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

Concept

Mediumship is the claimed ability of a person (the medium) to experience contact with spirits of the dead, angels, demons or other immaterial entities. A medium is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as the "supposed organ of communication with spirits". 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 trance (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 (psychography or surreal automatic writing).

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, apports of objects, or levitation.

History

Attempts to communicate with the dead and other spirits have been documented back to early human history. The story of the Witch of Endor, 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 churches, 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.

Terminology

Spirit guide

In 1958, the English-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 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."

Spirit operator

A spirit who uses a medium to manipulate energy or energy systems.

Demonstrations of mediumship

In old-line Spiritualism, a portion of the services, generally toward the end, is given over to the A typical example of this older 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 Chesterfield 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 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 telepathy. 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.

All 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,

"Trance phenomena result from the behavior of intense focusing of attention, which is the key psychological mechanism of trance induction. Adaptive responses, including institutionalized forms of trance, are 'tuned' into neural networks in the brain."

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

"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, apports, 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 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 ectoplasm 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.

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 Egnew 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, 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 claims to channel 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, and Lee Carroll 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.

• Clairvoyance 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.

• Clairsentinence 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 Bias, 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, Allison DuBois, John Edward, Danielle Egnew, Divaldo Pereira Franco, Colin Fry, Esther Hicks, John of God, J. Z. Knight, Sally Morgan, James Van Praagh, Gary Spivey, Tony Stockwell, Neale Donald Walsch, David Wells, and Lisa Williams.

Research

In Britain, the Society for Psychical Research 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). No night vision apparatus was allowed.

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.

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, a medium in Florida and at the Spiritualist Camp Chesterfield in Indiana, confessed in his book The Psychic Mafia, to defrauding the public. Keene detailed a multitude of common techniques utilized by mediums to conjure spirits.

Fiction

This article may contain minor, trivial or unrelated fictional references. Trivia or references unimportant to the overall plot of a work of fiction should be edited to explain their importance or deleted.

In fantasy literature, references to channelers or mediums are sometimes used to describe a person's ability to draw on magical power.

Film and television

• The Amazing Mr. X (also released as The Spiritualist) (1948), stars Turhan Bey as a fraudulent medium.
• Medium is an American television series about a woman who acts as a research medium for the Phoenix, Arizona district attorney's office.
• The film The Sixth Sense is about a boy who can see ghosts. By communicating with them he can help both them and their loved ones.
• In the drama movie Ghost, Whoopi Goldberg plays a medium.
• The main character in the 2009 film The Haunting in Connecticut is a medium.
• The character, Masako Hara, from the Japanese television show Ghost Hunt is a medium.
• Melinda Gordon, her mother Beth Gordon, her half-brother Gabriel Lawrence and her son Aiden Lucas from the American television series Ghost Whisperer are mediums.
• In the 2009 film The Lovely Bones the character Ruth Conners is a medium.

Books and comics

• Yoshino Somei in Spriggan uses her skills to act as a medium.
• The Secret Life of Sparrow Delaney by Suzanne Harper tells the story of a teenage medium.
• In CLAMP's Tokyo Babylon, Subaru Sumeragi works as an exorcist, occult detective and spirit medium.
• In Michael Buckley's Sisters Grimm books, Sabrina helps Ebenezer Scrooge.

See also

• Automatic drawing
• Cold reading
• Faith healing
• List of channelled texts
• Pseudoscience
• Raymond Moody's book Life After Life. He coined the term "Near-death experience"
• Spirit possession
• Spiritualist Church
• The Spirits Book
• The Book on Mediums
• Theatrical seances
• James Randi
• Jason Leen
• Ingo Swann

