COMMUNICATING WITH SPIRITS: SOME THOUGHTS
If you were not aware, I recently had a fantastic late-night discussion with Fr. Aaron Leitch. We talked about many subjects, but chief among them was our personal faith and how our two faith walks inform our magical practices. For all that is different between him and me, one reason I have always felt we vibe so strongly is that we both believe in the power of tradition but also have many branches of practice we work with to give our spiritual selves a sense of completeness.
One of the issues we discussed for some time was spirit communication. After our talk, we agreed to write about the subject and invite each other to comment and expound on whatever the other writes about it. That offer still stands for me, brother!
I could talk about how spirits communicate from many different angles, but the one I will primarily focus on is my years of practice of espiritismo. I share this practice with Aaron, whose teacher closely matches my spiritual upbringing. The part I will focus on in this post is the universality of Espiritismo. By that, I mean it is the most open spiritual system I know. Even in the ATRs, most of its systems are full of rules, restrictions, and absolutes about initiations needing to be taken to progress. But espiritismo or Spiritism is built differently. It does NOT require initiations to practice. LIKE other ATR traditions, it DOES require a consistent process of personal development with yourself first and then your spirits.
Espiritismo is grounded in a context, though. It came from somewhere, Europe, to be exact. In short, it came out of the desire of a university professor to use aspects of scientific method and academic inquiry to verify the existence of Spirit. The man pseudonymously known as Allan Kardec was called by the Good Spirits and began a wild journey that changed his life and birthed a spiritual system that went global.
Most people know that espiritismo works with ancestors and ancestral spirit guides. But many people do not understand that the system works with far more spirits than that. One spiritist can have ancestors, gods, nature spirits, and cosmic spirits in one spiritual court. This is why, during my discussion with Aaron, we started discussing how we are both aware that some gods/deities are divinized ancestors. I have met spirits just like that. I have also met ancestral spirits that are so elevated that you would not be able to distinguish them from a deity.
When you talk about spirit communication in this context, the universality of espiritismo practice allows us to connect to ANY spirit who walks with us. We don’t have to convert to and practice Buddhism to connect to a Buddhist monk spirit who walks with us. We don’t have to practice reconstructed Heathenry to bond with our Saxon spirit. We practice the tools of espiritismo, spend time at our spiritual table, and do work spiritual and mundane to work on our faults and imperfections.
The tools of espiritismo enable you to see, hear and otherwise perceive a spirit. You quickly come to understand that not every spirit talks with words. Some show you visions. Some come in your dreams. Others will touch your body a certain way, and you know that’s their signature. You understand that the more you practice at your table, the more precise the visions, messages, and perceptions come through for you to understand the spirit and the spirit to understand you.
Of course, there is also spirit possession. But contrary to popular belief and desire, possession is not the crowning jewel of the practice. It really is not. To boot, in an ironic act of divine humor, espiritistas who are horses for their spirits rarely remember what the spirit said or did. They have to rely on the people around them to tell them. So, if a person’s ability to pass spirits is legit, God built in an ego-destroyer in not allowing us even to remember what happened!
The last thing I will say for now is that the actual development of these abilities mentioned above takes time for most of us. Yes, I have met people who can sneeze and pass spirits. But the majority of people I have seen in Spiritist reunions—myself included—have to work hard and diligently to be able to perceive the spirits. Why? Because many of us have years of life conditioning that complicates and, in some cases, blocks our ability to perceive. That includes things like: life traumas, toxic family dynamics, abusive relationships, untreated mental illness, and much more. Working on these things, even with mundane means like therapy when needed, is also a part of that personal development I am talking about. It’s not just being some ethereal spiritual being. It is also working on the stuff in our lives that gets in our way of living more fully. This is why you will hear an increasing number of modern espiritistas encourage practitioners to get into therapy.
More on this subject will be forthcoming, and I know Aaron and I plan to talk again because we had a blast! Stay tuned…
