Transformation: Whitley Strieber's Paranormal Gnosis (original) (raw)
The Futures of Magic: Ethnographic theories of unbelief, doubt, and opacity in contemporary worlds. A Workshop convened by Richard Irvine and Theodoros Kyriakides, 2018
I take as my starting point the premise that Western ‘moderns’ are not so different from people in so-called pre-industrial, small-scale societies and never have been (Latour, 1993; Josephson-Storm, 2017), and that in today’s world, to a greater or lesser extent, Western forms of education and globalisation mean that everyone is faced with the question of choosing between different sorts of cosmology (Taylor, 2004), or is at least aware that others might have a different view of the world. I also assume that, as Lévy-Bruhl (1975) accepted in his later writings, logical and mystical thinking co-exist in all societies and in every human-mind. Having said that, there is a disjunction between the popular appetite for the paranormal, personal experience of Psi phenomena, and religious and spiritual practices on the one hand, and a fairly extreme physicalist straight-jacket that manifests itself in the media, within academia and in academic publishing on the other. In the United Kingdom and other parts of the Western world new spaces and practices are being created that seek to legitimise forms of magical thinking. I am going to leave religion on one side and focus in particular on the spaces between science and magic in which personal experiences that cannot be accommodated by the current dominant medical and scientific models are expressed, necessitating new or expanded understandings of the way the world works. Anthropologists have made some cautious moves towards validating personal and interpersonal experience as a respectable research tool (Briggs, 1974; Jackson, 1996; Jakobsen, 1999; Turner and Bruner, 1986), and have described their own uncanny experiences in the field, whether from a perspective of doubt in the interpretations offered by their hosts (Favret-Saada, 1980; Louw, 2015), by internalising emic explanations (Stoller, 1987; Turner, 1992), or while struggling to make sense of the challenge these experiences can pose to one’s settled view of the world (Clifton, 1992; Jenkins, 2015). The potentially transformative effects of fieldwork in general and extraordinary experiences in particular have also found their way into academic texts (Goulet & Miller, 2007; Young & Goulet, 1994). Having gained at least a glimmer of a very different psychic world and range of relationships with human and non-human others in Cameroon, I was taken aback by some of the continuities I later discovered among alternative healers in the United Kingdom, particularly when discussing forms of psychic energy, possession and the fluidity of the Self. This raised questions concerning the role of personal experience and its cultural manifestations and codifications on the one hand, and the challenges of interpreting uncanny or unusual experiences in a largely secular, rationalist society on the other. Along with David Hufford (1982), Michael Winkelman, (2016), Gregory Shushan (2018) and others, I suspect that first hand and recounted experiences of ‘magical’ phenomena, particularly near death experiences, encounters with the deceased, mediumistic and shamanic experiences, out of body travel, Psi (clairvoyance, telepathy, pre-cognition, psychokinesis), sleep paralysis and spirit possession, have profoundly shaped the ways in which human beings in all times and places have formed their religious ideas and cosmological outlook. Taking the example of spirit possession, I explore some of the ways in which experiences that appear to be universal and ancient appear or reappear in Western society to be interpreted in ways that seek a sometimes uneasy accommodation with normative medical, scientific (and religious) models of reality. Ethnographic enquiry is based on a conference organised by the Spirit Release Forum (SRF) in London (Bowie, 2017), and some of the wider work of those involved in this event. Motivations for involvement in the work of the SRF and similar bodies vary, but simple curiosity and a research agenda (Haraldsson, 2012) seems to play less of a role than direct experience of the intrusion of spirits into an existing clinical practice, which then leads clinicians new and unorthodox directions (Fiore, 1995; Zinser, 2010). In some cases a first-hand haunting or possession experience leads those affected to search for an explanation and relief or release from an unwanted and disturbing intrusion. Engagement in a world of spirits is not seen as an alternative to or escape from religion, science, or the ‘ordinary’ world, but as a result of ghostly or spirit-related experiences the world as it was has often slipped from view. Rationalist explanations for extraordinary and often frightening and life-changing encounters with spirits cannot be wished away and, as Jeanne Favret-Saada’s Normandy peasant farmers informed her, the Church can generally only provide a small, and not very powerful means of combatting the power of witchcraft and other psychic phenomena (1980). The medical profession may well pronounce the sufferer insane and resort to chemical treatments and perhaps incarceration. A de-witcher, shaman, spirit release therapist or suitably trained and experienced medium is therefore sought out, often as a last resort, although they may come disguised as a regular psychologist, psychiatrist or alternative healer (almost certainly in private practice). The focus of this particular SRF conference was mental health and ways in which a phenomenology of spirits and spirit possession can help provide clinical help for various types of mental illness. Much of the focus was on schizophrenia and hearing voices, conditions poorly understood and inadequately treated by conventional pharmaceutical and psychiatric methods, but which appear amenable to spirit release therapy. A range of other conditions, including obsessions and compulsions and Tourettes, which are similarly unresponsive to psychoanalytic treatment, are fertile ground for ‘magical’ healing methods (cf. Rapoport, 1989). Most of those taking part in the conference were both open to studying the effects of spirit release techniques in clinical situations and realistic about the barriers that such ideas openly expressed encounter within the NHS.
