Originally published in 1978 Spirit Possession and Spirit Mediumship in Africa and Afro-America is an incredibly diverse and comprehensive bibliography on published works containing ethnographic data on, and analysis of, spirit possession and spirit mediumship in North and Sub-Saharan Africa and in some Afro-American communities in the Western Hemisphere. The sources on Western Afro-American communities were chosen to shed light on the African continent and the Americas. The bibliography, while not exhaustive, provides extensive research on the area of research in spiritualism in Africa and Afro-America. The bibliography also provides unique sources on spirit cults, ritual or ethnic groups and will be of especial interest to researchers. Although published in the late 70s, this book will still provide an incredibly useful research tool for academics in the area of religion, with a focus on spiritualism and non-western religions.

Originally published in 1992, Channeling is a comprehensive bibliography on the subject of channeling. The book defines channeling as any message received or conveyed from transcendent entities and covers material on the history of channeling, those that have claimed to transcend death, contact with UFOs and contemporary channeling groups. The book acts as a research guide and seeks to outline the historical roots of channeling, explaining its major teachings and considers its significance as a spiritual movement. It provides sources from books, booklets, articles, and ephemeral material and offers a comprehensive list of both primary and secondary materials related to channeling, the bibliography takes the most diverse and useful sources of the time. This volume although published almost 30 years ago, still provides a unique and insightful collection for academics of religion, in particular those researching spiritualism and the occult.

Cutting across three areas of interest within New Religious Movements - insider perspectives, sociology of religion and the helping professions - this book explores insiders' experience of the Indian Guru-disciple Yogic tradition and is authored by a former member of that tradition. Highlighting the rich spiritual experience of devotees of Guru-disciple Yoga, and broadening the understanding of Guru-disciple Yoga Practice, this book also adds considerably to knowledge of conversion to New Religious Movements and to issues of affiliation and disengagement. Exploring participants' experience of attraction, affiliation and disengagement, these themes highlight individuals' personal experience of Guru-disciple Yoga Practice.

Using Spirituality in Psychotherapy: The Heart Led Approach to Clinical Practice offers a means for therapists to integrate a spiritual perspective into their clinical practice. The book provides a valuable alternative to traditional forms of psychotherapy by placing an emphasis on purpose and meaning. Introducing a new spiritually-informed model, Heart Led Psychotherapy (HLP), the book uses a BioPsychoSocialSpiritual approach to treat psychological distress. When clients experience challenges, trauma or attachment difficulties, this can create blocks and restrictions which result in repeated patterns of behaviours and subsequent psychological distress. Based on the premise that everyone is on an individual life journey, HLP teaches clients to become an observer, identifying the life lesson that they are being asked to understand or experience. The model can be used whether a client has spiritual beliefs or not, enabling them to make new choices that are in keeping with their authentic selves, and to live a more fulfilled and peaceful life. Illustrated by case studies to highlight key points, and including a range of practical resource exercises and strategies, this engaging book will have wide appeal to therapists and clinicians from a variety of backgrounds.

Originally published in 1968 The Founders of Psychical Research is centred upon the lives and work of Henry Sidgwick, Edmund Gurney and Frederic Myers - prominent in the Society for Psychical Research (S.P.R) - during its early years: it is not a history of the Society. It passes over important aspects of the S.P.R.'s story and deals at some length with matters quite outside it. The book frequently gives accounts of 'paranormal' phenomena which if indeed they occurred, would not be explainable through any recognisable hypothesis, but are treated throughout as unexplained.

In Strange Rites, Tara Isabella Burton takes a tour through contemporary American religiosity. As the once dominant totems of civic connection and civil discourse--traditional churches--continue to sink into obsolescence, people are looking elsewhere for the intensity and unity that religion once provided. We're making our own personal faiths - theistic or not - mixing and matching our spiritual, ritualistic, personal, and political practices in order to create our own bespoke religious selves. We're not just building new religions in 2019, we're buying them, from Gwyneth Paltrow's gospel of Goop, to the brilliantly cultish SoulCycle, to those who believe in their special destiny on Mars. In so doing, we're carrying on a longstanding American tradition of religious eclecticism, DIY-innovation and "unchurched" piety (and highly effective capitalism). Our era is not the dawn of American secularism, but rather a brand-bolstered resurgence of American pluralism, revved into overdrive by commerce and personalized algorithms, all to the tune of "Hallellujah"--America's most popular and spectacularly misunderstood wedding song.

