Platform mediumship

Platform mediumship is mediumship given in public, usually as the "demonstration" at a Spiritualist service, in which a medium stands before the congregation and passes on messages said to come from people who have died to members of the audience. Mediums call this working "on platform". Research with the Canberra Spiritualist Association describes the demonstration as the high point of the service.

Description

The demonstration in the service

At the Canberra Spiritualist Association, a typical service is run by a chair, a person running the sound and audio-visual system, and the day's medium. After a welcome, a short meditation, songs, a reading of Spiritualism's Seven Principles and an address by the medium, the medium gives the demonstration, offering "proof of survival" by passing on messages from people in the spirit world to members of the audience. The service then closes with a song, notices and a collection. At the Victorian Spiritualists' Union in Melbourne, the Sunday service includes a 30-minute "demonstration of survival" by one or more mediums.

How mediums work on platform

The medium describes people who have died, often including what they were like and how they died. Because the medium never met them, Spiritualists offer these details as evidence that personality survives death. Mediums don't always get a clear response; according to Tomlinson, these small "failures" help medium and audience feel they are working together to gather evidence, and mediums present themselves as skilled while treating the spirits as responsible for coming forward. Most readings, Tomlinson found, fall somewhere between striking success and failure, with a mix of yeses and noes, hesitation and hope.

The audience has a part to play. Tomlinson describes a visiting medium in Canberra asking people to answer her aloud rather than simply nod, because, she said, the voice of the recipient helps her perceive more clearly; in his reading, mediumship works as a two-way conversation and falters if the audience does not respond. The same medium taught that once a person in the spirit world has been described, the medium should ask "Who am I with?" rather than "Who understands?", and should not stop to explain how she is working.

Styles differ. Tomlinson describes one Canberra medium with a no-nonsense manner and another whose style was sunny and playful, who walked about a good deal as she worked. One experienced Canberra medium told him that her guides play no part when she is on platform, and that she feels influenced by them mainly when she speaks about philosophy.

Learning to work on platform

Platform work is learned in stages. In the Canberra mediumship course Tomlinson attended, part of each class was set aside for public speaking: students stood at the front of the room to talk and were then given pointers; Tomlinson himself was told to slow down and not to fold his arms. The SNU's Certificate in Speaking & Demonstrating is built around a trainer, practical experience at services, ongoing feedback and a logbook, and its final assessment includes a role-play in which the candidate answers a common misunderstanding of mediumship as well as a short demonstration (see Within Spiritualism, below).

Flower services

In Sydney in the 1970s, the usual form of demonstration was the flower reading, in which the medium gave a message while holding a flower brought by a member of the congregation. See Flower readings.

Scope

What it includes

• Public demonstrations of mediumship at Spiritualist services and similar gatherings

What it is not

• It is not a private reading. Gillen described private readings, or "consultations", as one-to-one sessions, sometimes free and sometimes a way for mediums to earn money. See Mediumship and Psychic reading.
• Its claims have not been shown scientifically. Researchers have tested mediums for more than a century, with mixed results and much debate about methods. See Mediumship for more on this research.

Traditions and lineage

Early Spiritualism was organised in small séance groups, but larger gatherings were also held for public demonstrations of spirit contact. These gatherings developed into the Sunday church services common in Spiritualist churches in the twentieth century.

Context

Within Spiritualism

Public demonstration is the main way Spiritualist churches present mediumship. The Spiritualists' National Union (SNU) in Britain says many services include a demonstration of evidential mediumship, in which a medium relays messages from the spirit world to the congregation; it presents this as a demonstration of the principle of the soul's continuous existence, "not a form of entertainment". The SNU assesses platform workers: for its Certificate in Speaking & Demonstrating a candidate must give two evidential communications to two different recipients within fifteen minutes. In London, the Spiritualist Association of Great Britain says it holds public demonstrations of clairvoyance every day. In the nineteenth century the platform also carried trance addresses by "inspirational speakers", often on subjects chosen by the audience.

In Australian Spiritualism

Older notices show platform work in Melbourne and Perth. In 1920 the Victorian Association of Spiritualists in Melbourne advertised a mediums' meeting with readings from flowers and clairvoyance; and in Perth in the 1930s, according to the Museum of Perth, speakers moved between suburban Spiritualist churches giving "Messages from Flowers" and trance addresses.

Besides the Melbourne and Canberra services described above, the Spiritualists National Union of WA holds a Sunday divine service with a speaker and a demonstration of mediumship, and monthly "medium nights"; mediums "on the platform" at the Centre Christian Spiritualist Church in Subiaco give messages to those who have placed a flower on the flower board; and St John's Spiritual Church in Adelaide includes a demonstration of mediumship or psychic readings in its Sunday service.

A Spiritualist perspective

Standing on the platform is a privilege, and Spiritualists tend to treat it seriously. The demonstration is part of a religious service, not a show, and its purpose is to offer evidence that the people we love survive death. A Spiritualist teacher would want a platform medium to be well trained and well mentored before going out in public, as the experienced mediums quoted above suggest, because a congregation trusts them with something precious.

Good platform work has a recognisable character. The medium gives clear, specific detail and is content to have it accepted or not, without fishing or bending a "no" into a "yes". Messages are kept kind and appropriate for a public room, where there may be children, the newly bereaved or first-time visitors. Anything private or painful is better offered quietly after the service, or not at all. The chair and the church share responsibility for the medium's safety and for a respectful atmosphere. Above all, the medium should never let the wish to entertain take the place of the evidence the demonstration exists to give.

Platform mediumship in Australia

Gillen described the platform of the Sydney church he studied in the late 1970s: a raised stage decorated with flowers, with a lectern and Bible, and a tray for the paper bags in which members brought their flowers for the medium to read. Approving which mediums could work on a church's platform could be a contested matter: at one committee meeting he attended, members were unanimously against one particular person approving mediums for platform work, on the view that no one person should take over the movement.

In Canberra, Tomlinson recorded several mediums' accounts of their early platform work. One recalled that her first platform performance was "woeful", and that for a year or more she gave only psychic readings before she first saw a spirit while on platform. Another said she had been pushed into public demonstrations before she felt ready, and that it had been "just too soon" for her.

Safety and good practice

• At the Canberra Spiritualist Association, one of the leaders often said that the chair's main job is to keep the medium safe. The risks he named were a medium going into trance and tripping or bumping into something, and a rude or heckling audience member.
• An experienced Canberra medium told Tomlinson that ongoing mentoring, including being taken out on platform by an experienced medium, pays off, and that being held to a high standard had kept her from going on platform too early. She was concerned that many people with only months or a few years of training wanted to be on platform.
• A visiting medium teaching in Canberra advised discretion on platform: some information comes to a medium only so that she understands what a family has been through, and painful details, such as the manner of a violent death, should not be announced in front of strangers.
• One Canberra Spiritualist leader worried that when mediums give demonstrations for profit at psychic fairs and social clubs, the wish to entertain can turn mediumship into a sideshow.
• 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.

Related modalities

• Mediumship
• Flower readings
• Development circles
• Trance mediumship
• Spiritualism

Further reading

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