Atlas›Domain XIV · Western esoteric, divinatory & new spiritual movements›Guide 021
Guide XIV-021

Pordage and Lead's Philadelphian Society

John Pordage, Jane Lead1649England
A 32 · L 48 · M 2019 interventions in the Trinity explorer6 described for recognition only
Client cardCompare
[source: …] where a claim comes from[uncertain] not confirmed in a primary source[synthesis] the writer's reconstruction

1. Introduction

Version followed: the historical circle of John Pordage (bap. 1607, d. 1681) and Jane Lead (1624–1704) and the Philadelphian Society of the later 1690s, as documented by Ariel Hessayon (Jane Lead and her Transnational Legacy, 2016, and his 2024 essays), Julie Hirst (York PhD, 2002) and Amanda Capern (2016); clinical procedures are those of the DSM-5 Cultural Formulation Interview (CFI) and Lukoff's 1985 criteria, applied as [synthesis].

What it is. This is a historical current, not a therapy. It was a small English circle of Christian visionaries shaped by the German mystic Jacob Boehme ("Behmenists"). [source: Hessayon 2024 part one; Berkshire History]

  • John Pordage. He was rector of Bradfield, Berkshire, by 1647. Around 1649–50 he led a "family" household there. In Richard Baxter's account its members claimed a "visible and sensible Communion with Angels". [source: Hirst 2002; Berkshire History]
  • Pordage's ejection. Charges against him included "intercourse with spirits". He was ejected by the Berkshire commissioners on 8 December 1654, was restored at the Restoration, and later led a circle in London. [source: Berkshire History, edited from the 1896 Dictionary of National Biography]
  • Jane Lead's visions. Lead was a Norfolk gentleman's daughter and a merchant's widow. From about two months after her husband's death in 1670, she recorded visions of Sophia, the "Virgin Wisdom", in dated spiritual diaries. These were later printed as A Fountain of Gardens (1696–1701). [source: Hirst 2002; Hessayon 2016 introduction]
  • The Philadelphian Society. After Pordage's death, Lead led the remnant of the circle. Lead was blind by 1695. Around her, the Philadelphian Society formed in 1696–97, with Francis Lee and Richard Roach among its leaders. It "retired" in 1703 and was fragmented by her death in 1704. [source: Hessayon 2024 part two; Reviews in History]

Core idea of how change happens (as the circle held it). Transformation was inward and revelatory. The believer turns inward and waits in prayer for God's coming. Divine Wisdom is born in the soul through vision and inner voice. Lead's later teaching added universal restoration: all beings, including fallen angels, would finally be saved. Private and public revelation was considered necessary. [source: Hessayon 2024 parts one and two; Hirst 2002] These are the circle's beliefs, reported here without endorsement or dismissal. Evidence status: claims of revelation are matters of faith and cannot be tested empirically. No study has examined these practices as therapy. [synthesis]

Why a therapist meets it today. No continuously existing Philadelphian Society is documented [uncertain: not verified]. Lead's writings reach clients in several ways:

  • public-domain texts and online reprints, such as the online Source Library listing of A Fountain of Gardens;
  • Christian Sophiology, for example the Center for Sophiological Studies (director Michael Martin, Michigan), which presents Lead as a visionary of Sophia;
  • feminist scholarship on Lead since the 1970s;
  • Mary's City of David, a Michigan group founded in 1930 that reprinted her works;
  • Pentecostal "Latter Rain" circles, which circulated an edited and altered "prophecy" attributed to her;
  • wider esoteric interest in Boehme.

[source: Hessayon 2016 introduction; Reviews in History; Center for Sophiological Studies] The clinical work in this guide concerns clients who report their own visions or inner voices, or who draw on Lead's or Pordage's model of visionary life. Christian theosophy and Boehme are covered in Domain XIII 221 (see XIV 019).

2. Framework

No therapeutic phases exist in the historical sources. The historical sequence below is context. The clinical phases that follow are [synthesis].

