An Exploration of Trance Mediumship

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I’ve been curious about the different types of mediumship, like séance tables, trance, and ouija, and how people perceive psychic abilities in the face of limited objective evidence.

The practice is associated with several religious-belief systems such as Shamanism, Vodun, Spiritualism, Spiritism, Candomblé, Voodoo, Umbanda and some New Age groups. Believing the impossible: No evidence for existence of psychic ability found" . Retrieved 2020-09-23.Harry Houdini. (2011). A Magician Among the Spirits. Cambridge University Press. p. 66. ISBN 978-1-108-02748-9 In 1960, psychic investigator Andrija Puharich and Tom O'Neill, publisher of the Spiritualist magazine Psychic Observer, arranged to film two seances at Camp Chesterfield, Indiana, using infrared film, intending to procure scientific proof of spirit materializations. The medium was shown the camera beforehand, and was aware that she was being filmed. However, the film revealed obvious fraud on the part of the medium and her cabinet assistant. The exposé was published in the 10 July 1960 issue of the Psychic Observer. [168] :96–97 Trance mediumship comprises a special relationship with the spirit controls that work with us. This relationship helps us to build a closer rapport and can bring a sharper, more specific and accurate flow of information in all areas of healing, mediumship, philosophy and teaching. Hayward, Rhodri (2017). "Part III: Beyond medicine – Psychiatry and religion". In Eghigian, Greg (ed.). The Routledge History of Madness and Mental Health. Routledge Histories (1sted.). London and New York: Routledge. pp.137–152. doi: 10.4324/9781315202211.ch7 (inactive 1 August 2023). ISBN 9781315202211. LCCN 2016050178. {{ cite book}}: CS1 maint: DOI inactive as of August 2023 ( link) In the 1930s Harry Price (director of the National Laboratory of Psychical Research) had investigated the medium Helen Duncan and had her perform a number of test séances. She was suspected of swallowing cheesecloth which was then regurgitated as "ectoplasm". [150] Price had proven through analysis of a sample of ectoplasm produced by Duncan, that it was made of cheesecloth. [151] Helen Duncan would also use a doll made of a painted papier-mâché mask draped in an old sheet which she pretended to her sitters was a spirit. [152] The photographs taken by Thomas Glendenning Hamilton in the 1930s of ectoplasm reveal the substance to be made of tissue paper and magazine cut-outs of people. The famous photograph taken by Hamilton of the medium Mary Ann Marshall depicts tissue paper with a cut out of Arthur Conan Doyle's head from a newspaper. Skeptics have suspected that Hamilton may have been behind the hoax. [153]

Mediumship is the practice of purportedly mediating communication between familiar spirits or spirits of the dead and living human beings. Practitioners are known as "mediums" or "spirit mediums". [1] [2] There are different types of mediumship or spirit channelling, including séance tables, trance, and ouija. Massimo Polidoro. (2000). Anna Eva Fay: The Mentalist Who Baffled Sir William Crookes. Skeptical Inquirer 24: 36–38. The mediums had anywhere from 15 to 47 years of psychography experience, performing up to 18 psychographies per month for free. All were right-handed, were in good mental health, and not currently using any psychiatric drugs.

History's greatest trance mediums

Brown, Michael F. (1999). The Channeling Zone: American Spirituality in an Anxious Age. Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-10883-3. In a 2019 television segment on Last Week Tonight featuring prominent purported mediums including Theresa Caputo, John Edward, Tyler Henry, and Sylvia Browne, John Oliver criticized the media for promoting mediums because this exposure convinces viewers that such powers are real, and so enable neighborhood mediums to prey on grieving families. Oliver said "...when psychic abilities are presented as authentic, it emboldens a vast underworld of unscrupulous vultures, more than happy to make money by offering an open line to the afterlife, as well as many other bullshit services." [53] [54] Fraud [ edit ] Helen Duncan (age 30) in a séance with dolls (1928)

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. The Hungarian medium Ladislas Lasslo confessed that all of his spirit materializations were fraudulent in 1924. A séance sitter was also found to be working as a confederate for Lasslo. [138] [139] Mina Crandon with her "spirit hand" which was discovered to be made from a piece of carved animal liver Stanisława P. with ectoplasm Some people feel uncomfortable with the idea of profiting from people’s grief or desperation, especially when it comes to providing messages from deceased loved ones. They typically receive information through clairvoyance (clear seeing), clairaudience (clear hearing), and clairsentience (clear feeling). 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. [173]

Further Reading

In the later half of the 20th century, Western mediumship developed in two different ways. One type involves clairaudience, in which the medium claims to hear spirits and relay what they hear to their clients. The other is a form of channeling in which the channeler seemingly goes into a trance, and purports to leave their body allowing a spirit entity to borrow it and then speak through them. [30] When in a trance the medium appears to enter into a cataleptic state, [31] although modern channelers may not. [ citation needed] Some channelers open the eyes when channeling, and remain able to walk and behave normally. The rhythm and the intonation of the voice may also change completely. [31] Tully, Caroline (2010). "Walk Like an Egyptian: Egypt as Authority in Aleister Crowley's Reception of The Book of the Law" (PDF). The Pomegranate: The International Journal of Pagan Studies. London: Equinox Publishing. 12 (1): 20–47. doi: 10.1558/pome.v12i1.20. hdl: 11343/252812. ISSN 1528-0268. S2CID 159745083. Archived (PDF) from the original on 10 January 2022 . Retrieved 10 January 2022. Anna Hurwic, Pierre Curie, translated by Lilananda Dasa and Joseph Cudnik, Paris, Flammarion, 1995, pp. 65, 66, 68, 247–48.