EPISODE 123: Careerist Medium: The Nicest Thing You Could Call Me with Ann Théato

Careerist Medium: The Nicest Thing You Could Call Me

Someone recently called me a careerist medium. It was meant as an insult.

In this solo episode of Psychic Matters, I unpack exactly what that phrase means, where the idea behind it actually comes from, and why I've decided to wear it as a badge of honour.

I trace the word “careerist” back to its dictionary definition, then go looking for where the idea of the “selfless, invisible medium” really originated. It didn't come from the spirit world. It came from a legal and social system that told women for centuries to serve quietly, own nothing, and want nothing in return — coverture law, the marriage bar, the 1975 Sex Discrimination Act, and a gender pension gap that still sits at nearly 40% in 2026.

I look at the mediums held up as “pure” examples of giving their gift away for free — Gordon Higginson, Daniel Dunglas Home — and find that every one of them had someone else quietly paying their bills. And I look at the mediums who charged, who toured, who built platforms and audiences: Maria B. Hayden, the Fox Sisters, Emma Hardinge Britten, Estelle Roberts, and Helen Duncan — the women who built the tradition we all now stand on. Even Arthur Findlay, the man whose name is on our most respected college, was by this definition a careerist.

This episode is about money, history and standards. It's about why visibility is a duty, not an ego trip. And it's about why charging for skilled, ethical mediumship isn't a betrayal of the work — it's what makes the work sustainable enough to actually be there for the person lying awake at three in the morning who needs it.

What You'll Learn in This Episode:

• Where the phrase “careerist medium” comes from, and why it's used as an insult in Spiritualist circles
• The real historical roots of the “selfless, invisible medium” model — and why they're social, not spiritual
• How coverture law, the marriage bar and decades of restricted women's rights shaped what a “respectable” medium was allowed to be
• Why mediumship let women speak publicly in an era when almost nothing else did
• The “hidden subsidy” behind every famous medium who never charged — from Gordon Higginson to Daniel Dunglas Home
• The mediums who built Spiritualism by charging, touring and building public profiles — Maria B. Hayden, the Fox Sisters, Emma Hardinge Britten, Estelle Roberts, Helen Duncan
• Why Arthur Findlay himself was, by today's definition, a careerist
• The psychology of why free readings often fail to land, and paid ones do
• What it actually costs, in time and money, to run a professional mediumship practice and podcast in 2026
• Why visibility and branding are a duty to the people who need this work, not vanity

 

This Week’s Episode

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Episode 123 Resources

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Ann Théato, Psychic, Medium and Spiritual Tutor, investigates psychic development, mediumship techniques, and paranormal science, so that you can come to understand your own innate psychic ability and expand your knowledge, whilst learning to develop a curious mind.

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Transcript

VO: Psychic Matters with Ann Théato. The top ranked spirituality podcast.

 

Ann

I’m Ann Théato, and welcome to Psychic Matters.

I heard something recently and I am going to completely paraphrase here cos I can’t remember exactly what it was, but…It was something along the lines of – “They do not like you. They said you are a careerist medium. Therefore, you will never be asked.” And I laughed, ‘cause I didn't really know what that meant “a careerist medium” I had to really consider, what that was -  a careerist medium – it doesn't even make sense to me.  A medium is a chosen career, so a careerist medium is your career, surely? That's how it fits in my head anyway, but apparently not – apparently, it's a great insult to call someone a careerist medium.

And I've really been wrestling with this in my head trying to understand what the insult is about because I've heard it since quite a few times, “they're a careerist medium - they won't get anywhere” or, “he or she can't come in here, they're a careerist medium” and I’m like what?!  What does it even mean?

After I picked myself up off the floor from laughing so hard, I started to get a bit peeved-a bit miffed! – I got a bit insulted - and then I laughed at myself for getting peeved about something that I didn’t know even existed ten minutes beforehand! It was madness. I mean, why are we insulting each other in this way?

And then a separate thing I heard was, “real spiritualists talking to real spiritualists”.  And I’m thinking, well who are these real spiritualists?  And if there's such a thing as a real spiritualist, that person must believe that there is such a thing as an unreal spiritualist. And what is an unreal spiritualist and what camp do I sit in? Am I real? Am I unreal? And this befuddles me as I lie awake in bed I'm like what are these mysterious words that are being bandied around in the public arena, in this EXTREMELY insulting way.

