Spiritism and Reincarnation
As a young man, Flammarion was exposed to two significant social movements in the western word; the thoughs and ideas of Darwin and Lamarck, and the rising popularity of spiritism with spiritualist churches and organizations appearing all over Europe. He included both of them into his astronoical work, and has been described as an "astronomer, mystic and storyteller" who was "obsessed by life after death, and on other worlds, and seemed to see no distinction between the two." He was also very influenced by Jean Reynaud (1806–1863) and his Terre at ciel (1854), which described a religious system based on the transmigration of souls believed to be reconcilable with both Christianity and pluralism. He was convinced that souls after the physcial death pass from planet to planet, progressively improving at each new incarnation. Because of his scientific background, he approached spiritism, psychic research and reincarnation from the viewpoint of the scientific method, writing, "It is by the scientific method alone that we may make progress in the search for truth. Religious belief must not take the place of impartial analysis. We must be constantly on our guard against illusions.". He was chosen to speak at the funerals of Allan Kardec, codifier of Spiritism, on 2 April 1869, when he re-affirmed that "spiritism is not a religion but a science."
In Real and Imaginary Worlds (1864) and Lumen (1887), he "describes a range of exotic species, including sentient plants which combine the processes of digestion and respiration. This belief in extraterrestrial life, Flammarion combined with a religious conviction derived, not from the Catholic faith upon which he had been raised, but from the writings of Jean Reynaud and their emphasis upon the transmigration of souls. Man he considered to be a “citizen of the sky,” others worlds “studios of human work, schools where the expanding soul progressively learns and develops, assimilating gradually the knowledge to which its aspirations tend, approaching thus evermore the end of its destiny.”
His spiritist studies also influenced some of his science fiction, where he would write about his beliefs in a cosmic version of metempsychosis. In "Lumen", a human character meets the soul of an alien, able to cross the universe faster than light, that has been reincarnated on many different worlds, each with their own gallery of organisms and their evolutionary history. Other than that, his writing about other worlds adhered fairly closely to then current ideas in evolutionary theory and astronomy. Among other things, he believed that all planets went through more or less the same stages of development, but at different rates depending on their sizes.
The fusion of science, science fiction and the spiritual influenced other readers as well; "With great commercial success he blended scientific speculation with science fiction to propagate modern myths such as the notion that “superior” extraterrestrial species reside on numerous planets, and that the human soul evolves through cosmic reincarnation. Flammarion’s influence was great, not just on the popular thought of his day, but also on later writers with similar interests and convictions." Both George Griffith and Edgar Rice Burroughs are referring to him in their writing. In the English translation of Lumen, Brian Stapleford argues that both Olaf Staledon and Willian Hope Hodgson has likely been influenced by Flammarion. Arthur Conan Doyle's The Poison Belt, published 1913, also have a lot in common with Flammarion's worries about that the tail of Haileys' comet would be poisonous for earth life.
Read more about this topic: Camille Flammarion