Download or read book Spirit Possession around the World written by Joseph P. Laycock and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2015-05-26 with total page 445 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides a fascinating historical and cultural overview of traditional beliefs about spirit possession and exorcism around the world, from Europe to Asia and the Middle East to the Americas. Possession and exorcism are elements that occur in nearly every culture. Why is belief in spiritual possession so universal? This accessible reference volume offers a broad sample of the traditions and cultures involving possession and exorcism, presenting thoughts on this widely popular topic by experts from the fields of anthropology, sociology, religious studies, history, neuroscience, forensics, and theology. The entries cover the subject of possession and exorcism across all inhabited continents, from the Bronze Age to the 21st century, providing information that is accessible and intriguing as well as scholarly and authoritative. Beyond addressing the Christian tradition of possession and exorcism, Pentecostalism, and "New Age" and less widely known Western concepts about possession and exorcism, this work examines ideas about possession and exorcism from other world religions and the indigenous cultures of Asia, Africa, and the Americas. It also covers historic cases of possession and presents biographies of famous theologians, exorcists, and possessed individuals. High school and undergraduate readers will learn about world history, religious and spiritual traditions, and world cultures through a topic that figures prominently in popular culture and modern entertainment. Bibliographies that accompany each entry as well as a selected, general bibliography serve to help students locate print and electronic sources of additional information.
Download or read book Demon Possession the Christian written by C. Fred Dickason and published by Crossway. This book was released on 1989 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shows from theology, the Bible and counseling experiences that Christians can be affected by demonic activity. Equips believers to fight spiritual battles--and win.
Download or read book Spirit Possession written by Éva Pócs and published by Central European University Press. This book was released on 2022-05-31 with total page 556 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Possession, a seemingly irrational phenomenon, has posed challenges to generations of scholars rooted in Western notions of body-soul dualism, self and personhood, and a whole set of presuppositions inherited from Christian models of possession that was “good” or “bad.” The authors of the essays in this book present a new and more promising approach. They conceive spirit possession as a form of communication, of expressivity, of culturally defined behavior that should be understood in the context of local, vernacular theories and empiric reflections. With the aim of reformulating the comparative anthropology of spirit possession, the editors have opened corridors between previously separate areas of research. Together, anthropologists and historians working on several historical periods and in different European, African, South American, and Asian cultural areas attempt to redefine the very concept of possession, freeing it from the Western notion of the self and more clearly delineating it from related matters such as witchcraft, devotion, or mysticism. The book also provides an overview of new research directions, including novel methods of participant observation and approaches to spirit possession as indigenous historiography
Download or read book Believe Not Every Spirit written by Moshe Sluhovsky and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2008-11-15 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From 1400 through 1700, the number of reports of demonic possessions among European women was extraordinarily high. During the same period, a new type of mysticism—popular with women—emerged that greatly affected the risk of possession and, as a result, the practice of exorcism. Many feared that in moments of rapture, women, who had surrendered their souls to divine love, were not experiencing the work of angels, but rather the ravages of demons in disguise. So how then, asks Moshe Sluhovsky, were practitioners of exorcism to distinguish demonic from divine possessions? Drawing on unexplored accounts of mystical schools and spiritual techniques, testimonies of the possessed, and exorcism manuals, Believe Not Every Spirit examines how early modern Europeans dealt with this dilemma. The personal experiences of practitioners, Sluhovsky shows, trumped theological knowledge. Worried that this could lead to a rejection of Catholic rituals, the church reshaped the meaning and practices of exorcism, transforming this healing rite into a means of spiritual interrogation. In its efforts to distinguish between good and evil, the church developed important new explanatory frameworks for the relations between body and soul, interiority and exteriority, and the natural and supernatural.
