Hortulus: The Online Graduate Journal of Medieval Studies: Call For Papers

A medieval deer park was an enclosed area containing deer.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_deer_park

Hortulus: The Online Graduate Journal of Medieval Studies Special Call For Papers for Issue on Medieval Space and Place

SUBMISSION DEADLINE FOR VOLUME 7, Issue 1: 1 March 2012

Hortulus: The Online Graduate Journal of Medieval Studies is a refereed journal devoted to the literature, history, and culture of the medieval world. Published electronically twice a year, its mission is to present a forum in which graduate students from around the globe may share their ideas. Article submissions on the selected theme are welcome in any discipline and period of Medieval Studies. We are also interested in book reviews on recent works of interest to a broad audience of Medieval Studies scholars. Recently, place and space theories have manifested themselves in Medieval Studies in a number of ways, from analysis of specific spaces and places, such as gardens, forests, cities, and the court, to spatially theorized topics such as travel narratives, nationalism, and the open- or closedness of specific medieval cultural areas. Over an array of subjects, the spatial turn challenges scholars to re-think how humans create the world around them, through both physical and mental processes. Articles should explore the meaning of space/place in the past by situating it in its precise historical context.

 Possible article topics include, but are not limited to:

Medieval representations of spatial order

The sense of place in the construction of social identities

Mapping and spatial imagination

Topographies of meaningful places

Beyond the binary of center/periphery

Spatial policies of separation: ethnicity, religion, or gender

Travel and the sense of place

Creating landscape

The idea of place in medieval religious culture

Pilgrimage

Workplaces

Intimate space, public place

Liminality and proximity as social categories

The 2011 issue of Hortulus: The Online Graduate Journal of Medieval Studies will be published in May of 2012.

All graduate students are welcome to submit their articles and book reviews, or to send their queries, via email to:

submit@hortulus.net by March 1, 2012.

For further information please visit our website at www.hortulus.net

Hortulus: The Online Graduate Journal of Medieval Studies, www.hortulus.net

Wouter J. Hanegraaff: Esotericism and the Academy – Rejected Knowledge in Western Culture

Esotericism and the Academy

Rejected Knowledge in Western Culture

Wouter J. Hanegraaff, University of Amsterdam

Hardback

ISBN:9780521196215

Cambridge University Press

Publication date:January 2012

478pages

4 tables

Dimensions: 228 x 152 mm

Weight: 0.88kg

Academics tend to look on ‘esoteric’, ‘occult’ or ‘magical’ beliefs with contempt, but are usually ignorant about the religious and philosophical traditions to which these terms refer, or their relevance to intellectual history. Wouter Hanegraaff tells the neglected story of how intellectuals since the Renaissance have tried to come to terms with a cluster of ‘pagan’ ideas from late antiquity that challenged the foundations of biblical religion and Greek rationality. Expelled from the academy on the basis of Protestant and Enlightenment polemics, these traditions have come to be perceived as the Other by which academics define their identity to the present day. Hanegraaff grounds his discussion in a meticulous study of primary and secondary sources, taking the reader on an exciting intellectual voyage from the fifteenth century to the present day and asking what implications the forgotten history of exclusion has for established textbook narratives of religion, philosophy and science.

Table of Contents

Introduction: hic sunt dracones

1. The history of truth: recovering ancient wisdom

2. The history of error: exorcizing Paganism

3. The error of history: imagining the Occult

4. The truth of history: entering the Academy

Conclusions: restoring memory.

Features

• The argument is presented as a historical narrative, taking the reader on an intellectual voyage from the early Renaissance to the present day

• Discusses currents of thought which have played an important role in intellectual history, but have never before been sufficiently identified

• Demonstrates patterns of intellectual prejudice that have distorted views of the history of religion, philosophy and science

see:

http://www.cambridge.org/se/knowledge/isbn/item6577534/?site_locale=sv_SE

Wouter Jacobus Hanegraaff (born 1961) is full professor of History of Hermetic Philosophy and related currents at the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands. He is also President of the European Society for the Study of Western Esotericism (ESSWE).  

(Above info thanks to Wikipedia Hanegraaff page)

NATURE & THE POPULAR IMAGINATION: International Society for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture

 Pepperdine University, Malibu, California

Nature & the Popular Imagination’

The Fifth International Conference of the

International Society for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture

8-11 August 2012, Pepperdine University, Malibu, California (USA)

pleased to announce its next conference in Malibu, California at Pepperdine University in August 2012. The conference theme will be “Nature and the Popular Imagination.”

Malibu is located on the Pacific Ocean, just minutes from Hollywood, that archetypal place of imagination and dreams, the backyard and playground for practitioners of the cinematic arts. For generations, the interconnections between religion and nature have been expressed, promoted, and contested through the incubator of popular culture, and sometimes even in films produced in Malibu itself or the Santa Monica Mountains above it. As a global, symbolic center, both reflecting and inventing nature/religion representations, Malibu and its environs provide an ideal venue for critical reflection on the religion/nature nexus in the popular imagination.

The ISSRNC cordially invites creative proposals including but not limited to papers, panels, film screenings, and forums with “cultural creatives” from this region and beyond, to illuminate the conference theme.

Specific proposals, for example, might explore:

• Apocalypticism (Abrahamic, Mayan, Scientific, etc.).

• Documentary film: nature faking and realism

• Theatrical film and nature spiritualities

• Nature in cartoons and animated films

• Malibu (and/or California) as sacred, imperiled, and desecrated places.

• The spiritualities of celebrities, including as animal and/or environmental activists

As always, while we encourage proposals focused on the conference’s theme, we welcome proposals from all areas (regional and historical) and from all disciplinary perspectives that explore the complex relationships between religious beliefs and practices (however defined and understood), cultural traditions and productions, and the earth’s diverse ecological systems. We encourage proposals that emphasize dialogue and discussion, promote collaborative research, and are unusual in terms of format and structure. Individual paper and session proposals, as are typical with most scholarly associations, are also welcome.

Presenters will be encouraged to submit their work for possible publication in the peer reviewed Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture, which is the official journal of the ISSRNC, and has been published quarterly since 2007.

Given the ISSRNC’s commitment to internationality financial assistance will be available for a number of scholars from outside of North America. We anticipate being able to provide travel grants to at least ten international scholars.

Submitting Proposals

Proposals for individual paper presentations, sessions, panels, and posters should be submitted directly to Sarah Pike at spike@csuchico.edu. It is not necessary to be an ISSRNC member to submit a proposal. Individual paper proposals should include, in a single, attached word or rich text document, the name and email of the presenter(s), title, a 250-300 word abstract, and a brief, 150 word biography (including highest degree earned and current institutional affiliation, if any). Proposals for entire sessions must include a title and abstract for the session as a whole as well as for each individual paper. Proposers should also provide information about ideal and acceptable lengths for proposed sessions, and whether any technology, such as data projectors, are desired.

Most paper presentations will be scheduled at 15-20 minutes and a premium will be placed on discussion in all sessions. Proposals will be evaluated anonymously by the Scientific Committee, but conference directors will be aware of proposers’ identities in order to select for diversity in terms of geographical area and career stage. Student proposals are welcome.

Requests for assistance with invitations to assist with visa processes must be included with proposals.

Requests for financial aid from scholars outside of North America must also be included with proposals, and provide a clear statement as to whether such aid is essential for attendance, the needed amount, and an explanation of supplemental travel resources that will be available to the proposer. Decisions on travel grants will be made by the ISSRNC Board of Directors based on recommendations from the conference directors and scientific committee.

The deadline for proposals is 1 April 2012.

for full details see:

<http://www.religionandnature.com/society/>

THE INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY FOR THE STUDY OF RELIGION, NATURE AND CULTURE (ISSRNC)

GHost: call for papers/ PRESENTATIONS/ PERFORMANCE

Call For Papers/ Presentations/ Performance: 

Hosting 6: “Absence – Haunted Landscapes”

Hosting 7: “Presence – Manifesting Ghosts”

GHost invites proposals for papers, presentations, or performances of 30 minutes exploring the desire and attempt to materialise what is absent via the medium of haunted landscapes or through the manifestation of a ghost. We would like to hear from researchers within all fields – anthropology, art history, cultural studies, film studies, history, science, law, literary studies, parapsychology, psychology, philosophy etc. as well as practising artists.

The Hostings will take place in the Court Room, University of London, Senate House between 6.30 – 9.00pm on the 29th February and 14th March.

Please send a (working) title and an abstract of approximately 300 words, also include which Hosting you are submitting to and, if applicable, one or two pictures.  

Send these to Sarah Sparkes at: ghost.hostings@gmail.com 

More about GHost:

www.host-a-ghost.blogspot.com

www.ghost.hostings.co.uk

Deadline for submissions of proposals: 13th January 2012

Hostings 6: Absence – Haunted Landscapes

The Key Of Solomon, a medieval grimoire instructs magicians to seek out “places that lie concealed, distant and removed from the haunts of men. Wherefore desolate and uninhabited regions are most appropriate, such as the borders of lakes, forests, dark and obscure places, old and deserted houses, whither rarely and scarce ever men do come, mountains, caves, caverns, grottos, gardens, orchards…”

Could it be that this instruction suggests a common topography of the haunted landscape that such venues operate as amplifiers for achieving rapport with the dead? Perhaps it is the absence of life and the nature of our own loneliness that in fact haunts the landscape? Are places of tragedy imbued with spirits of their victims or is this just a romantic engagement, an imaginative association with a past event? Is it possible to use a particular landscapes to facilitate the experience of paranormal phenomena – in this respect can landscape serve like the séance room for the natural channelling of the spirit of place, or the dead souls of its past? Moreover, have artists and writers intuitively apprehended these landscapes to manifest a haunted aesthetic?

GHost invites submissions exploring these or other ideas associated with the Haunted Landscape.

Hostings 7: Presence – Manifesting Ghosts

“Ghost Seance has the potential to summon spirits at any given location and time although 3:00 a.m. usually produces the best results.” (Taken from a website advertising a séance app. for smart phones)

Writers, psychical investigators, mediums, parapsychologists, illusionists, artists all have manifested ghosts in their own way. The writers mind conjures up ghostly apparitions, pinning down their fleeting forms with words. In the darkened séance room both psychical investigator and audience witness phenomena produced by the medium. Whether witnessed by believer or sceptic, the spirit announces itself, with a common ghostly language: wraps, moving furniture, unexplained scents, temperature changes, phosphorescent lights etc. In more recent times visual and auditory ephemera has been described and captured by paranormal investigators with the help of technological devices. This new language of the ghostly reappears in the haunted aesthetics of films such as Nigel Kneale’s The Stone Tape and in the work of contemporary artists such as Susan Hiller. When attempting to document ghosts, is it us or the ghosts who are controlling the means by which we describe and measure their presence?

GHost invites submissions exploring ghost-makers; their means, methods and their reasons for manifesting ghosts.

About GHost

GHost is a visual arts and creative research project which explores the various roles ghosts play in contemporary culture by bringing artists, writers, curators, researchers and others together. In homage to Duchamp’s wordplay “A guest + a host = a ghost”, we take on and explore the various roles of ghosts, guests and hosts in our activities. The project has been running since 2008 and we have organised exhibitions, performance nights and so-called Hostings, seminar-style workshops which serve as a forum for exchange between thinkers and makers, audience and practitioners. As a research project, GHost blurs the boundaries between the diverse research groups and audiences that exist for the paranormal and hosts events in which these groups can explore their various beliefs. As a visual arts project, GHost explores the illusionary power of art and artists to create what could be seen as a ‘haunted aesthetic’. Visual art exhibitions have been hosted by a John Soane church in East London, at the London Art Fair and the Folkestone Triennial Fringe while the Hostings have been held at Senate House, University of London.

GHost has been organising Hostings in association with the IGRS, School of Advanced Study, University of London since 2009.

www.host-a-ghost.blogspot.com

www.ghost.hostings.co.uk

MONSTROPHY: THE ACADEMIC STUDY OF MONSTERS: PRETERNATURE call for papers

 

MONSTROPHY: THE ACADEMIC STUDY OF MONSTERS: PRETERNATURE call for papers

“Preternature is a rigorously peer-reviewed interdisciplinary forum for original research that touches on the appearance of magic, prophecy, demonology, monstrophy, the occult, and related topics that stand in the liminal space between the natural world and the preternatural.

Preternature publishes scholarly articles, notes, and reviews covering all time periods and geographies, from a variety of academic approaches. As an English language publication, the Western tradition is inevitably an important focus, but the journal strongly encourages submissions covering cultural traditions worldwide.”

— Praeter paginam

Call for papers for Preternature, vol. 2, issue 2

Monstrophy: The Academic Study of Monster

Monsters have been widely catalogued in their historical and ethnographic contexts, and have been commonly included in cultural products such as epic, folktale, fiction, and film, but have only begun to be studied seriously as semiological markers indicating the seams of internal cultural tension. Interpreters commonly note the “monstrous” as occupying space at the borders of a society’s conceptual categories, such as those relating to sexual and behavioral transgression, or to inherent prejudice and internal conflict (for instance, in race, gender, politics, and religion). Monsters are rarely fully distinct from the “human,” but are often comprised of hybrid features of the human and non-human. This issue of Preternature invites contributions that explore how the category of “monster” is used to define and articulate what a certain group of people articulates to itself to be properly human.

Contributions are welcome from any discipline, time period, or geographic provenance, so long as the discussion highlights the cultural, literary, religious, or historical significance of the topic.

Contributions should be roughly 8,000 – 12,000 words (with the possibility of longer submissions in exceptional cases), including all documentation and critical apparatus. If accepted for publication, manuscripts will be required to adhere to the Chicago Manual of Style, 15th edition (style 1, employing footnotes).

Preternature also welcomes original editions or translations of texts related to the topic that have not otherwise been made available in recent editions or in English.

Submissions are made online at: 

<www.preternature.org>

 Final Papers are due February 15, 2012

Queries about submissions, queries concerning books to be reviewed, or requests to review individual titles may be made to the Editor:

Kirsten C. Uszkalo: kirsten@uszkalo.com

Inquiries about book reviews should be sent to the Book Review Editor:

Richard Raiswell: rraiswell@upei.ca

For more on the journal, please consult <www.preternature.org>

THE HISTORY AND ICONOGRAPHY OF THE OCCULT 1750-1950 exhibition Strasbourg:

THE HISTORY AND ICONOGRAPHY OF THE OCCULT:

A WORLD IN WORDS AND PICTURES

‘Europe and the Spirit World or the Fascination with the Occult, 1750-1950’ is a cross-disciplinary exhibition exploring the influence of the occult on artists, thinkers, writers and scholars throughout Europe, at decisive moments in the history of the modern world. The exhibition is organized into three sections:

• The creative arts: painting, drawing, sculpture, print-making and photography, the literature of the irrational and unexplained.

• The esoteric tradition revisited, with an extensive chronological survey encompassing the movement’s foundational texts and print iconography.

• The relationship between occult phenomena and the scientific world, through key scholarly figures and thinkers, and an examination of their experiments and scientific instruments.

With some 500 works of art, 150 scientific artefacts, 150 books and 100 documents from a host of European countries, Europe and the Spirit World will be presented in a dedicated 2500-m² space at the the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Strasbourg.

This exhibition has been awarded ‘national importance’ status by the French Ministry of Culture and Communication / Heritage department / French museums service, and has received State financial support in the form of an exceptional grant from the Ministry.

Full details:

www.musees.strasbourg.eu 

The esoteric tradition has been a feature of Western civilisation since the earliest times – a tradition that has come down to us in the form of esoteric writings, and the engraved illustrations that so often accompany them.

The exhibition presents significant works from the collections of Strasbourg’s national and university library (the BNU), and the prints and drawings collection of Strasbourg’s city museums, exploring the full range of topics featured in the Spirit realms exhibition: spiritism, esoterism, occultism, magic, witchcraft, divination…

The BNU’s encyclopaedic holdings include a section on occultism and other beliefs, encompassing major, foundational texts of the modern and contemporary periods.

The collections of papyri, manuscripts, incunabula, rare and fine books, and Alsatic texts, together with texts devoted to religious science and literature, offer a revealing – but by no means exhaustive – survey of a rich corpus.

Historic texts complement the displays of visual artworks, presenting major works in their original, first editions, and highlighting the work of the publishers, printers, engravers and illustrators who established the esoteric tradition and kept it alive, down to the present day. The section aims to focus on works by the movement’s leading authors, at key moments in its long history throughout Europe, and beyond.

Complementing the scientific displays included in the main exhibition, the section also presents key scientific works exploring spectral apparitions and other supernatural phenomena, together with an overview of the contact between scientific, mystical and esoteric thought down the centuries.

Some of the main authors represented:

Pythagoras, Plato, Virgil, Dante, Master Eckhart, Marsile Ficin, Cornelius Agrippa, Paracelsus, Lavater, Milton, Swedenborg, Cagliostro, Goethe, Balzac, Novalis, Kardec, Schuré, Conan Doyle, Huysmans, Ivan Goll, André Breton, Fulcanelli. The featured works are all from the collection of the Bibliothèque nationale universitaire de Strasbourg.

Featured artists include:

Baldung Grien, Brentel, Cranach, Dürer, Schongauer, Mantegna, Jacques Callot, Piranesi, Girodet-Trioson.

more info and images at:

http://www.musees.strasbourg.eu/sites_expos/europe-des-esprits/en/

TRANSFORMATIONS OF THE SACRED IN EUROPE AND BEYOND: Conference

ESA Research Network 34 – Sociology of Religion

Call for papers – Mid-term Conference

University of Potsdam, Germany

3-5 September 2012

 

The thesis of secularization, once sheer uncontested in the social sciences, is increasingly under fire. Secularization is nowadays often deconstructed as an ideology or mere wish dream that is intimately connected to the rationalist ambitions of modern Enlightenment. Such alleged blurring of morality and science, of what ‘is’ and what ‘ought’, informing sociological analysis obviously obscures clear sight on recent developments in the Western world. 

Countless empirical and theoretical studies convincingly demonstrate that religion is alive and well in Europe and beyond. Particularly after the attacks of 9/11 in 2001, religious identities have become salient in a situation of cultural polarization and religious pluralization. Moreover, we are witnessing a trend towards ‘believing without belonging’ (Davie, 1994) and – particularly in those European countries that are most secular – a shift from organized religion to ‘spiritualities of life’ (e.g., Heelas and Woodhead, 2005), paganism and ‘popular religion’ (Knoblauch, 2009). And although the thesis of secularization has always been highly problematic from a non-European or global perspective, the rapid globalization of Islam and the Evangelical upsurge – especially in Africa, Latin America and East Asia – fly in the face of the long-held expectation that religion is doomed to be a marginal or socially insignificant phenomenon.

Evidently, then, the focus of sociological analysis has shifted over the last decades from religious decline to religious change. More than that: it is theorized that we are living in a “post-secular society” (Habermas, 2005) where religion is re-vitalized, de-privatized and increasingly influences politics, voting behavior, matters of the state and ethical debates in the public domain (e.g., Casanova, 1994). Motivated by such observations, the mid-term conference calls for papers addressing changes in the field of religion and, more in particular, transformations of the sacred in Europe and beyond. Particularly we welcome studies covering the following topics:

&#61623 Studies on how and why conceptions of the sacred, religious beliefs, doctrines, rituals and organizations of long-standing religious traditions – such as Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism or Hinduism – transform under the influence of processes of globalization, individualization, mediatization as well as changing gender relations.

&#61623 Studies dealing with trends of believing without belonging, i.e. non-institutionalized beliefs, personal ‘bricolage’ and privatized conceptions of the sacred outside the Churches, Chapels and Mosques. Encouraged are also studies addressing new, more informal ways of ‘belonging’, religious communication and collective effervescence, i.e. in loose social networks, discussion groups or virtual communities on the internet.

&#61623 Studies covering popular religion and post-traditional spirituality, i.e., New Age, esotericism, paganism, occultism, discussing for instance an epistemological turn from belief to experience and emotion; a shifting emphasis from transcendence to immanence; from seriousness to playfulness; or a transition from dualism to monism.

&#61623 Studies dealing with implicit religion, i.e. addressing a re-location of the sacred to seemingly secular domains in society such as self-identity, sports, modern science and technology. This avenue of research may also include the place and meaning of the sacred (i.e., religious narratives, symbols and images) in popular media texts – in novels, films, series on television or computer games.

These topics are rough guidelines; papers dealing with religious change and the transformation of the sacred in Europe and beyond other than these outlined above are also very welcome. Furthermore we invite PhD and post-doc candidates to contribute to a poster session, including work in progress; the best poster will get a – small, but nice – prize.

Dates & Deadlines in 2012

March 15 Submission of abstracts and online registration starts

April 20 Submission of abstracts ends

May 10 Acceptance of abstracts

June 30 Early-bird registration ends

September 3 – 5 Conference

For further information, please visit: http://www.esareligion.org

Contact: esa-religion@uni-potsdam.de

OXFORD LAW AND RELIGION CONFERENCE

Oxford Law and Religion Conference

New Frontiers of Protection of Freedom of Religion or Belief Under International Law –

30 Years after the 1981 Declaration on the Elimination of All Forms of Intolerance and of Discrimination Based on Religion or Belief

24 November 2011

Balliol College, Oxford

LR 23

10am– 5:30pm

Speakers Include:

Heiner Bielefeldt

(UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of or Belief)

Malcolm Evans

(University of Bristol)

Christopher McCrudden

(University of Oxford and Queen’s University Belfast)

Nazila Ghanea (University of Oxford)

Michael Wiener

(Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights)

Ronan McCrea (University College London)

Registration:

£25

Students and unwaged:

Free

Registration enquiries: peter.petkoff@balliol.ox.ac.uk

The Conference is organised by the Oxford Society for Law and Religion, Focus on Freedom of Religion or Belief, School of Law University of Bristol, Law and Religion Research Group Brunel Law School, Religion, Law and International elations Programme Regent’s Park College, Oxford, Centre for the Study of Religion and Public Life, Kellogg College, Oxford

HISTORY OF HERMETIC PHILOSOPHY AND RELATED CURRENTS: UNIVERSITY OF AMSTERDAM

  

 www.amsterdamhermetica.nl

 

The University is seeking 2 Ph. D. candidates in the field of History of Hermetic Philosophy and Related Currents

The intention is that one of the two candidates will do research on a relevant topic within the historical period from the Renaissance to the 18th century, and the other within the period from the 18th century to the present. Candidates are invited to submit a research proposal that contains at least the following:

Title of the research project.

Brief description of the research question (a few lines).

A longer description of the research project, including attention to methodology and the nature/availability of the relevant source material (3 to 4 pages, line spacing 1 ½).

Explanation of academic relevance and importance of the research.

Bibliography.

A planning, subdivided in periods of six months.

Summary of additional material costs.

The research proposal must be accompanied by a cover letter and a C.V.

A list of possible research topics is available on request from w.j.hanegraaff@uva.nl. This list is intended to give an impression of the kind of research that could be considered, and an indication of some clear research gaps.

Requirements

A Master degree in a discipline of the humanities, preferably with a historical focus;

Sufficient demonstrable familiarity with the research area on which the GHF Center focuses, and the relevant subdomain;

Good command of at least English and other languages relevant to the research project.

Further information

For further information please contact Prof. Dr. W.J. Hanegraaff, telephone +31 20 525 3570 or +31 20 423 6218; e-mail w.j.hanegraaff@uva.nl.

