Mediumship
Encyclopedia
Mediumship is described as a form of communication
with spirit
s. It is a practice in religious beliefs such as Spiritualism, Spiritism
, Espiritismo
, Candomblé
, Voodoo
and Umbanda
.
(it is not necessary to go into a trance, it all depends on the medium's control and knowledge) and speak without knowledge of what is being said, to allow a spirit to control their body and speak through it, perhaps using a writing instrument (as in automatic writing
or drawing).
Mediumship is also part of the belief system of some New Age
groups. In this context, and under the name "channelling", it refers to a medium (the channel) who is said to receive messages from a "teaching-spirit". In some cultures, mediums (or the spirits to whom they are connected) reportedly produce physical paranormal
phenomena such as materialisations of spirits, apport
s of objects, or levitation.
, tells of one who raised the spirit of the deceased prophet Samuel to allow the Hebrew king Saul
to question his former mentor about an upcoming battle, as related in the First book of Samuel
in the Jewish Tanakh
(the Old Testament
).
Mediumship became quite popular in the 19th-century United States and the United Kingdom
after the rise of Spiritualism as a religious movement. Modern Spiritualism is said to date from practices and lectures of the Fox sisters
in New York
state 1848. The trance mediums Paschal Beverly Randolph
and Emma Hardinge Britten
were among the most celebrated lecturers and authors on the subject in the mid-19th century.
Allan Kardec
coined the term Spiritism
around 1860. Kardec claimed that conversations with spirits by selected mediums were the basis of his The Spirits' Book and later, his five-book collection, Spiritist Codification
.
After the exposure of the fraudulent use of stage magic tricks
by physical mediums such as the Davenport Brothers
and the Bangs Sisters
, mediumship fell into disrepute. The practice continued among people who believed that the dead can be contacted and tried to do so.
From the 1930s through the 1990s, as psychical mediumship became less practiced in Spiritualist church
es, the technique of "channelling" gained in popularity. Books by channellers who claimed to relate the wisdom of non-corporeal and non-terrestrial teacher-spirits became best-sellers amongst believers.
-born Spiritualist C. Dorreen Phillips wrote of her experiences with a medium at Camp Chesterfield
, Indiana
: "In Rev. James Laughton's séances there are many Indians
. They are very noisy and appear to have great power. [...] The little guides, or doorkeepers, are usually Indian boys and girls [who act] as messengers who help to locate the spirit friends who wish to speak with you." Then, describing the mediumship of Rev. Lillian Dee Johnson of Saint Petersburg, Florida, she noted, "Mandy Lou is Rev. Johnson's guide. [..] She was, on earth, a slave to Rev. Johnson's grandmother."
in Chesterfield, Indiana
: "Services are held each afternoon, consisting of hymns, a lecture on philosophy, and demonstrations of mediumship."
Today "demonstration of mediumship" is part of the church service at all churches affiliated with the National Spiritualist Association of Churches
(NSAC). Demonstration links to NSAC's Declaration of Principal #9. "We affirm that the precepts of Prophecy and Healing are Divine attributes proven through Mediumship."
. The medium mentally "hears" (clairaudience), "sees" (clairvoyance), and/or feels (clairsentience) messages from spirits. Directly or with the help of a spirit guide, the medium passes the information on to the message's recipient(s). When a medium is doing a "reading" for a particular person, that person is known as the "sitter."
Most trance
mediums remain conscious during a communication period, wherein a spirit uses the medium's mind to communicate. The spirit or spirits using the medium's mind influences the mind with the thoughts being conveyed. The medium allows the ego
to step aside for the message to be delivered. At the same time, one has awareness of the thoughts coming through and may even influence the message with one's own bias. Such a trance is not to be confused with sleepwalking
, as the patterns are entirely different. Castillo (1995) states,
In the 1860s and 1870s, trance mediums were very popular. Spiritualism generally attracted female adherents, many who had strong interests in social justice. Many trance mediums delivered passionate speeches on abolitionism
, temperance
, and women's suffrage
. Scholars have described Leonora Piper
as one of the most famous trance mediums in the history of Spiritualism.
In the typical deep trance, the medium may not have clear recall of all the messages conveyed while in an altered state; such people generally work with an assistant. That person selectively wrote down or otherwise recorded the medium's words. Rarely did the assistant record the responding words of the sitter and other attendants. An example of this kind of relationship can be found in the early 20th century collaboration between the trance medium Mrs. Cecil M. Cook of the William T. Stead Memorial Center in Chicago (a religious body incorporated under the statutes of the State of Illinois) and the journalist Lloyd Kenyon Jones
. The latter was a non-medium Spiritualist who transcribed Cook's messages in shorthand
. He edited them for publication in book and pamphlet form.
Physical mediumship may involve perceptible manifestations, such as loud raps and noises, voices, materialized objects, apport
s, materialized spirit bodies, or body parts such as hands, and levitation. The medium is used as a source of power for such spirit manifestations. By some accounts, this was achieved by using the energy or ectoplasm
released by a medium, see Spirit photography
. The last physical medium to be tested by a committee from Scientific American
was Mina Crandon
in 1924.
Most physical mediumship is presented in a darkened or dimly lit room. Most physical mediums make use of a traditional array of tools and appurtenances, including spirit trumpets, spirit cabinets, and levitation tables.
The term "physical mediumship", should not be construed as implying that any induced apport is confined to the physical plane. The apport ("ectoplasm", or whatever) may be composed of "etheric", "astral", "mental", or "causal" substance (i.e., a substance naturally residing on one of those planes and only temporarily transported into the physical plane). Instead, the term "physical mediumship" is employed to imply an effect manifested upon [objects naturally existing on] the physical plane, by means of interaction (merely physical, not chemical) with substance transported out (temporarily) of another plane of existence.
from living persons (not limited to the medium) to create a spirit voice-box, which enables the spirits to communicate with the living during seances. This form included the medium Leslie Flint
.
is known for her alleged communication with angelic entities.
The other incarnation of non-physical mediumship is a form of channeling in which the channeler goes into a trance, or "leaves their body". He or she becomes "possessed" by a specific spirit (spirit possession), who then talks through them. In the trance, the medium enters a cataleptic state marked by extreme rigidity. As the control spirit takes over, the medium's voice may change completely. The spirit answers the questions of those in its presence or giving spiritual knowledge.
A widely known channeler of this variety is J. Z. Knight, who channels the spirit of Ramtha, a 30 thousand-year-old man. Others claim to channel spirits from "future dimensional", ascended masters, or ,in the case of the trance mediums of the Brahma Kumaris, God. Other notable channels are Jane Roberts
for Seth, Esther Hicks
for Abraham, Margaret McElroy for Maitreya
, Serge J. Grandbois for Kris, Barbara Marciniak, and Wendy Kennedy both for the Pleiadian Collective, Darryl Anka
for Bashar, and Lee Carroll
for Kryon.
, Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, Emma Hardinge Britten
, Edgar Cayce
, George Chapman
, Andrew Jackson Davis
, Jeane Dixon
, Arthur Ford
, the Fox sisters
, Elizabeth "Betty" Grant
, Daniel Dunglas Home
, M. Lamar Keene
, Dada Lekhraj
, Ruth Montgomery
, Eusapia Palladino
, Leonora Piper
, Paschal Beverly Randolph
, Jane Roberts
, Doris Stokes
, Paul Solomon
, Stanisława Tomczyk and Chico Xavier
.
Notable living mediums include: Derek Acorah
, Rosemary Altea
, Marisa Anderson
, Sylvia Browne
, Chip Coffey
, Allison DuBois
, John Edward
, Danielle Egnew
, Divaldo Pereira Franco
, Colin Fry
, Esther Hicks
, John of God, J. Z. Knight, Char Margolis
, Sally Morgan
, James Van Praagh
, Gary Spivey
, Tony Stockwell
, Neale Donald Walsch
, Darryl Anka
, David Wells
, and Lisa Williams
.
has investigated some phenomena, mainly in connection with telepathy
and apparitions
. According to an article in the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, in some cases media have produced personal information which has been well above guessing rates. One of the more noteworthy recent investigations into mediumship is known as the Scole Experiment, a series of mediumistic séances that took place between 1993–98 in the presence of the researchers David Fontana, Arthur Ellison and Montague Keen. This has produced photographs, audio recordings and physical objects which appeared in the dark séance room (known as apports). According to paranormal researcher Brian Dunning
the Schole experiments fail in many ways. The seances were held in the basement of two of the mediums, only total darkness was allowed with no night vision apparatus as it might "frighten the spirits away". The box containing the film was not examined and could easily have been accessible to fraud. And finally, even though many years have passed, there has been no follow-up, no further research by any credible agency or published accounts.
The VERITAS Research Program of the Laboratory for Advances in Consciousness and Health in the Department of Psychology at the University of Arizona
, run by Gary Schwartz
, was created primarily to test the hypothesis that the consciousness (or identity) of a person survives physical death. Studies conducted by VERITAS into mediumship have been approved by the University of Arizona Human Subjects Protection Program and an academic advisory board. Schwartz claimed his 2005 experiments were indicative of survival, but do not yet provide conclusive proof.
An experiment conducted by the British Psychological Society
suggests that under the controlled condition of the experiment, people who claimed to be professional mediums do not demonstrate the mediumistic ability. In the experiment, mediums were assigned to work the participants chosen to be “sitters.” The mediums contacted the deceased who were related to the sitters. The research gather the numbers of the statements made and have the sitters rate the accuracy of the statements. The readings that were considered to be somewhat accurate by the sitters were very generalized, and the ones that were considered inaccurate were the ones that were very specific.
In a 1973 essay published in the University of the Witwatersrand
medical school journal, “The Leech”, current director of the Pacific Neuropsychiatric Institute, Vernon Neppe proposed that the human personality survives bodily death and concluded that that the “dead” have communicated with the living. Neppe referenced A.C. Munday-Castle’s hypothesis on the neurophysiological implications of parapsychology; a timeless, spaceless universe in which all things or events exist but in a more dormant sense, where drugs such as LSD may free the cerebral cortex from the “modulating effect of the brain stem reticular activating system,” allowing the cortex to run free. Neppe described a possibility that under such circumstances the individual is exposed to a purely mental universe, independent of matter, that contains all mental events, which may in some way overlap or be interlinked with the ordinary physical four-dimensional universe. Neppe also proposed that scientific investigation of parapsychological phenomena regarding brain function may imply an attempt to test the validity of these experiences. Neppe describes one such scientific investigation:
“In a study of twelve subjects, ten women and two men, ranging in age between 18 and 66 years, and consisting of eleven mediums and an “automatic writer” (all of whom volunteered through the agency of the South African Society for Psychical Research), G.K. Nelson adopted the following procedure: routine EEG examinations were carried out, usually with the subject in a separate room from the recording equipment. Photic stimulation was the only activating procedure applied in all cases. Six cases went into a trance after an initial few minutes of EEG monitoring."
"In the resting EEG recordings, ten out of the twelve eases showed localized signs of temporal lobe instability. The young automatic writer showed a partial suppression of alpha rhythms on the left side. Asymmetries and or asynchronies of EEG activity were therefore present in 11 of the 12 subjects almost equally divided between the dominant and non-dominant hemispheres as far as the site of maximum effect was concerned. (Interhemispheric differences in amplitude of the alpha rhythm are by no means uncommon; indeed the alpha amplitude often tends to be lower in the dominant hemisphere. It is only when the amplitude in one hemisphere is less than half that in the other that one takes particular note of such a difference — the EEG of the automatic writer showed such a difference."
"EEG abnormalities of the kind often found in the interictal EEGs of patients with epilepsy were seen in five cases in the form of paroxysmal bursts or focal spikes and sharp waves. Three other cases showed occasional sharp waves, raising the possibility of cortical hyperexcitability. Only four cases had EEGs of the kind usually associated with epilepsy and there were no reports of fits in the histories of any of the twelve volunteers. For these reasons the possibility exists that if the EEG signs are valid indices of temporal lobe dysfunction this is of a non-epileptic kind.”
According to Neppe, although the validity of mediumistic experience is neither confirmed nor denied by the presence of an unusual anatomical or physiological characteristic in the brain, such findings show that parapsychological phenomena are at least partly a function of the brain, and could serve to strengthen the hypothesis that certain people by reason of their individual pattern of brain function may be in a position more readily to experience a mental universe which is independent of matter.
In 1976, M. Lamar Keene
, a medium in Florida
and at the Spiritualist Camp Chesterfield
in Indiana
, confessed to defrauding the public in his book The Psychic Mafia. Keene
detailed a multitude of common stage magic techniques utilized by mediums which are supposed to give an appearance of paranormal powers or supernatural involvement.
Communication
Communication is the activity of conveying meaningful information. Communication requires a sender, a message, and an intended recipient, although the receiver need not be present or aware of the sender's intent to communicate at the time of communication; thus communication can occur across vast...
with spirit
Spirit
The English word spirit has many differing meanings and connotations, most of them relating to a non-corporeal substance contrasted with the material body.The spirit of a living thing usually refers to or explains its consciousness.The notions of a person's "spirit" and "soul" often also overlap,...
s. It is a practice in religious beliefs such as Spiritualism, Spiritism
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...
, Espiritismo
Espiritismo
Espiritismo is the Latin American and Caribbean belief that good and evil spirits can affect health, luck and other elements of human life....
, Candomblé
Candomblé
Candomblé is an African-originated or Afro-Brazilian religion, practised chiefly in Brazil by the "povo de santo" . It originated in the cities of Salvador, the capital of Bahia and Cachoeira, at the time one of the main commercial crossroads for the distribution of products and slave trade to...
