Kardec and the unification of the Spiritist Movement

On 5th June, one more anniversary of foundation of the USE – Spiritist Societies Union of São Paulo State has been celebrated. The institution was born in 1947, two years before the signature of the known Golden Pact, an agreement between the Brazilian Spiritist Federation (FEB) and the representatives of various Federations and Unions in the state sphere, aiming the unification of the Brazilian Spiritist Movement. The Pact has been signed in the head office of the FEB, in Rio de Janeiro city, on 5th October 1949, and this denomination has been given by Artur Lins de Vasconcellos Lopes, one of the subscribers in the epoch and, as we know, one of the major collaborators in the history of Spiritism in Brazil.

Given this agreement, the National Federative Council (CFN) was born on 1st January 1950, and since then has the objective of dealing with doubts, guiding the Brazilian Spiritist Movement, recommending regulations and guidelines to the Spiritist Centers.

The advent of the Golden Pact – which turns 60 years old in October – was the basis for an better agreement between the Brazilian Spiritist Institutions, making possible a new phase in the dissemination of the Spiritist Doctrine and making viable the coexistence of the Spiritist Houses, without jeopardizing the freedom of thinking or individual action, since there is no hierarchical structure in the Spiritist Movement, neither in Brazil nor abroad.

The theme unification, which is the main subject of this week’s interview conceded by the confrere Hélio Ribeiro Loureiro to the editor Orson Peter Carrara, deserves all the attention and full support from us, as such a concern appeared early in the Spiritism Codification.

Kardec talked clearly about that in 1861 while he was writing the text that would form The Mediums’ Book. As we know, the Codifier understood that the homogeneity would be an indispensable factor to the constitution of Spiritist groups because, according to him, a society where such a fact occurs is indissoluble. (The Mediums’ Book, item 334.)

As it was and still is notorious the difficulty of gathering a large number of homogeneous elements in one group, he affirmed then that, for the sake and the good of the studies, the Spiritist meetings should rather multiply small groups than be of large agglomerations.

In the less numerous aggregations – explained the Codifier – everyone knows better each other and there is more confidence in regard to the efficiency of the elements they receive. The silence and self-communion are easier and everything happens like in a family. Large meetings exclude the intimacy due to the variety of elements of which they are formed. The divergence of characters, ideas, opinions are intensified, offering more ease to the disturbing spirits to seed disagreement. (The Mediums’ Book, item 335.)

However, not to make the groups isolated, they should keep a constant relationship as they could form the nucleus of the big Spiritist family if they correspond, visit and exchange observations to one another, which is, undoubtedly, the purpose of the known unification, the objective of the Golden Pact and the aim of venerable institutions such as the USE, whose foundation’s anniversary we can only applause.