  

History of Hermetic Philosophy and Related Currents

The Center of History of Hermetic Philosophy and Related Currents

(GHF, www.amsterdamhermetica.nl ) was founded in 1999 and plays a leading international role in the field. The Center is part of the Department of Art, Religion, and Cultural Sciences (KRC) and work within the context of the Program Team Religious Studies.

The staff members of GHF provide a series of four modules (Hermetica I, II, III, IV) in the Bachelor Religious Studies, and a specialization program in “Western Esotericism” in the context of the One-Year Master and the Two-Year Research Master Religious Studies.

GHF consists of three permanent staff members (one professor and two assistant professors) and two PhD students. The Center focuses on historical research into a complex of movements in the border area between religion, philosophy, and science, today often summarized under the umbrella term “Western esotericism”.

These include movements such as hermetism and gnostic religion in late antiquity; traditional sciences like astrology, alchemy, and magia naturalis; the revival of platonism and related currents during the Renaissance in the context of prisca theologia, philosophia perennis, and philosophia occulta; early modern currents such as paracelsianism, Christian theosophy, rosicrucianism, freemasonry, and illuminism; nineteenth-century movements such as spiritualism, occultism, and traditionalism; and related currents including the contemporary New Age. For a representative sample of the discipline, see the Dictionary of Gnosis and Western Esotericism (ed. WJ Hanegraaff et al.), Brill: Leiden / Boston 2005. 

 

HIDDEN IN PLAIN SIGHT: a Conference for Scholars and Practitioners

SPONSORED BY THE ROSICRUCAIN ORDER AMORC

THE INFLUENCE OF WESTERN ESOTERIC MOVEMENTS ON MODERN THOUGHT: A CONFERENCE FOR SCHOLARS AND PRACTITIONERS

July 22-25, 2010

http://www.rosicrucian.org/hidden_in_plain_sight/

Through scholarly research, the interaction of Western Esotericism with the mystical traditions of organized religion has been recognized to be extensive. Further, and less well known, is the often pivotal role esoteric groups and beliefs have had in shaping the modern world as a whole, while remaining “Hidden in Plain Sight.”

We invite you to this conference to join with other scholars and practitioners within the field of western esotericism in exploring the substantial influence this tradition has on modern thought.

In addition to the opportunity to share our research and practice within the realm of western esotericism, we envision the weekend as an opportunity to celebrate the many facets of this tradition. We invite participants to exercise not only their scholarship, but cultural creativity as well.

We will gather together July 22-25, at Rosicrucian Park in San Jose, founded in 1927 by H. Spencer Lewis.

There is no set conference fee. There is a suggested donation of $75.00 per participant to help defray Conference costs.

The Keynote Address will be given by Lee Irwin, Ph.D., Lee Irwin is Professor and Chair of the Religious Studies Department at the College of Charleston. He is a scholar of world religions with an emphasis on Native American Traditions, western esotericism, hermeticism, contemporary spirituality, mystical cosmology, and transpersonal religious experience as related to dreams and visions. He is the Vice President of the Association for the Study of Esotericism (ASE) and a board member of the Sophia Institute and the Institute for Dream Studies. He has been a workshop leader and group facilitator for over twenty years, particularly in the areas of visionary cosmology and the development of the sacred human. He is the author of many books and articles, including: The Dream Seekers, Visionary Worlds, Awakening to Spirit: On Life, Illumination, and Being, The Alchemy of Soul, and Coming Down From Above: Prophecy, Resistance, and Renewal in Native American Religions.

Keynote Address: “Reincarnation and the Psychonoetic Body in Western Esotericism” This presentation will explore the topic of reincarnation in a historical review extending from Pythagoras to the present. The emphasis of the talk will focus on a variety of theories of reincarnation and the political context within which those theories were developed. He will also address the topic of participatory knowing and the importance of paranormal perceptions as an adjunct to reincarnational theories in western esotericism. Five explicit examples of theories on reincarnation will be presented: Plato, Origen, the Cathars, Jan Baptist van Helmont, and H. Spencer Lewis. Each example will be contextualized by culture and the religious environment to demonstrate issues of contestation or marginalization. Overall, the author’s approach supports reincarnation as a viable theory for post-mortem existence.

Some of the other Papers currently in preparation for the Conference include:

Maria de Lourdes Argüelles, Ph.D.: Dr. Arguelles is Professor Emerita of Education, Claremont Graduate University, a licensed psychotherapist in the State of California, and a long-time student of  Alchemy and other Western Esoteric Traditions. She has also been a practitioner for several decades in the Tibetan Buddhist Tradition and was ordained a Nagkma (female tantric practitioner) by HE The Garchen Rinpoche. She currently resides in Idyllwild, California.

“Forbidden Knowledge: Western Esotericism and Higher Education in the Social Sciences and Humanities” This presentation is based on a longitudinal action-research and narrative study of the status and reception of Western Esoteric knowledge and practices in several undergraduate and graduate colleges and universities in the United States. It documents and analyzes ways in which the academy formally and informally discourages social science and humanities faculty from incorporating these knowledge and practices into the curricula. The presentation also examines various strategies that the author and other faculty members have successfully utilized to bring the richness of esoteric traditions into their classrooms. In addition, it details pedagogical tools found effective in introducing secularly-oriented students to esoteric traditions.

, M.Div., CCHT and Brigitta F. D’Amato, CCHT: Debby Barrett holds a Master of Divinity, from the San Francisco Theological Seminary, San Anselmo, CA and a B.A. in Religious Studies and Koiné Greek from Coe College, Cedar Rapids, Iowa. She is a Certified Clinical and Alchemical Hypnotherapist in the Alchemical Hypnotherapy Institute and a Master Apprentice of the D’Amato Spiritual Group Facilitation Program. Her memberships include the National Guild of Hypnotists, the Rosicrucian Order, AMORC and the Traditional Martinist Order.

Brigitta F. D’Amato is a Certified Clinical Hypnotherapist in the American Council of Hypnotist Examiners;  an Alchemical Hypnotherapist, a Certified Group Process Facilitator, and an Instructor of Alchemical Hypnotherapy in the Alchemical Hypnotherapy Institute;  she is a California State Certified Instructor of Hypnotherapy, a State Licensed Practitioner of Religious Science for the International Centers for Spiritual Living and a Designated Examiner in the American Council of Hypnotist Examiners.

“Tracing the Roots of a 20th Century Recovery Phenomenon to the Royal Tombs of Egypt” Hidden in plain sight are two parallel texts of personal alchemical transformation. Both can be attributed with shaping the human experience of the Divine within a specific time and both offer a map for a journey of self discovery.  Both are structured as 12 sequential progressions to wholeness.  One comes from the ancient origins of the Western Esoteric Tradition (The ancient Egyptian mystical text called “The Treatise on What is in the Hidden Chamber” or “The Am Dwat” (c. 1550-1400 BCE), the other from modern American Spiritual Psychology, Bill Wilson’s 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous (1939).  One seems to have offered its powerful secret knowledge only to the highest ranks of ancient Egyptian culture, while the other text is freely available to what is often referred to as the “dregs of humanity,” namely struggling addicts protected only by the thin veil of anonymity.  The core messages of both these 12 faceted journeys will be excavated and compared, revealing the timeless Truth held within the divinely inspired human passage of reintegration and ‘re-membering’.  With a brief exploration into Jungian psychology and the archetype of the hero’s journey, these two texts will be presented for consideration as therapeutic models that will continue to revolutionize humanity’s psycho-spiritual journey of transformation.

Luiz Eduardo V. Berni, Ph.D.: Dr. Berni is a Psychologist with a Masters in the Science of Religion, and a Doctorate in the Psychology of Human Development. He is a founding member of the Center of Transdisciplinary Education (CETRANS), a member of the Work Group “Psychology and Indigenous Traditions” of the São Paulo Psychology Council, and general coordinator of Rose Croix University International for the Portuguese Grand Lodge in Brazil.

“The Sacred Circle Dance and the Numinous” The Sacred Dance movement is very strong in many countries. Bernard Wosien, a classical dancer until the end of Second World War, discovered the power of folk dancing (usually dancing in a circle) and began researching and collecting Helige Tanze (Sacred Dances) because of their holistic power for healing people, to transport people to a meditative level of consciousness, and also to connect with the Sacred (as Rudolf Otto describes it). In the 1970s, he began to work with the Findhorn sacred dancers in Scotland, also connected with the Rosicrucian, theosophical and Sufi traditions. Thus began the Sacred Dance movement which is the subject of this study, with important foundations in Scotland and Brazil, and connections with the United Nations. As the presenter has both researched this subject, and is a practitioner himself, he will share both perspectives. The study will consider the way in which the participants report transpersonal states of conscience and connection with the sacred and mystical. Since, in Brazil, Sacred Dance is being increasingly used in the educational and corporate world to improve the cooperation between people, this is a prime example of how an esoteric practice and movement have impacted our world for the better.

Peter Bindon, M.A.: Peter Bindon served as Grand Master of the English Language Jurisdiction for Australia, Asia, and New Zealand of AMORC from 1996-2008. He also served on the Board of Directors of the Supreme Grand Lodge of AMORC. Over the years, he has served the Rosicrucian Order in many capacities in Australia, and internationally he served as Supreme Legate (1989-1996). Peter and his wife, Nola, live in New South Wales and have an adult son.  The Presenter drew upon his talents as a botanist and anthropologist to design the Rosicrucian Peace Garden in Rosicrucian Park, an Eighteenth Dynasty Egyptian garden. This educational garden, authentic to the period, features a temple, viewing dais, grape arbor, an array of historic plants, and a reflecting pond to mirror this very special setting.

“Ancient Alchemical Diagrams: are they Mirrors of the Human Soul for the Modern World?” This presentation will examine examples from Alchemical diagrams and the texts that accompanied them to determine whether they might have spiritual elements encoded in them that relate to the advancement of the human soul. Ultimately, the presentation will address the question of their relevance to us today.

Maria Butina: Ms Butina is an internationally exhibited visual artist with exhibitions held in Prague, Split, San Jose, and Anaheim. Her art flows from her deep spirituality and mysticism. She is active in the Rosicrucian and Martinist traditions.

“Vibrations: a Journey of Light in Visual Art” The Images are the results of her search for the Truth, search for the Light, and search for the self in the inner self. They represent an inner state, visions, and intuitions on the material plane. They are impressions of her inner voice, and vibrations of her soul consciousness. They represent a closeness to the Cosmic.

Herm Cardona, MSSI, 32°: Herminio F. “Herm” Cardona is a Retired Foreign Service Officer and Former Army Counterintelligence Special Agent.  He is Worshipful Master of Cape Coral Lodge No. 367 Free and Accepted Masons in Cape Coral, Florida, National Advisor of the Scottish Rite Wisdom Strength and Beauty Club, and Senior Administrator of The Freemason Network, and an active Rosicrucian student.  His articles have appeared in Foreign Service Journal, The Virginia Masonic Herald, The Florida Freemason, and Scottish Rite Journal. Herm earned a Master of Science of Strategic Intelligence (MSSI) from the Joint Military Intelligence College (National Defense Intelligence University) and a Bachelor of Science of Liberal Arts from the University of the State of New York (Excelsior College).  He is a Certified Senior RF Engineer and the holder of several Information Technology Certifications.

“Fiat Lux: Freemasonry, the Enlightenment, and the Emergence of a New Socio-Political Order” Freemasonry has influenced modern sociopolitical thought in that it was both a “creature of” and an” agent for” the Enlightenment, played a major role in the American Revolution and the creation of the United States of America, and had an ideological influence on the leaders of many revolutions which sought to establish secular democracies as the form of government for their newly liberated nation states. This paper studies the manner in which a highly diverse and disorganized number of Masonic lodges reinvented themselves — by means of the Constitutions of 1723 — into a highly disciplined network of “finishing schools” in which the fundamental principles of the Enlightenment were not only taught, but also exemplified.  Thanks in part to its esoteric “Mystery School” aura and its extensive use of ancient ritual and symbology, Freemasonry attracted not only the scientists, but also the thinking men, the mavericks, and the philosophers of its time, men who would in turn, become the “movers and shakers” of the Enlightenment. It continues by examining the extent to which Freemasonry was a political force in Europe, the American Revolution, and the formation of the United States of America. It concludes by briefly examining the Masonic credentials of revolutionary leaders in France, Italy, Latin America, and Turkey, and the extent to which their revolutions may have been influenced by Masonic ideology. It concludes by offering the proposition that the dreaded “New World Order,” so feared by Masonic conspiracy theorists, is the result of the creation of the United States of America.

Madeline Daniels. Ph.D.: Dr. Daniels holds a Ph.D. in transpersonal psychology (1975), and another in clinical psychology (1988). She is a Full Member of the American Psychological Association, and a California licensed psychologist. She is also a Life Fellow of the American College of Forensic Examiners, and on the Board of the American Board of Intelligence Analysts. She holds Diplomate status as a Forensic Examiner and a Forensic Psychologist, as well as a Certification as Medical Investigator Level V. She was the Executive Director of Crossroads Center, a private counseling and consulting group in New Hampshire from 1979 to 1993. She has conducted workshops and in-service training, gave numerous professional presentations, and has taught at the State University of New York, the University of New Hampshire, and Humboldt State University in California, as well as a variety of community colleges. She wrote a syndicated newspaper column from 1982 to 1988, and authored 3 books. In 1983 she had a radio show in Boston, “Family Talk.” From 1988 to 1993, she ran an educational non-profit called the Spectrum Cross-Cultural Institute For Youth, Inc. (SCIY) which gave multi-cultural presentations in hundreds of schools throughout the U.S. and overseas. In addition, she drafted legislation to “support multi-cultural and multi-ethnic education for New Hampshire students,” and lobbied for 2 years with support from all political parties, conservatives and liberals. The bill was unanimously approved by the New Hampshire House of Representatives in 1990. She relocated to California in 1993. After nearly 17 years of working with victims and survivors of trauma and abuse, she began working with those who committed such crimes. She ran a parole outpatient clinic part-time for a year, then moved on to a forensic practice and contract work in over a dozen prisons. Her experience in California include over 500 hours on Child Protection Services cases and over 400 hours working in county jails. She now has a clinical practice in the Greater San Jose area.

“The Alchemy of Transmuting Human Venom: How Esotericism Provides Balance for this Process” Esoteric philosophies and mysticism have contributed enormously to society’s preservation of basic values of kindness and respect towards all things. This study will demonstrate how Mysticism and esoteric traditions — non-literal by definition and often preserved in oral tradition — have always placed an emphasis on reasoning through the exploration and creative use of human puzzle-solving skills. In the current era, we see the rise of “human venom,” the manifestation of violence that results in unkindness and damage to others, in large part due to the current increase in the literalism of today’s fundamentalisms of all cultures. All spiritualities converge in an orientation towards the transcendent and compassionate, constructive relationships with others. Revitalizing those core similarities is an important step in healing society and enabling our ability to walk in harmony with our society and with the transcendent. In order to find gracefulness in behavior and balance in our daily lives, this presentation will explore ways in which we can draw upon ancient mystical principles to return to focusing on the inner goodness in each of us and the reconciliation of opposing viewpoints, The same characteristics that have been proven effective in psychotherapy’s healing of the individual, including unconditional positive regard for human beings, can provide guidelines for healing our larger society. Like psychology, esoteric traditions assume that the process is important to achieving a positive result. Mystical practices utilize metaphors and alternative frameworks to facilitate an enlightenment or understanding that goes beyond what mere words can easily define. In exploring the contrasts and effects of various philosophies, we can find an antidote to current deficiencies in thought and behavior. In doing so, we can encourage a more balanced and healthier world.

Workshop: Patricia Downes, Ed.D.: Dr. Downes is an Organization Development Specialist with a doctoral degree from George Washington University.She also a Life Coach (CPCC) and a Relationship and Organization Systems Coach (ORSC).Her work has been done in the public and private sectors, in international organizations, including the OAS, and in consulting. She has been a Rosicrucian student for over 25 years. She serves as AMORC’s Regional Director in Trinidad and Tobago.

“The Great Work and the Workplace: Transforming Work and Workplaces through Stealth Esotericism” Esoteric tradition teaches that whatever the human being does or creates from a place of deep consciousness and concern for all existence is part of the Great Work and the continuous process of co-creating a better universe for all. Many are bored at work because that work does not bring together the body and mind. This interactive presentation proposes a mystical perspective of work which examines work from the inside out, allowing us to open the door to deeper learning, wisdom and the workplace. This perspective can become the tool for transforming organizations into workplaces where individual creativity is respected and where work is seen a joyful and sacred experience. One of the questions the presentation explores is why so few people are involved in the work they enjoy or learn to enjoy? How can those numbers be increased so that more and more of us find joy and deep satisfaction from the work we do? How can organizations be transformed so that we are concerned not with how the business works but how the universe works? Universal law governs all that exists. How do we raise and grow organizations where love becomes the bottom line? In this interactive experience, participants will go through a series of exercises that work on the inner self first and then the collective. These exercises allow participants to tap into our common humanity and the need we all have for respect, honor, appreciation, and involvement. The presentation will be followed by a brief discussion on how these exercises can be utilized in the workplace.

Kathryn LaFevers Evans, M.A.: Kathryn LaFevers Evans is a native Californian and citizen of the Chickasaw Nation, Oklahoma. Her Native American ancestors walked the Trail of Tears from the Southeastern United States to Indian Territory. Her French Huguenot ancestors emigrated from the Palatinate to Pennsylvania in 1709, in search of religious freedom. Evans’ higher education degrees and training are in Literature and Writing, Research in Consciousness, and Esotericism. Over the past seven years, she has presented academic papers on Esotericism at eleven conferences. Having practiced inspirational Neoshamanic techniques and rituals for thirty-seven years, she refers to her path as “reading the book of nature.” Her own personal struggles enliven Evans’ writing and teaching with empathy. She lives in Ojai, California, and frequents the Pacific Ocean and the High Sierras with her family.

“Magic & The Binary Code: Renaissance Christian Kabbalah & Buckminster Fuller’s Tensegrity Structures” The Renaissance Christian Kabbalist worldview is embodied as an emanating six-fold model of the genesis of creation in Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples’ De Magia naturali Book II and Quincuplex Psalterium Psalm 118. This image depicted in Psalm 118, of what is known as Merkabah mysticism’s “seed of life,” and also worldwide as the “flower of life,” exemplifies the transmission of Western Esoteric thought into the modern world through a key methodological tool and marker — the Hermetic binary. Through Natural Magic, utilizing nature’s forces of attraction and repulsion, the mythic Hermes (Mercury) Trismegistus knows the nature of God and how to achieve it. This is a magia naturalis wherein nature is an isomorphism of the Creator. Grounded in the theological concept termed Coincidence of Opposites, the presentation equates this creative technique with the binary code of modern science and with the nature of thought itself, tracing contemplation of the rose or lotus back to Egyptian Prehistory. This image of the Hermetic Christ was brought by the Huguenots and Anabaptists into the New World. Americans have been depicting artistic images of the seed of life, the flower of life, from the seventeenth century to the present day in what are now known as “Pennsylvania Dutch Hex Signs.” Buckminster Fuller also received this transmission of Western Esoteric ideas from our ancestors, imagining—and creating—buildings out of six-fold “Tensegrity Structures.” Tensegrity Structures thus model the Christian Kabbalist worldview that the first binary in creation is the paradox of God above and humans below, balanced in a Trinitarian unity of Word expressing nature: the Trinity of the Father, the Word, and the Spirit. The presentation demonstrates, how, in our world of spiritual need, the time has come to heed Lefèvre’s request in De Magia naturali that Academia engage in a practical approach, along with a theoretical approach, to Western Esotericism — not just as a mythic worldview, but as a practical phenomenology of thought and creation.

Helen Heightsman Gordon, M.A., Ed.D.: Dr. Gordon published five textbooks while a Professor of English at Bakersfield College, Bakersfield, California, as well as numerous articles, opinion pieces, and humor, in scholarly journals, newspapers, and professional newsletters. Her poetry has been published in such diverse venues as Amelia, Gray’s Sporting Journal, Good Housekeeping, and the Salt Lake Tribune. Her chapbooks of poetry and humor are available online. In 2007, she won first prize in the “Best Historical Novel” category at Hollywood Book Festival for her first novel, Voice of the Vanquished: The Story of the Slave Marina and Hernan Cortes. In 2008, she ranked among finalists in the category of “Best New Non-Fiction Books,” (sponsored by USA Book News), for her second edition of The Secret Love Story in Shakespeare’s Sonnets. Her interest in solving the puzzling 1609 Dedication to the sonnets led her to explore the effects of Rosicrucianism and Freemasonry upon 16th century literature.

“Shakespeare’s Riddle for Today’s Rosicrucians: Hidden Messages in the 1609 Dedication to the Sonnets” For the past four centuries, the enigmatic dedication to the 1609 edition of Shakespeare’s Sonnets has hidden the author’s plea to future generations of Rosicrucians and Freemasons to understand his story and bestow upon his beloved son the immortality of literature. The man who used the pen name of “William Shakespeare” reveals through symbols, codes, and cryptography that his true surname was DeVere, that he loved a woman named Elisabeth, and that they had a love child they could not acknowledge, Henry Wriothesley, to whom the sonnets were dedicated. DeVere’s natural son, Henry Wriothesley, raised as the Third Earl of Southampton, was the “fair youth” of the first 17 sonnets, as well as the mysterious dedicatee “Mr. W. H.” with his initials anagrammed. In 2007, the author published her findings in the Rose Croix Journal. In this presentation, she will demonstrate how she deciphered the message and how it throws new light onto the orthodox interpretations of the poetry and plays.

Dennis William Hauck, Ph.D.: Dr. Hauck is a practicing alchemist, author, consultant, and lecturer working to facilitate personal, institutional, and global transformation through the application of the ancient principles of alchemy. He writes and lectures on the universal principles of physical, psychological, and spiritual transformation to a wide variety of audiences that range from scientists and business leaders to Hermetic and New Age groups. Hauck’s initiation into alchemy took place while he was in graduate school in mathematics at the University of Vienna, and he has since translated a number of important Latin and German alchemy manuscripts dating back to the fourteenth century. A gifted speaker on esoteric subjects, Hauck has been interviewed on nearly three hundred radio and TV programs including such popular national shows as NPR’s Morning Edition, Sally Jessy Raphael, Geraldo, Art Bell’s Dreamland, CNN Reports, and Extra. He has lectured around the world and is a regular keynote speaker at the annual International Alchemy Conference (www.AlchemyConference.com). The author of over a dozen books on alchemy, his latest works are The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Alchemy, The Emerald Tablet: Alchemy for Personal Transformation, and Sorcerer’s Stone: A Beginner’s Guide to Alchemy. He is currently working on a full translation of Gottlieb Latz’s epic work Die Alchimia. Websites: www.DWHauck.com and www.AlchemyLab.com.

“Materia Prima – The Nature of the First Matter in the Esoteric and Scientific Traditions” The alchemists believed that no transformation — whether in the laboratory, in the body, or in the soul — could succeed without the presence of a mysterious ingredient known as the Materia Prima (First Matter). Nothing was more important to alchemist’s work than this energetic essence, which they believed could be extracted from any substance and actually rendered tangible and visible. This presentation examines the nature and properties of the elusive First Matter. First, we look at how the alchemists exposed it, accumulated it, and worked with it to accomplish the regeneration of the substance at hand. Then, we explore how the concept of the First Matter evolved in both the scientific and esoteric traditions to become a fundamental, although often unrecognized, tenet of both modern physics and modern Hermeticism.