So, I’ve given it a lot of consideration, because I wanted to understand exactly what it was I was being accused of, and here are my findings.

I looked up the word “careerist” in the Oxford English Dictionary and the official meaning is: “a person who is focussed on advancing their career, especially at the expense of their integrity or the wellbeing of others”. So, a careerist is someone who prioritises career advancement above ethics, relationships and above the work itself. So, when someone calls you a careerist medium, they are not just saying you have a career in mediumship. They are implying that you prioritise your own advancement and financial gain above the integrity of the work and the wellbeing of the people you serve. Someone who has turned something sacred into a transaction. Someone who is visibly ambitious. Who markets herself. Who is all over social media. Who puts herself forward to be seen rather than being humble. That is the insult.

That is a serious accusation.

Whereas possibly in their eyes, if I were a real Spiritualist, I would give my gift freely. Not promote myself. Not charge. Not be so visible. Not be ambitious. Just be devoted. Pure. Selfless.

And I want to be absolutely clear. If that is a genuine, free, considered choice -- if a medium looks at her life and says this is how I want to serve and she has the means to do so -- then that is a beautiful and entirely valid path and I honour it completely.

But I want to ask where that image came from. The pure selfless invisible medium sitting quietly in the church hall. It did not come from the spirit world.

It was shaped by the world those women were living in. A world that required women to be quiet. Selfless. Invisible. Serving without reward. Not because it was spiritually right. But because that was what society demanded of women who had no other choice.

I am not saying the devotion was not real. It absolutely was. I am saying the circumstances that made that model the only acceptable one were not spiritual. They were social. And historical. And worth understanding.

And it has been carried forward unchanged & unchallenged into 2026 as if it were a spiritual virtue rather than a historical oppression.

But here is my question. If we sit quietly and wait -- who finds us? How does the grieving person at three in the morning, lying awake in a silent house, find their way to genuine, skilled, ethical mediumship if we are not out there in the digital world?

We have a duty. To this work. To the spirit world. To the people who need what we have to offer. And that duty is to be seen. To get on social media. To spread the word. To be a careerist medium. To be the modern-day outreach. To be the Missionary. To educate the public. To go where people actually are and say -- here. This is real. This matters. Come and find out.

We cannot do that by being feeble and hiding under our aprons.

Arthur Findlay — the great man whose name is on our beloved college — was himself the definition of what they would now call a careerist. He was a stockbroker. A writer. A public speaker. A lecturer. A researcher who published extensively. He built institutions, founded organisations, wrote bestselling books, gave public talks, and spread the word about Spiritualism as widely and visibly as he possibly could. He used every platform available to him and spoke to anyone who would listen through the written or spoken word. He was a partial founder of the newspaper Psychic News and also a founder of the International Institute for Psychical Research. Having made his fortune in stockbroking, he moved to Stansted Hall and after retirement from business his main pursuit was book-writing. On the Edge of the Etheric ran into thirty printings within the first year of publication.

He could do all of that spreading of the word, all of that public outreach, all of that visibly ambitious platform-building — because he had already made his fortune as a stockbroker. The man who built the institution that trains and educates mediums was funded by one of the most commercially minded professions in existence.

By the definition being used against us today — Arthur Findlay was a careerist. And what he built changed the world of Spiritualism forever. The institution his money built has its own income, its own fees, its own commercial operation. Which is exactly as it should be. Institutions need to sustain themselves.

And so do practitioners.

And talking of money and careers and getting out there - I want to tell you something about the world I was born into. Because I think it matters to this conversation more than almost anything else I am going to say today.

I was born in 1965. In that year, a woman in the United Kingdom needed a man's signature to open a bank account. A woman could not get a mortgage without a male guarantor. Could legally be paid less than a man for identical work. Could be refused entry to a pub if she was unaccompanied by a man. Could legally be dismissed from her job simply for getting married.

These are not things I read about in history books. These are the conditions of the world I was born into.

It was not until 1975 - when I was ten years old - that the Sex Discrimination Act made it illegal for a bank to refuse a woman the right to open her own account. Equal pay legislation came into force the same year. Until 1982 any pub in England could legally refuse to serve a woman at all.

