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(Redirected from Spirit medium)
'Mediumship' is a term used mostly in Spiritualism to denote the ability of a person (the 'medium') to produce psychic phenomena of a mental or physical nature. The term is usually used to denote a person who is thought to be able to facilitate communication with spirits of the deceased or other non-corporeal entities, either by going into a trance and allowing a spirit to use their body, or by using extrasensory perception to relay messages from the spirits. The term 'channalling' often used for this type of mediumship.[1][2] Some mediums (or the spirits working with them) are also said to be able to produce physical paranormal phenomena such as materilizations of spirits, apports of objects, or levitation.http://skepdic.com/medium.html Skeptic's Dictionary by Robert Todd Carroll, on Mediums Retrieved March 23, 2007 "In spiritualism, a medium is one with whom spirits communicate directly."[3][4] Mediumship, often called ''channelling,'' is part of the belief systems and rituals of many religions, such as Candomblé, Voodoo, Kardecism, and Umbanda, and is popular in some New Age groups.
Skeptics say the phenomena of mediumship are the result of self-delusion, unconscious influence, or of magician's techniques such as cold reading, hot reading, and conjuring.''Skeptic's Dictionary'' by Robert Todd Carroll, on Mediums. Retrieved March 23, 2007 "In spiritualism, a medium is one with whom spirits communicate directly."
Mediumship was described in modern scientific terms by Allan Kardec, who coined the word spiritism, ''ca.'' 1860 [5]. Spiritualism in the United States dates from the activities of the Fox sisters in 1848. Some mediums acknowledged by the Spiritualist Church today include Andrew Jackson Davis and Helena Petrovna Blavatsky. In Britain, the Society for Psychical Research has carried on investigations of some phenomena, mainly in connection with telepathy and apparitions.[6]
There are several distinct types of mediumship. ''Mental mediumship'' is defined as communication of spirits with a medium by telepathy having received the communication, the medium then passes on the information. ''Trance mediumship'' is defined as a spirit taking over the body of the medium, sometimes to such a degree that the medium is unconscious. ''Physical mediumship'' is defined as manipulation of energies and energy systems by spirits, using the energy or ''ectoplasm'' released by a medium .[7]
A spirit who communicates with a medium, either verbally or visually, is known as a ''spirit communicator''. A spirit who uses a medium to manipulate energy or energy systems is called a ''spirit operator''.
''Channelling'' is another common term for mental mediumship and trance mediumship.
Mental mediumship involves communication between spirits and the medium. The medium mentally "hears", "sees", and feels messages from spirits, which he then relays to the recipient(s) of the message. When a medium is doing a "reading" for a particular person, that person is know as the ''sitter''.
Psychic senses used by mental mediums are sometimes defined differently in spiritualism than in other paranormal fields. ''Clairvoyance'', for instance, is often used by spiritualists to include seeing spirits and visions instilled by spirits , whereas the Parapsychological Association defines "clairvoyance" as information derived directly from an external physical source.[8]
'Spiritualistic definitions of psychic senses:'
'Clairvoyance' or "Clear Seeing", is the ability to see anything which is not physically present, such as objects, animals or people. This sight occurs "in the mind’s eye", and 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.
In 'clairsentinence' or "Clear Feeling", the medium takes on the ailments of a spirit, feeling the same physical problem the spirit person before they died.
'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 have the feeling that a message or situation is "right" or "wrong".
''Trance mediumship'' is often seen as a form of mental mediumship.
Some mediums remain conscious during this communication period, while others go into a trance, wherein a spirit uses the medium's body to communicate. ''Part trance'' mediums are aware during the period of communication, while ''full trance'' mediums pass into an unconscious state in which their physical and mental processes are completely controlled by the spirit communicator.
In the 1860s and 1870s, trance mediums were among the most popular of lecturer-entertainers, many delivering passionate speeches on abolitionism and women's rights.[9]
According to spiritualists, physical mediumship involves such manifistations as loud raps and noises, voices, materilized objects, apports, and materialized spirit bodies or body parts such as hands, and levitation. The medium is used as source of power and substance for such spirit manifestations. The power or substance taken from the medium is called ectoplasm.[10]
According to an article in the ''Journal of the Society for Psychical Research'', in some cases mediums have produced personal information which has been well above guessing rates .[11]
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.[12] Studies are conducted by VERITAS have been approved by the University of Arizona Human Subjects Protection Program and an academic advisory board.