Julian Johnson, MPS, MA: Julian Johnson is a non-profit executive with masters degrees in non-profit management and developmental psychology.  He is a longtime student of mysticism and a member of the Rosicrucian Order for more than 35 years.  In 1999, he helped organize a conference in New York under the theme “Where Mysticism Meets Science,” bringing together scientists from a number of disciplines who presented empirical research supporting concepts in the teachings of Eastern and Western mystical traditions.

“Rosicrucian Principles and Scientific Discoveries” The Rosicrucian movement declared itself openly in Europe under that name in the early 1600s, a time when the rate of scientific experimentation and progress was rapidly increasing. Alchemy and medieval science had always been a component of the Rosicrucian Tradition, and several figures associated with Rosicrucian philosophy, such as Robert Fludd, Francis Bacon, and Isaac Newton were in the forefront of scientific progress. The present study explores some notable Rosicrucian principles and modern scientific thought and research that now support them, including the mind-body link, the interaction between consciousness and matter, and the theory of reincarnation.

Bruce Krajewski, Ph.D.: Dr. Krajewski received his Ph.D. in English and is a Professor of English at Texas Woman’s University. Previously he has served as Department Chair of Literature and Philosophy at Georgia Southern University (1999-2005), and Associate Professor of English and Film from 1991-99, and Chair of the Department from 1995-97 at Laurentian University. He is the author of Traveling with Hermes: Hermeneutics and Rhetoric, and editor of several other books, including Gadamer’s Repercussions: Reconsidering Philosophical Hermeneutics (University of California Press, 2004).

“The Man in the High Castle: Everyday Esotericism in Small Town New Jersey circa 1940″ In Avenel New Jersey during the 1940s, Curt Grunzig built a castle with a temple. He and his wife Barbara inhabited the Castle, which provoked many rumors in the small New Jersey town. He was also a published author, clearly influenced by theosophy and Rosicrucianism. The author left behind some unpublished papers: this presentation will be an analysis of those papers, and of the mysterious castle.  Deeply mystical and spiritual, Grunzig’s library was filled with works he designated in his will as “the secret doctrines which lie at the base of all culture and religion.” The presentation seeks to uncover some of the ways that “everyday esotericism” influenced this little corner of twentieth century America.

Hugh McCague, Ph.D.: Dr. McCague is an analyst, consultant, and teacher in the Institute for Social Research at York University in Toronto. He is a statistician, architectural historian, and a student of mysticism and esotericism in its historical, architectural, artistic, and practical manifestations.

“Florence Nightingale and the Advancement and Spiritualization of the Nursing and Statistics Professions” Florence Nightingale (1820-1910) was world renowned and much beloved by the age of 36 because of her outstanding service as a chief nurse for the British military during the Crimean War. This work was the formative prelude to the much greater and far-reaching service of the next half century in which Nightingale founded and guided the nursing profession in its modern secular form, and championed major health and hospital reforms as a pioneering applied statistician. With the recent scholarly editing of her prolific writings, including books, manuscripts, diaries and letters, the great depth and wide range of her underlying mystical and philosophical erudition, experience, and motivation can be discerned. Nightingale is an important figure in the Western mystical tradition closely aligned in approach and inspiration with St. Catherine of Siena and St. Teresa of Avila. Through her meditative reading and travels in Egypt and Greece, Nightingale was greatly edified by the esoteric traditions of Egypt, Hermeticism, Gnosticism, and Pythagoreanism. Her advancement of the nursing profession and innovative application of statistics for holistic and environmental health reform were all active and conscious expressions of Nightingale’s rich contemplative
and mystical way of life. Guiding these movements were her application of mystical and esoteric laws and principles for the far-reaching and on-going benefit and healing
of humanity.

Mioara Merié, Ph.D.: Dr. Merié received a Ph.D. in the Philosophy of Science from the University of Bucharest in1993, and a Ph.D. in the History and Philosophy of Science from Notre Dame in 2005. She has also done additional work in Physics and Peace Studies in Romania and the United States. Having taught at the Secondary and University level in both countries, she is a Political and Cultural Analyst and an Independent Historian. Extensively published and a frequent Conference speaker, in 2005 she was the Winner of the Notre Dame Gender Studies Competition Award, with the paper “From the Afterlife to Life: Feminism and ‘Spirit Drawing’ in Victorian England.”

“Christian Esotericism and the Inner Eye: Automatic Drawing, Sciences of the Mind, and Religious Innovations in Mid-Nineteenth Century Britain” This presentation explores intersections among mid-nineteenth-century British religious innovations, art, psychology, psychiatry, and an older Christian esoteric, Gnostic, Hermetic, and Kabbalistic heritage.  Specifically, it analyzes the religious and scientific universe of a middle-class group of empirical “investigators” of the afterlife known as the group of Christian Spiritualists. The main goal of this group was to demonstrate empirically a renewed eschatology, focused on the idea of the progress of the spirit in the afterlife.  Their main concern was to offer experimental proofs for the rejection of two central doctrines of Protestantism: the everlasting punishment of the wicked and the doctrine of the election by grace.  Christian Spiritualists felt that they could defend a more “democratic” eschatology by refuting empirically the image of an oblivious and “motionless” intermediate state of the spirit in the afterlife.  The study case analyzed here suggests that esotericism, far from representing an obsolete and ossified corpus of beliefs, encapsulates in itself the potentiality to articulate a different attitude toward faith and God.  What is at stake is a perennial human need to eschew dogma and authority and to seek instead the immanence of the sacredness and an unmediated personal spiritual experience.

Zaven Paul Panikian: Born in Cairo, Egypt, to Armenian parents on February 9, 1948, Zaven Paul Panikian migrated to Australia in 1963 and settled in Sydney. Paul worked in government and legal positions, followed by small businesses. He joined the Rosicrucian Order, AMORC in 1969 and served in Sydney Lodge from 1970. In 1996, he was a part of the formation of the English Grand Lodge of Australia, Asia, and New Zealand, and served on the board as vice president. He was elected to the position of Grand Master by the Board of the Supreme Grand Lodge on October 7, 2008. Paul continues to work from Sydney where the Grand Lodge is located. He lives with his wife and four boys not far from the Grand Lodge and Sydney Lodge.  His research interests lie with what impact mysticism has had directly and indirectly on humanity, and on the Rosicrucian quest today, considering what impact it has on the arts, culture, education, etc.

“The Rosicrucian Quest: Then and Now” This presentation considers the magnitude of the mystical quest undertaken by Rosicrucians and other like-minded seekers. It reviews briefly its role in the past from the seventeenth century onward, as well as what impact it has had directly and indirectly on humanity. From there it moves to the Rosicrucian quest today and considers what impact it can have on the arts, culture, education, etc. Most importantly, the present study seeks to establish mysticism and the mystical path as an important medium for the betterment of humanity, and discusses the role of AMORC as a leading disseminator of this work on this path. The Rosicrucian quest urges us to diligently pursue personal enlightenment. As we evolve spiritually so does humanity.

Dean Radin, Ph.D.: Dr. Radin is Senior Scientist at the Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS) and Adjunct Faculty in the Department of Psychology at Sonoma State University (Rohnert Park, CA). His early career as a concert violinist shifted into science after earning a master’s degree in electrical engineering and a Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana. For a decade, he worked on advanced telecommunications R&D at AT&T Bell Laboratories and GTE Laboratories; for over two decades, he has been engaged in consciousness research. Before joining the research staff at the Institute of Noetic Sciences, he held appointments at Princeton University, University of Edinburgh, University of Nevada, and three Silicon Valley think-tanks, including SRI International, where he worked on a classified program investigating psychic phenomena for the U.S. government. He is author or coauthor of over 200 technical and popular articles, a dozen book chapters, and several books including the bestselling The Conscious Universe (HarperOne, 1997) and Entangled Minds (Simon & Schuster, 2006). His technical articles have appeared in journals ranging from Foundations of Physics and Psychological Bulletin to Journal of Consciousness Studies. He has appeared on television shows ranging from the BBC’s Horizon and PBS’s Closer to Truth to Oprah and Larry King Live, and he has presented over a hundred invited lectures in venues including Cambridge, Harvard, Stanford and Princeton Universities, Google headquarters, DARPA, and the US Navy.

“Common Sense and the Evolution of Reality” Most people, most of the time, take for granted that “reality” is identical to everyday common sense. In terms of what we might call naïve realism, basic properties of Nature like time and space, matter and energy, separate objects, the arrow of time, etc., are regarded as givens, or as absolutes. The same is true for subjective properties like color, tones, and taste. But we know that none of this is actually true. Science, especially the cognitive and neurosciences, and physics, have revealed that naïve realism is based upon an extremely tiny slice of a much greater reality that never reaches conscious awareness, and that our sense of reality is thus a crude cartoon model of what is “really” out there. When we attempt to see beyond the veil of common sense, using the lens of science focused by multidisciplinary scholarship, inklings of a greater reality can be glimpsed. Those glimpses appear to resonate with holistic descriptions of reality as provided by mystics throughout the ages. One consequence of appreciating that naïve realism is a special case of a larger, more complex reality, is that commonly reported experiences regarded as anomalous by the scientific mainstream, or labeled paranormal by the general public, are instantly reframed as expected and perfectly normal.

Geoffrey Redmond, M.A., M.D.: Dr. Redmond is a biomedical scientist and practicing physician with a long interest in Chinese and Western metaphysics. Much of his work is concerned with understanding the persistence of traditional ways of thought in a world seemingly dominated by science. His most recent book, Science and Asian Spiritual Traditions (Greenwood Press 2008) explores the relationship of metaphysical and scientific thought in pre-modern China. He is the author of five previous books and over one hundred research articles. Doctor Redmond is a graduate of Cornell, the University of Virginia and Columbia University of Physicians and Surgeons. He lives in New York City with his wife, novelist and musician Mingmei Yip.

“Influence of The Yijing (I Ching, Chinese Book Of Changes) on Western Esotericism.” The study of Western esoteric traditions (defined as including Egypt and the Middle East but not East or South Asia) has tended to be separate from the study of the esotericism of other cultures. Yet esotericism has always traveled far beyond its borders of origin. The Yijing, or Chinese Book of Changes, has exercised particular fascination for several reasons including its extreme antiquity (nearly 3,000 years), the high esteem in which it was held in China, the cryptic nature of its texts, the intuitive appeal of is yin-yang duality, and the seeming numinosity of its unique trigrams and hexagrams. While the Yijing traditions did not involve secret transmission, as many esoteric traditions did, it was assumed that special talent, fostered by self-cultivation, was necessary to understand this classic. Indeed, one who fully understood the Changes was a sage, who had complete understanding of the nature of macrocosm and microcosm. This expresses the appeal of the Changes to esotericists, who seek to know ultimate reality. The first Westerner to seriously study the Yijing, the Jesuit Joachim Bouvet, interpreted the classic from the figurist perspective as expressing the truths of Christianity in hidden form. Gottfried Leibniz was fascinated by the relation of the hexagram lines to binary mathematics. Later interpreters construed the Changes from a variety of esoteric perspectives: Canon Thomas McClatchie found sexual symbolism; Carl Jung used it to advance his highly influential theory of synchronicity, and Aleister Crowley felt one of his greatest accomplishments was a scheme of equivalents between the Kabalistic Tree of Life and Yijing trigrams. Beginning in the sixties, many now utilize the Yijing as a source of guidance on personal decisions.

Katherine Schaefers. M.A.: Ms Schaefers received her M.A. in Classical Archaeology from the Universiteit Leiden, Netherlands (2004). Her primary research interests include Gnostic Archaeology and the iconography of Graeco-Roman mystery religions, including the Isis Mysteries. Katherine is currently a lecturer in the Anthropology of Magic, Science, and Religion at Foothill College in Los Altos Hills, California. Her initial publication, “Essene Ethnicity” appeared in the Rose-Croix Journal (2008). This presentation will share updates and insights from her 2004 Master’s thesis “Gnosticism: Towards an Archaeological Definition.”

“’Gnostic’ imagery from the beginning of our Era to Today” This presentation will endeavor to provide suggestions for the possible identification of “Gnostic” material culture, while taking on the question of why there are very few legitimately recognized artifacts from an early Christian period religious movement termed “Gnosticism” by later scholars. This study works to aid scholars in the iconographic identification of ancient Gnosticism, so that we may trace and evaluate symbolic meaning as the movement has continued up to the present day, and its effects on modern trends of thought and belief.  The ancient and modern definitions of “Gnosis,” “Gnostic,” and “Gnosticism” are discussed, along with images illustrating possible Gnostic iconography.

Aimy Shaluly: Aimy Shaluly was born into a Rosicrucian family of the Ancient and Mystical Order Rosae Crusis (AMORC) and thus has developed a deep philosophy of life at a very young age. In addition to following the beautiful mystical philosophy of the Rosicrucian teachings, Aimy has also served as an officer in various capacities within this organization that has helped her develop real world people and organizational skills. She is a graduate of the University of Tampa in the field of Electronic Media, Art, and Technology, with a concentration in Management Information Systems. She currently works as Marketing Manager for Mastercut Tool Corp., an international manufacturing firm located in Safety Harbor, Fl. Aimy’s formal education and work experience, combined with her unique life training in the Rosicrucian Order, AMORC, gives her a keen insight into real-life situations. She currently serves as the head coordinator and organizer within the Colombe Committee for the English Grand Lodge of the Americas, a committee dedicated to the guidance of young girls within the order. She enjoys art and music, and directs much of her free time towards helping others through the portals of the Rosicrucian Order, AMORC, as well as contributing to a number of charities with her time and efforts.

“From Ancient to Modern: the Tradition of the Colombe in the Rosicrucian Order.” This presentation will explore the ancient traditions and symbolism behind the role of Colombe within the Rosicrucian Order AMORC, and how this mystical tradition has evolved over the centuries. The benefits derived for the individuals fortunate to grow up in the studies of esotericism and mysticism will also be examined.

Kitty Turgeon: Ms Turgeon is Executive Director of the Foundation for the Study of the Arts and Crafts Movement and Vice President for Education of the Roycrofters-at-Large Association, and recent recipient of the U.S. National Arts & Crafts Conference Lifetime Achievement Award. She holds a B.S. degree and a Master of Professional Services degree from the School of Hotel Administration, Cornell University.

“Elbert and Alice Hubbard’s Great Work: The Influence of the Rosicrucians on the Roycrofters and the Modern Arts and Crafts Movement” (Co-Author and Co-Presenter: Hugh McCague, Ph.D.) The presentation will illustrate the influence that the Rosicrucian Tradition and other Esoteric Traditions had on Elbert and Alice Hubbard, progressive philosophers and leaders of the influential Roycroft Arts and Crafts movement of East Aurora, New York.  H. Spencer Lewis, chief executive officer and Imperator of the Rosicrucian Order, AMORC indicated that the Hubbards worked with him on the first American Council to reactivate the outer expression of the Order in the Americas in 1915. Notable connections and concurrences of the Roycroft and the Rosicrucians can still be made. The presentation discusses the literary and artistic evidence, the effect that esotericism and Rosicrucianism had on the Hubbards, the expression of this influence through the Roycroft, and its subsequent impact on the wider Arts and Crafts movement and society can be inferred. The literary evidence includes the writings and lectures of Elbert and Alice Hubbard which are replete with profound points of agreement with the Rosicrucian philosophy. The artistic evidence includes the designs, craftwork and iconography of the Roycroft and its campus have many special allusions that closely match Rosicrucian symbolism, laws and principles. Some of these correspondences include the recurrent rose motif in the Roycroft Inn’s windows and Roycroft publications, the aphorisms inscribed on the Roycroft Inn’s portals, and Elbert’s appellation and magazine title The Fra. In addition to the Roycroft movement that was active until 1938, the Roycroft Renaissance movement has been underway since 1960. Since 1976, the Roycroft has been the only Arts and Crafts center to have been regenerated by a new guild and colony of artisans, the Roycrofters-at-Large Association (RALA) Artisans. Part of this renaissance has been the on-going contact with, and influence of, the Rosicrucian Order, AMORC. In this manner, the Rosicrucian philosophy and inspiration has been subtly suggested and effectively expressed as “Hidden in Plain Sight” for over a century in the Roycroft and Roycroft Renaissance.

George Young, Ph.D.: Dr. Young was born Pontiac Michigan in 1941, and grew up in Madison, Indiana. He received his Ph.D. in Slavic Languages and Literatures from Yale University in 1973. He has served since 2009, as a Fellow at the Center for Global Humanities, and since 2003, as Adjunct Professor of English and Language Studies, University of New England. His extensive publications include Force Through Delicacy:  The Life and Art of Charles H. Woodbury (1998); Nikolai Fedorov: An Introduction (1979), and Hermotimus’ Voyages (poems), (1976). He is a frequent lecturer on Nikolai Fedorov, Russian literature, and other academic subjects at U.S. and international conferences on Russian literature and philosophy. His current work includes a new book Fedorov and Russian Cosmists, and a study of literature and thought in the non-Russian republics of former USSR.

“Esoteric Tendencies in Russian Cosmism” Little known in the West, Russian cosmism is an important movement in Russian thought rooted in the ideas of the nineteenth century thinker Nikolai Fedorov (1829-1903) and extended, through the twentieth century, into a comprehensive, holographic view of the universe, treating elements from traditional esoteric doctrines as legitimate subjects for scientific, theological, and philosophical enquiry.  Major figures in the cosmist movement include  the rocket pioneer and grandfather of the Russian space program, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky,  (1857-1935), the geologist, biologist, and  developer of the theory of the noosphere, Vladimir Verndasky (1863-1945), the creative theologians Sergei Bulgakov (1871-1944) and Pavel Florensky (1882-1937) and the philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev (1874-1948). This paper focuses on the esoteric elements in cosmist thought and on the idea of active evolution, the cosmist insistence that we have the ability, indeed the Christian or rationalist duty, to determine the course of future human and cosmic development.

Please register early. Registrations will be accepted through June 22 or until the conference is sold out. Registrations will not be accepted at the door.

http://www.rosicrucian.org/hidden_in_plain_sight/

magic & the supernatural – prague – march 2011

Call for Papers

2nd Global Conference

Thursday 17th March – Saturday 19th March 2011
Prague, Czech Republic

---

Bewitched. I Dream of Jeannie. The Exorcist. Charmed. Buffy. Dr. Who. Dracula. Dark Shadows. Twilight and The Twilight Zone. Sookie Stackhouse and Bill Compton. Dresden Files. Harry Potter. The fascination and appeal of magic and supernatural entities pervades societies and cultures. The continuing appeal of these characters is a testimony to how they shape our daydreams and our nightmares, as well as how we yearn for something that is “more” or “beyond” what we can see-touch-taste-feel. Children still avoid stepping on cracks, lovers pluck petals from a daisy, cards are dealt and tea leaves read.

A belief in magic as a means of influencing the world seems to have been common in all cultures. Some of these beliefs crossed over into nascent religions, influencing rites and religious celebrations. Over time, religiously-based supernatural events (”miracles”) acquired their own flavour, separating themselves from standard magic. Some modern religions such as the Neopaganisms embrace connections to magic, while others retain only echoes of their distant origins.

This inter-disciplinary and multi-disciplinary project seeks to examine issues surrounding the role and use of magic in a wide variety of societies and cultures over the course of human history. People with access to magic or knowledge of the supernatural will also be examined.

Papers, presentations, reports and workshops are invited on issues on or broadly related to any of the following themes:

~ Magic as “paranormal,” anything alleged to exist that is not explainable by any present laws of science
~ the distinctions between “magic” and “religion” and “science”
~ Magical thinking and the equation of coincidence with causality
~ Folk magic and “traditional” systems of magic
~ “Magick” and “Wicca” as religious systems in modern society
~ Witchcraft in the European context
~ “Witchcraft” and animism in African or Asian contexts
~ Magic as illusion, stagecraft, sleight-of-hand
~ Magic in modern literature (ex. Harry Potter, Harry Dresden, the saga of Middle Earth, the Chronicles of Narnia, etc.) and in traditional literatures (folk or fairy tales, legends, mythologies, etc.)
~ Magic in art and the depiction of magical creatures, practices or practitioners
~ the associations of magic with the “monstrous” or “evil;” does one imply the presence of the other?
~ the portrayal of magic, magical creatures, and magical practices or practitioners on television and in film
~ the roles or uses of magic in video games, on-line communities, role-playing games, subcultural formations and identities
~ the similarities and differences of magical creatures across societies and time periods
~ the interplay of “magic” and “religion” as well as “science”
~ the “sciences” of demonology and angelology
~ the role of divination or prophecy in societies or religions
~ the use of “natural” vs. “supernatural” explanations for world events
~ Magic and the supernatural as coping mechanisms for individuals and societies

The Steering Group also welcomes the submission of pre-formed panel proposals. 300 word abstracts should be submitted by Friday 1st October 2010. All submissions are minimally double blind peer reviewed where appropriate. If an abstract is accepted for the conference, a full draft paper should be submitted by Friday 4th February 2011. Abstracts should be submitted simultaneously to the Organising Chairs; abstracts may be in Word, WordPerfect, or RTF formats with the following information and in this order:

a) author(s), b) affiliation, c) email address, d) title of abstract, e) body of abstract

Please use plain text (Times Roman 12) and abstain from using footnotes and any special formatting, characters or emphasis (such as bold, italics or underline). We acknowledge receipt and answer to all paper proposals submitted. If you do not receive a reply from us in a week you should assume we did not receive your proposal; it might be lost in cyberspace! We suggest, then, to look for an alternative electronic route or resend.

Organising Chairs

Stephen Morris
Hub Leader (Evil)
Independent Scholar
New York, USA

Sorcha Ni Fhlainn
Hub Leader (Evil)
School of English, Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland

Rob Fisher
Network Founder and Network Leader
Inter-Disciplinary.Net,
Freeland, Oxfordshire, UK

The conference is part of the ‘At the Interface’ programme of research projects. It aims to bring together people from different areas and interests to share ideas and explore various discussions which are innovative and exciting.

All papers accepted for and presented at this conference will be eligible for publication in an ISBN eBook. Selected papers maybe invited for development for publication in a themed hard copy volume(s) or for inclusion in the Perspectives on Evil journal (relaunching 2011).

Style Sheets
In preparing your papers, please pay strict attention to the following style sheets

• Download Oxford Style Sheet – v7 (pdf)
• Download Oxford Reference Style Sheet 2 (pdf)
• Download Template document (Word)

ALL & EVERYTHING 2011: 16th annual conference

CALL FOR PAPERS, CALL FOR SEMINARS

for the  16TH INTERNATIONAL HUMANITIES CONFERENCE  2011

VENUE: Hotel Extol Inn, Prague, Pristavni 2, Prague 7, 17000, Czech Republic Wednesday,

DATES: Wednesday 6th April – Sunday, 10th April 2011

A Gathering of the companions of the book, ‘All and Everything, Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson: A Totally Impartial Criticism of the Life of Man,’ G.I. Gurdjieff

THE ALL & EVERYTHING CONFERENCE:

Our Aim: the conference was originally conceived in 1996 as a meeting of the “Companions of the Book” and it has developed into a world forum for the presentation and discussion of recent writings, themes and music associated with the Work.

