Geraldine Dorothy Cummins (1890–1969) was an Irish spiritualist

medium Medium may refer to: Science and technology Aviation *Medium bomber, a class of war plane *Tecma Medium, a French hang glider design Communication * Media (communication), tools used to store and deliver information or data * Medium of ...

, novelist and playwright. She began her career as a creative writer, but increasingly concentrated on mediumship and "channelled" writings, mostly about the lives of Jesus and Saint Paul, though she also published on a range of other topics. Her novels and plays typically documented Irish life in a naturalist manner, often exploring the pathos of everyday life.

Early life and creative literature

She was born in Cork, Ireland, the daughter of the physician Ashley Cummins, professor of medicine at the

National University of Ireland The National University of Ireland (NUI) ( ga, Ollscoil na hÉireann) is a federal university system of ''constituent universities'' (previously called ''university college, constituent colleges'') and ''recognised colleges'' set up under t ...

and sister to

Mary Hearn Mary Ellice Thorn Hearn M.D. F.R.C.P.I. (25 February 1891 – 1969) was a gynaecologist and first female fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland. Early life and education Hearn was born on 25 February 1891 to William Edward Ashle ...

and Iris Cummins. In her youth she was an athlete, becoming a member of the Irish Women's International Hockey Team. She was also active as a

suffragette A suffragette was a member of an activist women's organisation in the early 20th century who, under the banner "Votes for Women", fought for the right to vote in public elections in the United Kingdom. The term refers in particular to members ...

. Her desire to follow her father in a medical career was vetoed by her mother, so she began a literary career as a journalist and creative writer. From 1913 to 1917 she wrote three plays for the

Abbey Theatre The Abbey Theatre ( ga, Amharclann na Mainistreach), also known as the National Theatre of Ireland ( ga, Amharclann Náisiúnta na hÉireann), in Dublin, Ireland, is one of the country's leading cultural institutions. First opening to the pu ...

in collaboration with Suzanne R. Day, the most successful of which was the comedy ''Fox and Geese'' (1917).Alexander G. Gonzalez, ''Irish Women Writers: An A-To-Z Guide'', Greenwood Publishing Group, 2006, pp.76–78. She published the novel ''The Land they Loved'' in 1919, a naturalistic study of working class Irish life. As she concentrated on

mediumship Mediumship is the practice of purportedly mediating communication between familiar spirits or ghost, spirits of the dead and living human beings. Practitioners are known as "mediums" or "spirit mediums". There are different types of mediumship o ...

, her literary work tailed off. However, she continued to publish creative literature in her later years. Her solo-written play, ''Till Yesterday Comes Again'' was produced by the Chanticleer Theatre, London, in 1938. She also published another novel, ''Fires of Beltane'' (1936) and a short-story collection ''Variety Show'' (1959). Literary critic Alexander G. Gonzalez says that her work tries to encompass the full range of Irish social life, from the aristocracy to the lower classes. In this respect she was influenced by

Somerville and Ross Somerville and Ross (Edith Somerville and Violet Florence Martin, writing under the name Martin Ross) were an Anglo-Irish writing team, perhaps most famous for their series of books that were made into the TV series ''The Irish R.M.''. The tel ...

. Gonzalez considers her short story "The Tragedy of Eight Pence" to be the "finest" of her writings, the tale of a "happily married woman trying to shield her ill husband from the knowledge that his death will leave her penniless."

Psychic writings

She began to work as a medium following prompting from Hester Dowden and E. B. Gibbes. She received alleged messages from her spirit-guide "Astor" and was an exponent of

automatic writing Automatic writing, also called psychography, is a claimed psychic ability allowing a person to produce written words without consciously writing. Practitioners engage in automatic writing by holding a writing instrument and allowing alleged spiri ...

. Her books were based on these communications. In 1928 she published ''The Scripts of Cleophas'', which provided channelled material on early Christian history complementing ''

Acts of the Apostles The Acts of the Apostles ( grc-koi, Πράξεις Ἀποστόλων, ''Práxeis Apostólōn''; la, Actūs Apostolōrum) is the fifth book of the New Testament; it tells of the founding of the Christian Church and the spread of its messag ...

'' and St. Paul's writings, supposed to have been communicated by the spirit of Cleophas, one of Paul's followers. This was later supplemented by ''Paul in Athens'' (1930) and ''The Great Days of Ephesus'' (1933). Cummins' next work described human progress through spiritual enlightenment. ''The Road to Immortality'' (1932) provided a glowing vision of the afterlife. Its contents were purportedly communicated from the 'other side' by the psychologist and psychic researcher

Frederic W. H. Myers Frederic William Henry Myers (6 February 1843 – 17 January 1901) was a British poet, classicist, philologist, and a founder of the Society for Psychical Research. Myers' work on psychical research and his ideas about a "subliminal self" w ...