Critics dispute the existence of genuine mediums, arguing that individuals who claim to possess this ability are either self-deluded or charlatans who engage in cold or hot reading.[13]
Critics say that Gary Schwartz's studies such as The Afterlife Experiments have not provided competent scientific evidence for survival of consciousness or that mediums can actually communicate with the dead. In the January/February 2003 issue of the ''Skeptical Enquirer,'' Ray Hyman charged that the research Schwartz presented is crucially flawed in a number of ways, including inappropriate control comparisons, inadequate precautions against fraud and sensory leakage, reliance on non-standardized, untested dependent variables, failure to use double-blind procedures, inadequate use of double-blind protocols, failure to independently check on facts the sitters endorsed as true, and the use of plausibility arguments to substitute for actual controls.[14] Schwartz and Hyman debated these points in the March 2003 issue of the ''Skeptical Enquirer''.[15][16] In January 2007 Julie Beischel and Gary Schwartz published the results of a triple-blind study in ''EXPLORE The Journal of Science and Healing'' that also had positive results.[17]
Some well-known mediums are, Derek Acorah, Sylvia Browne, Kuda Bux, Edgar Cayce, Jeane Dixon, Allison DuBois, John Edward, Daniel Dunglas Home, Esther Hicks, Colin Fry, JZ Knight, Joseph Kony, Jane Roberts, Sathya Sai Baba, David Wells, Lisa Williams, James Van Praagh, Rosemary Altea, Divaldo Pereira Franco, Myles Balfe, Gordon Smith, Chico Xavier, Richard Ireland and Clifford Bias.
In fantasy literature, references to ''channellers'' or ''mediums'' are sometimes used in other ways, particularly to describe a person's ability to draw on some form of magical power.
★ ''Medium'' is an American television series about a woman (played by Patricia Arquette) who acts as a research medium for the Phoenix, Arizona district attorney's office. The series is based on the life of Allison DuBois, who claims to use her psychic ability allowing her to contact the dead to help the local law enforcement agency.
★ ''Ghost Whisperer'' is an American television drama-fantasy-thriller starring Jennifer Love Hewitt as a young woman who can communicate with the spirits of the dead.
★ A green chihuahua named Shirley is a medium from the cartoon ''Courage the Cowardly Dog''.
★ Technically, Cole in ''The Sixth Sense'' is a medium, especially when he acts to help others via the knowledge given to him by the "dead people" he sees.
★ In the 2004 video game , the player meets The Sorrow, a mysterious dead medium who battles and also assists the player.
★ In the Ace Attorney series, Maya, Pearl, and Mia Fey are spirit mediums who have the ability to allow spirits to take over their bodies temporarily and at the same time alter their appearance, although Mia Fey never does so in the games.
★ "The Signalman" from Charles Dickens' short story, ''The Signalman'' isn't a medium per se, but he sees the ghost of a man who warns him of danger before it happens.
★ Yoshino Somei in ''Spriggan'' uses her necromancy skills to act as a medium, allowing the dead to speak to any living human.
★ In the Wheel of Time the energy of the "Source" is channelled by those gifted women able to use it.
★ Automatic drawing
★ Cold reading
★ Faith healer
★ Séance
★ Spiritualist Church
★ Spiritualism
★ Channelling (mediumistic)
★ The Spirits Book
★ The Book on Mediums
★ Spirit possession
1. http://thenewagefiles.shadowweb.info/new_age_timeline/ New Age TimeLine Retrieved September 1, 2007
2. http://www.spiritwritings.com/ChannelingFAQ.html What is Channeling and Prophecy?, Retrieved September 1, 2007
3. Parapsychological Association website. ''Glossary of Key Words Frequently Used in Parapsychology''. "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.
