The term mediumship denotes the ability of a person (the medium) to apparently experience contact with spirits. The medium generally attempts to facilitate communication between people and spirits who may have messages to share.

A medium may appear to listen to and relate conversations with spirit voices, go into a trance and speak without knowledge of what is being said, allow a spirit to enter their body and speak through it, and relay messages from the spirits those who wish to contact them with the help of a physical tool, such as a writing implement.

Mediumship is also part of the belief system of some New Age groups. In this context, and under the name channeling, it refers to a medium who receive messages from a teaching spirit.

Channeling became quite popular in the United States after the rise of Spiritualism as a religious movement. Modern Spiritualism is said to date to the mediumistic activities of the Fox sisters in New York state during 1848. The trance mediums Paschal Beverly Randolph and Emma Hardinge Britten were among the most celebrated lecturers and authors on the subject in the mid 1800s. Mediumship was also described by Allan Kardec, who coined the term Spiritism, around 1860.

After the exposure of the fraudulent use of stage magic tricks by mediums such as the Davenport Brothers, mediumship fell into disrepute, although it never ceased being used by people who believed that the dead can be contacted.

From the 1930s through the 1990s, as psychical mediumship became less practiced in Spiritualist churches, the technique of channeling gained in popularity, and books by channellers who related the wisdom of non corporeal and non terrestrial teacher spirits became best sellers amongst believers.

For some mediums, a spirit guide is a highly evolved spirit with the sole purpose of helping the medium develop and use their skills. They assist mediums in following their spiritual path. For other mediums, a spirit guide is one who brings other spirits to a medium’s attention or carries communications between a medium and the spirits of the dead.

Many mediums claim to have specific guides who regularly work with them and bring in spirits. Some mediums believe that spirits will communicate with them directly without the use of a spirit guide.

In old line Spiritualism, a portion of the service, generally toward the end, is given over to the pastor or another medium who receives messages from the spirit world for the congregants. This may be referred to as a demonstration of mediumship. Today, demonstration of mediumship is part of the church service at all churches affiliated with the National Spiritualist Association of Churches. 

Some mediums remain conscious during this communication period, while others go into a trance where a spirit uses the medium’s body to communicate. Trance mediumship is defined as a spirit taking over the body of the medium, sometimes to such a degree that the medium is unconscious. 

In the 1860s and 1870s, trance mediums were very popular. Spiritualism had attracted adherents who had strong interests in social justice, and many trance mediums delivered passionate speeches on abolitionism, temperance, and women’s suffrage.

Because the typical trance medium has no clear memory of the messages conveyed while in a trance, a medium of this type generally works with an assistant who writes down or otherwise records his or her words. 

There are two main techniques mediumship developed in the latter half of the 20th century. One type involves psychics or sensitives who can speak to spirits and then relay what they hear to their clients. One of the most noted channels of this type is clairvoyant Danielle Egnew, known for her communication with angelic entities.

The other incarnation of non physical mediumship is a form of channeling in which the channeler goes into a trance, or leaves their body and then becomes possessed by a specific spirit, who then talks through them. In the trance, the medium enters a cataleptic state marked by extreme rigidity. The control spirit then takes over, the voice may change completely and the spirit answers the questions of those in its presence or giving spiritual knowledge.

The most successful and widely known channeler of this variety is JZ Knight, who claims to channel the spirit of Ramtha, a 30 thousand year old man. Others claim to channel spirits from future dimensional ascended masters or in the case of the trance mediums of the Brahma Kumaris, God himself. Hossca Harrison is medium for a non physical entity named Jonah. There is video of Jonah taking over Hossca’s body and giving a message on YouTube.

While advocates of mediumship claim that their experiences are genuine, the Encyclopedia Britannica article on spiritualism notes that many Spiritualist mediums were discovered to be engaged in fraud, sometimes employing the techniques of stage magicians in their attempts to convince people of their clairvoyant powers. The article also notes that the exposure of widespread fraud within the spiritualist movement severely damaged its reputation and pushed it to the fringes of society in the United States.

Skeptics include atheists, agnostics who do not believe in the existence of spirits, and those who do not think contact with spirits through mediums is possible. Some skeptics say the phenomena of mediumship are the result of self delusion, unconscious influence, or magician’s techniques such as cold reading, hot reading, and conjuring.

Ants are social insects that evolved from ancestors in the Cretaceous period between 110 and 130 million years ago and diversified after the rise of flowering plants. Today, more than 12,000 species are classified with upper estimates of about 14,000 species.

Ants form colonies that range in size from a few tens of predatory individuals living in small natural cavities to highly organized colonies which may occupy large territories and consist of millions of individuals that are mostly sterile females forming castes of workers, soldiers, or other specialised groups. The colonies are sometimes described as superorganisms because ants appear to operate as a unified entity, collectively working together to support the colony.

Ant societies have division of labour, communication between individuals, and an ability to solve complex problems. These parallels with human societies have long been an inspiration and subject of study. Many human cultures make use of ants in cuisine, medication, and rituals. Some species are valued in their role as biological pest control agents. However, their ability to exploit resources brings ants into conflict with humans as they can damage crops and invade buildings. Some species, such as the red fire ant, are regarded as invasive species, since they can spread rapidly into new areas.

Ants communicate with each other using pheromones. These chemical signals are more developed in ants than in other insect groups. They perceive smells with their long, thin and mobile antennae. The paired antennae provide information about the direction and intensity of scents. Since most ants live on the ground, they use the soil surface to leave pheromone trails that can be followed by other ants.

In species that forage in groups, a forager that finds food marks a trail on the way back to the colony. This trail is followed by other ants, and these ants then reinforce the trail when they head back with food to the colony. When the food source is exhausted, no new trails are marked by returning ants and the scent slowly dissipates. This behaviour helps ants deal with changes in their environment. For instance, when an established path to a food source is blocked by an obstacle, the foragers leave the path to explore new routes. If an ant is successful, it leaves a new trail marking the shortest route on its return. Successful trails are followed by more ants, reinforcing better routes and gradually finding the best path. But ants use pheromones for more than just making trails. A crushed ant emits an alarm pheromone that sends nearby ants into an attack frenzy and attracts more ants from further away. Several ant species even use propaganda pheromones to confuse enemy ants and make them fight among themselves.

Pheromones are also exchanged mixed with food and passed among members of the community, transferring information within the colony. This allows other ants to detect what task group other colony members belong to. In ant species with queen castes, workers begin to raise new queens in the colony when the dominant queen stops producing a specific pheromone.

Many animals can learn behaviours by imitation but ants may be the only group apart from mammals where interactive teaching has been observed. One species of ant leads a nest mate to newly discovered food by the excruciatingly slow process of tandem running. The follower obtains knowledge through its leading tutor. Both leader and follower are acutely sensitive to the progress of their partner with the leader slowing down when the follower lags, and speeding up when the follower gets too close. Controlled experiments with some colonies suggest that individuals may choose nest roles based on their previous experience.

An entire generation of identical workers was divided into two groups whose outcome in food foraging was controlled. One group was continually rewarded with prey, while it was made certain that the other failed. As a result, members of the successful group intensified their foraging attempts while the unsuccessful group ventured out less and less. A month later, the successful foragers continued in their role while the others moved to specialise in brood care.

Ants perform many ecological roles that are beneficial to humans, including the suppression of pest populations and aeration of the soil. The use of weaver ants in citrus cultivation in southern China is considered one of the oldest known applications of biological control. On the other hand, ants can become nuisances when they invade buildings or cause economic losses.

In some parts of the world, large ants are used as surgical sutures. The wound is pressed together and ants are applied along it. The ant seizes the edges of the wound in its mandibles and locks in place. The body is then cut off and the head and mandibles remain in place to close the wound. Some ants have toxic venom and are of medical importance.

In South Africa, ants are used to help harvest rooibos, which are small seeds used to make an herbal tea. The plant disperses its seeds widely, making manual collection difficult. Black ants collect and store these and other seeds in their nest, where humans can gather them. Up to half a pound of seeds can be collected from one ant mound.  

EVP, or Electronic Voice Phenomena, are sections of static noise on the radio or electronic recording which some listeners believe sound like voices speaking words, and which paranormal investigators interpret as the voices of ghosts or spirits. Recording EVP has become a technique of those who attempt to contact the souls of dead loved ones or during ghost hunting activities. In addition to deceased spirits, various paranormal investigators say that EVP could be produced by psychic echoes from the past, psychokinesis unconsciously produced by living people, and aliens. According to parapsychologist Konstantin Raudive, who popularized the idea, EVP are typically brief, usually the length of a word or short phrase.

