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One of the more interesting theories I came across was developed by Barbara Honegger who was said to be the first person in the United States to obtain an advanced degree in experimental parapsychology. Honegger suggested that automatism was the result of “stimulation” of the right hemisphere of the brain so that it could overcome the suppression of the left hemisphere. It was never entirely clear what was doing the stimulating, however, and I could obtain no further information on her research. and I further The Chinese seem to have been the first to use Spiritual Automatism in the form of a “writing planchette”. The Chinese device was called a chi, and it was a sort of divining or dowsing rod used to write. It was said that the spirits came down into it, moving it, and the object of the activity was to use it to spell out the gods’ messages on paper or in sand. It seems that all “primitive” or preliterate cultures had some form of ‘odified communication between spirits and the living. This codified between codified communication between spirits and the living. This phenomenon seems to be universal in the ancient world, and only came under condemnation with the inception of monotheism around 1000 BC. When Yahweh spoke through his channels, they were called prophets and the activity was “divine inspiration”. When anybody else did it, it was necromancy or demonic possession, or even just out and out deception. This was because, obviously, since Jehovah/Yahweh was the only god, those other “gods” did not exist, therefore, anyone who claimed to be channeling them was lying. Of course that begs the question as to why people were put to death for lying about communicating with gods that were claimed not to exist? And, if they did actually exist, and were actually communicating, as Yahweh was also, then what status does that suggest about Yahweh, since he was the one who claimed to be the only god and that this was true simply because Yahweh said so via channeling? Most curious. and the This In the sixth century BC the Thracian Dionysiac cults were known to be using shamans as trance channels to communicate with the spirits, or what were then known as ¢heoi or gods: discarnate immortal beings with superhuman powers. Some scholars suggest that rationalist philosophy was born out of the Dionysiac, Orphic, and Eleusinian mystery cults devoted to the channeling of these gods; certainly much ancient Greek philosophy, especially that of Pythagoras, Heraclitus, and Plato, was saturated with these mysteries. This brings up the question, of course, as to how “channeled” information could have been the basis of the Rationalist philosophy that there was nothing to channel? Could it be merely a progression of the 57 High Strangeness — Part One stimulating, however,