The Society for Psychical Research (Chapter 24, The Occult World)

The Occult World, 2014

Chapter 70 of The Occult World (ed. Christopher Partridge; Routledge, 2014). Uncorrected proofs.

An overview of freely available materials for the history of mesmerism, spiritualism and psychical research in Google Books.

This paper presents brief information about the existence and orientation of selected journals that have published articles on psychic phenomena. Some journals emphasize particular theoretical ideas, or methodological approaches. Examples include the Journal du magn´etisme and Zoist, in which animal magnetism was discussed, and the Revue Spirite, and Luce e Ombra, which focused on discarnate agency. Nineteenth-century journals such as the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research and the Annales des Sciences Psychiques emphasized both methodology and the careful accumulation of data. Some publications, such as the Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research and the Dutch Tijdschrift voor Parapsychologie, were influenced by the agenda of a single individual. Other journals represented particular approaches or points of view, such as those of spiritualism (Luce e Ombra and Psychic Science), experimental parapsychology (Journal of Parapsychology), or skepticism (Skeptical Inquirer). An awareness of the differing characteristics of these publications illustrates aspects of the development of parapsychology as a discipline.

Journal of the history of the behavioral sciences, 2014

In so far as researchers viewed psychical, occult, and religious phenomena as both objectively verifiable and resistant to extant scientific explanations, their study posed thorny issues for experimental psychologists. Controversies over the study of psychical and occult phenomena at the Fourth Congress of International Psychology (Paris, 1900) and religious phenomena at the Sixth (Geneva, 1909) raise the question of why the latter was accepted as a legitimate object of study, whereas the former was not. Comparison of the Congresses suggests that those interested in the study of religion were willing to forego the quest for objective evidence and focus on experience, whereas those most invested in psychical research were not. The shift in focus did not overcome many of the methodological difficulties. Sub-specialization formalized distinctions between psychical, religious, and pathological phenomena; obscured similarities; and undercut the nascent comparative study of unusual experi...

This paper presents brief information about the existence and orientation of selected journals that have published articles on psychic phenomena. Some journals emphasize particular theoretical ideas, or methodological approaches. Examples include the Journal du magnétisme and Zoist, in which animal magnetism was

Alchemy "Sorcery has been called Magic: but Magic is Wisdom, and there is no wisdom in Sorcery" PARACELSUS. The Occultist is one who intelligently and continuously applies himself to the understanding of the hidden forces in nature and to the laws of the interior world, to the end that he may consciously cooperate with nature and the spiritual intelligences in the production of effects of service to himself and to his fellow-beings. This entails upon him a close study of the mystery and power of sound, number, colour, form; the psychological laws underlying all expression of faculty; the laws of sympathy and antipathy; the law of vibration; of spiritual and natural affinity; the law of periodicity, of cosmic energy, planetary action; occult correspondences, etc. To these labours he must bring a natural gift of understanding, an unusual degree of patience and devotion, and a keen perception of natural facts. The Medium, or natural sensitive, is one who holds himself in negative relations to the interior worlds, and submits himself to the operation of influences proceeding from things and persons, as well as to that of discarnate intelligences. The medium cultivates an unusual degree of responsiveness to environment and to the emanations (atomic, magnetic or psychic) and suggestions of other persons. The phenomena developed by this process of mediumism include automatism (temporary loss of control over the motor nerves), as in the phenomena of involuntary speech and automatic writing; hypercesthesia, as in the function of clairvoyance, clairaudience, psychometry, etc.; trance, with its attendant phenomena of unconscious cerebration, obsession, and a variety of physical effects of a supernormal character. In its highest manifestation, following upon the "crucifying of the flesh," the subjugation of the passions, and a process of intense religious aspiration, mediumism is frequently followed by spiritual revelation and spontaneous prophecy. "But this sort cometh not but by fasting and prayer."

2006

This paper presents brief information about the existence and orientation of selected journals that have published articles on psychic phenomena.

In recent years there has been much discussions about the development and potential of digital libraries in order to have the world’s literature online. This has led to the development of many databases formed of electronic books and articles. In this note I would like to present examples of some of the sites that provide online primary materials (books and articles) of interest to those concerned with the histories of psychical research, and related topics. It is my hope that this list will be useful to scholars, and students in their study of the topics in question.

Religion, the Occult, and the Paranormal (4 volume reprint series with Routledge), 2015

The first volume of Religion, the Occult, and the Paranormal is concerned with how people have interpreted experiences of a religious, occult, or paranormal nature, and the approaches that scholars employ in order to study such phenomena, which are often elusive and difficult to locate in the various frameworks that people accept as ‘reality’. Wouter Hanegraaff has noted that, "[i]n studying religion, scholars are dependent on believers expressing their awareness of a meta-empirical reality in empirically perceptible ways (words, images, behaviour etc.) but, qua scholars, they do not themselves have direct access to the meta-empirical … [M]ethodological agnosticism is the only proper attitude" (1995: 101). Yet many scholars involved in the study of esotericism and paranormal experiences are themselves ‘insiders’ to one or other tradition or practice, a phenomenon that has bedevilled the academic study of religion, in which a significant number of scholars have been theologically motivated. So, as Hugh Urban has asked, how do ‘outsiders’ study secret or restricted traditions, and does the intimate and closed nature of the teacher-pupil relationship result in the conundrum that ‘if one “knows,” one cannot speak; and if one speaks, one must not really “know” ‘ (Urban 1998: 210)? An unsolved question is, ‘Must the study of all non-normative experience involve the scholar as participant?’ Another important underlying issue concerns the connections between the three terms, ‘religion’, the ‘occult’, and the ‘paranormal’; how closely are they related? It is possible to situate them on a continuum, with religion at one end, signifying official, sanctioned non-normative experiences, the occult (which simply means ‘hidden’ or ‘secret’ and is the Latin-derived equivalent of the Greek-derived term ‘esoteric’) in the middle, and the radically de-institutionalised, individual and ‘unofficial’ experiences of the paranormal at the other end? Antoine Faivre, an early and influential scholar of Western Esotericism, posited a six-point definition of esotericism: 1) ‘[s]ymbolic and real correspondences … are said to exist among all parts of the universe, both seen and unseen’ (1994: 10); 2) Nature is experienced as alive and pulsating with energy; 3) the use of imagination to identify and utilise mediations between the material and spiritual worlds; 4) the transmutation of the individual initiate of esoteric wisdom, from a lower to a higher state; 5) the use of concordance, where attempts are made to ‘establish common denominators between two different traditions or even more, among all traditions’ (1994: 14); and 6) the transmission of esoteric knowledge directly from teacher to pupil. This model has been questioned, but it marks the occult and esoteric out as distinct from both organised religion (such as Roman Catholicism) and deregulated spiritualities (such as the ‘New Age’).

The first volume of this series has equipped us with the methodological tools for examining the occult and paranormal. The second has shown us that these themes have been present since the earliest times. This third volume of the Religion, the Occult, and the Paranormal provides examples of some of the rich diversity of ideas, practices and groups engaged in various ways with these supernatural considerations. Occult practices and ideas around the paranormal are found within each of the major world religions, often in connection with the more mythical aspects of those traditions. Bibliomancy, or divination using books, thrives within many forms of Christianity, Islamic theology is resplendent with jinns that can intervene in everyday life, and no process is more mysterious than the divinatory practices that foretell the next Dalai Lama in the “Yellow Hat” school of Tibetan Buddhism. Some of the chapters presented herein will explore just some of those crevices in South Asian religions