I haven’t done a deep dive in a while. When I went down the rabbit hole of Valiant Thor it came out as a podcast episode and a three part blog series that almost broke my brain. So when my buddy Jason asked me to come on his guest stint of Steve Berg’s excellent “Hi, Strangeness” podcast I wanted to do something a little different than my talk with Steve back in January. I wanted a topic I could talk about. I remember Jason’s episode with Steve and the “Seth” material came up, knowing Jason was a big fan of Jane Roberts, I decided on Channeling. As with most things, you have a limited amount of time to get to all the points you want to make on the subject, so I thought I’d share my complete notes as a companion piece to my latest podcast appearance, which will debut some time in late Summer. For now enjoy “Voices through the Veil”,
Growing up in the mountains of East Tennessee there was a belief that sometimes the world would get thin. Not gone, not broken, just….thin.
Thin enough for dreams to come bringing visitors long gone. Thin enough for warnings to arrive through birds in the window, phantom knocks at night, or your lips speaking words that steal your breath and all you can think is “that didn’t come from me.”
Human beings have always tried to explain these moments. Whether we call it divine inspiration, prophecy, mediumship, or in some cases possession.
In the modern world, we might call it channeling. We are going to walk through the long, strange history of channeling. From the ancient world to Spiritualism, to backwoods folk traditions, from the Poughkeepsie Seer all the way to Bashar, we’ll look at the science, the skeptics, and delve into modern theories about consciousness itself.
And somewhere in all this hangs the central question: Are people contacting something external from themselves or are they discovering hidden paths within the human mind itself?
I. What is channeling?
At it’s basic level, channeling is the belief that information can pass through a human being from a source beyond the ordinary conscious mind. Those sources may be described as spirits, ancestors, angels, ascended masters, extraterrestrials, or even gods.
The modern medical definition describes channeling as communication received from a source existing on another level or dimension of reality.
and immediately that creates a tension because to some folks channeling is revelation, to others it’s psychology, and others still it’s fraud, performance, subconscious creativity, or self deception.
II. The Ancient World
Long before anyone knew the term “channeling” nearly every civilization had people whose role it was to communicate with unseen forces. Whether they were called Shamans, Seers, Oracles, or Prophets.
Ancient Greece gave us some of the clearest examples. At Delphi, the priestess known as the Pythia sat above volcanic fissures in the earth. Vapors rose upwards and she entered into what could only be called an ecstatic trance. She would speak prophecies believed to come from the god Apollo himself. People would come from far away to receive those messages. And structurally, this sounded very similar to modern trance channeling.
The names change, but the mechanism barely does. At Dodona, prophecy came through the forms of rustling oak leaves, bronze chimes moved by the wind. At Epidaurus, people slept inside sacred healing temples hoping for dreams sent by the divine. Humanity has been tuning itself like a radio for a very long time. In modern times, we are even listening to radios and spirit boxes. The technology changes, but the impulse beneath it does not.
Many modern channelers argue the phenomenon itself never disappears, but the vocabulary changes. The Oracle becomes the Medium. The Seer becomes the Channeler. And today, some would even argue the artist, the musician, or the poet briefly enters similar states of reception.
Modern channelers often describe consciousness itself like a tuning system. The idea isn’t necessarily that information travels across distances, but that awareness shifts frequency, like adjusting a radio dial until another signal pops up.
As one modern interpretation puts it: “If you are the frequency of a particular piece of information, that information will pop into your awareness.”
And now suddenly ancient prophecy begins sounding similar to modern theories about resonance, information fields, collective consciousness, and the hidden architecture of the mind itself.
III. Prophecy, Ecstasy, & Altered States
We mentioned the Greeks, but if we look outward upon the globe over time it was the Hebrew Prophets, the Celtic Druids, the Indigenous Shaman, Egyptian Priests, and mystics throughout history reaching altered states in many ways. Whether they be fasting, chanting, isolation in caves, ritual intoxication or ecstatic prayers.
