| I took a two-evening physical mediumship class recently, where we delved into the intriguing world of table tipping. Let me walk you through this fascinating phenomenon. Participants lightly place their fingertips on a wooden table, preferably one with three legs. If enough people have the potential to be physical mediums, energy is transmitted into the table, and the table will eventually move. The table first vibrates and then shakes; eventually, it can tip or slide across the room as the energy builds. As the table begins to travel, the participants must stand and keep their fingertips on it as it moves around the room. It becomes a thrilling game of bumper cars, trying to avoid bumping into other people around tables as the tables are speeding around the room. This was not the first time that I witnessed this phenomenon, and while it is fun, I have not been that impressed with it. Then, on the second evening, we did a different form of table titling. This time, we sat in “séance conditions,” meaning we sat in complete darkness. This time, our Spirit controls for physical mediumship would manipulate the table. It was a completely different experience, one that was very fascinating. We followed a similar procedure. Four people sat around the table, each one holding their fingertips lightly on the table. You could feel the table vibrate and then begin to move. Then, one person was designated as the medium. That person would remove their hands from the table and enter a trance state. Once the table began moving, the remaining three people would give spirit directions on how they wanted it to move. They would ask the table to slide to a particular person sitting at the table, or to tip, or to rock. We could also begin to communicate with the Spirit control through the table. We would take turns asking a yes or no question, telling Spirit to tip the table once for yes and two times for no. With each tilt, the table would rise on one or two legs and then come back down with a thud. Therefore, Spirit would answer yes or no to the question through the table. At one point, the table remained tiled on one (or two) legs, waiting for us to ask a question so it could fall and bang out the answer. It was truly remarkable! [We could have asked more complex questions and began reciting the alphabet, waiting for Spirit to spell out an answer, but that would have been too time-consuming for the 15 minutes each person had to be the medium during this class.] During the middle of this experience, I began thinking about the research I had done for the lectures I gave this year about the Fox sisters and the Davenport Brothers. These were the very first mediums of “the Modern Age of Spiritualism,” who lived during the mid-1850s. After people were exposed to the phenomena these mediums produced, there was a sudden explosion of mediumship. Take a moment to consider how different your life would be without electricity. How would you fill your evenings without your computers, DVDs, TVs, Radios, and iPods? How would you cook your meals, keep food cold, wash clothes, and get water into your house? Life was extremely different in the 1850s than it is today. Imagine what your reaction would be to be able to ask a table (Spirit) a question and receive a correct answer. When considering an entertainment vacuum, the sudden explosion of this fascinating phenomenon could be compared to putting a match to a bottle of gasoline. In this context, it becomes easy to understand why there was an explosion of mediums and interest in Spirit Communication in the second half of the 19th century. |
