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Sir William Crookes Spiritist Society - S.W.C.S.S.love one another and educate yourselves

Registered Charity No. 1104534

Kardecism

What is Spiritism?

Spiritism is a philosophy and science which deals with the na-ture, origin and destiny of Spirits, as well as their relationship with the corporeal world. It regards Jesus Christ as our Guide and Model, whose doctrine we follow to reform ourselves and evolve spiritually. Spiritism was codified by Allan Kardec, a French teacher and educator.

Jesus’s doctrine emphasizes the importance of our participa-tion in the improvement of society. As we reform ourselves, we reform society, and through our attitudes and example we influence our incarnate and disincarnate brothers and sisters.

Main principles

* God is the Supreme Intelligence, first cause of all things. God is eternal, immutable, immaterial, unique, omnipotent, su-premely just and good. The Universe is His creation.

* Jesus Christ is our Guide and Model. The Doctrine He taught and exemplified is the purest expression of the Universal Laws.

* In addition to the corporeal world inhabited by incarnate Spir-its, which are human beings, there exists the spiritual world, inhabited by discarnate Spirits.

* There are other inhabited worlds in the Universe, with beings at different degrees of evolution: some less, some equal, and others more evolved than us here on Earth.

About us

Our group was formed on February 13th, 2000. In June 2004 we became a Registered Charity. Our mission is to help everyone to carry out their own inner reformation, using as a guide the doctrine of Jesus Christ seen through the Spiritist perspective, as codified by Allan Kardec.

* A Human Being is a Spirit incarnated in a material body.

* What connects the physical body to the Spirit is a semi-material body named perispirit.

* Spirits are created simple and ignorant. They evolve intellectu-ally and morally until they attain perfection.

* The individuality of the spirit is an achievement brought about by the various experiences that the spirit passes through during and between its incarnations.

* Spirits are always progressing, and reincarnate as many times as is necessary for their spiritual advancement. The speed of their intellectual and moral progress depends on the efforts they make to attain perfection.

* Human Beings are given free will to act, but they must answer for the consequences of their actions.

* All Spiritist practice is gratis, as Jesus advised us in the Gospel: “Freely you have received, freely give” (Matthew 10:8)

* Spiritism does not impose its principles; it expects us to sub-mit its teachings to the test of reason before accepting them. Spiritism only requires us follow Jesus’s Golden Rule - to love our neighbour as ourselves. (Matthew 22:39)

Who was Allan Kardec? Allan Kardec is a pseudonym of the French teacher and educator Hippolyte Léon Denizard Rivail (October 3, 1804 – March 31, 1869). He is the codifier of Spiritism, organising and publishing results of detailed research with mediums and channellers.

Rivail was born in Lyon, France, in 1804. Rivail was a disciple and collaborator of Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi, and a teacher in courses in mathematics, physics, chemistry, astronomy, physiology, comparative anatomy and French in Paris. For one of his research papers, he was inducted in 1831 into the Royal Academy of Arras. He organized and taught free courses for the underprivileged.

On February 1832 he married Amélie Gabrielle Boudet.

He was already in his early fifties when he became interested in the wildly popular phenomenon of spirit-tapping. At the time, strange phenomena attributed to the action of spirits were re-ported in many different places, most notably in the U.S. and France, attracting the attention of high society. The first such phenomena were at best frivolous and entertaining, featuring objects that moved or “tapped” under what was said to be spirit control. In some cases, this was alleged to be a type of commu-nication: the supposed spirits answered questions by control-ling the movements of objects so as to pick out letters to form words, or simply indicate “yes” or “no.”

At the time, Franz Mesmer’s theory of animal magnetism was popular in the upper reaches of society. When confronted with the phenomena described, some researchers, including Rivail, pointed out that animal magnetism might explain them. Rivail, however, after personally seeing a demonstration, quickly dis-missed the animal-magnetism hypothesis as being insufficient to completely explain all the facts observed (see Chapters VIII and XIV in the The Mediums’ Book). Rivail was determined to understand exactly what was causing the physical effects popu-

larly attributed to spirits.

As a teacher with some scientific background (he had never at-tended a university), Rivail decided to do his own research. Not being a medium himself, he compiled a list of questions and began working with mediums and channellers to pose them to spirits. Soon the quality of the allegedly communication with spirits appeared to improve.

Rivail used the name “Allan Kardec” allegedly after a spirit iden-tified as Zefiro, whom he had been communicating with, told him about a previous incarnation of his as a Druid by that name. Rivail liked the name and decided to use it to keep his Spiritists writings separate from his work, basically books for high school students.

In April 18, 1857 Rivail (signing himself “Allan Kardec”) pub-lished his first book on Spiritism, The Spirits’ Book, compris-ing a series of 1,019 questions exploring matters concerning the nature of spirits, the spirit world, and the relations between the spirit world and the material world. This was followed by a series of other books: The Mediums’ Book, The Gospel Accord-ing to Spiritism, Heaven and Hell, and The Genesis According to Spiritism. These five books - “the Codification” - define the basic doctrine of Spiritism. Kardec also published a periodical, the Revue Spirite.