. ''Unseen Adventures'' (1951) was a spiritual autobiography. She also published several books of spiritually-derived knowledge about details of the life of Jesus. During

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

she allegedly worked as a British agent, using her personal contacts to identify pro-Nazi factions within the Irish Republican movement. She also employed her psychic activities to support the allied cause, sending channelled messages from sympathetic spirits to Allied leaders to support the war effort. This included information from

Theodore Roosevelt Theodore Roosevelt Jr. ( ; October 27, 1858 – January 6, 1919), often referred to as Teddy or by his initials, T. R., was an American politician, statesman, soldier, conservationist, naturalist, historian, and writer who served as the 26t ...

Arthur Balfour Arthur James Balfour, 1st Earl of Balfour, (, ; 25 July 184819 March 1930), also known as Lord Balfour, was a British Conservative Party (UK), Conservative statesman who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1902 to 1905. As F ...

and

Sara Roosevelt Sara Ann Roosevelt ( Delano; September 21, 1854 – September 7, 1941) was the second wife of James Roosevelt I (from 1880), the mother of President of the United States Franklin Delano Roosevelt, her only child, and subsequently the mother ...

, Franklin D. Roosevelt's mother.Wendy E. Cousins, "Writer, Medium, Suffragette, Spy? The Unseen Adventures of Geraldine Cummins", ''The Paranormal Review'', 45, 3–7. In the 1940s and 50s she worked with psychiatrists to develop a model for using spiritualism to treat mental illness, ideas she explored in ''Perceptive Healing'' (1945) and ''Healing the Mind'' (1957). She collaborated with a psychiatrist who used the pseudonym R. Connell on both books. Their method was for Cummins to "read" an object associated with the patient and thus identify either childhood traumas or experiences of ancestors (preserved as "race memory") which have created the problem. This included treating a patient who was concerned about his homosexual desires by discovering that this derived from the fact that his Huguenot ancestors were humiliated by Catholics in the 18th century. Her biography of writer and spiritualist

Edith Somerville Edith Anna Œnone Somerville (2 May 1858 – 8 October 1949) was an Irish novelist who habitually signed herself as "E. Œ. Somerville". She wrote in collaboration with her cousin "Martin Ross" ( Violet Martin) under the pseudonym " Somerville ...

was published in 1952. She also wrote ''The Fate of Colonel Fawcett'' (1955) which offered her psychic insights into the disappearance of the explorer

Percy Fawcett Percy Harrison Fawcett (18 August 1867 during or after 1925) was a British geographer, artillery officer, cartographer, archaeologist, and explorer of South America. Fawcett disappeared in 1925 (along with his eldest son, Jack, and one of J ...

in Brazil in 1925. Cummins claimed she had received psychic messages from Fawcett in 1936. He was still alive at that time, informing her that he had found relics of

Atlantis Atlantis ( grc, Ἀτλαντὶς νῆσος, , island of Atlas (mythology), Atlas) is a fictional island mentioned in an allegory on the hubris of nations in Plato's works ''Timaeus (dialogue), Timaeus'' and ''Critias (dialogue), Critias'' ...

in the jungle, but was ill. In 1948 she had a message from Fawcett's spirit reporting his death. Her last book was an account of her conversations with the spirit of Mrs Willett (the spiritualist name of

Winifred Coombe Tennant Mrs Winifred Margaret Coombe Tennant (1 November 1874 – 31 August 1956) was a British suffragist, Liberal politician, philanthropist, patron of the arts and spiritualist. She and her husband lived near Swansea in South Wales, where she becam ...

): ''Swan on a Black Sea; a Study in Automatic Writing; the Cummins-Willett Scripts'' (1965).

Reception

The

and alleged channeled material from Cummins have been examined and have been described by some psychical researchers to be the product of her own

subconscious In psychology, the subconscious is the part of the mind that is not currently of focal awareness. Scholarly use of the term The word ''subconscious'' represents an anglicized version of the French ''subconscient'' as coined in 1889 by the psycho ...

