Physical mediumship

Physical mediumship is a form of mediumship in which spirits are said to produce effects that can be seen, heard or felt in the physical world, such as objects moving, voices or images. Spiritualists divide the "phenomena" they believe show the existence of spirit into physical phenomena, which go against normal expectations of how material things behave, and mental phenomena, which go against normal expectations of knowledge or will. Physical mediumship has a long history of exposed fraud, and by the 1970s, apart from spiritual healing, it was rarely practised in Australia.

Description

The phenomena

Gillen listed the physical phenomena recognised in Spiritualism as including:

• rapping and table-turning, the earliest Spiritualist effects
• spirit writing, in which a spirit is said to write a message on a slate or paper without the medium's hand (unlike automatic writing, where the medium's hand does the writing)
• direct voice, in which spirit voices are said to come from objects, usually trumpets supplied by the medium, rather than through the medium's own voice
• spirit photography, in which spirits are said to appear on a photograph
• apports, small objects such as flowers or jewellery said to be brought through solid matter
• levitation
• ectoplasm and materialisation: ectoplasm is a substance said to come from the medium's body during trance, and materialisation is any change of a "spiritual" substance into one that ordinary senses can perceive

Gillen also counted spiritual healing as a form of physical mediumship.

Why Spiritualists valued it

Spiritualists valued physical phenomena as evidence of spirit that could be perceived directly. The National Spiritualist Association of Churches in the United States calls physical mediumship "objective", because it acts on physical objects and can be observed by the senses. Some Spiritualists Gillen met regarded genuine physical phenomena as a "highly advanced" form of mediumship. Because the effects were physical, they could also be tested, and scientists and magicians set out to do so (see What it is not and Traditions and lineage, below).

The séance

Séance rooms were often darkened. Trumpet séances, for example, were almost always held in complete darkness. Many séances used a "cabinet", a small enclosure in which, Spiritualists believe, the medium builds up spiritual energy. A cabinet could be a solid wooden structure or simply blankets hung on wires to give the entranced medium some privacy. In the heyday of physical mediumship, an "open circle" usually meant a gathering where people paid to see phenomena such as direct voice, apports or the materialisation of spirits.

The circle and development

Nineteenth-century advice reprinted in a Sydney church magazine in Gillen's time said that phenomena were best investigated in a home circle, which should have between four and twelve members chosen for harmony, should meet on a fixed day once or twice a week in the same room, with everyone in the same seat, and should admit no one who was not sitting in the circle. Development is slow. The Spiritualists National Union of WA suggests physical mediumship has become rare perhaps because it takes many years to develop (see In Australian Spiritualism, below), and few mediums today attempt to produce ectoplasmic materialisations.

Scope

What it includes

• Séances and demonstrations in which spirits are said to produce physical effects

What it is not

• Its claims have not been upheld. One by one, physical mediums were found to be using fraud, sometimes with the techniques of stage magicians, and magicians such as Harry Houdini worked to expose them. The exposure of widespread fraud badly damaged the reputation of Spiritualism in the United States. Tomlinson notes that old-style physical mediums were often caught faking results, sometimes by audience members who seized a "spirit" in the dark and found it was a living person.
• It is different from mental mediumship, the passing on of messages through the medium, which a British medium teaching in Canberra described as what a "normal" medium does. See Mediumship.

Traditions and lineage

Very early in the Spiritualist movement, séances with more spectacular physical phenomena began to be held, and some mediums specialised in them. Spirits were said to levitate objects, speak apart from the medium, leave images on photographic plates, and materialise objects and even themselves. Scientists set out to test these claims, and the Society for Psychical Research was founded in Britain in 1882, followed by the American Society for Psychical Research three years later.

Daniel Dunglas Home is reputed to have been one of the few nineteenth-century physical mediums never caught in fraud.

Context

Within Spiritualism

Physical mediumship is one of the two broad kinds of mediumship that Spiritualist bodies recognise. The National Spiritualist Association of Churches lists levitation, transfiguration, materialisation, raps, apports, independent voice, trumpets, independent writing and precipitated art. J. Gordon Melton writes that, after the work of psychical researchers and of magicians concerned about conjuring passed off as paranormal, many of the physical phenomena that were prominent in Spiritualism in the early twentieth century have largely vanished from it. In England the Noah's Ark Society for Physical Mediumship (1990–2004), not affiliated with any religious body but with mainly Spiritualist members, promoted what it called safe practice and encouraged home circles for physical mediumship.

In Australian Spiritualism

Australian sources mostly treat physical mediumship as part of the movement's past (see Physical mediumship in Australia below). The Spiritualists National Union of WA, which counts physical mediumship among the three main types of mediumship, describes it as spirits speaking in their own voices or moving objects, and says it has become rare, perhaps because it needs many years of development.

A Spiritualist perspective

Physical mediumship holds a special and uneasy place in Spiritualism. For many Spiritualists, accounts of the great physical séances are part of the movement's heritage, and some still regard genuine physical phenomena as an advanced form of mediumship. Yet as the history above shows, this is also where fraud did the movement the most harm, and a thoughtful Spiritualist cannot pass over that.

A Spiritualist teacher would therefore counsel caution and openness. Physical mediumship takes many years of patient development in a stable circle, and no one should be asked to pay to witness phenomena or to take claims on trust. Darkened rooms call for particular care for everyone's safety, and conditions should be as open to scrutiny as the work allows. Honesty about what has and has not been shown matters more than any result, and a circle that finds one of its own members cheating owes it to everyone to say so. For most Spiritualists today, the evidence of survival is sought through mental mediumship and healing, and there is no shame in that. A circle that sits faithfully and honestly, whatever it does or does not produce, keeps faith with the best of the tradition.

Physical mediumship in Australia

In South Australia, interest in Spiritualism grew in the 1880s around the newly arrived musician Christian Reimers, until in 1884 a conjurer joined his circle and showed how supposed spirit rappings could be faked.

In the late 1970s, according to Gillen's study of Sydney Spiritualism, most physical phenomena were virtually forgotten. Apports were still discussed, but he heard of no Australian apport mediums; a direct voice medium had worked in Sydney until the mid-1970s; and spiritual healing was the only form of physical mediumship regularly practised in Australia. Spiritualists he met were ambivalent about physical phenomena because so many had been exposed as fraud: some saw them, if genuine, as "highly advanced", while others dismissed them as a "low" form of mediumship.

Safety and good practice

• Spiritualists told Gillen that physical phenomena were practised less than in the past because of the risk of legal action for fraud.
• 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

• Mediumship
• Trance mediumship
• Spiritual healing
• Spiritualism

Further reading

• Gillen, Paul. The Spiritualists: Gnosis and Ideology. PhD thesis, Macquarie University, 1981.
• Tomlinson, Matt. Speaking with the Dead: An Ethnography of Extrahuman Experience. punctum books, 2024 (open access).