In all public meetings and in seances where a medium is expected to give trance and inspirational addresses the…
- Date of account
- Published 1893
- Source
- How to thought-read: A manual of instruction in the strange and mystic in daily life, psychic phenomena, including hypnotic, mesmeric, and psychic states, mind and muscle reading, thought transference, psychometry, clairvoyance, and phenomenal spiritualism
- Reference
- How to thought-read: A manual of instruction in the strange and mystic in daily life, psychic phenomena, including hypnotic, mesmeric, and psychic states, mind and muscle reading, thought transference, psychometry, clairvoyance, and phenomenal spiritualism · selected passage 108
- Rights
- public_domain
- Language
- English
- Record updated
- 2026-08-24
Record summary
In all public meetings and in seances where a medium is expected to give trance and inspirational addresses the platform is “supported” or the chair surrounded by sympathisers, whose presence is esteemed favourable to “good conditions”--a “nebulous term” better understood by Spiritualists than the public
Published source text
Read the available text below. Archive transcriptions may contain OCR errors; later context is labelled separately. A recorded claim is not a finding that it happened.
Source passage
Source text · mention onlyIn all public meetings and in seances where a medium is expected to give trance and inspirational addresses the platform is “supported” or the chair surrounded by sympathisers, whose presence is esteemed favourable to “good conditions”--a “nebulous term” better understood by Spiritualists than the public. When the address is, as is often the case, a miserable jumble of things inconsequential, old, experienced Spiritualists say it is owing “to bad conditions,” _i.e._, the influence of the audience on the speaker being conflicting and bad, hence the inconclusive rambling of the spirit’s oration. Whether this is the true explanation or not, whether the medium was really controlled or not, or the addresses successful or not, the fact remains that Spiritualists admit that the “message” is not only “seriously modified,” according to the channel (or medium) through whom it is given, but that it may be deflected and distorted by the influences of the audience to whom it is given. Whatever the real cause of the imperfect oratory, what is this but admitting _the thoughts transferred from the audience to the sensitive either make or mar the utterance_?
Historical context
Contextual commentary · mention onlyThis source supplies historical scientific, skeptical or conventional context. Its terminology and conclusions may not reflect current scholarship.
Modern context
Contextual commentary · mention onlyLattice uses this as an alternative-explanation source, not as an automatic dismissal of testimony. Claims still need to be compared with the actual evidence and current knowledge.
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