Talk:Mediumship/Mediumship sandbox

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• Mediumship Sandbox

[edit] Intro

According to the doctrine of Spiritualism, some essential part of a human being survives death and can be communicated with by living human beings, this is known as Mediumship. Mediumship often involves communication between a human instrument and one or more discarnate, spirit personalities. Spiritualists refer to such a human instrument as a medium. Mediums in spiritualism have the ability to produce psi phenomena of a mental or physical nature

• Comment: this assumes too much- that only the dead are communicated with. But they claim pre-human, post-human, and non-human. These entities are all "dead," however, as in not having physical life. Martin^phi _{(Talk Ψ Contribs)} 04:45, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

• Comment: I was thinking more like this:

Mediumship is the doctrine or mystical belief, predominantly held by Spiritualists, that it is possible to communicate with spirits. Part of this belief is that spirits are in some way more advanced than humans. The two beliefs: that contact with spirits is possible, and that spirits are more advanced than humans, leads to a third belief, that spirits are capable of providing useful knowledge about moral and ethical issues, as well as about the nature of God and the afterlife. The intermediary between the spirit world and the world of the living are called "mediums" by Spiritualists.

(Paraphrased from the Spirtualism article [1]) --Nealparr ^{(yell at me|for what i've done)} 04:55, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Comment: Also, the last line about manifestations should be further down in the article. It's not a defining characteristic from a religious perspective. From a religious perspective, people consult mediums and thereby spirits for moral or ethical reasons, or insights into the nature of the universe. It's not to manifest a lost set of car keys or to glean the winning lotto numbers. Manifestations are central part of the story of mediumship, but not the idea of mediumship. Hopefully I explained that well enough.

--Nealparr ^{(yell at me|for what i've done)} 05:07, 29 March 2007 (UTC)