Introduction and links to related topics Below are some short introductions. Click on the blue hyperlinked word to get more related articles.
Medium - Medium Anything that serves as an intermediate, especially applied by modern spiritualists to a person who, alleged to be under the "control" of some other being, usually invisible, becomes a transmitting medium for phenomenal messages, feelings, or actions. These entities, mistakenly called spirits of the dead, are no part of the spiritual nature of composite man. On the contrary, these communications come from various entities in the astral world which interpenetrates and surrounds the physical earth, just as our astral model-body and aura surround the interpenetrate our physical form, cell for cell. In our present state of evolution, the astral or model-body acts normally only when conjoined to the physical -- a natural provision for protection from conditions with which we are as yet evolutionally unprepared to deal.
The medium, however, is one who is born with or develops a peculiarly unstable and often actually dislocated state of the elements of his inner constitution. Thereby he becomes at times disorganized physiologically and in his nervous system, which connects the inner man with the outer world, and he suffers, in effect, a psychic dislocation. Then the entranced, unconscious medium functions with magnetic sympathy with currents and entities in the astral light, especially with those in the kama-lokic levels which are nearest the earth.
Of these many entities, the types usually manifesting are nature spirits or elements of various kinds; kamic remnants, the shells or spooks of the dead; and elementaries or the imperfect astral remains of excarnate human beings who when alive on earth showed marked tendencies to gross and evil living. Being fated, because of their strongly materialistic biases and appetites, to exist in the astral realm, these last are a peculiarly dangerous and demoralizing influence, especially to people of weak will or of mediumistic temperament. Without physical body or real conscience, the elementaries yet are living entities of the unexpended force of their earth-passions and desires, eager to occupy and use a living body, meantime absorbing its vital essence if they can make psychic contact with it. They are psychomagnetically drawn to such conditions as the seance room usually offers.
The delicate tingling on the medium''s skin, supposed to come from angelic fingers, is actually an astral emanation of vitality to form an atmosphere or aura for the besieging control. These feathery touches are like the aurae which often precede convulsive epileptic attacks where the pale, cold, unconscious body of the ousted sufferer becomes temporarily possessed. Each time when the passive medium is controlled, his spiritual will is progressively weakened, his higher mind is blurred, and he becomes an open door for all kinds of uncanny astral influences. It is true that psychic sensitives of clean life and honest purpose, may first attract entities belonging to higher kama-lokic levels. But the finest types of supposed spirit faces that they see are generally reflections from their own mental pictures of beloved ones, or of their own innate ideals.
Of the many types of astral elementals, connection with even those friendly to man are injurious, for they all use part of the living for their automatic actions. Moreover, black magicians who live in their kama-rupas -- in the astral world -- relatively few though they are, survive by using many of these nature spirits to vampirize vitality from the living. The elementaries who, unfortunately, are galvanized into a fictitious life by devitalizing the medium and the sitters -- as clairvoyants have often seen -- are making new evil karma, and even inviting final spiritual disaster.
At most, this dealing with the dead is necromancy -- a wrong condemned by the wise in all ages as misleading at the least, very dangerous and ethically demoralizing at the worst. The passive medium under alien astral control, is the very antithesis of the highly evolved human mediator whose awakened spiritual, intellectual, and psychic nature serves as a conscious channel of inspiring influence between lofty spiritual powers and ordinary men, or between mahatmas of the Great White Lodge and men.
Shamanic Therapy - Belief in psychic healing techniques and mediumship skills as practiced by tribal "medicine men" such as those among the Native Americans and in various parts of the Orient; the practices of mediumship and healing techniques of a Shamanic priest.
Control - discarnate spirit that seems to take physical control of a medium. Some celebrated psychic control and the mediums through whom they communicate. (NAD)
Medium - A psychic (and frequently cleric as well) who specializes in being possessed by or otherwise communicating with, various spirits especially those of dead humans; someone who knows how to plug-in to the metapatterns of the recently dead, or can arrange such plug-ins for others. See Necromancer.
