Hollywood’s Heavenly Humdingers
Janet
Baldwin
Healing is regarded by
Spiritualist mediums as one of the highest expressions of power and it is
offered in situ to the public prior
to, or after, the Divine Church Service. Absent healing is sent through prayers
and blessings to those whose name is evoked during meditation or placed in healing
books and lists invariably located on the Spiritualist Church platform. Private
healing sessions are also offered by particularly gifted mediums and this
chapter is centred on participation observation of trance mediumship circles,
here mediums offer their bodies as instruments to heal clients and those in
spirit. Illness and disease manifest due to stress and social control and spiritual
healing helps to reduce the suffering. This culturally contextual belief,
patterns itself on the body and mind in many ways, and I explore how the body
is seen as the existential ground of culture, manifests the understanding of
social memory of illness and stress, and how spiritual healing serves as a
remedy for clients and those in spirit. I discuss the spiritual practice of a trance
medium and a patient in need, the transfiguration of a medium by a family of
three and the discourse of a discarnate spirit who seeks to teach and heal.
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