Why the Decline of Spectacular Mediumship
metgat
People familiar with the mediumship of 75-150 years ago often ask or wonder why the mediumship of today is not nearly as spectacular. With a few scattered exceptions, all of today's mediumship is of the clairvoyant, clairaudient, and clairsensient type, as demonstrated by John Edward, Lisa Williams, and other television mediums. While clairvoyance - as all three are generally grouped or termed - is frequently interesting and evidential, it is not nearly as spectacular or awesome as the mediumship of yesteryear, which often involved full spirit materializations, apports, levitations, thunderous rappings that spelled out messages, direct writing (pencils writing messages while not held by the medium), the direct voice (the actual voice of the deceased person emanating from outside the medium), and trance voice (the spirit speaking through the medium's voice mechanism). We occasionally hear of some of these things today, but most of it seems to have died out.
The pseudo-skeptic would say that it never existed - that it was all fraud, and that's why we no longer have this spectacular mediumship. No doubt there was much fraud, but the serious student of the subject can come to no conclusion other than that much of it was genuine. In some respects, clairvoyance may be an improvement on the older phenomena, but getting some evidential messages through a clairvoyant hardly seems as spectacular as hearing the actual voice of deceased loved one or seeing the materialized form of the deceased person. Below are my theories as to why today's mediumship is not as spectacular. As will be noticed, many of them are overlapping or inter-connected.
Lifestyle Changes: Before radio, television, and urbanization, people didn't have much to do in the evening, so they socialized in homes and sometimes experimented with various forms of mediumship. When they weren't socializing, there was the peace and quiet necessary for the individual to develop his or her mediumship. Sophia Williams, one of the best direct-voice mediums of the early 1900s, stated that she sat quietly each day for four years to learn the art of relaxation and complete detachment before her own mediumship began to really develop. In her autobiography, Gladys Osborne Leonard, one of the most respected trance mediums of yesteryear, wrote that she and two friends had 26 unproductive development sessions before obtaining results. Then it took another 18 months of development before she became a proficient medium. Pearl Curran and her two friends played with a Ouija board for some eleven months, as their husbands played pinochle, before the spirit entity calling herself Patience Worth began communicating. How many people today have that kind of patience (no pun intended) or solitude? Patience was also required of the researchers. Hamlin Garland, who studied mediums for more than 40 years, reported that he once observed phenomena from a particular medium and then went 12 sittings with her before anything else happened. Also, he once waited with a medium for four hours before spirit communication began.
Lack of Harmony: Psychical researchers came to realize that the best phenomena were obtained when there was harmony among the sitters and a positive attitude toward spirit communication. Lack of harmony, including the negativity of skeptics, often defeated the phenomena. The séances usually began with prayers and the singing of religious hymns to create the harmony. Harmonious conditions were much easier when there was less diversity among people, when they were more like-minded.
Moral Atmosphere: Daniel Dunglas Home, one of the great mediums of the 19th Century, told Sir William Crookes, the scientist who was studying his mediumship, that he could not produce any phenomena on May 28, 1873, Derby Day in England. According to Home, the gambling and drunkenness associated with Derby Day resulted in a negative moral atmosphere, one that prevented the higher spirits from communicating. Could the moral atmosphere in London on Derby Day have been any worse than it is worldwide now? Crookes observed Home on 29 occasions and the conditions were right on only three of those for Home to be levitated by the spirits. Indeed, there are many indications that there is a war on the inner planes - a contending of forces in which the negative forces are currently winning.
Point of Diminishing Returns Reached: A number of messages came through that said the scientists on the "other side" were just learning how to manipulate matter from their side and they were experimenting on their side just as psychical researchers were on our side. Such was the reason for some of the phenomena that seemed like tomfoolery to researchers on this side, e.g., accordions floating in the air and giving off music, observers being levitated, etc. It was reported in one of the messages that Emanuel Swedenborg and Benjamin Franklin, working together on the other side, were responsible for discovering some of the methods of manipulating matter. It may be that they reached the point of diminishing returns in their experiments and saw no point in further experimenting with that type of mediumship.