The conference provides an open, congenial and serious atmosphere for sharing research and investigation of G. I. Gurdjieff’s legacy. The conference seeks to keep the study of the teachings of Gurdjieff relevant to global, scientific, spiritual and sociological developments. This gathering is open to all serious students of All & Everything and is not under the auspices or sponsorship of any ‘Gurdjieff Group’ or umbrella organization. The conference is not intended to be a ‘Group Work Event’ and thus does not include Work on Movements or Exercises that are related to personal or group Work.

The conference includes the presentation of papers focused on the whole or part of this teaching, seminars on chapters, themes in All & Everything and cultural events. The program is scheduled so as to encourage time for dialogue and the developing of personal relationships outside the structured meetings.

DRAFT PROGRAM FOR ALL & EVERYTHING 2011

Wednesday Evening: Getting to know you session Thurs. Morning: Presentation of two papers, followed by discussions Afternoon Seminar: A chapter from Beelzebub’s Tales
Evening: Cultural Event
Friday Morning: Presentation of two papers, followed by discussions Afternoon Seminar: A chapter from Beelzebub’s Tales
Evening: open social evening
Saturday Morning: Presentation of two papers, followed by discussions Afternoon Seminar: A chapter from Meetings with Remarkable Men
Evening: Conference Banquet
Sunday Morning: Seminar: TBC
Closing Session: Where do we go from here? A conversation providing direction to the Planning Committee for future conferences.

CALL FOR PAPERS

ABSTRACTS – We are currently requesting submissions of abstracts for the papers that will be given at our next conference. Abstracts of accepted papers will be published in advance on the conference website so that delegates can prepare questions/comments. Writers who would like ongoing feedback should contact the Reading Panel.

Examples of previous papers as an indication of the variety of topics can be viewed here: http://www.aandeconference.org/reading-panel
The website is where all the contact and submission information is
provided: http://www.aandeconference.org/reading-panel
The submission form can be downloaded at:
http://www.aandeconference.org/Paper_Submission_Form_2011.pdf
and then submitted by email to: reading_panel@aandeconference.org <mailto:reading_panel@aandeconference.org?subject=Paper_Submission>

CALL FOR SEMINAR FACILITATORS FOR CHAPTER DISCUSSION

At each conference we hold seminars (questions, conversation,
dialogue) on chapters in The Tales and Meetings and other work related subjects. Our experience is also quite remarkable as we bring our questions and understandings to the group at the conference that is made up of various lineages in this teaching. This provides all in attendance to have an opportunity for a respectful and useful exchange of our understandings and experiences.

Facilitators need to have a working familiarity with the chapters or subjects that will be discussed. These facilitators are also responsible for the transcriptions of the seminar that they facilitate. The chapters for
2011 are 29, 32, 33, 34 in The Tales and in Meetings chapter 7, “Prince Yuri Lubovedsky.”

The website is where all the contact and submission information is
provided: http://www.aandeconference.org/seminar-panel
The submission form can be downloaded at:
www.aandeconference.org/Seminar_Submission_Form_2011.pdf
and then submitted by email to: info@aandeconference.org <mailto:info@aandeconference.org?subject=Seminar_Submission>

***
“Thanks to this, even the isolation of the inner life of each individual man is increased, and as a consequence what is called the “mutual instruction” so necessary to people’s collective existence is always more and more destroyed.”
- Beelzebub’s Tales, “From the Author,” page 1214
***

CONFERENCE REGISTRATION

Five day conference registration fee for Wednesday to Sunday is: £55 (approx CZK 1696, €67, $86) and due by March 1, 2010.
One day registration Fee is £14, (approx CZK 454, €18, $23)

The conference registration fee is payable directly to the A & E Conference and it is in addition to the hotel costs.

To make our administration much easier, please, if possible, register on-line with a credit card at our website: www.aandeconference.org/register

If this is not possible for you, you may register by post. Contact us at:
info@aandeconference.org <mailto:info@aandeconference.org?subject=Register>  and we will provide you a mailing address.
Please make checks payable to “All & Everything Conferences” with the form below or a photocopy.
……………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
MAIL-IN REGISTRATION FORM – ALL & EVERYTHING 2011
Name: Phone:
Address:
City/State/County
Post Code Country:
Email:
5 Day Registration for person(s) @ £55, approx CZK1696, €67, $86
1 Day Registration for person(s) @ £14, approx CZK454, €18, $23 TOTAL (£) The Conference Registration Fee and Form are due by March 1, 2011.
Registrants will receive confirmation by email or post.
……………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

***
“…I was composing in my thoughts the scheme and sequence of the ideas destined by me for publication and did not know then how to begin either?
“This sensation then experienced I might now formulate in words only thus: “the-fear-of-drowning-in-the-overflow-of-my-own-thoughts.”
“To stop this undesirable sensation I might then still have had recourse to the aid of that maleficent property existing also in me, as in contemporary man, which has become inherent in all of us, and which enables us, without experiencing any remorse of conscience whatever, to put off anything we wish to do “till tomorrow”.
- Beelzebub’s Tales, “The Arousing of Thought”, pages 4-5
***

HOTEL RESERVATION INFORMATION

Reservation Email: reservations@extolinn.cz <mailto:reservations@extolinn.cz?subject=Booking_for_A_and_E_Conference>

Please state that you are booking for the All & Everything Conference.

It is not too early to make reservations with the Hotel, and delegates are asked to book them early and directly with the hotel.
The A&E Conference cannot make reservations for delegates.

Extol Inn Hotel
Pristavni 2
Prague 7
170 00
Czech Republic
Reception tel./fax: +420 220 876 541
Reservations tel.: +420 220 802 549
Reservations fax.: +420 220 806 752
Contact Email: info@extolinn.cz
Website: http://www.extolinn.cz/english.html

HOTEL ROOM RATE ALL INCLUSIVE 4 NIGHTS (WED. EVE TO SUN. NOON)

single occupancy 3 star *** standard – CZK8685, £349, €286, $441 single occupancy 2 star ** – CZK7155, £236, €288, $364.
single occupancy 2 star ** economy-shared bath, CZK6415, £212, €258, $326 double occupancy 3 star *** – CZK 6585 per person, £ 217, € 265, $ 334 double occupancy 2 star ** – CZK 5815 per person, £ 192, € 234, $ 295 double occupancy 2 star ** economy – shared bath, CZK 5255 per person, £173, €211, $267

All options above include: “the postage,” conference facilities, breakfast, midmorning coffee, lunch, afternoon tea, three course dinner, and banquet dinner on Saturday evening.

NON-RESIDENT DAY ATTENDEES – HOTEL RATE PER DAY

Non-resident Day Attendee Hotel Conference Package Fee is: CZK 748, £ 25, € 30, $38 includes: mid-morning coffee, lunch, afternoon tea. (This is in addition to the day attendee registration fee listed above, and is payable directly to the Hotel, by the day attendee, when they sign in at the hotel front desk.)

PROCEEDINGS

The PDF eBooks versions of the 1998 and 2001 Proceedings are now available from our website at:
http://www.aandeconference.org/proceedings-overview

NEWSLETTER

A PDF printable version of this newsletter, suitable for distribution to your local group or community, is available at:
http://www.aandeconference.org/A&E_2011_Call_For_Papers.pdf
Please share this announcement with any like minded people you know.

ALL & EVERYTHING CONFERENCE MAILING LIST

If you lead or facilitate a Gurdjieff group and would like to recommend any colleagues to receive a copy of this newsletter and subsequent invitations, please email your request to us. If you wish to have your contact information updated, please email your request to us at:
info@aandeconference.org <mailto:info@aandeconference.org?subject=Add_or_Update_Email>

IF YOU WISH TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM A MAILING LIST,

Please email info@aandeconference.org <mailto:info@aandeconference.org?subject=Unsubscribe>  with “Unsubscribe” as the subject line.

Theology & Religious Studies Groningen University

International Programmes in Theology and Religious Studies

“I enjoyed the learn climate at the faculty. The topics were interesting and the teachers great. They taught in an interesting and intelligent way. They were sympathetic and tolerant and never gave the impression to stand above the students.”

“The faculty is open-minded, small and has a good name. I can only recommend it.”

Erasmus Exchange Students 2008

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The Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies of the University of Groningen focuses on the academic, open and critical study of religion in its historical and current context. Students can choose a social-scientific (anthropological and sociological), cultural-historical, philological, religious-psychological or systematic perspective. The faculty is reknowned for the quality of its education programmes and its research.

Furthermore, the faculty hosts institutes for the study of the Dead Sea Scrolls (Qumran), Christian Cultural Heritage and the Institute of Indian Studies. Teaching takes place in a historic building in the centre of the city, close to the University Library and town facilities. The faculty has a very active student society which organises many social activities.

The Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies offers the following programmes

• Exchange programme

• Bachelor programmes:
  • Religious Studies (Dutch)
  • Theology (Dutch)

Although the BA pogrammes of the Faculty Theology and Religious Studies are almost completely taught in Dutch, the 3rd BA Minor is given in English.

• Master programmes:
  • Spiritual Care (Dutch)
  • Religious Studies: Religion in the Modern World (English)
  • Theology: Biblical Studies and Hermeneutics (English)
  • Research Master Religion and Culture (English)
  • Joint Master’s Programme Religion in Peace and Conflict (English)

• Ph.D. programme

Please check the various programmes. If you do have any questions contact us via internationaloffice.thrs@rug.nl.

Secrets and Lies… Dublin City University Conference March 2011

Third Conference of the Society for Irish Latin American Studies

SILAS 2011 – Dublin City University

Secrets and Lies…

Date: Friday March 11th & Saturday March 12th 2011
Location: Dublin City University
Venue: TBC
Contacts: Mr Jean-Philippe Imbert

Welcome. Bienvenidos.

The School of Applied Language and Intercultural Studies is pleased to welcome the third SILAS conference in Dublin City University. It is organised jointly by SALIS, in DCU and SILAS, the Society for Irish Latin American Studies

Aims:

to foster international and cross-disciplinary approaches to the study of connections between Ireland, Latin America, the Caribbean and Iberia.

to provide a platform on which to discuss all occurrences of secrets and lies arising between these.

Organized by:

Society for Irish Latin American Studies (SILAS) + School of Applied Language and Intercultural Studies (SALIS)

Deadlines:

Abstracts to be submitted: Monday October 4th 2010
Acceptance confirmation: Friday November 19th 2010

===========================

Masonería y mujer: UNA COMPOSICIÓN DE LUGAR

Masonería y mujer: UNA COMPOSICIÓN DE LUGAR

A  survey on freemasonry and women, published in Spain see:

http://masonica.es/cm/revista_cm_octubre_2010.pdf

and

http://mauriciocamposmasoneria.blogspot.com/2010/09/revista-cultura-masonica-n-5-ano-ii.html

============================

Canonbury Masonic Research Centre: ‘Anti-Masonry’ Conference

Canonbury Masonic Research Centre; Journal for Research into Freemasonry
and Fraternalism, London, UK

29.10.2010-31.10.2010, 6 Canonbury Place, London N1 2NQ

http://www.canonbury.ac.uk/

The Canonbury Masonic Research Centre (CMRC) is pleased to announce the
program for its twelfth annual conference on the theme of ‘Anti-Masonry’
scheduled for 29/30-31 October, 2010.

Soon after its emergence in early Hanoverian London, organised
Freemasonry earned the enmity of both religious institutions and
governments alike, and by the summer of 1738 the association had been
proscribed by the Magistrate in The Hague, the French government of
Cardinal Fleury, and by Pope Clement XII, in what was to be the first of
many Papal Bulls issued against the order. In the wake of the French
revolution of 1789, polemicists such as the Catholic priest, Abbé
Barruel, accused the Freemasons of helping to bring about these
momentous events, and within a few years a Jewish component had been
introduced to this heady tale. It was an elaboration that was to have
disastrous consequences.

During the nineteenth century Freemasonry also found itself accused of
fomenting the European revolutions of 1848 and a highly successful
anti-masonic party was established in the United States. By the close of
century, the story that Freemasonry was somehow intertwined with Jewish
interests (what American historian Gabriel Jackson termed ‘The Black
Legend’) had metamorphosed into one of the most outlandish conspiracy
tales of all time – The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion. This
notorious forgery of the Tsarist Secret Police – an imagined blueprint
for Judeo-Masonic world domination – was eagerly embraced by the
European Fascist regimes, and it helped prepare the ground for the
Holocaust as well as the imprisonment and execution of thousands of
Freemasons, along with the targeted theft of vast masonic archives, many
of which are still being restituted to their original owners today.
In post-war Europe the publication and appeal of the Protocols dwindled,
although in the case of Spain General Franco continued to maintain a
belief in the existence an imaginary Bolshevik-Masonic complot until his
death in 1975. And today, this infamous document is still viewed as
genuine in many parts of the world, particularly in the Middle East
where it is typically used to justify an over-arching anti-Western
rhetoric. But while the anti-Jewish or anti-Zionist aspects of this
phenomenon are frequently discussed by academics, the anti-masonic
element is all too often ignored.

Consequently, this international conference aims to address this
neglected topic in all its aspects.

For further information please email:
conference@canonbury.ac.uk or telephone 00 44 (0)20 7226 6256

————————————————————————
Friday 29 October
The conference will commence with a
rare showing of ‘Les Forces Occultes’ – a feature length anti-masonic
film made in wartime occupied France (1943) complete with English
subtitles – at University College London.

Saturday 30 October

09:00 Registration and coffee
09:50 Official opening

10:00  The Protocols of the Elders of Zion
Professor Michael Hagemeister, Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich

10:45 Morning coffee

11:15 Chair: Professor Andrew Prescott, Hatii, University of Glasgow

Anti-masonry and masonic trans-nationalism: a complex interplay
Dr. Joachim Berger, Institute of European History, Mainz

Blaming the Great War on the masons’ entente: Friedrich Wichtl,
1872-1921
Dr. Reinhard Markner, Berlin

The anti-masonic writings of General Erich Ludendorff
Jimmy Köppen, Free University of Brussels

Anti-masonry as political protest: Fascist attitudes to Freemasonry in
interwar Romania
Roland Clark, University of Pittsburgh

12:35 Panel discussion
13:00 Lunch

14:15 Keynote: Franco’s persecution of Freemasonry
Professor José Antonio Ferrer Benimeli, University of Zaragoza

15:00 Afternoon Tea

15.30 Chair: Dr. Andreas Önnerfors, University of Sheffield

‘Anti-masonry’ in nineteenth-century Ottoman Lebanon: an offensive
against Anglo-Saxon and protestant missionaries?
Said Chaa EPHE/Sorbonne Paris

Anti-masonry among the Ottomans and in contemporary Turkey
Professor Thierry Zarcone, CNRS/Sorbonne Paris

Trends of anti-masonry in Eastern Orthodox cultures
Dr. Yuri Stoyanov, Research Fellow, SOAS, University of London

‘The Devil’s sons’: one century of anti-masonry in the Arab world
Stephan Schmid, American University of Beirut

16:50 Panel discussion

17:30 Close

19:00 Dinner

Sunday 31 October

10:00 Keynote: Professor John Robison (1739-1805)
Professor Andrew Prescott, Hatii, University of Glasgow

10:45 Morning coffee

11:15 Chair: Professor Jeffrey Tyssens, Free University of Brussels

The reception of anti-masonry in the eighteenth-century English press
Dr. Róbert Péter, Senior Assistant Professor, University of Szeged

Barruel’s conspiracy theory – a theoretical approach
Claus Oberhauser, University of Innsbruck

A Swedish diplomat’s recently deciphered perspective on the Unlawful
Societies Act of 1799
Dr. Andreas Önnerfors, University of Sheffield

‘The voice of Morgan’s blood cries from the ground’: reading American
anti-masonry through anti-masonic almanacs, 1827-1837
Jeff Croteau, MA MLS, National Heritage Museum, Lexington MA

12:35 Panel discussion

13:00 Lunch

14:15  Keynote: War on Freemasons: The restitution of stolen masonic
archives from Russia
Dr. Patricia Kennedy Grimsted, Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute

15:00 Afternoon tea

15:30 Chair: Dr. Tim Baycroft, University of Sheffield

Anti-masonic thought in France: the example of Bernard Faÿ
Jen Farrar, University of Sheffield

Visual evidence used by Franco’s Police in the persecution of Spanish
Freemasons
Dr. Sylvia Hottinger, Carlos III University, Madrid

Stolen truth or truth stolen?
Dr. Hans Kummerer, Quatuor Coronati Research Lodge, Austria

The ongoing restitution of the Norwegian masonic library and archives
Helge Bjørn Horrisland, Norwegian Order of Freemasons

16:30 Panel discussion

17:00 Close

–
Dr. Andreas Onnerfors, Universiteit Leiden

Academic Society for Research into Freemasonry and Fraternalism
133, Sharrow Vale Road
Sheffield S11 8ZA
United Kingdom
Telephone: +44 (0)114 266 52 84
Email: a.onnerfors@umail.leidenuniv.nl
Websites:

http://leidenuniv.academia.edu/AndreasOnnerfors

http://asrff.blogspot.com/

Journal for Research into Freemasonry and Fraternalism:

http://www.equinoxjournals.com/ojs/index.php/JRFF/index

KGB archives reveal secret masonic history

 

Canonbury Masonic Research Centre (CMRC) Conference

New revelations about the secret history of Freemasonry will be revealed at an international academic conference due to take place in London at the end of October. However, unlike the fictional account proffered by Dan Brown in his latest best-selling novel, The Lost Symbol, the history being revealed will be firmly rooted in fact and is set to cause a stir both within and without this enigmatic association.

The conference, which is being organised by the North-London based educational charity, the Canonbury Masonic Research Centre (CMRC), will include at least two speakers who will cast light on their recent forays into the former KGB archives in Moscow, archives that still contain millions of masonic documents originally stolen by the Nazis during the Second World War.

One speaker, Dr. Patricia Kennedy Grimsted of Harvard University, an expert of international renown in this highly specialised field, will deliver a keynote lecture entitled, ‘War on the Freemasons: the fate of Nazi and Soviet seized books and archives’, which will provide an overview of how these vast archives were stolen by the Gestapo and other branches of the Third Reich’s security and intelligence apparatus during the 1930s and 40s, to how they were subsequently shepherded back to the Soviet Union by the NKVD, the forerunner of the KGB­. While another speaker, Dr. José Ferrer Benimeli, a recently retired Professor of modern history at the University of Zaragoza, will cast light on General Franco’s hatred and brutal suppression of Freemasonry in Spain.

Other revelations due to be unveiled for the first time will include recently deciphered diplomatic correspondence from the close of the eighteenth century which provides a fresh insight to mindset of British Prime Minister Pitt the Younger and his attempts to thwart the activities of Freemasonry and various kindred societies one year after the United Irishmen’s rebellion of 1798.

One keynote lecturer will expound upon the infamous Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a notorious forgery which tragically helped to pave the way for the Holocaust. And several speakers will also explore the phenomenon of anti-masonry during the era of the European Fascist regimes, as well as in Turkey and the contemporary Arab world.

Further information, including a downloadable programme of this unique conference and full details of how to register, can be found on the CMRC’s website at:  http://www.canonbury.ac.uk/ Student reductions are available on request.

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SEE THE POST BELOW FOR FULL DETAILS OF CONFERENCE

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Tarot 2011 Conference: San Antonio

Tarot at the 2011 PCA/ACA Conference

It’s time to submit your proposal for the Tarot area at next year’s PCA/ACA conference (San Antonio, 20-23 April 2011). Possible topics may include, but are not limited to:

-Tarot and art history

-Tarot and literature

-Tarot artists, writers, and readers

-Individual decks and their guidebooks

-Tarot as a motif in comics, literature, and film

-playing cards in art history

Participants should be prepared to present their work as scholarly research and / or for the benefit of an interested audience of academics. See the conference website for more information.

Submissions should include the author’s CV, short biography (100-150 words), and abstract (100-250 words).

Deadline: Dec. 15 at the very latest, preferably sooner

Emily E. Auger, PhD

Website: http://emilyeauger.weebly.com/cfp-tarot-at-the-pcaaca-conference.html

Email: augere@canada.com; augeremily@gmail.com

Conference website: http://pcaaca.org/conference/national.php

Spirituality in the 21st Century: At the Interface of Theory, Practice and Pedagogy

Theory, Practice and Pedagogy

20 to 22 March 2011

Venue: Mamaison Riverside Hotel in Prague, Czech Republic

Website: http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/critical-issues/ethos/spirituality-in-the-21st -century/call-for-papers/
Contact name: Dr Rob Fisher

Call for Papers

The contemporary study of spirituality encompasses
a wide range of interests. These have come not
only from the more traditional areas of
religious scholarship – theology, philosophy of
religion, history of religion, comparative
religion, mysticism – but also more recently from
management, medicine, and many other fields.

This inter-disciplinary and multi-disciplinary
conference seeks to examine and explore issues
surrounding spirituality in regard to theory,
praxis and pedagogy. Perspectives are sought from
those engaged in the fields of Alcohol and Drug
Rehabilitation, Business, Counseling, Ecology,
Education, Healing, History, Management,
Mass/Organizational/Speech Communication,
Medicine, Nursing, Performance Studies,
Philosophy, Psychiatry, Psychology,
Reconciliation/Refugee/Resettlement Projects,
Social Work, and Theatre.

These disciplines are indicative only, as papers
are welcomed from any area, profession and/or
vocation in which Spirituality plays a part.

Papers, reports, works-in-progress and workshops
are invited on issues related to any of the
following themes:

* Conceptualizations of Spirituality
* History(ies) of Spirituality
* Interpreting elements and examples of
Spirituality
* The Liminal elements and facets of Spirituality
* Research methods for Spiritual Work
* Social and cultural aspects of Spirituality
* Spirituality and Children
* Spirituality Compassion and Reconciliation
* Spirituality and Cultural Identity
* Spirituality and Healing
* Spirituality in Medicine and/or Nursing
* Spirituality as Therapy
* Spirituality in Literature
* Spirituality in Art, Dance and/or Music
* Spirituality in Television and Film
* Spirituality in the Age of the Internet
* Spirituality and Communication
* Spirituality and the Environment
* Spirituality in Hospice Care
* Spirituality and Gaia
* Teaching Spirituality
* Theology and Spirituality – use and/or abuse
* Teleology and Spirituality
* Comparisons and/or Contrasts between
Spiritual Theory, Praxis and Pedagogy

The Steering Group particularly welcomes the
submission of pre-formed panel proposals. Papers
will be considered on any related theme.

300 word abstracts should be submitted by Friday
1st October 2010. All submissions are minimally
double blind peer reviewed where appropriate.
If an abstract is accepted for the conference, a
full draft paper should be submitted by Friday 4th
February 2011. Abstracts should be submitted
simultaneously to the Organising Chairs; abstracts
may be in Word, WordPerfect, or RTF formats with
the following information and in this order:

a) author(s), b) affiliation, c) email address, d)
title of abstract, e) body of abstract

Please use plain text (Times Roman 12) and abstain
from using footnotes and any special formatting,
characters or emphasis (such as bold,
italics or underline). We acknowledge receipt and
answer to all paper proposals submitted. If you do
not receive a reply from us in a week you
should assume we did not receive your proposal; it
might be lost in cyberspace! We suggest, then, to
look for an alternative electronic route or
resend. If an abstract is accepted for the
conference, a 12-20 page full draft paper should
be submitted to both Organising Chairs by
Monday 7th February 2011.

