Spiritualism and Spiritism Distinguished

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky · Confusing Words Series · 8 pages

The main difference stated at the head is a doctrinal one: Spiritists believe in the successive reincarnations of the human soul, and Spiritualists do not. Within the first camp the file then makes a second cut, between genuine Spiritualists — who believe in the immortality of the spirit and in the possibility of the living communicating with the departed, whether through pure mediums or by means of the Secret Science — and fanatical ones, who blindly accept the claims of every so-called spirit.

Blavatsky's own position is put with some care about proportion. Spiritualism she calls a philosophy of yesterday, yet she notes that a far lesser abyss separates Spiritualists from Theosophists than separates Protestants from Roman Catholics. Spiritism she treats as the harder case: as opposed to theosophical teaching as occultism is to the teachings of Allan Kardec, and objectionable on a specific ground rather than a general one — that it is the Spiritists who would doom the divine Monad to a terrible torment filled with gross earthly experiences, without the smallest ray of spirituality to enlighten them. The remaining pages carry the suggested reading and further reading.

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