The Handbook of UFO Religions, edited by esteemed scholar of new religions Benjamin E. Zeller, offers the most expansive and detailed study of the persistent, popular, and global phenomenon of religious engagements with ideas about extraterrestrial life. The present work considers not only new religions founded on ideas about extraterrestrials and UFOs, but how those within more mainstream religions have responded to the science, scientific speculation, and popular culture involving extraterrestrials, UFOs, and related concepts. Global in reach, it includes chapters considering South and East Asia, Europe, and North and South America, and draws on several interdisciplinary methods. In addition, the handbook traces connections between UFO religiosity and cultural patterns such as science and scientism, esoterism and occultism, millennialism, and popular culture.

To commemorate the 25th anniversary of the siege at Waco, and a tie-in to the upcoming Spike TV mini-series, an updated reissue of the critically acclaimed A PLACE CALLED WACO by Branch Davidian survivor, David Thibodeau now titled Waco: A Survivor's Story. For the first time ever, a survivor of the Waco massacre tells the inside story of Branch Davidians, David Koresh, and what really happened. When he first met the man who called himself David Koresh, David Thibodeau, who had never been religious in the slightest, was drumming for a rock band that was going nowhere fast. Intrigued and frustrated with a stalled music career, Thibodeau gradually became a follower and moved to the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas. He remained there until April 19, 1993, when the compound was stormed and burnt to the ground. In this book, Thibodeau explores why so many people came to believe that Koresh was truly divinely inspired. We meet the men, women and children of Mt. Carmel. We get inside the day-to-day life of the community. Thibodeau is brutally honest about himself, Koresh and the other members and the result is a revelatory look at life inside a cult. But Waco is just as brutally honest when it comes to dissecting the actions of the United States government. Thibodeau marshals an array of evidence, some of it never previously revealed, and proves conclusively that it was our own government that caused the Waco tragedy, including the fires. The result is a memoir that reads like a thriller, with each page taking us closer to the eventual inferno.

Why did so many Americans visit and write about, seances? What are the connections between the 'emergence' of spiritualism in 1848 and earlier kinds of supernatural phenomena? This book asks about the cultural and political meanings of spiritualism in the 19th century United States. In order to re-assess both transatlantic spiritualism and the culture in which it emerged, Bennett locates spiritualism within a highly technologized transatlantic capitalist culture. She argues that, through performances in which the dead speak through and to the living, white Americans' most profound anxieties about political and cultural dispossession, especially of Indians, are articulated.

In a remote corner of the Arctic in 1941, a meteor shower flashed across the sky for an unusually long time. Taking this to be a sign, one of the local Inuit proclaimed himself Jesus Christ. Another proclaimed himself God. Anyone who didn’t believe in them was Satan. Violence ensued. At the End of the World isn’t just the remarkable story of a series of murders that occurred on the Belcher Islands, a group of wind-blasted rocks in Canada’s Hudson Bay. It’s also a starting place for a deeper cultural exploration. Against the backdrop of the murders, which highlight the fact that senseless violence in the name of religion is not a contemporary phenomenon and that a even people as seemingly peaceful as the Inuit can turn to chaos at the hands of one person’s delusion, Millman addresses the burgeoning dawn of the digital era, following the murders’ trail to show how our obsession with screens is not unlike a cult and offering a warning cry against the erosion of humanity and the destruction of the environment. The story becomes a confluence of the consequences of generational trauma, outside religious evangelism, systemic racism against indigenous people, the perilous passage from the natural to the digital world, and what it means to be human in a time of technological dominance and climate disasters. At the End of the World, available for the first time in paperback, is not a straightforward tale of true crime but an examination of many of the issues that have become dominant in the global conversation. In snippets of reflection, Millman asks us to look north for answers to many of the questions we all hold, literally, in our hands.

In many parts of the world the "white man" is perceived to be an instigator of globalization and an embodiment of modernity. However, so far anthropologists have paid little attention to the actual heterogeneity and complexity of "whiteness" in specific ethnographic contexts. This study examines cultural perceptions of other and self as expressed in cargo cults and masked dances in Papua New Guinea. Indigenous terms, images, and concepts are being contrasted with their western counterparts, the latter partly deriving from the publications and field notes of Charles Valentine. After having done his first fieldwork more than fifty years ago, this "anthropological ancestor" has now become part of the local tradition and has thus turned into a kind of mythical figure. Based on anthropological fieldwork as well as on archival studies, this book addresses the relation between western and indigenous perceptions of self and other, between "tradition" and "modernity," and between anthropological "ancestors" and "descendants." In this way the work contributes to the study of "whiteness," "cargo cults" and masked dances in Papua New Guinea.