Organising Chairs

John L. Hochheimer
College of Mass Communication and Media Arts
1100 Lincoln Drive, Mail Code 6609
Southern Illinois University
Carbondale, IL. 62901 USA
E-mail: Hoch@siu.edu

Rob Fisher
Network Founder and Leader,
Inter-Disciplinary.Net
Freeland, Oxfordshire, OX29 8HR
E-mail: s21@inter-disciplinary.net

The conference is part of the ‘At the Interface’
programme of research projects. It aims to bring
together people from different areas and
interests to share ideas and explore various
discussions which are innovative and exciting.

All papers accepted for and presented at this
conference will be eligible for publication in an
ISBN eBook. Selected papers maybe invited
for development for publication in a themed hard
copy volume(s).

For further details about the project please visit:
http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/critical-issues/ethos/spirituality-in-the-21st-century/

For further details about the conference please visit:
http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/critical-issues/ethos/spirituality-in-the-21st-century/call-for-papers/

Daimonic Imagination: Uncanny Intelligence

Daimonic Imagination:
Uncanny Intelligence

6th-7th May 2011
University of Kent, Canterbury

 

CALL FOR PAPERS

In this inter-disciplinary conference we will be addressing the question of inspired creativity. In many traditions the fount of creative vision and the source of divinatory insight is located in an intelligent ‘other’, whether this is termed god, angel, spirit, muse or daimon, or whether it is seen as an aspect of the human imagination and the activation of the ‘unconscious’ in a Jungian sense. From the artistic genius to the tarot reader, the sense of communication with another order of reality is commonly attested. Such communication may take the form of a flash of intuitive insight, psychic or clairvoyant ability, or spiritual possession. In art and literature many forms have been given to the daimonic intelligence, from angels to aliens, and in the realm of new age practices encounters with spiritual beings are facilitated through an increasing variety of methods including shamanism, hypnotherapy, mediumship, psychedelics, channelling and spirit materialisation. Theories of divinatory practices such as astrology, tarot or I Ching often assume a spirit or god-like intelligence at work in symbolic interpretation, and guardian angels abound in self-help literature.

This conference is not concerned with ‘proving’ or ‘disproving’ the existence of such beings. Rather, we would invite papers that address the theme of how the ‘numinous other’ is conveyed and depicted, how its voice is heard, how it informs, and has always informed, human experience. We would like to engage the imagination and open up discussion, particularly around the subject of how researchers might best approach the study of such marginalised and culturally anomalous visions and experiences, and what their value might be.

The conference will be fully interdisciplinary, perspectives may include those from art, literature, divination, cultural studies, philosophy, theology and RS, spirituality, anthropology, classics, history, psychology, film studies and sociology. Presentations should be 30 minutes in length, to be followed by 15 minutes discussion.

Suggested themes:

• The daimonic in art, literature, music, dreams, divination, psychotherapy
• Philosophical, metaphysical, religious and transpersonal approaches to the daimonic
• Spirit visions and mediumship
• Spirits in shamanic and indigenous traditions
• Jung and the unconscious
• Paranormal encounters
• The ‘otherworld’ and its inhabitants
• Psychedelic encounters

Please send a title and abstract to:
William Rowlandson (w.rowlandson@kent.ac.uk ^[1])

and Angela Voss (a.voss@kent.ac.uk ^[2])

co-directors of the Centre for the Study of Myth at the University of Kent
by Monday 28th February 2011

Enquiries: +44 (0)1227 824717 or email MythConference  

 Check the    event website    for registration and list of confirmed speakers. 

University of Kent, Canterbury, Kent, CT2 7NX

Soul to Soul – Orality in the Platonic Tradition

 

Ivy House

CONFERENCE 2011

Friday, 1 July to Sunday, 3 July

Ivy House, Warminster, Wiltshire, UK

 Soul to Soul – Orality in the Platonic Tradition

 “But, in my opinion, a much more beautiful study will result from discourses, when some one employing the dialectic art, and receiving a soul properly adapted for his purpose, plants and sows in it discourses, in conjunction with science; discourses which are sufficiently able to assist both themselves and their planter, and which are not barren, but abound with seed; from whence others springing up in different manners, are always sufficient to extend this immortal benefit, and to render their possessor blessed in as high a degree as is possible to man.” Phaedrus, 276e

 The 2011 Prometheus Trust Conference will invite participants to consider the Platonic tradition as primarily an oral one – for in both the Phaedrus and in his Epistles, Plato indicates the superiority of the spoken above that of the written word in philosophy. Further, it is clear that where Plato does commit his philosophy to writing, the very form chosen – that of the dialogue – draws the reader as closely as possible to the oral experience. If this hypothesis is correct, it presents major difficulties to those investigating the Platonic tradition from our modern perspective, which sees the text as the safe arbiter of true understanding. How can we overcome these difficulties? And for those who seek to continue the tradition, how can we embrace orality as the central instrument of philosophical progress?

  Papers are invited from those interested in these areas for presentation at the sixth Prometheus Trust conference. We hope that the subject will attract speakers from both academic and non-academic backgrounds who share a common love of wisdom.

 Abstracts should be no more than 300 words and should be with us at the latest by Friday, 1 April 2011. Acceptance of these will be confirmed as quickly as possible.

 Papers should be around 2500-3000 words or 20 minutes’ presentation (we usually allow a further 20 minutes for a question and answer session after each presentation).

 Bookings should be received by us not later than Friday, 6 May 2011.

 We are delighted that Dr Deepa Majumdar has agreed to give the keynote address on the Friday evening. Deepa is originally from India and now resides in the US where she is a tenured faculty member (Associate rank) at Purdue University North Central. In 2000, she received her DSSc degree in Philosophy at the former Graduate Faculty of The New School, where she wrote her dissertation on the philosophy of Plotinus. She has a prior PhD in Agricultural Economics from Iowa State University. She has published one book entitled Plotinus on the Appearance of Time and the World of Sense (Ashgate Publishers 2007) and two papers on Plotinus. She has also published a paper each on Plato and Ghandi. Her current work includes a paper on Plotinus and the Bhagavad Gita, a book on Plotinus and Advaita Vedanta and a work on the nature of love. She has prepared reviews on papers on Plotinus for The International Journal of the Platonic Tradition, Ancient Philosophy, and the 2009 Conference volume of The International Society for Neoplatonic Studies, as well as a review on a book on Plotinus in The Classical Review, volume 60.

Deepa believes in disseminating academic knowledge as widely as possible, engaging in many public educational projects and writing copious op-ed pieces for Indian newspapers. She believes deeply in being a writer and thinker for the people, as it were, and is critical of the hyper-formalism of academia.

 The Thomas Taylor Lecture

 One of the highlights of our conferences is the annual Thomas Taylor lecture given on Saturday evening: this year we are very pleased indeed that Prof John Dillon of University College Dublin has agreed to give this lecture.

 Accommodation

 The conference will take place at Ivy House, a retreat centre in Warminster, which is comfortable and well appointed. Residential prices are for full board for the weekend (from Friday supper to Sunday tea) and are £120 (£90 for students). Students are requested to share a bedroom if there are no single rooms available when they book. Please contact the Treasurer if you cannot afford these fees as it may be possible to offer you a bursary.

 For those who wish to attend the conference but who do not wish to stay or eat at Ivy House, there are inexpensive residential pubs in Warminster and several take-aways/cafes/restaurants. It would be your responsibility to arrange accommodation and food; attendance at Ivy House on a non-residential basis costs £18 per day (to include refreshments and lunch) plus the conference fee. We can forward a list of local accommodation.

 Conference fee: This charge is £30 and is payable with your booking. It is non-refundable in the event of cancellation. Accommodation fees are payable by end of May. Ivy House has its own cancellation policy – details if required from the Conference Secretary.

 Booking forms are available from the Conference Secretary at the above address, phone or email. Completed forms with your deposit of £30 should be returned by FRIDAY, 6 MAY at the very latest.

 Travel: Warminster is on the main train line from South Wales and the South Coast and is easily reached from London via Bath or Salisbury. Buses run from Bath, Bristol and Salisbury and coaches from London.

 Trustees: Mr T J Addey (Chairman), Mr S Wade, LLB (Secretary), Mrs BAF Addey (Treasurer), Dr Crystal Addey, Mr Jeremy A Best,

Ms M Lyn, and Ms A V Wallace

Patrons: Mr D C Skilling and Mrs M A Skilling

The Prometheus Trust

28 Petticoat Lane, Dilton Marsh, Westbury, Wilts BA13 4DG

Tel: 01373 825808

email: info@prometheustrust.co.uk Registered Charity no. 299648

www.prometheustrust.co.uk

37ª Feria Internacional del Libro de Buenos Aires – Argentina 2011

 

37ª Feria Internacional del Libro de Buenos Aires – Argentina 2011

Hora: abril 20, 2011 a mayo 20, 2011

Ubicación: Predio de la Sociedad Rural

Organizado por: Publicaciones Argentinas, Fundación El Libro y otros

Descripción del evento:

37ª Feria Internacional del Libro de Buenos Aires, Argentina, abril – mayo de 2011. Pabellón Amarillo, stand 2502 de Publicaciones Argentinas, Director Fernando Fontenla. Allí serán expuestos mis siguientes textos:Hemorragia Interna.Volumen de poemas presentado en XVIII Feria Internacional del Libro de Buenos Aires en 1992, con el auspicio de la Subsecretaría de Cultura de la provincia de Buenos Aires. Diploma de reconocimiento por el aporte al Crecimiento Cultural Nacional en 1997, otorgado por el Círculo Literario Bartolomé Mitre de Azul, Buenos Aires. También fue presentado en las Ferias Internacionales del Libro de Puerto Rico, Panamá, Centroamérica y Costa Rica. ISBN: 950-735-057-8 Retrato de Adán y Eva. Primera edición, Faro Editorial, 1999. Los cuentos La tentación, Retrato de Adán y Eva y Los crucifijos de piel obtuvieron Medalla al Mérito Literario de la Editorial De Los Cuatro Vientos, siendo publicados en la antología Territorio Sur 2008 de escritores de Buenos Aires. También fue presentado en las Ferias Internacionales del Libro de Puerto Rico, Panamá y Buenos Aires.ISBN: 950-813-108-X V Antología Audiolibro Emociones 2010, selección de cuentos y poemas premiados, realizada a través de la convocatoria al V Certámen Internacional de Poesía y Narrativa en Audiolibro, evento organizado y editado en CD por el Instituto Cultural Latinoamericano. Tercer Premio de Cuento. El volumen fue presentado en las Ferias Internacionales del Libro de Puerto Rico y Buenos Aires.

Ver más detalles y RSVP en Respetable Logia Prometeo N° 1:

http://granoriente.ning.com/events/event/show?id=3997504%3AEvent%3A12607&xgi=4XkT7RxBOwbQQ5&xg_source=msg_invite_event

Phoenix Rising Academy

 

PHOENIX RISING

Phoenix Rising Academy offers full-length distance-learning courses, online seminars and webcasts in Western Esotericism, the Creative Arts, and many related topics.

Study at your own pace, from anywhere in the world, alongside accomplished scholars who combine rigorous and critical scholarship with imagination, intuition and spiritual awareness.

Distance-learning courses, events and retreats to stimulate the mind, stir the imagination, nourish the soul.

Σεμινάρια εξ αποστάσεως και δια ζώσης, εκδηλώσεις και βιωματικά εργαστήρια που διεγείρουν το νου, εμπνέουν τη φαντασία, και γεμίζουν τη ψυχή

Academy Director: Sasha Chaitow

Faculty:

Cody Bahir
Austin Case
Amy Clanton
Dr Geoffrey Cornelius (founding member)
Orlando Fernandez
Dr Amy Hale
Andrea Lobel
Dr Simon Magus
Daryl Morazzini
Martin Parrot
Dr Stanley Sfekas
Dr George Sieg
Dr Hereward Tilton
Romana Turina (founding member)
Dr Angela Voss (founding member)
Dr Jason Lawton Winslade 

For full details see:

 

http://www.phoenixrising.org.gr/

 

Renouncing Rejected Knowledge: Again

 PHOENIX RISING ACADEMY

Demons In The Academy?

Renouncing Rejected Knowledge, Again.

 

Many scholars of Western Esotericism support that its validation as a field within mainstream academia lies in the application of empiricism as the primary research method. Yet this perspective disregards a defining constituent of the object of study, namely, the symbolic perception which might also be termed imaginal epistemology. Pejoratively termed “religionism,” carrying connotations of inadequate scholarship, this formative element of esoteric thought has become the new pariah of the academic study of the field broadly termed Western Esotericism in its current form.

The concept of symbolic perception and interpretation is rooted in Western intellectual history, and its significance has been highlighted by a number of respected scholars who have proposed integrative models and approaches that combine scholarly rigour with imaginative and sympathetic

engagement. Other scholars have called for channels of dialogue and mutual understanding to be developed between scholars and practitioners in order to better understand the application and potentials of such epistemologies. However, this perspective is frequently repudiated, and scholars calling for more interdisciplinary approaches often find themselves marginalised, meeting with varying degrees of censure among their peers.

This approach is taking the field in a reductionist direction, with disquieting implications. More alarming still is the near-demonisation of such areas of inquiry in influential scholarly circles. Such interdictions have no place in centres of intellectual inquiry, and to support them with claims of “academic legitimacy” is to perpetuate the very reductionist and rationalist thinking that led to the separation of the sciences from the humanities and consigned the study of esoteric and initiatory philosophy to the backwaters of cultural and intellectual inquiry for the last three hundred years.

Even the most etic of approaches is not immune to subjectivity, and this begs the question of its adequacy for a subject whose very texts and images are directed towards inner, transformative work. Integrated approaches have been long established in many other areas of the humanities and social sciences, from art and performance, to ethnographic and behavioral perspectives. Thus the proscription of all but the most critical and rational methodologies necessarily fails to do justice to such a topic of study.

Phoenix Rising Academy wishes to explore the transdisciplinary options that may lead to more balanced and integrative approaches, while drawing attention to the very real dangers that we perceive in the insistence on objective and disinterested empiricism as the sole acceptable method for the study of these topics. To this end we invite interested parties to submit a proposal, or to join us for the discussion session at our symposium in connection with the:

Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion (AAR)

in San Francisco, California,

November 19-22, 2011.

Symposium Format

• Five 15-20 minute keynote presentations [1.5 hrs]
• Two video-link presentations [30 mins]
• Up to eight five-minute statements [1 hr]
• Panel discussion [30 mins]

 

Discussion tracks

• Legitimate ways of knowing: the place of experiential knowledge and/or symbolic perception as a form of research.
• What can we learn from each other? Bridging the practitioner-scholar divide
• The esoteric polemic and rejected knowledge: a valid concern or a baseless claim?
• Why are history and discourse analysis not enough?
• Paradigms for integration and applied transdisciplinary methodology

 

Guidelines for proposal submission

Two keynote spots remain open, as do all the ‘statement’ segments. Precise timing will be kept, and speakers exceeding their allotted time will be asked to stop, regardless of whether they have completed their talk or not. Please help us to avoid this by ensuring that you do not exceed the allotted time.

• Keynote lectures should not exceed an absolute maximum of 17 minutes.
• Statements should not exceed an absolute maximum of 6 minutes.
• Statements should consist of a clearly framed thesis and an outline of supporting detail relevant to the symposium topic.
• Audience members will be invited to prepare one written statement or question during the symposium. These will be handed to the symposium coordinators during the intermission, and a selection will be read out during the discussion session.

 

With your submission please include the following:

1. Presenter information (name, mailing and e-mail addresses, phone number)
2. Type of presentation (keynote or statement)
3. Title and affiliation (institution or organization)
4. Proposal or abstract (in English, not to exceed 250 words, in PDF, or Word, or Office)
5. Biographical data (in English, not to exceed 200 words)
6. Selected track, or four keywords

Please email all submissions to

phoenix@phoenixrising.org.gr

by July 15^th 2011, marking “PRA Symposium”

in the subject line. All submissions will be reviewed promptly and you will be notified of the academic board’s decision within a maximum of one week after the deadline.

INTERNATIONAL DREAM CONFERENCE AMSTERDAM

International Dream Conference 2011 in Amsterdam

After several years of preparation, we are excited to announce the International Dream Conference in Amsterdam, which will be held on

July 25-29, 2011.

The theme will be:

Unity and Honouring Diversity.

• We have already spoken with several internationally renowned speakers and authors , as well as our Dutch dreamworkers, who will be lecturing and doing workshops on a wide variety of subjects:

• Fields of anthropology, sociology, parapsychology, philosophy, theosophy, psychology, theology and (comparative) religious studies (including Islam and Native American shamanism) as well as others

• Cultural patterns, differences and similarities in dream interpretation and cultural rituals

• Gender aspects in dreamwork

• Spirituality, mindfulness and peace

• Theatre, dance, art and film

We expect to have participants from many different parts of the world: South Africa, South America, Japan, India, the Philippines, Thailand, Australia, Russia, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Canada, the USA and Europe.

The main language at this conference will be English, but we would also like to invite speakers of Dutch, French or Spanish to attend and participate in these languages.

This conference will be interesting for academics and people who are interested in the study of dreams in conjunction with university studies, for dreamworkers and for laypeople who are interested in the study of dreams and their meaning.

Please take a moment to register on the website www.dreamconference2011.nl and for more information you can click through to our new website www.dreamconference2011.com

We are looking forward to making this conference an unforgettable experience.

This dream conference will be sponsored. Because of this, we intend to cover some of the costs of travel for people coming from certain non-European countries and to provide a fee to a number of presenters at this dream conference.

We will have more information in the near future with the details about the conference program as well as information about sightseeing in our beautiful city.

FULL DETAILS AND PROGRAMME

http://www.dreamconference2011.nl/conference/website/program.htm

University College Cork: New MA in Contemporary Religions

Cork – Ireland – University College Cork

A new MA Contemporary Religions programme will be offered by the Study of Religions department at UCC Cork from September 2011. This is the first programme of its kind in Ireland.

The MA may be taken full-time (12 months) or part time (over 2 or 3 years) and will be taught in the evenings. The closing date for applications this year is July 1st. Applications received after this date will be considered if places are still available.

Details of the new MA programme can be accessed from the MA Contemporary Religions link on the dept website at http://www.ucc.ie/en/studyofreligions/ or at

http://www.ucc.ie/en/studyofreligions/PostgraduateStudies/

For queries about the programme content and delivery or an informal discussion about study options at MA or other levels please contact

Professor Brian Bocking or any member of SoR staff 

(details at http://www.ucc.ie/en/studyofreligions/Staff/

You may be interested to know that a further member of staff specialising in Contemporary South Asian Religions is due to be appointed in the coming weeks.

Enquiries about the MA application process (online, via PAC, the Postgraduate Applications Centre) should be directed to the UCC Graduate Studies Office – details of the new MA Contemporary Religions and of the PAC application procedure are at the GSO website

http://www.ucc.ie/en/study/postgrad/what/acsss/masters/religion/

Recent Academic Research on Astrology: THE 9TH HOUSE

www.the9thhouse.org

THE 9TH HOUSE

Recent Academic Research

on Astrology

Recent years have seen a flowering of academic research on astrology, or topics related to astrology, unprecedented in the last three hundred years. This website exists in order to make as much as possible of this work available.

It will be limited to:

Ph.D. or M.Phil. theses from accredited universities.

Selected M.A. dissertations from accredited universities.

Work in English.

Work in either the humanities or social sciences. (Research attempting to locate astrology as effects with causes determinable by the physical sciences is a sufficiently different enterprise to belong somewhere else.)

Short notices about forthcoming books based on, or incorporating, theses or dissertations.

All Ph.D./ M.Phil. theses and short notices that are offered by their authors will be accepted that conform, in the Editor’s opinion, to the above criteria. Regarding M.A. dissertations, the final decision of what to include rests with myself, as the site’s editor.

Notices of Forthcoming Work by

Nicholas Campion

Geoffrey Cornelius

Patrick Curry

Dorian Gieseler Greenbaum

Liz Greene

Angela Voss

Finally, although it has no direct involvement with this website, the Sophia Trust deserves thanks for making much of this research possible through its generous institutional support at various British universities.

(Dr) Patrick Curry

info@the9thhouse.org

© The 9th House | email: info@the9thhouse.org

ACADEMIC-STUDY-MAGIC: Call for Articles

Rudolph Steiner: Anthroposophy

William Butler Yeats: Golden Dawn Lodges

Jeanne de Salzmann: G. I. Gurdjieff – Fourth Way

The Widening Gyre: Western Esotericism in the Mid-Twentieth Century

Susan Johnston Graf and Amy Hale, eds. are seeking articles of 4,000 to 7,000 words for a volume that will explore developments within Western occultism and esotericism during the mid-twentieth century. The volume, when completed, will be under consideration for inclusion in the State University of New York Press (SUNY) series on Western Esotericism.

Interested authors should send a copy of their current curriculum vitae and a 300-500-word scholarly abstract summarizing the proposed contribution to both:

Amy Hale (hale.amy@spcollege.edu) and

Susan Johnston Graf (sjg9 @psu.edu)

by October 1, 2011. 

 

Rationale and Topics

Historical analysis of Western esoteric movements over the past two

centuries has put great emphasis on cycles of popularity and the

public evolution of esoteric ideas. Two areas of scholarly focus have

been the occult revival of the fin de siècle through the 1920s and the

expansion of Neopaganism as a religious movement in conjunction with

other liberating social movements of the late 1960s and 1970s.

Comparatively, the time period between the end of World War I and

1965, which was one of consolidation and generation in the development

of Western esoteric societies and movements, has been given less

attention. Histories of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, the

Theosophical Society, and other late nineteenth- and early

twentieth-century occult movements abound, but, aside from some

notable exceptions, in general there has been less concentration on

mid-century Western esoteric movements.

In this volume, we propose to concentrate tightly on the development

of esoteric groups and societies in the 45-year period between 1920

and 1965. This period saw the early unfolding and extension of Wicca,

important changes in Hermetic groups such as the Golden Dawn and the

O.T.O., and a significant change in the trajectory of Druidry in a way

that affected the entire subsequent direction of the Pagan movement.

Additionally, in the United States we see the earliest occult films of

Kenneth Anger and the first stirrings of the Church of Satan under

Anton LaVey. Likewise, in Germany we find the postwar development of

the Fraternitas Saturni. Our argument is that we should re-evaluate

this era, not only to redress the lack of scholarly attention it has

received, but also because it sets the tone and direction for Western

esotericism for the remainder of the twentieth century and into the

twenty-first.

We seek articles which explore Western esoteric societies, movements,

and ideas, and the individuals, expressions, and places involved in

their continued flowering or declining, as the case may be, between

1920 and 1965.  

Potential topics for exploration may include (but are not limited to) the following:

The development of Golden Dawn lodges after 1920

The development or decline of continental magical orders

Post colonial magical groups in Central America, South America and the Caribbean

The fractioning of neo-Druidic orders

The interplay between the esoteric and Science Fiction

Society for Inner Light and mid-century Glastonbury

Mid-century American magical groups

The work of Kenneth Anger

Early or competing (non Gardnerian) varieties of Witchcraft.

Mid-century Freemasonry

AMORC

The legacy of Rudolph Steiner and Anthroposophy

G. I. Gurdjieff and the Fourth Way

Conference for the Study of Contemporary Spiritualities

  

 Haifa, Israel                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          From:

Prof. Ofra Mayseless & 

Dr. Marianna Ruah-Midbar.

