In many people’s minds, such words as Spiritualism and séance trigger visions of Ouija® boards, Victorian table-tipping, darkened rooms, and phony ghosts—the kinds of things relentlessly exploited in low-budget movies and shown on late-night television. Yet Spiritualism is a serious religion, philosophy, and science that has been practiced by intelligent people for well over one hundred and fifty years.
In this book I will look more closely at Spiritualism and the séance, and in particular examine ways in which the average person—working alone—can experiment with various aspects of spirit communication.
In recent times there have been many television specials and series about ghost-hunting, about finding ghosts in supposedly haunted houses. These programs, and carefully planned “documentaries,” generally focus on getting rid of what are viewed as “unwanted guests.” There seems to be little effort put into making contact and finding out why the spirit is there and then interacting with that spirit. There also seems to be little effort put into trying to contact a specific spirit—a deceased family member or close friend—and “conversing” with them.
It is erroneously believed that there must always be a medium present (a person trained in making that connection) in order to affect spirit contact. Yet in fact there are many ways to link with spirit that need not involve a medium—leastwise, not a professional medium. It is also generally believed that for personal contact there must be, at the very least, a minimum of two people: a medium and a sitter. Yet there are many forms of spirit communication that can be carried out very successfully by an individual, a person acting alone . . . that individual becoming both sitter and medium. You can be that person, and these are the forms of communication that we will be focusing on in this book.
I will start at the beginning in that I’ll talk a little about death and dying and what it entails. Woody Allen said “I’m not afraid to die; I just don’t want to be there when it happens!” That is the feeling of most people. They know that death is inevitable but really don’t want to even think about it. Yet we all die; there’s no escape! So what exactly does it mean to “die”?
In the Spiritualist belief, death is only a transition. It is a change from the physical world into which we were born and in which we matured, to the next “level,” or world, where we continue in a spiritual form. We all have a spirit, soul, or spark within us. That spirit (and I will use the word spirit rather than soul throughout this book) is what lives on after this transition we term “death.” It is that which, under certain circumstances, may be contacted by those still living here in the physical world.
In ancient Greece, the continued existence of the dead was dependent upon the continuing remembrance of the living. The Greek spirit world was a cold, grey, and dreary place known as Hades and ruled over by the god of that name. In ancient Rome, the afterworld was ruled over by Pluto. Both the ancient Greeks and the Romans made contact with their dead through the agencies of their priests. The ancient Egyptian priests, also, were intermediaries between humans and the gods, offering prayers and relaying messages. Many Buddhist and Confucian-influenced societies maintain a contact and even a veneration of the ancestors—not “praying” to them in the sense of worshipping them, for they are not viewed as deities, but “speaking” to them to show respect and honor.
Native Americans, Voudouns, Aboriginals, and many others maintain a connection with the world of departed spirits. The Mayans and the Aztecs had priests who were plenipotentiaries for the people, acting between the living and the dead. So there has certainly been contact with spirits of the dead for millennia. Yet there had been little, if any, evidence of personal communication, of one-on-one exchanges between the Physical World and the Spirit World, until as recently as the mid-nineteenth century, and an incident in Hydesville, New York. This—because of this very personal communication—is regarded as the birth of Modern Spiritualism.
We are all potential mediums. We all have the ability to be that conduit between the two worlds. We may not all be as practiced as a professional medium, but then we don’t need to be making the connection with spirit except on a few occasions, and then strictly for our own benefit or for the benefit of those close to us. It is somewhat akin to acknowledging that there are professional musicians whom we would happily pay to go and listen to in a concert hall, yet we are still able to return home and play the piano (or whatever other instrument) quite happily for our own entertainment. The professional may give a stirring interpretation of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto #5 in E Flat Major while we struggle through “Chopsticks,” but the professional can be the tremendous inspiration leading to our satisfaction and feeling of accomplishment with our own performance.
A glance at the contents of this book might suggest that this is simply a work on divination or fortunetelling. In many ways it is . . . but then, what is divination? The word is connected to divinity: the belief that it is a gift of the gods that provides the ability to peer into the future. Here, however, we take it a step further in ascribing the results to spirit. Spirit—perhaps acting through divinity—is providing the answers to questions posed.