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 Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition, "Spiritism"
7. Somerlott, Robert, ''Here, Mr. Splitfoot''. Viking, 1971.
8. Parapsychological Association website, ''Glossary of Key Words Frequently Used in Parapsychology'', Retrieved January 29, 2007
9. Braude, Anne, ''Radical Spirits, Spiritualism and Women's Rights in Nineteenth-Century America''. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001.
10. "Ectoplasm" def. Merriam Webster dictionary, Retrieved 18 January 2007
11. ''Journal of the Society for Psychical Research'' January, 2001 - Vol. 65.1, Num. 862
12. The VERITAS Research Program of the Laboratory for Advances in Consciousness and Health in the Department of Psychology at the University of Arizona
13. http://www.csicop.org/articles/19990608-vanpraagh/
14. http://www.csicop.org/si/2003-01/medium.html ''How Not to Test Mediums1
Critiquing the Afterlife Experiments'' By Ray Hyman "The studies were methodologically defective in a number of important ways, not the least of which was that they were not double-blind."
15. http://www.csicop.org/si/2003-05/follow-up-schwartz.html ''Follow Up: How 'Not' to Review Mediumship Research'' By Gary Schwartz The ''Skeptical Enquirer'' May 2003
16. http://www.csicop.org/si/2003-05/follow-up-hyman.html ''Hyman’s Reply to Schwartz’s
'How Not To Review Mediumship Research''
17. http://www.explorejournal.com/article/PIIS155083070600454X/fulltext ''Anomalous Information Reception by Research Mediums Demonstrated Using a Novel Triple-Blind Protocol'' by Julie Beischel, PhD and Gary E. Schwartz
★ A further point-by-point response by Gary Schwartz to Ray Hyman's article ''How Not to Test Mediums''
★ After Death Communication Research Foundation, Jody A. Long, J.D. and Jeffrey P. Long, M.D.
★ The Scientific Proof of Survival After Death
★ Allan Kardec Educational Society website: The Book of Mediums
'Mediumship' is a term used mostly in Spiritualism to denote the ability of a person (the 'medium') to produce psychic phenomena of a mental or physical nature. The term is usually used to denote a person who is thought to be able to facilitate communication with spirits of the deceased or other non-corporeal entities, either by going into a trance and allowing a spirit to use their body, or by using extrasensory perception to relay messages from the spirits. The term 'channalling' often used for this type of mediumship.[1][2] Some mediums (or the spirits working with them) are also said to be able to produce physical paranormal phenomena such as materilizations of spirits, apports of objects, or levitation.http://skepdic.com/medium.html Skeptic's Dictionary by Robert Todd Carroll, on Mediums Retrieved March 23, 2007 "In spiritualism, a medium is one with whom spirits communicate directly."[3][4] Mediumship, often called ''channelling,'' is part of the belief systems and rituals of many religions, such as Candomblé, Voodoo, Kardecism, and Umbanda, and is popular in some New Age groups.
Skeptics say the phenomena of mediumship are the result of self-delusion, unconscious influence, or of magician's techniques such as cold reading, hot reading, and conjuring.''Skeptic's Dictionary'' by Robert Todd Carroll, on Mediums. Retrieved March 23, 2007 "In spiritualism, a medium is one with whom spirits communicate directly."
History of mediumship
Mediumship was described in modern scientific terms by Allan Kardec, who coined the word spiritism, ''ca.'' 1860 [5]. Spiritualism in the United States dates from the activities of the Fox sisters in 1848. Some mediums acknowledged by the Spiritualist Church today include Andrew Jackson Davis and Helena Petrovna Blavatsky. In Britain, the Society for Psychical Research has carried on investigations of some phenomena, mainly in connection with telepathy and apparitions.[6]
Types of mediumship
There are several distinct types of mediumship. ''Mental mediumship'' is defined as communication of spirits with a medium by telepathy having received the communication, the medium then passes on the information. ''Trance mediumship'' is defined as a spirit taking over the body of the medium, sometimes to such a degree that the medium is unconscious. ''Physical mediumship'' is defined as manipulation of energies and energy systems by spirits, using the energy or ''ectoplasm'' released by a medium .[7]
A spirit who communicates with a medium, either verbally or visually, is known as a ''spirit communicator''. A spirit who uses a medium to manipulate energy or energy systems is called a ''spirit operator''.