Trumpet Medium - A psychic or sensitive who brings forth "spirit voices" through a trumpet at seances.
Trance Medium - A psychically sensitive person who can dispossess his body to allow its use by a controlling spirit for psychic manifestation
Medium - A psychic or sensitive living person whose body is used as a vehicle for communicating with spirits.
Precipitation - Precipitation A process essentially founded in the formation of a visual image of some object in the mind, and the transferring of that image in visible form to some receptacle, such as paper. Usually used in theosophical history in reference to the precipitation of writing in messages from the Masters.
The messages were transmitted by will power as mental pictures to a chela at a distance; and the chela receiving these telepathic impacts or mental images, understood them in whole or in part, according to his skill, and then and there, either himself wrote down the message thus received for transmission to the addressee, or if a chela of advanced degree, materialized them into visible writing. Usually the messages thus mentally received were written down by the chela, and often in a handwriting closely similar to that of the Master, and then the message was transferred through the mail or otherwise to the addressee.
A mental image is a reality, and in materializing it the operator merely copies natural processes, since everything in the physical world is a materialization of something in the inner worlds working through the astral world into the physical. It is done by the use of psychic or psychophysiological faculties which have to be acquired by training, for even in the cases of those born with these powers, they exist because of training in previous lives.
Some spiritistic mediums instinctively possess the power of precipitation, but use it ignorant of its causes and rationale, and hence without conscious control. Were the adept or mahatma himself to employ precipitation for the conveying of intelligence to others, something which is very rarely done, the precipitation would be achieved by the will of the adept gathering astral and ethereal substance from the surrounding atmosphere by the power of his will and condensing it onto the paper.
Kama-rupa - Kama-rupa (Sanskrit) (from kama desire + rupa body, form)
The desire body; the portion of the human inner constitution in which inhere the various mental and psychic energies. After death it becomes the vehicle in the kama-loka of the usually unconscious higher principles of the person that was.
"After death . . . there occurs what is called the ''second death,'' which is the separation of the immortal part of the second or intermediate Duad from the lower portions of this Duad, which lower portions remain as the kama-rupa in the etheric or higher astral spheres which are intermediate between the devachanic and the earthly spheres. In time this kama-rupa gradually fades out in its turn, its life-atoms at such dissolution passing on to their various and unceasing peregrinations.
"It is this kama-rupa which legend and story in the various ancient world-religions or philosophies speak of as the ''shade,'' and which it has been customary in the Occident to call the ''spook,'' or ''ghost.'' It is, in short, all the mortal elements of the human soul that was. The kama-rupa is an exact astral duplicate, in appearance and mannerism, of the man who died; it is his eidolon or ''image'' " (OG 76-7).
"Bereft as it is of its higher mind, spirit and physical senses, if left alone to its own senseless devices, it will gradually fade out and disintegrate. But, if forcibly drawn back into the terrestrial sphere whether by the passionate desires and appeals of the surviving friends or by regular necromantic practices -- one of the most pernicious of which is mediumship -- the ''spook'' may prevail for a period greatly exceeding the span of the natural life of its body. Once the Kamarupa has learnt the way back to living human bodies, it becomes a vampire, feeding on the vitality of those who are so anxious for its company. In India these eidolons are called Pisachas, and are much dreaded . . ." (TG 172).
Mystic - A person who has mystical experiences.
Used loosely to refer to psychics, mediums or romantics.
Spiritualist - One who believes that the continuity of life can be demonstrated and proven by the ability to communicate with departed souls through a psychic medium.
Materializations - Materializations. In Spiritualism the word signifies the objective appearance of the so-called "Spirits" of the dead, who reclothe themselves occasionally in matter; i.e., they form for themselves out of the materials at hand, which are found in the atmosphere and the emanations of those present, a temporary body hearing the human likeness of the defunct as he appeared, when alive. Theosophists accept the phenomenon of "materialization"; but they reject the theory that it is produced by " Spirits", i.e., the immortal principles of the disembodied persons. Theosophists hold that when the phenomenon is genuine - and it is a fact of rarer occurrence than is generally believed - it is produced by the larve, the eidola or Kamalokic "ghosts" of dead personalities. (See "Kamadhatu", "Kamaloka" and "Kamarupa".)