Risk Factor: The physical phenomena all seems to have been produced by mediums who exuded a strange psychic force or magnetic energy called ectoplasm. It became clear to researchers that giving off this energy weakened the mediums and sometimes resulted in illness and even premature death, especially if the ectoplasm was exposed to light. Here also, the spirit scientists may have decided that it was best to cease experiments as there were too many mediums suffering ill effects from having given off ectoplasm and not completely reabsorbing it.
Interference by Low-Level Spirits: It was reported by some of the more advanced spirits that there were numerous low-level, devious spirits interfering with the communication and other phenomena, and because these low-level spirits were closer in vibration to humans they could better control the medium than the more elevated spirits. Indications are that many true mediums were taken over by low-level spirits and made to look like frauds. The reputations of many good mediums were damaged by this interference. Here again, the more elevated spirits may have decided not to subject honest mediums to such abuse.
Eradication of Disease: Mediums of yesteryear were not necessarily spiritual people. They were simply people who seemed to have had some kind of anomaly of the brain or nervous system - either genetic or caused by disease, often from an illness or disease that resulted in a high temperature. Many mediums reported that their "sixth sense" began after a childhood disease. Because many of these diseases have been eradicated, we have fewer people with mediumistic "gifts."
Electricity: It was often reported that phenomena could not be produced when there electrical storms. Most of the phenomena were produced before radio, television, etc. Perhaps there are too many electrical waves that now interfere with the phenomena.
Education: During the heyday of mediumship, people were not nearly as educated as they are now. With education comes a forgetfulness that science always lags behind truth. This forgetfulness often turns to arrogance and contributes to the lack of harmony, the pseudo-skepticism, materialism, and even the decline in moral atmosphere mentioned above.
Related Phenomena: It may be that the other side gave us as much of the spectacular mediumship as deemed necessary and then inspired us to move on to past-life regressions, near-death experiences, out-of-body travel, and more recently, electronic voice phenomena, instrumental trans-communication, and induced after-death communication.
Divine Plan: To again quote the spirit identifying himself as Martin Luther and communicating with Victor Hugo through a medium while Hugo was in exile. Hugo asked Luther why God does not better reveal himself, to which Luther responded: "Because doubt is the instrument which forges the human spirit. If the day were to come when the human spirit no longer doubted, the human soul would fly off and leave the plough behind, for it would have acquired wings. The earth would lie fallow. Now, God is the sower and man is the harvester. The celestial seed demands that the human ploughshare remain in the furrow of life."
In effect, that seems to say that we are not supposed to have absolute truth or it would stifle us in our earthly missions. Realizing that the blind faith of orthodox religion doesn't work in our "advanced" earthly world, the spirit world apparently gives us just enough evidence to help us move from blind faith to true faith or conviction. We have the free will to test it, discern it, and then accept or reject it.
Access: Public
consciousness
May 2008
I think it is useful to separate two issues: 1) Physical mediumship is less common than it was in the past. 2) Mediumship, both physical and mental, may be less developed today than it was in the past.
Physical mediumship includes levitation, materialization, slate writing etc.
Mental mediumship (typical of TV mediums) includes clairvoyance (which refers to percieving information visually) and also clairaudience, clairsentience etc.
Many of the issues you bring up deal with issue #2 and apply to both physical and mental mediumship. I have a few comments relating to issue #1.
Many of the spectacular phenomena of physical mediumship can be duplicated by magicians and frauds who impersonate mediums. Because of this, physical mediumship is not a useful means of proving the existence of spirits. People inclined to disbelieve in spirits may assume that all physical mediums are frauds merely because it is possible to duplicate the phenomena with tricks or because a few people do commit fraud. It also leaves genuine mediums open to accusations of fraud which are very difficult to disprove. These problems continue today with controversies surrounding physical mediums and is the reason some physical mediums capable of spectacular phemonena only work in private.
Mental mediumship only provides information. When a medium gives very accurate, precise and detailed information about a spirit known to a person who is a complete stranger to the medium, that provides strong evidence that something paranormal is going on. In a public demonstration where people see and hear this happing again and again, it can be a very forceful experience that will convince many, many people of the truth of spirits and the afterlife. (Cold reading can be used to make people think they are getting a reading but it is not capable of providing the very specific and detailed information that a genuine medium will provide.) Information itself is sufficient to convince most people that the medium is in communication with a spirit.
