“Divine Guidance”: A Review of An Angel Told Me So (Volume 1) by Wilma Jean Jones and Michael McAdams

 

 (Bloomington, IN: Balboa Press, 2017). ISBN: 978-1-5043-8603-6

Over the past eight months, I have reviewed several books produced in conjunction with a higher energy. Celestial beings, spirit guides, aliens, the Brotherhood, God… they go by different names, depending on the channeler or medium’s worldview and belief system. You’ll notice that what the receiver calls themselves also changes.

I am married to an acknowledged and publicly tested psychic medium, so I have a deep interest in this subject. I have studied Esther Hicks/Abraham, Darryl Bashar/Anka, and many others from the lens of my lifelong training in theatre. I study voice, mannerisms, vocabulary, syntax, and gesture. I mention Esther and Darryl because I believe they are true to their word. Many others are easily outed as frauds. Because I believe she has done much more harm than good, I’ll name one—JZ Knight, who professes to be channeling an entity called Ramtha. She isn’t.

It’s much harder to make a judgment—to apply the tools of the healthy skeptic—to those who channel by means of automatic writing (psychography) or typing. Is it the subconscious, and if so, how is that defined? Is it a form of mental illness? Perhaps only in a very low percentage of cases. Is it fraud? Again, it happens, although I do not believe it is often so.

My wife’s grandmother produced a manuscript in the 1980s that she professed to have channeled by request of Justin the Martyr, killed for his beliefs by the Romans in 165 CE. I could find nothing in the manuscript that you could not find through basic Internet research. It appears from surviving correspondence that potential publishers felt the same. This is not to say she was a fraud. Far from. We have written about her in our books on the paranormal because her overall body of writings and cataloged experiences are highly compelling. Again, when it comes to channeled material, we just don’t know.

This makes reading and reviewing books like An Angel Told Me So a challenge. In many ways, it is a test of faith. We have little data. A mother and son wrote this book—she through the channeled messages (using a typewriter) and he through the front matter and the commentary that precedes the texts produced from her first four months of channeling. They have deep ties to religion and to ministers and preachers. Michael’s uncle was a “fiery Pentacostal preacher.” They believe higher beings they term angels dictated to Wilma Jean the messages she received.  

The biggest challenge is that channeled messages often include data points about the future of the world, technology, politics, and other researchable details. The messages in An Angel Told Me So are highly personal and, for a researcher, frustratingly nonspecific.

With no data to check or physical mediumship to study, I applied my experience as a story analyst and field researcher.

Having considered the wisdom, guidance, and support given to Wilma and Michael (in most cases, there were two messages per session channeled to Wilma, one for each of them) in An Angel Told Me So, it is clear the messages positively affected their lives. They opened a path to the important work they each accomplished. That may be enough. We all need inspiration. Others’ stories provide it. The energy of the messages—on both the page and their frequency and vibration reading them aloud—suggests they came from a high-vibrational mind-space or plane. These guides navigated Wilma out of a terrible marriage, giving her the courage to end it. Michael is especially propped up and inspired, as though by a father figure, coach, or mentor.

Through a comparison of my wife’s channeled writings, those of respected and established colleagues, and my grandmother-in-law’s notebooks, I found uncanny similarities in phrasing, syntax, and tone. Anyone who studies these types of texts knows they are often simplistic in both language and in their platitudes about the channeler being watched over and all being well in the end. But sometimes the messages are complex and profound.

In An Angel Told Me So, Michael reports that many of the sentences given in the messages are over 100 words long. This reminds me of Bashar and Abraham. Within those long sentences is utter clarity. Efficiency. A use of language beyond your average speaker/writer.

Wilma produced over 2,500 single-spaced pages of messages. The selections in Volume 1 appear with no editing. Sometimes a single session took hours. That is deep commitment. This process also began unexpectedly and not as an experiment undertaken by Wilma, as is the case with most channelers/mediums I have studied and interviewed.

The communications are signed by or otherwise self-attributed to Spirit Guides, Spiritual Brothers, or Spirit Teachers, who speak collectively as We or Us. This also aligns with similar texts. In a few instances, the communications are signed in script as LZ, and once as L Zebelish. A quick Internet search of Zebelish yields virtually nothing, which tells us virtually nothing.   

Over months, as Wilma became more adept and her connection to these messengers grew, she had a few visions in the midst of her writing, which she detailed in her cursive handwriting. It’s a help to have these included, as we can read Wilma’s natural voice and compare it to the messages. I find them different in several respects.

One of the last messages is signed, “Your loving Guides for ever and ever.” Indeed, the messages continued for many years. You can read more of the messages in An Angel Told Me So, Volume 2.

In the end, I come back to the positive messages and sincere commitment of the authors. Given the state of the world and the need for those who keep their candles lit and vibrations high to continue on that path, reading An Angel Told Me So will be a benefit. Do we always have to ask the hard questions? In this case, perhaps not. And, if we do—I have asked several in this review—the answers point toward the authors being truthful about their experiences and from where this material came.