"from the Greek ""plasma"", meaning ""something molded or formed"". Thus, ""Necroplasm"" probably means ""dead cells"" or ""formed of dead tissue."" The word is a play on the term ""ectoplasm"", which denotes a substance or spiritual energy that is ""exteriorized"" by physical mediums and said to be associated with the formation of ghosts. Necroplasm Necroplasm is a will-controlled magical substance featured in the fictional Spawn universe. Necroplasm was originally indistinct/synonymous with psychoplasm, the substance of which Hell itself is composed. It is similar in properties, but special in that it can exist on Earth without needing to remain in one of"
"body an unidentified fluid termed the ""psychode"", ""psychic force"" or ""ecteneic force"" existed and was capable of being released to influence matter. This view was held by Camille Flammarion and William Crookes, however a later psychical researcher Hereward Carrington pointed out that the fluid was hypothetical and has never been discovered. The psychical investigator W. J. Crawford (1881–1920) had claimed that a fluid substance was responsible for levitation of objects after witnessing the medium Kathleen Goligher. Crawford, after witnessing a number of her séances, claimed to have obtained flashlight photographs of the substance; he later described the substance as ""plasma""."
"considered it to be a link between the physical body and the incorporeal soul while others such as Jean Fernel associated it more with animal spirits. Philosopher Henry More introduced the term into the medical setting and considered the astral spirit to be a part of the body that was separate from the ""rational soul"". More's viewpoint was criticized as ""[reducing] spiritual phenomena ... to pseudo-physical explanations"". Astral spirits have also been associated with the familiar spirit and witchcraft, specifically black magic, and was considered at one point to be demonic in origin. This definition of astral spirits considered the"
"Spiritism Spiritism is a spiritualistic philosophy and religion codified in the 19th century by the French educator Hippolyte Léon Denizard Rivail, under the pen name Allan Kardec; it proposed the study of ""the nature, origin, and destiny of spirits, and their relation with the corporeal world"". Spiritism soon spread to other countries, having today 35 countries represented in the International Spiritist Council. Spiritism postulates that humans are essentially immortal spirits that temporarily inhabit physical bodies for several necessary incarnations to attain moral and intellectual improvement. It also asserts that spirits, through passive or active mediumship, may have beneficent or malevolent"
"airy, or subtle material. Anthropologists link this idea to early beliefs that ghosts were the person within the person (the person's spirit), most noticeable in ancient cultures as a person's breath, which upon exhaling in colder climates appears visibly as a white mist. This belief may have also fostered the metaphorical meaning of ""breath"" in certain languages, such as the Latin ""spiritus"" and the Greek ""pneuma"", which by analogy became extended to mean the soul. In the Bible, God is depicted as synthesising Adam, as a living soul, from the dust of the Earth and the breath of God. In"
"pellets between his fingers and substituting them. Charles H. Foster Charles Henry Foster (1838-1888) was an American spiritualist medium. Foster was born in Salem, Massachusetts. He became a medium as a young man producing in his séances a phenomenon known as ""skin writing"", alleged names of spirits would appear on parts of his body such as his arms or forehead. He was also known for pellet reading. This involved séance sitters writing the names of the deceased on slips of paper that were rolled into pellets and put on a table. The pellets were mixed with blank slips. Foster would"
"Perispirit In Spiritism, perispirit is the subtle body that is used by the spirit to connect with the perceptions created by the brain. The term is found among the extensive terminology originally devised by Allan Kardec in his books about Spiritism. Its first use was in a commentary (by Kardec) to the answer given by the spirits to the 93rd question of the Spirits Book: This was a breakthrough concept, as the spirit had not been thought of as usually from its form (the ghost one saw was considered ""the ghost itself"", not the appearance of a ghost). Kardec, then,"
"cause the ""spooky movement of objects blamed on poltergeists."" Parapsychologists Nandor Fodor and William G. Roll suggested that poltergeist activity can be explained by psychokinesis. Poltergeist activity has often been believed to be the work of malicious spirits by spiritualists. According to Allan Kardec, the founder of Spiritism, poltergeists are manifestations of disembodied spirits of low level, belonging to the sixth class of the third order. Under this explanation, they are believed to be closely associated with the elements (fire, air, water, earth). Poltergeist In ghostlore, a poltergeist (; German for ""noisy ghost"" or ""noisy spirit"") is a type of"
