Mediumship
What is a Medium? Mediums are ordinary people who have through training developed their natural psychic ability to enable them to communicate with the Spirit world. There are three main types of Mediumship; Mental, Physical and Healing.
Mental Mediumship Mental Mediumship is the most common and falls into two categories; perception and control. First perception, in this the spirit communicator works through the medium’s mind and he or she is able to see, hear or sense, pictures, sounds or feeling. They will perceive them either subjectively or objectively. In the controlled state the medium will go into trance, this will enable the Spirit control to speak through the medium or to do automatic writing.
Physical Mediumship Physical mediumship is now quite rare, possibly because it takes many years to develop. This is a more direct form if mediumship as everyone present will witness the same phenomena. Spirit can speak directly with their own voice or even materialise for all to see. Objects can also be levitated and moved around the room with no visible means of support. An example of physical mediumship – Ectoplasm is a substance taken from the mediums body and according to Arthur Findlay, mixed with an etheric substance. This enables the spirit controls to affect physical matter. Depending upon the way it was developed it is very often light sensitive. For that reason many seances are held in either total darkness or a low red light. Ectoplasm is extruded from the medium through any opening, very often through either the mouth, ears or nostrils.
extracted from the Pocket Guide to Spiritualism, SNU Publications