The ancient world did not divide psychology and spirituality the way we do today. A vision could simultaneously be religious, medicinal, psychological, and prophetic. Prophecy itself often emerged through ecstatic states. The Oracle of Delphi inhaled vapors, Shamans used drumming and trance…the question wasn’t whether altered states existed, the question was what lived inside it?
Interlude: Experiences in Appalachia
One of the fascinating things about channeling is growing up in Tennessee. The mountains preserved old visionary traditions long after urban America tried to modernize them away. Most folks I know don’t even know the word ‘Channeling’. But the experiences existed. My kin would say things like “The Lord laid it on my heart.” or “Daddy came to visit me in my dream last night.” or “She’s been seeing signs.” If a long dead relative appeared in the night, families listened. If the birds behaved strangely, people paid attention, and when a death would happen after, they would remember.
Our Granny women often entered deeply altered prayer states before diagnosing what ailed someone or before giving spiritual advice. And honestly, there is a very short road between Pentecostal worship and what anthropologists might call trance possession.
Growing up, I witnessed speaking in tongues, falling under the Spirit, and even Ecstatic shaking. The hills normalized these experiences that psychology might have tried to qualify.
Many modern channelers describe childhood experiences remarkably similar to old folk traditions. Whether it be sensing unseen presences, feeling overwhelmed in certain places, or growing up around family that were involved in spiritual gatherings or healing work.
The language changes from culture to culture, but the emotional shape of the experience remains familiar.
IV. The Scientific View
Psychology has started to revisit these experiences with more nuance. Some researchers studying trance states and channeling noted that many channelers function normally, retain memory of the experience, and can voluntarily begin and stop the altered state.
Which makes modern channeling very different from severe dissociative disorders. That doesn’t prove spirits are real, but it complicates the assumption that every trance experience automatically equates mental illness.
Human beings may possess unusual states of consciousness that science still only partially understands.
Some modern researchers argue that channeling may exist on a spectrum. In this view, the trance medium, the inspired poet, the musician that improvises as he goes, and the painter lost inside creative flow may all be accessing altered states where information feels less invented than received.
One modern observation puts it like this: “As soon as anyone gets into a state where they are completely absorbed, they are in a channeling state.”
And maybe that re-frames the question entirely. Maybe channeling isn’t only about spirits. Maybe it’s about intuition, symbolic thinking, and the strange places consciousness can go when the ordinary mind loosens it’s focus.
V. Voices of Channeling
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Emanuel Swedenborg was one of the earliest modern figures in channeling history. He began his life as a scientist, engineer, philosopher, and Inventor. Then in his Fifties, something dramatically changed. He began to experience visions, trances, and conversations with spirits and angels. Swedenborg claimed he could consciously travel between Heaven and Hell and receive revelations about the structure of the spiritual universe itself.
What makes him so important is that he bridged the two worlds of Enlightenment and Revelation. He became the prototype for later Spiritualists, occultists, and New Age thinkers.
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Andrew Jackson Davis known as the “Poughkeepsie Seer” and has been called the “John the Baptist of Spiritualism”. Born poor and largely self-educated, Davis became fascinated with mesmerism and trance states. During these trances, he claimed to receive teachings from higher intelligence including Swedenborg and the ancient physician Galen.
Years before the Fox Sisters, Davis was already giving trance lectures about spiritual evolution and humanity entered into a new age of consciousness. One of those lectures was attended by the poet and writer Edgar Allan Poe, who was influences to write “Facts in the case of M. Valdemar” featuring a mesmerist.
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The Fox Sisters
In 1848 came Margaretta and Kate fox of Hydesville New York. The sisters claimed mysterious knocking sounds in their home were communications from the dead. Those “rappings” exploded into the Spiritualist movement. Suddenly America was filled with Seances, Automatic Writing sessions, table-turning, spirit photography, and trance mediums.
Importantly, this happened during an era saturated with dead from epidemics, war casualties, and high-infant morality. People desperately wanted proof their loved ones survived. Skeptics later pointed out fraud. The sisters confessed to producing the sounds through joint manipulation.