Professional mediums seldom use physical tools for their mediumship, yet tools can be of benefit to help the less-practiced person obtain the same results. A professional medium sees clairvoyantly (for example) without any physical aids. Yet if that same medium were to gaze into a crystal ball in order to focus her attention and then produce the same results as when not using one, would there be anything wrong with that? No. The sole reason for indulging in mediumship is to connect with spirit and to produce material of an evidential nature that will prove continued existence—the certitude of a life after the transition we term “death.” It should not matter, then, exactly how that material is produced. If using some physical object as a focal point can help produce that evidential material, then why not use it? And when you are acting alone, without any sort of an audience, it may well be especially beneficial to work with specific tools in order to be assured of getting the best results you can.
With the exercises in this book, we are not using these tools for simple divination or fortunetelling but are using them to bridge that gap between the physical world and the world of spirit. Here, “divination tools” will become “medium’s tools.”
“But wait! What about danger? Are there dangers associated with this spirit communication?” These are common fears and, not to take them lightly, I would say that they are generally unfounded. Having said that, I would add that it doesn’t hurt to take reasonable precautions. To that end I will start by telling you how to create what is known as an “Egg of Protection”: a psychic shield that will keep at bay any and all negative energies that might find their way into your personal space.
There is no special work place needed for what is taught in this book. You don’t have to establish a “temple” or even a “séance room”; you don’t need to have an altar with a variety of altar tools. As will be explained, you can achieve outstanding results with absolutely no tools at all. But where it might help to have some assistance, then I will tell you how best to go about it.
The most important thing is to remain open-minded and, especially, to be open to spirit. So many deceased loved ones and acquaintances have passed on that there are bound to be those who would like nothing better than to have a conversation with you again. To relive the past, perhaps to pass on a message or messages to others, to explain what might be puzzling those left behind . . . there are so many reasons for spirits to want to contact us, never mind the reasons we may have for wanting to contact them. So stay open to them; whether or not you have received any evidence, stay open to the possibility of it coming.
How do you allow spirit to come? That is the main substance of this book. There are a large number of ways to allow spirit to make contact. Some you will find work extremely well for you, while others will seem to give no results. The only thing to do is to experiment, to try the many different methods suggested and see what works and what does not. Don’t just try something once and then, when nothing happens, reject it. Give it a chance. Try different methods at different times, under different circumstances. I would advise working with just one method at a time, but you could certainly experiment with, say, three or four over the course of a week, one a day, and then repeat them over a number of weeks. This way you can find not only what works but what you feel most comfortable with. Once you have established your most effective method(s), then work consistently with that, keeping careful records of all you obtain.
I do urge you to keep records. Keep notes of any and all attempts you make to communicate with spirit, whether or not those attempts seem to be successful. Quite often it will seem that you have received nothing of any substance, yet when you review what came through—perhaps days or even weeks later—you may be surprised at the number of small points of interest that can add up to major revelations.
Alone or with others? Much of the attraction of contacting the departed lies in sharing with others what it is that you receive. These exercises certainly may be done by groups—by more than one person. But the whole point of this book is to present methods for the individual to communicate, with no outside help. There have been no books such as this offered anywhere before. The vast majority deal with working with others, either as a sitter or as a developing medium. This book will most certainly help you develop as a medium, if that is your wish, but its principal goal is to allow you to make that spirit contact without having to rely on anyone else. As I mention in the next chapter, I have seen people who go to a Spiritualist camp in order to have a sitting with a medium and then become most upset when the summer season of that camp comes to an end and they are no longer able to have such sittings. It was such a situation that inspired me to write this book, so that people need not wait for the next season, or the next available medium, but can continue contact with the Spirit World by themselves.
In my 2004 book Buckland’s Book of Spirit Communications, I present an intensive course on mediumship development and Spiritualism, for both individuals and groups. This present volume, by contrast, focuses on what can be done by the individual, working alone, on a regular or just an occasional basis. There are obvious parallels and a few repetitions, but it will be seen that the two books do complement each other.
—Raymond Buckland