, Voodoo
Voodoo
Haitian Vodou is a syncretic religion that originates in the Caribbean country of Haiti. It is based upon a merging of the beliefs and practices of West African peoples , with Arawakian religious beliefs, and Roman Catholic Christianity...
and Umbanda
Umbanda
Umbanda is an Afro-Brazilian religion that blends African religions with Catholicism, Spiritism and Kardecism, and considerable indigenous lore....
.
Concept
A medium is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as "a person believed to be in contact with the spirits of the dead and to communicate between the living and the dead". The role of the medium is to facilitate communication with spirits who have messages to share with non-mediums. Mediums claim to be able to listen to, relay messages from, and relate conversations with spirit, to go into a tranceTrance
Trance denotes a variety of processes, ecstasy, techniques, modalities and states of mind, awareness and consciousness. Trance states may occur involuntarily and unbidden.The term trance may be associated with meditation, magic, flow, and prayer...
(it is not necessary to go into a trance, it all depends on the medium's control and knowledge) and speak without knowledge of what is being said, to allow a spirit to control their body and speak through it, perhaps using a writing instrument (as in 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:...
or drawing).
Mediumship is also part of the belief system of some New Age
New Age
The New Age movement is a Western spiritual movement that developed in the second half of the 20th century. Its central precepts have been described as "drawing on both Eastern and Western spiritual and metaphysical traditions and then infusing them with influences from self-help and motivational...
groups. In this context, and under the name "channelling", it refers to a medium (the channel) who is said to receive messages from a "teaching-spirit". In some cultures, mediums (or the spirits to whom they are connected) reportedly produce physical paranormal
Paranormal
Paranormal is a general term that designates experiences that lie outside "the range of normal experience or scientific explanation" or that indicates phenomena understood to be outside of science's current ability to explain or measure...
phenomena such as materialisations of spirits, apport
Apport
According to parapsychologists and ghost hunters, an apport is the paranormal transference of an article from one place to another, or an appearance of an article from an unknown source that is often associated with poltergeist activity or spiritualistic séances. The Skeptic's Dictionary states...
s of objects, or levitation.
History
Attempts to communicate with the dead and other living human beings, aka spirits, have been documented back to early human history. The story of the Witch of EndorWitch of Endor
The Witch of Endor, sometimes called the Medium of Endor, was a woman who called up the ghost of the recently deceased prophet Samuel, at the demand of King Saul of the Kingdom of Israel in the First Book of Samuel, chapter...
, tells of one who raised the spirit of the deceased prophet Samuel to allow the Hebrew king Saul
Saul
-People:Saul is a given/first name in English, the Anglicized form of the Hebrew name Shaul from the Hebrew Bible:* Saul , including people with this given namein the Bible:* Saul , a king of Edom...
to question his former mentor about an upcoming battle, as related in the First book of Samuel
Books of Samuel
The Books of Samuel in the Jewish bible are part of the Former Prophets, , a theological history of the Israelites affirming and explaining the Torah under the guidance of the prophets.Samuel begins by telling how the prophet Samuel is chosen by...
in the Jewish Tanakh
Tanakh
The Tanakh is a name used in Judaism for the canon of the Hebrew Bible. The Tanakh is also known as the Masoretic Text or the Miqra. The name is an acronym formed from the initial Hebrew letters of the Masoretic Text's three traditional subdivisions: The Torah , Nevi'im and Ketuvim —hence...
(the Old Testament
Old Testament
The Old Testament, of which Christians hold different views, is a Christian term for the religious writings of ancient Israel held sacred and inspired by Christians which overlaps with the 24-book canon of the Masoretic Text of Judaism...
).
Mediumship became quite popular in the 19th-century United States and the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
after the rise of Spiritualism as a religious movement. Modern Spiritualism is said to date from practices and lectures of the Fox sisters
Fox sisters
The Fox sisters were three sisters from New York who played an important role in the creation of Spiritualism. The three sisters were Leah Fox , Margaret Fox and Kate Fox . The two younger sisters used "rappings" to convince their much older sister and others that they were communicating with...
in New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
state 1848. The trance mediums Paschal Beverly Randolph
Paschal Beverly Randolph
Randolph also edited the Leader and the Messenger of Light between 1852 to 1861 and wrote for the Journal of Progress and Spiritual Telegraph .2 as anonymous.3 under the pseudonym "Count de St. Leon".- References :...
and Emma Hardinge Britten
Emma Hardinge Britten
Emma Hardinge Britten is known for her work as an advocate for the early Modern Spiritualist Movement. Due to the publication of her speeches and writing on the spiritual movement, and an incomplete autobiography which was edited by her sister, much of Emma’s life and work is publicly recorded....
were among the most celebrated lecturers and authors on the subject in the mid-19th century.
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...
coined the term Spiritism
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...
around 1860. Kardec claimed that conversations with spirits by selected mediums were the basis of his The Spirits' Book and later, his five-book collection, Spiritist Codification
Spiritist Codification
Spiritist Codification is the customary name given by spiritists to the set of books codified by Allan Kardec. The books are a compilation of questions made by Allan Kardec and answers allegedly dictated by Spirits, between the years 1857 and 1868...
.
After the exposure of the fraudulent use of stage magic tricks
Magic (illusion)
Magic is a performing art that entertains audiences by staging tricks or creating illusions of seemingly impossible or supernatural feats using natural means...
by physical mediums such as the Davenport Brothers
Davenport Brothers
Ira Erastus Davenport and William Henry Davenport , known as the Davenport Brothers, were American magicians in the late 19th century, sons of a Buffalo, New York policeman...
and the Bangs Sisters
Bangs Sisters
The "Bangs Sisters", Mary "May" E. Bangs and Elizabeth "Lizzie" Snow Bangs were mediums out of Chicago, who made a career out of painting the dead or "Spirit Portraits," without ever have met the fallen.-Early Years :...
, mediumship fell into disrepute. The practice continued among people who believed that the dead can be contacted and tried to do so.
From the 1930s through the 1990s, as psychical mediumship became less practiced in Spiritualist church
Spiritualist Church
A Spiritualist church is a church affiliated with the informal Spiritualist movement which began in the United States of America in the 1840s. Spiritualist churches are now found around the world, but are most common in English-speaking countries, while in Latin America, where a form of...
es, the technique of "channelling" gained in popularity. Books by channellers who claimed to relate the wisdom of non-corporeal and non-terrestrial teacher-spirits became best-sellers amongst believers.
Spirit guide
In 1958, the EnglishEngland
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
-born Spiritualist C. Dorreen Phillips wrote of her experiences with a medium at Camp Chesterfield
Camp Chesterfield
Camp Chesterfield was founded in 1886 and is the home of the Indiana Association of Spiritualists, located in Chesterfield, Indiana. Camp Chesterfield offers Spiritualist Church services, seminary, and mediumship, faith healing, and spiritual development classes, as well as psychic readings for...
