Psychic Mediums

The term psychic medium is inexact and arguably tautologous. By some definitions any medium could be described as "psychic". Some of the best practising mediums would reject the distinction drawn on this page. Rather than hard and fast categories it might be better to think in terms of a spectrum with "psychic" at one end and "spiritualist" at the other, the areas in between fuzzy and difficult to quantify.

What Is A Psychic Medium?

Where a distinction is made, a medium is sometimes said to be psychic if they have paranormal powers in the mundane, day-to-day world. Such powers are normally of the form known as psi power or ESP. Psi powers of special benefit to medium during a reading include:

Telepathy Precognition Retrocognition Clairvoyance

Using these powers a psychic medium can obtain information about a client's past and possible future without the need to contact the spirits of the deceased. Some in the profession describe themselves as psychic mediums specifically to distinguish themselves from those who work by contacting the "other side".

Note that such use of psi powers by a medium does not imply any fraudulent intent. Some would argue that all authentic mediums are in fact psychic but simply not aware of the fact. Others point out that it really doesn't matter how a reading is achieved so long as it is useful and accurate.

Psychic Mediums and Spiritualism

It's also important to remember that being psychic does not preclude someone from also being a spiritualist medium in the more traditional sense. It's possible that many spiritualist mediums - whether they realise it or not - augment the information they obtain from the spirit world with that obtained through ESP.