Historical shape of the visionary path (for context).

  • Lead's three stages. Hessayon describes three stages in Lead's thought: an early Calvinist preoccupation with sin and predestination; Boehme's teaching together with visions of a female figure of divine wisdom; and universal restoration, which she said she received by revelation in 1693. [source: Hessayon 2016 introduction; Hessayon 2024 part two]
  • Early experiences. In her teens Lead reported a conversion experience. On Christmas Day 1640 she reported a "beam of Godly light" and an inner voice. [source: Reviews in History; Hessayon 2016]
  • Practice of the circle. The circle combined:
    • inward attention (Lead wrote that she "introverted more into my own Inward Deep");
    • shared waiting in prayer (Pordage and Lead agreed to "wait together in prayer");
    • dated written records of visions;
    • editing and publication by trusted associates (Francis Lee was her amanuensis after she went blind).
    [source: Hirst 2002; Hessayon 2024]

Clinical phases for a client with visionary experiences [synthesis]. The sources give no session counts. Pace is set by the client and by risk.

  1. Engagement and safety. Goal: the client can describe experiences without fear of being dismissed or labelled. Screen for urgent risk early. Move on when urgent risk has been assessed and the client has agreed to explore.
  2. Cultural and differential assessment. Use the CFI core interview, Module 5 (Spirituality, Religion and Moral Traditions) and the Explanatory Model module. Add a phenomenological account and screening for psychosis, mania, dissociation, OCD, grief, substances and medical causes. Move on when a shared formulation exists, including whether psychiatric or medical referral is needed.
  3. Meaning and integration. Goal: the client relates the experience to their life, tradition, losses and values, and decides what to do with it. Move on when the experiences are integrated into daily functioning and relationships, or when distress falls.
  4. Consolidation and ending. Goal: early-warning plan (if illness was part of the picture), links to community or spiritual direction if the client wishes, and an ending. [synthesis]

If phase 2 shows probable psychosis or mania, phase 3 continues alongside psychiatric care, not instead of it. [synthesis]

3. Guiding principles

  • Describe the belief as the client holds it. Use their words (Sophia, Wisdom, the inward deep, revelation) without correcting or adopting them. [source: APA Ethics Code Principle E; CFI Module 5]
  • Phenomenology before diagnosis. Get the full description (onset, form, content, affect, function) before you classify anything. [synthesis]
  • Mystical content is not by itself a symptom. Lukoff lists five features shared by mystical experience and psychosis: ecstatic mood, a sense of newly gained knowledge, perceptual alterations, delusions with mythic themes, and no conceptual disorganisation. Disorganised thinking points away from a benign reading. [source: Lukoff 1985, via Spiritual Competency Resource Center]
  • Also, do not miss illness. Lukoff's good prognostic signs are good premorbid functioning, acute onset (about three months or less), a stressful precipitant, and a positive exploratory attitude. When these are absent, you need a closer psychiatric look. [source: Lukoff 1985] Imminent risk to self or others overrides exploration. [source: Lukoff 1985; standard risk practice]
  • History is a resource, not a verdict. Later critics dismissed Lead and Pordage as "Christians of a dangerously psychic type" (Hobhouse). Hessayon and feminist historians read them in their religious context. Offer this contrast only if the client wants it. [source: Hessayon 2016 introduction]
  • The client and their tradition discern; the therapist does not adjudicate. Lead herself weighed a rival prophet's message against her understanding of God's love and rejected its emphasis on wrath. Discernment belongs within a tradition. [source: Hirst 2002] [synthesis for the clinical use]
  • Competence and referral. Where understanding religion is essential, obtain training, consultation or supervision, or refer. [synthesis; source: APA Ethics Code; Vieten et al. 2013]
  • No dual roles. The therapist is not a seer, prophet, spiritual director or interpreter of revelations within therapy. [source: APA Ethics Code 3.05; synthesis]
  • Informed consent about the approach. Explain that you will explore meaning and also check health factors. [synthesis; source: APA Ethics Code]
  • Watch power and money in any group. The Philadelphians held that new revelation was equal in standing to Scripture, and a 1697 date-setting expectation failed. Leaders who claim such authority deserve careful, non-hostile attention. [source: Reviews in History; Hessayon 2024 part two] [synthesis for the clinical use]
  • Grief is a context, not an explanation. Lead's visions began soon after her bereavement. Ask about loss without reducing the experience to it. [source: Hirst 2002; synthesis]