The fact that mental mediumship seems less spectacular is not necessarily due to the fact that it is less accurate, precice and detailed. Even trance mediumship is dependent on the contents of the mind of the medium. It is hard for sitters at a trance mediumship demonstration to understand the difficulties involved and not suspect fraud. Mental mediumship is more authentic in that a genuine mental medium will not claim to be 100% perfect.
Add in the fact that mental mediumship takes much less energy and resources on the part of the spirits and it becomes clear that, all in all, the reason mental mediumship is much more common today is that the spirits have found it to be the best for their purposes.
I totally agree with Henry and his comments.
On Michael Prescott's blog, you, Michael, made this comment about the ridiculous looking paper maché figures in the Helen Duncan photographs - ”Those grotesque figures were likely the result of a failure by the spirit to utilize the ectoplasm and project herself rather than a failure by Duncan.”
It seems, Michael, that you are unwilling to seriously look at the fraud claim with an open mind. I just can't figure out why.
Henry and Marcel,
Many seem to think that physical and mental mediumship are as distinct as black and white. In reality, however, there are many shades of gray. The direct or independent voice, for example, can be considered both physical and mental - physical from the standpoint of the ectoplasmic voice box being formed for the spirits to utilize and mental from the standpoint that much veridical information is offered in the communication. Of course, if we say that mental includes only the veridical information coming through the medium's mind, then it is more clearly distinct, although less evidential. Consider Emily French, one the most respected direct-voice mediums. . She was often seen talking to the people next to her as the independent voices were speaking. It seems unlikely that her mind was filtering the spirit voices at the same time she was talking to someone. But I'm sure someone will argue that possibility. Even fully materialized spirits often converse and provide much in the way of “mental” phenomena.
metgat,
I think we are using terminology slightly differently. Rather than argue over the definitions I'll just try to clarify how I was using the terms and what I meant. Then readers can be sure they understand my comment….
I didn't intend to include direct voice as a form of mental mediumship. When I wrote that mental mediumship only provides information, I didn't mean that any type of mediumship that provides information can be considered mental mediumship. I meant that clairvoyance, clairaudience, clairsentience and other subjective perceptions are how mental mediums work and this type of mediumship only provides information from the spirits, it does not provide any objective phenomena like sounds or levitations.
(I do think one could ask whether mental mediumship and trance mediumship might be two ends of a continuum. When a mental medium starts to pickup the style of speech and gestures of the spirit it may seem like they are going into a light trance.)
It is true that physical mediumship can also provide information from the spirits. My belief is that with physical mediumship the attention on and controversy over phenomena distracts people from the information conveyed. It is sad to say - but it is actually preferable for skeptics to be disputing the source of information a mental medium provides (by making accusations of cold reading, and the use of priviate investigators) rather than disputing the methods by which the physical phenomena are done (by making accusations of conjuring and ventriloquism). With mental mediumship, the focus is at least on the information.
Informaiton (not physical phenomena, not even materialization) is what proves the continuation of personality after the death of the body. If you want to get people focused on the information it saves everyone, spirits and mediums, a lot of work and grief if you get rid of the physical phenomena and just stick with information. If the information is coming from thin air it is no more true than if it comes from the mouth of a fully conscious medium.
My belief is that physical mediumship is less common today because spirits have learned that physical mediumship is not useful enough to compensate for the difficulties involved. Another difficulty I would like to mention is that the very spectacularness of it tends to bring about many of the problems you list. It attracts people who are out for a lark who are not serious about investigating spiritual matters. These types of people can lower the moral atmosphere, increase the lack of harmony, and bring in low level spirits to the seance.