As Kamaloka is on the earth plane and differs from its degree of materiality only in the degree of its plane of consciousness, for which reason it is concealed from our normal sight, the occasional apparition of such shells is as natural as that of electric balls and other atmospheric phenomena. Electricity as a fluid, or atomic matter (for Theosophists hold with Maxwell that it is atomic), though invisible, is ever present in the air, and manifests under various shapes, but only when certain conditions are there to "materialize" the fluid, when it passes from its own on to our plane and makes itself objective. Similarly with the eidola of the dead. They are present, around us, but being on another plane do not see us any more than we see them.
But whenever the strong desires of living men and the conditions furnished by the abnormal constitutions of mediums are combined together, these eidola are drawn - nay, pulled down from their plane on to ours and made objective. This is Necromancy ; it does no good to the dead, and great harm to the living, in addition to the fact that it interferes with a law of nature. The occasional materialization of the "astral bodies" or doubles of living persons is quite another matter.
These "astrals" are often mistaken for the apparitions of the dead, since, chameleon-like, our own "Elementaries", along with those of the disembodied and cosmic Elementals, will often assume the appearance of those images which are strongest in our thoughts. In short, at the so-called "materialization" seances it is those present and the medium, who create the peculiar likeness of the apparitions. Independent "apparitions" belong to another kind of psychic phenomena. Materializations are also called "form-manifestations" and "portrait statues". To call them materialized spirits is inadmissible, for they are not spirits but animated portrait-statues, indeed.
Lycanthropy - Lycanthropy (from Greek lykanthropos wolf-man)
In all times and places there has been prevalent the belief that human beings can become transformed into wolves or other animals, obsessed by the spirits of these animals, or even assume this condition at will through sorcery; the object being to gratify hatred or to satisfy voracious instincts. People thus affected are said to have appeared both to themselves and to others in the form of wolves and to have attacked animals, but especially human beings.
The English name for such a person was werewolf (man-wolf). The belief was very prevalent in medieval Europe, and was the occasion for numerous legal executions. It has disappeared before the advance of our present culture, but it was a fact, depending upon little understood mysteries of psychologization, and the belief still holds among some people.
The phenomenon is a variety of black magic, involving both the practice of psychologization and in certain cases the subjection of the victim to astral obsession: either an involuntary astral seizure on the part of a mediumistic person, or a deliberate act of sorcery on the part of a degraded one. The lower realms of the astral light harbor baneful exuviae of various sorts, with which a pernicious commerce may be had through various forms of moral depravity and psychic weakness. It was an exaggerated and specialized form of obsessions which takes place in our day in people transported by passion or afflicted with violent insanity; hence it is often found convenient to describe it simply as a form of insanity, which however does not explain how the appearances of a wolf were caused.
In extreme cases, however, the craving for physical life and the dread of personal extinction in a human kama-rupa may be so great that it may seize and enter the body of a living animal.
Channel - A ''sensitive'' who allows spiritual entities to use his/her body and mind as a link between this plane and other planes of consciousness for the purpose of receiving psychic information or healing energy. Formerly called mediums.
Third Eye - An imaginary eye in the forehead believed to be the center of psychic vision. Trance A mental state resembling sleep during which the conscious mind rests while the spirit entity takes over the medium''s body.
Obsession - Obsession The act of besieging, or the state of being bothered or besieged by a foreign personality, especially by an evil spirit, before demonic possession.
