The Psychomanteum (Scrying Environment)

lopaka

lopaka

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I was sort-of watching an X-Files rerun last night (the source of of too many of my *facts* about fortean phenomena? :oops: ) and Mulder stared talking about 'psychomantiums', rooms in Victorian-era homes that were mirrored to faciltate spirit communication. A google turns up references to the practice of mirror/reflection-based divination in ancient Greece, but does anyone know if the shows writers were just making that part up out of whole cloth? If there were some constructed during the heady Spiritualist days of the Victorian era are any still extant? Anyone ever been in one, even on a tour? (Don't think i saw one at the Winchester House, which is the most likely place I'd have encountered one.)
 
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about the completely mirrored room in old Victorian homes, does anyone have any idea what it would be like to have a room large enough to comfortably fit a few people in, but have all four walls, ceiling, and floor completely mirrored? illumination could come from small lights at all 8 corners to provide even and consistant lighting. apparently someone did something like this for an art exhibit, the only images i found weren't very good. i just wonder what color the "space" around your reflection would be if the lights were a perfect white, would you see an infinite number of yourselves standing in an infinity of white, or black? would you be able to take a step without being overcome by vertigo and falling down? when i become a multi-millionare, i'm going to have this room built!
 
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Psychomanteum

lopaka3 said:
Err, bump. Interesting old thread. I was sort-of watching an X-Files rerun last night (the source of of too many of my *facts* about fortean phenomena? :oops: ) and Mulder stared talking about 'psychomantiums', rooms in Victorian-era homes that were mirrored to faciltate spirit communication. A google turns up references to the practice of mirror/reflection-based divination in ancient Greece, but does anyone know if the shows writers were just making that part up out of whole cloth? If there were some constructed during the heady Spiritualist days of the Victorian era are any still extant? Anyone ever been in one, even on a tour? (Don't think i saw one at the Winchester House, which is the most likely place I'd have encountered one.)
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I was reading up on the psychomanteum recently, and it has been used in modern times. Ian Wilson describes using one in one of his books (I can't remember which one). There are also a few studies on the web:

boundaryinstitute.org/articles/PhantasmJSPR.pdf
Link is dead. The MIA file can be accessed via the Wayback Machine:
https://web.archive.org/web/2008070...undaryinstitute.org/articles/PhantasmJSPR.pdf

integral-inquiry.com/docs/manteum.pdf
Link is dead. The MIA file can be accessed via the Wayback Machine:
https://web.archive.org/web/20071012131207/http://integral-inquiry.com/docs/manteum.pdf

I'd do it myself but mirrors are weird at the best of times...
 
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Re: Psychomanteum

SimonBurchell said:
I was reading up on the psychomanteum recently, and it has been used in modern times. Ian Wilson describes using one in one of his books (I can't remember which one). There are also a few studies on the web:

*snip*

I'd do it myself but mirrors are weird at the best of times...
Click to expand...


There's an account here of someone's experience with a Psychomanteum :)
The link is dead, and the website is MIA. No archived version found.
 
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The Psychomanteum is making a comeback - care of Greg and Dana Newkirk:

How an Ancient Tool for Contacting the Dead is Making Breakthroughs in Paranormal Investigation

On the latest episode of Travel Channel’s Kindred Spirits, Amy Bruni & Adam Berry investigate a mysterious haunted mirror in Gettysburg’s famed Farnsworth House. With help from haunted object experts Greg & Dana Newkirk, the paranormal investigators use the object to construct an ancient device meant to contact the dead: the psychomanteum.

n a room blocked of all sunlight, Moody placed a chair in front of a large mirror hung on a wall which was tilted forward at a 45 degree angle, so as to obscure the gazer’s own reflection. Behind the chair was placed a low wattage lamp, meant to replicate the soft glow of a single candle. Before seating themselves in the psychomanteum, subjects were asked to focus on a loved one who had since passed. Then, the gazing session would begin. The results were astounding.

Out of the subjects, a quarter of them stated that they had made contact with the dead, seeing and even speaking with their loved ones in the mirror’s reflection. About ten percent of these subjects even said the spirits actually came out of the mirrors and touched them. In nearly a quarter of the cases, the contact with the dead didn’t occur immediately, but within 24 hours of the psychomanteum session. Even more startling, nearly every single subject strongly stated that their reunions were not fantasies or dreams, but insisted they were real events with elements of physicality.
Click to expand...


http://weekinweird.com/2019/02/07/psychomanteum-haunted-mirror-contact-dead-kindred-spirits/
 
Kingsize Wombat said:
The Psychomanteum is making a comeback - care of Greg and Dana Newkirk:

http://weekinweird.com/2019/02/07/psychomanteum-haunted-mirror-contact-dead-kindred-spirits/
Click to expand...


