We’ve all seen it in the movies. Those gripping scenes, when the psychic is helping the police solve the big mystery of the missing child. They hold the kid’s doll, or favorite book, or whatever to their forehead in an attempt to connect with their energy and find the lost little girl.
It officially has a name. Psychometry. It is the supposed ability to discover facts about an event or person by touching inanimate objects associated with them. This comes from Webster.
It is also known as token-object reading. Sometimes, when I hold an object that used to be owned by a loved one, say a parent or grandparent, I will get a “sense” of them. But I doubt this is from any psychic ability on my part. I think it is most likely a cloud of memories associated with that person and the object. It might be a ring they wore. A rosary. An old favorite shirt.
But psychometry is considered a valid form of extrasensory perception based on the ability to make “connections” with a person by touching that object. People who support this theory assert that an object may have an energy field. And that energy can transfer knowledge regarding that object’s history.
But let’s face it. There is no scientific evidence that psychometry works. As such, the idea has been widely criticized.
How did it start? A man named Joseph Rodes Buchanan coined the word “psychometry” — measuring the soul — in 1842. He was the one who developed the idea that all things give off an outflow of energy.
He believed that psychometry would allow us to explore the history of man, in the same way that those who study geology are able to explore the history of the earth.
He said: “There are mental fossils for psychologists as well as mineral fossils for the geologists; and I believe that hereafter the psychologist and the geologist will go hand in hand — the one portraying the earth, its animals, and its vegetation, while the other portrays the human beings who have roamed over its surface in the shadows, and the darkness of primeval barbarism!”
Buchanan truly believed and promoted the notion that psychometrics would supersede empirical science.
In some ways, I wonder about this. Everything vibrates. At different levels. We are a mass of atoms, moving swiftly. Our electrons are whipping left and right as we speak. We all give off different energy levels as such. Even rocks or concrete or ice cubes. Everything from humans to trees to a bowl of hot oatmeal.
We typically know what a person’s “energy” is when you walk up to them. They might be filled with anger, happiness, fright, or sadness. But we can often feel this.
But what about objects?
Well, this Buchanan fellow thought it was true and happening. He continued to promote psychometry throughout his life and had quite a following. Many people believed — and still do believe — that it would revolutionize science. It also became popular in seances and other psychic endeavors.
I can’t say if objects carry a history, or gives off energy, or clues, or any other such thing. Whatever the truth may be, the message around this is not to be missed. We are made of energy, and the more we become aware of our energy, the better we become. I think.
I’m sure we’ve all reacted to something at times and wondered later why we had such a response — be it anger, or a fit of tears, or uproarious laughter. It emerged because of the energy inside us responding to energy beyond us.
So we move along, bumping into each other’s electrons, swiping ions, and holding on dearly to our protons. And so we go.
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The energy of the mind is the essence of life.
— Aristotle
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There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening, that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique.
— Martha Graham
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Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal.
— Albert Camus
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Feel the object. Know the object. Swapping ions.