Download or read book Demons written by Michael S. Heiser and published by Lexham Press. This book was released on 2020-04-29 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The truth about demons is far stranger—and even more fascinating—than what's commonly believed. Are demons real? Are they red creatures with goatees holding pitchforks and sitting on people's shoulders while whispering bad things? Did a third of the angels really rebel with Satan? Are demons and "principalities and powers" just terms for the same entities, or are they different members of the kingdom of darkness? Is the world a chaotic mess because of what happened in Eden, or is there more to the story of evil? What people believed about evil spiritual forces in ancient biblical times is often very different than what people have been led to believe about them today. And this ancient worldview is missing from most attempts to treat the topic. In Demons, Michael Heiser debunks popular presuppositions about the very real powers of darkness. Rather than traditions, stories, speculations, or myths, Demons is grounded in what ancient people of both the Old and New Testament eras believed about evil spiritual forces and in what the Bible actually says. You'll come away with a sound, biblical understanding of demons, supernatural rebellion, evil spirits, and spiritual warfare.
Download or read book How About Demons written by Felicitas D. Goodman and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 1988-05-22 with total page 165 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author of the Exorcism of Anneliese Michel “is to be commended for a stimulating and wide-reaching treatment of a compelling and much-debated subject” (Journal of Folklore Research). As part of a series that strives to introduce new or previously unrecognized folkloric phenomena—as well as new approaches and theories that result from discovery and investigation—How About Demons? provides an overview of a topic that has for many years captured the imagination of people from all walks of life. Rich in detail derived from the author’s fieldwork and anthropological literature, this work contemplates possession and exorcism in a holistic manner—discussing their effects on both the body and soul. How About Demons? paints a picture of possession as a usually positive experience occurring in a wide variety of cultures and religions around the globe. It also details the ritual of exorcism which is applied when things go wrong. “Quite an interesting book.”—Religious Studies Review “It is by far superior to anything else on demons we have seen in the past few years.”—The American Rationalist
Download or read book The Possession at Loudun written by Michel de Certeau and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2000-08 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is August 18, 1634. Father Urbain Grandier, convicted of sorcery that led to the demonic possession of the Ursuline nuns of provincial Loudun in France, confesses his sins on the porch of the church of Saint-Pierre, then perishes in flames lit by his own exorcists. A dramatic tale that has inspired many artistic retellings, including a novel by Aldous Huxley and an incendiary film by Ken Russell, the story of the possession at Loudun here receives a compelling analysis from the renowned Jesuit historian Michel de Certeau. Interweaving substantial excerpts from primary historical documents with fascinating commentary, de Certeau shows how the plague of sorceries and possessions in France that climaxed in the events at Loudun both revealed the deepest fears of a society in traumatic flux and accelerated its transformation. In this tour de force of psychological history, de Certeau brings to vivid life a people torn between the decline of centralized religious authority and the rise of science and reason, wracked by violent anxiety over what or whom to believe. At the time of his death in 1986, Michel de Certeau was a director of studies at the école des hautes études en sciences sociales, Paris. He was author of eighteen books in French, three of which have appeared in English translation as The Practice of Everyday Life,The Writing of History, and The Mystic Fable, Volume 1, the last of which is published by The University of Chicago Press. "Brilliant and innovative. . . . The Possession at Loudun is [de Certeau's] most accessible book and one of his most wonderful."—Stephen Greenblatt (from the Foreword)
Download or read book Fertile Disorder written by Kalpana Ram and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2013-01-31 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In her innovative new book, Kalpana Ram reflects on the way spirit possession unsettles some of the foundational assumptions of modernity. What is a human subject under the varied conditions commonly associated with possession? What kind of subjectivity must already be in place to allow such a transformation to occur? How does it alter our understanding of memory and emotion if these assail us in the form of ghosts rather than as attributes of subjective experience? What does it mean to worship deities who are afflictive and capricious, yet bear an intimate relationship to justice? What is a "human" body if it can be taken over by a whole array of entities? What is agency if people can be "claimed" in this manner? What is gender if, while possessed, a woman is a woman no longer? Drawing on spirit possession among women and the rich traditions of subaltern religion in Tamil Nadu, South India, Ram concludes that the basis for constructing an alternative understanding of human agency need not rest on the usual requirements of a fully present consciousness or on the exercise of choice and planning. Instead of relegating possession, ghosts, and demons to the domain of the exotic, Ram uses spirit possession to illuminate ordinary experiences and relationships. In doing so, she uncovers fundamental instabilities that continue to haunt modern formulations of gender, human agency, and political emancipation. Fertile Disorder interrogates the modern assumptions about gender, agency, and subjectivity that underlie the social improvement projects circulating in Tamil Nadu, assumptions that directly shape people’s lives. The book pays particular attention to projects of family planning, development, reform, and emancipation. Combining ethnography with philosophical argument, Ram fashions alternatives to standard post-modernist and post-structuralist formulations. Grounded in decades of fieldwork, ambitious and wide ranging, her work is conceived as a journey that makes incursions into the unfamiliar, then returns us to the familiar. She argues that magic is not a monopoly of any one culture, historical period, or social formation but inhabits modernity—not only in the places, such as cinema and sound recording, where it is commonly looked for, but in "habit" and in aspects of everyday life that have been largely overlooked and shunned. Fertile Disorder will be of interest to a wide range of scholars in anthropology, religion, gender studies, subaltern studies, and post colonial theory.
