Historia del Espiritismo en Italia

History of Spiritualism in Italy

In 1855, the powerful English medium Daniel Dunglas Home (1833-1886), suffering from consumption, was forced to come to Italy, to Florence, for health reasons. The phenomena produced by Home are astonishing. He is the only medium, or one of the few, to operate in full light and without ever going into a trance. His very controlled levitations have become famous, culminating in the one on 13 December 1868, when, in the presence of Lord Adare, Lord Lindsay and Captain Wynne, he levitated out of one fourth-floor window and returned through another. There were also numerous materialisations: hands caressing those present and complete ghosts, one of whom once picked up an accordion and walked among those present playing it. The same accordion on which Home played various popular tunes by simply holding it with two fingers and enclosed in a metal cage. Incombustibility is also part of his powers, in fact, he used to pick up hot coals with his bare hands, directly from the cooker, without being harmed. Even in Florence, his phenomena continued to be more and more striking, but they terrified the locals, who considered him possessed and forced him to flee. But at this point, people's attention and interest began to be aroused and spiritism, according to Kardec's doctrine, began to be proselytised. In 1870, in fact, there were more than a hundred spiritism societies in Italy.

In 1863 the Spiritist Society was founded in Palermo; Vincenzo Scarpa (Niceforo Filalete) founded in Turin the Annals of Spiritism, which he directed until his death in 1898. In 1937, the university professor of psychology Emilio Servadio, Giovanni Schepis, professor of statistics, and Ferdinando Cazzamalli, director of the psychiatric hospital of Como, founded in Rome the Italian Society of Metapsychics (S.I.M.), recognised by the State. Servadio was particularly active and, with his prestige, contributed to keeping the name of Italian parapsychology high, participating in all the most important congresses and attracting the attention of scholars with his interventions. In 1946, a part of the members of the S.I.M., led by Cazzamalli, separated from it to create, in Milan, the Associazione Scientifica Italiana di Metapsichica (A.I.S.M.), which is still active, while the S.I.M. adopted in 1955 the name of Società Italiana di Parapsicologia (S.I.P.), which it still keeps. In 1948 the Centro Emiliano di Metapsichica (Emilian Centre of Metapsychics) was founded in Bologna, which in 1953 became the Centro di Studi Parapsicologici (C.S.P.) on the initiative of the gynaecologist Enrico Marabini, Dr. Piero Cassoli, Dr. Massimo Inardi and other scholars. In 1963, the Italian Centre of Parapsychology (C.I.P.) was founded with the programme to carry out scientific research in the field of mediumistic phenomenology, as well as in all paranormal cases. In Rome, in 1960, the Faculty of Psychological and Parapsychological Sciences was created at university level at the Accademia Tiberina. In the meantime, a young academic, thanks to a séance in which his mother seems to have manifested herself, loses his strict positivist mentality to become a convinced spiritism. Thus Ernesto Bozzano (1862-1943) was born on the paranormal scene. The scholar was fascinated by these subjects, threw himself body and soul into their study, and in 1899, together with Dr. Giuseppe Bendano and the journalist Luigi Arnaldo Vassallo, editor of ‘Secolo XIX’, founded in Genoa the Circolo Scientifico Minerva for the study of paranormal phenomena, Soon joined by the neuropsychiatrist Professor Enrico Morselli and the astronomer Professor Francesco Porro , both from the University of Genoa, it was the most important Italian study centre for four years.

Tribute Plaque Vincenco Giovanni Scarpa.

Famous from this centre are the ten sessions with Eusapia Palladino from 17 May to 8 June 1901 with phenomena of materialisation, levitation and telekinesis so astonishing that they convinced the very sceptical Morselli of the reliability of the facts. In 1922 he decided to devote himself entirely to the study of the paranormal. He adopted the method of Comparative Analysis and the convergence of evidence of Robert Dale Owen and used it throughout his life. He began the analytical study of all the cases he could find, and began to collect and catalogue them systematically, quickly becoming the most important and prepared exponent of scientific Spiritism first in Italy and then in Europe. His literary output, more than 15,000 pages of books and articles, is considered of enormous theoretical value throughout the world and forms the basis of the immense library that would later become the Bozzano - De Boni Library, one of the largest in the world in this field. Gastone De Boni (1908-1986) was linked to Bozzano by a fraternal friendship and, on the latter's death, inherited his enormous library, which at the time consisted of some 10,000 volumes. A physician and metapsychologist, he became interested in parapsychology in 1923. In 1924, he entered the orbit of the glorious magazine ‘Luce e Ombra’, founded in 1900 and still today, more active than ever, considered the most important in Italy in the field of the paranormal. In 1941 he published the first book on Parapsychology in Italy. In 1948, he became a member of the S.P.R.. An indefatigable, obstinate, absolutely objective and convinced spiritist, he studied the most important European mediums, experimenting and documenting exceptional phenomena which he later recounted in his books: ‘L'uomo alla conquista dell'anima’ and ‘Metapsichica: scienza nell'anima’. He directed ‘Luce e Ombra’ until his death, when he was replaced by Silvio Ravaldini (1925-2015), author of the book ‘Realtà e Ombra’ (‘Reality and Mystery’) in which he testified to the extraordinary paranormal phenomena that occurred in his house.

From left to right: Eusapia Palladino, Ernesto Bozzano, Gastone De Boni, Silvio Ravaldini.