What is Mediumship?

Rev. Carl R. Hewitt established the Gifts of the Spirit Church with one prime directive in mind: “I will not have you ignorant of the Gifts of the Spirit.” This also became my mission statement, when I began to continue his work.

To be educated with the Gifts of the Spirit means one needs to fully understand the topic of mediumship. That is not an easy task, since mediumship has so many facets. One can study the many mediumistic gifts that include: Clairaudience, Clairvoyance, Clairsentience, Prophecy, Trance, Dreams, Apports, Automatic Writing, Materialization, Direct Voice, Dowsing, Healing, Levitation, Psychometry, and Precipitated Art.

Then one can study the experiences of hundreds of mediums who have been recorded in history. Many of them struggled to prove the existence of Spirit to the public, and scientists, who refused to judge their work fairly.

One can also study how religions and mediumship have been intertwined and been rivals for people’s attention. While every religion was started when its founder had a psychic or mediumistic experience, the theologians and clergy of most religions often feel threatened by mediumship. All religions have Spiritual truths (often provided by Spirit) mixed in with man-made dogmas. Religions have sought to control the minds of the people, and therefore, have forbidden all mediumship and access to mediums. This was often done, as in Biblical times (when these prohibitions against mediumship were inserted into the books of Leviticus and Deuteronomy of the Bible) for economic reasons.

One can also study the Bible through the eyes of a medium. The Holy Bible is a book of psychic history. Most major personalities of the Bible either heard God/Spirit’s voice, or had visions. While the Bible labels these people seers and prophets, today we would call these gifted people mediums. The laws of psychic science have never changed; therefore, the mediumistic phenomena demonstrated in Biblical times can still take place, today, in the 21st century.

Today, I want to address mediumship itself, since there are several motivations for one to become or develop one’s mediumship, and then to decide on what direction to channels one’s gifts.

When one acts as a medium, one becomes the telephone wires between the physical and Spirit Worlds. It is a medium’s goal to become “a clear channel” meaning that the thoughts within the medium’s mind should not be mixed into Spirit’s message. That is not always easy to do, because for some mediums, the message comes as a very subtle shift from within the medium’s mental facility.

However, what is much easier for a medium to do is to set the intent for their mediumship. This simply addresses the question: “Why do I want to be a medium?” There are several answers to that question.

One very important reason is to help people to deal with the grief of losing a loved one, or relieve guilt about issues surrounding a loved one’s passing. Grieving is a very personal journey which is different for every person who experiences it. Often, if a grieving person consults a medium, who is able to bring communication from the loved one, it helps to heal the grieving heart. While most religions teach there is life after death, many people have a difficult time accepting it, because they are not mediumistic, and do not see or hear their loved on in Spirit. If they do feel the presence of their loved one, they logically think that they are imagining it.

If one studies Theresa Caputo on the Long Island Medium TV show, one can witness the peace of mind she brings to so many of her clients. By bringing through specific pieces of information (evidence) that only the person in spirit and the sitter knew, it establishes credibility the Spirit of the loved on is present. When the loved one discusses events that happened after the person entered into the Spirit World, the sitter realizes that life does continue after death, and their loved one is watching over them, and knows what is happening in their daily life. This is an extremely important facet of mediumship.

Mediums who have been trained in the “British” system specialize in this type of evidential mediumship, for to waver from this formula, subjected them to legal charges, of witchcraft (pre 1951) and fraud (post 1951).

However, there is another component of mediumship, which goes in tandem with proving the continuity of life. Since spirit lives in a timeless dimension, they can easily see into our future, and provide us guidance to avoid “pitfalls” in our lives. The medium needs to truly understand how s/he receives the information that is entering his/her consciousness. For a medium can access the guidance facet from the aura of the sitter. However, this information would be gleaned through psychic abilities. If the information is coming from a Spirit person then it is mediumistic. Some mediums are much better at this guidance facet than others. It can be that is the medium’s intent when s/he asks to become a channel for the Spirit World, or it may be his/her focus. Rev. Carl Hewitt gave outstanding guidance during his reading, while Theresa Caputo just gives some, (or at least that is all we get to see on television).

A third component of mediumship is educational or philosophical. Some mediums set their intention on allowing spirit to teach through them, instead of giving personal readings. Andrew Jackson Davis, “the Poughkeepsie Seer,” would be an example of this type of medium. Davis did not finish elementary school, so his formal education was extremely limited. However, he was a deep trance medium. He would go into a trance state, in a theatre full of people, with a stenographer writing down the information being said. The information at the time was outstanding, dealing with scientific and medical topics, and predicting discoveries that would be made. This clearly was far beyond his understanding, proving that the information was coming from an intelligence outside of his own consciousness.

Unfortunately, some medium’s intent is economic, seeing mediumship as an easy method to rake in lots of money. Usually the quality of a medium’s work will be reliant on the medium’s intent for being an instrument of the Spirit.