Download or read book Anthropology and Psychic Research written by Robert L. Van De Castle and published by Cosimo, Inc.. This book was released on 2016-05-01 with total page 41 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Very little cross-fertilization of ideas, concepts, or techniques has developed between the fields of anthropology and psychic research. This essay, chapter 11 of Psychic Exploration, reviews several firsthand reports of field observations that offer encouraging anecdotal support for the existence of psi. Also reviewed are the statistically-significant card testing experiments by Foster with American Indians, by the Roses with Australian aborigines, and by the author with Panamanian Indians. The full volume of Psychic Exploration can be purchased as an ebook or paperback version from all major online retailers and at cosimobooks.com.
Download or read book Paranthropology Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal written by Edited by Jack Hunter and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2012-06-30 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We are living in a complicated period in relation to our understanding of 'extraordinary' phenomena. Naive materialist approaches are more assertive than ever, in anthropology and in the world more generally. At the same time, the taboos against admitting to the reality of the paranormal are weakening. There is a growing body of writing which takes the paranormal and extraordinary seriously, while bringing to it the same academic standards that any other subject matter would require. This is a valuable and important development, and it helps open the way to new modes of understanding in the sciences and social sciences that will not reject scientific rationality, but expand that rationality so as to include more of the world of human experience. The articles in this Paranthropology reader provide important clues and suggestions, along with rigorous argument, to help us in exploring what is likely to be a major area of anthropological engagement in coming years. Dr.Geoffrey Samuel, Cardiff University.
Download or read book Parapsychology and Anthropology written by Allan Angoff and published by . This book was released on 1974 with total page 362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Each year, the Parapsychology Foundation hosts an international conference, during which a different topic relating to parapsychology is discussed. The conference was begun by Eileen J. Garret and Frances P. Bolton, shortly after they founded the Parapsychology Foundation. They brought together from all over the world some of the men and women working in isolation in a field regarded by many as too remote for respectable research. Eileen Garret inaugurated these conference to encourage those early parpsychologists to advance beyond an easy orthodoxy of thought and technique into the broader aspect of physics, chemistry, and biology and to relate these fields of research to the human personality and the largely unknown extrasensory capacities it contains.
Download or read book Manifesting Spirits written by Jack Hunter and published by Aeon Books. This book was released on 2020-12-12 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An exploration of contemporary trance and physical mediumship at a private spiritualist home-circle called the Bristol Spirit Lodge. Located in a garden on the outskirts of Bristol, the Lodge is a wooden shed specially constructed for the purposes of mediumship development and spirit communication. Through a combination of ethnographic observations in séances – including his own experiences of mediumship development – and interviews with spirits and their mediums, Hunter delves into a sub-urban world of trance states, ectoplasm, spirit lights and discarnate entities. Issues relating to altered states of consciousness, personhood, performance and the efficacy of ritual are examined in order to make sense of the processes by which spirits become manifest in social reality. A large part of Manifesting Spirits is given over to a broader discussion of anthropology's evolving attitudes toward the 'paranormal' as a component of the 'life-worlds' of many people across the globe, and argues for the development of a non-reductive anthropological approach to the paranormal, and mediumship in particular. This emerging framework – referred to as 'ontological flooding' does not attempt to explain away the existence of spirits in terms of functional, cognitive or pathological theories (as most mainstream theorists tend to do), but rather embraces a processual perspective that emphasises complexity and multiple interconnected processes underlying spirit possession performances and experiences.
Download or read book Psychic Investigators written by Efram Sera-Shriar and published by University of Pittsburgh Press. This book was released on 2022-06-14 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Psychic Investigators examines British anthropology’s engagement with the modern spiritualist movement during the late Victorian era. Efram Sera-Shriar argues that debates over the existence of ghosts and psychical powers were at the center of anthropological discussions on human beliefs. He focuses on the importance of establishing credible witnesses of spirit and psychic phenomena in the writings of anthropologists such as Alfred Russel Wallace, Edward Burnett Tylor, Andrew Lang, and Edward Clodd. The book draws on major themes, such as the historical relationship between science and religion, the history of scientific observation, and the emergence of the subfield of anthropology of religion in the second half of the nineteenth century. For secularists such as Tylor and Clodd, spiritualism posed a major obstacle in establishing the legitimacy of the theory of animism: a core theoretical principle of anthropology founded in the belief of “primitive cultures” that spirits animated the world, and that this belief represented the foundation of all religious paradigms. What becomes clear through this nuanced examination of Victorian anthropology is that arguments involving spirits or psychic forces usually revolved around issues of evidence, or lack of it, rather than faith or beliefs or disbeliefs.
