A “reading” is material that is delivered to a sitter by a medium or a psychic. There are Spiritualist readings (sometimes referred to as “messages") and psychic readings. Either of these may be in the form of a private reading or a public reading. A Spiritualist private reading is one-on-one with the medium and usually allows the sitter to ask questions, give or ask for explanations (if necessary), and generally become more involved with the retrieval of the information. Public Spiritualist readings are more common, where the medium—often as a specific part of a Spiritualist church worship service—will stand on the platform and deliver messages to particular members of the congregation or audience. Here there is no opportunity for the recipient to ask questions. In both cases it may be necessary for the individual to follow up after the meeting to verify the information given.
Psychic readings are more generally private, with the psychic dealing with the past, present and probable future for the sitter. By definition these readings do not connect with spirit and the only way to gauge the accuracy of the future predictions is to wait and see. Some idea of the possible accuracy may be judged by what the psychic tells of the known past and present.
The National Spiritualist Association of Churches publishes a pamphlet titled Hints for a Good Reading. It offers the following advice for a reading from a Spiritualist medium.
Sources:
a city in Great Britain, in Berkshire, on the Thames River at the influx of the Kennet River. Population, 132,000 (1971). Transportation junction. Reading is the trade center of an agricultural region. It has a large food industry and a machine-building industry, including the production of aviation, agricultural, and electrical engineering equipment and machinery for enterprises of the food industry. There is also a printing industry. Reading has a university founded in 1926. The city’s history dates back to the ninth century. Southwest of Reading is the Aldermaston nuclear research center.
a city in the northeastern USA, in Pennsylvania, on the Schuylkill River. Population, 82,000 (1974; 304,000 including suburbs). The manufacturing industry employs 56,000 (1973). Reading’s main industries include the ferrous metal and metalworking industries and the manufacturing of pipe, industrial equipment, and optical engineering items. There is also a knit-goods industry. Coal is mined nearby. Reading was founded in the first half of the 18thcentury.
in digital computers, the extraction of information from storage and the transmission of the information to other units of the computer. Reading is performed in most computer operations but sometimes constitutes an independent operation. The read process may be accompanied by the destruction, or erasing, of the contents of the storage cells or sections from which the information is read; such a destructive read may occur, for example, in the case of ferrite-core storage. Nondestructive reading is also possible—for example, in the case of magnetic tape or disk storage. In systems with nondestructive reading, once information is recorded it may be used many times. The read operation is characterized by the read time, which is the time required to deliver data from storage. Read times range from a few tens of nanoseconds to several microseconds. (See alsoRECORDING AND REPRODUCTION OF INFORMATION.)