Contacting the Dead Through Psychomanteum Mirror Gazing
Is it possible to connect with loved ones after they’ve moved on from this lifetime? Many people have reported apparitions or felt the presence of an otherworldly spirit at some point in their lives, but those experiences are often spontaneous or fleeting.
While séances and psychic sessions claim to produce connections with the departed, there is another lesser-known method that dates back to ancient Greece: the psychomanteum experience. This modernized practice of mirror gazing has been developed by Dr. Raymond Moody, a man who has devoted his life to studying near-death experiences and, through this process, has had some profound results.
The Ancient Greek Psychomanteum: A Portal to the Dead
In ancient Greece, people would go to a Necromanteion, a ziggurat-like temple that was devoted to Hades, Persephone, and the dead, in order to contact the spirits of their departed relatives. The word Necromanteion translates to “oracle of the dead,” and it was believed that these locations served as gateways between the worlds of the living and the deceased. The most famous of these temples was the Necromanteion of Ephyra, where visitors attempted to communicate with spirits.
Rituals at the Greek Necromanteion
To prepare for these encounters, visitors underwent elaborate rituals that included:
- A ceremonial meal – consisting of barley bread, broad beans, pork, and oysters.
- A cleansing process – involving purification ceremonies
- Animal sacrifices – offered to the Gods of the Underworld
- A mirrored hallway – created by filling a bronze cauldron with water, which was polished frequently to ensure a highly reflective surface.
Under dim lighting, with flickering lamps casting eerie reflections, participants gazed into the water, awaiting visions of their deceased loved ones. Temple priests guided the ritual, chanting invocations to summon spirits. If contact was made, apparitions appeared in the water, whispers echoed through the chamber, or messages came through the priests. To close the ritual, a banishing ceremony ensured no spirits lingered, allowing the living to return unharmed.
Dr. Raymond Moody’s Mirror Gazing
Dr. Raymond Moody, a philosopher, psychiatrist, physician, and author of Life After Life (1975) and Reunions: Visionary Encounters with Departed Loved Ones (1993) is best known for coining the term near-death experience and for his research on consciousness and the afterlife. Inspired by theater of the mind techniques found in ancient texts, Moody revived the concept of the psychomanteum as a method for making contact with spirits. He has dedicated his life to exploring NDEs and contact with the spirit world.
Dr. Moody’s psychomanteum approach differs from the Greek tradition by eliminating animal sacrifice and ritual meals, instead focusing on a structured and meditative environment designed to induce an altered state of consciousness. This process mirrors traditional scrying, also known as catoptromancy, where individuals use reflective surfaces to receive visions.
How to Contact the Dead Through Mirror Gazing
Dr. Moody has developed a technique for easily recreating a personal psychomanteum at home, or wherever one may desire, with the necessary tools. The following are his recommended steps for a successful mirror-gazing session to contact the dead.
Preparing for the Experience
- Dietary Adjustments: Avoid caffeine and dairy 24 hours before the session. Eat simple meals like fruits and vegetables to maintain a calm state of mind.
- Select a Quiet Location: Choose the quietest room in your home (or wherever you may be) where you won’t be disturbed. Unplug all clocks and phones in that room.
- Wear Comfortable Clothing: Remove jewelry and watches, and wear loose-fitting clothing.
- Mirror Placement: Place a large mirror in front of a comfy chair, and place it so you can gaze at it comfortably. It’s best if you cannot see your own reflection.
- Seating Arrangements: Sit in a comfortable chair with your head supported.
- Awareness: Ease into your transition to an altered state of awareness.
- Posture: Ensure a relaxed posture while seated.
- Set the Right Mood: Soothe yourself with aesthetically pleasing material for about 15 minutes by looking at works of art or listening to soft music, in order to stimulate awareness.
- Gather Personal Items: Gather photographs and personal items of the loved one you wish to contact. Touch them and remember your loved one. Imprint your loved one firmly in your mind. Family films and videos can help, or anything else that you associate with them.
- Dim the Lights: At twilight, light a candle and place it behind you. A dim light from behind you is ideal but experiment with the light for proper adjustment. Twilight is best because it typically stimulates altered states, especially for first-timers.
Entering the Trance State
After following the preparation steps, sit quietly and gaze into the mirror. Over time, you should start to notice:
- Your arms feeling heavy and fingers starting to tingle.
- A cloudy or mostly appearance forming on the mirror’s surface as you start to go into a trance-like, meditative state.
- The sensation of being drawn into the mirror or seeing movement within it.
Moody says it is important to stay passive at this point, as any attempt to guide the experience will remove you from your hypnagogic state and create interference. It can also be good to have a question in your mind before going into your mirror-gazing session, but not to develop and actively ask the question mid-session as this will, again, interrupt the experience.
Reported Experiences in the Psychomanteum
Experiences typically last for only about a minute, according to Moody, but experiences can last longer for more advanced practitioners. Experiences from mirror-gazing sessions can range from seeing the spirits of loved ones to entering the mirror or even seeing future events. In fact, Nostradamus’ visions for his prophecies are said to have come from using a psychomanteum like the Greeks used.
