In English-speaking countries we are more familiar with "Spiritualism," while in France and Latin America, it is Spiritism that has had more of an influence. Though they differ in important respects, Spiritism and Spiritualism are closely related and indeed, the former was inspired by the latter.

American Spiritualism has its roots in myriad traditions, but if it has a beginning, it is with Andrew Jackson Davis (1826-1910), a seer who was born in Bloomingrove, New York. As a youth, taken under wing by a local tailor and mesmerist, Davis was soon was well known in the area for his clairaudience and clairvoyance, which he used for making medical diagnoses. One day in 1844, he fell into a trance and woke up in the Catskill Mountains, some 40 miles distant from his home in Poughkeepsie. He claimed to have encountered there the spirits of Galen, the Roman physician and philopher, and the Swedish mystic Emmanuel Swedenborg. Subsequently, Davis went many times to a mountain near Poughkeepsie to receive from the spirits information for his book, Principles of Nature: Her Divine Revelations and a Voice to Mankind, which was published in 1847, and which foresaw the emergence of Spiritualism in the following year.

Most histories recount that Spiritualism first emerged near Buffalo, in Hydesville, New York in 1848, when a Methodist farm family heard strange raps and knocks, the source of which they were unable to identify. Two of the young daughters, Kate and Maggie Fox, found that they could communicate with whatever was causing the noises by clapping and calling out questions; soon the source was determined to be the spirit of a murdered peddler.[1]

This phenomenon, as well as others such as tipping tables, pencils writing by themselves, or on a planchette, levitation, clairvoyance, the appearance of strange lights, levitation, "spirit photography," and more, spread quickly throughout the region, and into Canada, England, and Europe, as scores of mediums emerged, claiming to communicate with spirits, and legions of curiosity-seekers as well as not a few intellectuals (among them, Victor Hugo, W. Crookes, and Alfred Russell Wallace), who, after attending séances, joined the ranks of the converted. Apart from the Fox sisters, who went on to spectacular fame, among the several outstanding mediums in this period were the Eddy Brothers from Vermont, William Stainton Moses in England, Eusalia Palladino in Europe, and the Scottish-born American Daniel Dunglas Home, who toured England and the continent, where he performed séances for the Emperor Louis Napoleon.

In 1871, a group of Spiritualists began to meet during the summers on the shore of Cassadaga Lake in upstate New York; eventually they formed the Lily Dale Assembly, which remains today the leading American Spiritualist community. Summer home to some forty registered mediums, the town of Lily Dale still attracts streams of visitors seeking to communicate with their departed loved ones.[2]

Over the years, Spiritualism has been defined differently by various individuals, circles, and churches, but most amply by the Lily Dale Assembly as the belief in the continuity of life and in individual responsability. According to their website, "Some, but not all, Spiritualists are Mediums and/or Healers. Spiritualists endeavor to find the truth in all things and to live their lives in accordance therewith."

In Paris, by the 1850s, attending séances with the so-called tables tournantes had become a fashion, and it was in this context that Spiritism first emerged.

The doctrine of Spiritism was formulated by Hippolyte Léon Dénizard Rivail, aka Allan Kardec (1804-1869), a French educator, in his several books, among them, Le Livre des Esprits, 1857 (The Book of the Spirits) and Le Livre des Médiums, 1861 (The Mediums' Book). Inspired by American Spiritualism, Kardec's works are based on his own extensive interviews with spirits who purportedly communicated with him through French mediums. These interviews led him to conclude, in an important departure from the American Spiritualists, that spirits reincarnate as, in life after life, they evolve into ever greater states of consciousness.

Though he quickly developed a following of millions, and even today, his tomb in Paris's Père Lachaise Cemetery, in the style of a Druidic temple, attracts heaps of flowers, Kardec was an unlikely guru for, according to his translator, Anna Blackwell, Kardec was "grave, slow of speech, unassuming in manner, yet not without a certain quiet dignity." Further, "he was never known to laugh."

According to its adherents, Spiritism is at once a science, a philosophy, and a religion. The science examines the nature of spirits and the invisible world, while the philosophy, among other things, holds that humanity evolves through multiple reincarnations; and the religion, presented in Christian terms—Jesus Christ as, to quote Kardec, "the epitome of the moral perfection to which humanity can aspire on Earth"— that the universe is a creation of a loving God.

A minority, certainly, but an important one, of intellectuals and scientists viewed these purported communications from the Beyond as not only spiritually momentous, but at one with ongoing discoveries in astronomy, biology, chemistry, physics, and more. As historian John Warne Monroe emphasizes, "These believers...considered their approach utterly rational, and, in elaborating their views, they drew self-consciously on their knowledge of scientific discourse and method. Indeed, the multifarious visions of 'factual' metaphysics that heterodox thinkers advanced during this period were as much a part of the emerging landscape of modernity as the railway or the telegraph."[3]

In the late 19th century, though elite Mexicans more often traveled to, studied in and had business dealings in the Unted States, they tended to feel more comfortable with French language and culture. Unsurprisingly then, it was Kardecian Spiritism, rather than American Spiritualism, that first made inroads in Mexico.[4] This was in 1872, thanks to Refugio González's translations of Kardec's books, among other Spiritist works.

Also of note, Federico Gamboa (1864 - 1939), the novelist and diplomat, translated Kardec's follower, Gabriel Delanne; and Ignacio Mariscal, in 1892, when he was serving as Mexico's Minister of Foreign Relations, albeit identified only as "un mexicano," translated Après la mort (After Death) by another leading Spiritist, León Denis.

While educated Mexicans, such as Madero's father, could subscribe to Kardec's Revue esprit, soon Spanish-speaking Mexican had their own Ilustración Espírita and they could join various informal Spiritist circles, as well as the Sociedad Espírita Central de la República Mexicana in Mexico City and other cities including Guadalajara, San Luís Potosí, and Monterrey.

Kardec's philosophy found fertile ground among those intellectuals who considered the positivist scientíficos, unbalanced in their overly rigorous materialism. The consoling idea of eternal life and the Spiritist morality based on love and charity also had their appeal; and finally, Spiritism found some adherents among the already well-established Masons who, at their higher levels, by tradition, had been open to esoteric teachings. (Madero himself was a Mason.)

During this same period, the Russian mystic and co-founder of Theosophy, Helena Petrovna Blavatksy (1831-1891) published her seminal works, Isis Unveiled (1878) and the Secret Doctrine (1888), which were almost immediately translated into French and which infused Western esoteric thinking, including that of some of the Spiritists, with new strains of Eastern and neopagan thought.

The Mexican Catholic Church strenuously condemned Spiritism. The leading intellectuals of the time, the so-called científicos, for the most part, considered Spiritism absurd and superstitious. Under attack, Mexican Spiritism receded somewhat in the 1890s, but after the turn of the century, it reemerged with vigor, and in large part because of the efforts of Francisco I. Madero, who was a leading organizer of the first and second Latin American Spiritist Congresses, both held in Mexico City in 1906 and 1908, respectively.