Glossary

Ancestor work: defining one’s lineages in terms of the physical, spiritual, emotional, and intellectual self and developing relationships with those who contributed to those lineages.

Intergenerational trauma: is the passing down of trauma across generations through genes and behavior on an individual and collective level.

Attentional travel: moving your attention and awareness from its natural, unfocused position to another intentional location. This includes scope change (larger or smaller size of focus) and location shifting (in or outside the body).

Circle or development circle: the primary way of learning for Spiritualist mediums. Everyone present serves as a medium and a sitter. There are protocols for circles, and although they have gotten less strict in recent times, they are still quite specific and vary by group.

Channeling: acting as a conduit for information from another plane of existence.

Cocreating: the recognition of our interconnectedness in action.

Connection: the biological imperative of the human species (and many others) to have relationships that support co-regulation.

Consciousness: a state of interaction with the world, of which there can be presumably infinite variations.

Contact: the person, place, or thing that a medium connects with in order to bring in information.

Contact point: a location for connecting during mediumship. A contact point has a physical and intentional dimension.

Creativity: the act of bringing something from an internal reality into a physical reality.[KB2] 

Demonstration, gallery reading, or platform mediumship: delivering messages from spirit in public in front of an audience.

Divination: the definition of a question and collection space for the gathering of information without the use of reason.

Ectoplasm: the physical manifestation of non-physical energy.

Embodied mediumship: a body connected to the transphysical world around it, including transphysical aspects of the self.

Evidence: information from a contact that allows the message’s recipient to identify the contact.

Ghost: a spirit who is still at least partially or occasionally present in physical form.

Imagination: a representational system for decoupling images, ideas, and events from real-time experience to work with them to create something new.

Interoception: the ability to notice sensations and emotions within the body.

Intuition: information that comes from outside the rational intelligence of a person’s mind. It may include neuroception, bodily awareness, extrasensory perception, and/or sub- or unconscious processing.

Lineage: a line of influence. This includes familial ancestry, spiritual, intellectual, cultural, and other sources of descent.

Meditation: time set aside to practice mindfulness or presence.

Medium: a person who serves as an intermediary between humans and other-than-human contacts, bringing in information from the contact for personal use, creative work, or a sitter.

Mediumship: a collection of skills that enable a medium to connect, collect, and communicate transphysical data as meaningful information.

Mediumship reading: an extended message or a sitting intending to convey a series of messages.

Mental mediumship: mediumship that happens within the medium’s mind and is communicated with words verbally or in writing.

Message: information from a contact meant to have specific meaning for the person receiving it.

Neuroception: a process within the body that operates below consciousness to constantly monitor the environment and produce reflexive changes in nervous system state based on perceived safety or danger. Also known as the sixth sense.

Ontological shock: the occasional consequence of the disruption or challenge of our fundamental understanding of reality or worldview, resulting in disorientation and cognitive dissonance. It can be caused by encountering new experiences or information contradicting deeply held beliefs or assumptions.

Physical mediumship: mediumship that happens with the medium’s body and objects outside the body.

Polyvagal theory: a theory from interpersonal neurobiology that explains how the human nervous system functions.

Possession: when a living human loses or gives control of their physical body over to a nonhuman entity, typically a spirit or deity.

Premembering: envisioning the future.

Presence: a state of focus or proximity typically referring to the current moment. This state is often defined by what it is not: there is no thinking, mental representation, or self.

Psychic: non-sensory, or a person who brings in non-sensory information.

Realm: another word for a place, often referring to one that doesn’t have a physical component.

Spirit: the part of a human that is not physical.

Spirit guides: beings in the spirit or another transphysical realm with whom we build relationships to support our spiritual work.

Séance: a circle, usually with only one medium, where all participants expect to receive messages. Many people use the term to refer exclusively to circles for physical mediumship, but I use it for any mediumship circle with a purpose other than development. French for “session.”

Sitter or client: a person receiving a message or reading from a medium.

Spiritualism: a movement prominent on the East Coast of the United States especially among middle-class white Protestants during the Second Great Awakening (mid-1800s) that is built on the belief that anyone can be a medium, which turned into a religion by the early 1900s based on proving the continuity of life through mediumship.

Tethering: putting focus on or hitching awareness to something. The object of a tether in meditation is traditionally the breath, but anything can be tethered.

Trance: a general term for being out of the normal state of waking consciousness.

Trance mediumship: mediumship where the medium is in a more altered state of consciousness than with mental mediumship, so more control is given to the contact. In Spiritualist mediumship, trance work often connects to a more general Spirit rather than specific dead people, although this is not a hard and fast rule. Information is typically shared verbally but can also be written.

Transliving: describing a broader concept of life that includes beings without physical bodies or having died.

Transphysical: the state of being beyond physical existence; spiritual; nonmaterial.

Transphysical Communication (TCP): exchanges of information that include elements outside of measurable reality.

Trauma: an experience that is more than a person can handle, resulting in lasting changes to nervous system function and behavior.