them.” Throughout the entire time in which he codified the Spiritist Doctrine, Allan Kardec allowed himself only one journey of leisure. n In August of 1864, shortly before visiting the Spiritists of Antwerp and Brussels, in Belgium, he was in Switzerland, lingering in the cities of Neuchâtel, Bern, Zimmerwald, Interlaken, Oberland, Fribourg, Lausanne, Vevey and Geneva, becoming acquainted with the valleys of Lauterbrunnen and Grindelwald, the lakes of Brienz and Léman, the waterfalls of Staubach and Giesbach, and the castle of Chillon. Even so, and to prove that he never shrank from work, he took advantage of the occasion to observe and study in loco the strange phenomenon of a peasant from the surroundings of Bern, who enjoyed the faculty of discovering springs of water and of seeing, at the bottom of a glass, the answers to the questions put to him, including images of people and places. n It was our initial intention to compose this volume solely with the complete translation of the Spiritist Journey in 1862. Recalling, however, the discourses pronounced on the other journeys that Kardec undertook, in France and in Belgium, as well as the appraisals that he saw fit to make concerning each of them in his Journal of Psychological Studies, the idea occurred to us of adding them to this book, in the form of an appendix, since they bear a close connection with the subject treated in this work. All the texts were drawn from the 1st edition of the Spiritist Review, edited by the Brazilian Spiritist Federation in the years 2004 and 2005. n Brasília (DF), October 3, 2005.

Evandro Noleto Bezerra.

Translator.

[1] Biographie d'Allan Kardec, by Henri Sausse, Paris: Éditions Pygmalion-Gérard, 1993, p. 78.

[2] See the Spiritist Review of October 1864. Translation by Evandro Noleto Bezerra. 1st ed. Rio de Janeiro: FEB, 2004, pp. 390-397.

[3] Translator's Note: Some articles drawn from the Spiritist Review had their titles slightly modified upon being transcribed for this work, so as to better characterize the spiritist journeys to which they referred.