Exploring what does and what does not constitute pilgrimage, Redefining Pilgrimage draws together a wide variety of disciplines including politics, anthropology, history, religion and sociology. Leading contributors offer a broad range of case studies from a wide geographical area, exploring new ways of approaching pilgrimage beyond the classical religious model. Re-thinking the global phenomenon of pilgrimages in the 21st century, this book offers new perspectives to redefine pilgrimage.

A comprehensive collection of the pioneering work of Leonard Norman Primiano, one of the preeminent scholars in religious studies In 1995, Leonard Norman Primiano introduced the idea of "vernacular religion." He coined this term to overcome the denigration implied in the concept of "folk religion" or "popular religion," which was juxtaposed to "elite religion." This two-tiered model suggested that religion existed somewhere in a pure form and that the folk version transforms it. Instead, Primiano urged scholars to adopt an inductive approach to the study of religion and to pay attention to experiential aspects of belief systems, ultimately redressing a heritage of scholarly misinterpretation. Here for the first time, Leonard Norman Primiano's pioneering works have been collected into one volume, providing a foundational look at one of the preeminent scholars of twentieth-century religious studies. Vernacular Religion makes visible the dimensions of vernacular religion in North America, exemplifying the richness of its ability to explain key facets of American society, including especially thorny issues around race and sexuality. The volume also demonstrates a method of abiding engagement, the creation of ongoing relationships with those who are studied, and how the relationship between scholars and the communities they study inform an ethics of critical commitment-what Primiano calls an "ethnography of collaboration and reciprocity." This posthumous collection, edited by Deborah Dash Moore, brings together key studies in vernacular religion that explore its expression among such varied groups as Catholics, LGBTQ Christians, and the followers of Father Divine. Vernacular Religion models empathetic ethnographic engagement that embraces American religion in all its rich diversity, illuminating Primiano's enduring legacy.

This book examines a number of landmark shifts in our account of the relationship between human and divine existence, as reflected through the perception of time and corporeal experience. Drawing together some of the best scholars in the field, this book provides a representative cross-section of influential trends in the philosophy of religion (e.g. phenomenology, existential thought, Biblical hermeneutics, deconstruction) that have shaped our understanding of the body in its profane and sacred dimensions as site of conflicting discourses on presence and absence, subjectivity and the death of the subject, mortality, resurrection and eternal life.

This book is a study of contemporary spirituality as it is practiced in the world today, characterized by its secular and inclusive nature, and applied to art and art education. It identifies the issues facing a formal introduction of contemporary spiritual concepts into a secular and multicultural arts educational environment. Lander begins by separating the notion of "the spiritual" from the study of organized religions. She uses examples of art from different cultures in contemporary spiritual systems, making the study a reference book for contemporary spirituality and spirituality in art education, with usable definitions and practical examples suitable for scholars in art and visual studies, art education, and contemporary spirituality.

Modern Hindu Traditionalism addresses Hindu traditions that resisted contact with both Neo-Hindu thought and views of "classical" Hinduism perceived to be outmoded. This book provides an in-depth understanding of Modern Hindu Traditionalism through the case study of the Ramanandi order (sampradaya) and the portrait of the Jagadguru Ramanandacarya Ramnaresacarya. This guru belongs to the ancient tradition of the Ramanandi order, which is active at the present time and the biggest Vaisnava religious order in Northern India. Analyzing the historical evolution of the Ramanandi order, the author shows how different centers have undergone different changes over the centuries, and focuses on the independence struggle of a group of Ramanandis from the Ramanujis, which led to the creation of the role of Jagadguru Ramanandacarya and the construction of the Sri Math. Drawing on extensive fieldwork, this book casts light on figures and processes central to the development of Hinduism in the twentieth and twenty-first century and consequently describes the role of religion in contemporary Indian society. The author examines the role religious institutions and their leaders have in the everyday life of individuals, how they interact with and in the society, and how they approach and interpret social and political issues. The Ramanandis' use of new methods of communication, in particular social media, is an innovative part of the study. A welcome innovation in the studies of South Asian religion, this book will be of interest to historians, anthropologists, and scholars of Hinduism and religion and politics.