Conference’s committee chairpersons

We are happy to announce that the 4th Israeli Conference for the Study of Contemporary Spiritualities (ICSCS) will be held this year at the University of Haifa (Isreal) on Tuesday, March 20th, 2012.

Please find below the CFP for the conference, and the lecture / Symposium proposal forms. The CFP describes this year’s conference’s central theme:

The therapeutic/psychological discourse within contemporary spiritualities. Nonetheless, this theme does not in any way limit all other research topics, and the conference will be open to all research fields within the study of contemporary spiritualities.

This year ICSCS becomes international, and a new international advisory board was founded alongside the conference’s academic committee.

One of the Keynote lectures will be given by Prof. Paul Heelas on Spiritual Humanism.

Pre-conference and/or post-conference workshops will be offered. More information on these will follow.

We invite researchers as well as graduate students from all disciplines to present papers and symposia in the study of contemporary spiritualities, as detailed below.

Please send proposal forms by 18/11/2011 

to the conference coordinator, Mr. Shai Feraro –

spirituality@construct.haifa.ac.il

Proposal for a Single Paper

Title of Paper      

Personal details:

Given name       Family name      

Phone: Home       Office       Cellular      

Email      

Academic status Prof.      

Affiliation (Academic Institution)      

State      

Abstract (400-500 Words):

     

Bibliography (about 10 items):

     

Comments:      

…………………………………….

Title of Symposium      

Information regarding the Symposium’s papers:

1) Paper’s title:      

Presenter name:      

2) Paper’s title:      

Presenter name:      

3) Paper’s title:      

Presenter name:      

4) Paper’s title:      

Presenter name:      

Symposium Organizer:

Given name       Family name      

Phone: Home       Office       Cellular      

Email      

Affiliation (Academic affiliation)      

Academic status Prof.      

State      

Proposed chair Prof.      

Given name       Family name      

Affiliation (Academic affiliation)      

Has this person has already agreed to chair the Symposium? Yes

Brief Description of Symposium (80-120 Words):

     

Comments:      

Please Note:

1. Each paper proposal for this Symposium should be submitted on a separate paper proposal form.

2. Symposium proposals should include 3-4 papers.

The committee is not obligated to accept the Symposium in its entirety, and may change the recommended chair or divide the accepted proposals into different Symposiums.

Psychosis and Spirituality: Inner Journeys in a Time Of Transition

 

 

 

SPIRITUAL CRISIS NETWORK

Psychosis and Spirituality: Inner Journeys in a Time Of Transition 

10th November 2011. Art and Design Academy, Liverpool John Moores University.

This conference will focus on psychosis and its relationship to spirituality, altered states of consciousness and unusual experiences and how these can be used constructively to facilitate recovery in people given a mental health diagnosis. Contributors are experienced in clinical practice and research, neuroscience and spiritual practices. The day will thereby provide a groundbreaking combination of practical ideas, new psychological understanding, opportunities for experiential work and lively discussion. This conference will appeal to mental health professionals, services users, carers and anyone seeking greater understanding in this rapidly developing area. 

 

Speakers’ Biographical Notes and Workshop Details:

 

Les Lancaster

Les is Professor of Transpersonal Psychology at Liverpool John Moores University, Honorary Research Fellow in the Centre for Jewish Studies at Manchester University, and part of the Adjunct Research Faculty at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology, California. He is a past Chair of the Transpersonal Psychology Section of the British Psychological Society, and currently President of the International Transpersonal Association. His published works include Mind Brain and Human Potential, winner of a Science and Medical Network Best Book Award, The Essence of Kabbalah, and Approaches to Consciousness: the Marriage of Science and Mysticism and contributions to various journals. 

Dr Mike Jackson

Mike is a Consultant Clinical Psychologist at Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board, University of Bangor, living and working in the NHS in North Wales. He has a long term interest in benign psychosis, and has conducted and published research in this area throughout his career.

Isabel Clarke

Isabel is a Consultant Clinical Psychologist, currently employed as Psychological Therapies Lead in a new NHS Acute Inpatient Unit (Woodhaven, New Forest). Her aim is to establish therapeutic and non stigmatizing approaches at the heart of the mental health service, and to this end she has published with colleagues an evaluation (Durrant et al. 2007) and an edited book (Clarke and Wilson 2008) to demonstrate how this can be done. Her work on psychosis and spirituality opens the way to a radical rethinking of openness to unusual experience which takes it away from the illness model. This is published in Madness, Mystery and the Survival of God (2008) and she edited, Psychosis and Spirituality: consolidating the new paradigm (2010). Details of her publications and activities can be found on her web site

Workshop Title: “Ways of Working beyond the Psychosis/Spirituality Threshold. Engagement and Mindfulness”

Summary: People who have become stuck on the far side of the threshold between ordinary life and ‘unshared reality’ (which includes psychosis) can be hard to reach; hard to talk to. This workshop will introduce new ways of working with people who find themselves on or over that edge; ways of working which have been found helpful in both forming therapeutic alliances and enabling people to understand and take charge of their own process. Mindfulness is crucial here as it is the key to managing the threshold. The workshop will introduce varied ways in which mindfulness can be used in order to take charge of this process, both for the individual and to be used in therapy.

Dr Christopher Findlay

Christopher is a general psychiatrist practising in Cheshire. He has been a member of the executive committee of the Spirituality and Psychiatry Special Interest Group of the Royal College of Psychiatrists since 2000. He is interested in neuroscience and psychotherapy.

Workshop title: “Spirituality and the body in the healing of psychosis”

Summary The workshop will be about the use of EMDR and sensorimotor psychotherapy in helping people recover from trauma in a range of psychiatric disorders including psychosis. Spiritual resources are an implicit part of this process and transcendent and transformational experience is commonly witnessed.

Janice Hartley

Janice is an independent mental health trainer, a director and volunteer for the Spiritual Crisis Network, and an ex-user of psychiatric services. She holds a Post Graduate Diploma in consciousness and transpersonal psychology from Liverpool John Moores University

Workshop title: “The Hero’s (and Heroine’s) Journey”

Summary: This workshop will introduce anthropologist Joseph Campbell’s ‘Hero’s Journey’ (based on his classic book ‘The Hero with a Thousand Faces’), as a means of promoting empowerment and recovery from psychosis. Participants will be encouraged to explore the Hero’s (or Heroine’s) Journey as an alternative non-medical framework for their own or their clients’ experiences. The concept is especially helpful to anyone seeking to challenge stigma in mental health.

Dr Jessica Bockler

Jessica is a professional theatre director and actress, specialising in physical theatre and expressive movement. She trained at the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts from 1996 to 1999 and has since led many diverse arts projects with professional performers and non-actors alike. Jessica specialises in arts & mental health and is currently Arts Officer of Creative Alternatives, an ‘arts on prescription‘ programme in the borough of Sefton, Merseyside. Jessica recently completed a PhD in Psychology, examining the psychosomatic effects of self-expressive theatre practices upon the actor.

Workshop Title: “The Psychosomatics of Creativity: How Mindful Play enhances Wellbeing and Health”

Summary: In this workshop we’ll explore how expressive arts practices — from spontaneous movement and voice work to sketching and writing — can help us connect to a deeper sense of self and bring this into outer expression, thus revitalising our wellbeing and sense of purpose. The workshop will highlight the role of the body in the creative act as healing process. I propose that the regular practice of expressive arts can facilitate deep body-based introspection which in turn enables us to gain greater self-insight and congruence through expressive engagement with felt senses and corresponding images. We’ll also explore what conditions need to be in place so that the creative journey can lead to healing transformation. I shall highlight mindfulness as a central factor, without which creative play may descend into mere diversion. This workshop is grounded in my PhD research at Liverpool John Moores University, which examined the psychosomatics of self-expressive theatre practices, and my work as Arts Officer of Creative Alternatives (an ‘arts on prescription’ programme for adults with mental ill health in the borough of Sefton, Merseyside, see www.creativealternatives.org.uk.

Dr David King (Chair)

David is a Consultant Clinical Psychologist — previously a general nurse and psychiatric nurse — providing clinical lead, professional advice and supervision to the Clinical Psychologists in the four Community Mental Health Teams across Liverpool. His approach to understanding and working with people with psychosis, as with all severe and complex mental problems, is via the principles of treating the person as being unexceptional (in exceptional circumstances), and of ‘recovery’. His therapeutic approach is integrative. For many years he has also read widely and intensively in philosophy, comparative mysticism and transpersonal theory, and is currently writing a book-length work intended to reassess and enhance ‘integral theory’ on its own terms.

www.spiritualcrisisnetwork.org.uk/innerjourneys/

Contact: Chris Clarke

Email:chrisclarke@spiritualcrisisnetwork.org.uk

CONTEMPORARY ESOTERICISM: INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE

STOCKHOLM UNIVERSITY

SWEDEN  

AUGUST 27-29, 2012

 

Keynote Speakers

Wouter J. Hanegraaff,

Center for History of Hermetic Philosophy and Related Currents, University of Amsterdam

Christopher Partridge, Religious Studies, Lancaster University

Kocku von Stuckrad, Study of Religion, Groningen University

Deadline for Abstracts: March 30, 2012

Submit your abstract (approx. 200 words) along with a brief academic CV (approx 1 page) to: ContEso2012@gmail.com

The academic study of Western esotericism has blossomed in recent years; University departments and MA programs have been established, book series and journals launched, academic societies founded, and several international conferences and panels are organized every year. There is, however, still a major gap in scholarship on esotericism: very little research exists on contemporary phenomena. While some present-day phenomena related to esotericism, such as ‘New Age spiritualities’ and (neo)paganism, have been the focus of scholars in other fields, scholars working in the field of esotericism have largely neglected such developments. With a focus on early modern phenomena, scholarship in the field of Western esotericism has been predominantly historiographical in its approach, with a common reluctance to incorporate social scientific approaches. In recent years, however, serious attempts have been made to develop sociological approaches to the study of the esoteric/occult which are both compatible with historical approaches and forgo the biased presumptions of yesteryear. A fundamental challenge for the study of contemporary esoteric phenomena is that it is not sufficient to simply transpose theories, definitions and methodologies developed for the study of e.g. Renaissance magic to later manifestations of the esoteric. Studying contemporary phenomena poses intriguing possibilities, such as the opportunity to study esotericism in lived contexts, which unavoidably also introduce new problems. In general, several theoretical and methodological concerns need to be addressed if a proper study of contemporary esotericism is to succeed.

Suggested Topics

The primary aim of this conference is to place contemporary phenomena on the agenda of the study of esotericism. Thus we welcome papers dealing with contemporary and recent developments in “classic” esoteric currents – e.g. within Theosophy, Anthroposophy, Freemasonry, Rosicrucianism, and ritual magical currents – as well as esoteric developments of particular relevance today – e.g. Chaos Magick, Satanism, and (neo)paganism. We also strongly encourage papers dealing with theoretical and methodological issues that are particularly pertinent to the study of contemporary esotericism, as well as papers dealing with the societal, cultural, political, religious etc. contexts of esotericism today. This can include discussions on the role played by the esoteric in modern politics (e.g. the new right), grassroots activism (e.g. deep ecology and the animal rights movement), science (e.g. parapsychology, neurotheology, “New Age physics”), healthcare (e.g. alternative medicine), popular culture (both entertainment media and in broader contexts such as kitsch, consumer, and fan culture), and modern interactive communications media (e.g. mediatization and the effects of changing modes of mediation), as well as the simultaneous influence of these and other fields on esoteric notions, beliefs, and practices. General theoretical discussion on the potential usefulness of sociological terms and concepts such as globalization, secularization, and the post-secular in the study of contemporary esotericism is also encouraged. The conference should function as an interdisciplinary meeting place where scholars from a multitude of disciplines and with different approaches and perspectives can come together to learn from each other.

Additional information

The conference is arranged in conjunction with the 2012 EASR conference, also arranged in Stockholm, Sweden (at Södertörn University, August 23-26). Panels on esotericism, both historical and contemporary, are planned for the EASR as well, thus providing the opportunity to engage in extended discussion on these subjects, and of course lessening travel expenses.

More detailed information, including conference fee, will be made available at a later stage.

Conference organizers

Egil Asprem, PhD Research Fellow, Center for History of Hermetic Philosophy and Related Currents, University of Amsterdam

Kennet Granholm, Assistant Professor, History of Religions, Stockholm University

Forthcoming volume on Contemporary Esotericism

The conference will function as the launching party for Contemporary Esotericism, the first volume specifically dedicated to the study of esotericism in the present day. The volume is published by Equinox Publishing and includes eighteen articles by well-established scholars as well as innovative younger researchers in the field. For more information, see the publisher’s webpage.

SCIENCE – FABLES & CHIMERA: STRANGE ENCOUNTERS

 

 

Université Paul Sabatier, Toulouse 3, France 

10 June 2011

 

Deadline for proposals: 31 January 2011

The history of science provides numerous examples of the way in which imagination, religion and mythology have sometimes helped, sometimes hindered scientific progress. While established ideas and beliefs clearly held back the discoveries of Copernicus, Galileo and Darwin, the implicit knowledge to be found in mythology, art and religion has often proved useful in indicating new ways in which to explore or represent new knowledge of the world. Stories, fables and images have often proved very useful in drawing a fuller picture of the past, understanding the present or imagining the future.

The aim of this conference is to question the rigidity of disciplinary boundaries and to show the dialogue between science and the humanities through specific examples or more general thematic analyses. Papers might consider the role of imagination in science in a given discipline, or address a particular notion at a specific period.

We invite scholars of any discipline and period to send their proposal for a 30-minute paper, with a short bio, to:

- Laurence Roussillon-Constanty (CICADA, EA 1922) <laurence.roussillon-constanty@univ-tlse3.fr>

- Philippe Murillo (CREW, EA 4399) <philippe.murillo@univ-tlse3.fr>

MIRACLES & CHARMS: WELLCOME COLLECTION

   

EXHIBITION

6 October 2011 to 26 February 2012

WELLCOME COLLECTION

183 Euston Road

London NW1 2BE

For directions or further info:

020 7611 2222

www.wellcomecollection.org

Miracles & Charms, Wellcome Collection’s   autumn free exhibition programme explores the extraordinary in the everyday with a pair of shows. Drawing lines between faith, mortality and healing, Miracles & Charms offers a poignant insight into the tribulations of daily life and human responses to chance and suffering. 

  

   

Miracles & Charms includes: 

‘Infinitas Gracias: Mexican miracle paintings’, the first major display of Mexican votive paintings outside Mexico, and

‘Charmed Life: The solace of objects’, an exhibition of unseen London amulets from Henry Wellcome’s collection, curated by the artist Felicity Powell.

Infinitas Gracias: Mexican miracle paintings

Mexican votives are small paintings, usually executed on tin roof tiles or small plaques, depicting the moment of personal humility when an individual asks a saint for help and is delivered from disaster and sometimes death. ‘Infinitas Gracias’ features over 100 votive paintings drawn from five collections held by museums in and around Mexico City and two sanctuaries located in mining communities in the Bajío region to the north: the city of Guanajuato and the distant mountain town of Real de Catorce. Together with images, news reports, photographs, devotional artefacts, film and interviews, the exhibition illustrates the depth of the votive tradition in Mexico.

Usually commissioned from local artists by the petitioner, votive paintings tell immediate and intensely personal stories, from domestic dramas to revolutionary violence, through which a markedly human history of communities and their culture can be read. Votives displayed in ‘Infinitas Gracias’ date from the 18th century to the present day. Over this period, thousands of small paintings came to line the walls of Mexican churches as gestures of thanksgiving, replacing powerful doctrine-driven images of the saints with personal and direct pleas for help. The votives are intimate records of the tumultuous dramas of everyday life – lightning strikes, gunfights, motor accidents, ill-health and false imprisonment – in which saintly intervention was believed to have led to survival and reprieve.

‘Infinitas Gracias’ explores the reaction of individuals at the moment of crisis in which their strength of faith comes into play. The profound influence of these vernacular paintings, and the artists and individuals who painted them, can be seen in the work of such figures as Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, who were avid collectors. The contemporary legacy of the votive ritual is present in the exhibition through a wall covered with modern-day offerings from one church in Guanajuato: a paper shower of letters, certificates, photographs, clothing and flowers, through which the tradition of votive offering continues today. The sanctuaries at Guanajuato and Real de Catorce remain centres of annual pilgrimage, attracting thousands of people to thank and celebrate their chosen saints.

Felicity Powell  

Charmed Life: The solace of objects

A ‘please’ to the votives’ ‘thank you’, ‘Charmed Life’, curated by Felicity Powell, features some 400 amulets from Henry Wellcome’s vast collection, which are exhibited encircled with works, including new pieces and videos, by the artist. The amulets, ranging from simple coins to meticulously carved shells, dead animals to elaborately fashioned notes, are from a collection within a collection, amassed by the banker and obsessive folklorist Edward Lovett, who scoured London by night, buying curious objects from the city’s mudlarks, barrow men and sailors, which he sold on to Wellcome.

The amulets are objects of solace. Intended to be held, touched, and kept close to the body, they are by turns designed and found, peculiar and familiar. The potency of the charms is invested through rituals of hope and habit. Each amulet on display has long been separated from its wearer, but collectively they form a repository for the anxieties, reassurances and superstitions of the city and its occupants. Lovett’s amulets are held at the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford, where they have remained archived and largely unseen. The amulets selected by Powell are uncanny: they are secrets brought to light.

Powell’s own works address the strange allure of objects that are a source of comfort and compensation. Intricate miniatures, with white wax reliefs on black mirror slate, they carry the same intimacy of size as the amulets, and are meticulously crafted. Her portraits, which appear as inverted silhouettes, white on black, are all in a process of change, metamorphosing into other selves and creatures. Like Lovett’s amulets, they seem to be more than themselves, hinting at a hidden magic at work, as they dip between real and imagined worlds. Using the reverse side of a mirror, Powell hides away literal reflection but leaves the viewer wondering at their playful and compelling strangeness.

Film works projected in the gallery see the wax reliefs in animation, featuring the hands of the artist as she works, alongside medical scans of her body overlaid with drawn images of amulets from the Lovett Collection. These films, with music by William Basinski, create imagery and forms that relate directly to the objects on display and to the artist’s own desire for wellbeing.

On Miracles & Charms as a whole, Ken Arnold, Head of Public Programmes at Wellcome Collection, says: “These two exhibitions explore rich traditions of everyday faith and health, presenting us with objects from across cultures, all invested with extraordinary personal potency. Sometimes comforting, other times strange, both simply made and exquisitely wrought: these exhibits give us insight into centuries of charmed lives and miraculous events.”

A full programme of events accompanies the exhibitions, see:

www.wellcomecollection.org

ESOTERIC TRADITIONS IN THE ANCIENT AND MODERN WORLD: ESSWE Call for papers

                                                                                           

ESSWE European Society for the Study of Western Esotericism

Call for Papers – Esoteric Traditions in the Ancient and Modern World

Date(s): July 12, 2012 -to- July 24, 2012

Location: Alexandria, Egypt

6 days in Alexandria Tour (optional):

3-day cruise on the Nile 

3 days in Cairo 

Conference description:  the purpose of the Conference will be to examine the source and foundations of the mystery and esoteric traditions; their expressions and nuances in the ancient and contemporary world along with the interface between ancient wisdom and modern scientific paradigms.

As we will be returning to the cradle of so-called “Western Esotericism” for this event, the Conference will be focusing upon the Hermeticism of Alexandria, neo-Platonism, former ancient Mysteries, and the modern Theosophical Movement; in view of their phenomenology, social impact, and nuances in the shaping of cultural and spiritual aspects of the contemporary western world.

Special emphasis will be given to the Theosophical Society; its foundational structures and orientation, successions, impact, and its role as an artery in the continuation of esoteric culture and Higher Age teachings within the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries.

Suggested topics, not compulsory: – Ancient Mystery Traditions. – The Hermeticism of Alexandria. – Neo-Platonism. – The Star-Lore of Ancient Egypt. – Theosophical Connections with Egyptian Traditions. – The Brotherhood of Luxor and its influence on the Theosophical Society. – Successions in the Theosophical Society [The Judge Case,etc.] – The Theosophical Movement in the 3rd Millennium. – Ancient Wisdom & Modern Science. – Modern Physics & the Secret Doctrine. Categories of Submissions There are five categories of submissions: papers, panel, workshops, round-table and short documentaries:

Papers: All online submissions must be in one of four formats: MS Word for Windows, MS Word for Mac, PDF, or Rich Text Format. All tables, graphs, and pictures associated with your submission must be included with the main text in a single document. Submissions must be completed and received before July 2011. Additional information: Title, author(s) short biography, 200-words abstract.

Panel Session: Panel title, description, chair/discussant, presentation titles, abstracts, and any other required information. It is required for presenters to submit a 150-word abstract; you also need to prepare a 400-word rationale for your panel proposal and a 75-word panel description for the conference program. Panels can contain up to four papers with no more than 1.000 words each paper. These must be completed before July 2011.

Workshops: You should submit an overview of the workshop structure, including key topics to be addressed, the equipment necessary, duration, aims and a 150-word abstract. These must be completed before July 2011.

Round-tables: Round-table proposals (same submission criteria as panel proposals) and must be completed before July 2011.

Short Documentaries: Short documentaries between 5 to 15 minutes, must be submitted on DVD NTSC or PAL (please test before sending). These must be received before July 2011. Short documentaries must be available for screening during the Conference on July 2012. Eligibility: You do not need to be a member of any Theosophical organization to submit a paper or proposal for the conference.

Simply send your proposal to: stoa.hypatia@gmail.com

Conference attendance: If your panel, paper, workshop or round-table proposal is accepted for the conference, you have a commitment to register for and attend the conference and perform your assigned role. If extenuating circumstances prevent you from attending, you should find a substitute to perform your duties and notify the program committee.

Conference registration: Submission of your paper or proposal does NOT automatically register you for the conference itself. If your paper or proposal is accepted for presentation at the conference “Esoteric Traditions in the Ancient and Modern World” you will be notified and then must register for the conference and pay the conference fee. Details about the conference registration will be soon available.

E-mail address: Each conference participant must use one and only one e-mail address for all submissions.

Program Committee: Alistair Coombs (UK), Nikos Fokas (GR), George Georgiades (GR), Erica Georgiades (GR), J.S. Gordon (UK). Conference chairwoman: Erica Georgiades.

Date(s): July 12, 2012 -to- July 24, 2012

Location: Alexandria, Egypt

For more information: For further information check the conference homepage at

 <http://www.hypatia.gr/Alexandria_Conference.html> 

E-Mail: stoa.hypatia@gmail.com

POST-DOCTORAL RESEARCH ASSOCIATE: FARADAY INSTITUTE FOR SCIENCE AND RELIGION

The Faraday Institute for Science and Religion

is an interdisciplinary research enterprise based at St Edmund’s College, Cambridge. In addition to academic research, the Institute engages in the public understanding of science and religion.

A post-doctoral Research Associate position has become available at the  Faraday Institute for Science and Religion.

 www.faraday-institute.org

 The post involves working with  Prof. John Wood [Imperial College, London] on a project entitled Restoring Spiritual Values to European Research. The overall object is to compare the current status of the European Research Area and its underlying values with those of the founders of the concept of European partnership, with particular reference to religious values.

The successful candidate will have independent research experience and an interest in international research policy and outcomes, and must be in agreement with the ethos and aims of The Faraday Institute.

 The salary for this three-year position will be up to £32,161 per annum,  depending on qualifications and experience, plus benefits. 