. For example,

Harry Price Harry Price (17 January 1881 – 29 March 1948) was a British psychic researcher and author, who gained public prominence for his investigations into psychical phenomena and exposing fraudulent spiritualist mediums. He is best known for ...

who studied various mental mediums including Cummins wrote that "there is no question that most of the automatic writing which has been published is the product of the subconscious." Paranormal researcher

Hilary Evans Hilary Agard Evans (6 March 1929 – 27 July 2011) was a British pictorial archivist, author, and researcher into UFOs and other paranormal phenomena. Biography Evans was born in Shrewsbury, Shropshire, United KingdomErnest Kay ''The Internati ...

noted that unlike most spiritualists, Cummins did not accept the phenomena at face value and questioned the source of the material. According to the psychical researcher

Eric Dingwall Eric John Dingwall (1890–1986) was a British anthropologist, psychical researcher and librarian. Biography Born in British Ceylon, Dingwall moved to England where he was educated at Pembroke College, Cambridge (M.A., 1912), and the Unive ...

information published in Cummins' scripts allegedly from Mrs

Willet The willet (''Tringa semipalmata'') is a large shorebird in the family Scolopacidae. It is a relatively large and robust sandpiper, and is the largest of the species called "shanks" in the genus ''Tringa''. Its closest relative is the lesser yel ...

were discovered to be erroneous. Biographer Rodger Anderson wrote that although spiritualists considered Cummins completely honest "some suspected that she occasionally augmented her store of knowledge about deceased persons by normal means if by doing so she could bring comfort to the bereaved." Cummins' book ''The Fate of Colonel Fawcett'' published in 1955, contains her automatist scripts allegedly from the spirit of Colonel Fawcett. Spiritualists have claimed the scripts are evidence for survival. However, the psychical researcher Simeon Edmunds noted that Fawcett before his disappearance had written articles for the ''

Occult Review ''The Occult Review'' was a British illustrated monthly magazine published between 1905 and 1951 containing articles and correspondence by many notable occultists and authors of the day, including Aleister Crowley, Meredith Starr, Walter Leslie ...

''. Cummins also contributed articles to the same review and Edmunds suggested it is likely she had read the work of Fawcett. Edmunds concluded the scripts were a case of subliminal memory and unconscious dramatization. Other researchers such as

Mary Rose Barrington Mary Rose Barrington (31 January 1926 – 20 February 2020) was a British parapsychologist, barrister and charity administrator. She was President of the Oxford University Society for Psychical Research, and joined the Society for Psychical ...

have suspected fraud as Cummins had long standing connections with friends and families of the deceased that she claimed to have contacted and could have easily obtained information by natural means. The classical scholar

E. R. Dodds Eric Robertson Dodds (26 July 1893 – 8 April 1979) was an Irish classics, classical scholar. He was Regius Professor of Greek (Oxford), Regius Professor of Greek at the University of Oxford from 1936 to 1960. Early life and education Dodds wa ...

wrote that Cummins worked as a cataloguer at the

National Library of Ireland The National Library of Ireland (NLI; ga, Leabharlann Náisiúnta na hÉireann) is the Republic of Ireland's national library located in Dublin, in a building designed by Thomas Newenham Deane. The mission of the National Library of Ireland is ...

and could have taken information from various books that would appear in her automatic writings about ancient history. Her writings were heavily influenced by literature and religious texts. Dodds also studied her book ''Swan on a Black Sea'' which was supposed to be an account of spirit conversation but wrote there was evidence suggestive of fraud as Cummins had received some of the information by natural means. Eric Robertson Dodds. (2000). ''Missing Persons: An Autobiography''. Oxford University Press. pp. 105–106.

Works

Plays

*''Broken Faith'' (co-written with Suzanne Day; Abbey Theatre, 1913) *''The Way of the World'' (co-written with Suzanne Day; Abbey Theatre, 1914) *''Fox and Geese'' (co-written with Suzanne Day; Abbey Theatre, 1917) *''Till Yesterday Comes'' (Chanticleer Theatre, London, 1938)

Fiction

*''The Land they Loved'', 1918 *''The Fires of Beltane'', 1936 *''Variety Show'', 1959

Non-Fiction

*''Dr. E. Œ Somerville: A Biography'', 1952

Psychic works

*''The Scripts of Cleophas'', 1928 *''Paul in Athens'', 1930 *''The Great Days of Ephesus'', 1933 *''The Road to Immortality'', 1933 *''Beyond Human Personality'', 1935 *''The Childhood of Jesus'', 1937 *''After Pentecost'', 1944 *''Perceptive Healing'', 1945 (with R. Connell) *''They Survive'', 1946 *''The Resurrection of Christ'', 1947 *''Travellers in Eternity'', 1948 *''The Manhood of Jesus'', 1949 *''I Appeal Unto Caesar'', 1950 *''The Fate of Colonel Fawcett'', 1955 *''Mind in Life and Death'', 1956 *''Healing the Mind'', 1957 (with R. Connell) *''Swan on a Black Sea'', 1965

Notes

External links

*
''Fox and Geese'' by Suzanne Day and Geraldine Cummins at Great War Theatre
{{DEFAULTSORT:Cummins, Geraldine 1890 births 1969 deaths 20th-century Irish novelists 20th-century Irish dramatists and playwrights Irish psychics Irish spiritual mediums Irish women dramatists and playwrights