4. Intervention inventory

Part A lists the circle's own practices as historians document them. They help you recognise what a client may be drawing on. The therapist does not lead them.

Part B lists the psychotherapist's interventions [synthesis unless a source is given].

Part A. Historical practices of the circle (context only)

A1. Waiting together in prayer

  • Purpose and context: Pordage and Lead agreed to wait together in prayer for God's coming. The Philadelphians met on Sundays and weekdays in London from 1695 to 1699, at Hoxton, Baldwin's Gardens (Ann Bathurst's house), Hungerford Market, Westmoreland House and other sites. [source: Hessayon 2024 part two]
  • Steps: The circle met to pray and to wait for revelation. Women preached alongside men, and the society's tenth constitution allowed women to pray or prophesy "with all Sobriety and Modesty". [source: Hessayon 2024 part two; Hirst 2002] No set liturgy beyond this is documented [uncertain].
  • Example language (illustrative): "When you say you 'wait' in prayer, what do you actually do, and what happens in you?"
  • Watch for: Long solitary waiting with poor sleep or withdrawal in a client who models practice on this. Group pressure to produce revelations. [synthesis]

A2. Inward turning and the dated visionary diary

  • Purpose and context: Lead recorded visions, dreams and inner states in dated entries from 1670 to about 1695. They were later printed as A Fountain of Gardens. She described turning into her "Inward Deep". [source: Hirst 2002; Hessayon 2016]
  • Steps: Historically, the circle recorded experiences and then shared them with trusted associates, who edited and published them. Francis Lee wrote that her inner voice was "real and substantial, not imaginary". [source: Hirst 2002]
  • Example language (illustrative): "You keep a record like Lead's. Would you be willing to look at some entries together, only as far as you want?"
  • Watch for: A diary that becomes the client's only relationship. Entries that speed up, or lose coherence or date order (a possible mood or psychotic warning sign). [synthesis]

A3. Discernment of revelations

  • Purpose and context: Lead faced the question of whether an experience came from God or the devil. In 1677 she rejected another prophet's message because its emphasis on wrath contradicted her understanding of divine love. [source: Hirst 2002]
  • Steps: Historically, she compared a message with core convictions and with trusted companions (Pordage, later Lee). No formal rule of discernment is documented. [uncertain]
  • Example language (illustrative): "In your tradition, how does someone tell whether a message is trustworthy? Who would you ask?"
  • Watch for: The client asking the therapist to rule on authenticity (see B8). [synthesis]

A4. Community forms: constitutions, spiritual names, sacramental views, "love feast"

  • Purpose and context:
    • The society agreed constitutions on 23 August 1697 and published them in Theosophical Transactions, edited by Lee and Roach.
    • Members took new spiritual names.
    • A contemporary observer reported that they rejected water baptism and outward breaking of bread.
    • Lee hinted at a spiritual eating of Christ's flesh that was not explained to outsiders.
    • Intercepted letters of 1697 refer to a heterodox "love feast".
    [source: Hessayon 2024 part two; Reviews in History]
  • Steps: Public outline only. The ritual content is not publicly documented and is not reconstructed. [uncertain]
  • Example language (illustrative): "Does your group use new names or private rites? How do you feel about that part?"
  • Watch for: Secrecy toward outsiders, new identities and private rites in a present-day group. These are not harmful in themselves, but explore consent and freedom to leave. [synthesis]