Those who believe in the existence of EVP as a paranormal manifestation have a number of beliefs as to what EVP may possibly be. Common explanations include living humans imprinting thoughts directly on an electronic medium through psychokinesis and communication by discarnate entities such as spirits, nature energies, beings from other dimensions, or extraterrestrials.

As the Spiritualism religious movement became prominent in the 1840s–1920s with a distinguishing belief that the spirits of the dead can be contacted by mediums, new technologies of the era including photography were employed by spiritualists in an effort to demonstrate contact with a spirit worl. So popular were such ideas that Thomas Edison was asked in an interview with Scientific American to comment on the possibility of using his inventions to communicate with spirits. He replied that if the spirits were only capable of subtle influences, a sensitive recording device would provide a better chance of spirit communication than the table tipping and ouija boards mediums employed at the time. However, there is no indication that Edison ever designed or constructed a device for such a purpose. As sound recording became widespread, mediums explored using this technology to demonstrate communication with the dead as well. Despite the eventual decline of Spiritualism through the latter part of the 20th century, attempts to use portable recording devices and modern digital technologies to demonstrate life after death continued to be promoted in popular culture and by a cadre of dedicated believers.

In 1980, William O’Neil constructed an electronic audio device called The Spiricom. O’Neil claimed the device was built to specifications which he received psychically from George Mueller, a scientist who had died six years previously. At a Washington, DC, press conference on April 6, 1982, O’Neil stated that he was able to hold two-way conversations with spirits through the Spiricom device, and provided the design specifications to researchers for free. However, nobody is known to have replicated O’Neil’s results using their own Spiricom devices. O’Neil’s partner, retired industrialist George Meek, attributed O’Neil’s success, and the inability of others to replicate it, to O’Neil’s psychic abilities forming part of the loop that made the system work.

Since EVP has been ignored and derided as fiction by the scientific community and is not generally studied by academic researchers, there is no singular consensus on what all EVP are. However, there are a number of straightforward scientific explanations that can account for why some listeners to the static on audio devices may believe they hear voices, including radio interference and the tendency of the human brain to recognize patterns in random stimuli. A percentage of recordings may be hoaxes created by frauds or pranksters.

The very first EVP recordings may have originated from the use of tape recording equipment with poorly aligned erasure and recording heads, resulting in previous audio recordings not being completely erased. This could allow a small percentage of previous content to be superimposed or mixed into a new silent recording.

Interference, for example, is seen in certain EVP recordings, especially those recorded on devices which contain RLC circuitry. These cases represent radio signals of voices or other sounds from broadcast sources. Interference from CB Radio transmissions and wireless baby monitors, or anomalies generated though cross modulation from other electronic devices, are all documented phenomena. It is even possible for circuits to resonate without any internal power source by means of radio reception.

Capture errors are anomalies created by the method used to capture audio signals, such as noise generated through the over amplification of a signal at the point of recording.

Artifacts created during attempts to boost the clarity of an existing recording might explain some EVP. Methods include resampling, frequency isolation, and noise reduction or enhancement, which can cause recordings to take on qualities significantly different from those that were present in the original recording.

Portable digital voice recorders are currently the technology of choice for EVP investigators. Since these devices are very susceptible to Radio Frequency (RF) contamination, EVP enthusiasts sometimes try to record EVP in RF and sound screened rooms. Nevertheless, in order to record EVP there has to be noise in the audio circuits of the device used to produce the EVP. For this reason, those who attempt to record EVP often use two recorders that have differing quality audio circuitry and rely on noise heard from the poorer quality instrument to generate EVP.

A few German enthusiasts coined the term Instrumental TransCommunication (ITC) to refer more generally to communication through any sort of electronic device such as tape recorders, fax machines, television sets or computers between spirits or other discarnate entities and the living. One particularly famous claimed incidence of ITC occurred when the image of EVP enthusiast Friedrich Jurgenson, whose funeral was held that day, was said to have appeared on a television in the home of a colleague, which had been purposefully tuned to a vacant channel. ITC enthusiastists also investigate TV and video camera feedback transmission loops.

