Automatism

Automatism is unconscious muscular movement or creative activity that appears to occur without deliberate conscious control and has often been attributed to supernatural guidance. It may involve writing, drawing, painting, speaking, playing musical instruments, composing, dancing or singing. In spiritualist and occult traditions, such activity may be interpreted as the work of spirits, divine beings or other intelligences acting through the individual, while automatisms not attributed to external entities are sometimes understood as expressions of spontaneous inner visions, voices or deeply buried material within the mind.

The idea that human beings can become instruments for powers beyond ordinary consciousness is ancient. Inspired speech, prophecy, sacred music and ecstatic performance were often regarded as gifts of gods or spirits long before modern Spiritualism appeared. During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, however, automatism became one of the most controversial subjects in psychical research because it seemed to offer a possible bridge between consciousness, mediumship and the survival of personality after death.

Automatism and Spiritualism

During the height of Spiritualism, automatisms became closely associated with mediumship. Automatic writing, drawing and speech were frequently presented as communications from spirits of the dead, while some mediums claimed even more extraordinary effects in which writing or drawing appeared without direct human contact.

These so-called direct automatisms were sensational, but they also became notorious for fraud. Many supposed examples occurred in darkened séance rooms where investigators could not clearly observe what was happening, making deception extremely difficult to exclude.

Early psychical researchers nevertheless studied automatisms intensively because they appeared to offer evidence that information could emerge through a person without passing through ordinary conscious thought. If the material contained knowledge apparently unknown to the automatist, researchers hoped it might provide evidence of communication with the dead.

The evidence rarely proved decisive.

Much automatistic material could be explained through forgotten memories, unconscious association, suggestion or what later investigators described as secondary personalities. Some researchers also considered the possibility of Extrasensory Perception, particularly when information appeared that the automatist could not easily have acquired by normal means.

Spirit communication remained the most dramatic explanation, but it was also the most difficult to establish.

Automatic Writing and Painting

The best-known form is Automatic Writing, in which a person allows the hand to move across paper without consciously deciding what to write. The resulting material may range from meaningless marks to coherent sentences, poems, philosophical texts or supposed messages from the dead.

Automatic painting and drawing follow the same principle. Individuals with little or no formal artistic training have sometimes reported an overwhelming urge to create images in styles they do not consciously recognise as their own. Some describe the sensation of an invisible force guiding or pushing the hand.

In the most remarkable cases, the resulting work has been compared with the style of deceased artists.

The occult interpretation is obvious: a dead artist has temporarily borrowed the living person’s hand. The psychological interpretation is considerably less supernatural, proposing that the automatist may unconsciously imitate visual material previously encountered and forgotten.

Neither explanation has completely removed the mystery surrounding the most unusual cases.

Other Forms of Automatism

Automatism is not limited to artistic creation. Motor automatisms may include impulsive behaviour, sudden inhibitions or temporary physical incapacities that appear to occur without conscious intention.

Sensory automatisms arise through spontaneous inner perceptions rather than overt muscular movement. These can include voices, visions, apparitions, inspirations, hallucinations and dreams.

Such experiences have historically been difficult to classify because they stand at the boundary between psychology, psychical research and supernatural interpretation.

The nineteenth-century psychical researcher Edmund Gurney, one of the founders of the Society for Psychical Research in London, investigated apparitions and unusual sensory experiences and challenged the assumption that every hallucination necessarily indicated physical or mental disorder. His work contributed to the wider investigation of experiences that appeared paranormal while occurring in otherwise healthy individuals.

Automatism can also become troubling. Some people experience compulsive behaviour, a loss of personal control or the sensation that another intelligence has taken command of their actions. In occult language, such experiences may be connected with Obsession or Possession, while psychology may interpret them in very different ways.

Rosemary Brown

One of the most famous twentieth-century figures associated with automatism was the English medium Rosemary Brown, who became known particularly for musical compositions she said were dictated by the spirits of dead composers.

Brown claimed that her awareness of spirits began during childhood. At the age of seven, in 1924, she said that the spirit of Franz Liszt, who had died in 1886, appeared to her and told her that he would return when she was older and bring her music.

She later married Charles Philip Brown in 1952 and lived as a housewife in London. After her husband’s death in 1961, she raised their two children.

In 1964, while recovering at home from broken ribs suffered in a minor accident, Brown sat at a piano she had not played for approximately twelve years. She then became aware, according to her account, of Liszt standing beside her and guiding her hands through unfamiliar music.

That experience marked the beginning of an extraordinary period of alleged musical mediumship.

The Dead Composers

Brown claimed that Liszt eventually introduced her to an entire circle of deceased composers who wished to work through her. Among those she named were Johann Sebastian Bach, Hector Berlioz, Johannes Brahms, Frédéric Chopin, Claude Debussy, Edvard Grieg, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Claudio Monteverdi, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Franz Schubert and Robert Schumann.

She produced musical compositions attributed to these figures and eventually gave hundreds of public performances.

Supporters argued that some of the works contained recognisable stylistic characteristics associated with the composers whose names Brown gave. Critics countered that the pieces could have been created through unconscious imitation, forgotten musical knowledge or Brown’s own creative abilities.

The controversy centred upon the same question that follows almost every impressive automatism: where did the material actually come from?

Brown herself maintained that the answer was simple. The composers were dead, but they were still composing.

Her claimed abilities extended beyond music. She also produced automatic writings attributed to figures such as George Bernard Shaw, Carl G. Jung and Albert Einstein, and she created drawings and paintings that she said came through the influence of deceased artists.

