Astral Projection: Also known as an “Out of Body Experience” or OOBE. The experience involves being separated from one’s physical body and travelling through space and time for either a particular purpose that you have willed your mind to achieve or because your higher mind wishes to explore something.
Astrology: Research and analysis of the effects of the sun, moon and eight planets upon the Earth and its inhabitants with regards to predicting future events.
Cabinet Work: A three sided dark cabinet allowing either a Physical Medium, Mental Medium or Trance Medium to sit within and to channel spirit energies for purposes such as Physical Phenomena.
Cartomancy: Divination through the use of Playing Cards. The Tarot also falls under this category.
Channeling: A mind process involving a state of altered consciousness used by a Mental Medium to effect two way communications with spirits and other supernatural intelligence and energies.
Clairaudience: Literally means “Clear Hearing”. Denotes the faculty of supernormal hearing from other dimensional sources or from our own plane but over vast distances such as thousands of miles.
Clairaudient: A person receptive to and/or knowingly practicing Clairaudience.
Clairsentience: Literally means, “Clear Sensing” and involves the psychic perception of the senses such as touch, taste, smell and emotions. Often coupled with Clairvoyance and Clairaudience.
Clairsentient: A person who practices clairsentience.
Clairvoyance: Literally means, “Clear Seeing” and involves the seeing and analysis/interpretation of waking visions using ESP.
Clairvoyant: A person who practices clairvoyance.
Crystal Ball: These are used for Scrying as a method of divination. Clairvoyant images are meant to appear within the ball. Other objects can be used to good effect too; mirrors, shiny stones, water or indeed anything with a reflective surface.
Dice: For 2000 years or more dice have been used as a divinatory tool. Set values were given to the points on each die. The user would ask a question, throw a couple of dice into a circle and whatever point was showing face up would be translated to give an answer.
Divinatory: See Divination.
Divination: Various techniques used to foretell the future and for finding lost people and objects with the help of spirit beings and the collective conscious.
Dowsing: An ancient form of divination using either a forked stick or rods or a pendulum. Dowsing is generally used to locate people, objects and substances. Also, it can be used to foretell the future and the pendulum is favoured for this.
Some alternative health therapists use dowsing to diagnose health problems. This is known as Radiesthesia.
ESP: Extrasensory Perception (known better as “ESP”) equates to the ability of being able to receive and transmit information through mental means. Part of Psi phenomena. Four main categories make up ESP; Telepathy, Clairvoyance, Precognition or Retrocognition.
Healing: Not all healers are mediums. Some people are able to redirect trapped energies to cure others. Reiki is a form of this. Healing mediums call on spirits to help channel the required energy to effect a cure. Psychics & clairvoyants can also help heal others with accurate and positive fore-telling. This can help to heal the enquirers mind or to alleviate stress of an individual person or animal.
I Ching: A sacred Chinese book which is thousands of years old. Also known as the “Book of Changes”. Used as the basis for a Chinese divination system involving 64 hexagrams each of which comprises six divided or undivided lines. Yarrow sticks were used originally but these days coins or match sticks can be used. Each hexagram has a meaning attributed to it.
Insight: A term generally used to describe intuition or foresight.
Intuition: A natural mental feeling of “knowing” that something is right or not right for that individual.
Inspirational Art: The ability to draw or paint what the medium “sees” or “feels” mentally. Mediums need to be good at artistic techniques and have the required skills to capture what is seen or felt.
Karma: Derived from the Sanskrit “deed”. A fundamental concept in Hinduism and Buddhism where thoughts and deeds determine the consequences of a person’s life and rebirth. What you do in one life affects who you are and what you do in subsequent lifetimes. Often mistaken by Westerners as meaning destiny or fate. Karma can be good karma or bad karma.
Karma Cards: An interesting divinatory tool comprising three different sets of cards which when used together in the manner intended, produce accurate results enabling the enquirer to make sensible decisions for moving forward.
Meditation: A form of relaxation achieved by deep thinking and visualising, in the mind, a nice relaxing scene. You can take it much further by allowing yourself to become part of the scene and letting your subconscious control what happens next.
Mental Medium: Also known as a Sensitive and one who communicates (two way link) with the other side of life.
Metaphysics: Philosophy. Speculation.
Mystical: A fusion of magic, the occult and supernatural forces providing an air of the unknown.
New Age: A modern Western term used to describe all unorthodox subjects such as spiritualism, astrology, the occult, mysticism, complimentary medicine, healing crystals, pyramids and similar sets of beliefs. People who support the new age era do so because they believe the time is right for us to investigate all these ancient albeit suppressed beliefs.
Numerology: Also known as numeromancy or arithomancy. Numerology is one of the oldest forms of divination and occult lore.
OOBE: Out of Body Experience. See Astral Projection.
Ouija: This is pronounced as “Wejar” in English. The term “Ouija” is derived from the French for “yes” (being Oui) and the German for “yes” (being Ja). An Ouija comprises a board and pointer (Planchette) that is used as a divinatory communications device with the spirit world. The board has all the letters of the alphabet and numbers from 0 to 9 inscribed on it and some even have “yes” and “no” printed. An Ouija board can be mentally dangerous to use if its users have not been professionally trained in using one.
Physical Medium: These are mediums who produce physical phenomena such as the movement of objects or can cause unexplainable noise. Some physical mediums can also produce ectoplasm; a substance believed to be from the spirit World in which some spirits, but not all, use it to form images of themselves or objects.
Planchette: This is a heart shaped pointing device for use with Ouija boards in the main. It is usually constructed out of wood with one end fashioned into a point. At its base there is usually a tricycle of casters to facilitate its smooth movement. Planchettes can be used for automatic writing and drawing also.