A5. Austerity and visions

  • Context: One member of Pordage's London circle reported visions that followed fasting. [source: Hirst 2002]
  • Steps: Not given. No fasting practice is described here.
  • Example language (illustrative): "Have you changed how you eat or sleep around these experiences?"
  • Watch for: Fasting or sleep loss used to seek visions can alter perception and destabilise mood. Route to medical review where eating or sleep is restricted. [synthesis]

A6. Prophecy and dates

  • Context: Commentators near the circle predicted Christ's coming for 23 August 1697. The prediction failed. Lead's millennial views implied the overturning of governments and churches. [source: Hessayon 2024 part two; Reviews in History]
  • Example language (illustrative): "Is there a date or event you are expecting? What will you do if it comes, or if it does not?"
  • Watch for: Financial or life decisions tied to a date. Despair after disconfirmation. [synthesis]

Part B. The psychotherapist's interventions

B1. Opening the topic and consent

  • Purpose: Make it safe to talk about visions. Agree how you will work. Use it at intake or when the client first mentions visions or Lead's writings. [synthesis; source: APA Ethics Code, Principle E]
  • Steps:
    1. Invite the topic neutrally.
    2. Explain that you will explore meaning and also check sleep, mood and health, because both matter.
    3. Explain the limits of your role: no interpretation of revelations.
    4. Agree how far the client wants to go.
    5. Note confidentiality limits.
  • Example language (illustrative): "Many people have experiences they call visions. I won't tell you what yours mean. I'd like to understand them, and I'll also ask about sleep and health, because those can shape any experience. Is that all right?"
  • Watch for: Relief and more detail mean it is working. Guardedness may reflect past dismissal; name it gently. [synthesis]

B2. CFI core and Module 5 (Spirituality, Religion and Moral Traditions)

  • Purpose: Map the client's identity, practices and community, and how the tradition helps or strains them. [source: APA CFI Supplementary Modules]
  • Steps: Cover each of the module's four areas in your own words:
    1. Spiritual, religious and moral identity, and any affiliation or community.
    2. The tradition's role in daily and family life, at home and outside it.
    3. How the tradition, its leaders, texts and practices help with the problem.
    4. Stresses and conflicts: distress tied to identity or practice, discrimination, and conflict with others.
    Follow up on degree of involvement. The APA permits clinicians to reproduce the modules for use with their patients. [source: APA CFI Supplementary Modules]
  • Example language (illustrative): "Is there a community you share these writings with? Has it helped, or made things harder?"
  • Watch for: Isolation from all community. Conflict with family or church over the experiences. [synthesis]

B3. Explanatory model of the experience

  • Purpose: Learn the client's own account of cause, course and help-seeking before you offer any frame. [source: APA CFI Explanatory Model module]
  • Steps:
    1. Ask what they believe the experiences are and where they come from.
    2. Ask how they affect body, mind and spirit.
    3. Ask what the client expects to happen.
    4. Ask what help they want.
    5. Ask what others (family, pastor) think.
  • Example language (illustrative): "How do you understand what's been happening? What do you think it's asking of you?"
  • Watch for: A rigid, single explanation held with great distress, compared with a flexible, curious one (see B5). [synthesis; cf. Lukoff 1985]

B4. Phenomenological interview

  • Purpose: A fine-grained description that supports both meaning-work and differential assessment. [synthesis]
  • Steps: Ask, in turn, about:
    1. First occurrence and its context (loss, stress, practice, substances, illness).
    2. Form: inner vision, outer perception, voice inside or outside the head, felt presence.
    3. Content and themes.
    4. Affect during and after.
    5. Control: can the client start or stop it?
    6. Frequency and trend.
    7. Effects on sleep, work and relationships.
    8. What the client does in response.
  • Example language (illustrative): "When the figure appeared, was it like seeing with your eyes, or more like knowing inwardly?"
  • Watch for: Commands, persecutory content, loss of everyday functioning, or perceptions the client cannot step back from. These point toward B5 and B6. [synthesis]

