O corpo da alma: cosmos, casa e corpo espírita kardecista

Abstract

The object of this study is to understand and highlight the role of the body in religious field by investing in an analysis of brazilian kardecist spiritual embodiment, which is constructed by social representations and imaginary. The analytical effort and the distribution of the chapters are based on the schema macro/microscopic – “Cosmos-house-body”. The first part deals with the construction of kardecism by its encoder, the French intellectual Hippolyte Rivail, known as Alan Kardec (Paris, 1804-1869), and its pretensions to unify “science, philosophy and religion”, producing a Cosmos. The second part presents the Spiritist Centre as a sacred space of its ritual universe. The third and last part is focused on the “body”, as semantic referential, which appears too as heuristic tool for analysis. Analyzing the conceptions and imaginary over the body in Kardecism, this work proposes that relations between the spiritual world, the Spiritist Centre and the body are crucial for understanding the spiritist person.