And this goes back much further than 1982. Long before my time.

There was no single law banning women from speaking publicly in Britain. The law did not need to be that explicit. Instead, it worked in a much quieter and more damaging way.

For centuries, the law of coverture meant a married woman had no independent legal existence at all. It started at birth. A baby girl was covered by her father's identity. And then, when she married, that covering simply transferred to her husband. The husband and wife became one person in the eyes of the law -- and that one person was the husband. It is why women took their husband's surname. A symbol of an identity being absorbed into someone else's.

She could not make contracts. Could not own property. Could not speak in court on her own behalf. She was, in the eyes of the law, not fully a person.

Let me be clear. That law had been formally dismantled by the time I was born. But the attitude it created had not. Women who spoke publicly, who earned independently, who moved through the world on their own terms, were still treated as if those laws were still in force. The social reality lagged the legal reality by generations.

Women who did speak publicly -- who stood up and had opinions and expressed them -- were not arrested. They were ridiculed. They were called difficult. They were called unnatural. They were called troublesome and unwomanly.

It kept women financially dependent by making financial independence morally suspect. Think about this carefully. In the 1800s a woman was not allowed to stand up in public and speak her mind. Not allowed to have opinions. Not allowed to be heard. That was man's territory.

But a medium could stand up. Because she was not speaking for herself. She was speaking for the dead. The voice coming through her belonged to a spirit, not to her. She was just the instrument. That was the only way a woman got to stand at the front of a room and be taken seriously. The words had to belong to the spirit. Not to her.

And I sometimes wonder — is that why mediumship changed? From trance mediumship, where the words belonged entirely to the spirit, to mental mediumship which you can see most mediums in the public eye using today, where we now interpret using our own voice — “your mum says, your dad wants you to know”. As women gained the right to speak publicly, did we also slowly claim the right to speak as ourselves within mediumship? It’s something to consider, isn’t it?

And I think it is important to understand why that model of the selfless invisible unpaid medium was so deeply embedded. Because Spiritualism did not grow up in a vacuum. It grew up inside a country that was overwhelmingly Christian. When I was born in 1965 more than nine in ten people in this country identified as Christian. The Church of England was the established state church. Roman Catholicism was deeply present. Indeed, I’m proud to say that I grew up as a Roman Catholic and it is a beautiful religion.

Both carried very clear ideas about women.

Women were excluded from the priesthood. The story of Eve told us that a woman was responsible for the downfall of humanity. And the cultural assumption that flowed from centuries of that teaching was that women were spiritually and morally subordinate. That they needed male guidance. Male governance. Male permission.

I am not attacking those traditions. Many people hold them dear and I respect that completely. But I am saying that Spiritualism grew up inside that world. It could not help but be shaped by it. The idea that a woman should give her spiritual gift away freely, selflessly, without financial reward, without ambition, without visibility - that did not come purely from the spirit world. It came from the world those women were actually living in.

A world that had spent centuries telling women that a good woman serves quietly and does not ask for anything in return. A good wife. A good mother. A good daughter. A good churchgoer. Serve. Give. Say nothing. Want nothing. That was the measure of goodness held up to women for generation after generation — and it did not disappear the moment a woman decided to become a medium. She simply carried it in with her.

That is the world that built the model.

And that model has never been updated.

Until now.

And before I go any further, I want to say something. Because the exclusion and marginalisation I have been talking about has not only been experienced by women. The LGBTQ+ community has faced it. People of colour have faced it. Anyone who does not fit a narrow and unexamined idea of what a real practitioner looks like has felt the weight of that word “real” used against them.

I cannot do justice to those experiences in this podcast. They deserve their own conversations. But I want to name them. Because the mechanism is the same.

The word real.

The circle drawn. The people left outside it.

This podcast is about one specific version of that exclusion. But it is part of a much larger pattern that our community needs to examine honestly and without defensiveness. And now I want to say something that I think cuts right to the heart of this.

We believe in the brotherhood of man. That is the second of the Spiritualist Seven Principles. It means equality. It means that every human being -- regardless of gender, race, class, background, or financial position -- has equal worth and equal standing.