B5. Differential assessment without pathologising belief

  • Purpose: Hold the possibility of a benign spiritual experience and the possibility of illness at the same time. [source: Lukoff 1985]
  • Steps:
    1. Check Lukoff's overlap features (ecstatic mood, new knowledge, perceptual change, mythic themes) and look for conceptual disorganisation, which argues against a benign reading.
    2. Check his prognostic signs: good premorbid functioning, acute onset (three months or less), a stressful precipitant, and an exploratory attitude.
    3. Screen for mania: reduced need for sleep, pressured speech, grandiosity, risky spending.
    4. Screen for psychosis beyond the tradition's norms, and ask co-religionists' views (CFI) on whether the experience fits their norms.
    5. Screen for dissociation, OCD or scrupulosity (intrusive fear of damnation or blasphemy), complicated grief, and substance use.
    6. Screen for medical and neurological factors, including new perceptual phenomena with vision loss, seizures or delirium. Refer medically where indicated.
    [source: Lukoff 1985 for steps 1–2; steps 3–6 synthesis]
  • Example language (illustrative): "Some of what you describe sounds like what mystics have written about. I also want to make sure your sleep and mood are holding up. Could we check a few things?"
  • Watch for: Lukoff presents his criteria as hypotheses that still need testing for reliability. Use them as a guide, not a test. [source: Lukoff 1985, via SCRC]

B6. Risk assessment

  • Purpose: Find imminent danger to self or others. [source: Lukoff 1985, criterion 3; standard practice]
  • Steps: Ask about command content, thoughts of death or self-harm, harm to others, and apocalyptic urgency. Assess using your service's current risk practice. Bizarre but safe behaviour alone does not justify restriction. [source: Lukoff 1985]
  • Example language (illustrative): "Have any of the messages asked you to hurt yourself or anyone else, or made you feel life should end soon?"
  • Watch for: Plans tied to a prophesied date. Refusal of food or sleep. Escalation that leads you to arrange urgent psychiatric assessment. [synthesis]

B7. Meaning-making with visionary material

  • Purpose: Help the client relate the visions to their life story, losses, values and tradition, in their own language. Use this once B5 and B6 are settled enough. [synthesis]
  • Steps:
    1. Ask the client to choose one vision or diary entry.
    2. Explore what it gave them (comfort, calling, a mother figure, hope of restoration) and what it cost.
    3. Link it to life context only as far as the client agrees. Lead's visions of a figure who said "Behold me as thy Mother" began soon after her bereavement. You may offer this pattern as an option, never as an explanation. [source for the historical point: Hirst 2002]
    4. Ask how the experience shows up in daily conduct.
  • Example language (illustrative): "What did that presence offer you that you most needed then?"
  • Watch for: Working well looks like more flexibility, better functioning, and an experience that feels owned rather than imposed. A client who feels you are explaining away their faith signals a possible rupture (see section 5). [synthesis]

B8. Supporting discernment without adjudicating

  • Purpose: Respect the client's tradition-based discernment and keep the therapist out of the role of seer. [source: APA Ethics Code 3.05; synthesis]
  • Steps:
    1. Ask how the client's tradition tests revelations.
    2. Offer, if the client wishes, a list of trusted people: pastor, spiritual director, community elder.
    3. Help the client prepare questions for them.
    4. With consent, liaise with them about the client's wellbeing, not about the truth of the visions.
  • Example language (illustrative): "I'm not the right person to judge whether this comes from God. Who in your tradition would you trust with that question?"
  • Watch for: A client who has no one, or whose only adviser is a leader who profits from their revelations. [synthesis]

