Various modes of communication

Spirits communicate in many ways. The first of them took place through the phenomena of typology and gives sematology which are, respectively, communications through knocks (for example, 1 knock for yes and 2 for no) and those through the movement of objects (for example: the Spirit moves a table or a pencil in the direction of the letter or word that want to communicate).

These, however, were very rudimentary and even extremely tiring methods for both sides. Furthermore, much more attention was paid to the fact of spiritual intelligences acting behind the phenomena than to the transmission of superior teachings, since only inferior spirits are given to such phenomena - although they may be "at the service" of others. other higher spirits.

The use of the pencil tied to the basket was also a form of sematology, but, more properly, it is called by Kardec, at least at this moment, as indirect writing. Very quickly, however, and on the advice of the spirits themselves, this method was replaced by psychography, where the medium himself holds the pencil or pen and gives control of his hand to the communicant spirit.

The capacity and depth of this writing, obtained by psychography, depends a lot on the capacity of the medium himself and the communicant Spirit - in other words, the synergy between them. Some get long manuscripts of a higher order; others obtain writings that are impossible to read except by the mediums themselves, as if a kind of intuition guided them.

It is also important to remember that psychography can be more intuitive or more mechanical. When it is more mechanical, the medium's hands can be shaken, controlled, without the medium even knowing what he is writing. It is the opposite of what happens in the first case, where communication comes through intuition.

Another genre of communication is that of the word – what we now know as psychophony. The Spirit takes control of the Incarnate's vocal cords and transmits their communication. Sometimes these communications, however, happen without corporeal intermediation, which are the cases of voices we hear in the air or in our thoughts, as we will explain below.

It is interesting to note that the Spiritist Magazine was born before of The Mediums' Book, having some very well defined and important purposes: the first one was to propagate Spiritism as much as possible among the masses; the second would be to be able to obtain reports from all sources, verifying the contents methodologically and seeking the much-needed universal agreement. Many contents treated in the Journal, in a serious way and under this methodology, were later reproduced and deepened in other works, such as the one cited.

In this context and at that moment, Kardec uses a term that he has never used again – hence the importance of the above understanding: spiritualology, there being, then, two types of this phenomenon – that of the direct spiritualology and the one mediate spiritualology. They would be, respectively, the cases of direct verbal communications, where the spirits appear in a waking state, and the cases of communications where words and phrases sound in our thoughts or even in our ears.

This is, in short, one of the first steps, perhaps a sketch, of something much more grandiose and profound that, in a short time, would take shape in The Mediums' Book or Mediums and Evocators' Guide. We will return to this subject in the future, but you, dear reader, can delve into it, like so many others, in the study of this much-needed and recommended work.