References

1. "Mediums", Robert Todd Carroll, Skeptic's Dictionary, Retrieved March 23, 2007 "In spiritualism, a medium is one with whom spirits communicate directly."
2. J. Simpson, E. Weiner (eds), ed. (1989). "Medium". Oxford English Dictionary (2nd ed.). Oxford: Clarendon Press. ISBN 0-19-861186-2. {{cite encyclopedia}}: |editor= has generic name (help)
3. "Glossary of Key Words Frequently Used in Parapsychology", Parapsychological Association website. "Materialization: A phenomenon of physical mediumship in which living entities or inanimate objects are caused to take form, sometimes from ectoplasm." Retrieved January 24, 2006
4. "Medium - Definition". Dictionary.com. Retrieved 2007-03-23.
5. "spiritism is not a religion but a science", by the famous French astronomer Camille Flammarion in Allan Kardec's Eulogy on April 2, 1869, in Death and Its Mystery - After Death. Manifestations and Apparitions of the Dead; The Soul After Death Translated by Latrobe Carroll (1923, T. Fisher Unwin, Ltd. London: Adelphi Terrace.), online version at Allan Kardec eulogy
6. ^ The Autobiogaphy of a Fortune Teller by C. Doreen Phillips, Vantage Press, 1958.
7. Braude, Anne, Radical Spirits, Spiritualism and Women's Rights in Nineteenth Century America. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001.
8. Ruth Brandon, The Spiritualists, The Passion for the Occult in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Alfred A. Knopf, 1983
9. Deborah Blum, Ghost Hunters, William James and the Search for Scientic Proof of Life After Death, The Penguin Press, 2006
10. Amy Tanner, Studies in Spiritism, G. Stanley Hall, Introduction, p. 18, Prometheus Press, 1994, originally published by D. Appleton, 1910
11. God's World: A Treatise on Spiritualism Founded on Transcripts of Shorthand Notes Taken Down, Over a Period of Five Years, in the Seance-Room of the William T. Stead Memorial Center (a Religious Body Incorporated Under the Statutes of the State of Illinois), Mrs. Cecil M. Cook, Medium and Pastor. Compiled and Written by Lloyd Kenyon Jones. Chicago, Ill.: The William T. Stead Memorial Center, 1919.
12. "Ectoplasm" def. Merriam Webster dictionary, Retrieved 18 January 2007
13. Somerlott, Robert, Here, Mr. Splitfoot. Viking, 1971.
14. "Leslie Flint"
15. Wood, Matthew (2007). Possession Power and the New Age: Ambiguities of Authority in Neoliberal Societies. Ashgate Publishing, Limited. ISBN 0-75463-339-X.
16. LeCron, Leslie (1970). Hypnotism Today. Wilshire Book Co. p. 278. ISBN 087980081X. "When in a trance . . . the medium seems to come under the control of another personality, purportedly the spirit of a departed soul, and a genuine medium undoubtedly believes the 'control' to be a spirit entity." "In the trance, the medium often enters a cataleptic state marked by extreme rigidity. The control then takes over, the voice may change completely . . . and the supposed spirit answers the questions of the sitter, telling of things 'on the other plane' and giving messages from those who have 'passed over.' {{cite book}}: More than one of |first1= and |first= specified (help); More than one of |last1= and |last= specified (help)
17. Brown, Michael F. (1999). The Channeling Zone: American Spirituality in an Anxious Age. Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-67410-883-3.
18. Klimo, Jon (1998). Channeling: Investigations on Receiving Information from Paranormal Sources. North Atlantic Books. p. 100. ISBN 978-1556432484.
19. Chalmers, Robert (8 July 2007). "Interview: The couple who claim they can make you rich beyond your wildest dreams". The Independent.
20. "Glossary of Key Words Frequently Used in Parapsychology", Parapsychological Association website, Retrieved January 29, 2007
21. The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition, "Spiritism"
22. Journal of the Society for Psychical Research January, 2001 - Vol. 65.1, Num. 862
23. David Fontana (2005): Is there an afterlife, p. 324-351. See also www.thescoleexperiment.com
24. The VERITAS Research Program of the Laboratory for Advances in Consciousness and Health in the Department of Psychology at the University of Arizona
25. http://www.newsnet5.com/news/2893543/detail.html
26. The Truth about Medium by Gary E. Schwartz, Ph. D., with William L. Simon, Hampton Books, 2005, page 119
27. Spiritualism (religion) :: History - Britannica Online Encyclopedia

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.
• The National Spiritualist Association of Churches phenomena web site
• The National Spiritualist Association of Churches
• Psychic Awareness

• New Age practices
• Parapsychology
• Spiritual mediums
• Spiritualism
• Channelling
• Paranormal