''Channelling'' is another common term for mental mediumship and trance mediumship.
Mental mediumship
Mental mediumship involves communication between spirits and the medium. The medium mentally "hears", "sees", and feels messages from spirits, which he then relays to the recipient(s) of the message. When a medium is doing a "reading" for a particular person, that person is know as the ''sitter''.
Psychic senses used by mental mediums are sometimes defined differently in spiritualism than in other paranormal fields. ''Clairvoyance'', for instance, is often used by spiritualists to include seeing spirits and visions instilled by spirits , whereas the Parapsychological Association defines "clairvoyance" as information derived directly from an external physical source.[8]
'Spiritualistic definitions of psychic senses:'
'Clairvoyance' or "Clear Seeing", is the ability to see anything which is not physically present, such as objects, animals or people. This sight occurs "in the mind’s eye", and 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.
In 'clairsentinence' or "Clear Feeling", the medium takes on the ailments of a spirit, feeling the same physical problem the spirit person before they died.
'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 have the feeling that a message or situation is "right" or "wrong".
Trance mediumship
''Trance mediumship'' is often seen as a form of mental mediumship.
Some mediums remain conscious during this communication period, while others go into a trance, wherein a spirit uses the medium's body to communicate. ''Part trance'' mediums are aware during the period of communication, while ''full trance'' mediums pass into an unconscious state in which their physical and mental processes are completely controlled by the spirit communicator.
In the 1860s and 1870s, trance mediums were among the most popular of lecturer-entertainers, many delivering passionate speeches on abolitionism and women's rights.[9]
Physical mediumship
According to spiritualists, physical mediumship involves such manifistations as loud raps and noises, voices, materilized objects, apports, and materialized spirit bodies or body parts such as hands, and levitation. The medium is used as source of power and substance for such spirit manifestations. The power or substance taken from the medium is called ectoplasm.[10]
Research and controversy
According to an article in the ''Journal of the Society for Psychical Research'', in some cases mediums have produced personal information which has been well above guessing rates .[11]
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.[12] Studies are conducted by VERITAS have been approved by the University of Arizona Human Subjects Protection Program and an academic advisory board.
Critics dispute the existence of genuine mediums, arguing that individuals who claim to possess this ability are either self-deluded or charlatans who engage in cold or hot reading.[13]
Critics say that Gary Schwartz's studies such as The Afterlife Experiments have not provided competent scientific evidence for survival of consciousness or that mediums can actually communicate with the dead. In the January/February 2003 issue of the ''Skeptical Enquirer,'' Ray Hyman charged that the research Schwartz presented is crucially flawed in a number of ways, including inappropriate control comparisons, inadequate precautions against fraud and sensory leakage, reliance on non-standardized, untested dependent variables, failure to use double-blind procedures, inadequate use of double-blind protocols, failure to independently check on facts the sitters endorsed as true, and the use of plausibility arguments to substitute for actual controls.[14] Schwartz and Hyman debated these points in the March 2003 issue of the ''Skeptical Enquirer''.[15][16] In January 2007 Julie Beischel and Gary Schwartz published the results of a triple-blind study in ''EXPLORE The Journal of Science and Healing'' that also had positive results.[17]
Well-known mediums
Some well-known mediums are, Derek Acorah, Sylvia Browne, Kuda Bux, Edgar Cayce, Jeane Dixon, Allison DuBois, John Edward, Daniel Dunglas Home, Esther Hicks, Colin Fry, JZ Knight, Joseph Kony, Jane Roberts, Sathya Sai Baba, David Wells, Lisa Williams, James Van Praagh, Rosemary Altea, Divaldo Pereira Franco, Myles Balfe, Gordon Smith, Chico Xavier, Richard Ireland and Clifford Bias.
Mediums and channellers in fiction
In fantasy literature, references to ''channellers'' or ''mediums'' are sometimes used in other ways, particularly to describe a person's ability to draw on some form of magical power.
