Unknown Unknown
By Tiffany Hopkins
Explorations of alternative forms of information: where they come from, how to use them and what they mean for our world.
Your host is Tiffany J. Hopkins who began studying mediumship in 2018 after moving into her great-great grandmother's cottage in Lily Dale, the world's largest community of Spiritualists. She combines a university-trained mind with a universe-connected heart in her work as an educator and independent futurist. She’d like you to join her over at NormalizeTalkingtotheDead.com
Unknown UnknownMar 23, 2021
Mediumship as Data Collection
Nerd out with Tiffany as she talks through her ways of making decisions by collecting data through the mind, body, heart, and soul. Yes, really, mediumship can be research, and no, this will not permit you to say 'Spirit told me to'.
The image is me in a server circa 2007.
Reading Reading Reading
In learning mediumship, the second most important thing (after practice) is exposing yourself to new perspectives, techniques, and ideas around your practice. This year I got a whole bunch of new mediumship books for the comparative titles section of my proposal for a book on mediumship. Here are some thoughts about them and books on a few tangental topics that I love too. Here's the list for reference:
Answers From the Ancestral Realm by Sharon Anne Klingler
Ancestor Medicine by Daniel Foor
Brujas by Lorraine Montegut
The Other Side by Jennifer Higgie
Modern Mediumship by Johan Poulsen
Medium Mentor by MaryAnne DiMarco
Stay Woke by Justin Michael Williams
Psychic Witch by Mat Auryn
Magickal Mediumship by Danielle Dionne
The Book of Seances by Claire Goodchild
DIY Magic by Anthony Alvarado
The Creative Act by Rick Rubin
The Dawn of Everything by Davids Graeber & Wengrow
Getting Into Sorts
There are many ways to find presence. Let me share what I do for mindfulness/bodifulness, to change my state, or to prepare for spiritual work. I'll talk you through a half dozen techniques I use daily. Try them out during a brief meditation at the end, then make your own!
Post-Eclipse Meditation
Join host Tiffany Hopkins for a meditation to rest, rejuvenate, and acquaint ourselves with all the new information that has come in through this eclipse season.
The Potency of Care with Chioma Ume
Chioma Ume helps us understand how attention and focus on the people (and spirits) in our life can work like magic to create connection and facilitate communication. Chioma is a writer, empath, and seeker who does design research and brand strategy alongside being a death doula.
Intro music En Shenandoah by Down With Ben Ft: airtone (c) copyright 2020 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license.
Channeling Precepts for Channeling
Get to know what Mediumship for Creativity means for Unknown Unknown host Tiffany Hopkins, and try your hand at a little automatic drawing. Tiffany gives the backstory to her Mediumship for Creativity classes, including the foundational precepts for the practice, which came through while using the practice itself. Towards the end, she guides listeners into meditation with instructions for automatic drawing on your own and with a spirit.
If you want more, join her Friday evening Mediumship for Creativity circles hosted by Morbid Anatomy.
Intro music is "uncertain times (Duty Calls Remix)" by Ben Blohowiak
Artfully Accessing The Mental Filing Cabinet with Marianne McCarthy
Your host is Tiffany J. Hopkins. She began studying mediumship in 2018 after moving into her great-great grandmother's cottage in Lily Dale, the world's largest community of Spiritualists. She combines a university-trained mind with a universe-connected heart in her work as an educator and independent futurist. She'd like you to join her at Normalize Talking to the Dead.
Beyond Words with John A. Rice
Get to know NYC-based artist John A. Rice and his in-progress project Beyond Words. John specializes in oil pastels and came to Lily Dale as part of a residency with Normalize Talking To The Dead. He shares his process working with our mediums and holding his own art séance to bring through impressions, images, and ideas for his next series.
It is John's mission to foster healing, introspection, and creativity through otherworldly art — empowering the internal world so that we can enrich our outer world. You can find him on Instagram @jarstudionyc.
Intro music is Random Alien Sonata by septahelix (c) copyright 2023 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial (3.0) license. https://dig.ccmixter.org/files/septahelix/66168 Ft: airtone, Javolenus, Apoxode, copperhead, Mr_Yesterday
The Fox Sisters and Beyond with Grace Kredell
Expand your understanding of Spiritualist history, psychic labor history, and what early mediumship was really like with the luminous Grace Kredell. Grace (she/they) is a psychic practitioner, matchmaker, community organizer, and historian. They recently finished a master's program at Sarah Lawrence College, publishing their thesis "Working Witches: Fortune Tellers, Clairvoyants, and Astrologers in the Golden Age of Spiritualism" in late 2022. Grace is the Associate Director of Golden Dome School, a community dedicated to mysticism and the arts. They are also a Spiritualist Church of New York City member and aspire to a summer home in Lily Dale. Grace moves between worlds and shares their findings from traversing the real-life details of historical research and the fuzzy mysteries of the unseen.
