The word channeling has been introduced into the occult and Spiritualist language over the past 10 to 15 years and people are often confused as to what it actually means.

Channeling is the ability to obtain information from personalities who do not live on earth. Mediums do this when they use their sensitivity to link into spirit vibrations and, using either clairvoyance, clairaudience or clairsentience, or a combination of all three, bring forward evidence from a spirit communicator which is relevant to the recipient of such a communication.

Channeling is also used to describe what is more normally known as trance mediumship. The state of trance is an altered state of consciousness and can vary from a very slight overshadowing of the medium's mind by a spirit operator, to a very deep level of control wherein the medium's consciousness is suppressed to such a degree that the medium has no memory of any occurrences during the period the control was taking place.