Paper short abstract:

Guided by spirits, Spiritualist mediums learn a sophisticated multi-sensory form of communication and healing. The medium serves as a channel for spirits to cause a transformative rupture in clients, waking them to discover their true expressions in life and work through self-limiting beliefs.

Paper long abstract:

Faced with global uncertainty and adversity, Western demographics are increasingly seeking ‘radical experiences with the sacred’ (Rocha, 2017) and mystical cultivation of intuition, psychic and healing abilities (Hoo, 2021). Across a landscape of growing spirituality sub-cultures, the Spiritualist medium is highly regarded for their advanced spirit communication and spirit healing techniques. These techniques draw on altered states of consciousness and heightened embodied multi-sensory experiences for wellbeing. Research indicates these practices have some commonality with psychotherapy, but conducted with significantly different cultural variation (Sollod, 2005).

To respond to ethnographic gaps identified by transcultural mental health and anthropology (Kirmayer and Ban, 2013), I am undertaking an experiential auto-ethnographic investigation (Stoller and Oakes, 1987) into Spiritualist mediumship. I am also training under spirits, as channelled by trance mediums. My approach builds on Luhrmann’s (2020) methodological focus on the cultivation practices of people developing relationships with spirits, rather than an understanding of their beliefs and cosmology.

My paper will provide insight into the complex support relationships people have with spirits. Spirit communication provides a sophisticated embodied and multi-sensory form of healing. Spirits provide a rupture (Deleuze and Guatttari), waking people to discover their true expressions in life. Spirit mediums also provide support to people with complaints of evil entities and curses. Participants have identified a grey area between spiritual perceptions of spirits and mental health challenges. Insights from my research are being fed into a transcultural mental health unit, to illuminate the complexity of spirit communication practices in Australia.