Allan Kardec
French educator and writer (1804–1869), born Hippolyte Léon Denizard Rivail in Lyon and trained under the direct influence of Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi in Switzerland, where he absorbed a rationalist, experimental pedagogical method he would apply throughout his life as an educator in Paris, founding several schools there and publishing, before his conversion to spiritism, numerous manuals of grammar, arithmetic and pedagogy. Around 1854 he grew interested in the 'turning tables' phenomena and mediumistic communications then causing a sensation across Europe and, applying his customary methodological rigour, decided to systematise the responses obtained through various mediums into a coherent body of doctrine, adopting for this new stage the pseudonym Allan Kardec, which he said he recalled from a previous life as a Gaulish druid. The result, The Spirits' Book (1857), foundational for the entire modern spiritist movement, presents in question-and-answer form a complete cosmology combining belief in communication with the spirits of the dead with the doctrine of successive reincarnation as a means of the soul's progressive moral perfection — an original synthesis that distinguishes Kardecist spiritism from Anglo-Saxon spiritualism, which is generally alien to reincarnation. He completed this doctrine with other systematic works, such as The Mediums' Book (1861) and The Gospel According to Spiritism (1864), and founded the Revue Spirite to spread and coordinate the movement. Although Kardecist spiritism was eventually eclipsed by other currents in Europe, it took root with exceptional strength in Brazil, where it remains today an organised religion with millions of followers.