Henry,
Thank you for your thoughts. For the most part I agree with you. However, I do feel that the direct or independent voice is more evidential than clairvoyance as all indications are that the communication coming from spirit is not distorted by the mind of the medium. It seems to me that hearing the voice of a loved one, as it is remembered, speaking complete sentences and carrying on a conversation is more evidential than a clairvoyant trying to interpret what the spirit is communicating and just relaying fragmentary thoughts. The same may be said of fully materialized spirits who speak. What could be more evidential than seeing your deceased parent or spouse and hearing him or her talking to you in the same voice he or she had when alive?
Many people don't know the difference between trance voice and direct or independent voice, so for the benefit of anyone who might be reading this I'll explain. In trance voice, the communicating spirit uses the voice mechanism of the medium and the communication is apparently filtered through the medium's mind. However, in the direct or independent voice, the communicating spirit does not use the medium's voice mechanism or her mind. A voice box or larynx is molded from the medium's ectoplasm and the spirit speaks independent of the medium. A conical or cylinder of some kind is usually required to amplify the voice of the communicating spirit. The pseudo-skeptic claims such voices are the result of ventriloquism, but researchers have ruled that out with the most credible direct voice mediums, such as Emily French, Etta Wriedt, and Sophie Williams.
Materialization may be convincing but is it evidential? Do we really know what materialization is? It seems to be some form of sculpture made from ectoplasm. Do the features of a materialized spirit reflect the actual form and location of the spirit as it exists in the seance room or is it only an “animated” representation of how the spirit appeared in life?
1) There are accounts of materializing spirits rising up from the floor as they materialize and descending down to the floor as they dematerialize. It is as if the materialized spirit is being constructed and deconstructed in a linear fashion rather than an existing form being made visible.
2) I have read a discussion about how the materialized cloth is patterned on cloth found in the seance room. If the materialization was simply the process of making visible a preexisting form why would the materialized cloth have to be patterned on cloth in the seance room?
3) Sometimes when the spirits are just learning to materialize with a new medium, the initial forms appear misshapen. If materialization were simply making visible a preexisting form one might expect initial attempts to be hazy or blurry (of low resolution) or patchy but misshapen forms would seem to point to the materialized forms being a sculpture which is formed through skill and artistic ability and not by coating an existing spirit with ectoplasm.
I don't have the references for these ponts handy nor can I vouch for the reliability of those references, however a clear and detailed statement from the spirits on what ectoplasm is, and how materialization is done might dispell these concerns. The lack of such information in my opinion is just another cause of concern about materialization and physical mediumship in general. You make a good point about the value of direct voice, but If direct voice is such an accurate means of communication, I don't understand why it hasn't been used to explain such things. This is part of why I believe that information is so important in proving the existence of the afterlife. We're supposed to believe that these spectacular phenomena prove somethng but when we ask how they are done we do not get a very clear or detailed answer. So what do they prove? Something paranormal is occuring but what exactly is it?
For the sake of completeness I would also like to mention another difficulty with physical mediumship which is the physical mistreatment of the medium that comes from trying to prove they are not causing the phenomena through ordinary means. This has been elaborated in:
People From the Other World
Henry S. Olcott
http://survivalebooks.org/#People%20From%20the%20Other%20World
see page 26 and 27
“…their soft young
metacarpal bones were squeezed out of shape, and their arms covered with the
scars of melted wax, used to make the assurance of the bonds doubly and trebly
sure. These wrists and arms are a sight to see. Every girl and boy of them has a
marked groove between the ends of the ulna and radius and the articulation of
the bones of the hand, and every one of them is scarred by hot sealing-wax. Two
of the girls showed me scars where pieces of flesh had been pinched out by handcuffs used by “committees”–fools who seem to have been
unable to discover suspected fraud without resort to brutal violence on the
persons of children.”
Henry,
Thank you for your additional thoughts. Again, I agree, with some reservations. There are records of materializations where nothing was said, but there are also records where the communicating spirit spoke for 10 or 15 minutes on matters very personal to the sitter. See “The Materializations of May King” a few posts back at this blog as an example. However, they are few and far between. There is much more of such conversation with the direct or independent voice. If you want to read some intriguing books on the direct voice go to http://survivalebooks.org/#The%20Voices and read the books by Admiral Usborne Moore and Edward Randall. You might also check “The Mystery of the Buried Crosses” at this blog five or six posts back.