Flower readings

Flower readings are a form of Spiritualist mediumship in which a medium holds a flower brought by a member of the congregation and gives a message, or "reading", for the person who brought it. In a study of Sydney Spiritualism in the 1970s, Paul Gillen found that reading flowers was the usual form of demonstration in Sydney services, and the most developed form of divination at the church he studied. One Australian church today presents the practice as a form of clairvoyance that demonstrates the survival of the human personality after death.

Description

The flower service

Gillen described the flower reading as the climax of the Sydney Spiritualist service, coming after the sermon, the collection and a hymn. People bring a flower to the service in a bag. The medium chooses a bag, takes out what is inside (usually, but not always, a flower) and, holding it, gives a message for the person who brought it. This continues until everyone who brought a flower has had a message.

The medium isn't expected to know who brought each flower. Instead, the medium usually asks the person to make themselves known at some point during the reading. What matters is that the message is one the person can relate to their own concerns. Only the person who wants the reading is supposed to touch the flower, because Spiritualists believe that handling by others could interfere with the reading. Some people "place" a question on their flower, holding it in mind in relation to the flower in the hope that the medium will pick it up and answer it.

After the service the flowers are usually thrown away, though members sometimes take the nicer ones home. Gillen noted that some Spiritualists believe flowers touched by a medium last longer, because of the spiritual power the medium is in contact with.

Styles of message

Mediums do not all read flowers in the same way. At the Sydney church, Gillen found that the older mediums tended to stress circumstantial evidence for the recipient, such as names, dates and descriptions of people and places, while a newer group gave more weight to inner experience and symbolic language. One medium might use several styles in a single service. The difference matters to a learner because evidence of the first kind is what Spiritualists look to as a sign that a person lives on after death.

How Spiritualists explain flower readings

Gillen identified four different explanations for how a medium gains information from a flower:

• Psychometry: the flower carries impressions of the person who brought it, which the medium picks up
• Guidance: the medium's spirit guides, or the guides of the person receiving the reading, pass on the message
• Telepathy: the flower serves as a point of focus that helps the medium tune in to the person
• Clairvoyant diagnosis: some mediums base a whole reading on the appearance of the flower itself, working from stem to leaves to petals and relating colour, wilting and texture to the person's circumstances

Gillen noted that the Victorian "language of flowers", in which each flower stood for a feeling or quality, offered another set of meanings for flowers. At the Sydney church he studied, however, the meanings given to flowers were largely limited to the colour code used for auras.

Flowers in circles and development

Flowers are also used for practice in circles. The Sydney development class Gillen attended always closed with a test of psychometry, sometimes using flowers as in the service, though more often keys or jewellery, with steps taken so that no one knew whose object they were reading. One home circle chose flowers over personal belongings for its regular psychometry sessions because its members knew one another well enough to recognise each other's rings and watches.

Scope

What it includes

• Messages given by a medium while holding a flower brought by a member of the congregation, usually during a Spiritualist service
• Flower readings in some circles, where flowers are used as objects for psychometry

What it is not

• Its accuracy has not been shown. Gillen noted that mediums sometimes have clues about who brought each flower, such as seeing people arrive with their bags, the order in which the bags are placed on the tray, and the type of flower itself. He considered conscious fraud unusual among mediums, but reported that he never saw anything at a service that couldn't be explained by a medium being quick-witted, imaginative and good at communicating.

Traditions and lineage

Gillen placed flower reading within psychometry, the reading of objects, which he traced to Joseph Buchanan, a nineteenth-century American physician who promoted it as a way of diagnosing illness. He also noted that Spiritualists are sensitive to suggestions that they practise "fortune telling", because of its link with prosecutions in the past.

Context

Within Spiritualism

Flower reading is a practice of Spiritualist churches, used in services and circles as a way of giving mediumistic messages. Spiritfold has not found it named in the published definitions of the National Spiritualist Association of Churches (NSAC) or the Spiritualists' National Union. Gillen classed it as a kind of psychometry, and the NSAC counts psychometry as a form of mental mediumship. One Australian church presents it as a form of clairvoyance given to show that the human personality survives death (see below).

In Australian Spiritualism

Flower readings are documented in Spiritualist churches in all five mainland states in the early twentieth century. In 1920 the Victorian Association of Spiritualists in Melbourne advertised readings from flowers at a mediums' meeting; in Adelaide, a co-founder of St John's Spiritual Church demonstrated "flower clairvoyance" at its services; a Wollongong Spiritualist church ended its Sunday service with a flower reading in 1931; the Brisbane Spiritual Church held "Floral readings" on a weeknight in 1933; and Perth's suburban churches of the 1930s offered "Messages from Flowers".

Today the Centre Christian Spiritualist Church in Subiaco gives messages at every service to people who have placed a flower or sprig of leaves on its flower board. After the address, its platform mediums give themselves over to their spirit guides to pass on these communications, which the church describes as a form of clairvoyance that demonstrates survival. The Spiritual Mission of Noarlunga includes flower readings in its Friday development programme.

A Spiritualist perspective

Flower readings have a long and affectionate place in Australian Spiritualism, as the history above shows. For many congregations they were, and still are, the heart of the service. A Spiritualist would see the flower as a link between the medium and the person who brought it, a simple, gentle way into a message rather than anything special in itself.

The aim is the same as in any demonstration: to offer something the person can recognise, and ideally evidence that their loved ones live on. A good medium is honest about what the flower is and isn't doing, and is careful not to rely on clues such as who carried which bag. Messages given from the platform should be kind and suitable for a public room, without predictions or anything that could alarm. People who bring a flower are often looking for comfort, and some will be recently bereaved, so the reading should leave them feeling respected and cared for, whatever the message turns out to be. For a student, flower reading is a good discipline because it asks for clear, specific detail that a stranger can check.

Flower readings in Australia

According to Gillen, Australian Spiritualism took its modern form in the early twentieth century, as a network of loosely affiliated churches whose main ritual was reading flowers. In Sydney in the 1970s, flower readings remained the usual form of demonstration at services. Gillen also noted that some churches had recently begun holding healing sessions before their flower services.

Flower readings continue in Australian Spiritualist churches. St John Spiritual Church in Port Adelaide holds a Wednesday gathering that includes flower reading messages and hands-on healing.

Safety and good practice

• The Spiritualists' National Union says mediumship is meant to give evidence of survival, not to foretell events, give advice or counsel. It suggests that a person receiving a message ask whether the communicator's identity was clearly established, whether there was enough evidence of who was communicating, and whether the message was relevant to them.
• The National Spiritualist Association of Churches' Code of Ethics asks its mediums to make only realistic statements about what mediumship can do and not to exploit the trust and dependency of others.
• Section 40 of South Australia's Summary Offences Act 1953 makes it an offence for a person, intending to defraud, to claim to act as a spiritualist or medium, or to claim to use telepathy, clairvoyance or similar powers. The offence requires an intent to defraud.

Related modalities

• Psychometry
• Mediumship
• Clairvoyance
• Aura reading
• Spiritualism

Further reading

• Gillen, Paul. The Spiritualists: Gnosis and Ideology. PhD thesis, Macquarie University, 1981.