"Ghost word A ghost word is a word published in a dictionary or similarly authoritative reference work, having rarely, if ever, been used in practice, and hitherto having been meaningless. As a rule a ghost word will have originated from an error, such as a misinterpretation, mispronunciation, or misreading, or from typographical or linguistic confusion. Once authoritatively published, a ghost word occasionally may be copied widely and take a long time to be erased from usage (if it ever is). The term ghost words was coined and originally presented in public by Professor Walter William Skeat in his annual address"
"the implication being that psychedelics can access the soul and develop unused potentials of the human mind. The word was coined in 1956 by British psychiatrist, Humphry Osmond, the spelling loathed by American ethnobotanist, Richard Schultes, but championed by the American psychologist, Timothy Leary. Aldous Huxley had suggested to Humphry Osmond in 1956 his own coinage ""phanerothyme"" (Greek ""phaneroein-"" visible + Greek ""thymos"" soul, thus ""visible soul""). Recently, the term entheogenic has come into use to denote the use of psychedelic drugs in a religious/spiritual/mystical context. Psychedelics have a long history of traditional use in medicine and religion, for their"
"up. French physician, inventor and manufacturer of conjuring apparatus and scientific instruments Edmé-Gilles Guyot described several techniques in his 1770 book ""Nouvelles récréations physiques et mathématiques"", including the projection of ghosts on smoke. In the early 1770s in Leipzig, Germany, coffee house owner, charlatan, necromancer and leader of an independent Freemason lodge Johann Georg Schrepfer (or Schröpfer) performed ghost-raising séances and necromantic experiments for his Freemason lodge. For typical necromantic activity his followers were asked to fast for 24 hours and were served a salad (possibly drugged) and much punch before the midnight start of séances in a darkened room"
"small objects in order to produce 'telekinetic movements'; the gradual substitution of one hand for two when being controlled by sitters; the production of 'phenomena' with a foot which had been surreptitiously removed from its shoe and so on."" The French psychical researcher Charles Richet with Oliver Lodge, Frederic William Henry Myers and Julian Ochorowicz investigated the medium Palladino in the summer of 1894 at his house in the Ile Roubaud in the Mediterranean. Richet claimed furniture moved during the séance and that some of the phenomena was the result of a supernatural agency. However, Richard Hodgson claimed there was"
"came a new interest in the spirit world. Franz Anton Mesmer spoke of the stars, animal magnetism and magnetic fluids. In 1801, the English occultist Francis Barrett wrote of a herb's ""excellent astral and magnetic powers"" - for herbalists had categorised herbs according to their supposed correspondence with the seven planetary influences. In the mid-nineteenth century the French occultist Eliphas Levi wrote much of ""the astral light"", a factor he considered of key importance to magic, alongside the power of will and the doctrine of correspondences. He considered the astral light the medium of all light, energy and movement, describing"
"substance to be made of tissue paper and magazine cut-outs of people. The famous photograph taken by Hamilton of the medium Mary Ann Marshall (1880–1963) depicts tissue paper with a cut out of Arthur Conan Doyle's head from a newspaper. Skeptics have suspected that Hamilton may have been behind the hoax. The mediums Rita Goold and Alec Harris dressed up in their séances as ectoplasm spirits and were exposed as frauds. The exposures of fraudulent ectoplasm in séances caused a rapid decline in physical mediumship. Ectoplasm (paranormal) Ectoplasm (from the Greek ""ektos"", meaning ""outside"", and ""plasma"", meaning ""something formed or"
"in the case of the trance mediums of the Brahma Kumaris, God. Other notable channels are Jane Roberts for Seth, Esther Hicks for Abraham, and Carla L. Rueckert for Ra. Senses used by mental mediums are sometimes defined differently from in other paranormal fields. A medium is said to have psychic abilities but not all psychics function as mediums. The term ""clairvoyance"", for instance, may include seeing spirit and visions instilled by the spirit world. The Parapsychological Association defines ""clairvoyance"" as information derived directly from an external physical source. Spiritualists believe that phenomena produced by mediums (both mental and physical"
"as formed by splitting off aspects of the person that he or she deems incompatible; whereupon the person may be haunted in later life by such ghosts of his or her alternate selves. Ghost In folklore, a ghost (sometimes known as an apparition, haunt, phantom, poltergeist, shade, specter or spectre, spirit, spook, and wraith) is the soul or spirit of a dead person or animal that can appear to the living. In ghostlore, descriptions of ghosts vary widely from an invisible presence to translucent or barely visible wispy shapes, to realistic, lifelike visions. The deliberate attempt to contact the spirit"