Learn the latest details and most recent groundbreaking discoveries that reveal, for the first time, the mystery of life in the spirit world after death on Earth--proof that our consciousness survives--in "Journey of Souls" by Michael Newton, Ph.D.
Using a special hypnosis technique to reach the hidden memories of subjects, Dr. Newton discovered some amazing insights into what happens to us between lives. "Journey of Souls" is the record of 29 people who recalled their experiences between physical deaths. Through their extraordinary stories, you will learn specifics about:
-How it feels to die
-What you see and feel right after death
-The truth about "spiritual guides"
-What happens to "disturbed" souls
-Why you are assigned to certain soul groups in the spirit world and what you do there
- How you choose another body to return to Earth
-The different levels of souls: beginning, intermediate, and advanced
-When and where you first learn to recognize soulmates on Earth
-The purpose of life
"Journey of Souls" is a graphic record or "travel log" by these people of what happens between lives on Earth. They give specific details as they movingly describe their astounding experiences.
After reading "Journey of Souls, " you will gain a better understanding of the immortality of the human soul. You will meet day-to-day challenges with a greater sense of purpose. You will begin to understand the reasons behind events in your own life.
"Journey of Souls" is a life-changing book. Already, over 165,000 people have taken "Journey of Souls" to heart, giving them hope in trying times. You should read a copy, too.

New religious movements commonly known as cults are defined as organizations that have arisen within the last 200 years. Most treatments of these movements have typically resorted to sensationalism rather than objectivity, and New religious movements tend to receive negative media publicity. Despite their unfavorable portrayal in popular culture, however, new religious movements are a global phenomenon and much remains to be studied about these movements. In this newly updated second edition of the Historical Dictionary of New Religious Movements, George D. Chryssides traces the rise and development of new religious movements throughout the world. An updated introduction summarizes the phenomenon of new religious movements and lays out the changes to the dictionary since the 2001 edition, while the main body of the dictionary consists of close to 600 cross-referenced entries on key figures, ideas, themes, and places related to various new religious movements. An index organizes the information in the dictionary, and a comprehensive bibliography leads the researcher to further sources. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about new religious movements."

Nearly twenty years after they happened, the ATF and FBI assaults on the Branch Davidian residence near Waco, Texas remain the most deadly law enforcement action on American soil. The raid by Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms agents on February 28, 1993, which resulted in the deaths of four ATF agents and six Branch Davidians, precipitated a 51-day siege conducted by the FBI. The FBI tank and gas assault on the residence at Mount Carmel Center on April 19 culminated in a fire that killed 53 adults and 23 children, with only nine survivors. In A Journey to Waco, survivor Clive Doyle not only takes readers inside the tragic fire and its aftermath, but he also tells the larger story of how and why he joined the Branch Davidians, how the Branch Davidian community developed, and the status of survivors. While the media and official reports painted one picture of the Branch Davidians and the two assaults, A Journey to Waco shares a much more personal account of the ATF raid, the siege, and the final assault that details events unreported by the media. A Journey to Waco presents what the Branch Davidians believed and introduces readers to the community's members, including David Koresh. A Journey to Waco is a personal account of one man's journey with the Branch Davidians, through the tragic fire, and beyond.

Discover some of the world’s most awe-inspiring and holy places, from Stonehenge to Uluru, and Walden Pond to Angkor Wat. Humans have always searched for and created meaning in the world around them, whether in breathtakingly stunning natural features and phenomena, acknowledging the ancient home of a particular faith or movement, or honouring the location of a significant event. In this beautifully illustrated guide, Alice Peck discusses what makes a place spiritual – whether reaches of time, geography, the provision of sustenance or inspiration, or mystery and magic – and then explores 80 such locations around the globe. Rather than a comprehensive travel guide, the description of each one includes a detail or tip – something beautiful, strange, relatively unknown or unfamiliar – to allow readers to deepen their focus and perhaps experience the place in a different way than they might expect. If you are unable to travel at this time, this book will help you plan your next adventure. And if you are trying to limit your carbon footprint, each destination is accompanied by a related meditation, prayer, practice or quotation to help you connect to the spirit of it from your own home.