Playing Cards: Virtually any system (or game - which is, after all, a fun system) can be used as a divinatory tool. Normal playing cards are often used. Divination through traditional playing cards is known as Cartomancy. As long as you lay down the rules for what your preferred system is meant to do and how it should work then that too can be used. Edward (owner of this site) has used Microsoft’s Windows’ Solitaire as an impartial divinatory tool with accurate results.
Precognition: The knowledge of events lying in the future & waiting to happen.
Predicting: Foretelling future events. Prophesy.
Prediction: See Predicting.
Psi: A term used in parapsychology to include ESP and Psychokinesis.
Psi Cards: An interesting card system of finding your inner self and how to best move forward in your life.
Psychic: Generally & incorrectly used as a label for all meanings to do with divination. Its true meaning is the use of ESP or Psychokinesis.
Psychic Art: A form of physical mediumship. The medium's hand is controlled by spirit. The medium needs no artistic skills although it does help to have them.
Psychokinesis: Mind over matter. Using the mind to control the state of matter through materialisations, levitation and movement.
Remote Viewing: This is the ability to “see” or “sense” remote objects, places, locations, buildings etc., via clairvoyance or through an OOBE.
Retrocognition: Knowledge of past events without physical access to information about those events.
Runes: A system of divination originating from Norse and Germanic alphabets of symbols which were used mainly for charms and inscriptions. Runes were constructed from stone, wood, metal or bone.
Séance: Also known as a “Circle” or a “Sitting”. It involves a group of people sitting in a circle with a medium who contacts a spirit guide. The spirit then communicates with the circle of people through the medium either mentally or by using the medium’s voice box. Manifestations can occur as well as apparitions and other phenomena. Most séance are held in very dark rooms to facilitate the seeing of materialisations. However, séance can be practiced anywhere indoors or outdoors and in the light too.
Self Hypnosis: A self help technique for inducing rapid and deep relaxation. Useful to combat stress. It is used very successfully during meditation and to prepare for OOBE’s. Some mediums, especially those doing trance work, will use the technique to “go down” quickly.
Sixth Sense: A general term used to describe “Intuition” or the “Gut Feel”.
Soul/Spirit: There are many different explanations as to what the soul may be and all religions will argue their case for their particular beliefs. The majority of people seem to believe that each and every living being has a soul although it seems that there are a few non believers. Ancient philosophy suggests that man comprises a triune being; body, soul and spirit. Accordingly the soul is a vehicle in which resides the spirit and both are harboured by the physical body. At the time of death the soul along with its spirit withdraws and continues to function in the spiritual world. People who believe in this are generally known as trichotomists whereas people who believe that the soul and the spirit are one of the same are known as dichotomists, among the Christian faith.
Spiritual: A general word used to describe anything to do with esoteric matters, the supernatural, occultism, divination, mediumism, materialisations etc.,
Spiritualist: A person who believes in Spiritualism. This is a movement which was founded in the USA during 1848 by the Fox sisters in New York.
Spiritual Medium: A person who has the ability to communicate and work with the Spiritual World.
Spiritual Psychic Medium: A term used to describe someone who practices as a Spiritual Medium together with Psychic (ESP - Extrasensory Perception) phenomena.
Spiritual World: When people and animals die, the physical body generally remains on the Earth Plane but the soul/spirit move on into another dimension often referred as the Afterlife or Heaven within the Western hemisphere. Some spirits within the afterlife are tasked with helping people and animals on the Earth plane. Within this collection of spirits are those who have the ability to read the Akashic Records which is a detailed mapping system of Past, Present and Future events for all living creatures. Most professionally trained Spiritual Psychic Mediums also have access to these records through mental and spirit guide means.
Tarot Cards: A picture card system used for divinatory purposes such as fortune telling. Comprises 78 cards in total split into two groups. The first group consists of 22 trump cards which are categorised as belonging to the Major Arcana. The remaining 56 cards are categorised as the Minor Arcana; these are then split into four suits of 14 cards. The cards are shuffled while a question is being considered and then one or more cards are laid out into a pre-determined spread. The card reader will then interpret the meaning of the cards in relation to the query. It can take many years to learn it properly but once learnt it is a very accurate form of divination albeit from a lower realm to that of the spirit.
Table Tilting: This involves the transfer and integration of energy into a table to make it move or dance on its own accord. It works best with wooden tables.
Tea Leaves: Reading Tea Leaves or Coffee Grounds is known as Tasseography.
Telepathy: Mind-to-mind communication. See ESP.
Telekinesis: Paranormal abilities to move objects by thought process alone.
Trance Medium: A form of self hypnosis enabling the sitter who is invariably a medium to experience what can be best described as being suspended between life and death. This condition allows the mind to roam freely to explore other realms or dimensions and to perhaps communicate with other entities. A Trance Medium may allow one spirit entity at a time to integrate him/her/itself within his/her body and to allow that entity to communicate either visually or audibly through speech.
Transfiguration: A physical medium may transfigure his/her facial features involuntarily. The transfiguration is achieved by the build-up of ectoplasm over the mediums face. Spirits will mould their own features over the medium’s face for recognition. Edward, who is generally clean shaven, once experienced the build-up of a moustache and could physically feel the “hairs” growing through his skin, while transfiguring the facial features of an 11th Century Scribe (Writer) from Normandy.
Visions: These are mental pictures as a result of clear seeing.
Visioning: The ability to create visions through spiritual or occult means.
Check Your Spiritual Pathway : Knowledge and Glossary of Terms regarding the Supernatural
The table below acts as a glossary of terms for the more popular words. All the descriptions were written by Edward and are based on his experience and understanding.
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