François Marie Gabriel Delanne (23 March 1857 - 15 February 1926) was a notable French spiritist

Spiritism

Spiritism is a loose corpus of religious faiths having in common the general belief in the survival of a spirit after death. In a stricter sense, it is the religion, beliefs and practices of the people affiliated to the International Spiritist Union, based on the works of Allan Kardec and others...

, psychical researcher, writer, and electrical engineer. He is best known for his book, "Le Phénomène spirite" (The Spiritist phenomenon).

Life and work

Delanne was born in Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

 in 1857. His father, Alexandre Delanne, was a friend of the well-known founder of spiritism Allan Kardec

Allan Kardec

Allan Kardec is the pen name of the French teacher and educator Hippolyte Léon Denizard Rivail . He is known today as the systematizer of Spiritism for which he laid the foundation with the five books of the Spiritist Codification.-Early life:Rivail was born in Lyon in 1804...

, and his mother was an automatic writing

Automatic writing

Automatic writing or psychography is writing which the writer states to be produced from a subconscious and/or spiritual source without conscious awareness of the content.-History:...

 medium

Mediumship

Mediumship is described as a form of communication with spirits. It is a practice in religious beliefs such as Spiritualism, Spiritism, Espiritismo, Candomblé, Voodoo and Umbanda.- Concept :...

 (Fr: "médium écrivain"). Delanne was one of the principal exponents of spiritism, apart from Léon Denis

Léon Denis

Léon Denis was a notable spiritist philosopher, and besides Gabriel Delanne and Camille Flammarion, one of the principal exponents of spiritism after the death of Allan Kardec...

 and Camille Flammarion

Camille Flammarion

Nicolas Camille Flammarion was a French astronomer and author. He was a prolific author of more than fifty titles, including popular science works about astronomy, several notable early science fiction novels, and several works about Spiritism and related topics. He also published the magazine...

, after the death of Kardec.

Delanne's writings were mainly concerned with the question of the immortality of the soul

Soul

A soul in certain spiritual, philosophical, and psychological traditions is the incorporeal essence of a person or living thing or object. Many philosophical and spiritual systems teach that humans have souls, and others teach that all living things and even inanimate objects have souls. The...

 and with reincarnation

Reincarnation

Reincarnation best describes the concept where the soul or spirit, after the death of the body, is believed to return to live in a new human body, or, in some traditions, either as a human being, animal or plant...

. As a spiritist, he favoured a scientific approach to psychic phenomena

Parapsychology

The term parapsychology was coined in or around 1889 by philosopher Max Dessoir, and originates from para meaning "alongside", and psychology. The term was adopted by J.B. Rhine in the 1930s as a replacement for the term psychical research...

. He managed "La Revue scientifique et morale du spiritisme" (The Scientific and Ethical review of Spiritism), the journal of the "Union Spirite Française" (French Spiritist Union), from its first appearance in March 1883.

Gabriel Delanne died in Paris in 1926, and was buried in Père Lachaise Cemetery

Père Lachaise Cemetery

Père Lachaise Cemetery is the largest cemetery in the city of Paris, France , though there are larger cemeteries in the city's suburbs.Père Lachaise is in the 20th arrondissement, and is reputed to be the world's most-visited cemetery, attracting hundreds of thousands of visitors annually to the...

.

Publications

By Delanne:

• Le Spiritisme devant la science (Paris, E. Dentu, 1885). French text
• Le Phénomène spirite, témoignage des savants, étude historique, exposition méthodique de tous les phénomènes, discussions des hypothèses, conseils aux médiums, la théorie philosophique (Paris, Leymarie éditeur, 1909).
• L'Évolution animique. Essais de psychologie physiologique suivant le spiritisme (2nd edition, Paris, Chamuel, 1897). French text.
• L'Âme est immortelle. Démonstration expérimentale de l'immortalité(Paris, Chamuel, 1899). French text.
• Evidence for a future life (P. Wellby; G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1904). English translation of "L'Âme est immortelle".
• Les Apparitions matérialisées des vivants et des morts: Volume 1, Volume 2 (Paris, Leymarie, 1909-1911, 2 vol.) pp. 528 & 842.
• Recherches sur la médiumnité (Paris, BPS, 1923).
• Documents pour servir à l'étude de la réincarnation (Paris, Vermet, 1985).

Incorporating writing of Delanne:

• Madame de Watteville. Ceux qui nous quittent, extraits de communications médianimiques (Saint-Victor-sur-Rhins, Éditions du Fil d'argent, 2007). Preface.
• G. Bourniquel & Delanne, G. Écoutons les morts (Paris, Henri Durville, no date) p.340.
• La Revue Métapsychique. Bulletin de l'Institut Métapsychique International.

Biography:

Bodier, Paul & Régnault, Henri. Un grand disciple d'Allan Kardec: Gabriel Delanne, sa vie, son apostolat, son œuvre (Paris: J. Meyer, B.P.S., 1937).

External links

• Short biography (Answers.com)
• Biography (Spiritist Group of New York).
• Biography (Centre Spirite Lyonnais Allan Kardec) in French