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When the Extraordinary Hits Home
she turns to me and says, I know you didn’t know what your mes-
sage was about but it was really important to me, I really needed
to hear it. I realize that it (whatever “it” was) is still affecting me,
even though it wasn’t my fault. Thank you. Relief! (Fieldnotes,
August17, 2004)
Spiritualist writers often mention “thought forms,” visible manifes-
tations of others’ thoughts that affect the person to whom the clair-
voyance is given. My first contact with a “thought form” happened
several months after I joined the group.
I am trying to see for Nancy (thirty-ish, divorced, two children; a
massage therapist), but when I try to focus on her, there is a whit-
ish cloud on one side of her, and it gives me a creepy feeling. I try
again and again, but I just can’t make myself look there; it repels
me. When the time comes to tell what we saw, I hesitate. Does it
mean something negative about her or that something bad is going
to happen to her? Michel explains that what I saw was a “forme
de pensée,” a thought form, in this case the jealousy of others, and
goes on in elaborate detail about a problem Nancy is having at
work. Nancy nods vigorously in assent throughout his explana-
tion. (Fieldnotes, March 26, 1999)
As several of the preceding examples suggest, seeing is one thing,
interpreting another, and communicating what one sees, yet another.
All three are part of clairvoyant inspiration in the Spiritualist context.
After a while, Michel’s new students are nudged toward interpreting
what they see. “Ask your guides,” Michel tells them.
When this happens to me, a few months after I enter the group,
I am startled: “Push has come to shove,” I think. “If you are there,
please help me out!” While not disbelieving in spirit guides, an idea
familiar enough from Catholic beliefs in saints and guardian angels,
I was not at all convinced at this point that they were present in the
room or interested in what I was doing.^17 In fact, as usually happens,
the interpretation came immediately, and so this procedure became,
in a sense, naturalized. A year or so later, I began to feel the presence
of a certain guide from time to time (and not only in the Spiritualist
group), most dramatically on one occasion:
