Extensive Definition

Mediumship is a form of relationship some people say they have with spirits that is practiced in religions such as Spiritualism, Spiritism, Espiritismo, Candomblé, Louisiana Voodoo, and Umbanda. While the Western movements of Spiritualism and Spiritism account for most Western exposure, most traditional African and African diasporic traditions include mediumship as a central focus of religious practice.

Concept

The term "mediumship" denotes the supposed ability of a person (the medium) to experience and/or to tell others about their experiences of contact with spirits of the dead, spirits of non-corporeal entities, angels, and/or nature spirits. By experiencing , the medium generally claims to allow communication between non-mediumistic people and spirits who may have messages to share.

A medium may claim to: listen to and relate conversations with spirit voices; go into a trance and speak without knowledge of what is being said; allow a spirit to enter his or her body and speak through it; or relay messages from the spirits those who wish to contact them with the help of a physical tool, such as a writing pad.

Mediumship is also part of the belief system of some New Age groups. In this context, and under the name channelling, it most often refers to a medium purporting to receive messages from a "teaching-spirit" of advanced wisdom.

In some cultures, mediums (or the spirits working with them) are imagined to be able to 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. One of the most well-known is the story Witch of Endor, who was said to have 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.

Mediumship became quite popular in the United States after the rise of Spiritualism as a religious movement. Modern Spiritualism is said to date to the mediumistic activities 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 1800s. Mediumship was also described by Allan Kardec, who coined the term Spiritism, around 1860 .

After the exposure of the fraudulent use of stage magic tricks by physical mediums such as the Davenport Brothers, mediumship fell into disrepute, although it never ceased being used by people who believed that the dead can be contacted.

From the 1930s through the 1990s, as psysical mediumship became less practiced in Spiritualist churches, the technique of channelling gained in popularity, and books by channellers who related the wisdom of non-corporeal and non-terrestrial teacher-spirits became best-sellers amongst believers.

Terminology

Spirit guide

A spirit who brings other spirits to a medium's attention or carries communications between a medium and the spirits of the dead is called a "spirit guide." Many mediums claim to have specific guides who regularly work with them and "bring in" spirits of the dead. The relationship between the medium and the guide may be providential, or it may be based on family ties. 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 seances 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."

Because the typical trance medium has no clear memory of the messages conveyed while in a trance, a medium of this type generally works with an assistant who writes down or otherwise records his or her words. A good 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, a non-mediumistic Spiritualist who transcribed Cook's messages in shorthand and then 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 manifistations 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 source of power and substance for such spirit manifestations. This is sometimes said to be accomplished using the energy or ectoplasm released by a medium.

Most physical mediumship is presented in a darkened or dimly lit room, and most physical mediums make use of a traditional array of tools and appurtenances, including spirit trumpets, spirit cabinets, and levitation tables.

Channeling

There are two main techniques mediumship developed in the latter half of the 20th century. One type involves psychics or sensitives who can speak to spirits and then relay what they hear to their clients. One of the most noted channels of this type is clairvoyant Danielle Egnew, known for her 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" and then becomes “possessed” by a specific spirit, who then talks through them. In the trance, the medium enters a cataleptic state marked by extreme rigidity. The control spirit then takes over, the voice may change completely and the spirit answers the questions of those in its presence or giving spiritual knowledge. The most successful and widely known channeler of this variety is JZ 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 himself. Channeling is popularly parodied in the "Doonesbury" cartoon where a ditzy female character is occasionally taken over by "Hunk-Ra," an assertive 21,000-year-old warrior based on Ramtha. Other notable channels are Jane Roberts for Seth.

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, whereas the Parapsychological Association defines "clairvoyance" as information derived directly from an external physical source.

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.

Clairsentinence or "Clear Feeling" is a condition in which 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 claim to have the feeling that a message or situation is "right" or "wrong."

Notable mediums

Notable alleged mediums have included: Derek Acorah, Rosemary Altea, Sathya Sai Baba, Clifford Bias, Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, Emma Hardinge Britten, Sylvia Browne, Kuda Bux, Edgar Cayce, Andrew Jackson Davis, Jeane Dixon, Allison DuBois, John Edward, Danielle Egnew, Divaldo Pereira Franco, Colin Fry, Elizabeth "Betty" Grant, Esther Hicks, Daniel Dunglas Home, Richard Ireland, JZ Knight, Joseph Kony, Lekhraj Kripalani, Hirday Mohini, Eusapia Palladino, Paschal Beverly Randolph, Jane Roberts, James Van Praagh, Stanisława Tomczyk, David Wells, Lisa Williams, Chico Xavier, M. Lamar Keene

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 mediums have produced personal information which has been well above guessing rates .

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 have been approved by the University of Arizona Human Subjects Protection Program and an academic advisory board.

Criticism

While advocates of mediumship claim that their experiences are genuine, the Encyclopedia Britannica article on spiritualism notes 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."

Some Christians believe that mediumship is specifically forbidden in the Bible, and they can cite biblical verses to support their position.

Criticism of mediumship also comes from skeptics and atheists, who dispute the existence of spirits or of genuine mediums. 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..

Fiction

In fantasy literature, references to channelers or mediums are sometimes used in other ways, particularly to describe a person's ability to draw on some form of magical power.

Film and television

The Amazing Mr. X, also relased under the title The Spiritualist, is a movie starring Turhan Bey as a fraudulent medium.
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 in the cartoon Courage the Cowardly Dog.
The film The Sixth Sense is about a boy who can see ghosts.
In the movie Ghost, Whoopi Goldberg plays a medium who discovers that she can actually hear ghosts, and uses her magical power to help the protagonist.
In the 2007 film The Orphanage, Geraldine Chaplin plays a medium helping a woman find her missing son.

Video games

In the 2004 video game Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, 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 to that of the person they are channeling. Mia Fey never uses her abilities in the games, but is usually called upon by Maya and Pearl.
In the 2007 independent computer game series The Blackwell Legacy, a young woman named Rosangela Blackwell is a medium who inherited the ability from her late Aunt Lauren who was thought to have dementia. She inherits her aunt's "spirit guide", a ghost named Joey that apparently only she, other ghosts, and other mediums can see. They work together to bring tortured souls trapped in the material plane to the afterlife. In the second game of the series you play as her Aunt Lauren at the time she was Rosangela's age, where she channels spirits whose souls are linked between another medium and a living "spirit guide" who wrote about their troubles.
The 1995 Sierra horror epic Phantasmagoria (computer game) featured the main character consulting a hobo woman who turned out to be an actual medium who channeled one of the malicious spirits present on the property.

Books

Yoshino Somei in Spriggan uses her necromancy skills to act as a medium, allowing the dead to speak to any living human.

The Secret Life of Sparrow Delaney by Suzanne Harper tells the story of a teenage medium in a family of eight others.

References

External links

mediumship in Danish: Medium (person)

mediumship in German: Medium (Person)

mediumship in Spanish: Médium

mediumship in Esperanto: Mediumo

mediumship in French: Médium (occulte)

mediumship in Icelandic: Miðilsgáfa

mediumship in Italian: Medium

mediumship in Dutch: Medium (esoterie)

mediumship in Japanese: 霊媒

mediumship in Polish: Medium (osoba)

mediumship in Portuguese: Mediunidade

mediumship in Russian: Медиум

mediumship in Serbian: Медијум

mediumship in Finnish: Meedio

mediumship in Swedish: Spiritistiskt medium

mediumship in Turkish: Medyumluk

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