An Extraordinary Journey: The Memoirs of a Physical Medium

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The medium or chairperson at a seance must give a pre-seance briefing to the sitters with details of what can and can’t be done during the seance, tailored to the individual medium who is working during the seance.

Others have worked over the last couple of years which I understand included a visit from David Thompson, Gordon Garforth and Jean Skinner. Minister Steven Upton has also been working towards the use of physical mediumship within healing for several years and Sharon Harvey is starting to experiment with this aspect of her mediumship at the College.” As another counterbalance to Lewis’s model, Susan Rasmussen has highlighted the practice of spirit possession amongst the Kel Ewey Tuareg of Nigeria, noting that Tuareg women ‘are not subjugated, but enjoy high status and prestige’, and so do not fit the standard social-protest model. 21 Owing to these obvious discrepancies between Lewis’s general theory and the ethnographic reality, Donovan (2000) has argued that Lewis’s hypothesis, although generally applicable to many possession cults, ought not be thought of as a complete theory, but rather should be supplemented by other approaches. In other words, while it is undoubtedly the case that spirit possession performs a range of social functions, this is not necessarily all that is going on. Therapeutics Gomm, R. (1975). ‘Bargaining from Weakness: Spirit Possession on the South Kenya Coast.’ Man, Vol. 10, No. 4, pp. 530-543.

Physical Mediumship Categories of Manifestations

There was another name on the card and I asked about a spirit names Violet Snyder. He responded she was a lovely friend from a life in Ireland. He said, “You were in Ireland during its founding as a country with sovereign rights. Violet is all you need to say. She chose this name after arriving here. There is a connection with me and the Violet flame. Snyder was a previous name in another life. That said, mediumship, and the ability to incorporate spiritual entities, can undoubtedly provide women, and other socially-marginalized groups, such as homosexuals and factory workers 18, with significant social benefits that would not otherwise be available. Kilson 19 has written of the transformation in status that spirit mediumship brings about in Ga society in Ghana, for example. At the time of Kilson’s fieldwork, the Ga considered women to be innately inferior to men, which when combined with illiteracy, unmarried life and, potentially, an inability to conceive children, frequently resulted in a particularly low social standing. By becoming spirit mediums, women in Ga society were able to achieve a degree of status they could not have attained under normal circumstances, taking on a vital social role, and one imbued with supernatural authority. Frazer, J.G. (1993 [1890]). The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion. Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Editions. Harrison, Vernon. J’ACCUSE: AN EXAMINATION OF THE HODGSON REPORT OF 1885, Journal 53, 1985-86, pp. 286-310. Argues that Hodgson’s negative verdict on Helena Blavatsky’s mediumship was flawed by rampant prejudice. The author focuses on his attitude to the handwriting specimens in the Koot Hoomi scripts. CORRESPONDENCE, Journal 54, p. 281-3; 55, pp. 40-44; Journal 56 & 57, 1989-1991, pp. 61-2, 63. DISCUSSION Journal 6, 1893, pp. 110-11, 143-4. physical mediumship/beliefs/theosophy/magic/cheating Many anthropologists have directly questioned the idea that spirit possession is a pathological condition. 54 Budden, for instance, argues that the prevalence of dissociative possession and possession-trance states across the world, and the extent to which such states are ‘embedded within historical and cultural contexts’ indicates that the phenomenon is far from abnormal, indeed, as we have seen, in many societies it may be a desirable state, with those able to incorporate spiritual entities at will being granted higher social status than would otherwise be attainable. As an illustrative example, Thomas Csordas recounts a Candomblé (Brazilian syncretic religion) case in which an individual was denied initiation because subtle behaviours were recognized in his performance that were indicative of pathology rather than ecstasy, 55 thus demonstrating an awareness among spirit possession practitioners themselves of essential differences between spirit incorporation and pathological states, as well as an ability to actively distinguish between them. Cognitive Approaches

Goff, D.C., Brotman, A.W., Kindlon, D., Waites, M., & Amico, E. (1991). ‘The Delusion of Possession in Chronically Psychotic Patients.’ Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease,Vol. 179, No. 9.If you're reading this -I want you to know you may not be going through a negative change, you may have a spiritual gift.

St. Germain- You will not work with her while still in a human body on earth, however, she is my assistant in the work we do and Violet assists in structuring my work. She is in a busy community and someday you will be a member of this community yourself.

Sound is always important in a physical seance. Silence does not provide the right energy for physical mediumship. It is important to have vocal responses from the sitters about what they are experiencing or what they are not experiencing, so that these can be compared. We must remember that physical mediumship is witnessed by all present through the physical senses, therefore all should be perceiving the same thing at the same time.Music can be a great help in building the energy, but should not be so loud that it is distressing to the sitters and is not required to be played throughout the seance. Kilson, M. (1971). ‘Ambivalence and Power: Mediums in Ga Traditional Religion.’ Journal of Religion in Africa, Vol. 4, pp. 171-177. Intriguingly, the protocol states that “night vision viewers” are required to be made available “to watch events live during the séance and so have independent witnesses acting on behalf of those present.” I asked David who would be responsible for providing this equipment and who would select the people to use it in each séance? Physical mediumship is very rare and it is said that there are probably only a handful of good physical mediums in the world. It is also said it can take 10 or 20 years for physical mediumship to develop.

Pierini, E. (2014). ‘Becoming a Spirit Medium: Initiatory Learning and the Self in the Vale do Amanhecer.’ Ethnos, Vol. No. , pp. 1-25.As I started developing my gifts and sharing them with the world, lots of people thought I needed to be committed. Truth be told, I'd almost convinced myself of that, too, at the time.