The Sanctuary


In 2007 a small group of interested people decided to set up a
home circle dedicated to learning and understanding more about Physical
Mediumship.
This circle was named the Bristol Spirit Lodge - as Chris, whose home
hosted the circle and who created the idea, lived in Bristol at the time.
The BSL grew and evolved over time with many sitters and mediums coming
and going. I myself developed my own abilities as a Trance and Transfiguration
medium but the hoped for physical phenomena didn't appear to be on the agenda.
Much of the early development records as experienced by myself are
recorded in this blog up to the point where I really felt I was unable to add
anything new to the record.

In May 2013, some 5 yrs down the line, the BSL has relocated to Clevedon
and gone from strength to strength. Numerous new home circles have spun off and
have set up on their own and links to many others have been created
6 months ago, a young lady, wife and Mum contacted Chris to enquire
about physical mediumship. One thing led to another and she has now been sitting
in her own circle within the BSL for development with some amazing results. The
speed and level of her development has been stunning.

A few months ago, her spirit team who have been communicating through
direct voice whilst Emily has been in deep trance, told us that they wished to
form a small closed circle to sit weekly with a handful of dedicated sitters in
support to start what they called the “serious work”.

Last week was the inaugural sitting of the closed circle and what
follows below will be my own subjective account of my personal experiences
during this and subsequent sittings.
Chris will continue to update her own account of course on the BSL
on-line diary. My own diary in no way replaced these, this is just my own
personal record for my own interest and for anyone else who wants to follow.




To read the full diary and objective accounts of the other circles that meet in the Sanctuary, visit the main site at: http://www.spirit-lodge-diary.blogspot.com/




Friday, July 18, 2008

New beginings

This blog has been active now for just about 18 months and a lot has happened and changed since it first began.

Initially, I wanted to simply make a record of the development of our small home circle, recording my own subjective experiences as a sitter within the physical seances. The progress made has been astounding in such a short period of time and we've been privileged to witness spirit's ability to interact with our physical world week in and week out. Each week bringing something new, something even more amazing than the week before.

Looking back now, many friends have joined the circles and a few have left to explore different areas as well.
I think as well, almost without exception, everyone that has joined the circle has found that they have made new discoveries about themselves and their potential abilities.

Often sitting in the Lodge for an hour or so once a week seems simply fun and natural and it's only when you look back that you begin to appreciate just how incredible some of those evenings have been.

In fact, now that the Lodge has become so well established and with several mediums working regularly and with the main web site (www.spirit-lodge-diary.blogspot.com) this record is really only duplicating what is largely already there.
In addition, with my own role within the lodge having changed over the last few months, I've begun to appreciate that making a useful record of goings on when sitting in the cabinet as well, is fairly mundane.
...There's only so many ways to write that I "felt a bit funny and light headed before sitting, drifted off into a kind of meditative state/trance & then half woke up to hear myself talking to the rest of the room for half an hour before it was all over" - which is about all I can add to the proceedings when it's my week in the cabinet :-)

So this blog will go now into a period of suspended animation for a while. I'll make the odd addition from time to time when I've got something interesting to add, but for the most part I think the main site will be able to keep a more consistent record of everything that's going on.

Also, as the spirit teams seem to want to do a lot more communication through trance for a while, we'll be making much more use of the recordings rather than trying to keep written summaries up to date.
And with 3 circles running plus a growing number of development/1:1 sittings, we don't really have the time to make a decent entry of each event. The audio recordings should be much better suited to tracking the information shared by Spirit as well.

...mind you, if history is anything to go by, merely taking the decision to suspend the blog will most likely coincide with an immediate need to get it started again, so do drop by from time to time to see if there has been any changes.

Until then, thanks for being a part of our grand experiment and why not do what we did.
Just go ahead and start your own circle and see what happens. You don't need anything other than a room with some good heavy curtains to get started.
I can guarantee you won't get bored!

Wednesday, July 2, 2008

Tuesday 1st July

This evening started in high spirits as we all arrived well before 8pm and had plenty of time to relax and joke around before heading out to the lodge for the circle.

Unusually, with Brian in the cabinet, I was asked to sit in the North Corner –a spot that often produces a focus of energy almost as strong as the cabinet. For some reason that wasn’t explained to us, FC had indicated to Chris that I didn’t need to have the usual glow-tab pinned on. In retrospect of the evening’s events, this was probably more symbolic than practically required. It’s usual for only the medium in the cabinet not to wear a tab (Brian's team were/may/are considering using ectoplasm. This substance is highly light sensitive and a glo tab produces light. It is therefore safer to leave Brian in total blackout).
The practice of wearing glow-tabs came in to being so that those sitting in the circle could be confident that no-one was moving around the room and any visitors to the lodge would be able to monitor everyone’s position.

Anyway, I was feeling fine and wide awake and as this was to be a physical séance with Brian in the cabinet, I had no thoughts of doing anything other than sitting in the circle as normal. After the first couple of tracks, Chris checked to see everyone was OK and seemed surprised to find that I was still awake!

In order to assist Brian’s development into a deeper trance state, the music had been selected to support this, so rather than the usual sing along tracks, we had a selection of soft ‘trance’ type music and we sat in relative silence. It seemed not unreasonable under the circumstances to go along with the general mood so I let my eyes shut and drifted off myself.

After a while I heard Blaze speaking through Brian and brought myself awake, sat up and started paying attention. Shortly after, Cheung-Ly came through and at this point I found that my usual ‘slouch’ in the chair didn’t feel right and felt a strong desire to sit upright with a straight back. I was surprised when I heard Chung-Ly suggest that someone else was joining us in the room. I listened expectantly for something new to occur -perhaps a second voice- when suddenly the temperature in the room rocketed (I’d previously been a bit cold) and everything in the room started to sort of get a bit hazy.
I felt my right hand begin to tremble and vibrate and then someone came very close to me, wanting to speak. Both Chris and Cheung-Ly invited the energy to come forward and I felt myself going off into a light trance type state.

I vaguely recall some of the conversation that followed (something to do with the power of prayer) but interestingly for me this time, the stronger ‘memory’ is not of the ‘words’ so much as the imagery that came into my mind as the words were spoken. It wasn’t just the pictures either, as the complete set of feelings and concepts that came at the same time which carried everything, as if the spoken words were almost surplus to requirements.
If I could had been able to give everyone the image/ideas that were coming into my mind, then they’d have been able to grasp the answers much more clearly than the words that seemed to be stumbling out.
I can still recall those images and ideas even now, yet I can’t remember more than a couple of the actual words that were used.

The next thing I clearly remember is the feeling as if someone had flicked a switch and turned the power off. Rather than ‘coming back’ slowly like I’ve done I the past, one minute I wasn’t really there at all, and then next I was back in full awareness and felt completely wide awake.

As we listened to the Chief as he rounded off the evening, I was very much aware that ‘Charlie’ had only stepped back and had not gone completely and when the final coming out tracks were played, I realised I was still feeling a bit ‘out of it’ and wasn’t half as awake as I’d thought I was.
On the drive home (about and hour away) I could feel still him there but as a very positive energy, full of fizz and excitement as opposed to the often drowsy feeling I often get on the way to a circle.

All in all another great evening. The one thing you can always say for sure is that we rarely get two séances the same. They always seem to have something new up their sleeves.