MEDIUMSHIP: BEWARE OF ANIMISM

Definition | Discovery and Response

Definition

All mediums and directors of mediumship sessions must be aware of, and know how to recognize, the phenomenon of animism.  Animism is a state of trance, provoked unconsciously and unintentionally, by the spirit of the medium.  This is made possible by the property of expansion of the medium’s perispirit, and occurs without any intervention from another spirit.  As the author, Martins Peralva, writes, "Many times, that which appears to be a mediumistic trance, with all the appearances of the influence of a spirit, is nothing more than the medium, naturally a maladjusted medium, reliving scenes and events extracted from his own subconscious mind, a phenomena which is provoked by the magnetic contact, meaning the approach of entities with whom the medium shares experiences of the remote past.  In the phenomena of animism, the medium expresses himself as if there were truly a discarnate spirit there to communicate."

Animism is provoked by the fixation of the mind on some circumstance, thus provoking a state in which a being, incarnate or discarnate, sees nothing, hears nothing, and feels nothing outside of that situation.  Isolating himself from the world around him, such an individual begins to concentrate his thoughts and energies around his own imbalance, crystallizing himself in time. At some point in time, the spirit is able, most likely with the intervention and help of others, to free himself from this self-inflicted captivity.  However, at a later point in time, the memory of that fixation could resurface in the form of animistic phenomena.  Peralva writes, "The crystallization of the mind on given situations, today, can provoke a future manifestation of the animistic phenomena, just as such fixation of the mind, at some time in the past, can exteriorize itself in the present."