Catalan Spiritism and the Paradoxes of Modernity

The diversity of forms of trance, including possession, spirit mediumship, and shamanism, reflects the times and societies in which they are found. In mid nineteenth century Europe, the theoretical systematization of spirit mediumship by the pedagogue H.P. Rivail (a.k.a. Allan Kardec) is known by the name Spiritism.  It maintains the possibility of communication between the living and the spirits of the dead at the same time that it advocates for the deep transformation of the established social and political order.  The scale of this social and religious movement in the Catalan Countries, from the 1860s until the end of the Spanish Civil War in 1939 (during which more than a hundred Spiritist organizations were shut down in Catalonia alone, and militants were imprisoned and shot by the Spanish fascist state), is exceptional in the European context.  This paper will discuss several reasons for Spiritism’s impact in the Catalan Countries, including: its revolutionary content—e.g., the impugnation of the catholic bourgeois social order in all its dimensions and the sustained linked with anarchism; the movement’s horizontal articulation of new models of social relations in all fields of collective life; and the multitudinous participation of the popular classes.  Underlying this discussion is a fundamental question: How is it possible that from the practicing body of the medium, largely considered an irrational figure, is born a project of modernizing, rationalist social relations?