"to find the explanation of the movements in spirits, animal magnetism, Odic force, galvanism, electricity, or even the rotation of the earth. Some Evangelical clergymen alleged that the spirits who caused the movements were of a diabolic nature. In France, Allan Kardec studied the phenomenon and concluded in ""The Book on Mediums"" that some messages were caused by an outside intelligence as the message contained information that was not known to the group. The Scottish surgeon James Braid, the English physiologist W. B. Carpenter and others pointed out, that the phenomena could depend upon the expectation of the sitters, and"
"that had survived death were the source of at least some mediumistic communications. He became convinced that the mediums: He compiled the mediums' responses that were consistent and adapted them into a philosophy that he called Spiritism, which he initially defined as ""a science that deals with the nature, origin, and destiny of spirits, and their relation with the corporeal world."" Rivail wrote under the name ""Allan Kardec"", allegedly following the suggestion of a spirit identified as ""Truth"". On 18 April 1857, Rivail (as ""Allan Kardec"") published his first book on Spiritism, ""The Spirits' Book"", comprising a series of answered"
"Astral spirit An astral spirit is a term used in spiritualism and holism. Depending on the time period and culture, the term can have several meanings. During the Renaissance time period it was used in a Platonic format to designate the ""aetheric vehicle or starlike garment surrounding the soul which descended from heaven and entered the individual body"". It was thought to be one of the three parts of the human soul that contained the ""thoughts, cogitations, desires, imaginations that were impressed upon the mind at the time of death"" as well as lust and anger. The philosopher Marsilio Ficino"
"of air by odor or smoke (i.e., airborne particulate matter) was supposed to drive off or displace an unclean spirit. Since either body or soul could be unclean, it can be difficult to distinguish exorcism from traditional magico-medical practice in which a personified illness is adjured to depart from the patient's body (for instance, ""Flee, Fever!"") by means of a charm, spoken or inscribed on an amulet or other ritual object. In some rabbinic literature, demons are viewed as inflicting evil on humans in part through illness and disease, though Mishnah and Tannaitic scholars in Palestine did not view demons"
"Ghost In folklore, a ghost (sometimes known as an apparition, haunt, phantom, poltergeist, shade, specter or spectre, spirit, spook, and wraith) is the soul or spirit of a dead person or animal that can appear to the living. In ghostlore, descriptions of ghosts vary widely from an invisible presence to translucent or barely visible wispy shapes, to realistic, lifelike visions. The deliberate attempt to contact the spirit of a deceased person is known as necromancy, or in spiritism as a ""séance"". The belief in the existence of an afterlife, as well as manifestations of the spirits of the dead, is"
"the spirit with effects resembling those of locomotion in the body"". Like his heroes Swedenborg and Saint-Martin, Balzac attempts in ""Louis Lambert"" to construct a viable theory to unify spirit and matter. Young Lambert attempts this goal in his ""Traité de la Volonté"", which – having been confiscated by a teacher – is described by the narrator:The word Will he used to connote ... the mass of power by which man can reproduce, outside himself, the actions constituting his external life... The word Mind, or Thought, which he regarded as the quintessential product of the Will, also represented the medium"
"of the human soul. The word derivation of the Latin ""psȳchē"" is from the Greek ""psȳchḗ"", literally ""breath"", derivative of ""psȳ́chein"", to breathe or to blow (hence, to live). French astronomer and spiritualist Camille Flammarion is credited as having first used the word psychic, while it was later introduced to the English language by Edward William Cox in the 1870s. Elaborate systems of divination and fortune-telling date back to ancient times. Perhaps the most widely known system of early civilization fortune-telling was astrology, where practitioners believed the relative positions of celestial bodies could lend insight into people's lives and even"
"like social anxiety or awkwardness. Deflecting this negative qi through geomancy is a preoccupation in feng shui. The traditional explanation of acupuncture states that it works by manipulating the circulation of qi through a network of meridians. There are various sacred natural sites that people of various belief systems find numinous or having an ""energy"" with significance to humans. The idea that some kind of ""negative energy"" is responsible for creating or attracting ghosts or demons appears in contemporary paranormal culture and beliefs as exemplified in the TV shows ""Paranormal State"" and ""Ghost Hunters"". Energy (esotericism) The term ""energy"" is"
"who transcribed Cook's messages in shorthand. He edited them for publication in book and pamphlet form. Physical mediumship is defined as manipulation of energies and energy systems by spirits. This type of mediumship is claimed to involve perceptible manifestations, such as loud raps and noises, voices, materialized objects, apports, materialized spirit bodies, or body parts such as hands, legs and feet. The medium is used as a source of power for such spirit manifestations. By some accounts, this was achieved by using the energy or ectoplasm released by a medium, see spirit photography. The last physical medium to be tested"