Applications quoting Position FP2/6 should include a c/v, naming three  referees, together with a covering letter summarising the relevance of the applicant’s background and experience for this position. 

Applications (preferably by e-mail) should be sent to: The Faraday  Institute Administrator,

Mrs Polly Stanton, St. Edmund’s College, 

Cambridge, CB3 0BN, UK [ps400@cam.ac.uk <mailto:ps400@cam.ac.uk> 

by  Tuesday 1st November 2011. A job description may also be requested from Mrs Stanton. Interviews will be held in early November. 

YALE UNIVERSITY: ASSISTANT PROFESSOR RELIGIOUS STUDIES

 

Yale University Department of Religious Studies

intends to make a tenure-track appointment in the field of religious studies beginning July 1, 2012, at the rank of Assistant Professor. Applications are invited and welcome from scholars with research specialties in the anthropology, history, philosophy, or sociology of religions or a tradition-specific field of study, who also possess demonstrated teaching proficiency in methods and theory in the study of religion.

Yale University is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Employer. Yale values diversity among its students, staff, and faculty and strongly welcomes applications from women and underrepresented minorities. A letter of application describing your research, a c.v., a two-page dissertation abstract, a chapter-length writing sample, a syllabus for an introductory undergraduate course, “Introduction to Religion,” and three letters of reference should be submitted on-line at https://academicjobsonline.org/ajo/Yale/RLST

Materials may be sent to:

Methods and Theory Search, Religious Studies, Yale University, P.O. Box

208287, New Haven, CT 06520-8287

or by e-mail to

rosemary.carrion@yale.edu

The review of applications will begin October 20, 2011. Preliminary interviews will be held at the AAR annual meeting in San Francisco, Nov 19-22, 2011.

 

LOS MASONES HABLAN: MASONERIA MIXTA EN LA ARGENTINA

 

 

 

LOS MASONES HABLAN:

MASONERIA MIXTA EN LA ARGENTINA

Hombres y mujeres compartiendo una misma logia.

Mesa redonda con los expositores:

Antonio CERUELO,

Integrante del Supremo Consejo del Grado 33 de la Orden

Masónica Mixta Internacional Le Droit Humain – El Derecho Humano

Mauricio Javier CAMPOS,

Historiador de la Francmasonería.

Prof. Dr. Antonio LAS HERAS,

autor de SOCIEDADES SECRETAS: MASONERIA, TEMPLARIOS,

ROSACRUCES Y OTRAS ORDENES ESOTERICAS

(Libro premiado con la Faja Nacional de Honor en el Género Ensayo de

la Sociedad Argentina de Escritores, SADE)

Sábado 29 de octubre, a las 18.00 horas

ENTRADA LIBRE Y GRATUITA

ABIERTA A TODA PERSONA INTERESADA

Auditorio de la

Sociedad Argentina de Escritores (SADE)

Calle Uruguay 1371, Capital Federal

ASTROLOGIES: PROCEEDINGS OF THE 8TH ANNUAL SOPHIA CENTRE CONFERENCE 2010

 

Ed. Nicholas Campion and Liz Greene

Paperback, 265 pp.

Publication 23 October 2011

Price: £28 

 

 

PREPUBLICATION OFFER

Order before 23 October at the Pre-Publication Price of £18.00 including postage and packing.

To order, and for contents, see here:

http://www.sophiacentrepress.com/publications.html

The ‘Astrologies’ conference, organised by the Sophia Centre, University of Wales Trinity Saint David, at the Bath Royal Literary and Scientific Institution on 24-25 July 2010 was the first gathering of academics working in the history and culture of modern astrology.

The range of topics explored in the publication of the conference proceedings is broad, and reflects the striking diversity of techniques and underlying philosophies which underlie the enduring human perception of meaningful relationships between the heavenly bodies and life on earth. Although astrology has been treated in many scholarly works as a monolithic entity, all of the papers in this book demonstrate one of the paradoxes of astrological thought and practice: the existence of a relatively stable tradition of cosmological and astral representations and ideas combined with a adaptability that has enabled astrologies to meld with different spheres of human endeavour in a variety of cultures.

The papers are grouped into three basic themes: the symbolism of astrologies, the history of astrologies within different cultural contexts, and the practice of various astrologies from both ‘insider’ and ‘outsider’ perspectives.

BODY: SOUL: SPIRITS & SUPERNATURAL COMMUNICATION

BODY: SOUL: SPIRITS & SUPERNATURAL COMMUNICATION

International Conference

Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Pécs, Hungary

18th-20th May 2012, Friday to Sunday

Department of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology of Pécs University

The Folklore Department of the Hungarian Ethnographic Society, &

ISFNR Belief Narrative Research Network

CALL FOR PAPERS

June 1st 2011

This conference will be the ninth in a row of events launched by the Hungarian organisers in 1993 under the heading “concepts of religious ethnology in an interdisciplinary approach”. To date this has resulted in eight publications. The primary objective we declared at the outset of the project is still valid today: to approach various concepts of religious ethnology and to survey the latest findings from the angle of folklore studies, anthropology, religious studies, cultural history, psychiatry, literary studies etc.; as well as to create an interdisciplinary discourse to find the solution to our various scientific problems. Participants at the conference will include academics from all parts of Europe to give us an even closer view of current European research areas.

Each of the topics mentioned in the title deserves investigation in its own right; however, at this conference our main aim is to capture the set of connections which exist around these three topics. Thus we need to explore the ties between different notions of the soul, communicational techniques and functions and the spiritual world which is supposed to decode such communication. We would also welcome papers which investigate the role of notions of the soul and the spirit world in the everyday life, religion and mentality of various communities. On the other hand, we would like to explore the narrative traditions surrounding each of our themes: narrative metaphors for notions of the soul and for supernatural communication, their representations in folklore, literature, the arts and academic literature, as well as the ways in which beliefs and narratives are related.

As regards notions of the soul, folklore research has presented a rather simplistic account in the past, insofar as they reduced the topic, at least with regard to Christian Europe, to something like “the Christian duality of body and soul versus the remnants of the mythological legacy of the different peoples”. The latter mainly refers to representations of the free soul/shadow soul, alter ego or second body as well as their traces in literature and folklore. E.g. in a Hungarian respect this mainly meant exploring the “shamanistic” legacy of the nation’s archaic pre-Christian religion, while in Greek literature and philosophy they were discovering remains of Thracian or Iranian shamanism, etc. Besides this simple pattern, research sometimes came face to face with the more nuanced notions of the soul held by certain non-Christian and even non-European peoples, e.g. the rich ancient Greek literary, philosophical and linguistic heritage or Germanic mediaeval data (or, in the Hungarian context, the varied material of the Ob-Ugrian linguistic relatives), which were mainly examined by linguists, literary scholars, researchers of religion, theologians and philosophers (e.g. Erwin Rohde, Jan Bremmer, Hans-Peter Hasenfratz, Régis Boyer, Claude Lecouteux, etc.). It barely occurred to anthropologists studying similar subjects abroad to look around their own neighbourhood.

Research conducted by linguists and historians of religion about notions of the soul, the free soul or the alter ego which breaks away from the body, have attained considerable results in Europe, but rarely if ever have scholars looked into the role of these notions in the everyday religiosity of a community, and in the communication with the supernatural. As regards the exploration of Christian visions, both religious studies and anthropology have made serious advances in the last few decades, particularly as regards investigations into the religious and social role of visions in the Middle Ages and the modern period (pl. Ernst Benz, Peter Dinzelbacher, Jean-Claude Schmitt, Claude Lecouteux, most recently William Christian, Galia Valtchinova and many others). At the same time, many other forms of communication have remained unexplored, nor do we see clearly regarding the boundaries and interconnections of various systems of communication (e.g. shamanism, spirit possession, Christian visions, mediumism, etc.) with each other and with different notions of the soul.

Therefore we believe that the time has come to gain a somewhat more nuanced picture of the notions of the soul held by the peoples of Europe, in the above indicated context of connections. It would be desirable to form clear ideas about the extent to which the notions of the soul used by various religions and denominations were known, the local interpretations that existed, the special “popular” notions and representations of the soul which might differ from or only partially converge with the former; as well as alternative traditions that have been preserved alongside Christianity and survived in folklore collections, literary and linguistic relics or have merged with Christianity. (Naturally, Christian notions are also far from being homogeneous and have been changing along the constantly shifting ideas and boundaries of monism/dualism/trialism and also in relation to the various eschatological and resurrection dogmas which are in themselves also in constant change. At the same time they have helped sustain popular and non-Christian traditions.) We are not necessarily implying here the existence of a unified and clearly outlined notion of the soul or several, clearly delineated souls with different functions – it is more to do with the (frequently merging) representations of different ideas and notions as they appear in mentality, way of thinking, folklore or literature.

It is this rich and varied array of phenomena that needs to be mapped out for each nation and culture, including their terminology, cultural and social context, linguistic metaphors, visual representations and meaning, with regard to a people or a geographic unit or local society, preferably in the context of the above described connections, meaning the role they play in sacred communication.

A few possible points to anchor this vast and varied material may be the following.

1. Concepts of the soul

Life soul, selbst, psyché. life force (vitalstoff) as a body-soul immanently present in the body, the ‘inside’ (thymos) which is clearly connected to some part of the body (head, brain, heart, liver, kidneys etc.), it resides there and is associated with bodily functions (breathing, breath, blood circulation, sperm). The soul related to some natural element or phenomenon such as the wind blowing (duše), fog, water. Functions related to various notions/terms for the soul (life force, mental concepts, breathing, movement) etc.

The free soul, external soul, mirror or shadow soul, double ( alter ego, double, harm, fylgja etc.) as the seat of life force, as the depository of communication with the supernatural. It is outside the body either constantly or temporarily, it breaks away from the soul in dreams, in a trance etc. Living and dead, bodily and spiritual variants. Their connection with the soul which lives on after death and with mortal spirits. Its formations (human, animal, mirror image, light, foggy figure). It is only observable in certain situations, at certain times, before death; appears only in dreams or visions. An invisible protector, companion (guardian angel), a fate soul which determines destiny or prophecies the future. It is an emotional and intellectual tie with the alter ego of oneself or others (mara/Mahr/mora phenomena). Accompanying, guarding, helping and initiating spirits interpreted as formal variants of the free soul.

Narrative traditions related to notions of the soul, motifs in stories and legends for the free soul, shadow soul, external soul, as well as departure from the body, the soul departing in sleep, narrative metaphors for transformation, metamorphosis, for turning into a soul (flight, invisibility, becoming small, entering through the keyhole, travelling in a small object, walking on the water, turning into an animal etc.).

Special creatures who have a free soul or an alter ego since birth – two-souled creatures, double beings, shapeshifters: werewolves and mara/mora/Mahr/Alp/lidérc beings, vampires, witches and magicians.

2. Body and soul – death, life after death, spirits of the dead

Death of an individual: death of the body and/or soul, the bodily and spiritual existence of the dead. Dead body (drying out, turning to dust, whether the soil will or will not admit it). Bodies living on, living dead bodies. Half-living or revived bodies, possessed dead bodies. What (sort of soul) dies along with the body, what survives the body. Souls living on in dead bodies and in bones.

Deathbed – with ancestors and relatives appearing, coming to take the soul. Companions of the soul (angels, saints, demons). The soul at the moment of death, which soul dies. Whether and how it leaves the body, where it goes, what shape it takes (breath, blood, fog, tiny man, tiny angel, naked baby, bee, bird etc.). Linguistic metaphors for the departure of the body. The place where the departing soul resides, its different stages, periods, dates of departure. Gradual death, bodily functions which persist temporarily after death, gradual departure. Transitory places, transitory existence: dead persons with no status who have not found a final place of rest, souls roaming in a liminal existence.

Souls and spirits in the other world, up, down, in heaven, in the underworld, in the woods, on the mountain, on an island, under water. The spirit of the dead in the other world – bodily and spiritual attributes and manifestations. Personal judgement and resurrection, resurrected body and/or soul – the fate of the body and/or soul in the meantime; souls in purgatory. Transition between different other worlds. Last judgement, the final destiny of the soul after resurrection.

Souls remaining in the soil, in the body, in the cemetery (in or around the grave), in the house, with the family; the dead of the family in the house, around the hearth, the soul of the ancestor in the wall, around the hearth, under the doorstep – in an animal form (house snake, talašom etc., ‘building sacrifices’). The spirit of the dead person in the likeness, statue, magical object (talisman, stoicheion). Dead people turned into guardian spirits of the family or the individual, ‘evil dead’ assaulting the family or the community.

Mythical beings fused or merged with the dead: fairies; ill-intentioned dead turned into demons; ‘two-souled creatures’ – people who have alter egos or living and dead variants (witches, magicians, vampires), demons. Spiritual beings which are half human or a transition between human and spirit – ‘light shadowed ones’, ‘wind-men’ (storm magicians, stuha, zduhać, płanetnyk, chmurnik); fairies.

Spirits of the dead or possessing dead who return to the human community, to earth, who appear to humans (in a dream, trance, in an earthly setting as ghosts, in ’a bodily form’, individually or in a group), helping or assaulting humans, snatching them to death, hoping that they would influence their otherworldly destiny or demanding offerings. Occasions, time and purpose for returning/appearance; times and places of the dead on earth.

3. Supernatural communication – in the context of the body-soul and spirits

General, spontaneous, lay forms and professionals who use certain bodily/spiritual capacities, birth traits (they have a special soul, alter ego or peculiar guardian spirits etc, and communicate with a unique spirit world or other worlds).

Communication with the dead, with spirits of the dead, with demons of storm clouds, ‘walking with the fairies’ etc. Forms and functions of such communication (assaults by the dead, snatching the living for ‘initiation’, possession by the dead, poltergeist phenomena). Communication with dead people or spirits who appear in dreams. Communication through alter egos/doubles of the living. Lay and professional communication with the dead, with spirits through a double who had broken away from the person: horizontal, earthly travels of the double. Double beings, creatures with two souls and shapeshifters communicating between the worlds of nature and culture (werewolf), and between the human world and the night world of the dead and demons through their demonic alter egos: mora, Mahr, witch, strigoi, vampire etc. Helping spirits as the unique manifestations of the alter ego.

Techniques of the communication. Communication in a trance – inducing a trance, relevant techniques (spontaneous transe, self-suggestion, meditation, objects inducing a trance such as a mirror, water etc). The state of the body and the soul in a transe. Seers and fortune tellers reporting in a transe about their journey int he other world.

Ritual communication, symbolic and trance-inducing rites (fasting, St. Lucy’s stool, magic circle, magic wand, walking around the grave of the dead and the ‘places of the fairies’, beating them with the wand). Ritual invocation of the dead and of fairies, rites for acquiring spirit helpers or invoking the dead.

Spontaneous and professional, ritually induced activity of mediums. The clairvoyant as a medium possessed by the dead. The role of music, dance and turning round in inducing trance; ritual possession by the dead or by fairies (healing societies: rusalia, rusalje, căluşari, etc.).

‘Journeys’ of the free soul – with companions, helping souls or spirits or without; the free soul rises out of the body, elevates itself, looks back and sees the body or the earth; falling in a tunnel, crossing the water in a vehicle, rising with the vapours into a storm cloud; flying in dream to a ’fairy heaven’; turning into an animal and thus joining the demonic werewolf troupe; travelling to a witches’ Sabbath on the back of animals, or of objects or metamorphosed into an animal; flying to the fairy other world with a troupe of fairies, making music and dancing etc.

Battles of the soul in dream or trance, against hostile harming spirits, storm souls in storm clouds, against assaulting werewolf demons, between good and bad – healing and harmful – spirits (in a possession trance); night battles (in a dream or trance) against the assaults of the dead or demons.

Narrative tradition, linguistic metaphors and textual representations of trance experiences and soul journeys, of communication through alter egos, of being snatched by the dead and of journeys to the other world, accounts of such experience, motifs in tales, legends and literature; folklore and literary motifs of journeys to the other world; narrative traditions of fairy other worlds and witches’ Sabbaths.

*

Papers are welcome without restrictions on methodology or on the time and place of their subject matter as long as they use a theoretical approach in folklore studies, anthropology, cultural history, sociology etc. We also welcome comparative historical or textual philological analyses or presentations of research findings based on archive work or field work either in our outside of Europe, as well as analyses of religious phenomena from the perspective of religious anthropology, history of religion, theology etc. Mere descriptions of material are acceptable only if they considerably enhance our knowledge about a particular field.

The conference will be bilingual (Hungarian and English), and might take place in parallel sections, preferably in alternate time periods. (In such a case foreign participants will be offered optional cultural events or excursions for the duration of Hungarian papers.)

We request applicants to submit applications with an abstract of 10-15 sentences before August 20th 2011 on the form attached. The full text of the papers should be submitted no later than April 30th 2012 in order to leave sufficient time for circulating and printing.

Although publication of the proceedings of our last conference (Magical and Sacred Medical World) in English are still not forthcoming, we are not giving up hope and will do everything for the material of this conference to appear in both languages. While the Hungarian publication seems almost guaranteed, we are making efforts to secure an English version, too.

Costs for participants are presently being calculated, and organisers will do their best to keep costs manageable. (Should we fail to secure sponsorship, costs for three days and three or four nights, including food and accommodation but excluding travel costs, are expected to be around EUR 200.)

The maximum number of papers to be accepted for presentation is 50. Should there be more applicants than this, we will be forced to select among presenters. However, we shall not limit the number of non-presenting participants. We also reserve the right to reject papers for thematic discrepancy or other reasons.

Please, submit applications to the address below (by e-mail or post).

Professor Emeritus Éva Pócs

PTE Néprajz-Kulturális Antropológia Tanszék

7624 Pécs, Rókus u. 2.

e-mail: pocse@chello.hu

Application form for the conference Body, Soul and Supernatural Communication (Pécs, 18th-20th May 2012)

Name:

Occupation, position, title, employer:

Postal address:

Telephone:

E-mail:

Title of paper:

Language of paper:

Abstract (10-15 sentences):

Paranthropology: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal

 

The October 2011 issue of Paranthropology:

Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal

 

http://paranthropologyjournal.weebly.com/free-pdf.html

 This issue Vol. 2 No. 4 features articles from 

Dr. Lee Wilson,

Prof. David E. Young,

Dr. Christel Mattheeuws,

Andrew Lang,

Dr. Mark A. Schroll,

 Dr. Henry Dosedla,

Dr. William Rowlandson,

Dr. David Luke  

Eileen J. Garrett.

see also  www.paranthropology.co.uk

MUTANTS AND MYSTICS: SCIENCE FICTION: SUPERHERO COMICS & THE PARANORMAL

MUTANTS AND MYSTICS: SCIENCE FICTION, SUPERHERO COMICS, AND THE PARANORMAL

by Jeffrey J. Kripal

Published 2011

In many ways, twentieth-century America was the land of superheroes and science fiction. From Superman and Batman to the Fantastic Four and the X-Men, these pop-culture juggernauts, with their “powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men,” thrilled readers and audiences–and simultaneously embodied a host of our dreams and fears about modern life and the onrushing future.

But that’s just scratching the surface, says Jeffrey Kripal. In Mutants and Mystics, Kripal offers a brilliantly insightful account of how comic book heroes have helped their creators and fans alike explore and express a wealth of paranormal experiences ignored by mainstream science. Delving deeply into the work of major figures in the field–from Jack Kirby’s cosmic superhero sagas and Philip K. Dick’s futuristic head-trips to Alan Moore’s sex magic and Whitley Strieber’s communion with visitors–Kripal shows how creators turned to science fiction to convey the reality of the inexplicable and the paranormal they experienced in their lives. Expanded consciousness found its language in the metaphors of sci-fi–incredible powers, unprecedented mutations, time-loops and vast intergalactic intelligences–and the deeper influences of mythology and religion that these in turn drew from; the wildly creative work that followed caught the imaginations of millions. Moving deftly from Cold War science and Fredric Wertham’s anticomics crusade to gnostic revelation and alien abduction, Kripal spins out a hidden history of American culture, rich with mythical themes and shot through with an awareness that there are other realities far beyond our everyday understanding.

A bravura performance, beautifully illustrated in full color throughout and brimming over with incredible personal stories, Mutants and Mystics is that rarest of things: a book that is guaranteed to broaden–and maybe even blow–your mind.

* * * ** * * * * * * * *

THE SERPENT’S GIFT: GNOSTIC REFLECTIONS ON THE STUDY OF RELIGION

by Jeffrey J. Kripal

Published 2006

“Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field.” With those words in Genesis, God condemns the serpent for tempting Adam and Eve, and the serpent has shouldered the blame ever since. But how would the study of religion change if we looked at the Fall from the snake’s point of view? Would he appear as a bringer of wisdom, more generous than the God who wishes to keep his creation ignorant? Inspired by the early Gnostics who took that startling view, Jeffrey J. Kripal uses the serpent as a starting point for a groundbreaking reconsideration of religious studies and its methods. In a series of related essays, he moves beyond both rational and faith-based approaches to religion, exploring the erotics of the gospels and the sexualities of Jesus, John, and Mary Magdalene. He considers Feuerbach’s Gnosticism, the untapped mystical potential of comparative religion, and even the modern mythology of the X-Men. Ultimately, The Serpent’s Gift is a provocative call for a complete reorientation of religious studies, aimed at a larger understanding of the world, the self, and the divine.

Jeffrey J. Kripal: 

is the J. Newton Rayzor Professor in and chair of the Department of Religious Studies at Rice University. He is the author of Kali’s Child: The Mystical and the Erotic in the Life and Teachings of Ramakrishna and Roads of Excess, Palaces of Wisdom: Eroticism and Reflexivity in the Study of Mysticism, both published by the University of Chicago Press.

http://ebookstore.sony.com/ebook/jeffrey-j-kripal/mutants-and-mystics/

VARIETIES OF CONTINENTAL THOUGHT AND RELIGION

 

 

June 15-16, 2012

Ryerson University

Toronto, Canada

We invite submissions from scholars and graduate students based in Canada and abroad on the topic of Continental Thought and Religion. The general theme of the conference is meant to reflect the variety of  articulations of religion that have emerged in contemporary European thought. While the focus of the conference is continental thought, we nonetheless conceive the latter in an interdisciplinary manner (including literary theory, social and political thought, psychoanalysis, and religious studies). We also encourage submissions from people interested in exploring possible connections with analytic philosophy.

Confirmed Speakers: John Caputo (Syracuse U.), Bettina Bergo (U. de Montréal), more to be announced in the near future.