B9. Joint working with psychiatry and medicine

  • Purpose: Arrange assessment when B5 or B6 suggests psychosis, mania, a medical cause or high risk. [synthesis]
  • Steps:
    1. Explain the referral in the client's terms (sleep, safety, a clear mind for discernment).
    2. Send a referral letter that describes the spiritual context respectfully and attaches the CFI findings.
    3. Keep therapy going alongside psychiatric care.
    4. Never advise starting, stopping or changing medication. Route all such questions to the prescriber.
  • Example language (illustrative): "Getting your sleep and mood checked doesn't mean your experiences are dismissed. It protects your ability to reflect on them."
  • Watch for: Fear that treatment will "silence" the visions. Discuss this openly and bring the prescriber into the conversation. [synthesis]

B10. Working with a client's diary

  • Purpose: Use a client's own record of visions (a habit that may echo Lead's) for reflection and as an early-warning tool. [synthesis]
  • Steps:
    1. With consent, suggest adding brief notes beside entries on sleep, stress and mood.
    2. Review the notes together at agreed intervals.
    3. Look for patterns such as rising frequency with falling sleep.
    4. Agree with the client what change would prompt contacting you or a doctor.
  • Example language (illustrative): "Would you be willing to jot your sleep beside each entry, so we can see if anything travels together?"
  • Watch for: The diary becoming compulsive or reassurance-seeking. Stop the tracking if it feeds anxiety. [synthesis]

B11. Assessing a present-day group or teacher

  • Purpose: Gauge power, money and isolation when a client belongs to a circle that draws on Lead, Pordage, Sophiology or a "prophetic" group. [synthesis]
  • Steps: Ask about:
    • the leader's claimed authority, for example revelation on a par with Scripture, as Lead's critics noted she claimed [source for the historical point: Reviews in History];
    • date-setting;
    • payments and donations;
    • limits on outside contact;
    • secrecy (new names, private rites);
    • how dissent and leaving are treated.
  • Example language (illustrative): "What would happen if you disagreed with a revelation given in the group?"
  • Watch for: Financial pressure, isolation, punishment of doubt, or sexualised rites. If you find these, cover religious trauma, safe leaving and family concerns. [synthesis]

B12. Historical contextualising (optional bibliotherapy)

  • Purpose: For clients who already read Lead or Pordage, offer reliable history so the client can see the circle's context, conflicts and later reception. [synthesis]
  • Steps:
    1. Ask whether they want historical reading.
    2. Suggest scholarly sources (Hessayon's edited volume and essays; Hirst).
    3. Discuss what the history means to them.
    4. Note that a "Lead prophecy" circulating in Pentecostal settings is an edited and altered text. [source: Reviews in History]
  • Example language (illustrative): "Historians have written about Lead's circle. Would it help to know how her contemporaries saw her, or would that feel intrusive?"
  • Watch for: Use only at the client's request. Imposed history can feel like debunking. [synthesis]

B13. Documentation and coding

  • Purpose: Record spiritual distress without implying disorder. [source: Unbound Medicine ICD-10-CM]
  • Steps: Where a code is needed and no mental disorder is present, ICD-10-CM Z65.8 "Other specified problems related to psychosocial circumstances" lists "religious or spiritual problem" as an inclusion term. The corresponding DSM-5-TR wording is [uncertain: not verified]. Record the client's terms, the CFI findings and the differential reasoning.
  • Example language (illustrative): "In my notes I describe this as a spiritual concern, not an illness, unless we find otherwise together."
  • Watch for: Labels in letters that could later stigmatise the client. Share records with the client where your setting allows. [synthesis]

5. Handling problems

All guidance in this section is [synthesis] except where a source is given.