Interestingly, some do not experience contact immediately but instead have delayed visions, or “take-out experiences,” occurring hours or days later. Moody notes that these encounters can happen in dreams, reflections, or unexpected moments of deep thought.
Moody stresses that preparation is key to successful mirror-gazing. He reports an 85 percent success rate among those who carefully follow his methods. For those who initially struggle, Moody suggests keeping a vision journal and practicing regularly. Ironically, he has observed that those who completely let go of expectation often have the most vivid and unexpected encounters.
Notable Cases of Spirit Communication
According to Moody’s study, some individuals had unexpected encounters with spirits. One man, for instance, went into the room expecting to meet his father, but instead a longtime business associate who had passed away from a heart attack paid him a visit. The participant received unexpected closure from the spirit’s message on outstanding problems.
In another instance, when a woman tried to get in touch with her late husband, she was met by several generations of family members who all seemed youthful and healthy and appeared to be wishing her well from the afterlife.
The Science & Skepticism Behind Mirror Gazing
While many report profound spiritual encounters, skeptics argue that psychomanteum experiences are the result of psychological processes such as:
- Hypnagogic Hallucinations: Dream-like visions that occur in altered states of consciousness.
- Sensory Deprivation Effects: The dim lighting and limited stimuli can trick the brain into filling in gaps with imagined images.
- Confirmation Bias: People may interpret vague images as meaningful due to emotional expectations.
Through the measurement of brain activity, temperature changes, and electromagnetic field alterations during mirror-gazing sessions, scientific investigations have investigated the psychomanteum experience. Although the results are still unclear, some researchers contend that even if the images are subconscious, psychomanteums could be useful aids for grieving processing.
Psychomanteum: A Gateway to the Spirit World or Window Into the Subconscious?
The psychomanteum experience continues to intrigue and transform those who try it. Dr. Raymond Moody’s work has revived this ancient practice, offering a unique way to seek closure, guidance, or self-discovery. While skeptics remain, many who have used a mirrored room for spirit contact report deeply moving encounters.
About the Author
Parallel Lives in Comas and NDEs: Is This Proof of The Afterlife?
Have you ever awoken from a dream so seemingly real that you regret waking up, or maybe even question reality? One of those reveries that stays with you the rest of the day or for weeks to come? A dream that leaves you in a state of ineffable nostalgia?
But what if that dream was so realistic it put you into a state of depression, questioning whether it was more real than this reality? Such is often the case for people who live another lifetime while in a coma when knocked unconscious, or during a near-death experience (NDE), who come back believing they’ve found proof of an afterlife or another reality beyond.
These NDEs can add a layer of confusion to the existential questions of life – why we’re here, how we got here, and what happens when we die – or in some cases, it can add a layer of clarity.
The topic has become subject matter for massively popular books, movies, and shows, though academics debate the validity of such experiences, writing them off as anesthesia hallucinations or the product of an intense, prolonged dream. But often the subjective and convincing nature of these experiences forces disbelievers to question what they once thought was sacrosanct.
And it is within these stories that we begin to question the foundations of our own conscious reality.
Concussions and Strange Coma Stories
There is a popular story circulated on Reddit of a college student’s experience while knocked unconscious. And while it’s difficult to verify the story’s authenticity, there is a multitude of anecdotes in response from people who have experienced similar phenomena while in an unconscious state.
Often these accounts result in bizarre time distortions for the experiencer, in which years pass when in reality they were unconscious for only a few minutes. This same time dilation can happen under anesthesia, in dreams, and during intense psychedelic trips, leaving the subject confused upon resuscitation, questioning the meaning of reality and time itself.
This phenomenon is usually explained as our mind filling in the narrative of a dream with memories that seem to have been living. But this Reddit user’s experience titled, A Parallel Life / Awoken By A Lamp, recounts his experience living out a decade of another life, including the birth and upbringing of two children.
You can find the full story (here), but for an abridged version read on…
The Reddit user said that during his last semester at college, he was knocked out by a football player three times his weight. While unconscious he met a woman, was happily married, and experienced the birth of two children. Every day he walked into his children’s rooms and spent time with them before leaving for work. He had a great job, a beautiful relationship with his wife, and detailed emotional memories connecting him to this family.
But one day he noticed that a lamp in his house looked strange – it was inverted and just looked off. He spent the following days on the couch, staring at the lamp, trying to figure out why it looked the way it did. He stopped eating, drinking, and even using the bathroom. His wife grew worried and brought someone to the house to talk to him, before taking the kids to her mother’s house because she was so upset. Then he realized the lamp was not real, nor was the house, the wife, or the kids either. All of a sudden, he woke up to voices, screams, and a police officer picking him up and putting him in his car to go to the hospital.
Mere minutes had passed, but in his unconscious state, an entire decade of life ensued. He spent the next several years in a state of depression, trying to cope with the loss of a family he believed to be real, and a reality remarkably less pleasant than the one he believed he had lived.
Watch this episode of Open Minds with Raymond Moody the psychologist who coined the term “Near Death Experience:”