Some EVP enthusiasts describe hearing the words in EVP as an ability, much like learning a new language. Skeptics say that the claimed instances are all either hoaxes or misinterpretations of natural phenomena. Neither EVP nor ITC are researched within the scientific community and, as ideas, are generally derided by scientists when asked.

The didgeridoo is a wind instrument of the Indigenous Australians of northern Australia. It is sometimes described as a natural wooden trumpet or drone pipe. Musicologists classify it as an aerophone. Some sources state that the didgeridoo had other uses in ancient times.

It is usually cylindrical or conical in shape and can measure anywhere from 3 to 9 feet in length. Generally, the longer the instrument, the lower the pitch or key of the instrument. Keys from D to F are the preferred pitch of traditional Aboriginal players. The didjeridoo functions as an aural kaleidoscope of timbres and the extremely difficult virtuoso techniques developed by expert performers find no parallel elsewhere.

There are no reliable sources stating the didgeridoo’s exact age, though it is commonly claimed to be the world’s oldest wind instrument. Archaeological studies of rock art in Northern Australia suggests that the Aboriginal people of the Kakadu region of the Northern Territory have been using the didgeridoo for about 1500 years, based on the dating of paintings on cave walls and shelters from this period. A rock painting in Ginga Wardelirrhmeng from the freshwater period 1500 years ago shows a didgeridoo player and two songmen. In some Aboriginal cultures, only men are permitted to play it, and women can only use clapsticks.

Authentic Aboriginal didgeridoos are produced in traditional communities in Northern Australia and are usually made from hardwoods, especially the various eucalyptus species that are endemic to the region. Sometimes a native bamboo or pandanus is used. Generally, the main trunk of the tree is harvested, though a substantial branch may be used instead. Aboriginal didgeridoo craftsmen spend considerable time in the challenging search for a tree that has been hollowed out by termites to just the right degree. If the hollow is too big or too small, it will make a poor quality instrument.

When a suitable tree is found and cut down, the segment of trunk or branch that will be made into a didgeridoo is cut out. The bark is taken off, the ends trimmed, and some shaping of the exterior then results in a finished instrument. It may then be painted or left undecorated. A rim of beeswax may be applied to the mouthpiece end. Traditional instruments made by Aboriginal craftsmen in Arnhem Land are sometimes fitted with a wax mouthpiece. This comes from wild bees and is black in appearance with a distinctive aroma.

Didgeridoos are also made from PVC piping. These generally have a 1.5 to 2 inch inside diameter, and have a length corresponding to the desired key. The mouthpiece is often made of the traditional beeswax, or duct tape. An appropriately sized rubber stopper with a hole cut into it is equally acceptable. Some have also found that finely sanding and buffing the end of the pipe creates a sufficient mouthpiece.

The didgeridoo is played with continuously vibrating lips to produce a drone while using a special breathing technique called circular breathing. This requires breathing in through the nose while simultaneously expelling air out of the mouth using the tongue and cheeks. By use of this technique, a skilled player can replenish the air in their lungs, and with practice can sustain a note for as long as desired. Recordings exist of modern didgeridoo players playing continuously for more than 40 minutes. Mark Atkins, in Didgeridoo Concerto plays for over 50 minutes continuously.

A termite bored didgeridoo has an irregular shape that usually increases in diameter towards the lower end. This shape means that its resonances occur at frequencies that are not harmonically spaced in frequency. This contrasts with the harmonic spacing of the resonances in a cylindrical plastic pipe, whose resonant frequencies fall in octaves, fifths and fourths. The second resonance of a didgeridoo, or the note sounded by overblowing, is usually around an 11th higher than the fundamental frequency.

The vibration produced has specific harmonics. It has frequency components falling exactly in the ratios of octaves, fifths and fourths. However, the nonharmonic spacing of the instrument’s resonances means that the harmonics of the fundamental note are not systematically assisted by instrument resonances, as is usually the case for Western wind instruments.

Sufficiently strong resonances of the vocal tract can strongly influence the timbre of the instrument. At some frequencies, depending on the position of the player’s tongue, resonances of the vocal tract inhibit the oscillatory flow of air into the instrument. Bands of frequencies that are not thus inhibited produce variations in the output sound. These variations give the instrument its readily recognizable sound.

