Among the many questions posed to the scholar of the Spiritist Doctrine, that of the vital fluid is one of the most intriguing. We could think that the expression vital fluid, widely used by Kardec, could be limited to a term appropriate to the Encoder's time, with no meaning nowadays. After all, the term fluid was used in the 19th century in connection with many unknown things. People spoke, for example, of plague fluid, to refer to something, unknown, that caused the plague. It was later found to be a bacterium.

However, the mediumistic work that emerged in the 20th century, particularly through Yvonne Pereira and Chico Xavier, kept the term vital fluid and, there is several information about it.

To enrich our reflections on a concept that is still poorly understood, we present some concepts extracted from Kardec, Yvonne and Chico Xavier.

Vital fluid in Kardec's work

Kardec's reflections on the vital fluid are premised on a fact that, according to him, and as a consequence of observation: organic beings have within themselves an intimate force that determines the phenomenon of life, as long as this force exists; that this force is independent of intelligence and thought, therefore fundamentally differs from the intelligent principle, and is present in all living beings, from plants to man. ⁱ

Kardec called this force the vital principle. Active in the living being and extinct in the dead, this principle gives organic substance properties that distinguish it from inorganic substances. ⁱⁱ

For Kardec, the vital principle resides in a special fluid, universally spread, called vital fluid. ⁱⁱⁱ It is, therefore, the vital fluid, a by-product of the universal cosmic fluid ^iv, exclusive to living beings and incarnate Spirits, which does not exist in raw matter and is not identified, as a rule, among the disembodied ^v. It works as a link between the perispirit and the physical body ^vi.

The activity of the vital principle is nourished during life by the action of the functioning of the organs, just as heat is fed by the turning motion of a wheel. When that action ceases, on account of death, the vital principle is extinguished, like heat, when the wheel ceases to turn. ^vii

Kardec wrote: the set of organs constitutes a kind of mechanism that receives impulse from the intimate activity or vital principle that exists between them. The vital principle is the driving force of organic bodies. At the same time that the vital agent gives impetus to the organs, their action entertains and develops the activity of that agent, almost as happens with friction, which develops heat. ^viii

Kardec compares organic bodies with electric cells; they work while the elements of these cells are in a position to produce electricity: it is life; when such conditions disappear, they cease to function: it is death. According to this view, the vital principle would be nothing more than a particular kind of electricity, called animal electricity; during life it is detached by the action of the organs; its production ceases at death, when the that action is extinguished. ^ix

 The amount of vital fluid is not absolute in all organic beings. It varies according to the species and is not constant, either in each individual or in the individuals of a species. There are some who are, so to speak, saturated with this fluid, while others have just enough of it. ^x Magnetism, in such cases, is often a powerful means of action, because it restores to the body the vital fluid it lacks to maintain the functioning of the organs. ^xi

Through the vital fluid, impregnated in the egg cell, incarnation can take place, because the Spirit can only act on matter through the vital force. Kardec wrote: when the Spirit has to incarnate in a human body in the process of formation, a fluidic bond, which is nothing more than an expansion of its perispirit, connects it to the germ that attracts it by an irresistible force, from the moment of conception. As the germ develops, the loop shortens. Under the influence of the vital and material principle of the germ, the perispirit, which has certain properties of matter, unites itself, molecule by molecule, to the body in formation, whence it can be said that the Spirit, through its perispirit, it takes root, in a way, in that germ, like a plant in the earth. When the germ reaches its full development, the union is complete; then the being is born for the external life. ^xii

In order for incarnation to take place, therefore, an intimate fusion between the perispirit and the vital fluid is necessary. By an opposite effect, the union of the perispirit and the carnal matter, which had taken place under the influence of the vital principle, ceases from the moment the vital principle ceases to act, as a result of the disorganization of the body. Maintained as it was by an acting force, this union breaks down as soon as that force ceases to act. Then, the perispirit detaches itself, molecule by molecule, as it was united, and freedom is restored to the Spirit. ^xiii

The amount of vital fluid is depleted. It can become insufficient for the preservation of life, if it is not renewed by the absorption and assimilation of the substances that contain it. ^xiv

Its excessive emission can determine organic weakening. ^xv The vital fluid is transmitted from one individual to another. The one who has the most of it can give it to the one who has the least, and in certain cases prolong the life that is about to be extinguished. As an ordeal for the Spirit or in the interest of a mission to be completed, depleted organs can receive a supplement of vital fluid that allows them to prolong the material manifestation of thought for a moment. ^xvi

Natural death results from the illness of the body with natural depletion of vital fluid, which cannot be renewed due to progressive organ failure. ^xvii In cases of violent death, when death does not result from the gradual extinction of vital forces, the more tenacious the bonds that hold the body to the perispirit and, therefore, the slower the detachment, since, as a rule, it still finds itself with resources satisfactory amounts of vital fluid ^xviii.

When the organic being is dead, the elements that compose it undergo new combinations, which result in new beings, which draw from the universal source the principle of life and activity, absorb and assimilate it, to return it to this source again, when they cease to exist. ^xix

Kardec also sees the vital fluid as a preponderant role in mediumship. He wrote: Whoever wishes to obtain a phenomenon of this order needs to have mediums with him whom I will call — sensitive, that is, endowed, in the highest degree, with the mediumistic faculties of expansion and penetrability, because the easily excitable nervous system of such mediums allows them, through certain vibrations, to project abundantly around themselves the animalized fluid that is their own.^xx

It is worth saying that for the phenomena to occur, it is necessary for the fluids of the Spirit to be identified with those of the medium: the vital fluid, indispensable to the production of all mediumistic phenomena, is the exclusive property of the incarnate and that, therefore, the Operator Spirit is obliged to impregnate itself with it. Only then can it, through certain properties, which you do not know, of your environment, isolate, make invisible and make some material objects move and even incarnate ones. ^xxi

Complementing Kardec's thought, Gustavo Geley, a French researcher, who died in 1924, showed that the vital fluid is one of the components of ectoplasm, fundamental material in a large part of mediumistic phenomenology and spiritual cures. The term ectoplasm, coined by Charles Richet, did not exist at the time of Kardec. According to Geley, mediums are individuals who serve as intermediaries for the disembodied who wish to communicate with us and lend them the vital fluid and material elements released by the partial exodus of the perispirit's strength. ^xxii

So, Dr. Geley defines a medium as a person who, thanks to natural faculties and through appropriate training, is capable of supplying the disembodied with a sufficient quantity of their nervous fluid or of a certain organic substance, in order for them to manifest materially. ^xxiii

(This article will be completed in the next issue.) 

¹ Genesis, chap. X, item 16.

² LE, Introduction, item 2.

³ Idem.

⁴ LE, item 64.

⁵ The Book of Mediums, item 98.

⁶ Genesis, chap. XI, item 18.

⁷ Genesis, cap. X, item 18.

⁸  LE, item 67.

⁹ Genesis, chap. X, item 19.

¹⁰ LE, item 70.

¹¹ LE, item 424.

¹² Genesis, chap. XI, item 18.

¹³ Idem.

¹⁴ The Book of Mediums, item 161.

¹⁵ Heaven and Hell, part II, chap. 3.

¹⁶ LE, item 154.

¹⁷ LE, item 161.

¹⁸ LE, item 70.

¹⁹ The Book of Mediums, item 98.

²⁰ Idem.

²¹ Summary of the Spiritist Doctrine, part I.

²³ Idem.