I’ve been blessed over the last couple of years with a driving curiosity about the various spiritual paths toward liberation from suffering. If I want non-Buddhists as well as Buddhists to benefit from what I write, I need to understand the range of belief systems. Reddit has helped me there. It’s where I first came across Kardecism.

At first glance, it seems like an obscure 19th-century European curiosity. But with millions of practitioners in Brazil and growing interest elsewhere, it deserves attention.

Allan Kardec was the pen name of Hippolyte Léon Denizard Rivail, a French educator who in 1857 published The Spirits’ Book. He wasn’t trying to start a religion. He was attempting to systematize what he believed were communications from spirits through mediums. The result became a comprehensive philosophy addressing many of the same questions Buddhism tackles through different methods and with some different answers.

As one who sees the donut before thinking about the hole, I’ll start with similarities.

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