Other variations in the didgeridoo’s sound are made with “screeches” related to sounds emitted by Australian animals, such as the dingo or the kookaburra. To produce these sounds the player simply has to cry out in the didgeridoo while continuing to blow air through it. The results range from very high pitched sounds to much lower guttural vibrations.

The didgeridoo is sometimes played as a solo instrument for recreational purposes, though usually it accompanies dancing and singing in ceremonial rituals. For Aboriginal groups of northern Australia, the didgeridoo is an integral part of ceremonial life, as it accompanies singers and dancers in religious rituals. Pair sticks, sometimes called clapsticks or bilma, establish the beat for the songs during ceremonies. The rhythm of the didgeridoo and the beat of the clapsticks are precise, and these patterns have been handed down for many generations. Only men play the didgeridoo and sing during ceremonial occasions, whilst both men and women may dance. The taboo against women playing the instrument is not absolute. Female Aboriginal didgeridoo players did exist, although their playing generally took place in an informal context and was not specifically encouraged. Linda Barwick, an ethnomusicologist, says that women have traditionally not played the didgeridoo in ceremony, but in informal situations there is no prohibition. 

The didgeridoo was also used as a means of communication across far distances. Some of the sound waves from the instrument can be perceived through the ground or heard in an echo. Each player usually has his own base rhythm which enables others to identify the source of the message.

There are sacred and even secret versions of the didgeridoo in Aboriginal communities in parts of Arnhem Land, Northern Territory, and the surrounding areas. These types of instruments have specific names and functions and some of these are played like typical didgeridoos whereas others are not.

Rongorongo is a system of glyphs discovered in the 19th century on Easter Island that appears to be writing or proto writing. It has not been deciphered despite numerous attempts. Although some calendrical and what might prove to be genealogical information has been identified, not even these glyphs can be read. If rongorongo does prove to be writing, it could be one of only three or four known independent inventions of writing in human history.

Two dozen wooden objects bearing rongorongo inscriptions were collected in the late 19th century and are now scattered in museums and private collections. None remain on Easter Island. The objects are mostly tablets made from irregular pieces of wood, sometimes driftwood, but include a chieftain’s staff, a birdman statuette, and two reimiro ornaments. There are also a few petroglyphs which may include short rongorongo inscriptions. Oral history suggests that only a small elite was ever literate and that the tablets were sacred.

Authentic rongorongo texts are written in alternating directions, a system called reverse boustrophedon. In the case of the tablets these lines are often inscribed in shallow fluting carved into the wood. The glyphs have a characteristic outline appearance and include human, animal, plant, artifact and geometric forms. Some of the human and animal figures, and have protuberances on each side of the head, possibly representing ears or eyes that are also characteristic of rongorongo.

Oral tradition holds that because of the great value of wood, only expert scribes used it, while pupils wrote on banana leaves. German ethnologist Thomas Barthel believed that carving on wood was a secondary development in the evolution of the script based on an earlier stage of incising banana leaves or the sheaths of the banana trunk with a bone stylus, and that the medium of leaves was retained not only for lessons but to plan and compose the texts of the wooden tablets. He found that the glyphs were quite visible on banana leaves due to the sap that emerged from the cuts and dried on the surface. However, when the leaves themselves dried they became brittle and would not have survived for long.

The glyphs are stylized human, animal, vegetable and geometric shapes, and often form compounds. Nearly all those with heads are oriented head up and are either seen face on or in profile to the right, in the direction of writing. It is not known what significance turning a glyph head down or to the left may have had. Heads often have characteristic projections on the sides which may be eyes but which often resemble ears. Birds are common. Many resemble the frigatebird which was associated with the supreme god Makemake. Other glyphs look like fish or arthropods. A few, but only a few, are similar to petroglyphs found throughout the island.

Easter Island has the richest assortment of petroglyphs in Polynesia. Nearly every suitable surface has been carved, including the stone walls of some houses and a few of the famous statues and their fallen topknots. Around one thousand sites with over four thousand glyphs have been cataloged. Designs include marine animals like turtles, tuna, swordfish, sharks, whales, dolphins, crabs, and octopus, some with human faces. Although the petroglyphs cannot be directly dated, some are partially obscured by pre-colonial stone buildings, suggesting they are relatively old.

