Mediumship is a practice in religious beliefs such as Spiritualism, Spiritism, Espiritismo, Candomblé, Louisiana Voodoo, and Umbanda which is believed by its adherents to be a form of communication with spirits.^[1] While the Western movements of Spiritualism and Spiritism account for most Western media exposure, most traditional African and African diasporic traditions include mediumship as a central focus of religious practice.
 

The term "mediumship" denotes the ability of a person (the medium) to apparently experience contact with spirits of the dead, spirits of immaterial entities, angels, or demons. The medium generally attempts to facilitate communication between non-mediumistic people and spirits who may have messages to share.

A medium may appear to listen to and relate conversations with spirit voices; go into a trance and speak without knowledge of what is being said; allow a spirit to enter their body and speak through it; relay messages from the spirits those who wish to contact them with the help of a physical tool, such as a writing implement.

Mediumship is also part of the belief system of some New Age groups. In this context, and under the name channelling, it refers to a medium who receive messages from a "teaching-spirit".

In some cultures, mediums (or the spirits working with them) are believed to be able to produce physical paranormal phenomena such as materialisations of spirits, apports of objects, or levitation.
 

Attempts to communicate with the dead and other spirits have been documented back to early human history. One of the most well-known is the story Witch of Endor, who was said to have raised the spirit of the deceased prophet Samuel to allow the Hebrew king Saul to question his former mentor about an upcoming battle, as related in the First Book of Samuel in the Jewish Tanakh.

Mediumship became quite popular in the United States after the rise of Spiritualism as a religious movement. Modern Spiritualism is said to date to the mediumistic activities of the Fox sisters in New York state 1848. The trance mediums Paschal Beverly Randolph and Emma Hardinge Britten were among the most celebrated lecturers and authors on the subject in the mid 1800s. Mediumship was also described by Allan Kardec, who coined the term Spiritism, around 1860 ^[4].

After the exposure of the fraudulent use of stage magic tricks by physical mediums such as the Davenport Brothers, mediumship fell into disrepute, although it never ceased being used by people who believed that the dead can be contacted.

From the 1930s through the 1990s, as psychical mediumship became less practiced in Spiritualist churches, the technique of channelling gained in popularity, and books by channellers who related the wisdom of non-corporeal and non-terrestrial teacher-spirits became best-sellers amongst believers.

There was once a message given by Jonah, the entity that speaks through a meduim Hossca Harrison in Colorado, he came through and said that one day their would be somone claiming to be a medium on every streetcorner. Since that statement somone can sign up for a corispondance course, to become a channel. Therefore most of the people out their are fraudulant, however simply because most are fruads does not disprove this phenominon. The concept of channelling goes back before ancient Greece, the oracles that Socrates talked to where channels.