Download or read book Engaging the Anomalous written by Jack Hunter and published by . This book was released on 2018-04-30 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Engaging the Anomalous is a collection of essays written by Jack Hunter between 2010-17. Together, the essays push toward the development of a non-reductive, participatory and experiential anthropology of the paranormal. Over the course of the book, Hunter surveys: - Trends in anthropology's engagement with the paranormal - The anthropology and neuroscience of spirit possession - The history of Spiritualism and the phenomena of physical mediumship - The overlaps between mediumistic practices and other mind-body phenomena Hunter also poses serious questions about consciousness, experience, spirits, mediumship, psi, the nature of reality, and how best to investigate and understand them. In addition, the book features a selection of illuminating interviews with the author, as well as an original Foreword by leading parapsychologist and trickster theorist George P. Hansen. Engaging the Anomalousis a bold contribution to Anomalistic literature.
Download or read book Adolf Bastian and the Psychic Unity of Mankind written by Klaus Peter Köpping and published by LIT Verlag Münster. This book was released on 1983 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Adolf Bastian mapped a programme for anthropological research in the nineteenth century which is still accepted in the international scholarly community today, without the figure of its founder being known. This is the first time that seminal pieces of the work of this much-neglected scholar have been translated into English. Bastian had an impact, directly and indirectly, on geography, psychology, comparative religious studies, and ethnology in the twentieth century.
Download or read book The Anthropological Paradox written by Massimo De Carolis and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-02-01 with total page 100 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book addresses how the erosion of traditional forms of political association and legal regulation has given rise to a pluralism of "imperfect communities" constantly exposed to the risk of dissolution. These are niches and micro-worlds that are connected through precarious and ambivalent ties. Such a far-reaching transformation affects at one and the same time both our psychic and social identity. The book argues that this phenomenon is linked to the proliferation of new forms of psychic "disorder" – depression, personality disorder, dissociation – typical of hypermodern societies. However, while these can easily turn into genuine disorders, they can also open onto richer forms of identity, more complex than those of the past. Based on this analysis, the book’s main claim is that this dynamic epitomizes a general anthropological paradox – one that has always marked the human animal: humans are bound by their own biological constitution to fend off disorder by drawing the boundaries of artificial niches, and yet they are inclined to expose themselves to unlimited contingency so that they can find a truly suitable environment. Pursuing a novel understanding of the apparent collapse of traditional juridico-political settings, this book makes the case that the emergence of dissociations at several levels – individual, social, political, legal – does not stem from a lack of political imagination. Rather, it is a situation with which humans are inevitably confronted: a perennial tension between the limited and the unlimited, between the desire to take refuge and the desire to cross borders.
Download or read book Psychic Exploration written by Edgar D. Mitchell and published by Cosimo, Inc.. This book was released on 2011-07-01 with total page 946 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Psychic Exploration, A Challenge for Science is a primer on psychic research, life's purpose, and the meaning of the universe. Originally published in 1974, this landmark anthology of nearly thirty chapters on every area of psychic research is finally available again. Edgar D. Mitchell, Apollo 14 astronaut and moonwalker, as well as a distinguished researcher of the study of human consciousness, brought together eminent scientists to write about issues once considered too controversial to discuss. This book includes fascinating chapters on the history of parapsychology, telepathy, hauntings, psychic phenomena, and consciousness, along with an extensive glossary and index. This timeless anthology continues to be appealing as a reference work for those curious about the history of parapsychology, fans of the world of psi, and readers interested in the meaning of the universe. Contributors include: Willis W. Harman, Jean Houston, Stanley Krippner, Robert Masters, William G. Roll, Russell Targ, Charles T. Tart, Montague Ullman, and many more.
