Theresa Cheung - The Element Encyclopedia of the Psychic World - The Ultimate A–Z of Spirits, Mysteries and the Paranormal

A mediumby the name of Mrs Willet first communicated the phrase ‘Ear of Dionysius’ when she went into a trance in August 1910. At the time the phrase meant nothing to the sitter, a Mrs Verrall, but her husband, the classical scholar A W Verrall, explained that the name was given to a huge abandoned quarry at Syracuse, which was roughly shaped like a donkey’s ear. In this place unhappy Athenian captives were confined from 405 to 367 BC and the peculiar acoustic properties of the cave were said to have enabled Dionysius the Tyrant to overhear his victims speaking.

There was no more talk of the Ear of Dionysius for several years until, in January 1914, Mrs Willet produced, during an automatic writingsession, a script for Mrs Verrall that contained a passage referring to the Ear of Dionysius. The script was allegedly sent by Dr Verrall, who had died a year or so before. The Verralls were supporters of the Society for Psychical Research, which stressed the importance of private communications as evidence for life after death, so it seemed likely that Verrall would try to communicate his survival after deathto his wife in this way.

For the next year Verrall, along with another communicator, S H Butcher, another dead classical scholar and a close friend of Verrall when they were both alive, reportedly began a series of communications to Mrs Willet that made allusions to Ulysses and Polyphemus. It wasn’t until August 1915, however, when a communication referred to a man called Philoxenus, who had been imprisoned for seducing Dionysius’s wife, that all the references eventually began to make sense. It seemed that a satirical poem of the passionate and tragic life of Philoxenus was being communicated, in which Philoxenus was portrayed as Ulysses and Dionysius as Polyphemus.

The Ear of Dionysius case is often held up as an example of cooperation between two dead communicators and proof of survival after death. Sceptics, however, argue that only one medium was involved, not several as is more usual in cross correspondence cases, and Mrs Willet could have discovered the knowledge for herself from university research libraries. It’s also possible she managed to learn the key points through ESPwhen Verrall was alive and unconsciously wove them into her trancecommunications.

In magical symbolism one of the four (or five) elements, corresponding to matter that is solid and to cold and dry qualities.

Earth typically symbolizes order, both in nature and in society. It also represents the female principle, the nurturing and mothering aspect of Mother Nature and the material realm of money and business. The magical tool associated with earth is the bell. Earth colours are green or brown and earth is associated with the zodiacsigns of Taurus, Virgo and Capricorn. In Chinese philosophy earth is associated with the season of late summer and represents stability and practicality, but it is also the element involved in personal transformation. Dampness, the colour yellow, worrying and the sound of singing are also related to the earth element.

Also known as ghost lights, earth lights are mysterious patches of light reported to have been seen at more than a hundred or so sites in remote locations, such as isolated buildings and mountain peaks, in the United States, Britain, Japan and elsewhere. The lights appear at random or regularly at some sites. They often bounce up and down, almost in a playful fashion, and are said to be red, orange, blue, yellow or white in colour.

Earth lights have been linked to locations where sacred shrines have been erected by ancient peoples, and according to some Native Americans they are doorways to the world beyond. Others believe that earth lights are extraterrestrialin origin and convincing evidence of UFOs or some as yet unidentified electromagnetic energy.

Research in the phenomenon of earth lights suggests that that they might be produced by seismic stresses beneath the earth which generate ionized gas that is released into the air near a fault line. Several locations where earth lights have been reported, such as the Brown Mountains in North Carolina and eight of the lochs in Scotland, are near major fault lines.

Some lights have been shown to have natural explanations, such as car headlights, radioactivity from ore in the ground or the shifting of geological plates, but some, such as the Marfa lightsseen southwest of the Chinati Mountains, Marfa, Texas, along with those seen in Joplin, Missouri, appear to be true mysteries that defy attempts to explain them.

A phenomenon involving the room shaking as if there was an earthquake. The phenomenon is usually associated with the medium D D Home.

A patented form of astral traveldevised by American guru Paul Twitchell (1908-1971). In a series of out-of-body experiencesTwitchell claimed to have made contact with superior beings in the astral planecalled the Eck Masters, who showed him this special technique for astral travel and taught him a series of complex, universal and comprehensive spiritual truths. It was on the basis of these truths that Twitchell founded the Eck-ankar organization in 1965: an international organization where followers can learn the truths and practise astral projectionor ‘soul travel’ according to the methods and techniques revealed to Twitchell by the Eck Masters.

Twitchell lectured all over the world, establishing 284 Eckankar centres in 23 countries. He claimed to use soul travel to heal, exorcise ghostsfrom haunted places, find missing persons and help others in their spiritual self-discovery. Twitchell was adored by his followers who called him Mahanta, the living embodiment of the God consciousness on earth. He died in 1971 and in 1986 the Eckankar headquarters moved to their current location in Minneapolis, Minnesota: www.eckankar.org/.

From the Greek words ektos and plasma and meaning ‘exteriorized substance’, ectoplasm a whitish substance that allegedly extrudes from the mouth, nose, ears or other orifices of the mediumduring a séance.

The phrase was coined in the late nineteenth century by French psychologist Charles Richet, who recorded the phenomenon in his own research with the ectoplasm-producing medium Madame d’Esperance. It is said to smell like ozone (a sweet, clover-like smell), to be either warm or cold to the touch and to appear either light and airy or sticky and jelly-like, with a structure that varies from amorphous clouds to a net-like membrane that can transform into limbs, faces or bodies of ghostsor spirits. If exposed to light the ectoplasm is said to snap back into the medium’s body, sometimes causing discomfort, pain and injury Many believe this substance to be the matter that composes one’s astral bodyand is the basis of all psychicphenomena.

In experiments in the early 1900s, medium Marthe Béraud was said to produce masses of white or grey material during a sitting. She was thoroughly examined beforehand by a German doctor, Baron Albert von Schrenck-Notzing, to confirm that she wasn’t hiding anything. The Baron described Béraud’s ectoplasm as sticky icicles that ran down her face and onto the front of her body where they assumed faces or shapes.

Perhaps the most well-known ectoplasm-producing medium was Mina Cran-don. Famous photographs from the 1920s show Mina with long strings of ectoplasm streaming out of her mouth, ears, nose and even from between her legs.