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The Spiritist Principles

To believe in:

  • One God who is all powerful, sovereignly just and good;
  • The soul and its immortality;
  • The pre-existence of the soul as the only justification for conditions of the present;
  • The plurality of existences as a means of expiation, of reparation, and of moral and intellectual advancement;
  • The perfectibility of even the most imperfect beings and the growing happiness that corresponds to the process of perfection;
  • The equal rewards for good and bad, in agreement with the principal of: to each one according to his work;
  • The equality of justice for all, without exceptions, favors, or privileges for any individual;
  • The duration of atonement being limited or determined by the degree of one’s development and/or knowledge;
  • The Free Will of man, which always allows him to choose between good and bad;
  • The continuity that links the visible world to the invisible world;
  • The solidarity that reunites individuals, both incarnate and disincarnate, in their past, present, and future;

To consider the earthly life as transitory and only one phase in the life of the eternal Spirit;
To accept trials with courage, foreseeing a future much more pleasant than the present;
To practice charity, in the most inclusive sense of the word, through thoughts, words, and actions;
To make daily efforts toward becoming better than the day before, gradually eradicating imperfections of the soul;
To submit all beliefs to the control of free examination and reason, and to accept nothing on blind faith;
To respect all sincere beliefs of others, no matter how irrational they may seem, and to avoid violating anyone’s conscience;
To see, in the discoveries of science, the revelation of the natural laws which are God’s laws.

This is the “creed1” or the “belief” of Spiritism, a philosophical, scientific, ethical-moral doctrine that can be conciliated with all forms of adoration toward God. It is the bond that must unite all Spiritists in an elevated communion of thought, with the hope of joining all humankind under the flag of universal fraternity.

*SOURCE:
Allan Kardec, Speech at the Parisian Society of Spiritist Studies, Nov 1st, 1868.
Published in the Magazine “Revista Espirita” (Spiritist visit this site Review), Vol. 12 December 1868 – Edicei
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1 Statement of Belief