Television and movies
★ ''Medium'' is an American television series about a woman (played by Patricia Arquette) who acts as a research medium for the Phoenix, Arizona district attorney's office. The series is based on the life of Allison DuBois, who claims to use her psychic ability allowing her to contact the dead to help the local law enforcement agency.
★ ''Ghost Whisperer'' is an American television drama-fantasy-thriller starring Jennifer Love Hewitt as a young woman who can communicate with the spirits of the dead.
★ A green chihuahua named Shirley is a medium from the cartoon ''Courage the Cowardly Dog''.
★ Technically, Cole in ''The Sixth Sense'' is a medium, especially when he acts to help others via the knowledge given to him by the "dead people" he sees.
Video games
★ In the 2004 video game , the player meets The Sorrow, a mysterious dead medium who battles and also assists the player.
★ In the Ace Attorney series, Maya, Pearl, and Mia Fey are spirit mediums who have the ability to allow spirits to take over their bodies temporarily and at the same time alter their appearance, although Mia Fey never does so in the games.
Books
★ "The Signalman" from Charles Dickens' short story, ''The Signalman'' isn't a medium per se, but he sees the ghost of a man who warns him of danger before it happens.
★ Yoshino Somei in ''Spriggan'' uses her necromancy skills to act as a medium, allowing the dead to speak to any living human.
★ In the Wheel of Time the energy of the "Source" is channelled by those gifted women able to use it.
See also
★ Automatic drawing
★ Cold reading
★ Faith healer
★ Séance
★ Spiritualist Church
★ Spiritualism
★ Channelling (mediumistic)
★ The Spirits Book
★ The Book on Mediums
★ Spirit possession
References
1. http://thenewagefiles.shadowweb.info/new_age_timeline/ New Age TimeLine Retrieved September 1, 2007
2. http://www.spiritwritings.com/ChannelingFAQ.html What is Channeling and Prophecy?, Retrieved September 1, 2007
3. Parapsychological Association website. ''Glossary of Key Words Frequently Used in Parapsychology''. "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.
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 Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition, "Spiritism"
7. Somerlott, Robert, ''Here, Mr. Splitfoot''. Viking, 1971.
8. Parapsychological Association website, ''Glossary of Key Words Frequently Used in Parapsychology'', Retrieved January 29, 2007
9. Braude, Anne, ''Radical Spirits, Spiritualism and Women's Rights in Nineteenth-Century America''. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001.
10. "Ectoplasm" def. Merriam Webster dictionary, Retrieved 18 January 2007
11. ''Journal of the Society for Psychical Research'' January, 2001 - Vol. 65.1, Num. 862
12. The VERITAS Research Program of the Laboratory for Advances in Consciousness and Health in the Department of Psychology at the University of Arizona
13. http://www.csicop.org/articles/19990608-vanpraagh/
14. http://www.csicop.org/si/2003-01/medium.html ''How Not to Test Mediums1
Critiquing the Afterlife Experiments'' By Ray Hyman "The studies were methodologically defective in a number of important ways, not the least of which was that they were not double-blind."
15. http://www.csicop.org/si/2003-05/follow-up-schwartz.html ''Follow Up: How 'Not' to Review Mediumship Research'' By Gary Schwartz The ''Skeptical Enquirer'' May 2003
16. http://www.csicop.org/si/2003-05/follow-up-hyman.html ''Hyman’s Reply to Schwartz’s
'How Not To Review Mediumship Research''
17. http://www.explorejournal.com/article/PIIS155083070600454X/fulltext ''Anomalous Information Reception by Research Mediums Demonstrated Using a Novel Triple-Blind Protocol'' by Julie Beischel, PhD and Gary E. Schwartz
External links
★ A further point-by-point response by Gary Schwartz to Ray Hyman's article ''How Not to Test Mediums''
★ After Death Communication Research Foundation, Jody A. Long, J.D. and Jeffrey P. Long, M.D.
★ The Scientific Proof of Survival After Death
★ Allan Kardec Educational Society website: The Book of Mediums
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