Forms of Mediumship

1 Psychic Powers and Mediumship | 2 Forms of Mediumship
3 Develop Psychic Powers and Mediumship | 4 Spirit Guides
5 How to Become Psychic

Mental Mediumship

Mental mediumship is by far the most common form of contemporary mediumship. Mental mediums see, hear or sense Spirit and relay their impressions to sitters.

Mental mediums may operate in a fully conscious state in which they are in control of both their words and actions, or in various degrees of trance, where a Spirit entity speaks through the Medium. In most cases the trance state is light enough for the medium to remain conscious of what is being said through his/her vocal cords.

Spirit communicates by projecting impressions onto the medium’s consciousness. Mediums receive these impressions through clairvoyance (clear seeing), clairaudience (clear hearing), and clairsentience (clear sensing).

Aside from the deepest trance states Spirit is limited by the medium’s knowledge and vocabulary, eg the medium will not be able to speak in a language not consciously known to him/her. Dog breeds, flowers, and other symbols will only be able to be named where the medium knows the name in his/her normal state.

In modern Spiritualist church sittings it is common for the medium’s address to be delivered in a trance state, but group demonstrations of clairvoyance are almost invariably given under full consciousness.

Automatic writing may be considered a form of mental mediumship. This varies from the subject consciously writing his/her Spiritual impressions through to trance state in which Spirit takes control of the subject’s hand, with or without his/her knowledge of the process.

Psychometry involves the reading of an object’s history by handling it. It appears the object acts as a link between the medium and Spirit. An alternative view is that the object somehow records impressions from its owner and events in its history.

Psychic artists are able to sketch or paint people in the Spirit world who are then recognised by sitters. Psychic artists usually accompany their drawings with some information about the person.

Physical Mediumship

Physical mediumship demonstrates the reality of Spirit through the production of various physical phenomena. Physical mediumship is currently much less common than it was in the nineteenth and early twentieth century.

Forms of physical phenomena may include:

Transfiguration - in which the medium takes on the physical appearance of the communicating Spirit;
Audible phenomena - knocks, raps, possibly in the form of a code responding to the medium’s, or sitters’, questions;
Psychokinetic effects - the movement of objects, levitation;
Direct voice - in which the voice of the communicating Spirit is produced and does not emanate from the medium’s voice box;
Ectoplasm - the production of a white “substance” from the medium’s body;
Apports - materialised objects, usually earthly objects appearing in the séance room from elsewhere on earth;
Materialization - the communicating Spirit appears in physical form allowing physical contact with sitters.

Spiritual Healing

Healing is considered an important part of modern Spiritualism and is viewed as an alternative path of expression to mediumship, though many mediums are also healers and vice versa. Spiritualist churches generally offer healing sessions in which healers deliver healing through the laying on of hands. Spiritualist church services usually feature an absent healing component in which names are read from the healing list and prayers said for those in need of healing. Most Spirit healers say they simply act as a channel through which the healing energy flows from Spirit to the recipient.

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