Allan Kardec coined the word “spiritism” and followed modern scientific methods in its study, which was recognized among others by Camille Flammarion, a famous French astronomer and author, who said “spiritism is not a religion but a science”.

Having died due to aneurysm, Kardec is buried at the Cimetière du Père Lachaise, Paris, France.

Source: Wikipedia

Who was Sir William Crookes? Sir William Crookes, OM, FRS (17 June 1832 - 4 April 1919) was an English chemist and physicist. Sir William attended the Royal College of Chemistry, in London, and worked on spectroscopy.

Legacy

The work of Crookes extended over several areas: chemistry and physics, public services, and paranormal phenomena. Its salient characteristic was the originality of conception of his experiments, attention to detail, and the skill of their execution.

Crookes discovered the element thallium, a heavy metal used in nuclear medicine, the manufacture of thermometers, lenses, electronics, costume jewellery, and fireworks. He also identified the first known sample of helium.

He was a pioneer in the construction and use of vacuum tubes for the study of physical phenomena such as energy discharges on rare gases. He was, as a consequence, one of the first scien-tists to investigate what are now called plasmas, and performed important research in X-rays. He also devised one of the first instruments for the study of nuclear radioactivity, the spinthar-iscope.

Crookes invented protective goggles to protect the eyes of glassworkers. These goggles blocked most infrared and all ul-traviolet radiation. However, they were rejected by conservative glassworkers. His invention gave rise to the modern sunglasses industry. He carried out research in sewage disposal and pub-lic sanitation, and advised the use of nitrogenous fertilizers to forestall world hunger. Crookes patented designs of light bulbs, and became Director, then Chairman, of the Notting Hill Electric Company.

Notably, Crookes was one of the first scientists to carry out me-ticulous research in the area of the paranormal, under rigidly controlled conditions. In the company of several witnesses he proved that the medium Florence Cook and the spirit that she materialized, Katie King, were separate entities (he even had a surgeon, Dr James M Gully, record Katie King’s pulse). He noted the numerous physical differences between the medium and the spirit. This, as well as the presence of phenomena unexplain-able by conventional natural laws (such as movement of bod-ies at a distance, levitation, rappings, the appearance of writ-ing without human agency, etc.) led him to conclude that “...Outside our scientific knowledge there exists a Force exercised by intelligence differing from the ordinary intelligence common to mortals...”

Early life

William Crookes was born in London, the eldest son of Joseph Crookes, who was a wealthy tailor of north-country origin, and Mary Scott, his second wife. William received some instruction at a grammar school at Chippenham, Wiltshire. But his scientific career began when, at the age of fifteen, he entered the Royal College of Chemistry in Hanover Square, London.

Rise as prominent scientist

From 1850 to 1854 he filled the position of assistant in the col-lege, and soon embarked upon original work, not in organic chemistry where the inspiration of his distinguished teacher, August Wilhelm von Hofmann, might have been expected to lead him, but on certain new compounds of the element sele-nium. These formed the subject of his first published papers in 1851.

Leaving the Royal College, he became superintendent of the me-teorological department at the Radcliffe Observatory in Oxford

in 1854, and in 1855 was appointed lecturer in chemistry at the Chester training college. In 1856 he married Ellen, daughter of William Humphrey, of Darlington, by whom he fathered three sons and a daughter.

From this time his life was passed in London, devoted mainly to independent work. After 1850, he lived at 7 Kensington Park Gardens, where in his private laboratory all his later work was carried out. Crookes’s life was one of unbroken scientific activ-ity. He was never one of those who gain influence by popular ex-position. The breadth of his interests, ranging over pure and ap-plied science, economic and practical problems, and psychical research, made him a well-known personality, and he received many public and academic honours. In 1859 he founded the Chemical News a science magazine, which he edited for many years and conducted on much less formal lines than is usual with journals of scientific societies. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1863, and became its President in 1913.

Crookes was knighted in 1897, and in 1910 received the Order of Merit. He died in London on 4 April 1919, two years after his wife, to whom he had been much devoted. Crookes is buried in London’s Brompton Cemetery.

Chemistry

Crookes was always more effective in experiment than in inter-pretation. The method of spectral analysis, introduced by Bun-sen and Kirchhoff, was received by Crookes with great enthusi-asm and to great effect. His first important discovery was that of the element thallium, announced in 1861, and made with the help of spectroscopy. By this work his reputation became firmly established, and he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1863.

Crookes’s attention had been attracted to the vacuum balance in the course of the thallium researches. He soon discovered the

phenomenon upon which depends the action of the well-known little instrument, the Crookes radiometer, in which a system of vanes, each blackened on one side and polished on the other, is set in rotation when exposed to radiant energy. Crookes did not, however, provide the true explanation of this apparent “attrac-tion and repulsion resulting from radiation”.

