Although much of orthodox religion looks upon mediumship as the work of the devil, a strong case can be made that messages received through mediumship are the very foundation of organized religion. In Séances with God (subtitled God Through the Ages), Jacqueline Jones-Hunt, Ph.D., makes that case, offering an abundance of evidence suggesting that what today is known as mediumship went by different names in earlier times. “Besides the term medium and the more recent channel, other names have included shaman, witch doctor, healer, and medicine man in native cultures,” she points out. “They have also been called fortune-tellers, oracles, seers, soothsayers, savants, and visionaries. In religious contexts, they have been known as priests, gurus, prophets, saints, mystics, and holy ones.” She adds in light workers, initiates, teachers, adepts, and masters as names applied by esoteric schools.

Dr. Jones-Hunt, a member of the London-based Society for Psychical Research and the the Scottish Society for Psychical Research, begins with an overview of mediumship and related paranormal phenomena. She discusses fraud, cryptomnesia, the “game-playing demon theory,” possession, obsession, Super-ESP, clairvoyance, trance, automatic writing, psychical research, the cross-correspondences, and various other aspects of spirit communication or purported spirit communication. She goes on to explore mediumship in ancient Egypt, Greece, India, China, and Japan. It was interesting to note an ancient Chinese author quoted: “Among men the dead speak through living persons whom they throw into a trance; and the wu, thrumming their black chords, call down the souls of the dead, which then speak through the mouths of the wu.” The author doesn't mention it, but one has to wonder if this is the origin of the modern “woo-woo” reference to things mysterious.

Jones-Hunt points out that our ancient ancestors often bequeathed the status of god or gods upon otherworldly communicators. The ancestor worship in Japan is believed to have resulted from such spirit communication. The Greeks, including Pythagoras, Plato, and Plotinus, often deified their ethereal communications, the author adds, stating that “they would progressively gain spiritual and eschatological knowledge from these communicators. Their objective was to contribute to humankind's attainment of spiritual progress, thereby emancipating them from the endless wheel of rebirth and therefore ultimately restoring them to their rightful and original habitat in the Heavenly realm.”

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