I find the notion somewhat curious. But colour me a little skeptical here when I read the following:

While crystal balls, mirror scrying, and other forms of chiromancy remained popular throughout the years, it wasn’t until 1993 when Dr. Raymond Moody, a researcher of near death experiences, published the book Reunions: Visionary Encounters With Departed Loved Ones and brought the psychomanteum back to life. In his book, Moody recounts how he took inspiration from Greek nekromanteions and other shamanic mirror-gazing traditions from around the world, constructing his own psychomanteum, and documenting some three-hundred individuals’ experiences with the method.

In a room blocked of all sunlight, Moody placed a chair in front of a large mirror hung on a wall which was tilted forward at a 45 degree angle, so as to obscure the gazer’s own reflection. Behind the chair was placed a low wattage lamp, meant to replicate the soft glow of a single candle. Before seating themselves in the psychomanteum, subjects were asked to focus on a loved one who had since passed. Then, the gazing session would begin. The results were astounding.

Out of the subjects, a quarter of them stated that they had made contact with the dead, seeing and even speaking with their loved ones in the mirror’s reflection. About ten percent of these subjects even said the spirits actually came out of the mirrors and touched them. In nearly a quarter of the cases, the contact with the dead didn’t occur immediately, but within 24 hours of the psychomanteum session. Even more startling, nearly every single subject strongly stated that their reunions were not fantasies or dreams, but insisted they were real events with elements of physicality.

Dr. Raymond Moody wrote that the sessions with his modern day psychomanteum weren’t just an effective method of contact with the dead, they quite literally changed the lives of the users, healing wounded relationships with the deceased and reshaping the way they saw the world.


A quarter of cases? Surely if such an easily reproducible scenario (effectively a windowless room with a single mirror, chair and light source) yielded such results it would be common knowledge for centuries. We'd all be calling up our dead loved ones for a natter in the mirror.

When I pictured the notion of a Psychomanteum somehow I pictured something a little more grand or intricate than... a brook cupboard, with a mirror and a torch. :D
 
CoffeeJedi said:
about the completely mirrored room in old Victorian homes, does anyone have any idea what it would be like to have a room large enough to comfortably fit a few people in, but have all four walls, ceiling, and floor completely mirrored? illumination could come from small lights at all 8 corners to provide even and consistant lighting. apparently someone did something like this for an art exhibit, the only images i found weren't very good. i just wonder what color the "space" around your reflection would be if the lights were a perfect white, would you see an infinite number of yourselves standing in an infinity of white, or black? would you be able to take a step without being overcome by vertigo and falling down? when i become a multi-millionare, i'm going to have this room built!
Click to expand...
I've been in one - back in 2019 I went to an Escher exhibition in Naples, and they had a room done up with mirrors and hanging mobiles, with some lighting. It was quite dark.

20190308_122457.jpg
 
Just a bit of useless trivia, in the video game House Flipper, you can build a psychomantium. It was the first I'd heard of it!
 
I'm sure I've posted about this before:

The mirror room construction reminds me of a short story about a man who built a spherical mirror, with the reflective surface on the inside. The idea was to look at himself in it.

He climbed into it, closed the door, and went mad because his own reflection was so bizarre.
 
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Xanatic* said:
It does sound like it would work a bit like a sensory deprivation chamber.
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Yup, I think the idea was that his reflection was so distorted his brain couldn't handle it.

I had/have questions.
1. Where is the light source?
2. Assuming the inside surface is smooth, how could he find the trapdoor and get out?
3. How did he explain what the problem had been?
4. Crucially, what would the reflection look like?
etc

I reckon a clever programmer could reproduce this effect for us.
 
Fripp and Eno's 1970s No Pussyfooting album cover art was something not dissimilar to a psychomanteum.
Not sure if I can post the image from my phone.
 

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A psychomanteum is not really a mirrored room, it's just a dark room with a seat in front of a mirror positioned at an angle above your head so you can't see your own reflection.

Dean Radin has a set-up for a high-tech version in the book "Hauntings and Poltergeists, Multidisciplinary Perspectives".
 
I was in a very rich mans cabin once, entirely done in dark red velvet and looked kinky. Definitely a place you could get killed quick, workingman's harbor of Vinalhaven Maine USA the LOVE statue is there.
 
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