  • "Tell me if my vision is real."
    • Decline the adjudicating role warmly.
    • Return to the client's own criteria and to their tradition (B8).
    • Example (illustrative): "Your question matters too much for me to answer it from outside your faith. Let's look at how you and the people you trust test these things."
  • Fear of being labelled mad.
    • Name the fear.
    • Explain the stance of assessing both meaning and health.
    • If helpful, note that historians now read visionaries like Lead in context, where earlier critics dismissed them. [source: Hessayon 2016 introduction]
  • Escalation: less sleep, rising frequency, grandiosity, commands.
    • Move to B5, B6 and B9 the same day if risk is present.
    • Involve family only with consent, unless risk overrides consent under your local law.
  • Apocalyptic date-setting or a disconfirmed prophecy.
    • Before the date: protect money, housing and relationships.
    • After it: give grief and shame space.
    • Watch for suicidal despair; follow safe messaging and standard risk practice.
    • The 1697 failed prediction is a historical precedent. [source: Hessayon 2024 part two]
  • Stopping medication on the authority of a revelation.
    • Do not argue the theology.
    • Do not advise on medication.
    • Arrange an urgent prescriber review and explore what the message means.
  • Family conflict.
    • Use the CFI conflict questions.
    • Offer a joint session focused on safety and respect.
    • Avoid siding with a "spiritual" or a "medical" camp.
  • Dependency on a teacher, or financial exploitation.
    • Use B11.
    • Support the client's own decisions.
    • Signpost independent advice. Use the word "cult" only when quoting reliable sources.
  • Overwhelm during meaning-work.
    • Slow down and ground in the present.
    • Shift to coping and sleep.
    • Return to the material only with consent.
    • For dissociation during practice, see the research on meditation-related adverse effects (Lindahl et al. 2017, PLOS ONE; Farias et al. 2020, Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica) [uncertain: not verified].
  • A client "receiving messages" by channelling-like dictation, or recovering past events through visions.
    • Be alert to suggestion and false memory.
    • Cross-refer to Domain VI 110.
  • Rupture from perceived scepticism or over-enthusiasm.
    • Repair openly: acknowledge, ask what landed badly, restate your role.
    • Monitor your own reactions (fascination, dismissal) in supervision. [synthesis; source: APA Ethics Code on consultation]
  • Therapist who shares or rejects the tradition.
    • Keep self-disclosure minimal and purposeful.
    • Do not pray with or teach the client within therapy unless your service and ethics framework explicitly allow it and the client freely asks.
    • Refer if neutrality is not possible. [source: APA Ethics Code 3.05]
  • Children.
    • If a child is drawn into a visionary or prophetic household, assess safeguarding: sleep, schooling, medical care, isolation.
    • Seek a developmental and mental health assessment rather than accepting a spiritual label in its place.
    • Use assent and consent; follow local child-protection duties.
  • Stuck clients.
    • Review the shared goal (relief, understanding, functioning).
    • Check that an unaddressed grief or mood problem is not maintaining distress.
    • Consider adding a spiritual director or community member, with consent.

Sources

Books and articles cited:

  • Hessayon, A. (ed.) (2016). Jane Lead and her Transnational Legacy. Palgrave Macmillan.
  • Lukoff, D. (1985). The diagnosis of mystical experiences with psychotic features. Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, 17(2), 155–181.
  • Vieten, C., Scammell, S., Pilato, R., Ammondson, I., Pargament, K. I., & Lukoff, D. (2013). Spiritual and religious competencies for psychologists. Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, 5(3), 129–144. The 16 competencies span attitudes, knowledge and skills; the individual items are [uncertain: not verified].
  • Lindahl et al. 2017, PLOS ONE; Farias et al. 2020, Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica: adverse effects of meditation [uncertain: not verified].
  • Lead, J. (1696–1701). A Fountain of Gardens (3 vols). Cited via Hirst 2002.
  • Pordage, J. (1683). Theologia Mystica. Cited via Capern 2016.

Conflicts noted:

  • The date Lead met or joined Pordage is given as 1663 (DNB), 1663 met and 1668 joined (Hirst), or August 1673/1674 (Hessayon; Capern). This guide follows Hessayon.
  • The society's founding is given as 1696 (Hessayon's introduction) or 1697 (constitutions agreed 23 August 1697).
  • Details of Pordage's own 1649–50 visionary experiences are [uncertain: not verified].
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