"Matter is the link that binds the mind; it is the instrument that serves it and at the same time acts upon it." - Allan Kardec -
A SHORT DEFINITION
Medium is a Latin word that means middle, intermediate. Mediumnity is therefore a sense that lies beyond the five senses (sight, smell, taste, hearing, touch) and that makes the link between two planes: physical (matter) and spiritual (spirit).
~~~~~~~
A BIT OF HISTORY
by Geoffrey Spriet, Psychoanalytic Approach to Mediumnity Master 1 in clinical psychology, psychopathology and psychotherapy, University Paris 8, year 2005-2006
If mediumship is a relatively recent doctrine that originated in the 19th century through the spiritualist movement, the practices and phenomena of contact with an invisible spiritual world have been recorded in many places by historians and anthropologists. Since ancient Greece, the Pythia of the sanctuary of Delphi came into contact with the god Apollo to tell the oracle to whom asked. Closer to now, the book De la Philosophie Occulte, written by Cornelius Agrippa in 1533, explains in its third part how to evoke angels, spirits and demons. The shaman, a healer among animist peoples and without writing, to whom Mircea Eliade has dedicated a work that has become classical, makes contact with the spirits of nature by absorbing hallucinogenic plants to treat the sick. Levi-Strauss even equated the therapeutic practice of the shaman with that of the psychoanalyst. This short presentation of historical or ethnological examples that may be similar to mediumship is far from exhaustive. Mediumship knew one of its precursors in the person of Emmanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772), a great visionary who founded an esoteric school still active today. Swedenborg claimed to come into contact with angels and spirits in trance states that followed prayer. But it was in Hydesville, in the United States, in 1847, that the official history of mediumnity began. The Fox family lived on a farm that was said to be haunted: blows were struck in the partitions and furniture moved by itself. It was by establishing a code which was the precursor of the spiritist alphabet that the Fox family was able to dialogue with the entity, the author of these manifestations, through the intermediary of the two young sisters, Margaret and Katie, who were mediums. The spirit identified itself as Charles Haynes (or Charles Ryan), a peddler murdered by a previous tenant and buried in the cellar. The Foxes did find human remains there. This communication method with the spirits spread very rapidly in America and the phenomenon quickly crossed borders to enter Europe where it also caused a great success. In 1854, a Frenchman named Léon Hippolyte Rivail (1804-1869), a pedagogue disciple of Pestalozzi, received the initiation to spritism, not without reluctance, by a magnetizer, Monsieur Forestier. Hippolyte Rivail then took the pseudonym of Allan Kardec, a name he wore as a druid in a previous incarnation and which was revealed to him by an entity. Allan Kardec became the official codifier of what would later be called spiritism. As a board game (in America it was called the table dance), mediumship became therefore a part of a rigorous spiritual and moral framework.
~~~~~~~
GIFT OR ABILITY?
Mediumship is often an innate gift and the manifestations of mediumnic abilities are thus visible from a very young age. To be born with a gift is simply to have a facility to develop a natural and common aptitude for all individuals of the same species. Therefore, all humans are fit to become marathoners, mathematicians, or mediums, but not all will become so. If it is not innate, mediumship can also be triggered in the course of life following a coma, a traumatic shock (physical or emotional) or any other situation that compels the mind to remain silent. Flashes, whispering voices, unbridled intuition, the person is assailed by sensations that he had previously ignored. But what to do with all this information and especially how to interpret and channel these messages? To reveal and work on one’s mediumship is to open and expand one’s awareness, to develop one’s understanding of natural phenomena, to pacify oneself inwardly while becoming fully the creator of one’s reality and above all to put oneself at the service of others to help them face the trials of life. Like the marathoner or the mathematician, whether it is an innate gift or acquired as a result of an accident and because he is or has become a sensitive being, introverted, rather solitary and often out of step with the society in which he was born, the medium will have every interest to cultivate his abilities by refining his perceptions, by acquiring discernment to identify illusions, by knowing how to cut certain connections to preserve himself and by protecting himself energetically.
~~~~~~~
PSYCHIC OR PHYSICAL MEDIUM?
Most mediums are psychic, which means that their physical body is not possessed by an entity during the psychic trance. They use other frequencies to communicate with the astral plane. There are several ways to perceive the invisible:
clairvoyance is an extra-sensory capacity that makes it possible to capture the past, present and future by seeing beyond the visible. We can compare this predisposition to a very deep intuition that the medium captures in the form of images or visual flashes. A clairvoyant may discover information about a person or situation without knowing it.
Clairaudaince refers to hearing. The medium receives messages in the form of sounds.
Clairsentience is a type of empathy that allows the medium to perceive the emotions and sensations coming from a person, but also from a place or a situation. However, unlike empathy, if the clairsentient feels the emotions and sensations, these do not cause any suffering in him, he remains totally detached.
Each medium has a natural predisposition to be clairvoyant, clairaudient or clairsentient. However, as the mediumship development and practice progresses, it is not uncommon for this original disposition to give way to another or even for the three to mingle.
Among the psychic mediums and regardless of how they perceive the invisible, there are also two great movements that have made and still make talk about them:
spiritualism: doctrine born in the 19th century, spiritualism is based on the belief that certain paranormal phenomena are the way for entities of the afterlife called spirits to communicate with the living. The spirits we are talking about are most often deceased people.
Channeling : American term of the New Age literature, channeling refers to a process of communication between the medium and an entity belonging to another dimension.
In both cases it is said that the medium is capable of raising his vibration sufficiently to connect to disembodied entities, whether they are deceased, deities, ascended masters or aliens.
Physical mediums are rarer and the entity borrows their physical body to manifest itself through it, we then speak of incorporation. During these manifestations, the entity draws on the energy of the medium to have an impact on matter and can therefore move objects, lift them, project them and thus cause an impact directly in matter. This is called telekinesis or poltergeist. It is important to point out that while the physical medium holds significant and sufficient energy, he rarely has control over what happens through him. But as with all other types of mediumship, it is possible to work on one’s faculties in order to acquire a certain level of mastery.
~~~~~~~
MEDIUM OR MEDIUM-HEALER?
Among all mediums and always independently of how they perceive the invisible, we find:
the medium who is mainly receptive. He channels messages and delivers them to their recipient.
The medium-healer who is both receptive and active. He channels messages, delivers them to their recipients and also acts concretely through techniques such as massage, magnetism, shamanism, energetic care, etc. as would do any healer.
So not all mediums are healers, but all healers are a little bit medium.
~~~~~~~
WHAT IS A PURE MEDIUM?
The pure medium is so sensitive that he is able to practice without external support because he bases his predictions solely on instinct, intuition and flashes. If he uses an external support, he does it only to confirm the messages he has previously received. Therefore, the gift of pure mediumship is most often innate.
~~~~~~~
DO MEDIUMS TALK WITH THE DECEASED?
Contrary to popular belief, mediums do not speak with the dead because, as Kellee White , psychotherapist and spiritual medium explains: "Death does not exist, there is only a transition from the physical to the spiritual being and some mediums are sensitive and intuitive enough to hear, feel and see information from the other side." However, the success of communicating with a missing person depends on:
the human: if the medium is preoccupied or emotionally disturbed, it will have difficulty in receiving and transcribing the messages delivered to him. It is therefore important for him to maintain a serene, calm and inwardly settled state, far from the vagaries of his daily life.
The departed: after his death, the deceased passes through different states according to the evolution of his mind and the conditions of his death. Some spirits may therefore be difficult to access for a longer or shorter period of time, while others will be accessible almost instantaneously.