This condition is found among the sufferers from insanity, epilepsy, hysteria, drug addiction, dipsomania, severe asthmas, and mediumship; these sufferers are found to be suitable, negative instruments or vehicles through which disimbodied entities of strong desire can contact sensuous life. Sometimes, even where organic degeneration is found to be present, questions arise whether this is the cause or the effect of continued nervous and mental wrongs.
These latter are striking evidence of the vexing or besieging influence which appears in varying degrees, of restlessness with inner tension, of clouded consciousness, inhibition of will, unusual irritability, vague fears, suicidal impulses, epileptic befogged states, and sudden impulsions, criminal and otherwise. In these disorders those afflicted, although karmically sensitive to psychic conditions and influences, often retain enough normal resistance against surrendering to abnormal control to account for the many-sided inner conflict of the siege. This subjective conflict is sometimes disclosed, as in a patient who, subject to attacks of impulsive violence, anticipates them and asks to be restrained. Thus, psychiatrists note that in the insane, the will power to resist wrongdoing is usually lost before moral judgment is gone. Sometimes the inner man knows that he is not sane and longs for help, but cannot make himself understood.
What are technically classified as obsessing ideas and feelings are evidence of the subjective reality of the astral plane and its disimbodied entities. Knowledge of man''s multifold nature, including the parts played by each of its principles both during life and after death, gives a key to many psychological problems in the postmortem survival of the kama-rupa. The differing aspects of obsession result from the varied types of the astral entities -- ghosts or shades of the dead, elementaries of suicides and executed criminals, evil sorcerers, nature spirits, etc. The kama-rupic shells alone, being remnants of deceased personalities, differ as the latter had done in their imbodied desires and impulses.
The variety of obsessing influences accounts for the medley of typical symptoms in conditions of inert melancholia, of sustained catalepsy, of violent mania and convulsions, of emotional egoism in hysteria, of childish grimaces and erratic muscular contractions in essential chorea, of subjective horrors in delirium tremens, and of the perverted brutality in purposeless, unhuman crimes. Though only a seer''s inner vision could reveal just what entity was active in each case, yet a student of human duality can recognize the unseemly and distorted play of the animal, lower nature, separated from the conscience and higher mind -- the kama-rupic condition. Mild types of these disorders frequently are simply the uncontrolled play of the person''s own selfish nature; but these are in danger of drifting into the severer forms, because like attracts like.
See also POSSESSION
Control - The Spirit that hat seems to take physical control of a medium. The psychic mediums through whom they communicate.
Chorea - Chorea (from Greek choreia dancing)
A disorder of the nervous system, characterized by a peculiar convulsive and irregular action of the voluntary muscles, especially those of the face and extremities. It has been called insanity of the muscles, since their action is without harmony or purpose, and each seems to have a will of its own. It is most common in the impressionable years of childhood and adolescence, though appearing at different ages and associated with other diseases which, as a rule, are free from choreic movements.
All types have significant common features. First, that many cases are free from organic disease shows that this is a purely functional one; when it complicates other diseases, it retains the typical movements of essential chorea. Whether it develops after some infectious or exhausting condition or polluting experience, or after some mental or psychological strain or shock, like fright or fear, the choreiform reaction indicates the occurrence of an unstable balance between the physical and astral bodies and the inner and higher manasic in man. Persons who develop chorea share a common psychic susceptibility which marks those who are subject to disturbances like hysteria, mediumship, epilepsy, and other phases of obsession.
In addition, there are similar signs of a besieging influence at first, as when the child grows peevish, capricious, and restless, wants improper food, is listless at school, suffers with disturbed sleep and night-terrors; and later begin the convulsive movements in the muscles which are naturally under the control of the conscious will.
The individual will thus weakened and, in some cases, psychic changes like hallucinations and somnambulism, point to the characteristic action of some astral influence. Further evidence of this is seen in the danger of chorea developing into more serious nervous disorders; whereas, with proper mental, moral, and physical care, cure results when the spiritual will regains its rightful place in controlling the course of life.
Trumpet Medium - A psychic or sensitive who brings forth "spirit voices" through a trumpet at seances.
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