Crookes published numerous papers on spectroscopy, a subject which always had a great fascination for him, and he conduct-ed research on a large variety of minor subjects. In addition to various technical books, he wrote a standard treatise on Select Methods in Chemical Analysis in 1871, and a small book on Dia-monds in 1909.

Physics

Crookes investigated the properties of cathode rays, showing that they travel in straight lines, cause phosphorescence in ob-jects upon which they impinge, and by their impact produce great heat. He believed that he had discovered a fourth state of matter, which he called “radiant matter”. But his theoretical views on the nature of “radiant matter” proved to be mistaken. He believed the rays to consist of streams of particles of or-dinary molecular magnitude. It remained for Sir J. J. Thomson to discover their subatomic nature, and to prove that cathode rays consist of streams of negative electrons, that is, of nega-tively electrified particles whose mass is only 1/1840 that of a hydrogen atom. Nevertheless, Crookes’s experimental work in this field was the foundation of discoveries which eventually changed the whole of chemistry and physics.

In 1903, Crookes turned his attention to the newly discovered phenomena of radioactivity, achieving the separation from uranium of its active transformation product, uranium-X (later established to be protactinium). He observed the gradual decay of the separated transformation product, and the simultaneous reproduction of a fresh supply in the original uranium. At

about the same time as this important discovery, he observed that when “p-particles”, ejected from radio-active substances, impinge upon zinc sulphide, each impact is accompanied by a minute scintillation, an observation which forms the basis of one of the most useful methods in the technique of radioactivity.

Spiritualism

In 1870 Crookes decided that science had a duty to study the preternatural phenomena associated with Spiritualism (Crookes 1870). Judging from family letters, Crookes had developed a favorable view of Spiritualism already by 1869 (Doyle 1926: vol-ume 1, 232 - 233). Nevertheless, he was determined to conduct his inquiry impartially and described the conditions he imposed on mediums as follows: “It must be at my own house, and my own selection of friends and spectators, under my own condi-tions, and I may do whatever I like as regards apparatus” (Doyle 1926: volume 1, 177). Among the mediums he studied were Kate Fox, Florence Cook, and Daniel Dunglas Home (Doyle 1926: volume 1, 230-251). Among the phenomena he witnessed were movement of bodies at a distance, rappings, changes in the weights of bodies, levitation, appearance of luminous objects, appearance of phantom figures, appearance of writing without human agency, and circumstances which “point to the agency of an outside intelligence” (Crookes 1874).

Crookes’s report on this research, in 1874, concluded that these phenomena could not be explained as conjuring, and that fur-ther research would indeed be useful. Crookes was not alone in his views. Fellow scientists who came to believe in Spiritual-ism included Alfred Russel Wallace, Oliver Joseph Lodge, Lord Rayleigh, and William James (Doyle 1926: volume 1, 62). Never-theless, most scientists were convinced that Spiritualism was fraudulent, and Crookes’s final report so outraged the scientific establishment “that there was talk of depriving him of his Fel-lowship of the Royal Society.” Crookes then became much more cautious and didn’t discuss his views publicly until 1898, when he felt his position was secure. From that time until his death in

All activities are free of charge

Prayer meetings

Study & discourse, healing, and fraternizationWednesdays (English): 19:30 – 21:30hSundays (Portuguese): 14:30 – 17:30h

Charity Shop and Spiritist Bookshop & Library

Monday to Friday: 10:00 – 18:00hSaturday: 10:00 – 14:30h

Children’s Moral Education

Course for Parents (Study of the Family)

Saturday: 15:00 – 16:30h

Mediumship Work - Spiritual Treatment

Monday: begins at 19:00h

Mediumship Course & Gospel Course

Tuesday: 19:30 – 21:30h

Choir

Thursday: 19:30 – 21:30h

Counselling and spiritual treatment

Friday evenings by appointment(call Ivonete – 07878 760 609)

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Send an email to: boletim_sirwilliam@yahoo.co.uk

1919, letters and interviews show that Crookes was a believer in Spiritualism (Doyle 1926: volume 1, 169 - 170, 249 - 251).

Principal source: Wikipedia (edited)

Other online sources used.

Address

269 Caledonian Road

(corner of Story Street)

Islington

London N1 1EE

How to get here

King’s Cross St Pancras station

& bus 259, 17, 91 from stop G

Overground

Caledonian Road & Barnsbury

Buses: 274, 259, 17, 91

Contact

Mrs Ivonete Jessamy

info_sirwilliam@yahoo.co.uk

Tel: 07878 760 609

http://www.sirwilliam.org

Sir William Crookes Spiritist Society - S.W.C.S.S.love one another and educate yourselves

Registered Charity No. 1104534