And we believe that in the spirit world there is no hierarchy. No class system. No haves and have nots. No first-class souls and second-class souls. Every soul is equal. That is what we teach. That is what we hold to be true.

So, I want to ask a question.

If there is no hierarchy in the spirit world - why are we building one down here? Why are we deciding that some practitioners are real and others are not? That some are pure and others are compromised? That the medium who can afford to give her gift away for free is more devoted than the one who cannot?

The haves and the have nots. It drives me absolutely insane. Because it has no place in a tradition that believes in the equality of all souls. If we truly believe what we say we believe -- then the word “real” has no business being used to divide us.

Now fast forward to today. And a woman stands up, charges for her work, puts her name on her business, builds her own audience, speaks in her own voice - as herself, not as a vessel, not as an instrument, but as a skilled professional with something genuinely valuable to offer.

And she gets called a careerist. By people in her own community. By people who share her beliefs. By people who know exactly what this work costs and what it demands. By the very people who should be standing beside her.

The tradition was built on women making themselves invisible. And now the women who finally refuse to be invisible are the ones being told they do not belong. “You cannot come in here”. Unwelcome!

That is not a spiritual standard. That is the same old story with different words. Society needed women to be useful, visible enough to serve, and silent enough not to threaten.

And now - in 2026 - I want to be absolutely clear. We are still not equal.

In 2026, women in the UK retire with up to £136,000 less in their pension pots than men on average. The majority of pensioners currently living in poverty in this country are women. The gender pension gap stands at nearly 40%.

3.6 million women born in the 1950s planned their entire working lives around a retirement age of 60. They were told, with inadequate notice, that their pension age had been raised by up to six years. The Parliamentary Ombudsman ruled it was maladministration. In December 2024 the Labour government looked at those 3.6 million women and said there was no evidence of direct financial loss. No compensation.

I was affected by the pension age rise. I was born in 1965. The state pension age is rising again -- from 66 to 67 between 2026 and 2028.

Financial need is not a spiritual failing. It never was. And here is the part that makes me most irate. People who judge other people for charging for their work - who call them careerist, who imply they are less real, less pure, less devoted -- do you know what they are doing? They are using the exact same words that were used to keep all of us small for centuries. Virtue. Charity. Selflessness. Give it away for free or you are not good enough. We are still doing this to each other. In 2026. And that is the disgrace.

And if we are going to talk about being visible and being out there — let us talk about what that actually means. I want to talk about branding. Because in spiritual circles this word makes people uncomfortable. It sounds commercial. It sounds ego-driven. But what is a brand, really?

A brand is not a logo. It is not a colour palette or a font. A brand is the answer to one question: when someone encounters your work, what do they feel, and what do they understand about who you are and what you stand for?

By that definition, every medium already has a brand. The only question is whether it is intentional or accidental.

Why does branding matter? Because we live in a world of overwhelming noise. Someone seeking genuine mediumship help is navigating a sea of unqualified practitioners and entertainment psychics. A clear, consistent, professional presence is what allows a sincere seeker to find a sincere practitioner.

People are searching online. They are on social media. They are on TikTok. Spiritualism is becoming mainstream - appearing in unexpected places, driven by young people who have grown up in a digital world. That is where the searching is happening. That is where the people who need us are looking. If the people seeking this work are online -- and they are -- then a practitioner without a professional digital presence is not being humble. She is being absent. And if your mission is real, invisibility is not humility. It is abdication.

This tradition was not built by women who gave their gifts away for free. It was built by women who charged, who toured, who published, who built careers, who had public profiles and paying audiences.

Maria B. Hayden. An American medium who came to Britain in 1852 and brought Spiritualism to this country. She charged a guinea per sitting. Five guineas for ten. In today's money that is roughly £120 a session. She was ridiculed by the British press. She carried on regardless. She was not hiding under her apron. She was running a professional practice and building an entirely new movement from scratch.

The Fox Sisters. Kate and Margaret Fox. The women at the very heart of the founding story of modern Spiritualism. Hydesville. 1848. Celebrated every year on the 31st of March as Hydesville Day. Those women charged for their work. They began with large public demonstrations before paying audiences of hundreds. They moved to New York and held lucrative private séances for the great and the good. They earned their living from their gift. The tradition celebrates their founding moment every single year -- while some people in that same tradition tell us that charging for mediumship is contrary to its values.