, Indiana
Indiana
Indiana is a US state, admitted to the United States as the 19th on December 11, 1816. It is located in the Midwestern United States and Great Lakes Region. With 6,483,802 residents, the state is ranked 15th in population and 16th in population density. Indiana is ranked 38th in land area and is...
: "In Rev. James Laughton's séances there are many Indians
Indigenous peoples of the Americas
The indigenous peoples of the Americas are the pre-Columbian inhabitants of North and South America, their descendants and other ethnic groups who are identified with those peoples. Indigenous peoples are known in Canada as Aboriginal peoples, and in the United States as Native Americans...
. They are very noisy and appear to have great power. [...] The little guides, or doorkeepers, are usually Indian boys and girls [who act] as messengers who help to locate the spirit friends who wish to speak with you." Then, describing the mediumship of Rev. Lillian Dee Johnson of Saint Petersburg, Florida, she noted, "Mandy Lou is Rev. Johnson's guide. [..] She was, on earth, a slave to Rev. Johnson's grandmother."
Demonstrations of mediumship
In old-line Spiritualism, a portion of the services, generally toward the end, is given over to demonstrations of mediumship through contact with the spirits of the dead. A typical example of this way of describing a mediumistic church service is found in the 1958 autobiography of C. Dorreen Phillips. She writes of the worship services at the Spiritualist Camp ChesterfieldCamp Chesterfield
Camp Chesterfield was founded in 1886 and is the home of the Indiana Association of Spiritualists, located in Chesterfield, Indiana. Camp Chesterfield offers Spiritualist Church services, seminary, and mediumship, faith healing, and spiritual development classes, as well as psychic readings for...
in Chesterfield, Indiana
Chesterfield, Indiana
Chesterfield is a town in the U.S. state of Indiana which lies in Union Township, Madison County. The population was 2,547 at the 2010 census. It is part of the Anderson, Indiana Metropolitan Statistical Area.-Geography:...
: "Services are held each afternoon, consisting of hymns, a lecture on philosophy, and demonstrations of mediumship."
Today "demonstration of mediumship" is part of the church service at all churches affiliated with the National Spiritualist Association of Churches
National Spiritualist Association of Churches
The National Spiritualist Association of Churches is one of the oldest and largest of the Spiritualist churches in the United States. It was formed in 1893 in Chicago, Illinois. Among its leaders were Harrison D. Barrett and James M. Peebles, both former Unitarian clergymen, and Cora L. Richmond,...
(NSAC). Demonstration links to NSAC's Declaration of Principal #9. "We affirm that the precepts of Prophecy and Healing are Divine attributes proven through Mediumship."
Mental mediumship
"Mental mediumship" is communication of spirits with a medium by telepathyTelepathy
Telepathy , is the induction of mental states from one mind to another. The term was coined in 1882 by the classical scholar Fredric W. H. Myers, a founder of the Society for Psychical Research, and has remained more popular than the more-correct expression thought-transference...
. The medium mentally "hears" (clairaudience), "sees" (clairvoyance), and/or feels (clairsentience) messages from spirits. Directly or with the help of a spirit guide, the medium passes the information on to the message's recipient(s). When a medium is doing a "reading" for a particular person, that person is known as the "sitter."
Trance mediumship
"Trance mediumship" is often seen as a form of mental mediumship.Most trance
Trance
Trance denotes a variety of processes, ecstasy, techniques, modalities and states of mind, awareness and consciousness. Trance states may occur involuntarily and unbidden.The term trance may be associated with meditation, magic, flow, and prayer...
mediums remain conscious during a communication period, wherein a spirit uses the medium's mind to communicate. The spirit or spirits using the medium's mind influences the mind with the thoughts being conveyed. The medium allows the ego
Ego (spirituality)
In spirituality, and especially nondual, mystical and eastern meditative traditions, individual existence is often described as a kind of illusion. This "sense of doership" or sense of individual existence is that part which believes it is the human being, and believes it must fight for itself in...
to step aside for the message to be delivered. At the same time, one has awareness of the thoughts coming through and may even influence the message with one's own bias. Such a trance is not to be confused with sleepwalking
Sleepwalking
Sleepwalking, also known as somnambulism, is a sleep disorder belonging to the parasomnia family. Sleepwalkers arise from the slow wave sleep stage in a state of low consciousness and perform activities that are usually performed during a state of full consciousness...
, as the patterns are entirely different. Castillo (1995) states,
In the 1860s and 1870s, trance mediums were very popular. Spiritualism generally attracted female adherents, many who had strong interests in social justice. Many trance mediums delivered passionate speeches on abolitionism
Abolitionism
Abolitionism is a movement to end slavery.In western Europe and the Americas abolitionism was a movement to end the slave trade and set slaves free. At the behest of Dominican priest Bartolomé de las Casas who was shocked at the treatment of natives in the New World, Spain enacted the first...
, temperance
Temperance movement
A temperance movement is a social movement urging reduced use of alcoholic beverages. Temperance movements may criticize excessive alcohol use, promote complete abstinence , or pressure the government to enact anti-alcohol legislation or complete prohibition of alcohol.-Temperance movement by...
, and women's suffrage
Women's suffrage
Women's suffrage or woman suffrage is the right of women to vote and to run for office. The expression is also used for the economic and political reform movement aimed at extending these rights to women and without any restrictions or qualifications such as property ownership, payment of tax, or...
. Scholars have described Leonora Piper
Leonora Piper
Leonora Piper was a famous trance medium in the area of Spiritualism. Piper was the subject of intense interest and investigation by American and British psychic research associations during the early 20th century, most notably William James and the Society for Psychical Research. She claimed to...
as one of the most famous trance mediums in the history of Spiritualism.
In the typical deep trance, the medium may not have clear recall of all the messages conveyed while in an altered state; such people generally work with an assistant. That person selectively wrote down or otherwise recorded the medium's words. Rarely did the assistant record the responding words of the sitter and other attendants. An example of this kind of relationship can be found in the early 20th century collaboration between the trance medium Mrs. Cecil M. Cook of the William T. Stead Memorial Center in Chicago (a religious body incorporated under the statutes of the State of Illinois) and the journalist Lloyd Kenyon Jones
Lloyd Kenyon Jones
Lloyd Kenyon Jones was a newspaper journalist, lecturer, and author who was raised in Wisconsin and became associated with the religion of Spiritualism during the early 20th century....
. The latter was a non-medium Spiritualist who transcribed Cook's messages in shorthand
Shorthand
Shorthand is an abbreviated symbolic writing method that increases speed or brevity of writing as compared to a normal method of writing a language. The process of writing in shorthand is called stenography, from the Greek stenos and graphē or graphie...
. He edited them for publication in book and pamphlet form.
