Garment of the Spirits
 

We present in this issue the topic #92 from the Systematized Study of the Spiritist Doctrine, that is being presented weekly, according to the programme elaborated by the Brazilian Spiritist Federation (FEB), structured in 6 modules and 147 topics.

If the reader uses this program for a study group, we suggest that questions proposed be discussed freely before the reading of the text that follows. If you would like to study alone, we ask you to try to answer the questions at first and only then read the text that follows. The answer key can be found at the end of the lesson. 

Questions

1. What kind of garment do the disincarnated Spirits present themselves?

2. Are there disincarnated who show themselves wearing just a plain tunic?

3. Has any psychic medium related seeing Spirits completely naked?

4. Where do the Spirits get their clothes and articles?

5. Why do some Spirits present themselves covered in rags and tatters?

 Text

Many Spirits wear a plain tunic as garment

1. Testimonies of psychic mediums agree on the fact that Spirits are usually seen wearing any garment. In some cases, the outfits of the Spirits present a great abundance of details, several patterns and amazing colours.

2. Some of them present themselves wearing costumes or typical garments, with characteristic adornments of a certain historic period. Psychics have registered, regarding to this fact, the most various types of clothes, which resembles from light fabric, vaporous, lacy, to the heavy or gross ones. Tunics of diversified colours, trousers, shirts, jackets, vests, ties, short or long skirts, blouses, coats, uniforms, rich apparel, modern and ancient, modest clothes, poor and even covered in rags or tatters – that’s what the mediums have related about the subject.

3. Some garments described by psychics favour printed vivid colours, as it happens with Spirits who present themselves with the appearance of gypsies, who still exhibit, necklaces, big earrings and bracelets. Some others present themselves wearing uniforms, showing off armours, helmets and even guns, while there are those who hide their head with a hood.

4. Among the observed garments, it is verified, however, that the most common is the tunic. Such is the case of Spirits fully spiritualized, as Adolfo Bezerra de Menezes and Bittencourt Sampaio, who Yvonne A. Pereira has seen wearing a long vaporous tunic, white, sparkling, slightly graduated in blue, as the notable medium depicts on her book Penetrating the Invisible, pages 51 to 55.

There are Spirits who are seen completely naked

5. As Yvonne Pereira relates in the quoted work, the Spirits show themselves, quite often, wearing what they used to when they were incarnated. Those who were men present themselves with the usual suit; women show themselves with dresses of habitual usage. Few present themselves with clothes similar to the one they were wearing at the burial of their physical body.

6. Some Spirits – adds Yvonne – can be observed completely naked. That’s what happens with those who were men and women of low moral condition who dragged themselves into existences consecrated to carnal excesses and to the corruption of customs and, therefore, can appear nude to psychic mediums, even revealing, in depressing scenes – which were usual to them in the state of incarnated – the mental degradation in which they still remain.

7. One question that imposes itself, in the matter in focus, is to know where they Spirits get their clothes and articles. Kardec deals with the theme in two works – The Book of the Mediums and Genesis -, in which he explains that Spirits manipulate the spiritual fluids through their thought and will. With the action of thought, they print on these fluids such or which direction and agglomerate, combine or spread them, organising clusters that perform an appearance, a shape, a certain coloration.

8. The spiritual fluids are, therefore, the element of the spiritual world, from which substances are extracted to the most various purposes. It’s with the help of this material principle that the perispirit covers itself with garments similar to those the Spirit used to wear when incarnated.

The fluidic garment indicates the superiority of the Spirit

9. There are Spirits, however, who notice that they are dressed and they don’t have the slightest idea of how this happens, which means, they not always have the knowledge of how their garments are formed. Concur, that way, to their formation acting instinctively. Yvonne A. Pereira gives, in this purpose, an interesting testimony in her book Penetrating the Invisible, in which she describes the case of Joaquim Pires, who presented to her vision wearing clothes with dirt, or better, impressions of portions of dirt in which he was buried. Joaquim Pires was a suicide in the last existence.

10 As a rule, the Spirits dress themselves and change the appearance of their garments according to their please, exclusion made to some who are very inferior, like criminals and obsessors of nethermost moral condition, whose mind doesn’t possess the necessary vibrations to carry out the required plastic operation. That’s why the appearance of those last mentioned is usually shocking to the psychic, by the ugliness or simply by the poverty of shapes, since they present themselves covered in rags and tatters, as if soaked with mud or hidden in long black palls, with cloaks or capes enfolding shoulders and head.

11. Léon Denis teaches in his book After Death that the fluidic garment indicates the superiority or inferiority of the Spirit. It is like a covering formed by your merits and by the qualities acquired along the succession of your existences.

12. Opaque and shady in the inferior soul, its purity increases according to the progress achieved, becoming more and more pure. Bright in the elevated Spirit, it gets, in superior souls, to obfuscate other Spirits.

Answer Key

1. What kind of garment do the disincarnated Spirits present themselves?

A.: Spirits are usually seen wearing any garment, in some cases, presents a great abundance of details, several patterns and amazing colours. Some of them present themselves wearing costumes or typical garments. Psychics have registered, regarding to this fact, the most various types of clothes, which resembles from light fabric, vaporous, lacy, to the heavy or gross ones.

2. Are there disincarnated who show themselves wearing just a plain tunic?

A.: Yes and such fact is quite common.

3. Has any psychic medium related seeing Spirits completely naked?

A.: Yes. Yvonne A. Pereira refers to this saying that such fact can occur to those who were men and women of low moral condition who dragged themselves into existences consecrated to carnal excesses and to the corruption of customs and, therefore, can appear nude to psychic mediums.

4. Where do the Spirits get their clothes and articles?

A.: Kardec says that Spirits manipulate the spiritual fluids through their thought and will, with what they print on these fluids such or which direction and agglomerate, combine or spread them, organising clusters that perform an appearance, a shape, a certain coloration. It’s with their help that the perispirit covers itself with garments similar to those the Spirit used to wear when incarnated.

5. Why do some Spirits present themselves covered in rags and tatters?

A.: It happens in some cases with criminals and obsessors of nethermost moral condition, whose mind doesn’t possess the necessary vibrations to carry out the required plastic operation. That’s why their appearance is usually shocking by the ugliness or simply by the poverty of shapes, since they present themselves covered in rags and tatters, as if soaked with mud or hidden in long black palls, with cloaks or capes enfolding shoulders and head.
 

Bibliography:

The Genesis, by Allan Kardec, Chapter 14, item 14.

The Book of the Mediums, by Allan Kardec, Chapter VIII, items 126 to 131.

After Death, by Léon Denis, FEB, Page 226.

Penetrating the Invisible, by Yvonne A. Pereira, FEB, Pages 47 to 60.