Emma Hardinge Britten. Author. Lecturer. Political activist. One of the most important voices in the history of this movement. She travelled internationally, commanded audiences, charged for her work, and built a career. She was not sitting quietly waiting to be discovered.

Estelle Roberts. Known as Britain's greatest medium. She toured the United Kingdom giving mediumship demonstrations for money. She filled the Royal Albert Hall on over twenty occasions -- drawing audiences of six thousand at a time -- with hundreds turned away at the door.

And she demonstrated within the Houses of Parliament itself, which contributed to the legal recognition of Spiritualism and the overturning of the three-hundred-year-old Witchcraft Act, replaced by the Fraudulent Mediums Act in 1951.

Doris Stokes. A former tea lady from Grantham. Sold out the Sydney Opera House. Sold out the London Palladium - tickets gone in two hours. Six bestselling books. Television appearances across the world. A working-class woman who built a career from her gift and reached millions of people.

And Helen Duncan. A Scottish medium so visible, so public, so significant that in 1944 the British government prosecuted her under the Witchcraft Act of 1735 and sent her to prison. Think about that. They used a three hundred year old law to silence her. Because she was that much of a public presence. Because she was that visible. Because she mattered that much.

These women did not hide. They did not sit quietly and wait to be discovered. They got out there. They were seen. They charged. They built careers and reputations and audiences.

Every single one of them would be called a careerist today.

And they built everything we have.

But now I want to talk about the other side of this argument. The mediums held up as shining examples of purity. The ones who did not charge. The ones some people point to and say -- that is what we should all be doing.

Gordon Higginson. One of the most beloved figures in the history of British Spiritualism. President of the SNU for over twenty years. A man I hold in the highest regard. He did not charge for his mediumship. That is true and I honour it completely. His devotion was real. His contribution to this tradition was extraordinary. I am not here to diminish any of that for a single second.

But I want to look at something structural. Not personal. Structural.

Gordon had a retail business. He had a business partner called Frank Tams who ran more than his fair share of that business so that Gordon could give his time to Spiritualism. And Gordon himself said so. In his own words. He said he could not have done what he did without Frank's support.

This is not a criticism of Gordon. It is simply an honest look at how his free mediumship was made possible. How did Gordon pay his rent? His mortgage? His food? His bills? The retail business. Frank Tams.

The free mediumship was possible because something else was paying the bills. That is not a failing. That is a reality. And it is a reality that deserves to be acknowledged honestly — because without acknowledging it, we are asking other mediums to achieve what Gordon achieved without the foundation that made it possible for him.

Daniel Dunglas Home. One of the most celebrated physical mediums of the 19th century. He never charged for his sittings either.

So how did he live? He lived in other people's houses. He ate at other people's tables. He was clothed and fed and housed by wealthy aristocratic patrons across Europe who supported him financially in exchange for access to his gift.

He was not paying his own rent. Someone else was. The free mediumship was possible because wealthy patrons were picking up the bill. Do you see the pattern?

Every single medium held up as a pure example of giving their gift away for free had something else paying their bills. In every case I have looked at. The free mediumship was always supported by something.

A business. A partner. A patron. A day job. The money was always coming from somewhere. The only difference between them and a medium who charges for her work is this -- the medium who charges is not pretending the bills pay themselves.

And here is the question nobody ever answers. If we are not supposed to charge -- how do we pay our rent?

Daniel Dunglas Home had European aristocrats housing and feeding him. Gordon Higginson had Frank Tams running the retail business. Those options no longer exist. I do not know any aristocratic patrons looking to house a medium. Do you?

And the modern version of the same idea — that someone else's income should quietly cover the bills while the medium works for nothing. A partner's salary. A pension. Savings. That is not a financial model. That is just someone else paying, dressed up as devotion.

So, what is left? What is the actual practical answer to the question of how a devoted medium in 2026 pays her bills without charging for her work? I have never heard anyone answer that question. Because there is no answer. We have to charge.