Physical mediumship
"Physical mediumship" is defined as manipulation of energies and energy systems by spirits.Physical mediumship may involve perceptible manifestations, such as loud raps and noises, voices, materialized objects, apport
Apport
According to parapsychologists and ghost hunters, an apport is the paranormal transference of an article from one place to another, or an appearance of an article from an unknown source that is often associated with poltergeist activity or spiritualistic séances. The Skeptic's Dictionary states...
s, materialized spirit bodies, or body parts such as hands, and levitation. The medium is used as a source of power for such spirit manifestations. By some accounts, this was achieved by using the energy or ectoplasm
Ectoplasm (paranormal)
Ectoplasm is a term coined by Charles Richet to denote a substance or spiritual energy "exteriorized" by physical mediums...
released by a medium, see Spirit photography
Spirit photography
Spirit photography is a type of photography whose primary attempt is to capture images of ghosts and other spiritual entities, especially in ghost hunting. It was first used by William H. Mumler in the 1860s. Mumler discovered the technique by accident, after he discovered a second person in a...
. The last physical medium to be tested by a committee from Scientific American
Scientific American
Scientific American is a popular science magazine. It is notable for its long history of presenting science monthly to an educated but not necessarily scientific public, through its careful attention to the clarity of its text as well as the quality of its specially commissioned color graphics...
was Mina Crandon
Mina Crandon
Mina "Margery" Crandon was the wife of a wealthy Boston surgeon and socialite, Dr. Le Roi Goddard Crandon. She became well known as a medium who claimed that she channeled her dead brother, Walter Stinson.-Biography:...
in 1924.
Most physical mediumship is presented in a darkened or dimly lit room. Most physical mediums make use of a traditional array of tools and appurtenances, including spirit trumpets, spirit cabinets, and levitation tables.
The term "physical mediumship", should not be construed as implying that any induced apport is confined to the physical plane. The apport ("ectoplasm", or whatever) may be composed of "etheric", "astral", "mental", or "causal" substance (i.e., a substance naturally residing on one of those planes and only temporarily transported into the physical plane). Instead, the term "physical mediumship" is employed to imply an effect manifested upon [objects naturally existing on] the physical plane, by means of interaction (merely physical, not chemical) with substance transported out (temporarily) of another plane of existence.
Direct voice
Direct voice communication involves spirits extracting ectoplasmEctoplasm
Ectoplasm may refer to:* Ectoplasm , the outer part of the cytoplasm* Ectoplasm , supposed physical substance that manifests as a result of spiritual energy or psychic phenomenon...
from living persons (not limited to the medium) to create a spirit voice-box, which enables the spirits to communicate with the living during seances. This form included the medium Leslie Flint
Leslie Flint
Leslie Flint was a British medium who is credited as having been one of the last psychics to use direct-voice mediumship. He has been described as the most renowned psychic of the 20th century....
.
Channeling
In the latter half of the 20th century, Western mediumship developed in two different ways. One type involves psychics or sensitives who claim to speak to spirits and then relay what they hear to their clients. Clairvoyant Danielle EgnewDanielle Egnew
Danielle Egnew is a psychic, musician, actress, media personality, and activist known in the areas of music, film, radio and television for both performing and producing in all four genres...
is known for her alleged communication with angelic entities.
The other incarnation of non-physical mediumship is a form of channeling in which the channeler goes into a trance, or "leaves their body". He or she becomes "possessed" by a specific spirit (spirit possession), who then talks through them. In the trance, the medium enters a cataleptic state marked by extreme rigidity. As the control spirit takes over, the medium's voice may change completely. The spirit answers the questions of those in its presence or giving spiritual knowledge.
A widely known channeler of this variety is J. Z. Knight, who channels the spirit of Ramtha, a 30 thousand-year-old man. Others claim to channel spirits from "future dimensional", ascended masters, or ,in the case of the trance mediums of the Brahma Kumaris, God. Other notable channels are Jane Roberts
Jane Roberts
Jane Roberts was an American author, poet, psychic and spirit medium, who said she had "channeled" a personality she called "Seth". Her publication of the Seth texts, known as the "Seth Material", established her as one of the preeminent figures in the world of paranormal phenomena...
for Seth, Esther Hicks
Esther Hicks
Esther Hicks is an American inspirational speaker and best-selling author. She has co-authored nine books with her husband Jerry Hicks, presented workshops on the Law of Attraction and appeared in the first release of the film The Secret...
for Abraham, Margaret McElroy for Maitreya
Maitreya
Maitreya , Metteyya , or Jampa , is foretold as a future Buddha of this world in Buddhist eschatology. In some Buddhist literature, such as the Amitabha Sutra and the Lotus Sutra, he or she is referred to as Ajita Bodhisattva.Maitreya is a bodhisattva who in the Buddhist tradition is to appear on...
, Serge J. Grandbois for Kris, Barbara Marciniak, and Wendy Kennedy both for the Pleiadian Collective, Darryl Anka
Darryl Anka
Darryl Anka started his Hollywood career as a visual and special effects artist who has worked on, among many others, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, I Robot, Pirates of the Caribbean, Live Free or Die Hard and Iron Man. After that he started working as a producer and writer...
for Bashar, and Lee Carroll
Lee Carroll
Lee Carroll is an American channeller, speaker and author.Originally an audio engineer, Carroll claims that he began to channel communication with an entity from a higher dimension called Kryon in 1989...
for Kryon.
Psychic senses
In Spiritualism, psychic senses used by mental mediums are sometimes defined differently than in other paranormal fields. The term clairvoyance, for instance, may be used by Spiritualists to include seeing spirits and visions instilled by spirits. The Parapsychological Association defines "clairvoyance" as information derived directly from an external physical source.- ClairvoyanceClairvoyanceThe term clairvoyance is used to refer to the ability to gain information about an object, person, location or physical event through means other than the known human senses, a form of extra-sensory perception...
or "Clear Seeing", is the ability to see anything that is not physically present, such as objects, animals or people. This sight occurs "in the mind’s eye". Some mediums say that this is their normal vision state. Others say that they must train their minds with such practices as meditation in order to achieve this ability, and that assistance from spiritual helpers is often necessary. Some clairvoyant mediums can see a spirit as though the spirit has a physical body. They see the bodily form as if it were physically present. Other mediums see the spirit in their mind's eye, or it appears as a movie or a television programme or a still picture like a photograph in their mind. - Clairaudience or "Clear Hearing", is usually defined as the ability to hear the voices or thoughts of spirits. Some Mediums hear as though they are listening to a person talking to them on the outside of their head, as though the Spirit is next to or near to the medium, and other mediums hear the voices in their minds as a verbal thought.
- Clairsentience or "Clear Sensing", is the ability to have an impression of what a spirit wants to communicate, or to feel sensations instilled by a spirit.
- ClairsentinenceClairvoyanceThe term clairvoyance is used to refer to the ability to gain information about an object, person, location or physical event through means other than the known human senses, a form of extra-sensory perception...
or "Clear Feeling" is a condition in which the medium takes on the ailments of a spirit, feeling the same physical problem which the spirit person had before death. - Clairalience or "Clear Smelling" is the ability to smell a spirit. For example, a medium may smell the pipe tobacco of a person who smoked during life.
