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| Fig. 1 Brazilian postage stamp released in 2010 in commemoration to Xavier´s birthday. |
Read more about Chico Xavier mediumship by
clicking here (access to SKL repository).
Introduction
Brazil has a spiritualist tradition that dates back to the beginning of Spiritualism. The Spiritualist movement in Brazil is known as Spiritism and started after several works on psychic phenomena that flourish around Hippolyte Léon Denizard Rivail (1804-1869) in the third quarter of the XIX century in France. Allan Kardec, as Rivail was to be known later, introduced a set of Spiritualist principles (Kardec, 1985) encompassing not only the basic precepts of Spiritualism such as life after death, the possibility of communication between the material and the ‘invisible’ worlds, but alto the belief in reincarnation. Granted the stable existence of many Spiritist groups in Brazil, many mediums found a highly favorable environment for the development of their faculties starting with physical manifestations (Ana Prado (Faria, 1921), Peixotinho (Palhano, 1997), Mirabelli (Palhano, 1994)) to mental mediumship. Automatic writing or psychography (Braude, 2003; Oxon, 1878; Piper, 1929) can be described as the most prominent feature of many Brazilian Spiritist mental mediums, resulting in the publication of many ‘channeled’ books and works.
Roughly speaking, this material can be divided in two groups: texts covering
the principles of Spiritualism from its inception in Brazil to the present date
and a vast collection of psychic or ‘channeled’ works that describe the
relationship between the Spiritist movement and the afterlife. If we focus on material
of paranormal origin, one figure must be distinguished: that of Francisco
Cândido Xavier (1910-2002, Fig. 1). His works
still remain to be carefully scrutinized and better understood not only as an
anthropological phenomenon but also as notorious evidence in favor of the
survival of consciousness. The aim of
this short summary is to present one of the first attempts to analyzed a very small
set of his works that were published in several grief counseling books
(Arantes, 2007; Barbosa, 1982, 1998, 1998b, 2008; Xavier, 1981, 1983) and that
contain a peculiar period of his life. During this phase he produced many
correspondences addressed to relatives on Earth from recently departed
personalities. Texts attributed to such authors contain a large amount of
information that cannot be easily explained by alternative hypothesis (i.e., that
deny consciousness survival) and that shows the high degree of development that
mental mediumship can achieve in a well-trained metal medium.
Xavier´s short biography
The first name
‘Francisco’ has a short form, ‘Chico’. Chico Xavier, as he was later known (Playfair,
2010; Leite, 2002; Grumbach, 2010; Filho, 2010), wrote more than 400 books
and virtually thousands letters or communications attributed to recently
deceased persons through automatic writing. Xavier mediumship started very
early when he was about 5 and described to his relatives frequent visits of his
deceased mother Maria João de Deus. Public notoriety came in 1932 with the
book ‘Parnassus from beyond the grave’
in which Xavier (then at the age 22) presented a vast repertoire of poems
attributed to Brazilian and Portuguese authors obtained through automatic writing
(Rocha, 2001). By the late 60´s Xavier dedicated a considerable amount of his
time to private correspondences as we explain below.
Statistics and psychography in other languages
 |
| TAble 1. |
In a recent paper (Xavier, 2011), we analyzed the pragmatic and
intentional content of these ‘private correspondences’ attributed to a large
number of authors (Grumbach, 2010). Grief counseling was the aim of these
paranormal compositions from the perspective of parents and relatives who
sought the medium after a recent loss. Using some basic elements of
linguistic analysis, we showed how pragmatics and intention are present in
those writings and how they contribute to build a convincing image of the
possibility of communication with discarnate personalities. In fact, several
hierarchical aspects (Rigotti, 2006) are present in a written communications in
general (morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics and intention), but in
automatic writings, such aspects become especially relevant in face of our
complete ignorance on regard to the mechanism involved (Beischel, 2009). Thus,
if in a message, many names of living relatives are found, such names must be
taken into account as instances of morphological importance. If the medium uses
words and sentences similar to those attributed to the diseased author, these
are examples of private semantic content. Moreover, if the medium communicates
intentional messages in the form of sentences of pragmatic value, a high level
of interaction is probably taking place that is most easily explained in the
context of survivalist hypothesis. Therefore, these correspondences build a
dramatic case in favor of survival, given the large number of Xavier´s documented
reports, which are however a tiny fraction of what was produced during a period
of almost 40 years.
