literature and the medium

sorry I do not wish to detract from your topic but I am slightly dim and something has just occured to me.
Re reading Leslie Flint I am amazed at it's literary merit the metophores comes tumbling out 'when the mop and I was dancing' in regards to his dancing lessons and 'our lady of the daises' regarding a womans hat festooned with daisies, his whole journey through life is almost equal to HG Wells' The history of MR Polly and the subject matter of this book helped to run an inn as did Leslie Flint now HG Wells History off... is what I think is known as a picaresque novel or someone setting out on a journey To condense what I am saying is most mediums works are entertaining and I must assume that they are very creative people along with good communication skills
Maybe this is why good mediums are very hard to find because creativity is a god given gift which many people do not possess maybe a good novelist or artist could be a medium?

julie wrote:
Maybe this is why good mediums are very hard to find because creativity is a god given gift which many people do not possess maybe a good novelist or artist could be a medium?

IMO mediumship is a god-given gift which not many people possess, though far too many believe that they do.

Hi Julie
I am not sure all mediums need to be a good communicators as was evident with Leslie Flint as he (I think) claimed to be a passive participant in the Independent Direct Voice phenomena which he was famed for (although I think he seems to have been a good communicator in himself). Some mediums had their biographies written for them by other people. Some mediums of good repute seem to have been appalling communicators in their own right - eg John Sloan.

On the other hand, Gordon Higginson strikes me as an excellent communicator, however he did not write his own story.

@ Dan - hear hear!

oh yes Flints bigraphy was written by Doreen Montgomery I take your point. Its just such a loveley witty read

But what does make a medium a medium?

Is it creativity love of mankind or what? trust me on this last point after being woken up by the manager of my shop at an unearthly hour cos of staff shortages my love of mankind is evaporating...

Dan wrote:

julie wrote:
Maybe this is why good mediums are very hard to find because creativity is a god given gift which many people do not possess maybe a good novelist or artist could be a medium?

IMO mediumship is a god-given gift which not many people possess, though far too many believe that they do.

Hmmm I went to one of our local meetings and a guest medium who had a NDE was giving out awful messages I did wonder if she was twisted actually. Or maybe there was somethin I hadn't grasped

julie wrote:oh yes Flints bigraphy was written by Doreen Montgomery I take your point. Its just such a loveley witty read

But what does make a medium a medium?

Is it creativity love of mankind or what? trust me on this last point after being woken up by the manager of my shop at an unearthly hour cos of staff shortages my love of mankind is evaporating...

Even though Doreen Montgomery wrote Flint's biography I can assure you it was very well written - it was like listening to Flint speaking.

On the other hand, Higginson's biography failed to capture his personality. In my view it was badly written.

"Hmmm I went to one of our local meetings and a guest medium who had a NDE was giving out awful messages I did wonder if she was twisted actually. Or maybe there was somethin I hadn't grasped


julie

Maybe the so-called medium wasn't any such thing?

Yet another case of one kind of a practitioner masquerading (or simply believing themselves to be) another kind....?

A psychic or sensitive believing she/he was an evidential medium.

A depressingly recurrent theme.

With the advent of Spiritualist 'respectability' - in that the Christian influence over local laws can no longer have us arrested for our beliefs and practices - came a greater obstacle.
Once the dam was burst the outpouring of interest in other wordly things brought many new outlets for Mediumship, attrracting many who sought to fill the demand.

Unfortunately, they did not always realise the essential requirement: first and foremost, personal cleansing, then building your foundation, next getting a basic grounding in Mediumistic development and then continually improving on it. Which all takes dedication.
The time scale thought to meet the new demand did not and does not produce the desired quality of evidential Mediumship.
A pity, but all is learning. There are exceptions, of course.

Modern mediumship seems based upon the human ego rather than the human spirit, which appears to be so necessary and without it, must reduce the possibilities of the proponent excelling as in former times.
As always, the remedy, if required, is in our own hands

zerdini wrote:On the other hand, Higginson's biography failed to capture his personality. In my view it was badly written.

Gordon's biography was based on a series of dictated tapes and having heard many of the actual tapes it is based on, I can say the biography is almost word for word what he was saying. It cannot therefore be said that it was badly written as much of it it really is just a transcript of his own words.

The issues are that he wasn't very well when he recorded the tapes so some of his sparkle is missing and without a live audience to speak to, the process of talking to the the tape recorder does not seem to have brought out his personality.

If he had written it rather than dictated it, I am sure it would have been a much better book.

Given that Z knew Gordon very well indeed I think he is perfectly qualified to determine whether the biog was a true representation of the person.

The purpose of an autobiography is surely to capture the 'person' not just report what they have said. Compare it with the biog of Leslie Flint - Gordon's biog makes a very poor comparison. I found Gordon's biog a disappointing read and he came across very poorly in it in my opinion. That has to be the fault of the biographer unless it was a true representation of Gordon - which according to Z, it wasn't.

Interesting point Martin I had not realised his autobiography was written from tapes he had dictated, its a little surprising Z had not mentioned it given his apparent close association with Gordon.

I imagine it would be almost impossible to capture the true person by lengthy recording sessions which are then transcribed. One has to wonder what the biographer felt as they typed it did they feel that they could interfere and add life or be faithful to the tapes.

Is there more to the way the books were produced Martin, or were they a pure and accurate transcript? Maybe Z can aslo shed more light.


Jim

On Jim's final point, z may be a while replying as he had problems with Internet access and the last I heard was waiting for a replacement router.

Maybe this is why good mediums are very hard to find because creativity is a god given gift which many people do not possess maybe a good novelist or artist could be a medium?

All creative and inspirational work is a form of mediumship.

Mediumship has many aspects and is not solely confined to communication between the two worlds.

Admin wrote:Interesting point Martin I had not realised his autobiography was written from tapes he had dictated, its a little surprising Z had not mentioned it given his apparent close association with Gordon.

I imagine it would be almost impossible to capture the true person by lengthy recording sessions which are then transcribed. One has to wonder what the biographer felt as they typed it did they feel that they could interfere and add life or be faithful to the tapes.

Is there more to the way the books were produced Martin, or were they a pure and accurate transcript? Maybe Z can aslo shed more light.


Jim

I happen to know the background to the biography of Gordon Higginson which was written by Jean Bassett.

It was not intended to be a word for word transcript from tape recordings. What happened was that Jean had a number of interviews with Gordon, in between his busy engagements, so that she could write his life story.

She asked him to put some of his experiences on tape when he had a spare moment when a much better idea would have been to have used some of the many tape and video recordings addressing large audiences e.g. Wembley at the sesquicentennial celebrations which were jointly organised by Jean and myself.

I sent Martin Twycross 37 tapes of lectures given by Gordon at the SAGB, Stansted and elsewhere which were truly inspirational and captured his personality very well indeed. They could have been used rather than asking him to talk onto a tape recorder and then transcribing it.

I know that Gordon was very disappointed at the result, as were many of us, but he was too polite to say so.

It is the writer's job to convey the essence of the personality of the man as was done by Doreen Montgomery who knew Leslie Flint very well and attended many of his seances.

It is true that Jean Bassett served on the NEC of the SNU, in an administrative capacity, when Gordon was President but I rarely saw her attend any of the spiritual awareness courses he ran at Stansted which would have been a great help in writing his life story.