- Clairgustance or "Clear Tasting" is the ability to receive taste impressions from a spirit.
- Claircognizance or "Clear Knowing", is the ability to know something without receiving it through normal or psychic senses. It is a feeling of "just knowing". Often, a medium will claim to have the feeling that a message or situation is "right" or "wrong."
Notable mediums
Notable deceased mediums include: Clifford BiasClifford Bias
Clifford Bias was a prominent psychic in early 20th-century America.-Early life:Born in Huntington, West Virginia in 1910, he claimed that since the age of five he had been able to communicate with people who had long since died. President Franklin D...
, Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, Emma Hardinge Britten
Emma Hardinge Britten
Emma Hardinge Britten is known for her work as an advocate for the early Modern Spiritualist Movement. Due to the publication of her speeches and writing on the spiritual movement, and an incomplete autobiography which was edited by her sister, much of Emma’s life and work is publicly recorded....
, Edgar Cayce
Edgar Cayce
Edgar Cayce was an American psychic who allegedly had the ability to give answers to questions on subjects such as healing or Atlantis while in a hypnotic trance...
, George Chapman
George Chapman (healer)
George Chapman was an English trance spiritual healer and medium. Active for 60 years, he was a medium for the spirit of "Dr...
, Andrew Jackson Davis
Andrew Jackson Davis
Andrew Jackson Davis , American Spiritualist, was born at Blooming Grove, New York.- Early years :He had little education, though probably much more than he and his friends pretended. In 1843 he heard lectures in Poughkeepsie on animal magnetism, as the phenomena of hypnotism was then termed, and...
, Jeane Dixon
Jeane Dixon
Jeane L. Dixon was one of the best-known American astrologers and psychics of the 20th century, due to her syndicated newspaper astrology column, some well-publicized predictions, and a best-selling biography....
, Arthur Ford
Arthur Ford
Arthur Ford was an American psychic spiritual medium, clairaudient and in 1955 founded the Spiritual Frontiers Fellowship.- Biographical problems :...
, the Fox sisters
Fox sisters
The Fox sisters were three sisters from New York who played an important role in the creation of Spiritualism. The three sisters were Leah Fox , Margaret Fox and Kate Fox . The two younger sisters used "rappings" to convince their much older sister and others that they were communicating with...
, Elizabeth "Betty" Grant
Stewart Edward White
Stewart Edward White was an American author.-Biography:Born in Grand Rapids, Michigan he attended Grand Rapids High School, and earned degrees from University of Michigan ....
, Daniel Dunglas Home
Daniel Dunglas Home
Daniel Dunglas Home was a Scottish physical medium with the reported ability to levitate to a variety of heights, speak with the dead, and to produce rapping and knocks in houses at will. His biographer Peter Lamont opines that he was one of the most famous men of his era...
, M. Lamar Keene
M. Lamar Keene
Morris Lamar Keene, born about 1938, is a former spirit medium in Tampa, Florida and at Camp Chesterfield, Indiana, where he was known as the "Prince of the Spiritualists"...
, Dada Lekhraj
Dada Lekhraj
Lekhraj Khubchand Kripalani , , also known as Bhai or Dada Lekhraj was the Co-founder of Brahma Kumaris World Spiritual University movement...
, Ruth Montgomery
Ruth Montgomery
Ruth Shick Montgomery was a self-described Christian psychic in the tradition of Jeane Dixon and Edgar Cayce. She was a biographer of Dixon and a protégée of Arthur Ford who claimed he could access the Akashic Records of the Universe.Montgomery initially believed her mission on Earth was to...
, Eusapia Palladino
Eusapia Palladino
Eusapia Palladino was a Spiritualist medium from Naples in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies ....
, Leonora Piper
Leonora Piper
Leonora Piper was a famous trance medium in the area of Spiritualism. Piper was the subject of intense interest and investigation by American and British psychic research associations during the early 20th century, most notably William James and the Society for Psychical Research. She claimed to...
, Paschal Beverly Randolph
Paschal Beverly Randolph
Randolph also edited the Leader and the Messenger of Light between 1852 to 1861 and wrote for the Journal of Progress and Spiritual Telegraph .2 as anonymous.3 under the pseudonym "Count de St. Leon".- References :...
, Jane Roberts
Jane Roberts
Jane Roberts was an American author, poet, psychic and spirit medium, who said she had "channeled" a personality she called "Seth". Her publication of the Seth texts, known as the "Seth Material", established her as one of the preeminent figures in the world of paranormal phenomena...
, Doris Stokes
Doris Stokes
Doris May Fisher Stokes , born Doris Sutton, was a British spiritualist and psychic medium.She was a controversial figure, with some believing her to possess psychic abilities, while sceptics stated that her performances amounted to nothing more than cold reading, a technique used to create the...
, Paul Solomon
Paul Solomon
Paul Solomon was a professed psychic and seer who claimed to channel answers to questions asked of him from a metaphysical "Source", similar to Douglas Cottrell, Andrew Jackson Davis and Edgar Cayce...
, Stanisława Tomczyk and Chico Xavier
Chico Xavier
Chico Xavier, born Francisco de Paula Cândido was a popular medium in Brazil's spiritism movement who wrote 413 books, ostensibly using a process known as "psychography"....
.
Notable living mediums include: Derek Acorah
Derek Acorah
Derek Acorah is a British medium. He is best known for his work on Most Haunted, broadcast on Living, between 2002 and 2005. He recently presented the series Derek Acorah on Sky Real Lives...
, Rosemary Altea
Rosemary Altea
Rosemary Altea is a New York Times best - selling author and psychic medium. She has appeared on various televisions shows, including Larry King Live, The Oprah Winfrey Show "20/20," "Unsolved mysteries", "Prime Time, with Diane Sawyer," "Politically Incorrect," "Leeza," "The View," and Fox and...
, Marisa Anderson
Marisa Anderson
Marisa Anderson is a psychic consultant and medium from Scarsdale, New York who specializes in remote viewing to sense and locate missing persons from a distance...
, Sylvia Browne
Sylvia Browne
Sylvia Browne is an American author who describes herself as a psychic and spiritual medium...
, Chip Coffey
Chip Coffey
Chip Coffey is an American psychic from Elmira, New York, currently living in Atlanta, Georgia. He appears as a medium on various paranormal television programs, primarily Paranormal State and Psychic Kids. On Psychic Kids he acts as a mentor towards children who have allegedly experienced psychic...
, Allison DuBois
Allison DuBois
Allison DuBois is an American author and medium. DuBois has controversially claimed to possess psychic abilities and use them to help U.S. law enforcement officials solve crimes, which formed the basis of the TV series Medium....
, John Edward
John Edward
John Edward McGee, Jr. is an American television personality and professional psychic medium. He is best known for his TV shows Crossing Over with John Edward and John Edward Cross Country....