Download or read book True Or False Possession written by Jean Lhermitte and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "True and False Possession, an English translation by P. J. Hepburned Scott of Vrais et faux possedes (F. Brouty, J. Fayard, et Cie, 1956), was originally published in 1963 by Hawthorn Books, New York, as Volume 43 of the Twentieth Century Encyclopedia of Catholicism, edited by Henri Daniel-Rops."
Download or read book Possession written by Elana Johnson and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-05-08 with total page 414 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a world where Thinkers control the population and Rules are not meant to be broken, 15-year-old Violet Schoenfeld must make a choice to control or be controlled after learning truths about her "dead" sister and "missing" father.
Download or read book Possession written by Katie Lowe and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2021-02-09 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Possession is a chilling psychological thriller written with Katie Lowe’s signature “subtle, persistent, and unmistakable creepiness” (Kirkus, on The Furies). The past haunts her. The present hunts her. Conviction @ConvictionPod · 1m The investigating officer: “I’ve seen a lot of homicides in the years since, but...that’s the one that keeps me up at night.” The husband’s best man: “They had everybody fooled. Or at least, she did. But I always knew something was off.” Hannah, the wife: “I told you. I don’t remember anything. I don’t know.” That’s all to come, this season, on Conviction. Get ready for our most twisted season yet. ~~~ Ten years ago, Hannah’s husband was brutally murdered in their home, and she (conveniently) doesn’t remember a thing about that night. But the police charged someone else—a stranger—and put him away for life. And Hannah packed up her six-year-old daughter and left London behind. But now her hard-won countryside peace is threatened. Conviction, a viral true crime podcast known for getting cases reopened and old verdicts overturned, has turned its attention to Hannah’s husband’s murder for its new season. They say police framed the man who was found guilty, and that Hannah has more suspicious secrets than just her memory loss: a history of volatility; citations at the clinic where she worked as a psychiatrist; dependencies on alcohol and pills; and a familicidal grandmother, locked away in a Gothic insane asylum until her death. As Hannah loses the trust of everyone she loves, the only person she feels she can confide in is a former colleague, Darcy, who’s come back into her life—but who may have motives of her own. But Hannah can’t tell even Darcy her deepest secret: that she’s still tormented by the memory of her husband and the crater he carved through her life.
Download or read book Demon Possession written by John Nevius and published by . This book was released on 2017-05-02 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Demon Possession in China - frightening happenings narrated by Dr. John Nevius, a pioneering American Protestant missionary in China, appointed by the American Presbyterian Mission; his missionary ideas were also very important in the spread of the church in Korea. Experiences in Central Shantung, India, Japan, but also demon possession in Christian countries.