"spiritualist medium equipment titled ""Gambols with the Ghosts: Mind Reading, Spiritualistic Effects, Mental and Psychical Phenomena and Horoscopy"", issued by Ralph E. Sylvestre in 1901. It was designed for private circulation amongst fraudulent mediums. Sylvestre stated in the catalogue that ""our effects are being used by nearly all prominent mediums."" It contained equipment to produce fraudulent materialisations, slate-writing, table-turning, and a ""complete spiritualistic séance."" A copy is preserved in the Harry Price Library of Magical Literature at the University of London. William Marriott (magician) William S. Marriott (ca. 1910) also known as Dr. Wilmar was a British magician who became"
""""", details one experience after dying. The book became a movie in 2010 available in multiple languages in addition to over 15 other movies. The following works contain concepts related to Spiritist beliefs: In Brazil, a number of soap operas have plots incorporating Spiritism. For a list of writings by Allan Kardec see his biographic article. Spiritism Spiritism is a spiritualistic philosophy and religion codified in the 19th century by the French educator Hippolyte Léon Denizard Rivail, under the pen name Allan Kardec; it proposed the study of ""the nature, origin, and destiny of spirits, and their relation with the"
"(analogous to evocation) Basil of Caesarea also who wrote on this subject. He believed that demons, to materialize, had to condense vapors and with them form the body of a person or animal, then entering that body as if it were a puppet to which they gave life. Henry More supported this idea, saying that their bodies were cold due to the solidification of water vapor to form them (see below). Many authors believed that demons could assume the shape of an animal. Raoul Glaber, a monk of Saint-Léger, Belgium, seems to have been the first in writing about the"
"questions (502 in the first edition and 1,019 in later editions) exploring matters concerning the nature of spirits, the spirit world, and the relationship between the spirit world and the material world. This was followed by a series of other books, including ""The Medium's Book"", ""The Gospel According to Spiritism"", ""Heaven and Hell"" and ""The Genesis According to Spiritism"", and by a periodical, the ""Revue Spirite"", which Kardec published until his death. Collectively, the books became known as the Spiritist Codification. Kardec's research influenced the psychical research of Charles Richet, Camille Flammarion and Gabriel Delanne. After his death caused by"
"Materialization (paranormal) In spiritualism, paranormal literature and some religions, materialization (or manifestation) is the creation or appearance of matter from unknown sources. The existence of materialization has not been confirmed by laboratory experiments. Numerous cases of fraudulent materialization demonstrations by mediums have been exposed. In the early 20th century a series of exposures of fraudulent activity led to a decline of materialization séances. The poet Robert Browning and his wife Elizabeth attended a séance on 23, July 1855 in Ealing with the Rymers. During the séance a spirit face materialized which Home claimed was the son of Browning who had"
"it was considered to be a remnant of the deceased in some form. Astral spirits were also considered to be potentially capable of fathering a child, as there were some tales of astral spirits reportedly impregnating the wife of a deceased hajduk. Astral spirit An astral spirit is a term used in spiritualism and holism. Depending on the time period and culture, the term can have several meanings. During the Renaissance time period it was used in a Platonic format to designate the ""aetheric vehicle or starlike garment surrounding the soul which descended from heaven and entered the individual body""."
"bodies and bonding the spirits within bodies by the early 4th century Greek-Egyptian alchemist Zosimos. An alchemist was called a 'chemist' in popular speech, and later the suffix ""-ry"" was added to this to describe the art of the chemist as ""chemistry"". The modern word ""alchemy"" in turn is derived from the Arabic word ""al-kīmīā"" (الكیمیاء). In origin, the term is borrowed from the Greek χημία or χημεία. This may have Egyptian origins since ""al-kīmīā"" is derived from the Greek χημία, which is in turn derived from the word Kemet, which is the ancient name of Egypt in the Egyptian"
"the Spirit, or spirits. Typical expressions include ""the indwelling of the Spirit"" (Jonathan Edwards), ""the witness of the Spirit"" (John Wesley), ""the power of God"" (early American Methodists), being ""filled with the Spirit of the Lord"" (early Adventists; see charismatic Adventism), ""communing with spirits"" (Spiritualists), ""the Christ within"" (New Thought), ""streams of holy fire and power"" (Methodist holiness), ""a religion of the Spirit and Power"" (the Emmanuel Movement), and ""the baptism of the Holy Spirit"" (early Pentecostals). It focuses on a class of seemingly involuntary acts alternately explained in religious and secular terminology. These involuntary experiences include uncontrolled bodily movements"