And here is something else nobody talks about. This work did not come for free. The years of training. The courses. The development circles. The workshops. The time away from family. The sacrifices that go completely unacknowledged because they happened quietly, privately, over decades. We have spent thousands of pounds becoming good at what we do. Thousands of hours away training – away from the people we love. Time we will never get back. All of it given freely and willingly in devotion to this work. And paid for from our own pockets.

A solicitor trains for years to become a solicitor. And then they charge. Of course they charge. That is not a moral failing. That is the logical conclusion of years of serious professional investment.

A surgeon trains for years to become a surgeon. To save lives. And then they charge. Because that is what you do when you have devoted that much of yourself to becoming skilled at something that matters.

A teacher trains to teach. And then they are paid. Because their knowledge and their expertise and their time have value. This is not complicated. This is just how the world works.

We have trained. For years. At significant personal cost. In money and in time and in sacrifice.

Of course we charge.

And I want to say one more thing. I do not know a single medium who would turn away someone in genuine need. Not one. We do not advertise it. We do not make a performance of it. But every professional medium I know gives their time freely to those who truly need that connection and cannot afford to pay for it. Or to those who need to be on a training course but can’t afford to pay for it. That is not the behaviour of someone who has turned something sacred into a transaction. That is devotion. Quiet, unannounced, and entirely without fanfare.

And there is one more thing I want to say about advertising that you are giving this work away for free. Because I have done it. I have publicly offered free sittings. And I want to tell you what happens.

People do not turn up.

Or they turn up unprepared. Distracted. Half present. And the information I bring through -- information that took 40 years of development to be able to access, that came from a real communicator in the spirit world, that is specific and evidential and genuinely significant -- that information gets treated as if it has no value. Because it cost them nothing.

And this is not about those people being ungrateful or careless. It is about human psychology. We are wired to equate price with worth. When you pay for something, you show up. You prepare. You sit with what you receive. You take it seriously. When something is free, we treat it as free.

A paid sitting is taken seriously, and energetically it makes a massive difference to the connection. The recipient arrives prepared. They engage. They process what they receive. It lands. It matters. It can genuinely change how they understand life and death and what it means to have lost someone they love.

So, charging is not just about the medium being able to pay her bills. It creates the conditions in which the work can be received. It tells the person sitting opposite you -- this matters. Come and be present. Take this seriously. And that is better for them. Not just for us.

The gift is free. You pay for our time.

I know what some of you are thinking right now. If you need the money, get a day job. Do your mediumship on the side. Keep the two separate. Keep it pure. And for some practitioners that is exactly the right path. That argument has a logic to it. And back in 1890 it made some kind of sense. A medium who served a local community could walk to the church hall, sit for an hour, go home. The reach of any individual medium was limited to whoever could physically be in the same room.

But here is the reality for those of us who have chosen to make this our whole vocation.

A professional website. A podcast. A YouTube channel. Video production. Audio editing. Social media across multiple platforms. Course infrastructure. Booking systems. Newsletter management. Recording software. Hosting platforms. Subscriptions upon subscriptions upon subscriptions. Hours of preparation for every piece of content. Days of work for every episode. Continuous development and training. Doing endless software tutorials. Years of building an audience who trust you enough to come to you when they are in the deepest grief of their lives.

And every single one of those things costs money. The running costs of a professional digital practice are significant. This is not a hobby with a few expenses. This is a business. A real one. With real overheads. And we still have to pay our rent.

That is not careerist. That is the logic of any serious vocation.

And while we are talking about vocations -- let us talk about monks and nuns. Because their devotion is genuine and I honour it completely. They truly do live without personal wealth. That is real. That is sincere. That is not in question.

But how does the monk eat? Who pays for the roof over his head? Who pays to heat the monastery? Who maintains the building? The diocese. The Church. Centuries of endowments from wealthy landowners and benefactors. The Catholic Church is one of the wealthiest institutions in human history. The Church of England holds billions in assets, land, and investments.

The monk does not need to earn because the institution around him provides what he needs. His freedom from personal financial concern is made possible by an enormous amount of financial activity happening elsewhere on his behalf. The hidden subsidy. Again.

And we are back to exactly the same pattern we have seen everywhere we have looked. The appearance of giving freely. The reality of money coming from somewhere else.

The medium who charges has no institution behind her. No endowment. No diocese. No centuries of accumulated wealth paying her bills. She stands alone. And she charges. Because that is the only honest option available to her.

