Geraldine Cummins

The term "automatic" when applied to writing or painting means the production of a work not consciously directed by the person whose hand executed it. More often than not, the medium appears to have been taken over by the spirit of one long deceased, and they have no knowledge or control over the works they produce.

Foremost among automatists was a little athletic Irishwoman, Miss Geraldine Cummins, who died in 1968, and whose integrity remains unblemished. One of eleven children and the daughter of a Professor of Medicine at Cork University, Miss Cummins had the faculty for psychically healing and was also thought to be telepathic. In psychic circles her prolific works have earned her the title of the greatest automatic writer of this century, and at one stage she was taking notes from her control at the rate of 1500 words an hour.

Her book The Scripts of Cleophas, written in the 1920s was a compelling addition to the New Testament telling of the apostle Paul’s missionary journeys and of the political and religious turmoil of the Middle East after the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. The incredible amount of detail supplied by the spirit control filled in many areas of history where our knowledge was scant, and in view of the fact that Miss Cummins had no knowledge of the Greek, Latin or Hebrew which would have been necessary to carry out the research to write such a voluminous work, credence was accorded her. By the time she died at the age of seventy-nine she had written fifteen books transmitted from the other world, produced numerous private communications for famous people, and at the age of sixty-nine achieved what some believe was the pinnacle of her career as an automatist — the Cummins-Willett scripts. Published in 1965, her last book, Swan on a Black Sea, being a remarkable litany of forty scripts detailing the communications between a dead mother and her sceptical son.

Comment:

As spiritualism took hold in the latter half of the nineteenth century automatic writing came into vogue. The majority of the writings were either based on moral or religious precepts and the world hereafter, or historical romantic novels purportedly narrated by the deceased. The former out-pourings were a direct result of a tenacious clinging to old religious beliefs and a defiance of the teachings of evolutionists, and the latter, although held by many to be beyond the normal ability of the automatist were, on investigation, often found to be well within their capability.