Essay on the roots of the doctrinal inconsistencies

The Spiritism is a synthesis of human efforts to understand the world and life 

(Part 2 and final) *

"The naive faith, imposed by authority and tradition,
melts as fragile wax by the fire of reason. “
- Herculano Pires

According to Herculano Pires (1),

Let us see why: Osiris, son of Heaven and Earth, grow, thrive and glowed and then he is cut, shredded or grounded, and finally buried. But from the earth, Osiris reborn such as seeds, to start new cycle, similar to the previous one. Dead and quartered by Set, his brother, he is resurrected by his wife and sister, the goddess Isis, through special rituals. It is clear the agrarian analogy. Osiris is like the wheat, which after mowing suffers the thrashing; he is back to be buried at sowing, and finally reborn. Sometimes, associated with the Nile is a river god. Grows with the flooding, declines and dies on the ebb, but later he is resurrected and he makes the plants be born, with the magical power of water.

Osiris, god-river, is naturally connected to the cultivation of land. However, in his river aspect, he presents us with a new element, which is the magic of water. We see in him the "pure water", used to purify the dry land, barren, dusty, and with it the men and animals, “the water of renewal”, used widely in sacred purification by washing and used in baptismal forms, such as the classic case of John the Baptist, and finally, the "fertilizing water", which represents the virility of the river-god fertilizing the land.

The religious dogmatism cannot draw back from the impact of such comparisons. Only a "reasoned faith" as Kardec wanted, can calmly face this historical analysis, without losing itself in the denial or stray in doubt. In addition, the sceptical rationality even when is evolved cannot penetrate the essence of the agrarian myth. In the same way that faith needs the light of reason, that light in its turn needs the wick of faith.

Spiritism shows that the agrarian myth is essentially an analogy; it is born of the comparative power of reason. This power assimilated, from the tribal era, the human resurrection, demonstrated by mediunic facts, to the vegetal resurrection. Without the material evidence of the existence of the Spirit, from the survival of man, the agrarian myth is reduced to its analogical aspect, hiding the deep reasons of the analogy. Therefore the disbelief and the ironic smile of the "wise men", which in truth should wait for laughing later, since those who laugh last laugh best.

From the mythical impregnation of the religious thought

Agrarian, as well, is the myth of the Virgin-Mother, who acquires social and political amplitude in the doctrine of the Egyptian theogamy. The earth, the mother goddess, is virgin before and after the birth, because she isn’t stained after the fertilization and she is always in a state of purity. Fertilized by the heavenly god she flourishes in the (messes) harvesting fields, swinging in her lap the Messiah, the god-sun, who brings the light, the life and the abundance of crops after the winter. The agrarian myth of the Virgin-Mother has as well its astronomical aspect, like all agrarian -gods, as if heaven and earth join themselves in the mystery of fertilization. The constellation of the Virgin is the first to appear in the sky, after the midwinter. The sun, the messiah, is born from her and the constellation remains virgin after the birth. The word "messes", as shown, has a great mystical power: the name of the Messiah derives from it and from the cult that worship Him, later represented in the liturgy of the mass.

The same happened with the mystery of bread and wine. The bread represented in the Greek mysteries, the goddess Demeter, or Ceres to the Romans, mother of the cereals. The wine represented Bacchus or Dionysus, god of joy, of life, and therefore the god of the Spirit. So eating bread and drinking the wine was symbolizing the fertilization of the matter by the power of the Spirit. The matter impregnated by the power of the Spirit was represented in pagan religious ceremonies, by the bread soaked in wine. When the Hebrews arrived in Canaan they found this practice among Canaanites.

The entire agricultural horizon is dominated by this magical symbolism of bread and wine, which Christ himself served, not to subject men to the symbol, but to illustrate it through it.

These examples are enough to perceive the intensity of the mythic impregnation of the contemporary religious thought. Spiritism combats such impregnation, releasing the man of the overwhelming weight of the agricultural horizon, to take man to the spiritual horizon that Jesus announced to the Samaritan woman.

While agricultural horizon’s men could only understand the unique God by a syncretistic form, a mixture of God and Man, the spiritual horizon’s men will understand God in a more pure form. It is not, however, two gods, but the same God, seen in two ways. Behind all forms of God, there is a single reality, which is God himself. That's what allows Jesus to say that he is the son of Jehovah, while pointing his universal Father, in spirit and truth.

Similarly, the fundamental principles of the Bible are not denied, but confirmed by the Gospels. The law is not destroyed, but confirmed. More than once they will serve to clarify the statement of Paul: "The law was a schoolmaster to bring us to Christ."

The historical process is not adversarial, but progressive

The Jewish Torah wasn’t worth only its transitional, and exterior circumstantial rules, but for its substance. This substance is the prevalent one, being  confirmed by Jesus in the two main commandments: "Love God above all things and your neighbor as yourself." The historical process is not adversarial, but progressive.

When we do not know how to see the lines of evolution in its natural development, we can only see the apparent contradictions of things. In the same way that the idea of God evolves with men, since the worship of the stone until the mythological forms, and from those the spiritual notions that we accept today, the principles and postulates in the Bible will also achieve its true expression in the Gospels, and finally its spiritualization in Spiritism.