Download or read book How God Becomes Real written by T.M. Luhrmann and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2020-10-27 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The hard work required to make God real, how it changes the people who do it, and why it helps explain the enduring power of faith How do gods and spirits come to feel vividly real to people—as if they were standing right next to them? Humans tend to see supernatural agents everywhere, as the cognitive science of religion has shown. But it isn’t easy to maintain a sense that there are invisible spirits who care about you. In How God Becomes Real, acclaimed anthropologist and scholar of religion T. M. Luhrmann argues that people must work incredibly hard to make gods real and that this effort—by changing the people who do it and giving them the benefits they seek from invisible others—helps to explain the enduring power of faith. Drawing on ethnographic studies of evangelical Christians, pagans, magicians, Zoroastrians, Black Catholics, Santeria initiates, and newly orthodox Jews, Luhrmann notes that none of these people behave as if gods and spirits are simply there. Rather, these worshippers make strenuous efforts to create a world in which invisible others matter and can become intensely present and real. The faithful accomplish this through detailed stories, absorption, the cultivation of inner senses, belief in a porous mind, strong sensory experiences, prayer, and other practices. Along the way, Luhrmann shows why faith is harder than belief, why prayer is a metacognitive activity like therapy, why becoming religious is like getting engrossed in a book, and much more. A fascinating account of why religious practices are more powerful than religious beliefs, How God Becomes Real suggests that faith is resilient not because it provides intuitions about gods and spirits—but because it changes the faithful in profound ways.
Download or read book Science in the New Age written by David J. Hess and published by Univ of Wisconsin Press. This book was released on 1993 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hess examines the arguments of people who accept the paranormal as part of a spiritual quest, parapsychologists who are seeking scientific explanations for a narrow range of paranormal phenomena, and skeptics who pooh-pooh the very notion. He finds that, despite their disagreements, they are forging a shared culture. Written for the nonspecialist. Paper edition (unseen), $17.95. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Download or read book A New Science of the Paranormal written by Lawrence LeShan and published by Quest Books. This book was released on 2013-08-15 with total page 146 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mainline science rejects the paranormal because it cannot be proven by the classical methods of controlled experiments. But sciences such as geology, astronomy, and anthropology also don’t rely on laboratory testing for repeatable results. Moreover, psi concerns consciousness, which is by definition nonquantitative. "Psi researchers must stop acting like science’s poor relations," says author Lawrence LaShan, "limiting themselves to controlled experiments such as analyzing statistics of people guessing cards being flipped in the next room" This provocative book outlines the principles of making a real study of the large, exciting events — clairvoyance and precognition; mediumship and spirit controls; psychic healing — that would bring mainline science into and revitalize the whole field. "And the issue is not just academic," says LeShan. "The old, materialistic worldview has not worked. Psychic research," he argues, "can transform our sense of reality itself to offer a new and more hopeful picture of ourselves and of the world."
Download or read book Journal of the Society for Psychical Research written by Society for Psychical Research (Great Britain) and published by . This book was released on 1920 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Physics and Psychics written by Richard Noakes and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-10-17 with total page 421 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Noakes' revelatory analysis of Victorian scientists' fascination with psychic phenomena connects science, the occult and religion in intriguing new ways.
Download or read book Religion Supernaturalism the Paranormal and Pseudoscience written by Homayun Sidky and published by Anthem Press. This book was released on 2019-11-30 with total page 520 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Religion, Supernaturalism, the Paranormal, and Pseudoscience" provides a comprehensive rejoinder to the challenges posed to science, scientific anthropology, evolutionary theory and rationality by the advocates of supernatural, paranormal, and pseudoscientific perspectives and modes of thought associated with the current rise of irrationalism, antiintellectualism, and emboldened religious fundamentalism and violence. Drawing upon H. Sidky’s scientific anthropological background and ethnographic field research of supernatural and paranormal beliefs and practices in several cultures over three decades, the book answers several important questions: Why do humans have a proclivity for the supernatural and paranormal thinking? Why has humanity remained shackled to sets of ideas inherited from a violent past that have no basis in reality and which bestow an illusionary solace, promote bloodshed, endless cruelties and fervent hatreds, and have come at a high cost? Why have ancient superstitions been held as sacred, inviolate truths while other aspects of the archaic belief systems of which they were a part have long been discarded? Why have not humans outgrown religion and paranormal beliefs?
Download or read book The Resonance of Unseen Things written by Susan Lepselter and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2016-03-03 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An interdisciplinary study of how conspiracy theories and stories persist and resonate among different Americans
Download or read book Mattering the Invisible written by Diana Espírito Santo and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2021-05-14 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Exploring how technological apparatuses “capture” invisible worlds, this book looks at how spirits, UFOs, discarnate entities, spectral energies, atmospheric forces and particles are mattered into existence by human minds. Technological and scientific discourse has always been central to the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century spiritualist quest for legitimacy, but as this book shows, machines, people, and invisible beings are much more ontologically entangled in their definitions and constitution than we would expect. The book shows this entanglement through a series of contemporary case studies where the realm of the invisible arises through technological engagement, and where the paranormal intertwines with modern technology.