Curiously, variations of “joint cracking” techniques still appear in certain corners of modern paranormal entertainment.
But even this admission failed to destroy Spiritualism. Which tells us something important: People aren’t only seeking evidence. They are seeking meaning.
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Madame Blavatsky
Then we have Helena Petrovna Blavatsky. She claimed contact with hidden spiritual masters in Tibet and helped found the Theosophical Society. Blavatsky blended Eastern religion with occultism, esoteric philosophy with channeled teachings. Without her, much of modern New Age spirituality looks completely different.
Theosophy also popularized Western interest in concepts like the Akashic Records, the idea that human thoughts, events, and experiences might exist within a kind of universal informational field accessible through altered states of consciousness.
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Edgar Cayce
One of my favorite channelers was a humble man from Hopkinsville Kentucky. Known as “the Sleeping Prophet”, Cayce entered trance states and gave readings on many different subjects ranging from illnesses, spiritual development, reincarnation, to even Atlantis.
What makes him fascinating is that he remained deeply rooted into his Protestant Christianity upbringing while doing this. He didn’t present himself as some guru, he felt more like a backwoods faith healer who accidentally wandered into metaphysics.
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Pearl Lenore Curran–
Perhaps the strangest case in the early Twentieth Century was with Curran and the entity known as “Patience Worth”. Before the phenomenon began, Curran was a housewife and music teacher with limited formal education. Beginning around 1912, in St, Louis Missouri, Curran began Ouija board sessions which evolved into spoken dictation and trans like narration which would produce vast amounts of literature supposedly dictated by Patience, who claimed to be a Seventeenth Century English spirit.
According to Curran, Patience described herself as an Englishwoman born in Dorsetshire who later traveled to colonial America and died during an indigenous attack.
Over the next two decades, this housewife and amateur musician produced poetry and novels in archaic language styles that stunned her readers. This happened during a period where Spiritualism was exploding internationally after World War I, as grieving families searched desperately for contact with this lost loved ones.
Researchers debated whether Curran possessed hidden literary genius or was just experiencing disassociation, or perhaps it was was genuine spirit communication.
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Jane Roberts
Modern channeling truly exploded with the Seth material. Beginning in the 1960’s, Roberts claimed to channel an entity known only as “Seth”. She too began contact with an Ouija board as part of a writing project on extrasensory perception. soon after, she would enter into trance states in which she claimed Seth began speaking through her, transforming channeling into something deeply psychological and philosophical. Instead of simply speaking with the dead, channeling became multidimensional consciousness, parallel realities, personal transformation, and self-created experience.
One of Seth’s famous lines was: “You create your own reality.” the entity’s teachings emphasized personal responsibility and the idea that thought and belief help shape lived reality, a concept that echoes through later self-help and manifestation movements.
Roberts would continue producing Seth material until her death in 1984. Selling millions of books, Seth is still regarded by many readers as one of the most articulate and influential channeled voices.
Whether people interpret Seth as a spirit contact or subconscious creativity, the influence could not be denied. Skeptics pointed out something important: Roberts was intelligent, imaginative, widely read, and was already immersed in mysticism. Which raises another possibility: What if channeling sometimes represents hidden creative capacities emerging from the subconscious itself?
Not fraud, Not spirits, but something psychologically profound.
Even among channelers themselves, there is disagreement about exactly what is happening. Some believe they are communicating with autonomous beings. Others believe the experience emerges from a deeper layer of consciousness sometimes described as the higher self, oversoul, or universal mind.
Which leads to perhaps the central mystery underneath all this: Is channeling contacting another being….or another level of ourselves?
VI. The Skeptical View
Skeptics have long argued that channeling is essentially mediumship dressed in modern clothing. The Committee for Skeptical Inquiry described channeling as “hassle-free religion.” A spiritual system offering meaning, comfort, and cosmic identity without the rigid structure of organized religion.