There is a perfect thread in the historical process, which we cannot overlook. Thanks to this thread, the spirits could tell Kardec that Spiritism is the restoration of the Christianity, which is worth saying: the last stage of historical development of Christianity. When we know that it rose of Judaism, representing a natural development of the Jewish religion, then we understand that Spiritism, as Kardec claimed and Léon Denis maintained is the highest point we can achieve so far in our religious development. Jehovah, the agrarian-god, becomes the Gospel Father, to reach the "Supreme Intelligence" in Spiritism. Jehovah is refined, and with him the rites of his worship are refined as well, which ultimately become the "worship in spirit and truth," that Jesus spoke.

The “agricultural horizon” remains behind in our modern mentality. We are still unable to free ourselves from its agrarian formulas, its gods and cults, loaded with animal and plant sacrifices. The "civilized horizon" is carried out under the agricultural signs. But it will come, finally, the moment of transition to the "spiritual horizon" that will mark a phase of transcendence in human life.

In the Theological States, the political structure is similar to the metaphysical or divine structure. The Religion and the State shape themselves reciprocally, one on the other, and vice versa. The priestly class, organized rationally, prepare the myths in the intellectual frame, creating the theology, structuring the ritualism, establishing the genealogy of the gods and the forms of relations between them and men.

In the Egyptian theogamy the divine genealogy extends itself in the human genealogy of pharaohs, through the fertilization of the queen by a god. Amalgamated as the two powers, the temporal and the divine, in the flesh of the kings, the Theological States become monolithic. Even in Greece we see it: the human figure of Zeus, in his Olympic court, reflecting in the space the political structure of the nation.  

Slow and painful evolution

 "You will know the truth and the truth  will set you free."
Jesus. (Jo. 8:32.)

Herculano Pires continue with the book said:

"(...) With time man will be free of themselves, form their human condition, painstakingly constructed through social structures of the tribal horizon and agricultural horizon, looking for a more precise definition of their nature. In the tribal organization, they released themselves of the animal condition and the yoke of absolute forces of nature, to develop their own condition. In agricultural organization, he learned to master nature and submits it to his service, but he fell prisoner of the social structure. In the Civilized horizon he begins to break the ties of the social organization, to discover himself which he will only do when he becomes an individual.

The evolution of the Spirit is very clear in that huge process of historical development of Mankind. Man rises gradually from the jungle to civilization through the historical periods defined as "horizons", i.e. as the own universes, in which the different powers of the species are being trained together, until the development of reason promotes the process of individualisation. First of all, men differentiate themselves from Nature through the tribal group, then, they reaffirm their independence through the most extensive groups of agrarian civilizations, and then, they build the most complex groups of the large Oriental civilizations. In these groups, however, man discovers the possibility of stands out individually of the social structure. The human spirit is stated as individual, as autonomous entity, capable of overcoming not only nature, but also the humanity itself. " 

According to Joanna de Angelis: 

"(...) Human beings, move towards Reality, in which, want it or not, they are immersed because they are alive and unquenchable sparks...

Slowly the evolution imposes itself in an inevitable way because the progress is inexhaustible. Overwhelming waves will come for a moment, succeeding others which will also disappear, and the search of the "self" will lead to a different conduct, making room for authenticity, internalisation and self-discovery... 

It is necessary to keep us from the obtuseness of evasive ironists

For a long time the prevalence of the myth in the human unconscious will govern their behaviour. Even with its presence programs of ascension will be designed, through the dreams of beauty, peace and complete freedom, which will create future archetypes that will imprint in the unconscious, through the experiences in the spiritual world, where life simmers, and revelling on Earth it will developed the programs of evolution. "

The Spiritist Doctrine puts us face to face with the "spiritual horizon" that Jesus mentioned to the Samaritan woman; this horizon is totally different from all others which we have spent this long evolutionary journey from the time of the caves and primitive tribes ...

To not obstruct our evolutionary process, leaving it flow naturally and unhindered, it is necessary keep us of the minify and obtuseness of evasive ironists who are in numb conformity and are not interfered by the spiritist knowledge, because they are prisoners of the old "horizons and dominated by the varnish of myths and ancient fantasies which they do not give up.

Knowing the historical roots of atavistic and rooted customs that are lost in the mists of time, it's easier to identify current customs and therefore, we can work more efficiently in order to eradicate them from the Spiritist environment, freeing both the Spiritist Movement and the Spiritists centres of all the “habits and customs "that are still committed and attached to the past of ignorance from which we proceed.

This is the way for us to go towards the "civilized horizon", i.e. the "spiritual horizon" paying special attention to the words of Jesus to the Samaritan woman (3):

"(...) You worship what you do not know, but the time comes, and now is, when the true worshipers worship the Father in spirit and truth, because the Father seeks for those that worship Him. "

Notes:

(1) Pires, José Herculano. The Spirit and Time. 3.ed.São Paulo: EDIECEL, 1979.

(2) Second stage of human evolution. (For more information read the 1st part of this article, the previous edition of this magazine.)

(3) John, 4:22 and 23.

* The first part of this article was published in issue 106, May 10, 2009, this journal.