Download or read book Spirited Things written by Paul Christopher Johnson and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2014-05-07 with total page 351 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The word “possession” is anything but transparent, especially as it developed in the context of the African Americas. There it referred variously to spirits, material goods, and people. It served as a watershed term marking both transactions in which people were made into things—via slavery—and ritual events by which the thingification of people was revised. In Spirited Things, Paul Christopher Johnson gathers together essays by leading anthropologists in the Americas that reopen the concept of possession on these two fronts in order to examine the relationship between African religions in the Atlantic and the economies that have historically shaped—and continue to shape—the cultures that practice them. Exploring the way spirit possessions were framed both by material things—including plantations, the Catholic church, the sea, and the phonograph—as well as by the legacy of slavery, they offer a powerful new way of understanding the Atlantic world.
Download or read book Demonic Foes written by Richard Gallagher, M.D. and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2020-10-06 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The world’s leading psychiatric authority on demonic possession delves into the hidden world of exorcisms and his own transformation from cynic to believer over the course of his twenty-five-year career. Successful New York psychiatrist Richard Gallagher was skeptical yet intrigued when a hard-nosed, no-nonsense Catholic priest asked him to examine a woman for a possible exorcism. Meeting her, Gallagher was astonished. The woman’s behavior defied logic. In an instant, she could pinpoint a person’s secret weaknesses. She knew how individuals she’d never known had died, including Gallagher’s own mother, who passed away after a lengthy battle with ovarian cancer. She spoke fluently in multiple languages, including Latin—but only when she was in a trance. This was not psychosis, Gallagher concluded. It was, in his scientific estimation, what could only be describe as paranormal ability. The woman wasn’t mentally disturbed—she was possessed. This remarkable case was the first of many that Gallagher would encounter. Sought after today by leaders of all faiths—ministers, priests, rabbis and imams, Gallagher has spent a quarter-century studying demonic activity and exorcisms throughout history and has witnessed more cases than any other psychiatrist in the world today. In this eerie and enthralling book, Gallagher chronicles his most famous cases for the first time, including: A professional who claimed her spiritualist mother had “assigned” her a spirit who “turned on her.” A petite woman—”90 pounds soaking wet”—who threw a 200-pound Lutheran deacon across the room to the horror of onlookers in a church hall; And “Julia,” the so-called Satanic queen and self-described witch, who exhibited “the most harrowing” case, a “once-in-a-century” possession. Going beyond horror movies and novels, Demonic Foes takes you deep into this hidden world, sharing in full details of these true-life tales of demonic possession.
Download or read book The Demon s Possession written by Kiersten Fay and published by . This book was released on 2020-09-03 with total page 442 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A devilishly passionate tale of a fierce demon captain and the mysterious young princess he vows to protect. Their passion will ignite the stars. As captain of the merchant ship Marada, Sebastian has been commissioned to deliver a curious parcel to a ruthless pirate named Ethanule. But when a bewitching young woman mysteriously appears on his ship, he finds it impossible to focus on the job...and to keep his hands off her. Held captive most of her life, Analia makes a desperate bid for freedom and escapes onto a craft led by a fearsome demon who sparks her desire, but her secrets are more dangerous than she knows. If she is to maintain her freedom, she must gain Sebastian's trust while concealing her true nature.
Download or read book About Possession written by John R. Wikse and published by Penn State University Press. This book was released on 1977 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Exorcist written by William Peter Blatty and published by Random House. This book was released on 2010-01-26 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Father Damien Karras: 'Where is Regan?' Regan MacNeil: 'In here. With us.' The terror begins unobtrusively. Noises in the attic. In the child's room, an odd smell, the displacement of furniture, an icy chill. At first, easy explanations are offered. Then frightening changes begin to appear in eleven-year-old Regan. Medical tests fail to shed any light on her symptoms, but it is as if a different personality has invaded her body. Father Damien Karras, a Jesuit priest, is called in. Is it possible that a demonic presence has possessed the child? Exorcism seems to be the only answer... First published in 1971, The Exorcist became a literary phenomenon and inspired one of the most shocking films ever made. This edition, polished and expanded by the author, includes new dialogue, a new character and a chilling new extended scene, provides an unforgettable reading experience that has lost none of its power to shock and continues to thrill and terrify new readers.
