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Spirit Studies in the Future

By T Stokes

Britain has seen some real lost opportunities to capitalise on recent spiritual triumphs.

We now have greater media coverage than ever before, the sheer volumes of sympathetic books alone released each year, is very uplifting.

But we do not seem to learn from our mistakes, we still get the cottingley fairies fiasco thrown at us, and the claim that the “knocks” of the Fox sisters were just toe clicks etc.

35 years ago the News of the World, a down market British weekly newspaper, ran a 3 week series on public fraud, and it was a sensation, first week wrestling, then sport particularly dog racing, then spiritualism, many genuine mediums were rubbished along with the fraudulent.

The news that the catholic church agenda is collating information for a large scale attack on all new age subjects, especially spiritualism, along side the regular T.V. quack psychologists just seems each time to catch us unprepared.

Damage Limitation

We must learn from bodies such as the B.M.A who are expert at covering their mistakes, we do not tar all the health services with the same brush as the Dr Shipmans, Beverly Allets and “butcher” Rodney Ledwards.

Similarly the sanitized news releases on the “Deepcut barracks” killings have not affected the army, and even our own royal mail, with the worst record in british industry of managerial harassment, theft, bullying and incompetance, still manages public support, and the public may be sick of political corruption but many still vote.

So we must learn from these other bodies, and we must police ourselves.

We have all seen novice members of our own circles, leaving to practise public mediumship, often With only a few months under their belt, and there are many who just should not be in practise because of either inexperience, or other issues.

One prominent medium has an extensive criminal record of offences against young boys, yet still runs a spiritual youth group, can you imagine what the press would make of that ?

The alliance between the international drug companies and the Evangelical Christian right in the U.S. means an all out attack on first alternative medicine, herbs, vitamins and health foods being withdrawn from sale, stage two is the outlawing of all psychic readings, and what their documentation refers to as “mediumistic fraud”.

The Blairite administration here in Britain, currently having won its third term, is expected to just “rubber stamp” the proposals for the U.K.

Many who come into the alternative clinic where I work speak of anxiety over the future of both spirit and health in this country.

Unity is Strength

The ideal situation is to licence all practitioners, if we do not police ourselves then an outside body will.

We do really need to get the postal spam psychics stopped, and there are so many abuses with telephone psychics, because of my paranormal lectures I hear a lot of complaints that perhaps others do not, and some of these are blatent exploitation cases that do worry me, as they target the old and vulnerable.

I will often ask for a show of hands for peoples views on mediums and psychics, and so many are afraid of fraud, that the baby is regularly thrown out with the bath water.

Let us talk now and put our house in order and look forward to a positive future for spiritual progression.

Yours, T.Stokes paranormal studies lecturer.