ABSTRACT
Theories of Spiritualist tongues can depend for their explanation first on the belief that human personalities are closed, in which case the phenomena indicating communication are merely the products of the individual mind. The same explanations can be given for some Spiritualist tongues as for Christian. They may be genuine languages having their sources in the cryptomnesia or cryptesthesia of the speaker. The advent of the tape-recorder now makes it possible to study them, but it is not as easy to obtain specimens of Spiritualist tongues as of Christian. Communications in Spiritualist churches are seldom, if ever, in tongues; and when foreign languages are allegedly spoken, it is usually in private circles or in interviews between a sensitive and one or two sitters. The fact that all taped specimens of Christian tongues can be shown to be pseudo-languages or traceable to cryptomnesia makes no difference to the determined believer.