In addition to our keynote speaker, John Caputo, we will have four commissioned workshops comprised of two papers and a response, and a series of themed panels. We invite submissions of three-page proposals for essays for the following themed panels with included possible topics:

Phenomenology of Religion

The thought of Chrétien, Henry, Lacoste, Levinas, Marion, and Ricoeur

Topics: the gift; the work of art; appearance and transcendence; call and response

Religion and Politics

The thought of Agamben, Asad, Connolly, Derrida, de Vries, Girard, Habermas, Schmitt, and Taylor

Topics: political theology; the post-secular; sovereignty; religion and violence; pluralism

Religion and Speculative Realism

The thought of Brassier, Harman, Laruelle, and Meillassoux

Topics: materialism; correlationism; nihilism; the things themselves; divine inexistence; ‘future Christ’

Beyond Theism and Atheism

The thought of Caputo, Kearney, Kristeva, Milbank, Vattimo

Topics: kenosis; anatheism; weak theology; a/theology; radical orthodoxy

Continental Thought, Religion, and Aesthetics

The artwork of Bresson, Caravaggio, Celan, Chagall, Dostoyevsky, Dumont,

Artemisia Gentileschi, Kahlo, Kapoor, Kiarostami, Kiefer, Malick, Newman, O’Keefe, and Stevens

The thought of Cavell, Cixous, Critchley, Irigaray, Marion, Nancy, and Rancière

Topics: transcendence in art; image and icon; creativity and creation; representation and idolatry

Immanentism and Religion

Agamben, Badiou, Bergson, Deleuze, James, Foucault, Keller, and Žižek

Topics: self-organization; the event; plurality; bio-power; polydoxy

History of Continental Thought and Religion

Spinoza, Kant, Hegel, Marx, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Freud, Benjamin, Heidegger

Topics: death of God; reason and faith; scripture and philosophy;

religion and fantasy; onto-theology

Please send only one three-page (double-spaced) proposal on one of the

above themes and any questions to:

varieties2012@gmail.com<mailto:varieties2012@gmail.com>

by December 31, 2011.

We intend to notify authors about our decisions by February 28,

2012. Other conference details (registration fee, preliminary program,

etc.) will be announced in new year.

The VCTR Conference is organized by John Caruana (Philosophy, Ryerson

University) and Mark Cauchi (Humanities, York University).

PILGRIMAGES AND SANCTUARIES: ART: MUSIC AND RITUALS

11-12 November 2011

Organized by

The Centro Incontri Umani

Ascona, Swizterland

 

Conveners:

T. Zarcone, CNRS – GSRL / EPHE, Paris

P. Khosronejad, Department of Social Anthropology, University of St Andrews, Scotland

A. Hobart, University College, London

With the participation of

The “Groupe Sociétés Religions Laïcité”

Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

Ecole Pratique des hautes Etudes – Université de la Sorbonne

and of The Department of Social Anthropology, University of St Andrews     

 

PROGRAM

THURSDAY 10 NOVEMBER

19:00 Registration

19:30 Dinner

FRIDAY 11 NOVEMBER

9:30 Opening: Angela HOBART (London University College / director of the Centro Incontri Umani)

9:45 Introducing the topic of the conference: Pedram KHOSRONEJAD (St Andrews University) and Thierry ZARCONE (CNRS – GSRL / EPHE, Paris)

Session 1: Musique, Songs and Nature

Chair: Angela Hobart

10:00 Razia SULTANOVA (Central Asian Forum, University of Cambridge, UK)

Devotional chanting in Uzbek and Kazakh Pilgrimages: (Shahimardan, Bukhara, Turkestan)

Pilgrimages in Central Asia accompanied by devotional chanting have not yet been the subject of sustained scholarly attention, but they occur on a regular basis and are significant

for the study of religions. Pilgrimage destinations in Central Asia are distinguished by various forms of performance, and the choice of chanting and narration relates to the different Sufi orders: Qadiriya in Shahimardan in Ferghana Valley, Naqshbandiya in Bukhara and Yasaviya in Turkestan. When, for example, you arrive in the mountainous region of Shahimardan in Ferghana Valley, you are surrounded by people singing and praying, performing suras from the Holy Quran as well as blessings and various Sufi ghazals. In Bukhara around the tomb of Naqshbandi, and in Turkestan in the region of the Khanaqa of Ahmad Yasavi, these chants build an essential part of devotional rituals. How are they performed? What is their origin? Who are their performers? These and other similar questions are examined in my paper.

10:35 Saskia KERSENBOOM (Amsterdam University, The Netherlands)

Lady of Great Bliss

In the hills of Northern Hungary pilgrims have for centuries travelled to sacred places where mother earth opens up miraculous stones, hills, rock-caves and, especially, healing water from divine wells. The focal point of their devotion are the female representations, whether they be in the ancient Maria, the newly founded temple for Buddhist Tara, or the nubile girls in UNESCO World Heritage Holloko village. All are to be found within the range of 20 km around the pilgrim site of Szentkut and its Holy Well. This presentation compares and analyses the performative strategies in the arts of storytelling, song and mimetic action that enable believers to turn their devotion into a sensuous, invigorating experience of the divine.

11:10 Morning Coffee

11:40 Richard BLURTON (Dept of Asia, British Museum, London)

Pilgrimage to Banggajang: lake-dwelling goddesses and their devotees in the eastern Himalayas

This paper discusses the previously unrecorded pilgrimage to a group of high altitude lakes located in the hills above the Se-La. This pass at 13,000 feet separates western Arunachal Pradesh from Tawang District and the onward route to Tsona in south-eastern Tibet. The lakes are imagined as the residences of the goddesses Dorje Phagmo and Palden Lhamo, while the surrounding landscape is impregnated with divine and cosmic presence – all of which is pointed out to pilgrims as they make the pilgrimage circuit. In this, the Banggajang pilgrimage fits into the same type as the much more substantial landscape pilgrimage that has been recorded to the east, at Tsa-ri, by Toni Huber.

The pilgrimage to Banggajang has both a historic and a present manifestation, and both elements will for the first time – and with some trepidation – be placed in an overview of the well-known Tibetan notion of mountain and lake veneration and the accommodation of this activity within a Buddhist world-view. There is some evidence that the pilgrimage acted not only as a spiritual activity but also as an economic and indeed a cultural activity, and this will be presented.

12:15 Charles RAMBLE (Oriental Institute, University of Oxford)

‘Objets trouvés’: The transformation of nature into art in Tibetan pilgrimages

Pilgrimage is one of the most widespread and popular activities among Tibetan Buddhists and followers of the Bön religion. Although a few pilgrimages are centred on man-made shrines such as the „cathedral‟ (Jokhang) of Lhasa, the majority entail arduous journeys to uninhabited mountain wildernesses. The trails and sacred sites at these locations are festooned with coloured flags printed with prayers, as well as white ceremonial scarves and sacred formulae sometimes carved into rocks, but the natural environment is otherwise hardly transformed; except, that is, in the imagination of the pilgrims. In the abundant „guidebook‟ literature associated with each pilgrimage route, topographic features are sacralized by being re-envisioned as a wide range of ritual items, animals, divinities and even social interactions. While this „denaturalised‟ landscape is sometimes transferred to painted scrolls, the true richness of the imagery is reserved for pilgrims who see these objects in situ, through the prism of prescribed religious vision.

12:40- 1:15 Questions and discussion

13:30 Lunch Break

Session 2: Sacred Artefacts

Chair: Pedram Khosronejad

15:00 Michel BOIVIN (CNRS – CEIAS / EHESS, Paris)

Building a local culture in a Sufi centre: the kishti and other artefacts in Sehwan Sharif (Pakistan)

Sufism in the Indian Subcontinent is usually introduced through Imperial centres like Nizamuddin in Delhi or Muinuddin Chishti in Ajmer. The art and culture thus produced are therefore closely attached to imperial power, be it the Delhi Sultanate or the Moghul Empire. My contention, however, is that innovative clues can be adduced as evidence of regional and local approaches. My lecture focuses on the Sufi centre of Sehwan Sharif (Pakistan) where the Sufi Lal Shahbaz Qalandar (d. 1274) is buried. It will study a number of artefacts, usually represented as the Sufi‟s relics, as material goods embodied in a number of narratives. The artefacts are also ritual tools which reflect negotiations between different categories of local people such as sayyids and non-sayyids, Sunnis and Shias, Muslims and Hindus, men, women, khadras etc. Briefly, the study of the artefacts informs us on how a local ‟system‟ is working.

15:35 Alexandre PAPAS (CNRS – CETOBAC / EHESS, Paris)

Steles, relics and photographs in the Muslim shrines of Northwest China (Qinghai, Gansu)

In the provinces of Qinghai and Gansu (more precisely: Xunhua Salar Autonomous County and Jishishan Bonan, Dongxiang and Salar Autonomous County) live several Muslim minorities, namely Hui, Salar, Dongxiang, Bonan and Kargan Tibetan. Whether Chinese, Turkic, Mongolian or Tibetan speakers, they all venerate saints and perform pilgrimage on their shrines. Based on fieldwork conducted in 2010, this presentation introduces the main features of Islam and Sufism in the area. In a second step, I will focus on the specific shrines in which Qâdirî and Naqshbandî saints are buried, and where several material features appear repeatedly: 1) the granite steles composed in Chinese, which provide basic information to visitors; 2) the relics jealously preserved by the shrine custodians and shown at exceptional occasions; 3) the photographs taken by pilgrims and used as souvenirs of pious visits and mystical rituals. These three material aspects of Sufi holy places tend to multiply the narratives associated with pilgrimage, reconstructing the religious memory of Muslim minorities in north-west China.

16:10 Afternoon Tea

16:40 Sanjay GARG (SAARC Cultural Centre, Colombo, Sri Lanka)

Pilgrims’ memorabilia in the social landscape of India

India is a land of diverse religious faiths and practices. It is the place of origin of four religions – Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism – and a congenial abode for almost all the religions of the world, be it the oldest, such as Judaism, Zoroastrianism, Christianity, Islam, or one of the newest, like Baha‟ism. The shrines of these religions dot the cultural landscape of the country, and from antiquity these have served as pilgrimage centres for devotees. One of the traditions associated with pilgrimage in India is the carrying back of blessings of the sacred site in some tangible form. These range from holy prasād (eatables offered by a devotee at a shrine and generally returned after being blessed), sacred water and holy ash from incense, to charms, amulets, statuettes and jewellery. This tradition could be studied from a functionalist point of view, in which the memorializing of the pilgrimage and sharing of the divine blessings with one‟s kith and kin appear to be the prime objects of the pilgrim; or from a philosophical standpoint, in which the pilgrim seeks to associate himself permanently with the sacred site.

This paper will explore this tradition of „pilgrims‟ memorabilia‟ in the cross-cultural and inter-religious settings of India by focusing on the religious tokens commonly known as Rāmtankās (lit. „Money of Lord Rama‟). Previously confined to Hinduism, the prevalence of these religious tokens amongst the Hindu pilgrims has prompted Islamic, Sikh and other religious communities to devise their own. These tokens have provided not only a convenient and affordable medium of expression for the popular art and religious beliefs of the masses of India, but they have also served variously as objects of worship, talismans and mementoes, or indeed as a combination of all three. Finally, the paper will also attempt to address issues such as the motivations and expectations of the practitioners of this tradition, as well as the influence of their social background in their choice of memorabilia.

17:15 Thierry ZARCONE (CNRS – GSRL / EPHE, Paris)

Flags and ritual banners at shrines in Asian Islam (Central Asia, Xinjiang, India)

This presentation will examine the role played by banners or flags (tugh/tughaläm), major sacred artefacts in saint veneration and tomb cults in Turkic Islam. In particular it will consider the offering of banners, a notable ritual executed at the saints‟ tombs in Eastern Turkestan/Xinjiang (China) and, in a different manner, in India. My approach is both historical and anthropological. I will first show that the use of banners during pilgrimages at saint tombs in Central Asia has shamanic, Buddhist and Islamic origins. These three traditions have mingled over time and gave birth to a very syncretic practice. Also worthy of mention is the frequent identification, as shown in the written sources in Persian and Oriental Turkish, of the word „mazar‟, for the tombs of saints, with the word „tughaläm‟, a banner – a sign that the banner is a central element in the saint cult and gives him its legitimacy. One of the most compelling proofs of this, is that the Chinese administration of Xinjiang, when aiming to eradicate saint‟s cults and pilgrimage before and after 1049, forbade the banners at these places – a proscription that remains to this day. After this historical introduction, I will report on the rituals of the offering of banners that are performed nowadays at shrines in Xinjiang, along with the aesthetic and artistic dimensions of these artefacts..

17:50 -18:30 Speakers’s panel – Questions and discussion

19:30 Dinner

SATURDAY 12 NOVEMBER

Session 3: Images and Representation

Chair: Thierry Zarcone

9:30 Hümeyra ULUDAG (Istanbul University, Turkey)

Shrines and the culture of pilgrimages in the Ottoman visual material

Shrines, which are the centres of popular pietism in Ottoman society, comprise one of the most significant dynamics of social life. These sacred locations, which substantially guide religious, social and psychological lives of people, are observed in Ottoman miniatures. This paper will concentrate on certain dimensions of the shrines that are reflected in the Ottoman visual materials, such as their architecture and setting, and the culture of pilgrimage and rituals. The way this topic is studied in visual terms and the modes of representation and the motifs in the miniatures will be also discussed.

10:05 Pedram KHOSRONEJAD (University of St Andrews)

Curtains of heaven: celestial and devotional mural paintings of Iranian pilgrimage

In this talk the author will present and analyze the creation and function of mural paintings of saint shrines in Iran since the Safavide period (1501–1736). The main emphasis will be on the relationship between such devotional depictions and the veneration of saints in Shiite Iran. This talk will be completed by a case study of mural paintings of shrines of saints which are located in and around Lahijan in the north of Iran.

10:40 Morning Coffee

11:00 Isabelle CHARLEUX (CNRS – GSRL / EPHE, Paris)

Sacred souvenirs of 19th-20th century Mongol pilgrimages to Wutaishan (China)

Mount Wutaishan was an important centre of religious shopping for Mongol pilgrims, who purchased there various kinds of objects, from rosaries, statuettes, good-luck tokens and mass-produced prints and maps up to expensive icons. Back home, these „relics‟ of the holy shrine served to maintain a physical connection with the charisma of the site. This presentation will examine three kinds of sacred souvenirs – maps, prints of Shakyamuni‟s footprints and thangkas – to question their different functions and uses, and the lasting influence they had on Mongol Buddhist art.

11:35 Speakers’s panel – Questions and discussion

12:10 Conclusion: Pierre-Jean LUIZARD (CNRS – GSRL / EPHE, Paris)

12:30 Closing: Angela HOBART; Pedram KHOSRONEJAD; Thierry ZARCONE

13:00 Lunch Break

All are welcome

For all inquiries, please contact:

secretary@ciu-ascona.org

http://www.ciu-ascona.org/

 

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ASTROLOGY IN TIME AND PLACE: CROSS-CULTURAL QUESTIONS IN THE HISTORY OF ASTROLOGY

 

Venue: Bath Royal Literary and Scientific Institution, Bath, England

Date: 23-24 June 2012

 University of Wales Trinity Saint David

The Sophia Centre, School of Archaeology, History and Anthropology

University of Wales Trinity Saint David

http://www.historyofastrology.org.uk/conferences/TimeAndPlace/

 

Conference Chairs: Nicholas Campion and Dorian Greenbaum

 

Contact: Nicholas Campion, n.campion@tsd.ac.uk

Call for Papers

We invite abstracts this academic conference which will consider the questions which arise from the transmission of ideas in the theory and practice of astrology. Such transmission may be between cultures or through time in the same culture. Issues may also be addressed of comparison between cultures.

Astrology is ‘the practice of relating the heavenly bodies to lives and events on earth, and the tradition that has thus been generated’ (Patrick Curry). It has been practised in some form in most cultures. In some it is rudimentary, in others complex. It may be considered magical, religious or scientific, or it may defy categorisation. There is evidence of the transmission of ideas in the near east between Egypt, Greece and Mesopotamia, and between the Near East, India and East Asia. In Mesoamerica and China technical forms arose which were entirely different to the Near Eastern tradition. Syncretism has been a major feature of astrology in India, Persia and Europe down to modern New Age culture and the globalisation of alternative spiritualities.

This conference will consider questions surrounding the exchange of astrological ideas or practice between cultures, issues arising from their transmission from one period to another, or consider comparisons between the astrologies of different cultures. Papers may focus on iconography, literature, theory, practice, philosophy or cultural context.

Our keynote speakers will be

Professor Charles Burnett (Warburg Institute), Professor of the History of Islamic Influences in Europe at The Warburg Institute. Professor Burnett received his PhD from Cambridge University, and has been a Member of the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, a Leverhulme Research Fellow at the University of Sheffield, a Distinguished Visiting Professor in Medieval Studies in the University of California at Berkeley and Visiting Professor at the Ludwig Maximilian Universität, Munich (2009).

Professor David Pankenier, whose books include East Asian Archaeoastronomy: Historical Records of Astronomical Observations of China, Japan, and Korea, (with Xu, Zhenoao and Yaotiao Jiang, Amsterdam: Gordon and Breach Science Publishers, 2000) and Bringing Heaven Down to Earth: Celestial Foundations of Chinese Civilisation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012).

Professor Francesca Rochberg, one of the foremost authorities on Mesopotamian astrology and its transmission to the Hellenistic world, and author of The Heavenly Writing: Divination, Horoscopy and Astronomy in Mesopotamian Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004) and In the Path of the Moon: Babylonian Celestial Divination and its Legacy (Leiden: Brill, 2010).

Professor Michael York, former Professor of Cultural Astronomy and Astrology at Bath Spa University, and author of The Emerging Network: A Sociology of the New Age and Neo-Pagan Movements (London: Rowan and Littlefield, 1995) and Pagan Theology: Paganism as a World Religion, New York: New York University Press, 2003).

Proposals are invited for papers of 30 minutes, to include discussion. All papers will be plenary sessions.

Abstracts should be around 150 words. Please include a brief biography of c.50-100 words.

Speakers will not have to register for the conference.

Selected proceedings will be published by the Sophia Centre Press.

Please submit abstracts and full contact information to Dr Nicholas Campion n.campion@tsd.ac.uk

Deadline 15 December 2011

RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE AND TRADITION: International interdisciplinary scientific conference

 

Call for Papers

International interdisciplinary scientific conference

Religious Experience and Tradition

Kaunas, Lithuania, May 11-12, 2012

During the last century, religious experience has been studied extensively from different points of view, such as: the revitalization of religion; New Age movements; new social roles of religion; the place of different religions in society; neurosciences; ecumenism; (re)secularization as a part of modernization; religions and values, etc. Globalization offers a wide assortment of exotic religious practices sometimes covered under the diversity of physical or intellectual activities. Traditional faiths are confronted with new religious movements. Families uniting people from different countries face cultural and religious inadequacies in daily life. Consequently, scholars in the field of religion are facing new challenges, namely to rethink the importance of religious experience and its place in contemporary society with relation to its interconnection with the religious tradition.

This conference is the 3rd one dedicated to the research of religious experience and the religious consciousness. After discussing the phenomenon of mystical experience and relationship between East and West we direct our attention towards religious experience in relation to religious traditions. Some fundamental questions are: How do religious experiences correlate with religious traditions? Are religious experiences expressions of religious tradition or of human religiousness in general? How is the experience of Transcendence understood by the religious and nonreligious people? Is it possible that the expression of such experience stays beyond the concrete religious tradition? How is it possible (if at all) to express one’s personal experience of Transcendence?

The Conference organizers invite you to address such questions and welcome papers in line with the Conference theme, particularly in relation to the following subthemes:

• The consequence of religious experience on tradition

• The influence of religious tradition on religious experience

• Religious experience in diverse religious environments

• Religious experience as an ecumenical phenomenon

• Effects of daily and extraordinary religious experiences on tradition

• Social aspects of religious experience and tradition

• Psychological, psychoanalytical and anthropological aspects of religious experience and tradition

• Literary and other artistic expression of religious experience

• Interconnection of religious practices and religious experiences and tradition

Please submit an abstract of your paper of 250-300 words (500 words if your paper will be presented not in English), together with your name, position, and institutional affiliation to:

religio@ktf.vdu.lt by December 15, 2011.

The abstract should be sent as an email attachment in Microsoft Word format. Each proposal will undergo a double-blind peer review process.

Registration fee is 30 € (EUR). Unfortunately, there are no funds available at the time to cover the accommodation- or travel-expenses.

All papers accepted for and presented at the conference will be eligible for publication in the scientific journal ‘SOTER’ published by the Faculty of Catholic Theology at Vytautas Magnus University. The Journal is reviewed in: CEEOL, The Philosopher’s Index, eLABa, DOAJ.

Organizing institute: Vytautas Magnus University (Department of Philosophy, Faculty of Catholic Theology)

Scientific commitee:

prof. dr. Algis Mickūnas (chair, Ohio university, USA),

prof. dr. Romualdas Dulskis (VMU, Faculty of Catholic Theology, Lithuania),

prof. dr. Merab Ghaghanidze (Free University, Tbilisi, Georgia),

prof. dr. Peter Jonkers (Tilburg university, Netherlands),

prof. dr. Rekha Menon (Berkeley College, Boston, USA),

prof. dr. Tomas Sodeika (KUT, Dep. of Philosophy and Cultural Science, Lithuania),

prof. dr. Anita Stašulane (Daugavpils University, Latvia),

assoc prof. dr. Olga Breskaya (University of Brest, Belarus),

assoc. prof. dr. Janis Priede (University of Latvia, Latvia),

dr. István Povedák (Bálint Sándor Institute for the Study of Religion, Hungary)

Organizing committee:

assoc. prof. dr. Agnė Budriūnaitė (chair, VMU, Dep. of Philosophy, Lithuania),

assoc. prof. dr. Živilė Advilonienė (VMU, Faculty of Catholic Theology, Lithuania),

assoc. prof. dr. Povilas Aleksandravičius (MRU, Dep. of Philosophy, Lithuania),

assoc. prof. dr. Rūta Brūzgienė, (MRU, Dep. of Lithuanian Language, Lithuania),

assoc. prof. dr. Vida Daugirdienė (VMU, Faculty of Catholic Theology, Lithuania),

assoc. prof. dr. Lora Tamošiūnienė, (MRU, Dep. of Foreign Languages, Lithuania),

assoc. prof. dr. Benas Ulevičius (VMU, Faculty of Catholic Theology, Lithuania),

assist. prof. theol. lic. Valdas Mackela (VMU, Faculty of Catholic Theology, Lithuania),

assist. prof. Rimantas Viedrynaitis (VMU, Dep. of Philosophy, Lithuania),

Vitalij Milkov (VMU, Dep. of Philosophy, Lithuania).

Venue: Vytautas Magnus University, Kaunas, Lithuania

Conference languages: English, Lithuanian, French, German.

Important dates:

Submission of proposals – December 15, 2011

Notification of acceptance – January 15, 2012

Registration fee payment – March 15, 2012

Publication of the program – April 15, 2012

THE IMAGINAL COSMOS: Community Arts and Education short course

 

THE IMAGINAL COSMOS

Community Arts and Education short course

Tutors: Angela Voss and Geoffrey Cornelius

Date: Thursday 2 February

(8 sessions, 10.30am – 1pm)

Nearly everyone has a ‘sixth sense’ that finds meaning in life events apart from rational explanations, and yet this intuitive experience has no place in our institutions of learning or science. This has not always been the case, and in this 10 week course you will investigate the history and practices of this sixth sense.

Our exploration ranges from psychic communication and spiritualism to symbolic interpretation in popular forms of divination such as astrology, I Ching and Tarot. What is the role of imagination, and in what way is this knowledge ‘real’? Does it suggest an intelligent Cosmos?

Starting with the Western tradition coming down to us through Plato, we follow the Renaissance rebirth of ancient wisdom through to contemporary New Age spirituality. Adopting the metaphor of the two brain hemispheres and their different orientations towards reality, we look at the bridge between rational and non-rational knowledge, allowing intuitive and creative insights to inform our experience.

Cost: £85 (excluding lunch)

This event is open to the public.

Venue: Canterbury Christ Church University Campus,

Time: 10:30

Contact: April Doyle (email)

Telephone: 01227 86345