Evocation of Spirits in Abyssinia

Paulo Degering R Jr
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The Ethiopian Empire, also known as Abyssinia, was an empire that occupied the present territories of Ethiopia and Eritrea, existing from approximately the year 1270 (beginning of the Solomonic dynasty) until 1974, when the monarchy was deposed by a coup d'état. Therefore, it still existed at the time of Allan Kardec.

Kardec opens the article by citing a narration by James Bruce (1730 – 1794), a Scottish explorer and writer, in his work Voyage aux sources du Nil, in which he says he is appalled by the practices of witchcraft and evocation of the Devil practiced by the king of Gingiro, a small kingdom in the southern part of Abyssinia.

Kardec points out that, had Bruce known Spiritism, he would have seen that there was nothing absurd there (in terms of evocations). In addition, it would be a people that, for sure, kept a large number of Jewish traditions and some rudimentary ideas of Christianity in which, for lack of knowledge, they absorbed the idea of the Devil, not understanding that they were for inferior spirits who made their sacrifices.

Two ambassadors that Socinius, to the king of Abyssinia, sent to the pope, around 1625, and who had to cross the Gingiro. It was then necessary that the king be asked for an audience for the caravan to cross his territory. The king happened to be in ceremonial, and he ordered the ambassador and his attendant to wait eight days for the audience with him. After the deadline, the delegation was received.

The central area in orange corresponds to the Abyssinian territory.

What Kardec thinks is that at such a short distance there was still degradation and ignorance in doing everything through consultations with Spirits being so close to the main intellectual centers. It merges this idea with the local temperature, which, being hot, could be potentiated in cold climates. He compares the Ethiopians, who cover almost the whole of Abyssinia, with the Gingerans, who neither worship the devil, nor pretend to have any communication with him; nor do they sacrifice men on their altars; in short, there was no trace of this revolting atrocity among them.

Our encoder continues the censorship by stating that the king of Gingiro sacrificed to Devil, at that time of the slave trade, the poor people who would have the destiny of being exiled, given the proximity of that kingdom to the sea, because, away from the coast, their safety was guaranteed.

As we have seen, Mr. Bruce is the narrator of the story, and if he had seen what we are witnessing today, he would have found nothing astonishing in the practice of the evocations used in Gingiro. He only saw in them a superstitious belief, while we find its cause in the fact of falsely interpreted manifestations, which could take place there as in other documented places.

To end the article, when sacrificing human beings, Kardec concludes, with complete confidence in the light of Spiritism, that they could not attract superior Spirits to their midst. It is attributed to credulity the fact that the barbarian peoples worshiped an evil power the phenomena that they could not explain, because it was a very backward people morally and spiritually.

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