 |
| Fig. 2 (a) Distribution of number of words; (b) Distribution of author's age. |
We present here a study of statistical content where
we have analyzed the content of 113 letters attributed to 87 different authors
(Barbosa, 1982, 1998, 1998b, 2008; Xavier, 1981, 1983). Almost all messages
were written in the native language of the medium (Portuguese), with exception
of 2 cases written in Italian. Table 1 contains general statistical figures
extracted from the sample. The total number of words in each letter is
approximated by a numerical estimation based on the word density (length and
width of each text). The table has two parts. The general statistics lists the
total number of analyzed letters, the total number of authors and average and
standard deviations for the average number of words per letter as well as the
expected distribution of author´s age at the time of their death. A large
variation in the letter´s length and author age was found. Maximum letter
length in the sample was 1467 words and the minimum was 26. Maximum author age
was 85 while the minimum was 3. In the case of very young children, two aspects
must be regarded: a) the annotated age is the author’s age at the time of
death, while the automatic writing communication was obtained several months or
years later; b) in many communication of young children the signed name is only
an alias of the true author who is often quoted in the letters as a close
relative; c) In the vast majority of letters, grandmothers and grandfathers
(and also grand-grand mothers and fathers) from both family sides are the
diseased ‘contacts’ or ‘hosts’ in the spirit world. Authorship inference comes
from the context (also from the presence of known relative names) and pragmatic
content of each letter that was later validated by the families. Another
interesting statistics is presented in the second part of Table 1, which brings
the average number of citations of ‘living’ and ‘deceased’ people in the
letters together with their corresponding standard deviations. The total number
of citations of ‘living’ relatives in the analyzed sample is 526 and names of
diseased ones are 414. An interesting aspect of our analysis is the large number
of nicknames (both belonging to the ‘living’ and ‘deceased’ counterparts), 151.
So, at least one nickname per letter is found in the sample. Many old family first
names (and most certainly nicknames) were not on the minds of those to whom the
letters were addressed. Moreover, given the environment where these
correspondences were obtained, almost none previous knowledge on the part of
the medium can be assumed which would involve an impossible network of
information acquisition as many skeptics have suggested. Rather, they demonstrate the degree of
information and detail a well-trained medium in automatic writing can provide.
 |
| Fig.3 Distribution of causes of death encountered in the sample. |
Fig 2(a) is the distribution histogram of letter´s length where each bin in the abscissa is the maximum number of words found (thus 20% of the letters have more than 314.2 and less than 458.3 words). Fig.2(b) is the age distribution of attributed authors. Therefore, 5% of the letters are attributed to authors under 11 years old. Fig. 3 is the distribution of author´s causes of death. The large frequency of car crash causes is directly related to high frequency of authors between 20 and 30 years old.
 |
| Fig. 4 Automatic writing in Italian attributed to Alberto Corradi. |
To give an example of automatic writing in a different language
(therefore in completely distinct linguistic framework), we regard in the following
a letter attributed to Alberto Corradi (1958-1978) (Barbosa, 2008). The
original text is in Italian (see Fig. 4), includes the attributed author
signature and was obtained in a sitting at Uberaba/MG, Brazil, on March 16
1979, almost 10 month after Corradi death in a motorcycle accident in Italy, on
May 1978. A version of this message in English (parts 1-4) is as follows:
“My mother, dear beloved mommy Ebe. I ask
you not to cry any more. Your tears are like flames of pain in my heart. I stay
here with my beloved grand-grandma Tina and my grand-grandpa Amadei . Keep calm.
God is with us. A kiss of your son to you and my dad. Alberto Corradi.”
Alberto’s
parents lived in Torino, Italy and came to Brazil to try a message from
Alberto. The relatives quoted in the message are Alberto’s father grandparents,
Mr. Vittorio Amadei and Mrs. Tina Amadei
(bisnono and bisnona as stated in the message, respectively).
Final Remarks
Many researchers in the past relied upon evidences coming from
physical phenomena in favor of survival and the possibility of communication
with the afterlife. However, given the preeminent communication aspect of many
mental mediumship manifestations exhibiting a rich pragmatic and intentional
content, it is probably more correct to say that mental mediumship provides
today the best evidences for the survivalist idea. Xavier´s prolific automatic
writing works contain a large amount of information gathered through paranormal
ways that is best explained under the assumption of an unseen world that can be
put in contact with the physical world. Such material is still little known
outside a very narrow domain of the Spiritist community in Brazil and includes a
private correspondences or letters that contain a large amount of family
specific information. The aim of this paper is to call attention to the
existence of this material, which may represent one of the best registered
cases of confirmed paranormal acquisition of information in favor of the
survival idea.
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Alexandre Caroli Rocha for useful discussions and references.
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