This volume addresses controversies connected to the testing of the
capacities and potentials of mediums. Today we commonly associate
the term "medium" with the technical communication between
transmitters and receivers. Yet this term likewise applies to those
who cooperate with agencies that exceed the presumed domain of the
material world. Insofar as one presumes a division between
distinctly opposed categories of religion and the secular,
technical media tend to be associated with the secular and human
(trance) mediums tend to be associated with religion after 1900.
This volume concerns the ways in which the term medium still marks
an overlapping of - and thus problematizes - the aforementioned
division between religion and the secular, the personal and the
technological. The term medium carries with it a seed of doubt that
is itself inseparable from investment in the medium's power:
insofar as they communicate with an "other" realm, mediums offer
the hope and promise of new possibilities and improved efficiency,
and thus of a better life; yet they have simultaneously been under
suspicion of altering (or even inventing) the messages they
communicate. It is due to this combination of promise and suspicion
that "mediumism" has tended to evoke scientific, religious, and
moral controversies. Thus, we can speak of a "mediumistic trial" -
that is, a process in which a medium is put to the test concerning
its potentials and trustworthiness. Around 1800, experts were asked
if a modern secular institution would be capable of inspiring,
domesticating or excluding trance mediumship. This question has
stayed with us ever since, and the answers have remained
inconclusive. That is why the past and present of mediumship may be
asked to elucidate each other.
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