Mediumship
Mediumship
Mediumship (/ˈmiːdiəmʃɪp/) is the practice of purportedly mediating communication between spirits of the dead and living human beings. Practitioners are known as mediums or spirit mediums.
Etymology
The term "medium" (from the Latin medius meaning "middle") is used because the medium is seen as a middleman between the spirit world and the physical world.
History
Mediumship dates back to antiquity with shamans in tribal societies acting as mediums. In the 19th century, it became the central practice of the Spiritualist religious movement.
Types of Mediumship
There are two main types of mediumship: mental (or intuitive) mediumship and physical mediumship.
Mental mediumship involves communication through the thoughts of the medium. The medium mentally "hears" (clairaudience), "sees" (clairvoyance), and/or "feels" (clairsentience) messages from spirits.
Physical mediumship involves the manipulation of energies and energy systems by spirits. This type of mediumship is claimed to involve perceptible manifestations, such as loud raps and noises, voices, materialized objects, apports, materialized spirit bodies, or body parts such as hands, legs and feet.
Related Terms
- Clairvoyance: The supposed ability to gain information about an object, person, location, or physical event through extrasensory perception.
- Spiritualism: A religious movement based on the belief that the spirits of the dead exist and have both the ability and the inclination to communicate with the living.
- Psychic: A person who claims to use extrasensory perception (ESP) to identify information hidden from the normal senses.
External links
- Medical encyclopedia article on Mediumship
- Wikipedia's article - Mediumship
This WikiMD dictionary article is a stub. You can help make it a full article.
Languages: - East Asian
中文,
日本,
한국어,
South Asian
हिन्दी,
Urdu,
বাংলা,
తెలుగు,
தமிழ்,
ಕನ್ನಡ,
Southeast Asian
Indonesian,
Vietnamese,
Thai,
မြန်မာဘာသာ,
European
español,
Deutsch,
français,
русский,
português do Brasil,
Italian,
polski