Matthew Manning

Another extraordinary figure associated with automatism is the English psychic Matthew Manning, whose reported phenomena included automatic writing and drawing, spirit communication, metal bending, psychokinesis, telepathy, prediction and unusual physical disturbances.

Manning’s experiences reportedly began dramatically during childhood. In 1967, when he was eleven, poltergeist phenomena erupted around his family home at Shelford near Cambridge.

He also began reporting out-of-body experiences and claimed that he could project his awareness into the past, observing an old family house at Linton as it supposedly appeared centuries earlier.

Spirit communication followed.

At first, Manning described apparitions and voices. Later he began producing automatic writing. According to accounts of the case, the increase in automatic communication coincided with the gradual disappearance of the poltergeist phenomena.

Some messages were incoherent or trivial, while others were said to contain accurate information or predictions.

Voices From Other Times

Manning reportedly produced automatic material in numerous languages, including French, German, Italian, Greek, Latin, Russian and Arabic, sometimes in archaic or medieval forms.

The communicators he identified ranged from famous historical personalities to obscure individuals apparently connected with local history.

One recurring figure was Robert Webbe, dated to around 1733 and connected with the history of the Manning family’s house. According to Manning’s account, Webbe communicated repeatedly and eventually prompted hundreds of supposed names connected with his family and social circle to appear upon the walls of the Manning home.

Another claimed communicator was Kephalas Nektarios, a Greek Orthodox bishop, whose messages were said to concern the construction of a monastery at Aegina, where the bishop had been buried.

Such cases attracted attention precisely because they appeared to produce information beyond the ordinary interests of the automatist. Whether the source was unconscious knowledge, psychic perception, spirit communication or some combination remains unresolved within the paranormal literature.

Automatic Art

In 1971, Manning’s mother suggested that he attempt automatic drawing. The results became another major feature of his psychic reputation.

He produced drawings attributed stylistically to artists including Thomas Bewick, Paul Klee, Aubrey Beardsley, Albrecht Dürer, Thomas Rowlandson, Henri Matisse, Arthur Rackham, Francisco Goya, Isaac Oliver, Pablo Picasso, Leonardo da Vinci and Beatrix Potter.

Most were executed rapidly in pen and ink with relatively few corrections.

Manning claimed that he possessed no significant artistic ability of his own.

To believers, this suggested that another intelligence was using his hands. To sceptics, the drawings demonstrated the strange power of unconscious imitation and latent creative ability.

Again, automatism stood between two worlds.

Spirit, Subconscious or Something Else?

Automatism remains difficult to classify because the experience can feel completely external even when the source may be internal.

A person producing automatic writing may sincerely feel that the hand is being controlled by someone else. A musician may hear a composition internally before consciously understanding it. An artist may create images that appear radically different from anything deliberately attempted before.

Occult traditions interpret such phenomena through spirit contact, possession, inspiration or mediumship. Psychological explanations may point towards dissociation, forgotten memories, unconscious creativity or secondary aspects of personality.

Psychical researchers have sometimes proposed a third possibility, suggesting that certain cases might involve extrasensory perception without necessarily requiring communication with spirits.

The mystery therefore lies not merely in what is produced but in the experience of agency. The automatist does something while simultaneously feeling that someone or something else is doing it.

That sensation has fascinated mystics, mediums and investigators for centuries.

Automatism and the Occult

For the occultist, automatism occupies dangerous and fertile territory. Automatic writing can be used as a method of spirit communication, divination or exploration of the unconscious, but surrendering conscious control also raises obvious questions about discernment.

Who is speaking?

Is the message external or internal? Is it a spirit, subconscious material, imagination or suggestion? Is the communicator trustworthy? Is the individual genuinely receiving information or unconsciously producing what they expect to receive?

These questions become particularly important when automatism begins to feel compulsive. What begins as curiosity can become psychologically powerful if the person increasingly treats every involuntary thought or movement as the command of an external entity.

Traditional occult practice therefore places considerable value upon discernment, protection and control. Contact with the unseen is not valuable merely because something answers.

The source matters.

The Hand That Moves by Itself

Automatism remains one of the strangest territories between mind and spirit because it challenges the assumption that conscious intention controls everything we create. A hand begins to write, a melody arrives apparently complete, a drawing emerges in an unfamiliar style or an inner voice speaks with an identity of its own.

Perhaps such things reveal hidden depths of the human mind. Perhaps they occasionally reveal forms of perception that conventional psychology does not completely explain. Spiritualists have gone further, arguing that under the correct circumstances the living may become temporary instruments through which the dead continue to speak, compose and create.

Whatever explanation is ultimately accepted, automatism asks an unsettling question that has never completely disappeared from occult thought: when the hand moves but the conscious mind claims it did not command it, who is responsible for what appears on the page?

Stop Dabbling With Spirit Communication and Learn What You Are Actually Doing

If automatic writing, mediumship, possession, spirits, Witchcraft, Demonology, Black Magick, divination and communication with the dead fascinate you, then stop treating the occult as a collection of spooky experiments you can perform without understanding the forces involved. Enter the Occult World Mystery School and study the systems seriously. Learn how occultists distinguish inspiration from obsession, invocation from possession, genuine ritual practice from uncontrolled experimentation, and disciplined spirit work from handing your mind over to anything willing to answer. The hidden world is not impressed by curiosity without knowledge. If you intend to open doors, learn what stands behind them, how to protect yourself, and above all how to remain the one holding the key.