Raymond Buckland - Solitary seance: how you can talk with spirits on your own

About the Author

Born in London, England, Raymond Buckland has written over sixty booksfiction and nonfictionof which there are more than two million copies in print, with translations into seventeen languages. He has received many awards for his work, and his books have been featured by several national book clubs. Raymond has also written screenplays and has served as Technical Director for films, working with Orson Welles and William Friedkin (director of The Exorcist ).

Raymond is a leading authority on the occult and the supernatural. He has lectured at colleges and universities across the country, and he has been the subject of articles in such newspapers and magazines as the New York Times , the Los Angeles Times, Cosmopolitan, True , and many others. He has also been a guest on numerous radio and television talk shows, including The Dick Cavett Show . He has appeared extensively on stage in Great Britain and has played small character parts in movies in the United States. His recent books include Bucklands Book of Spirit Communications and Signs, Symbols & Omens .

Raymond is listed in a number of reference works, including Contemporary Authors, Whos Who in America , and Men of Achievement . He lives on a small farm in north-central Ohio, with his wife, Tara, and two Chihuahua dogs.

Copyright Information

Solitary Sance: How You Can Talk with Spirits on Your Own 2011 by Raymond Buckland.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any matter whatsoever, including Internet usage, without written permission from Llewellyn Publications, except in the form of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

As the purchaser of this e-book, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. The text may not be otherwise reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, or recorded on any other storage device in any form or by any means.

Any unauthorized usage of the text without express written permission of the publisher is a violation of the authors copyright and is illegal and punishable by law.

First e-book edition 2012

E-book ISBN: 9780738729046

Cover illustration Istvan Orosz/Marlena Agency; Border iStockphoto.com/Cloudniners

Cover design by Lisa Novak

Editing by Brett Fechheimer

The domino interpretations on pp. 144150 first appeared in The Fortune-Telling Book: The Encyclopedia of Divination and Soothsaying by Raymond Buckland. Copyright 2004 Visible Ink Press, reprinted by permission.

Complete list of art credits can be found on

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Contents

Automatic Writing/Drawing/
Painting/Doodling

Inspirational
Writing

Dominoes
and Numerology

ITC, EVP,
and More

Spiritualism
Glossary

Introduction

I n ma ny peoples minds, such words as Spiritualism and sance trigger visions of Ouija boards, Victorian table-tipping, darkened rooms, and phony ghoststhe kinds of things relentlessly exploited in low-budget movies and shown on late-night television. Yet Spiritualism is a serious religion, philosophy, and science that has been practiced by intelligent people for well over one hundred and fifty years.

In this book I will look more closely at Spiritualism and the sance, and in particular examine ways in which the average person working alone can experiment with various aspects of spirit communication.

In recent times there have been many television specials and series about ghost-hunting, about finding ghosts in supposedly haunted houses. These programs, and carefully planned documentaries, generally focus on getting rid of what are viewed as unwanted guests. There seems to be little effort put into making contact and finding out why the spirit is there and then interacting with that spirit. There also seems to be little effort put into trying to contact a specific spirita deceased family member or close friendand conversing with them.

nsac definition

Adopted by the National Spiritualist Association of Churches on October 24, 1951, the definitions of Spiritualism and of a Spiritualist are as follows:

Spiritualism is a Science, Philosophy, and Religion of continuous life, based upon the demonstrated fact of communication, by means of mediumship, with those who live in the Spirit World. A Spiritualist is one who believes, as the basis of his or her religion, in the communication between this and the Spirit World by means of mediumship and who endeavors to mould his or her character and conduct in accordance with the highest teachings derived from such communication.

NSAC Spiritualist Manual, NSAC Lily Dale, 2002

It is erroneously believed that there must always be a medium present (a person trained in making that connection) in order to affect spirit contact. Yet in fact there are many ways to link with spirit that need not involve a mediumleastwise, not a professional medium. It is also generally believed that for personal contact there must be, at the very least, a minimum of two people: a medium and a sitter. Yet there are many forms of spirit communication that can be carried out very successfully by an individual, a person acting alone... that individual becoming both sitter and medium. You can be that person, and these are the forms of communication that we will be focusing on in this book.

I will start at the beginning in that Ill talk a little about death and dying and what it entails. Woody Allen said Im not afraid to die; I just dont want to be there when it happens! That is the feeling of most people. They know that death is inevitable but really dont want to even think about it. Yet we all die; theres no escape! So what exactly does it mean to die?

In the Spiritualist belief, death is only a transition. It is a change from the physical world into which we were born and in which we matured, to the next level, or world, where we continue in a spiritual form. We all have a spirit, soul, or spark within us. That spirit (and I will use the word spirit rather than soul throughout this book) is what lives on after this transition we term death. It is that which, under certain circumstances, may be contacted by those still living here in the physical world.

In ancient Greece, the continued existence of the dead was dependent upon the continuing remembrance of the living. The Greek spirit world was a cold, grey, and dreary place known as Hades and ruled over by the god of that name. In ancient Rome, the afterworld was ruled over by Pluto. Both the ancient Greeks and the Romans made contact with their dead through the agencies of their priests. The ancient Egyptian priests, also, were intermediaries between humans and the gods, offering prayers and relaying messages. Many Buddhist and Confucian-influenced societies maintain a contact and even a veneration of the ancestorsnot praying to them in the sense of worshipping them, for they are not viewed as deities, but speaking to them to show respect and honor.