And some criticisms are fair. Fraud absolutely existed. Commercial exploitation absolutely exists. Some modern channeling movements drift into expensive seminar culture wrapped in cosmic motivational slogans.
The skeptic James E Alcock argued that many channelers provide prepackaged metaphysical comfort while avoiding evidence that could truly verify their claims.
And yet skepticism alone struggles to explain why trance traditions appear globally, repeatedly, and across cultures separated by oceans and centuries.
For many believers, channeling is less about scientific proof and more about lived experience. The conviction often comes not from evidence in the science lab, but from the emotional intensity and personal transformation associated with the experience itself.
As some practitioners put it: “Those who have experience with it will understand because it is experiential.” And perhaps that is part of why the phenomenon persists. Not because everyone agrees on what it is. But because the experience itself feels real to the people who undergo it.
VII. The Gateway Report
I would be remiss if I didn’t throw out one last rabbit hole to ponder. In 1983, the CIA and US Army circulated a document entitled: “Analysis and Assessment of the Gateway Process”. Often simply called- The Gateway Report.
Written by Lt Col. Wayne McDonnell, the report examined techniques developed by the Monroe Institute and it’s founder, Robert Monroe. The program used “Hemi-Sync” audio technology, where slightly different sound frequencies play into each ear to synchronize the brain’s hemispheres.
According to the report, these altered states might allow: out-of-body experiences, remote viewing, expanded consciousness, and encounters what the document called “Intelligent, non-corporeal energy forms.”
Now I’m not saying this report specifically endorsed channeling, and it certainly isn’t claiming Seth is a real entity, but it absolutely wanders in the territory.
The report suggested consciousness itself might access information beyond ordinary spacetime limitations. One of the most famous lines in the report advised participants to “Be intellectually prepared to react to possible encounters with intelligent,non-corporal energy forms. ”
Which may be the most bureaucratically worded ghost story ever printed on government stationary.
The report stayed obscure for decades until it’s rediscovery online, where it became hugely popular in discussions about remote viewing, UFO phenomena, and of course channeling.
Critics argue the report was speculative and scientifically unverified. Supporters counter that it proves the government agencies seriously explored altered states during the Cold War.
Either way it’s fascinating.
VII. The Cosmic Age and beyond
By the 1980’s and beyond, channeling changed again. Instead of angels and dead relatives, many channelers were contacting aliens, and inter dimensional beings. JK Knight channels Ramtha, Darryl Anka channels Bashar, and honestly, that evolution makes cultural sense.
Ancient societies imagined gods descending from the heavens. Modern technological societies imagine advanced extraterrestrial civilizations. every age dresses it’s mysteries in the language it understands. Darryl Anka describes himself as “A translation device.” That phrase is important because it re-frames mediumship in technological terms.
Modern channelers often describe themselves less as possessed individuals, and more as translators or receivers. Anka describes channeling Bashar as a kind of telepathic translation process, where information arrives symbolically and is converted into human language.
That shift in vocabulary matters. Earlier centuries spoke of angels, spirits, and heavenly messengers. Now we have beings of light and information.
From Delphi to the seance parlor. From Appalachian death omens to CIA consciousness experiments. From prayer circles to ETs speaking in hotel ballrooms. The costumes change but the hunger underneath remains.
Some researchers and channelers argue that channeling may exist on a spectrum rather than as a singular paranormal event. In this view, trance mediums, mystics, artists lost in improvisation, and writers describing ideas that seem to arrive fully formed may be touching altered states where information feels less invented than received.
And perhaps that’s the strangest possibility. The line between revelation and creativity may not be a wall at all, maybe it’s a doorway.
Humanity has always leaned towards the dark edge of the fire for a voice answering back.
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Further Reading:
Channeling: A Non-pathological Possession and Dissociative Identity Experience or Something Else?
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9034997
What They Don’t Want You to Know About Jesus Christ and the Seer of Poughkeepsie
https://contingentmagazine.org/2019/06/21/jesus-poughkeepsie/
Channeling: Brief History and Contemporary Context
BYRD OF ILL OMEN 