As with most undeciphered scripts, there are many fanciful interpretations and claimed translations of rongorongo. However, apart from a portion of one tablet which has been shown to have to do with a lunar calendar, none of the texts are understood. There are three serious obstacles to decipherment, assuming rongorongo is truly writing: the small number of remaining texts, the lack of context such as illustrations in which to interpret them, and the poor attestation of the Old Rapanui language since modern Rapanui is heavily mixed with Tahitian and is therefore unlikely to closely reflect the language of the tablets.

The prevailing opinion is that rongorongo is not true writing but proto writing, or even a more limited mnemonic device for genealogy, choreography, navigation, astronomy, or agriculture. For example, the Atlas of Languages states, “It was probably used as a memory aid or for decorative purposes, not for recording the Rapanui language of the islanders”. If this is the case, then there is little hope of ever deciphering it. For those who believe it to be writing, there is debate as to whether rongorongo is essentially logographic or syllabic, though it appears to be compatible with neither a pure logography nor a pure syllabary.

We who are the life of the earth are increasing our being. Our nature as humans allows us to amplify and potentiate what now lies dormant, waiting to unfold. Like the unused capacity of our brains, there are other potential abilities that can be cultivated. The clarity and strength of our communication is one of those.

Communication between humans on a verbal level uses the tool of language. Language reflects the focus of attention of the culture. In the language of the Inuit of the far north it is said there are more than thirty descriptive words for snow and its different conditions. In the ancient language of the Greeks there were many descriptive words for love and the various qualities of its manifestation. Language carries the culture and becomes a tool of thought. As we learn language we learn the culture.

We find that in English as well as many other languages of civilization there is much confusion. In many cases similar sounds mean different things, and different word sounds mean the same thing. Language, as we know it, has become indistinct from what is being described. To add to this we are now coming into the age of double speak in which government employs psychological operations and media manipulation teams to confuse and disinform the masses.

A type of intuitive language has been formulated by John W. Weilgart. “aUI” is the name of this language, which means ”mind space sound” (in aUI). It is not the type of language that we are accustomed to. Abstract symbols like letters do not denote or connote abstract meanings. Instead there are a set of thirty basic symbols that reflect the intuitive realities of our existence. These are such things as space, movement, light, human, life, time, matter, sound, feeling, round, equal, inside, quantity, quality and so forth. Out of these basic categories thoughts are put together intuitively.

The symbols for each of these categories is congruent with their meaning so that the symbol for “inside” is a circle with a dot inside of it. “Feeling” is a heart shaped symbol and “active” is a lightening shaped symbol. Weilgart created the sounds for each symbol so that the sound is intuitively similar to the meaning so that the sound for “inside” is a guttural sound coming from deep inside the throat. Weilgart has also created a sign language in which the arms and upper torso form the symbols. This provides an additional level of congruence of meaning for each symbol.

In creating aUI, Weilgart has discovered something of the nature of language in its primitive state and something essential about human communication at its beginning stages. This language is not a concocted language like esperanto. It is a rediscovery of the basic categories of human thought and expression.

By working with basic categories of meaning and a simple set of aural and visual symbols for each, Weilgart has succeeded in making language definitive rather than merely denotive or conative. Basic categories are communicated through single symbols and new concepts are created by merely combining the basic symbols by way of a simple, intuitive logic. The result is language which has the simplicity of archaic speech plus the sophistication of modern thought.

There are a number of cultures known to modern anthropology that use several languages within their cultures. Among the Apache of Southern New Mexico there existed a war language that was only used in expeditions of war. Among other cultures there are known to have been spiritual languages, used primarily for discourse on spiritual subjects.

aUI is so intuitive and simple that Weilgart was able to teach it to many different groups. Individuals of diverse groups such as military servicemen, children of tribal societies, and school children were able to begin communicating in the language within a few minutes. Weilgart, among other talents, was a professor of psychology. In this capacity he used this language to facilitate communication with people classed as schizophrenic. These people, who ordinarily experience confusion in communication, were able to improve their communication significantly because of the precision and clarity of the language that they learned after a brief introduction.