, Danielle Egnew
Danielle Egnew
Danielle Egnew is a psychic, musician, actress, media personality, and activist known in the areas of music, film, radio and television for both performing and producing in all four genres...
, Divaldo Pereira Franco
Divaldo Pereira Franco
Divaldo Pereira Franco is a prominent Spiritist speaker and medium.He represented Spiritism as a delegate to the United Nations August 28–31st, 2000, Millennium World Peace Summit of Religious and Spiritual Leaders...
, Colin Fry
Colin Fry
Colin Fry is an English television personality, entertainer, who purports to be a psychic medium. His critics assert that he has no paranormal powers and merely uses basic cold reading techniques...
, Esther Hicks
Esther Hicks
Esther Hicks is an American inspirational speaker and best-selling author. She has co-authored nine books with her husband Jerry Hicks, presented workshops on the Law of Attraction and appeared in the first release of the film The Secret...
, John of God, J. Z. Knight, Char Margolis
Char Margolis
Char Margolis is an American psychic medium. She stars in her own show, Char, on Dutch television, in which she utilises her intuition to contact the spirits of deceased relatives of guests in her show...
, Sally Morgan
Sally Morgan (psychic)
Sally Morgan is a British television and stage artist who claims to have psychic abilities.-Career:Morgan can be seen on the ITV2 programme Sally Morgan: Star Psychic, as well as the Sky Living programme Psychic Sally: On the Road.In March 2010, she appeared on an episode of What Katie Did Next in...
, James Van Praagh
James Van Praagh
James Van Praagh is a self-proclaimed medium who has written several books on spirituality and spirit communication.-Early life and career:Van Praagh was born in Bayside, New York and is the youngest of four children...
, Gary Spivey
Gary Spivey
Gary Spivey claims to be a psychic, medium, spiritual healer and spiritual teacher. He has made appearances on radio programs, TV shows, and in live casino shows and also conducts personal readings, seminars, workshops, and hosts retreats.- Radio shows :...
, Tony Stockwell
Tony Stockwell
Tony Stockwell is a British author, television personality and psychic medium. He was born in Walthamstow, East London.-Career:Stockwell was born on London's East End. His career as a medium began at the age of 16 when he was invited to a local Spiritualist church by a friend to see another medium...
, Neale Donald Walsch
Neale Donald Walsch
Neale Donald Walsch , is an American author of the series Conversations with God. The nine books in the complete series are Conversations With God , Friendship with God, Communion with God, Conversations With God for Teens, The New Revelations, Tomorrow's God, and Home with God: In a Life That Never...
, Darryl Anka
Darryl Anka
Darryl Anka started his Hollywood career as a visual and special effects artist who has worked on, among many others, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, I Robot, Pirates of the Caribbean, Live Free or Die Hard and Iron Man. After that he started working as a producer and writer...
, David Wells
David Wells (medium)
David Wells is a Scottish medium and astrologer. Born in the community of Kelloholm in Scotland, Wells states that he discovered his abilities after suffering from pneumonia, learning astrology and studying the Qabalah to "ground" his abilities...
, and Lisa Williams
Lisa Williams
Lisa Williams is a claimed psychic and healer who has starred in two shows on Lifetime TV: Lisa Williams: Life Among the Dead and Lisa Williams: Voices From the Other Side ....
.
Research
In Britain, the Society for Psychical ResearchSociety for Psychical Research
The Society for Psychical Research is a non-profit organisation in the United Kingdom. Its stated purpose is to understand "events and abilities commonly described as psychic or paranormal by promoting and supporting important research in this area" and to "examine allegedly paranormal phenomena...
has investigated some phenomena, mainly in connection with telepathy
Telepathy
Telepathy , is the induction of mental states from one mind to another. The term was coined in 1882 by the classical scholar Fredric W. H. Myers, a founder of the Society for Psychical Research, and has remained more popular than the more-correct expression thought-transference...
and apparitions
Apparitional experience
In psychology and parapsychology, an apparitional experience is an anomalous, quasi-perceptual experience.It is characterized by the apparent perception of either a living being or an inanimate object without there being any material stimulus for such a perception...
. According to an article in the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, in some cases media have produced personal information which has been well above guessing rates. One of the more noteworthy recent investigations into mediumship is known as the Scole Experiment, a series of mediumistic séances that took place between 1993–98 in the presence of the researchers David Fontana, Arthur Ellison and Montague Keen. This has produced photographs, audio recordings and physical objects which appeared in the dark séance room (known as apports). According to paranormal researcher Brian Dunning
Brian Dunning (skeptic)
Brian Dunning is the host and producer of Skeptoid: Critical Analysis of Pop Phenomena, a weekly audio podcast dedicated "to furthering knowledge by blasting away the widespread pseudosciences that infect popular culture, and replacing them with evidence-based scientific reality." He is also the...
the Schole experiments fail in many ways. The seances were held in the basement of two of the mediums, only total darkness was allowed with no night vision apparatus as it might "frighten the spirits away". The box containing the film was not examined and could easily have been accessible to fraud. And finally, even though many years have passed, there has been no follow-up, no further research by any credible agency or published accounts.
The VERITAS Research Program of the Laboratory for Advances in Consciousness and Health in the Department of Psychology at the University of Arizona
University of Arizona
The University of Arizona is a land-grant and space-grant public institution of higher education and research located in Tucson, Arizona, United States. The University of Arizona was the first university in the state of Arizona, founded in 1885...
, run by Gary Schwartz
Gary Schwartz
Gary E. Schwartz, PhD, is a professor of psychology at the University of Arizona best known for controversial experiments with mediums.-Biography:...
, was created primarily to test the hypothesis that the consciousness (or identity) of a person survives physical death. Studies conducted by VERITAS into mediumship have been approved by the University of Arizona Human Subjects Protection Program and an academic advisory board. Schwartz claimed his 2005 experiments were indicative of survival, but do not yet provide conclusive proof.
An experiment conducted by the British Psychological Society
British Psychological Society
The British Psychological Society is a representative body for psychologists and psychology in the United Kingdom. The BPS is also a Registered Charity and, along with advantages, this also imposes certain constraints on what the society can and cannot do...
suggests that under the controlled condition of the experiment, people who claimed to be professional mediums do not demonstrate the mediumistic ability. In the experiment, mediums were assigned to work the participants chosen to be “sitters.” The mediums contacted the deceased who were related to the sitters. The research gather the numbers of the statements made and have the sitters rate the accuracy of the statements. The readings that were considered to be somewhat accurate by the sitters were very generalized, and the ones that were considered inaccurate were the ones that were very specific.
