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séance séance (sâ´äns´, -äNs´)
noun1.A meeting of people to receive spiritualistic messages.
2. A meeting, session, or sitting, as of a learned or legislative body.[French, a sitting, from Old French seoir, to sit, from Latin sedêre.]

Word History: A gathering in which phenomena such as levitation, telepathy, and communication with the dead take place should seemingly have little in common with a session of an administrative body of a learned society, but the word séance can refer to both. Séance does not have the mysterious and exciting background one might expect for such a word but rather comes from French séance, "seat, session," from Old French seoir, "to sit." In French as in English the word came to be used specifically for a meeting of people to receive spiritualistic messages (a sense first recorded in English in 1845), but earlier in French and English the word had been used for meetings more generally. Certainly the second recorded use of the word in English in 1803 hardly seems to refer to an exciting spiritualistic meeting: "your séances . . . which I have a shrewd suspicion must be something dull."

"The Drop of Water" - a 1900-era nurse who makes a fateful decision while preparing the corpse of one of her patients - an elderly medium who died during a seance.  - 1 of 3 short stories in the 1963 film _Black Sabbath_ (vhs/ntsc)

Echinopsis Seance

• Ouija board
• track _Séance_ by Deepsky on Fragrant Music
• tech house release _This Is Not A Seance_ 12" by The Little Man Presents on Mosaic #009
  • a1 _This Is Not A Seance_
  • a2 _Machine Code_
  • b1 _Take It Back_
  • b2 _Evidence_
• post rock track _Waking Dream Seance_ MP3 by I Am Spoonbender off of _Sender/Receiver on Gold Standard Laboratories (1998)
• track _An Exact Seance_ MP3 by Slaves off of _Devil's Pleasures_ 12" on Troubleman Unlimited (1999)

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