The Mysteries of Making Things with Joanna Ebenstein
This episode I get to share with you a little of Joanna Ebenstein's brilliance. Joanna is best known as the co-founder and creative director of Morbid Anatomy. She's also an author, photographer (she took the photo in this episode's cover), curator, producer, art director, and designer. Throughout her experiences bringing all these different forms of creativity into the world she's found some really meaningful philosophies, habits, and tools, which she shares with us during our wide ranging conversation.
You can see more about Joanna on her website. The Morbid Anatomy Patreon is an online journal of videos, lectures, essays, and recordings. On the Morbid Anatomy site you can sign up for their mailing list and enroll for their classes like Joanna's Manifesting from the Beyond class.
Get Your Mind On Board
In this episode, I go through my foundational book list for nerds who are looking to get into mediumship and other anomalous events. You can also watch this episode on Lily Dale's Facebook page.
Nature and the Human Soul Bill Plotkin, 2007
Radical Spirits Ann Broude, 2001
The Trickster and the Paranormal George Hanson, 2001
American Cosmic Diana Pasulka, 2019
The Master and His Emissary Iain McGilchrist, 2009
The Flip Jeffrey Kripal, 2019
Kicking Off 2023 with Anabel Zenith
This is a preview episode for the new season of Unknown Unknown which is kicking off new Monday night shows on Lily Dale Radio.
Anabel Zenith and I go far out as she interviews me about my favorite psychic experiences, her brilliant game MERGE / CHANNEL / BANISH and setting up the perfect séance. You can find Anabel as @anabelzenith and at AnabelZenith.com
You can tune in live starting March 6th on BlogTalkRadio.com/LilyDaleRadio, on Lily Dale's Facebook page or catch the recordings here the next day.
Conversations with George P. Hansen: Power, Change & Status
George and I discuss topics that have come up in reading chapters 9, 4 & 7 including questions about entropy & the physical sciences as ways to understand the supernatural, taboos & physical danger in studying vs practicing paranormal subjects, why we talk to the dead more than aliens and the difference between being tricked by a magician vs a medium. Here's the link to SciHub that George mentioned.
Conversations with George P. Hansen: Introduction to Disenchantment
George and I have our second conversation about his book The Trickster And The Paranormal starting with Chapter 8 on Disenchantment. We also get into rationalization, sources of power & authority, new genres of media, the importance of democracy, the paranormal as vitality plus the requisite aliens, Lily Dale and unanswerable questions about how to fix social ills. He mentions his paper on Rationalization and the topic of Demythologization.
Conversations with George P. Hansen: Introduction to the Trickster
George and I kick off the Morbid Anatomy reading group with a wide ranging conversation about why it is so hard for us all to grasp the paranormal. Topics include the book's creation story, Trump as Trickster, Jung & UFOs, the importance of carnivals and much more. Read chapters 2 and 22 in George's The Trickster and the Paranormal to complement your listening.
The Realness of Now
In the fifth Unknown Unknown interview, we hear Stargazer Li speak the story of now: dancing with the Universe, notice & acknowledge, learning languages, a revolution unlike any revolution we've ever had. What happens when we just be?
Stargazer Li's website: https://stargazerli.com/
The Long Now Foundation: https://longnow.org/
Questions Meditation
Here's a meditation to explore receiving different types of information in different areas of your awareness. Sit back, relax and enjoy!
Shhhhh....! How Quieting Helps Mediumship + Meditation
We're back! This season we'll be focusing on the foundational ideas and practices needed to be a medium. We'll start with quieting: getting the busy self to be still enough to experience the subtle influences from beyond. Meditation alert: I'll guide you through a quieting process - driving or otherwise engaging in an outward activity will not be possible! Music courtesy of Secret Jane and Siddhartha Corsus.
Season One Wrap Up
Hannah and I talk about what we've learned in the four interviews this season, touching on a few timely topics these days in the process: living with less, letting go, anxiety and embodiment.
Choose To Believe
A Drawing Out
Changing the Question
Today we talk with Mark Thomas about other than conscious communication (OTCC), the difference between transformational and informational knowledge, embodied spirituality, what happens when you start to get the answers to life, why "link don't think" gets you to the unknown unknown and a heck of a lot more. Here are some links from Mark:
https://excelquest.com/product/dave-dobson-intro-to-otcc-and-nfp/
Feel, Think, Do
We talk with Marza Millar of Ancient Earth Apothecary about the ancient prophecies and what they mean for us today.
Pilot: Poof, Get Out There
In this episode, get to know your host, what's behind the name and some basics about prophecy, divinations and readings in general.