In a 1973 essay published in the University of the Witwatersrand
University of the Witwatersrand
The University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg is a South African university situated in the northern areas of central Johannesburg. It is more commonly known as Wits University...
medical school journal, “The Leech”, current director of the Pacific Neuropsychiatric Institute, Vernon Neppe proposed that the human personality survives bodily death and concluded that that the “dead” have communicated with the living. Neppe referenced A.C. Munday-Castle’s hypothesis on the neurophysiological implications of parapsychology; a timeless, spaceless universe in which all things or events exist but in a more dormant sense, where drugs such as LSD may free the cerebral cortex from the “modulating effect of the brain stem reticular activating system,” allowing the cortex to run free. Neppe described a possibility that under such circumstances the individual is exposed to a purely mental universe, independent of matter, that contains all mental events, which may in some way overlap or be interlinked with the ordinary physical four-dimensional universe. Neppe also proposed that scientific investigation of parapsychological phenomena regarding brain function may imply an attempt to test the validity of these experiences. Neppe describes one such scientific investigation:
“In a study of twelve subjects, ten women and two men, ranging in age between 18 and 66 years, and consisting of eleven mediums and an “automatic writer” (all of whom volunteered through the agency of the South African Society for Psychical Research), G.K. Nelson adopted the following procedure: routine EEG examinations were carried out, usually with the subject in a separate room from the recording equipment. Photic stimulation was the only activating procedure applied in all cases. Six cases went into a trance after an initial few minutes of EEG monitoring."
"In the resting EEG recordings, ten out of the twelve eases showed localized signs of temporal lobe instability. The young automatic writer showed a partial suppression of alpha rhythms on the left side. Asymmetries and or asynchronies of EEG activity were therefore present in 11 of the 12 subjects almost equally divided between the dominant and non-dominant hemispheres as far as the site of maximum effect was concerned. (Interhemispheric differences in amplitude of the alpha rhythm are by no means uncommon; indeed the alpha amplitude often tends to be lower in the dominant hemisphere. It is only when the amplitude in one hemisphere is less than half that in the other that one takes particular note of such a difference — the EEG of the automatic writer showed such a difference."
"EEG abnormalities of the kind often found in the interictal EEGs of patients with epilepsy were seen in five cases in the form of paroxysmal bursts or focal spikes and sharp waves. Three other cases showed occasional sharp waves, raising the possibility of cortical hyperexcitability. Only four cases had EEGs of the kind usually associated with epilepsy and there were no reports of fits in the histories of any of the twelve volunteers. For these reasons the possibility exists that if the EEG signs are valid indices of temporal lobe dysfunction this is of a non-epileptic kind.”
According to Neppe, although the validity of mediumistic experience is neither confirmed nor denied by the presence of an unusual anatomical or physiological characteristic in the brain, such findings show that parapsychological phenomena are at least partly a function of the brain, and could serve to strengthen the hypothesis that certain people by reason of their individual pattern of brain function may be in a position more readily to experience a mental universe which is independent of matter.
Criticism
While advocates of mediumship claim that their experiences are genuine, the Encyclopædia Britannica article on spiritualism notes in reference to a case in the 19th century that "...one by one, the Spiritualist mediums were discovered to be engaged in fraud, sometimes employing the techniques of stage magicians in their attempts to convince people of their clairvoyant powers." The article also notes that "the exposure of widespread fraud within the spiritualist movement severely damaged its reputation and pushed it to the fringes of society in the United States."In 1976, M. Lamar Keene
M. Lamar Keene
Morris Lamar Keene, born about 1938, is a former spirit medium in Tampa, Florida and at Camp Chesterfield, Indiana, where he was known as the "Prince of the Spiritualists"...
, a medium in Florida
Florida
Florida is a state in the southeastern United States, located on the nation's Atlantic and Gulf coasts. It is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the north by Alabama and Georgia and to the east by the Atlantic Ocean. With a population of 18,801,310 as measured by the 2010 census, it...
and at the Spiritualist Camp Chesterfield
Camp Chesterfield
Camp Chesterfield was founded in 1886 and is the home of the Indiana Association of Spiritualists, located in Chesterfield, Indiana. Camp Chesterfield offers Spiritualist Church services, seminary, and mediumship, faith healing, and spiritual development classes, as well as psychic readings for...
in Indiana
Indiana
Indiana is a US state, admitted to the United States as the 19th on December 11, 1816. It is located in the Midwestern United States and Great Lakes Region. With 6,483,802 residents, the state is ranked 15th in population and 16th in population density. Indiana is ranked 38th in land area and is...
, confessed to defrauding the public in his book The Psychic Mafia. Keene
M. Lamar Keene
Morris Lamar Keene, born about 1938, is a former spirit medium in Tampa, Florida and at Camp Chesterfield, Indiana, where he was known as the "Prince of the Spiritualists"...
detailed a multitude of common stage magic techniques utilized by mediums which are supposed to give an appearance of paranormal powers or supernatural involvement.
See also
- Cold readingCold readingCold reading is a series of techniques used by mentalists, psychics, fortune-tellers, illusionists, and con artists to determine or express details about another person, often in order to convince them that the reader knows much more about a subject than they actually do...
- Faith healingFaith healingFaith healing is healing through spiritual means. The healing of a person is brought about by religious faith through prayer and/or rituals that, according to adherents, stimulate a divine presence and power toward correcting disease and disability. Belief in divine intervention in illness or...
- List of channelled texts
- Raymond MoodyRaymond MoodyRaymond Moody is a psychologist and medical doctor. He is most famous as an author of books about life after death and near-death experiences , a term that he coined in 1975. His best-selling title is Life After Life.-Life:...
's book Life After LifeLife After LifeLife After Life is a 1975 book written by psychiatrist Raymond Moody. It is a report on a qualitative study in which Moody interviewed 150 people who had undergone near-death experiences . The book presents the author's composite account of what it is like to die...
. He coined the term "near-death experience" - Swami Laura HorosSwami Laura HorosSwami Laura Horos was a late 19th and early 20th century medium. She was convicted of fraud several times in the US, and was tried for rape and fraud in London in 1901...
- The Book on MediumsThe Book on MediumsThe Book on Mediums or Mediums and Evokers' Handbook , is a book by Allan Kardec published in 1861, second of the five Fundamental Works of Spiritism — the spiritualist philosophy Kardec had been publishing — being the tome in which the experimental and investigative features of the doctrine were...
- The Spirits BookThe Spirits BookThe Spirits' Book is part of the Spiritist Codification, and is regarded as one of the five fundamental works of Spiritism. It was published by the French educator Allan Kardec on April 18, 1857...
- Theatrical seancesTheatrical SéancesA theatrical séance is an aspect of mentalism that purports to give its audiences the feeling of contacting the spirits of the dead, as in a successful Spiritualist seance....
External links
- Expanded article about "What is channeling?"
- Article about what goes on in channeling
- Article about how mediums work
- eLibrary of ancient books on the subject of spiritualism, séances, trance channeling, development of mediumship in the Western and Oriental Traditions.
- A Guide to Mediumship and Psychic Unfoldment by E. and M. Wallis (Chicago, 1903). Practical, no-frills instructions.