-
Down the Rabbit Hole, or Why There’s No New Possession Column Today
Over the past few days, I started my research on what was to be the next installment in my series on possession. Specifically, I began researching two categories of modern ‘benign possession’, that are accepted by many in the western world. I was looking into spiritualist mediumship (which I already know a few things about), and alien contactee channeling. It was when I began gathering materials for alien contactees who channel one or more aliens that I fell down the rabbit hole. Here was Ashtar, and Seth, and the Galactic Federation of Light, and a whole bunch of other stuff. It’s a tangled web, one that I need to untangle…
-
American Spiritualism–Hidden History
The Haunting of America—William J. Birnes and Joel Martin, 2009 Before I begin this review, you need to know something about me. I buy books. Lots of them. Sometimes I don’t get around to reading them for years. At last count, I owned over fifty tomes on a variety of subjects from different genres that have never been read. Why don’t I read them when I get them? Let’s just say that life can be a little too interesting sometimes. However, the result of life’s intrusion is that my library has a deep backlog of books that I’m finally trying to read. I’ve seen YouTubers and websites do ‘Retro Movie…
-
Monday Musings #2–Automatic Writing, Part I
So, today I find myself intrigued by a psychic practice that’s really fallen by the wayside in recent decades—Automatic Writing. Automatic Writing is a psychical practice that first became popular during the Spiritualist Movement of the latter half of the 19th Century. In fact, it was so popular, the much-lauded Encyclopedia Britannica even honored it with an entry. From their 1911 Edition: The writing generally resembles the ordinary handwriting of the agent, but there are sometimes marked differences, and the same automatist may employ two or three distinct handwritings. Occasionally imitations are produced of the handwriting of other persons, living or dead. Not infrequently the writing is reversed, so that…