2022
Religious studies and concomitant fields within the humanities have long ignored paranormal phenomena as viable data for theory building. This thesis is an attempt to correct such an error and provide a step towards taking seriously the experiential reports of persons who recount anomalous and paranormal happenings that defy a materialist metaphysics. Post- Enlightenment societies have largely presupposed a working metaphysical model of materialism through which all acquired knowledge must be filtered. This model is insufficient to explain all the material data including paranormal phenomena. The assumption that this model contains the only method(s) that can assess data leads to a form of epistemological marginalization by which all other societies’ beliefs and experiences are subjected. The methodological approach of phenomenology and the accompanying tool known as “bracketing” are challenged and argued to be a reinforcement of the metaphysical paradigm of materialism. Other epistemological approaches are considered that advocate for more open ontological possibilities. An examination of the alien abduction phenomenon and the related research findings of several academics is presented with an emphasis upon the objective nature of the phenomenon. Related research funded by the US government pertaining to anomalous findings such as UFOs, poltergeist activity, remote viewing, telekinesis, psychokinesis, prognostication, and other psi-related abilities are discussed as they relate to the alien abduction phenomenon. The primary intention of this thesis is to showcase the serious attention that paranormal phenomena merit within the academy and the implications for incorporating such data, especially within the discipline of religious studies. New approaches and theoretical frameworks could potentially arise as a result of engaging with the possibility that paranormal phenomena are real and accepting that our current scientific understanding of the world around us is in some ways incomplete.
Th published article Paranormality myth or reality 0074 (1)
International Journal of Recent Academic Research, 2020
The events which cannot be explained by our known five senses-hearing, seeing, smelling, touching, and tasting are called paranormal events. These are mysterious events happening frequently across the world and these simply defy logic Paranormal events are, still, a mystery. These events are sporadic in nature and are frequently happening across the globe and have intrigued intelligentsia. With so much work going across the world to understand the paranormal phenomena, we are still wondering whether Paranormality is a myth or reality. In this article, I try to analyze this question keeping the probing totally unbiased and rational. I approach the question with research in favour and also against the question, giving fair weightage to arguments in favour and also against Please read on.
Open Letter to Paranormalists Limits of science, trust and responsibility
This is a letter to members of the paranormalist community discussing lessons learned, as Co-Director of the ATransC, about science, scientists and research. The letter includes a brief discussion identifying paranormalists, dominant theories about the nature of paranormal phenomena and important considerations for their study. The intent is to advise paranormalists about the need for discernment concerning the intention of those who would study these phenomena. (Revised November 2017)
Religion, the Occult, and the Paranormal: An Introduction
2015
The legacy of the Enlightenment is increasingly contested in the twenty-first century. It is undeniable that secularisation has gained ground as institutional Christianity retreated from the public sphere, but since the mid-twentieth century the supernatural (a close relative of religion, but one liberated from the traditional and institutional aspects of that phenomenon) has been resurgent in the West (Hanegraaff 2003). The early sociologist of religion Max Weber (1864-1920) identified ‘the disenchantment of the world’ (die Entzauberung der Welt) as the retreat of belief and participation in spirit-filled nature and traditional Christian religion, and the advance of science, despite the fact that its certainties failed to satisfy the moral and existential questions of, ‘[w]hat shall we do and how shall we live?’ (Weber 2001[1948]: 143). In the West, the Christian churches have trenchantly resisted the notion that ‘religion’ (which is traditional, legitimate, respectable and represents God and the miraculous) might have anything in common with unauthorised manifestations of the supernatural (the occult and the paranormal, now mainstreamed as prominent discursive motifs in popular culture). Following Weber, Keith Thomas in his seminal work, Religion and the Decline of Magic (1971) asserted that magical and supernatural beliefs no longer had traction in modern society. He contended that intelligent, modern people no longer believed in astrological systems, divination, ancient prophecies, ghosts, or fairies (Thomas 1971: ix). Yet recent scholarship in the social sciences (in particular, Religious Studies) has revealed this disclaimer to be an assertion of professional boundary maintenance. Both embattled religious institutions in secular modernity, and the modern secular state itself, with its exaltation of science and technology, can be viewed as being under siege by the unsanctioned and powerfully renascent occult and paranormal. The paranormal is immensely popular in contemporary culture, and includes both Christian (angels) and non-Christian supernatural phenomena (ghosts, witches). Indeed, as Jeffrey J. Kripal has stated, it is ‘our secret in plain sight’ (Kripal 2010: 7).