Congruent, validated answers were eventually compiled and organized into what become known as “The Spirits’ Book”. “The Spirits’ Book” was first published on April 18, 1857 containing 501 questions and answers. The second edition was published in 1860 and contained 1,018 — a testament to the ever-growing, ever-learning nature of Spiritism. The third edition — considered final and the one we use today — included minor revisions and numbered one more question to end at the total of 1,019 we know today. As an educator, Kardec also understood the importance of primary sources and thus chose to reproduce the answers from the spiritis verbatim, avoiding editorializing unless greater context would help. Finally, Kardec organized The Spirits’ Book into four parts to facilitate understanding: 1) Primary Causes; 2) The Spirit World; 3) Moral Laws; and 4) Hopes and Solaces.The result is an impactful work which begs the reader to reach its own conclusions about the facts presented. Spiritism After The Spirits’ Book Chapter 1 (Earthly Joys and Sorrows) is about the meaning of the experiences we have on Earth, both good and bad.

The Complete Book of Spirits: A Guide to Their History

A newly introduced main character in The Labyrinth of the Spirits, Alicia, a police agent in the fascist era, is explicitly a Spanish version of Lewis Carroll’s Alice, who, just as typically, was also the inspiration for Ariadne, the protagonist of the eight lost Mataix novels. But Alicia is also compared to Cinderella; she has, like two of the women in Wilkie Collins’s The Moonstone (a favourite Zafón text) a physical disability; and, consciously or unconsciously, also seems to incorporate elements of Lisbeth Salander in Stieg Larsson’s Millennium series. Chapter 3 (Vital Principle) is about the differences between animate and inanimate beings, between the living and the dead and the features of intelligence compared to instinct. And one of those things is this teaching that St. John the Forerunner, John the Baptist, went to Hades to preach the coming of Christ. Now, you’re not going to see that in the Bible, but it is a belief that is actually in Orthodox tradition. I actually noticed this for the first time just a few years ago, and the funny thing is it’s actually kind of staring you in the face. It’s referenced in lots of places, especially in our liturgical tradition. So, for instance, a couple weeks ago, on the New Calendar we just celebrated the Beheading of John the Baptist, that feast, and I had noticed that in the apolytikion, which is kind of one of the main hymns for the feast, that it actually mentions that he goes to Hades to preach there. I’d sung it for years, but I’d never just taken notice of that particular phrase. It’s in the apolytikion, so I started looking at other texts, and you know what? It’s in the kontakion, too, the other main hymn for the day. Then I started looking at more and more, especially throughout the Menaion, which is the main set of festal texts for the feast—and it’s everywhere. It’s mentioned over and over that he goes to the underworld to preach to those in Hades. Fr. Andrew: Yes! And we’re just sort of stumbling through this, too. I’m learning how to do this. So thank you for bearing with us.

Michael: Yeah, that was excellent. I feel a bit misled by our education system, so I appreciate you both clearing that up for me.

Book of Angels - Cambridge Scholars Publishing The Book of Angels - Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Fr. Stephen: It gets complicated, because the Septuagint does it different ways, but, yes, it’s the same kind of idea: God of the powers. The hymn, the trisagion there, the “Holy, holy, holy, Lord Sabaoth,” is being sung by the angels, and it’s a way of the angels expressing and worshiping him as their God. That’s a way we don’t always think about it, and that’s why there’s a similar phrase also in our memorial prayers, which is actually taken directly from the Book of Jubilees, a different piece of Enochic literature, where the prayer begins, “O God of spirits and of all flesh…” In the past few years, a lot of things have really opened my eyes to whole parts of Orthodox tradition that are there and that are often staring us in the face, but that we’re often not paying attention to. I’ll just give one example. So you’re probably going to hear us talk a lot about what we’re going to call spiritual geography. Where is paradise, where is the underworld, the mountain of God, Hades—all this kind of stuff. One of the things, one of the teachings that’s actually preserved in the Orthodox Church and has been handed down for many, many centuries but that I—I’ve been an Orthodox Christian for 25 years now—that I never actually paid attention to. So if you’d come up to me and said, “Does the Church teach this?” I would be like, “Uh… I’ve never heard that.” This idea of polytheism versus monotheism is actually a relatively later kind of notion in Western intellectual history. The reason why the idea of monotheism was kind of come up with was to kind of group sets of religions together. We’re monotheists and Jews are monotheists and Muslims are monotheists, and over here you have polytheists, these other kinds of religions. But I don’t think anyone in the ancient world would have looked at it that way. I mean, that’s not the way religion works and the way people understood it. The question is really not, “Is there only one God?” which is what monotheism means, that there’s only one god. We see the Bible doesn’t teach only one god. The difference is that there’s only one God that you worship. The other significant difference is that the God whom we worship, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, is a very different kind of divine being from all these other divine beings. Fr. Andrew: I know we’re going to get into it in a future discussion, but, if I remember correctly, part of why this is important in this case is that in that time and place, a woman displaying her glorious hair openly was regarded as essentially a thing to do to attract men. Doubly inappropriate for church, but as to why that is considered attractive to men in that time and place we’re going to have to save it for a future episode. It’s going to blow your mind when you hear it, though, folks.Fr. Andrew: I just wanted to make another… Because we’re going to be talking, I know, because we’re both nerds in different ways and on different levels for sure, but we’re going to be talking a lot about words and what they mean and how they’re used and how they’re used in lots of different ways. Someone might counter and say, “Doesn’t the word elohim, doesn’t that mean ‘gods’ in Hebrew? Doesn’t elohim just mean the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit? Doesn’t that just mean Yahweh?” Is that the case? Is elohim only used in the Hebrew Bible for Yahweh? Fr. Stephen: Like the court of a king. So it’s talking about the council of God, basically, and people on the council.

Angels and Demons: Introducing Lord of Spirits - Ancient Faith Angels and Demons: Introducing Lord of Spirits - Ancient Faith

The Deer of Cernunnos ( Jek-Kookan to the Wendigo/Uktena and Kerdh-Dhue to the Get of Fenris, Kerheist) Fr. Stephen: Right, so the term elohim is used to apply to him. The biblical author is not saying that the Prophet Samuel was another person of the Trinity or that he was a polytheist and the Prophet Samuel now lived on Mount Olympus or something. [Laughter] That’s not what he’s going for. The word is just flexible to include that. Fr. Stephen: However, evil angels can die. We just read from Psalm 82. We didn’t read the verse, but verses 6 and 7.Fr. Stephen: Well, just going along with what you were just saying, one of the questions that we will probably end up getting asked relatively frequently is sort of why people haven’t heard this stuff before.