I want to spend some time on the word “real”. You will hear it used in our world. Real mediums. Real devotion. Real spiritualists talking to real spiritualists. And it sounds like it is pointing at something objective - genuine as opposed to fake, authentic as opposed to false. But here is what that word is actually doing.

When you call someone a real anything, you are not describing them. You are ranking them. And ranking requires a hierarchy -- which means someone has to be at the bottom of it.

The word real is not providing information. It is giving legitimacy to one group by quietly taking it away from another. And it does this through implication -- through what is left unsaid but clearly felt.

There is a misunderstanding about what we mean when we say we have a career in this work.

It does not mean sitting at a desk reading for the public forty hours a week. Most mediums I know do a handful of readings each week. Because the quality matters. Because energetically this work is demanding. You cannot read for the public week in week out without rest. You cannot do it at the level it deserves without protecting your energy and your integrity.

Career mediumship means teaching. It means training the next generation of practitioners. It means demonstrating mediumship -- standing on a platform and bringing through evidence of survival for a room full of people who need it. It means taking divine services. It means appearing on podcasts and talking about the work. Writing articles & books. Making YouTube videos. Going on social media and speaking honestly about what this work actually is. Exploring new ways of working -- spirit art, music, channelling, all the extraordinary ways that communication can come through.

Some of the finest mediums in the world run free weekly events -- year after year after year -- such as sitting in the power, a free resource for churches and individuals. World class mediums offer low-cost demonstrations so that as many people as possible can experience mediumship regardless of what they can afford. Development circles run for next to nothing. The voluntary work that career mediums pour into this field is vast and almost entirely invisible.

I created this podcast because I believe it is vital. Vital to bring education to people who have nowhere else to access it. Vital to introduce working professional mediums to the world — and to each other. Vital to support this community as best I possibly can.

And I do all of that at my own cost. No institution behind me. No financial help. My podcast takes four days to create every single episode. Four days I could be doing paid work. Four days of income I do not earn, every single time, so that the podcast can exist. I have produced a hundred and twenty three episodes. That is nearly four thousand hours where I was not paid a penny for my time.

And the overheads on top of that — the equipment, the software, the hosting, the editing — I have paid for the vast majority of that myself. A small handful of patrons have chosen to support the show, and I am genuinely grateful for every one of them. But the real weight of what it costs, in time and in money, sits with me.

I still have to pay my rent. There is no spiritual institution behind me, absorbing the cost.

We are desperately, constantly trying to make ends meet. And so it is for most of the career mediums I know. We are not rinsing this work for money. We are trying to sustain ourselves well enough to keep doing it.

Yes, that is careerist. If careerist means built a career, invested my own money, given my own time, sustained something at real personal cost because I believe in it — then it is exactly that. And I am proud of it. I’d call it devotion.

And that devotion does not stop at my own work. It means supporting the Spiritualist churches too. Because those churches are doing something beautiful and important, and the mediums I know give their time to them freely and willingly. They turn up. They demonstrate. They take services. Yes, they get their petrol expenses. But the time and the energy and the devotion they bring -- that is given. That is not charged for. Just like the wonderful volunteers who run these churches and centres, who give their time so willingly week in week out. That is service in the truest sense of the word.

Career mediumship is all of that. Every single part of it. And here is who all of that is actually for. The grieving person who cannot sleep. Who is awake at three in the morning in a silent house. An empty space next to them in the bed. Just the ticking of the clock and the dark. And their phone. Looking at YouTube. Looking for connection. Looking for something -- anything -- that might help them make sense of what has happened to them.

That person is out there right now. Tonight. And tomorrow night. And the night after that.

We have a duty to that person. An absolute duty. To the spirit world. To the spirit communicators who want to reach their loved ones. To the work itself.

And that duty is to be out there. To be visible. To be everywhere we can possibly be. To speak about this work as often and as honestly and as authentically as we can.

To be exactly what Arthur Findlay was. What Maria B Hayden was. What Doris Stokes was.

Careerists. Every single one of them.

And proud of it.

To those who thought they were insulting me - I want to thank you.

Careerist medium.

Yes. I am.

And it is the nicest thing you could call me.